SEA
Chinese short video app Tik Tok is setting up a team of censors in Indonesia to combat “inappropriate content” to overturn the ban. The ban is said to be temporary by Minister of Communication and Informatics Rudiantara and could be lifted once Tik Tok cleans up its content. (Reuters)
AI-driven, digital debt collection startup, AsiaCollect, has raised US$4.5 million in funding led by global technology investor SIG Asia Investments. The startup provides integrated credit management services in Southeast Asia. (Business Times)
Asia’s largest IP-driven fund, Makara Innovation Fund, which is jointly established by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and private equity firm Makara Capital, has raised $150 million in capital commitment from global investment firm Badr Investments. (Deal Street Asia)
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is looking for opportunities to invest in Myanmar’s infrastructure, finance, manufacturing, agribusiness and services sectors, as said by a top executive. Currently, IFC has an accumulated $1.26 billion worth of capital commitments in Myanmar. (Deal Street Asia)
Dahmakan, a food delivery startup based in Malaysia, is expecting to close its Series A funding round in the third quarter of this year and expand to Singapore by the end of this year. Its previous pre-Series A round had participants from accelerator Y Combinator, Texas Atlantic Capital, Atami Capital and the former founder of APAX Partners. (Deal Street Asia)
China
Chinese bike-sharing service Mobike announced today to scrap deposit requirements nationwide in China, as well as to add e-bikes to its bike fleet that colors China’s street corners with their iconic light orange touch. (KrASIA)
Shanghai is looking to strengthen its development in business related to AI technology through an investment fund of at least 100 billion yuan ($15.1 billion) over the next two or three years. (SCMP)
Alibaba’s financial affiliate Ant Financial has invested in Wifi provider Peanut Subway. (CMN)
Online payment service AlipayHK is finding difficulty in breaking the traditional means of transaction and concerns over data privacy in Hong Kong. It faces stiff competition from the home-grown Octopus stored-value card. (SCMP)
Alibaba and Guess have teamed up, unveiling its new AI driven concept for future fashion stores, improving customer experience through integrating technology into offline shopping to drive sales. (SCMP)
China has managed to shift the focus of venture capitals away from North America, accounting for 47% of the world’s venture capital funding in the second quarter. This was assisted by a record US$14 billion fundraising round by Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services. (SCMP)
Tencent Music, the music streaming arm of Chinese internet giant Tencent, is reportedly filing for an IPO application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on July 6th. (KrASIA)
China’s search giant Baidu spent almost $2 billion on R&D of AI technologies last year. “Over the past seven or eight years, Baidu was spending every year around 15% of its annual revenue on R&D of AI technologies,” said Robin Li, founder and CEO of Baidu today at Baidu Create 2018, the company’s annual AI developer conference. (KrASIA)
Nokia and Tencent plan to work together on 5G R&D and applications, leveraging on Tencent’s mass user base. (TC)
Binance Labs leads a seed round in Zhidian, a blockchain information portal, with participation from LD Capital, and INBlockchain. (CMN)
Rest of Asia
Ola, India’s largest cab-hailing firm, has appointed Simon Smith, former CEO of eBay Australia, as managing director to fortify its presence in Australia. (Deal Street Asia)
World
Uber will resume ride-hailing operations in Finland after the taxi market deregulation. The company will relaunch its UberX and UberBLACK services on Wednesday afternoon. (Reuters)
Volkswagen Group is launching an electric vehicle car-sharing service called WE, managed by UMI Urban Mobility International, a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG. WE will debut in Germany next year, then to major cities in Europe, North America and Asia beginning in 2020. (Techcrunch)
Food delivery startup Deliveroo has materialized its shared kitchen concept, opening its first shared kitchen in Paris. (Techcrunch)
Gadgets
Baidu unveiled a new AI chip Kunlun which is made to handle AI models for computing on devices and in the cloud. (VB)
Good News Bad News
Singapore’s anti-trust body mulls to fine Grab and Uber Technologies, warning that the merger between the two companies may have lessened competition. (Reuters)