Southeast Asia Is A Rising Star

Southeast Asia is a rising star in Asia.?

As an emerging market with a massive young and tech-savvy population, the region has become more enticing, of late.?

Why? Because China has slowed down considerably. And India is already super crowded.?

Even Apple can’t ignore it anymore. That is why Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly planning a visit to Indonesia next month. The speculation (by the Indonesian government, no less) is that the company might announce potential investments including building a factory in the country.?

The last time Apple invested in the country was in 2017. The tech titan had poured US$44 million into building a research and development facility in Indonesia.?

This comes at a time when Apple’s sales is sliding in China, while Southeast Asia’s smartphone market is expected to grow much faster than the rest of the world. Beyond sales figures, Apple is in the soup in the US, where the Department of Justice and 16 attorneys general are suing it for violating antitrust laws. Whereas in Europe, the company is reportedly facing probes about whether it’s complying with the region’s Digital Markets Act.?

Naturally, it needs to develop its emerging markets like Southeast Asia into growth drivers for the future.?

For context, for chip-making behemoth Nvidia, Singapore alone drove 15% or US$2.7 billion of the total revenue for the quarter ended October 2023. Following this, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang went on a tour of Asia last December to expand its AI business. During the visit, he hinted at large investments the company would make in the city-state including building a new supercomputer and backing an iconic site for AI.?

Aside from US tech giants, Japanese investors have been quite keen on investing in the region for a while.?

Just this week, Japanese lending platform Crowd Credit partnered with Singapore-based fintech firm Helicap to channel US$50 million from Japanese investors to Southeast Asian firms. As a part of this collaboration, Helicap will connect potential Southeast Asian borrowers with Crowd Credit. In turn, Crowd Credit will also link investment opportunities in Japan to Helicap.?

All this points to one thing. Money continues to flow into Southeast Asia. And that money will circulate and reach innovative regional founders, sooner or later.?

On that note, let’s dive into this week’s recap.

Buzzing Deals

• Malaysian babycare company Applecrumby received a US$4.2 million investment from 500 Global to support its global growth. Present in 11 countries including China, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines, the company plans to expand to 20 by year's end. Additionally, it wants to have its products in nearly 2,000 Malaysian retail locations. Applecrumby sells affordable babycare items online and offline, competing in Southeast Asia's babycare market against brands like The Parentinc and KeaBabies. The investment will also help develop new products in the PureBasics line.
• Global trading and investment firm Mitsui & Co. has invested an undisclosed sum in LinkAja, an Indonesian digital payment provider. Founded as a joint venture between 10 state-owned enterprises, including Telkomsel and Pertamina, LinkAja has achieved EBITDA profitability by the end of 2023 through cost-cutting and a focus on the state-owned ecosystem. Now it is aiming for a positive net income in 2024. The deal will help Mitsui & Co. deepen its presence in digital finance, while LinkAja will expand its payment ecosystem with partnerships with state-owned enterprises.
• Singapore-based Anext Bank has received an additional US$148 million in funding from its parent Ant Group, following a US$188 million investment last year. So far, Ant Group has poured US$503 million into its digital bank, which it set up after obtaining a digital wholesale bank license—geared at catering SMEs—from Singapore's central bank. As of June 2023, 65% of its clients were micro-businesses.
• Online lending platform in Indonesia Akulaku secured up to US$100 million in debt financing from HSBC Singapore. The funds will be used to pay off some existing debts. This financial boost comes shortly after Indonesia's Financial Services Authority lifted restrictions on Akulaku's buy now, pay later (BNPL) service, previously limited due to regulatory concerns. Akulaku offers various financial services, including BNPL, virtual credit cards, wealth management, and digital banking through Bank Neo Commerce. The raise comes amid several exits from the BNPL space including Bukalapak’s BukaCicilan and ShopBack’s PayLater service.

M&A Streak Continues

Strategic buyers are becoming more and more active in Southeast Asia. Earlier this month, among many M&A deals, we saw Carro acquiring used car service Beyond Cars to expand in Hong Kong and Singapore's Sqreem Technologies buying Melbourne's advertising company Trade Indy to deepen its services portfolio. This week, we saw another couple of M&A deals finalizing in the region.?

AnyMind goes to Malaysia: Singapore-based AnyMind Group, an end-to-end brand enablement platform has acquired Arche Digital, a Malaysia-based e-commerce enabler for US$1.5 million. Founded in 2015, Arche Digital provides end-to-end solutions to help businesses enter online marketplaces like Shopee and Lazada. The transaction, which will be completed in June, is the second acquisition of an e-commerce enabler in the past 12 months. This acquisition will help AnyMind expand its business process-as-a-service offering in Malaysia.

EFishery boosts AI power: Indonesian aquaculture company EFishery has acquired AI IoT startup DycodeX for an undisclosed amount. DycodeX's team will join eFishery’s product division working on AI and IoT, with co-founder Andri Yadi joining as vice president. The deal will boost EFishery’s AI capabilities, including launching a new brand, eFishery.ai. The company also plans to release 10 new AI and IoT-based aquaculture products over the next two to three years. The company currently offers an AI-powered efeeder, which allows its clients to enable automatic feeding for fish and shrimp cultivation.

Firing and Hiring

As usual, there is bad news and good news.?

After deciding to retreat from the buy now pay later space in Indonesia, Temasek-based online shopping rewards app ShopBack is cutting 24% of its workforce. In total, the company is eliminating 195 roles. The company gave the same reason as all other job slashers. To become more focused and self-sustainable, so as to pave the way for profitability. Even after freezing salaries for leaders and lowering bonuses since 2022, sustainable growth has remained a challenge for the company.

There is an even bigger layoff happening at ByteDance. The internet giant is slashing 1000 jobs at its workplace collaboration arm Feishu–which also houses Lark, the platform’s international version. Overall, the company might lay off up to 20% of Feishu’s employees in total, or over 5,000 people, mostly in mainland China. Those impacted by the job cuts will get compensation or a chance to switch to other roles in the company.

On the other hand, Feishu will keep sharpening its focus on AI. Last year, the unit added an AI assistant to the Feishu app that can condense meetings, filter messages, and read various files. This aligns with ByteDance’s overarching efforts to embrace generative AI.?

And that’s a good news. Recently, ByteDance posted over 100 job openings related to generative AI, with most roles based in Singapore and the US. Of these, 40 open positions were for large language models (LLMs)—the engine behind generative AI—roles in the city-state. These hires will be working on ByteDance’s in-house LLM model called Yunque, which powers its ChatGPT-like app Doubao, aside from helping the company develop other generative AI apps.

And that’s the wrap for this edition of #ICYMI. We will continue to curate the weekly highlights of the Asian tech ecosystem in case you missed what made the buzz in the week that just went by. You can subscribe to #ICYMI to get it every Thursday to stay abreast of noteworthy tech developments.