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It recently signed a partnership with major Burmese retail chain City Mart to launch a joint venture

It’s a little hard to believe, but, four years ago, sim cards in Myanmar used to cost around US$500. If that price is considered exorbitant for even a first world nation, think about how out-of-reach it would be for the working class Burmese, whose minimum wage is only US$87.

But that all changed thanks to the entrance of two foreign telecoms in 2013, Qatar’s Telenor and Norway’s Ooredoo, which saw sim card prices slashed to about US$1.50. Since then, the mobile penetration in Myanmar has skyrocketed to 90 per cent, up from 7 per cent in 2012, according to government figures. And of that, more than 80 per cent use smartphones; as a result, Burmese are hooking up to the internet more than ever.

Now, Thailand-based fintech company T2P wants to help Burmese catch up to a tech product already prevalent in many other markets — mobile payments.

Earlier this week, T2P signed a joint venture deal with City Mart Holdings Co.,Ltd, a leading Myanmar retail chain with over 200 outlets across the nation, which includes fast food restaurants, bookstores and supermarkets.

The signing was held during a Myanmar-Thailand Business Cooperation event presided over by Myanmar State Counseller Aung San Suu Kyi and Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand Dr. Somkid Jatusripitak.

The joint venture will see T2P integrate its suite of fintech offerings including its payment platform, loyalty and e-gift platforms, as well as e-wallets to cater to Myanmar’s burgeoning smartphone user demographics.

According to an official press release, T2P’s overarching goal is to democratise financial services to the country’s large unbanked population.

Also Read: Myanmar has opportunity, so why are investors hesitating? Here are four reasons

“At a company level, we are not only bringing our technology platform to help accelerate technology deployment for our partner, but also indirectly drawing attentions from our investors and other potential investors to take a deeper look at opportunities in Myanmar. When more of this happen[s], I’m sure there will be more parties to help accelerate the growth of startup ecosystem in Myanmar,” said T2P’s CEO Taweechai Pureetip, in an interview with e27.

He added that through regional events such as Mekong Investment Forum, Thai entrepreneurs are raising awareness about the great potential of tech innovations, as well as enabling other entrepreneurs by sharing their experiences and lessons.

But like any emerging economy, Myanmar’s tech ecosystem still have many obstacles to overcome. Basic infrastructure is still dysfunctional in certain parts, especially rural areas. And although foreign investments are on the rise in Myanmar, the law regarding such investments in the country’s newly-minted stock exchange is still restrictive.

Pureetip is aware of such challenges, having faced similar problems in his home market.

“Since the beginning of our company, we aimed to help improve financial access to those unbanked in Thailand.  We have to take into accounts technology literacy of our customers, access to services, and connectivity issues that may arise in some areas.  These are similar issues but may be more common in Myanmar,” said Pureetip.

Also Read: 4 ways to boost e-commerce in Myanmar

“Aside from technology, both Burmese and Thais are cash base society. Changing cash into electronic money will be our big challenge for us but we also see great opportunities there. We will be working closely with CityMart in adapting our service offerings to encourage them to use more electronic money,” he added.

Founded in late 2011 by MIT Alumni Pureetip, Natwut Amornvivat and Charatpong Chotigavanich, Panop Kasemsarn, T2P has been providing white label cash and reward card solutions to national retailers in Thailand since 2013. It currently process over 1.5 million card holders,

In 2016, it raised its first outside financing round in 2016 from 500 Startups, 500 Tuk Tuk and a strategic partner Benchachinda Holding.

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Image Credit: T2P

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Saeed Amidi, co-founder of Plug and Play and legendary startup investor. Photo credit: Robert Scoble.

Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Plug and Play has opened up a branch in Jakarta and is recruiting startups to join its first batch.

Plug and Play has been around since 2006. Hundreds of companies have run through its program – including Dropbox and Lending Club.

The name Plug and Play is connected with its co-founder Saeed Amidi, a unique figure who has been called “Silicon Valley’s hottest matchmaker“.

Coming from a family of Iranian carpet dealers, he built a large network in Silicon Valley, and proved to have an exceptional sense for scouting out promising entrepreneurs. Most notably, Amidi participated in PayPal’s first round of investment.

In Indonesia, Plug and Play partnered with Gan Kapital – an investment firm with interests in traditional industries like mining, oil and gas, as well as infrastructure development. It wants to attract startups in mobile development and fintech.

Gan Kapital’s Wesley Harjono also acts as managing director of Plug and Play Indonesia, while Nayoko Kho, formerly the CEO of local services marketplace Seekmi, heads the accelerator.

Hits and misses

Plug and Play launched programs under its name across the globe, including in Malaysia and Singapore, prior to Indonesia. It usually partners with a local company. But not all of them turned into long-lasting collaborations.

For example, SPH Plug and Play, the startup accelerator of Singapore’s largest newspaper publisher, was declared dead last month after running for just under two years.

But Plug and Play is still running an accelerator in Singapore via a collaboration with Mercedes-Benz.

Tech in Asia has reached out to Plug and Play Indonesia for more details.

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M-Pesa changed the lives of underbanked Africans decades ago; Will Wechat Wallet drastically change the fintech landscape anew?

A few days ago, I visited a Chinese internet finance museum for a blockchain event organized by okcoin, one of Bitcoin’s large players. The three giants in Chinese internet — Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent — occupied the most entries with their products and their subsidiaries numbering around 20 companies for each (photo below).

Safaricom’s banner next to Tencent’s on the Chinese internet finance museum’s hall of fame

The event area was in a large dimly lit conference room with large Hogwarts like posters hanging from the wall of the well known internet finance visionaries such PayPal founder Peter Thiel, Tranferswise’s Taavet Hinrikus, and LendingClub’s Renaud Laplanche. Ensconced between them was Michael Joseph, the former CEO of Safaricom, who oversaw the launch and runaway success of the company’s money transfer service, M-Pesa.

Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT) web of companies

M-Pesa: A breath of fresh air (in its heyday)

M-Pesa completely altered everyday lives of most Kenyans — it was breath of fresh air. Before Safaricom, Banks ruled the Kenya finance market with an iron hand. Applying for a bank account was tedious, with stiff-faced and sullen bank tellers behind inches-thick glass making the experience even more depressing.

Banks charged exorbitant interest rates, had very few ATMs mostly in high end areas in the capital city, offered terrible services, and were extremely choosy on who to bank with. They kept finding better ways of extorting the consumers, such as asking everyone to pay just to get a statement, among other illogical charges.

After M-Pesa, your lovely neighbour became your bank teller. You no longer needed a long line to deposit money or withdraw money, as you could just go to your neighbour’s house or call them.

There had also been various bank collapses and massive corruption scandals involving banks, which led to any contact with a bank being done only when needed. Kenyans had developed a deep mistrust in the banking system, which resulted in people creating their own mini-banks called Saccos or merry go rounds.

M-Pesa transformed this terrible experience and also affected other parts of the economy, such increasing employment opportunities and creating a finance institution that has had a very significant effect in economic growth and the GDP. The M-Pesa technology is now being licensed in other countries, and recently it was introduced into Albania.

This might all change once again, if Wechat realises its ambitions of going international.

Gateway to Africa

Africa plays an important role in its expansion due to similar characteristics with its home market, such as a relatively new finance system (Compared to the Western ones). New users are skipping the PC era altogether and jumping into the mobile era, just like majority of African countries. The African banking system is also not as regulated as the Western banking systems and few, if any, alternatives exist.

Wechat is owned by Tencent, which is, in turn, partly owned the uncelebrated South Africa’s tech giant, Naspers. Naspers partly owns shares of other national champions around the world (dstv in in many African countries, Allegro (sold) and Gadugadu in Poland, Flipkart in India ,Avito in Russia, Mail.ru and VK (Russia’s gmail and facebook respectively). And with a yearly profit of US$12 billion, it is by some standards Africa’s biggest company.

South Africa is therefore Wechat’s first port of call and after it’s launch in South Africa, Kenya will be its next market, as is usually the case of most companies which come to Africa — this is due to South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria being the regional economic heavyweights.

Wechat’s threat to M-Pesa dominance is imminent

Safaricom has never had to worry about M-Pesa’s dominance. Numerous attempts by other telcos (Orange, a French multinational and Airtel, an Indian multinational), banks (Equity’s equitel), multinational (Google’s bebapay and wallet), startups with better technology, and cheaper fees — all have tried and failed terribly. Safaricom enjoys a first-to-market advantage, a large network of M-Pesa shops, and a majority of the subscribers for its carrier business.

Safaricom has therefore become lazy and un-innovative, concentrating more on milking its cash cow. M-Pesa will be 10 years this year. Despite a yearly revenue of US$320 million (2015) and 13 million users, it still lacks a mobile app and no dedicated user-facing website.

Safaricom licences the M-Pesa technology from its major shareholder, Vodafone and pays 12 per cent of the M-Pesa revenues as licence fees. This lack of control of the M-Pesa platform is a major reason Safaricom cannot easily innovate. Creating an app would require its board’s approval, which is unlikely as Vodafone will try to protects its revenue.

Safaricom has tried to add piecemeal features into the M-Pesa technology, such as mkesho and mshwari, but it cannot go adding such complex features into the USSD technology much longer as incomes are rising and majority of its users will soon have smartphones and will prefer using apps.

M-Pesa has not become as successful in some other more advanced markets as it was launched without major revisions. Vodacom (which Vodafone has 65 per cent ownership of), the leading telco in South Africa, tried and failed numerous times to launch the M-Pesa service in South Africa until it finally gave up and will reportedly no longer try to launch M-Pesa in South Africa.

M-Pesa is just a footnote in Safaricom’s official Android app

A battle for ‘super app’ supremacy

Wechat has been locked in an unrestrained battle for supremacy with Alibaba-owned Alipay. Both companies have been improving their respective money banking apps by copying each other and other popular apps either in China or outside, such as the read-and-burn feature in Alipay, which is a copy of Snapchat. Wechat appears to be winning from my every day experience, with nearly everyone now using Wechat wallet as compared to Alipay. Wechat wallet is far far much younger as compared to Alipay, which was released nearly 13 years ago. Wechat wallet was only launched in 2014.

Although virtually unknown outside Asia, its features are been copied by western companies such LinkedIn account QR codes and Facebook’s focus on its messenger platform, among many others.

Wechat, which is now being referred to as a super app, is soon expanding worldwide, since it has already conquered its home market. The reigning mantra in the Chinese economy is execution over first-to-market or other perceived advantages. It recently debuted it mini-programmes, a direct assault on the Google and Apple app stores. Its official accounts are similar to Facebook pages, but as powerful a native apps.

Some companies have built billion-dollar businesses inside Wechat official accounts such as Weidian (literally “small shop”), a shopify clone; Weipiao (“small ticket”) for movie tickets; and ele.me (meal ordering), among many others. It managed to educate a billion people on how to use QR codes, a technology that was rarely used before its launch.

Wechat’s hongbao (“red pocket”) feature was a brilliant stroke of innovative execution that grew the subscriber base of its wallet feature exponentially. It began its international expansion by accepting non Chinese cards such MasterCard and Visa to be linked with the wallet one year ago.

Wechat Wallet in South Africa

Should established African enterprises be worried?

Wechat Wallet has already been launched in South Africa. Expansion into East Africa poses a threat not only to M-Pesa, but to Safaricom, due to Wechat’s other innovative features, which have even been copied by Facebook.

Wechat Wallet has been free since its launch as Tencent used its vast sums of cash to run it, making only marginal revenue mostly from selling message stickers until it grew to nearly a billion users. It is free to transfer money between accounts and pay for items, while Safaricom charges an exorbitant fee. Paying for items in M-Pesa is now a very frustrating experience and usually done due to lack of options.

Wechat Wallet relies on connecting a user’s bank account to his Wechat account, which is a huge opportunity for some Kenyan banks if they partner with Wechat. Visa adopted this approach when it launched its mVisa app in September 2016 with four local Kenyan banks (KCB, Family Bank, Co-op Bank, and NIC bank).

Due to the fact that Wechat launched in South Africa with its second biggest bank, Standard Bank, Wechat will probably launch in Kenya with Standard’s Kenyan subsidiary Stanbic bank, which is one of the top 10 banks by assets. Stanbic bank is present in 11 other African countries, which, too, offers other opportunities for Wechat.

In fact, when it was launched in China, it covered only a few banks which later expanded to most banks as it grew in popularity. Tencent has previously co-operated with Naspers in India until they split their jointly owned operations in 2013, so Wechat might piggyback on OLX Kenya — another Naspers’ owned tech company — as it did with Snapscan, Standard’s mobile money app when it launched in South Africa.

What will be the impact of Wechat Wallet’s launch in Kenya?

Wechat Wallet’s launch in Kenya will likely be followed by attempts by banks and Safaricom to gang up against it. This will be repeat of a similar situation, when banks ganged up against Safaricom after the launch of M-Pesa and used various tactics such as court cases and lobbying to stop the spread of M-Pesa.

Safaricom, too, is prone to this tactic, as evidenced when it cut bitpesa, a blockchain startup, from its M-Pesa platform. Tencent, and it’s app Wechat, have perfected this tactic, too, as anticompetitive laws rarely exist or are not enforced in China. Wechat blocked Uber’s official account as it had invested in Uber’s rival Didi Fache. This, and other tactics, ultimately led Uber to pull out of China, the only market it has given up on. Tencent is also an investor in Xiaomi, another scrappy startup that managed to become the World top five smartphone seller in than 5 years.

M-Pesa India

Vodaphone, Safaricom’s majority shareholder and also an M-Pesa patent holder, has launched an M-Pesa mobile app in other regions in which it operates such as India and Romania, but the app appears to be mediocre compared to Wechat. It require manual filling of datam which the user has to remember such as the till number, bank account number, and numerous other steps to complete a simple transaction. Wechat Wallet requires you only have to enter the amount and password to complete the transaction.

The success of Wechat will also affect Vodaphone, as it gets a significant revenue from licensing the M-Pesa technology. Companies will now prefer building their own mobile apps. Wechat, too, has made some missteps such hiring footballer Lionel Messi in 2014 to for its worldwide expansion. This did not have any effect on its adoption and was considered a failure. It tried launching in India, too, but Whataspp had already become far too commonly used. Similar attempts in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, were met with strong competition from other mobile messaging apps such as Kik and Line. (Tencent is an investor in Kik messenger.)

Alibaba’s Alipay, too, has global ambitions and deep pockets to support this. It recently moved to acquire Nasdaq-listed Moneygram for US$880 million, which I think is pocket change, as it has paid much more for younger startups — some of which are only based in China and others which are still not making profit. Alibaba invested US$200 in Snapchat in 2015, and it paid a staggering US$4.2 billion to acquire China’s youtube Youku tudou, among many other investments.

Moneygram is nearly 30 years old and present in over 200 countries, including Kenya. It has a network of agents spread across the country and has built relationships with a majority of Kenyan banks, as it too requires a bank to withdraw money. It is not yet clear what Alibaba intends to do with Moneygram, as the transaction has not yet been approved by shareholders. If Wechat Wallet doesn’t launch in Kenya, Alipay will by renaming Moneygram. Alipay, too, is also a superapp with even more features than Amazon, Skype, Udemy, Uber, Paypal and many other apps. It initially tried launching its own OS in 2013 — Aliyun OS in collaboration with Acer — but was blocked by Google.

Alipay’s app

The takeaway

A competition between Wechat and M-Pesa will also spark historical rivalries between English and Afrikaan companies (Vodaphone and Naspers), and between Western and Chinese companies. In Kenya, this is reminiscent of the stiff competition faced by Sabmiller when it entered into East Africa, which was the home market of another English multinational Diageo (EABL).

There have been reports of Safaricom’s intention to split the business into M-Pesa and Safaricom, which is similar to the split of PayPal and eBay. This might be the only hope for M-Pesa to chart it own path and face the vicious battle that will be coming very soon.

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This article first appeared on my Medium Blog, @CACTUS.

The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

Featured Image Copyright: maciejbledowski / 123RF Stock Photo

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The news comes right on the heels of its first acquisition in a US-listed company, Moneygram

Alibaba’s online payment service Ant Financial is seeking to raise US$3 billion in debt financing, according to a report by Bloomberg. It added that the funds will be used to finance acquisition deals. Additionally, Ant is looking at a potential IPO by this year.

This development comes right on the heals of its recent deal with American money-transfer company Moneygram, which it acquired for US$880 million — its first US-listed company acquisition.

Also Read: Ant Financial partners with US payment tech companies Verifone and First Data

Ant is one of the largest online payment services in China. The Alibaba spin-off currently has over 450 million users, and aims to increase to two billion by 2020. In April 2016, Ant raised a whopping US$4.5 billion Series B at a US$60 billion valuation. Last year, it was named at the top fintech company in a global fintech innovation list.

Outside its home market of China, Ant has made several significant investments, including Thailand-based fintech startup Ascend Money, and India’s mobile commerce platform Paytm.

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Image Credit: Ant Financial

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Photo credit: Pexels.

India’s largest ride-hailing app just lost its chief financial officer. Ola’s CFO Rajiv Bansal, who had jumped ship from IT behemoth Infosys to join the taxi-hailing company in October, 2015, quit today. The company’s operations head Pallav Singh has moved up as its interim CFO.

The news was confirmed to Tech in Asia by two highly placed sources within Ola.

Rajiv was a high profile hire for Ola in the wake of US$500 million series F round of funding in 2015. He was one of the highest paid executives at Infosys, which he quit as CFO.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Both Ola and India’s ecommerce leaders Flipkart and Snapdeal cut a sorry figure last year, even as their global rivals Uber and Amazon surged in India with superior tech and customer engagement backed with huge funds.

Ola and Snapdeal, both backed by Japan’s SoftBank, struggled to raise funds. Flipkart had a similar fate, seeing its valuation plummet. All three of India’s startup icons are seeing an exodus of top management talent.

Last month, US-based investment firm Vanguard Group slashed the valuation of its stake in Ola by over 40 percent.

The story will be updated as we get more details.

See: Pros and cons for Alibaba in battle with Amazon on neutral ground in India

(With reporting inputs from Nivedita Bhattacharjee.)

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The Mastercard Girls in Tech report is back. While we still have homeworks remain, the prospect seems full of hope

Mastercard is back with the second edition of its Girls in Tech report, and it reveals that girls believe that studying and pursuing a career in STEM is not only satisfying, but can also lead to longevity in career.

Conducted via online survey to 2,270 girls aged 12-25 years old in six Asia Pacific countries (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore), it is discovered that first jobbers who graduated with a STEM degree, 84 per cent indicated that they took less than six months to land their first job and 60 percent of these graduates were very satisfied with the job options they had upon graduation.

Sixty-three per cent of the young women surveyed noting that they are likely to stay in STEM related fields for their entire career.

In general, girls seem happy about building a career in the STEM field. So what is exactly the problem that we are facing here, that prevents us from achieving gender balance in the industry?

“While the results are encouraging, they highlight some deeply held misconceptions by young girls and young women with regards to the study and pursuit of STEM – they still believe it’s a man’s world in STEM and that the path is difficult. In fact, careers in STEM afford women the opportunity to positively impact the world through their leadership and creativity,” said Georgette Tan, Senior Vice President, Communications, Asia Pacific, Mastercard.

So what to do then?

“To build future generations of women leaders in STEM, we must continue to inspire, engage and cultivate an interest in STEM among girls at an early age,” Tan said.

To get a more detailed picture of what girls are thinking about a career in STEM, check out the following infographic:

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Image Credit: tomwang / 123RF Stock Photo

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Photo credit: Alex Bellink.

Shopo, the online marketplace for quirky and handicraft products owned by Snapdeal, is going to shut down after a year and a half of trying to make it in India’s crowded ecommerce market.

In a blogpost titled Goodbye from Shopo, the ecommerce site says the Shopo team realised that “it will take some more years for a broader ecosystem to develop around the C2C segment,” and that while the app and website will be shut on Feb 10, the team will be around to take email queries and solve seller or customer problems.

“It is tempting to go on, but it is often beneficial to pause, take stock and plan ahead for greater success. It is time for us to pause the Shopo journey for now,” the blog says.

Shopo says it has some four million products registered on its site, sold by about 1,50,000 sellers.

Snapdeal bought Shopo in 2013 and relaunched the site as a mobile-only marketplace in 2015, with an investment of US$100 million. Shopo was an open marketplace that let sellers and buyers chat on their smartphones and had a zero-commission, and zero fees policy.

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Axilor CEO and co-founder Ganapathy Venugopal chatting with founders. Photo cedit: Axilor.

Amidst the gloom in India’s startup ecosystem over a funding crunch, here’s a silver lining: Bangalore’s Axilor today announced a doubling of the intake of startups for its accelerator program.

Axilor was launched in November 2014 by Infosys founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and S D Shibulal along with Srinath Batni and Ganapathy Venugopal, who held senior positions at the Indian IT giant, and Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna. So far, 30 startups have gone through its accelerator program. Now, the fifth batch for which applications are open till February 23, doubles the size of the cohort to 20.

70 percent of the startups from our last batch have moved to their next stage – half of them have secured funding, one has been acquired, and the others are in pilots.

“A fast-growing base of online consumers, an enabling public digital infrastructure, growing pool of founders with prior startup experience, and increase in early-stage seed capital are creating conditions for the second wave of startups in India,” says Kris Gopalakrishnan, Axilor Ventures chairman. This is a vote of confidence in the startup ecosystem from the first generation of tech entrepreneurs in Bangalore, who created an IT services industry that accounts for a tenth of India’s GDP today.

It comes at a time when the ecosystem’s hype cycle has hit a trough of disillusionment after the inflated expectations and funding of 2014 and 2015. Over 1,000 startups shut down last year, half of which were founded in India’s takeoff period of 2013 and 2014. Mostly, they ran out of runway as follow-on funding became scarce. Several were acqui-hired in distress sales.

See: 25 failed startups in 2016 and what we can learn from them

The five-spice program

Infosys founder Kris Gopalakrishnan at a startup mentoring session at Axilor. Photo credit: Axilor.

Axilor, whose mentors try to bring system and process to startups without shackling their nimbleness and agility, appears to have mostly come out unscathed in these worst of times. “Seventy percent of the startups from the last batch have successfully moved to their next stage – half of them have already secured funding, one has been acquired, and the others are in advanced stages of pilots,” says Ganapathy Venugopal a.k.a VG, Axilor CEO and co-founder.

The new batch will have 20 early stage startups in five spaces: artificial intelligence, fintech, healthtech, enterprise SaaS (software-as-a-service), and consumer internet.

AI is the buzz everywhere this year, with impressive advances in the technology thanks to computing power. But what VG is looking for are founders grounded in the mundane world of business. “The use cases need to be understood well. A company that we recently invested in, for example, uses visual algorithms for diagnostics and is able to deliver a five-fold improvement in throughput for pathologists and three-fold reduction in costs for the tests,” he explains to Tech in Asia.

See: Why Microsoft is asking startups to dance with it into the new year

Likewise, fintech is also a natural choice this year, given the moves to digitize the economy after demonetization. But while the recent focus has been on payments, VG hopes to see a broader range of innovations in this space. “Some of the new opportunities around security, blockchain, robo-advisory [automated portfolio management] products can be interesting. Or, for that matter, businesses which leverage Aadhaar [unique number as citizen ID] and IndiaStack [digital infrastructure] to create solutions addressing India-specific solutions can be disruptive.”

It is important to have differentiated solutions and not just aim to win by playing a price advantage.

Enterprise SaaS is a space where India has a natural advantage, leveraging its tech talent at relatively lower price points to build solutions for global markets. Axilor’s take is that “it is important to have differentiated solutions and not just aim to win by playing a price advantage.”

Consumer internet businesses, on the other hand, have fallen from favor after the euphoria of 2014 and 2015. But VG believes the time is right for a second wave of startups to create sustainable businesses. “The demographics and smartphone penetration point towards a growing consumer base. However, the challenge will be to achieve meaningful growth without burning capital.”

See: Pros and cons for Alibaba in battle with Amazon on neutral ground in India

In healthcare, India has deep problems, with large sections of the population lacking access, and Axilor has backed this space from the very outset keeping in mind its social impact as well as business opportunity. “It is a sector which is in the process of embracing technology, especially on early disease detection or use of technology to deliver medical care more efficiently,” points out VG.

Another space Axilor had backed early on was cleantech, recognizing its importance in a large, growing economy with huge unsolved problems from garbage to pollution. But it has put this on the backburner for now.

“Axilor was founded with two main objectives. One, to improve the odds of success of startups in their first 12 months. Second, promote entrepreneurship in areas like healthcare and cleantech where the problems are large but entrepreneurial interest is low,” explains VG. “Cleantech is still an area of interest. However, considering the long gestation cycles, the ability to showcase demonstrable success within 100 days is a tough call for startups. We feel the value of the program remains underserved in this case. Hence the shift.”

See: He was skeptical of accelerators, but now he runs one with a twist

Apart from mentorship, Axilor also provides early funding support to startups that meet program goals and need it. One out of two startups in the last batch got the INR 2.5 million (US$37,275) earmarked for this. Startups with early customer traction get further funding support of up to INR 5 million (US$74,550) for scaling up after the 100-day accelerator program. Finally, those that demonstrate a market fit qualify for early-stage funding of US$100,000 to $500,000.

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Facebook Lite, the social media platform’s barebones version for low speed internet, is one of its fastest growing offerings

Facebook, the ever-growing social media giant, has doubled its number of users for its bare-bones product Facebook Lite in less than a year and serves 200 million monthly active users.

The app supports 55 languages and is popular in over 150 countries but mainly in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines. Today it’s being launched in four additional countries: Israel, Italy, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

The company’s engineering office in Tel Aviv, Israel created this product to provide the optimum Facebook experience for users in areas with poor Internet connections or with low-end devices. Also, in developing areas, a common issue is multiple users using one device.

Also Read: The Jay Kim Show: Lewis Howes on how necessity led to entrepreneurship

With the revamped Facebook Lite, people can easily log on and off their account when sharing a device. They can also still access videos, multiple photo uploads and have apps start at faster speeds.

Tzach Hadar, Product Manager at Facebook, says, “The engineers working on this project need to consider users with low-quality Internet connections and limited data packages, but also make sure the experience is great, regardless of where they connect.”

Also Read: Sansiri, SCB join forces to launch Siri Venture for property tech startups in Thailand

This product comes on the heels of the failed launch of Free Basics, a free Internet service provided by Facebook for rural Indians. You would assume that anything free would be desired, but the people of India scorned the offering because it had limited access unlike what the Internet truly is, or represents.

Regulators listened and banned Free Basics in India, championing net neutrality. Disappointed but with lessons learned, a Facebook spokesperson stated that Facebook “will continue efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet and the opportunity it brings.” Facebook Lite just might do that.

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Copyright: 2nix / 123RF Stock Photo

The original version of this article,Facebook Lite launching in four more countries, including South Korea, Israelfirst appeared on Geektime.

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Siri Venture is the second venture capital firm of its kind in Thailand, after Ananda Development’s Ananda Urban Tech

Thai property developer group Sansiri Pcl and the Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) launched new corporate venture capital fund Siri Venture, according to Dealstreet Asia.

With focus on investing in property-related startups and R&D, Sansiri will own 90 per cent of Siri Venture while SCB owns the rest, with registered capital of THB100 million (US$2.8 million).

Siri Venture Chief Executive Shakrit Chaurungsakul stated that the firm plans to invest between THB100 million (US$2.8 million) and THB500 million (US$14.2 million) to startups based in Thailand and Singapore. It will inject between THB500,000 (US$14,200) and THB10 million (US$285,000) in each startup, with the target of investing in 40 startups over the next three years.

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The firm is particularly looking for startups working on various home technologies, robotics, drones and artificial intelligence. It is also set to launch Thailand’s first property technology accelerator in the second quarter of 2017.

The launch follows the launch of Ananda Urban Tech, a venture capital fund launched by fellow Thai property development Ananda Development in January, which invests in innovation to improve or solve urban living problems.
Ananda Development became the first property developer group to branch out into startup investment in the country, which programmes include ecosystem support, fund of funds and corporate venture capital.

Some property tech startups in Thailand include Hipflat and ZmyHome.

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