Not only will this bring more comfort and convenience into modern life, but it will bring new ways of being energy efficient and lower the costs of the city

We’re used to weird and wonderful things coming out of science and technology at breakneck speeds. But never before has technology been so advanced, and this time the future promises an almost movie-like reality. The focus of this article is one of these promises, the smart city.

The idea of a completely connected city has been born from the recent technological phenomenon known as the internet-of-things. Simply put, this is the process of endowing inanimate objects with sensors and connecting them via the internet, allowing them to gather, analyse and send data automatically. This has already begun to enter the home life with smart houses that can perform various tasks for you, such as running a bath to be ready when you get in from work.

Moving into the city will be a huge step forward for mankind. Not only will this bring more comfort and convenience into modern life, but it will bring new ways of being energy efficient and lower the costs of the city. To give you an idea as to the aesthetic and technological possibilities, this article will focus on three features of the future city: electricity, street lights, skyscrapers and automation.

Efficient use of resources

One of the benefits of smart initiatives is an improvement in efficiency. This could be in the form of logistics, workflows, and utilisation of resources. For instance, in New York City, which is considered to be a leader in smart city initiatives, IoT and blockchain startup MXC has partnered with mapping Citiesense to deploy smart sensors and collect data about walking routes, sewage flows, car usage, and other common activities across the city’s five boroughs. MXC is a blockchain startup that deploys smart sensors and LPWAN gateways across dense geographies to aid in data collection, analytics, and interpretation. With data on a large scale from different sources, cities can improve how resources are allocated and consumed.

Streetlights

Already, there are many areas where councils and authorities have opted to switch off or dim certain street lights between the hours of midnight and early morning, saving huge amounts of energy that would be otherwise wasted. Although there were concerns that this darkness might result in higher traffic accidents and crime, research has shown that this is not the case. The future city offers the best of both worlds. The streetlights of tomorrow will have sensors that can detect movement and will light up as and when they’re needed, saving massive amounts of energy and money.

Also read: Taipei is using a blockchain alternative to transform into a smart city

Buildings and Skyscrapers

The costs of running a huge skyscraper filled with businesses can be very daunting. If you consider the amount of electricity needed to keep the building working through the day — and even night — and then the fact that more and more people are migrating to urban areas, into high-rise accommodations, there needs to be some solution as to how we can keep these buildings powered for as little cost as possible. The utopian notion, and one that is key in the smart city index, is energy self-sufficiency. Skyscrapers of the future might very well have the answer. Windows have been developed that double as solar panels, for instance. These windows will cover the facades of these future buildings, meaning that they will be able to essentially power themselves without the need to deploy separate photovoltaic devices.

Automation

This relates more to transport than automation within the home or workplace, even though automation is set to take over up to 40% of jobs as we know them. Specifically, this involves the use of drones for deliveries and self-driving cars for taxis. In the not too distant future there could be a second lane of traffic overhead containing drones delivering goods, plus self-piloting helicopter taxis, similar to the ones being introduced in Dubai. Given that drones can work constantly if properly maintained, this will cut delivery times and costs as drivers would not be needed. Likewise, Singapore is currently utilising IoT and sensors to reduce road congestion, as well as other data-centric means of improving city services.

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Also, A JV partnership to result in Thailand’s first data centre, and India’s ride-hailing service Ola to invest in scooter sharing startup Vogo

Indonesian culinary supplier marketplace Stoqo raises Series A round from Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India [Deal Street Asia]

Stoqo, an Indonesia-based culinary supplier marketplace aimed at small restaurants and hotel owners reportedly just closed a Series A round co-led by Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India.

Deal Street Asia was the first to share the news upon the story shared by two people familiar with the investment.

Stoqo was founded by Aswin Andrison and Angky William just a shy one year ago under PT Stoqo Teknologi Indonesia. According to Andrison, Stoqo focuses on Business-to-Business (B2B) culinary supplier and seeks to become a pioneer in this sector.

“We gave an easy access to buyers, especially those in culinary business, in getting the basic, daily needs like rice, eggs, oil, flour, vegetable, fresh meat, and other produces. Stoqo aims to fulfill this need to be more accessible and efficient in the best price,” said Andrison in a statement shared by SWA.

Also Read: Indian edtech startups Toppr, DataTrained raise funding

Right now, Stoqo has more than 2,000 produces available on its platform and has gained over 5,000 downloads from Google Playstore. Next, Stoqo is looking to expand to other cities in Indonesia.

Singapore’s STT GDC partners with TICON to bring Thailand’s first data centre to the country [Press Release]

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), Singapore-based data centre service provider announced that they are now in the final step of completing the joint venture partnership with TICON, the smart industrial platform provider in Thailand. The joint venture will allow their first data centre to be built on a 75,000 square metre (15-rai) site in Ramkhamhaeng district, situated in central Bangkok, that would be finished by 2020.

This first data centre is in line with the Thailand 4.0 initiative that seeks to develop the digital economy in the country, as well as the Thai government’s National Digital Economy Masterplan, in which the digital economy is expected to see robust growth and contribute up to 25% of Thailand’s GDP by 2027.

“We believe in the market potential of expanding our focus into developing Thailand’s digital economy and transforming urban living with Smart Cities. Developing digital infrastructure in the form of state-of-the-art data centres is one of the key investment areas we are embarking on in this new economy. This partnership will allow us to best serve the digital growth plans of our customers,” said Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi, Chairman of the Executive Committee of TICON Industrial Connection Pcl. (TICON),

Furthermore, TICON’s representative added that they are confident that the data centres’ operation will match the global standards in key markets such as Singapore, China, India and the UK, as well as maximising the local expertise of TICON in understanding the needs of the Thai market and navigating its regulatory environment.

Myanmar’s largest private bank KBZ Bank works with treasury management solution Finastra to eliminate manual operation [Press Release]

Kanbawza (KBZ) Bank, Myanmar’s largest privately owned bank has selected treasury management solution Finastra to automate the tedious operational work by enabling straight-through-processing (STP) using the company’s product called Fusion.

By moving away from manual treasury processing operation, the bank believes that it will result in a faster, more efficient services that can help the bank grow both transaction volumes and revenue and reduce operational risk. The bank also seeks to scale more effectively without sacrificing current levels of manpower across all its treasury business operations.

“Market dynamics are changing rapidly due to increased modernization and digitalization within Myanmar’s banking sector. Finastra’s capability is helping us to overcome high operational overheads associated with manual processes, reduce time-to-market for new products and bring our operations and systems in line with the standards of sophisticated developed markets both regionally and globally,” said Win Lwin, Managing Director of KBZ Bank.

Fusion Treasury by Finastra is a single, integrated, front-to-back solution, built to cover all aspects of a bank’s operations in treasury, capital markets, derivatives, and risk and compliance. The solution enables financial institutions to integrate and automate systems and streamline treasury operations.

Prior to this partnership, Finastra has supported other financial institutions in Myanmar like Yoma Bank, AYA Bank and First Private Bank.

Microsoft’s Azure manages to cover almost all Southeast Asia regions with its cloud capability [SG Channel Asia]

Microsoft Azure Availability Zones are now generally available across Southeast Asia, as the tech giant’s cloud system arm continues to expand cloud capabilities regionally.

The Azure Availability Zones are designed to be a solution for mission-critical applications.

“As a high-availability offering that protects your applications and data from data centre failures, Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region with each one of them made up of one or more data centres equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. To ensure resiliency, there is a minimum of three separate zones in all enabled regions,” explained Patrik Bihammar, cloud and enterprise lead at Microsoft Singapore.

Furthermore, with the introduction of Availability Zones, the vendor can now offer a service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.99 per cent for uptime of virtual machines. The company believes that it will build upon their extensive cloud portfolio to enable customers to design resilient applications for comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy.

Through the addition of these regional zones, customers will now be able to synchronously replicate applications and data using Availability Zones within an Azure region for high-availability within Singapore, and asynchronously replicate across Azure regions for geographic disaster recovery protection.

India’s ride-hailing service Ola seeks to invest US$100 million in Indian scooter sharing startup Vogo [Channel News Asia]

Indian ride-hailing service Ola is reportedly to invest US$100 million in Vogo, a domestic scooter sharing startup. When the investment comes through, the two-wheelers fleet will be added to Ola app to broaden the range of vehicles it offers.

Vogo provides services in the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The company will use the money to expand its fleet by 100,000 scooters.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

Meanwhile, Ola’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal said, “Our investment in Vogo will help build a smart multi-modal network for first-last mile connectivity in the country.”

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Image Credit: STT GDC

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500 Startups Vietnam shares its plan to bring 500 Startups’ Silicon Valley accelerator curriculum to the country

Updates: The editorial team has corrected some errors on the previous version of this article. We apologise for the inconvenience.

500 Startups has announced the launch of its accelerator programme in Vietnam for 2019 called The Saola Accelerator, brought to the country in partnership with Korean multimedia retailer GS Shop.

This announcement was made just one month after the accelerator had the oversubscribed final close of its fund.

The Saola Accelerator is named after rare species of Vietnamese deer, commonly known as the “Asian unicorn”.

It seeks to support three batches of Vietnam-connected startups with every single startup in the batches to receive US$100,000 investment and a Silicon Valley accelerator curriculum.

Also Read: MealPal is great, but it uses A LOT of plastic

Each participating company will also receive access to more than US$500,000 worth of free perks and discounts from twenty 500 Startups partners including Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft.

In addition to capital, the Saola Accelerator will offer enhanced programming including 500’s signature Growth Hell Week plus hands-on support for growth.

The programme will conclude with a Demo Day, where the companies will share about their products and progress to an invite-only audience of regional venture investors.

“We’ve learned a lot from working with 1,000 companies in more than 40 growth programme batches around the world. We’re excited to bring that experience to Vietnam,” said Marvin Liao, Partner at 500 Startups and head of its flagship accelerator programme in San Francisco.

There are three criteria to enter the accelerator:

• Tech or tech-enabled
• Vietnam-connected: serving the Vietnam market, having a Vietnamese co-founder, and/or having a meaningful portion of the team in Vietnam
• Have meaningful traction

The registration opens now and interested startups can apply to the programme here.

The Early Bird application deadline is January 2, 2019, and regular deadline is January 20, 2019.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

“Our programme is aimed at companies ready to break out and become Asian unicorns – saolas,” closed Eddie Thai, a lead partner of 500 Startups Vietnam.
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Image Credit: 500 Startups

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Chinese internet giant ByteDance has filed a series of trademarks hinting at a foray into the fintech sector

The article ByteDance registers fintech trademarks was written by Jill Shen for TechNode.

Chinese internet giant ByteDance has filed a series of trademarks hinting at a foray into the fintech sector.

The most valuable startup in the world, which runs content aggregator Jinri Toutiao and short video platform Douyin (known as TikTok internationally), filed for three trademarks on December 6. News of the filing was only picked up by media this week.

Included is BytePay (our translation, 字节付), classified as relating to insurance and other financial products.

The company also applied for the trademarks of two loan products, namely Qingli Installment and Wuxian Installment, falling into the same trademark category as BytePay.

The company declined to comment when contacted by TechNode.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, Nov 30: ICONLOOP joins govt blockchain initiative, ByteDance fined for illegal medical ads

Speculation around ByteDance’s entry into the financial services market has circulated since 2017 when the company was reportedly applying for relevant licenses. ByteDance denied the claims.

In July, Jinri Toutiao launched a fintech product named Safe Lending. Up to 20,000 users were permitted to borrow up to RMB200,000 (around US$30,000) per person per day. The company claimed the Bank of Nanjing was one of its loan partners.

The product became the subject of investigations by the media in September. ByteDance later shuttered the online money lending service, while thousands of Chinese P2P lending companies shut down in the second half of the year.

Thanks to the success of its short video and content aggregation platforms, Bytedance has become one of the fastest growing startups in China. The company’s valuation skyrocketed to US$75 billion following a round of financing earlier this year.

ByteDance has sought to raise an additional US$1.45 billion for its first venture fund. The company reportedly plans to invest in AI and media content.

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The article ByteDance registers fintech trademarks first appeared on TechNode.

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Good Foodie Media produces food-, event- and travel-related content in the form of daily food review videos, listicles, event postings, and food deals compilations

Penang-based Good Foodie Media — the startup behind the online food channels Penang Foodie and KL Foodie — has secured RM220,000 (US$53,000) from the city-based i4 SeedFund and several angel investors.

The company plans to use the funds to expand to Singapore, Bangkok and Johor in 2019. A part of the money will also go into strengthening its market presence and its digital content (video and article).

Founded in 2018, Good Foodie Media produces food-, event- and travel-related content in the form of daily food review videos, listicles, event postings, and food deals compilations. Good Foodie Media currently has presence in Penang and Kuala Lumpur.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

The company claims it has over one million followers across multiple social media platforms. Its content reached 32 million and generated over 16 million video views in November.

Since its debut in early this month, its channel Singapore Foodie’s viewership has grown to reach three million, and has over one million video views.

The one-year-old startup is profitable from day one. The entity makes money via video advertising, advertorial, branded content and agency work.

 

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