As a member of the society, tech companies have the right — and obligation— to fight for justice

There are many reasons to be disappointed at the world these days. The latest was when, on Wednesday February 13, Instagram deleted a comic strip about daily struggle of being an Indonesian gay Muslim man.

The ban was confirmed by Indonesian minister of communications and informatics Rudiantara, following pressure from society to ban the comic strip’s account. The account, which boasts 6,000 followers, had been condemned by internet users as blasphemous and immoral for its depiction on the internal conflicts that a Muslim gay man faces on daily basis.

If you recall, this is not exactly the first time a tech giant succumbing to the pressure of homophobic groups in Indonesia. As recently as 2018, Google succumbed to the ministry’s request to remove several LGBT apps — mostly social networking or dating apps — from Play Store.

Also, do not forget that time when Go-Jek had to sanction its executive for posting a compliment on the company’s inclusive policies on his personal Facebook. While the executive was sanctioned for “violating the company’s employee social media guideline”, it is hard to separate the sanction from the public pressure that had called upon Go-Jek users to uninstall the app for supporting LGBT rights.

These incidents happened at least three times in the Indonesian market and I have reasons to believe that more is going to come as the country becomes more religiously conservative.

It is about time for us to beg the question: How long can tech companies succumb to the homophobic, human rights-violating demand of its public?

Also Read: Riding the irony: Can Indonesian GO-JEK afford supporting LGBTQ rights in a country that condemns it?

The first response to this question would be: Well, when running their operations in a country, businesses are obliged to abide to the positive law of said country. If Indonesia said you should pay tax, then you pay tax. If Indonesia said you should not have pornographic content on your platform, then you should not, unless you are willing to risk being banned.

But guess what? Despite some group’s effort to have them banned, being a homosexual is not illegal in Indonesia.

So if a tech company decided to follow through demands from groups or a ministry to ban LGBT content on its platform, they are not abiding the law, they are succumbing to pressure from hardline groups.

Also Read: World’s largest dating app for gays sets up shop in Taiwan

Here is the thing: On the other hand, we also have to understand that businesses can not afford to lose their customers. They need to maintain a certain a public image and a good reputation equals money.

However, innovation is meant to be for the betterment of society.

And we believe that in the case of tech companies, their innovation should not be limited to to their scope of work, or the services and products that they provide. It also lies in the value that they are propagating.

This is why, when tech giants such as Google make a mistake in the way they are handling sexual harassment cases, its employees did not just sit down and accept. They walked out; they called for changes.

As long as you are a member of the society, you are entitled — no, obliged — to fight for justice.

—

Image Credit: Mercedes Mehling on Unsplash

The post Bullied to succumb: Should tech companies bow to society’s homophobic demands? appeared first on e27.

This brings to a close OYO’s US$1B financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund, which has pumped US$800M into the company

OYO gets US$100M from China’s Didi Chuxing [The Economic Times]

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has invested US$100 million in Southeast Asia’s budget hotel aggregator chain OYO. The investment, which continues to value Oyo at about US$5 billion, has been made from Didi-controlled entity Star Virtue Investment, people aware of developments told ET.

This brings to a close OYO’s US$1 billion financing round led by existing backer SoftBank Vision Fund, which has pumped US$800 million into the company.

The Didi investment comes a little over two months after Singapore-headquartered transportation major Grab infused the same amount in the Gurgaon-based startup.

Circles.Life to expand to Taiwan, Australia this year after securing Sequoia investment [Channel News Asia]

Mobile virtual network operator, Circles.Life, on Thursday announced it will be expanding its presence from beyond Singapore’s shores, with plans to enter Taiwan and Australia this year.

Its regional expansion plans come after it closed a Series C funding round led by Sequoia India, the company said in a press release. No details on the size of investment that was raised were disclosed.

CEO Rameez Ansar told Channel NewsAsia in an interview before the announcement that this is one of the few times Sequoia is investing in a telco, which is testament to what the company is trying to achieve – creating a telco experience on top of the infrastructure akin to what Uber and Grab did to disrupt the taxi industry.

Google, Apple face calls to pull Saudi app allowing men to monitor wives [Reuters]

A Saudi Arabian government app that allows men in the country to monitor and control their female relatives’ travel at the click of a button should be removed from Google and Apple’s online stores, a US politician and activists said on Wednesday.

Human rights campaigners argued the tech giants are enabling abuses against women and girls in the ultra-conservative kingdom by hosting the app.

The free Absher app, created by the Saudi interior ministry, allows men to update or withdraw permissions for their wives and female relatives to travel internationally and get SMS updates if their passports are used, said human rights researchers.

Indonesia’s trader platform Stockbit acquires mutual fund app Bibit [DealStreetAsia]

Indonesia-based Stockbit, a social network for stock traders, has acquired local investment startup Bibit for an undisclosed fee to simplify investment process for first-time traders. Prior to the acquisition, which took place late last year, Bibit was an OJK-licensed tech-based mutual fund seller.

Following the deal, Stockbit has relaunched Bibit as a robo-advisory platform to simplify conventional time-tested investment products to the Indonesian public.

“(Bibit will be) a one-click solution to invest in an optimal portfolio that is personalized towards your age and risk profile,” Stockbit CEO Wellson Lo told DealStreetAsia.

The post Today’s top tech news, Feb 14: China’s Didi Chuxing injects US$100M into OYO appeared first on e27.

The company plans to launch in Taiwan, Australia and Indonesia plus two other unnamed countries

Circles.Life, the Singaporean mobile data plan operator, announced today it has raised US$50 million from Sequoia India to finance international expansion.

Circles.Life plans to open in five countries over the next 18 months, beginning with a launch in Taiwan in Q2.  The plan is to launch in Australia the next quarter, according to Channel News Asia, Indonesia is also one of the five countries included in the launch.

The company plans to spend quite a bit as it pursues its international goals, expecting to, “invest more than $50 million in each launch.”

Furthermore, Circles.Life has dedicated US$25 million to its engineering center in Bangalore. It plans to use this money to use data science to improve its personalised offerings to customers.

In Singapore, Circles.Life operates by purchasing bandwidth from the local telco M1 and then selling it to customers at discounted prices (or giving a huge amount of data).

For example, just this week, the company pulled a clever marketing stunt by announcing it was killing its 20GB for US$20 plan at the end of February. Then, a day later, it announced that it was offering unlimited data for US$20 a month.

The company claims it has 5 per cent of the Singaporean market and calls itself Singapore’s fastest growing telco (although, technically, it is not a telco).

“Circles.Life was built on a mission to give power back to the customers. Because of this mission and our innovative digital platform, we have raised the bar in Singapore and telco space. The significant investment from a blue-chip venture capital firm is a testament to the impact we bring to the industry,” said Rameez Ansar the Co-founder and CEO of Circles.Life.

Also Read: Bullied to succumb: Should tech companies bow to society’s homophobic demands?

Considering its position in Singapore, Circles.Life is still very young, having been launched to the public in May, 2016. In the 2+ years of existence, it has grown into a very well-known brand in the Lion City.

“Circles.Life has a fresh and disruptive approach in reimagining what the telco experience of the future can be for millions of people,” said Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

—

 

 

The post Circles.Life raises Series C from Sequoia India to expand abroad appeared first on e27.

These startups are building the next-generation of applications that leverage the advantages of 5G tech, including faster and better connectivity

The latest-generation cellular mobile communications, 5G, is just around the corner. The first phase of 5G spec is set to be completed in April this year, and the second phase will launch in April 2020. Telecommunications companies and technology providers stand to gain from the much-anticipated upgrade, which highlights faster data rates, reduced latency, better energy saving, cost reduction, higher system capacity, and better interconnectivity.

Taiwan’s Asia Pacific Telecom 5G Accelerator Programme — jointly developed by Asia Pacific Telecom and the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan — recently collaborated with e27 in recruiting startups at NUS Enterprise. APTG Accelerator selected the 15 most promising teams from more than 300 startups at home and abroad.

These teams passed several rounds of review to enter the final selection — all have demonstrated outstanding capabilities and exceptional potential. The selected teams will collaborate with Asia Pacific Telecom to co-develop the 5G market and find business opportunities worth tens of billions.

A fierce selection process whittled this down to 15 companies, aspiring to leverage 5G technology, as well as Big Data, Cloud, internet-of-things, and sensors, in disrupting and innovating in their respective spaces.

These teams were chosen for their potential in creating 5G applications in building systems, services, applications, and hardware integration.

Also read: e27 teams up with APTG to provide startup founders scholarships to attend e27 Academy

The APTG 5G Accelerator Programme cohort 2019 had its programme opening ceremony on February 14, 2019 , at the first floor at the Asia Pacific Telecom HQ, where the selected teams successfully showcased their winning applications and content for 5G innovation. Teams also had the opportunity to interact and inspire more ideas with media, partners, and investors from all over the world.

Here are 7 of the 15 companies that had the opportunity to showcase their technologies:

1. Hyper Immersion Technology Taiwan Co. Ltd.

Hyper Immersion Technology Taiwan Co. Ltd. was founded in 2014 by a group of entrepreneurs with great enthusiasm for stereoscopic 3D imaging and virtual reality images. Formerly known as the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Labs. The team consistently develops 3D related techniques, and it is targeting to make virtual reality (VR) and interactive technology widely available for individual and family use.

Hyper Immersion Technology focuses on VR 360 panoramic video production technology and provides exclusive VR Live streaming services. Highlights include:

• Real-time stitching: Proprietary VR360 real-time stitching software stitches multiple cameras to make VR360 video streaming.
• High performance algorithm: Optimises stitching resolution up to 8K 30 fps to meet the needs of real-time VR live streaming.
• Extremely high quality: A VR 360 capturing system consists of multiple digital mirrorless camera with higher resolution, sensitivity and sharpness is suitable for various applications.

2. Cheng Jie Technology Co., Ltd.

This smart education company was founded by parents with preschool children, and it has invented the “Witspal Smart Pen” and “Witspal Smart Case”, which are devices that link up via IoT in helping address nearsightedness among children, by combining computer vision with speech.

The company’s project has won three prizes, including a second-place finish in the Seventh Information Service and Innovation Competition across the Taiwan Straits.

3. InnovArt Design

This LA- and Taiwan-based design startup that integrates design, technology, business, and user experience, with focus on creating innovative products that greatly compliment the user’s lifestyle. The company believes that technology is an extension of a user’s personality, and this can be enhanced through better mobility.

Its product, CarWink is a highly interactive internet-on-vehicle (IoV) consumer electronic gadget, which InnovArt Design expects to reduce road rage, improve communication between vehicles, reduce cable mess and personalise vehicle styles.

The aim is to help improving traffic conditions and enhance business behavior prediction through back-end data analytics, with the aim of leveraging AI toward a mature automotive industry.

4. OSENSE

This startup leverages image processing, computer vision, artificial intelligence, indoor positioning and navigation, and augmented reality, in producing vision-based smart solutions and services. The technology-driven team has its core strength in computer vision and artificial intelligence. The latest product gives a computer “eyes” to understand physical space in order to solve tasks with smart solutions in various industries.

OSENSE’s world leading indoor positioning technology, VBIP, is a fusion of spatial recognition and magnetic filtering to create an easy-to-use, compact and reasonably priced indoor positioning and navigation solution.

With the support of AI and cloud computing, VBIP can quickly identify and recognise space, providing indoor positioning and navigation for the environment with no GPS signals. Furthermore, VBIP does not require Bluetooth beaconing or Wi-Fi devices to provide a plethora of innovative applications and smart services via the AR user interface.

VBIP has been awarded with multiple international patents. The fusion of technologies can effectively enhance the strength and reduce the limits of indoor positioning, dramatically increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of positioning and navigation. VBIP can be quickly deployed with minimum hardware requirements (in terms of installation costs and operating requirements).

Also read: 5G Technology: how Taiwan’s APTG Accelerator Programme is approaching the future of tech

5. GranDen Corp.

GranDen devotes to integrate VR, AR, and MR technologies into entertaining interactive services. A global team from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and with averagely more than seven-year experience in game development, GranDen focuses on the O2O space in pioneering “XR” or “Extended Reality” which refers to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables.

Currently, GranDen’s services includes the VR music game I’m ready to Fly, and AR and location-based-services social mobile game AliGala, a go-and-play casual game that lets players interact with augmented reality, location, and O2O marketing.

AliGala’s first cooperation with the Bravo Bear Mascot from Taipei City Government enables users to collect items via mobile phone’s AR camera and exchange for practical Bravo Bear dolls. In only one month, the event generated an expected US$650,000 in Taipei 101 and other 14 department stores and 4 shopping districts.

In the future, AliGala will cooperate with the largest video marketing company to offer precision marketing and big data as B2B solutions.

The company is in cooperation with Shin Kong Bank, Taipei 101, and the Museum of Archaeology in delivering content, and also plans to expand into Japan and Hong Kong markets.

6. AccuPai

AccuPai enhances visual imagery with instant, high-quality photos and watermarks, which enables businesses to build strong brand images across online communities.

The service allows real-time cloud uploading and photo editing, which works best in events. Users can simply scan a QR code, and the startup’s editing and quality assurance platform uploads images to an event album within five minutes. AI aids in facial recognition to automatically tag users during events.

7. igloohome

igloohome smart locks and smart lockboxes allow home and property owners to grant access to visitors remotely, with time-sensitive PIN codes and Bluetooth keys. Headquartered in Singapore, the 60- strong team has its offices around Asia, USA, Europe and India.

igloohome’s products have been rolled out to over 90 countries with over 50 distributors globally, and these have been featured in numerous publications, which include The Wall Street Journal, Channel NewsAsia, The Business Times, The Huffington Post, and GQ.

igloohome products are designed to provide 24 hour access, even when the home or property owner is away. They work with the igloohome mobile app, which allows access for guests to be granted remotely via PIN codes or Bluetooth keys.

The ability to work offline makes igloohome products suitable for properties with weak or no Wi-Fi and negates the risk of Wi-Fi hacking. The technology behind it is similar to that of an Internet banking token, which involves cryptography and synchronisation.

APTG 5G Accelerator Programme’s opening ceremony hosted potential partners and investors, where they met with these promising startups, media, potential partners, and other investors.

You can find more information about the APTG 5G Accelerator Programme, as well as investment opportunities, roadshows, recruitment events, and partnerships.

—-

 

 

The post These 7 startups will be early 5G adopters under the guidance of APTG Accelerator Programme appeared first on e27.

Vanessa Keng and Chang Xi are running e-commerce store, The Golden Concepts, which curates eldercare products for Singaporeans

While pursuing a Business Management course at National University of Singapore (NUS), Vanessa Keng, a guitarist, and Chang Xi, her friend and neighbour at Kent Ridge Hall, spent more time playing sports and music than studying.

Although entrepreneurship was on their mind, they didn’t seriously pursue it until they went to Denmark as part of the student exchange programme in the third year of their course.

“Denmark is one of the most progressive countries in terms of elder care and quality of life,” Keng narrates her entrepreneurial story to e27. “During our stay there, we observed that Danish seniors embraced ageing and lived life to its fullest, while not being limited by mobility challenges. Upon returning to our own elderly grandparents, we wondered –- why not bring home this positive, independent culture surrounding the golden years?”

When they came back, they got to meet young entrepreneurs during their technopreneurship classes at NUS, and this shaped their thinking better. “While brainstorming on ideas, we kept gravitating to our experiences in Denmark. We felt that we could do something to help elderly Singaporeans improve their independence and age better. Knowing that this would affect not just our grandparents but eventually our parents and ourselves too, it just seemed like the right reason to start our company,” says Keng.

Also Read: How apps help seniors with better mobility, safety, and quality of life

The Golden Concepts, their startup, was started immediately after their graduation in 2011. A B2C e-commerce store, The Golden Concepts curates eldercare products, such as adjustable and foldable wheel chairs, nursing beds and mattresses, walking canes, hiking and trekking pole, mobility scooters, and bath accessories.

“At The Golden Concepts, we believe that mobility is key to ageing well. A loss of mobility often has profound consequences on a person’s physical, social and psychological state. By maximising mobility, seniors will be able to continue to be fully engaged in their communities and enjoy a high quality of life,” Keng says.

“We understand that the role of caregivers is an extremely important one, and we strive to provide customised solutions that best suit your needs. With a curated selection from both international and local brands, our product specialists can advise you on the various options available to find the best solution,” she adds.

The beginning

Keng and Xi set up the company using the money they saved from their part-time jobs while studying. This money went into buying some inventory in the initial days. While running the company, the duo still continued their part-time jobs in the nights and on weekends to get things going.

“In the initial days, we barged into hospitals and pharmacies and spoke to whoever would be keen to chat with us. I realise that it was an asset to look like students as more people were willing to give us their time and share their experiences,” she smiles. “Before long, we landed our first (small) order from a hospital, and that made us rush to incorporate the company, so that we could have a business registration number and a company bank account for them to issue payment to us.”

As things got better, Keng and Zi wanted to more and stand out from the crowd. “We asked ourselves what unique value we could bring to this growing industry — something that most other established industry players were not focusing on. We realised that the focus on independence and mobility rather than rehabilitative and medical equipment would be our key differentiating factor. Our dream was to introduce more products to maximise mobility at any level because we felt that was the way to age with dignity and enjoy a good quality of life,” Keng shares.

With this in mind, The Golden Concepts started manufacturing its own brands in 2015 to have a better control over the quality, affordability and design of the products. The hefty investments in manufacturing was something that the duo pondered over, but they knew that it was an important step to grow the business.

“Over the years, we have curated a range of high quality products suited to our customers’ needs, including partnering with the finest manufacturers to create our own improved product lines. Product safety standards are our top priority and we go the extra mile to source for the best, durable parts,” she maintains.

Adapting to the local market

After receiving feedback from many of their customers that the standard walking canes were too tall and not suited for the elderly users in Singapore, Xi and Keng decided to manufacture their own brand of designer walking canes, The Cane Collective.

“We designed our walking canes to have a shorter height range suitable for the local market, and offered a variety of patterns for our customers to have more options to suit their style. We did face some challenges during the production process, but learnt many valuable lessons. Since then, we have launched several more brands of mobility, bath and home safety products,” shares Keng.

Also Read: Tweet about your #startuplyfe and win tickets to Echelon Asia Summit 2019!

While the company’s major focus is Singapore, it also has orders coming from other countries in Southeast Asia and even Canada and the US. In addition to manufacturing own line of products, it also distributes foreign brands in the region through its online platform and brick-and-mortar showroom, as well as through other e-commerce platforms, retailers, hospitals, and pharmacies in Singapore.

The company claims to have grown 30-40 per cent year-on-year in the past four years.

In the past seven years of its existence, the company faced several challenges, including hiring right people. But for Keng and Xi, it has always been an opportunity to take a step back and re-evaluate their business model.

“These problems gave us the uncertainty and discomfort to find new ways to stay ahead of the competition while staying true to our purpose of why we started the company in the first place. We also learnt that instead of viewing other companies in the industry as simply competitors, we could collaborate with them. It just required us to be more creative and proactive to suggest win-win scenarios for both parties,” she continues.

Started off with just four products, the company today has a warehouse, in addition to the online store with over 400 products.

In 2017, The Golden Concepts secured a round of funding from unnamed investors.

Also Read: Why be a thought leader at Echelon Asia Summit 2019?

“It has been a challenging but truly fulfilling journey and nothing makes us happier than hearing stories from our customers about how our products have helped improve the lives of their parents and loved ones,” Keng signs off.

 

The post These two entrepreneurs help elderly Singaporeans improve their independence and age better appeared first on e27.