The platform Jupiter Chain enables data analytics use with maintained privacy

Singapore-based blockchain startup JEDTrade today announced the launch of Jupiter Chain, a consent-able data exchange platform that enables the use of data analytics without compromising on privacy.

According to a press note, Jupiter Chain allows blockchain technology to be put in the healthcare services ecosystem, where data privacy and security is crucial. It does so by encrypting users’ data and requiring consent before other parties can access the necessary information to conduct big data analytics projects.

JEDTrade’s vision is to have customised healthcare plans from the aggregated medical data, while the data remains secure and private to them. Healthcare business owners will also no longer have to be custodians to user data, avoiding hiccups in securing sensitive data.

The whole objective is to eliminate the risks of data sharing and increases the benefits to consumers and researchers.

“With Jupiter Chain, JEDTrade hopes to fundamentally change the way we handle data. From day-to-day interactions to large-scale processes, enterprise blockchain technology will change the way we live, with new industries hungry for solutions,” said Dr. Ernie Teo, CTO of JEDTrade.

Also Read: Japan’s startup ecosystem has yet to fully mature, says Cool Japan Fund’s Shinnosuke Watanabe

Last month, JEDTrade also announced Jupiter Chain’s partnership with Genecare, a genetics testing company based in Southeast Asia. Genecare allows clients to understand their health risks based on whole-genome sequencing. With this partnership, service providers can only access assessment results and will not see specific genetic data, ensuring the privacy of users while allowing them access to tailored healthcare and services.

JED is a technology company that builds business solutions powered by blockchain technology focussing on three domains: data, supply chain and financial services. Jupiter Chain is aligned with global data laws such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and related data governance.

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How Taiwan is advancing towards becoming Southeast Asia’s leading AI talent hub

In the past two years, Taiwan has rapidly been catching up to the global AI wave and is quickly becoming the region’s defacto AI talent hub.

In order to inject greater momentum into Taiwan’s industries, the government has rolled out the AI Taiwan Action Plan in 2018, a comprehensive industrial plan to accelerate innovation and development.

The four-year action plan will be jointly implemented by the ministries of economic affairs, education, labor, science and technology with a total budget of over US$1 billion poured into the project.

During the same time the Asia Silicon Valley Development Plan was also launched in order to incorporate AI into areas like transportation, healthcare, telecommunications, logistics, and other smart city initiatives.

Over the past two years, technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM have announced the establishment of their largest Asian R&D centers to be based in Taiwan.

For example, Google, following the acquisition of HTC’s handset division in January 2018, received a total of 2,000 engineers, designers, and professionals, along with the launch of “Intelligent Taiwan” just three months later.

The first phase of this initiative was announced to recruit over 300 AI engineers and to train 5,000 AI talents in Taiwan. The second and third phases were to empower more locals to participate in the digital economy by offering free training courses thus, aiming to cultivate a future-ready workforce. Microsoft and IBM have also since announced the recruitment of  AI engineers from Taiwan.

Also Read: Is Taiwan ready to become a global innovation hub?

Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan has two advantages: AI talents and industrial environment.

In terms of talent, Taiwan produces more than 10,000 graduates of computer-science degrees and 25,000 electrical engineers every year. A relatively sizeable talent pool that, if properly upskilled, can provide incredible value to the AI community.

According to OECD statistics, Taiwanese students have topped the global rankings in fourth place for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).

In addition, over the past 30 years, Taiwan has accumulated an unparalleled foundation in hardware manufacturing, leaving ample opportunities for companies to capitalize on the growing integration of hardware and software, especially when it comes to 5G, IoT, big data, and industry 4.0.

New opportunities abound as digital marketing and e-commerce mature

According to AppWorks’ newly released 2019 Taiwan AI Ecosystem Map, Taiwan has been shaping up well with 28 startups & 12 habitat providers.

Taiwan’s earliest investment in the AI field can be traced back to Tagtoo, which was established in 2010 and specializes in marketing tech. In addition to capturing the Taiwan market, Tagtoo has also actively expanded into a Greater Southeast Asian regionalcompany.

In 2018, it won the Best Brand Award in Indonesia by CMO Asia. Tagtoo currently aggregates all their data and has a full-time AI team dedicated to train models to more effectively optimize marketing campaign decisions for their clients.

Also Read: AI is set to revolutionise content marketing

Behind the rapid rise of Tagtoo, Taiwan’s digital marketing and e-commerce development has moved into the AI era, and has spawned a number of new innovations in the field of digital marketing and advertising.

For example, Appier, which provides AI-driven data analytics and marketing solutions, recently closed their Series C round, having  received more than US$82 million in total funding.

Other well-known marketing-related startups in Taiwan include Rosetta.ai, which provides e-commerce personalization modules, and Akohub, which develops retargeting chatbots.

AI technology startups converge with Taiwan to create synergy

Notably, we have also witnessed the increasing integration of hardware and software, specifically as it relates to marrying Taiwan’s traditional manufacturing prowess with its growing AI capabilities.

Established in 2014, Umbo CV (Umbo Computer Vision) a model of this innovation and has successfully entered the European and American markets with loyal enterprise clients in over 30 countries.

Umbo CV specializes in intelligent security monitoring and develops image recognition technology with self-learning and analytic capabilities.

The software platform can be used to learn and identify objects, cars, animals, and plants, as well as monitor for intruders and special events like fires.

By combining AI technology with their own proprietary cameras, Umbo CV helps automate what has traditionally been a very labor-intensive industry riddled with false alarms, saving invaluable time and resources for surveillance and monitoring companies.

Other startups that utilize the integration of software and hardware, development of AI applications, big data from cameras, and WiFi measurement include SkyREC, Cubo, Lucid and NUWA Robotics.

With more and more AI innovations, Taiwan is also booming in terms of startup accelerators, education, and research.

The Taiwan AI Academy and Taiwan AI Labs are Taiwan’s representative institutions in the field of AI for education and research respectively.

Looking into the future for AI innovation, we believe that there are three opportunities related to startups.

The first is the automation of routine and repetitive work in labor-intensive industries such as law, accounting, and healthcare.

The second is the use of AI to facilitate tasks that would otherwise be impossible or highly inefficient for humans to do such as processing large amounts of data for personalized recommendations en masse.

The third is the development of enabling tools to help users capitalize on the growing ubiquity of AI without any prior technical foundation.

Also Read: Asian insurtech on the rise: An overview of the main players

Disclosure: AppWorks is a fully independent venture capital fund/startup accelerator and is only affiliated with the listed startups, which have previously gone through  equity-free accelerator, and Umbo CV, which we have invested in.

The map will be updated every half year to adequately capture the sheer pace at which the industry is evolving. We made our best effort to include everyone but if you feel you have been missed out, let us know.

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Image Credit: Louis Cheng

 

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Also, there’s a new co-working space set to open in Jakarta’s Domestic airport, and CredoLab is expanding to Africa

Indonesia is drafting rules to apply VAT on digital goods and services

Indonesia is drafting value added tax (VAT) rules that will be applied on digital goods and services provided by offshore companies, according to a report by Reuters.

John Hutagaol, an official who heads the international department at the tax office, said that the country would need new “implementation rules to decide on the mechanism” for digital goods and services as they have no time or space restrictions, unlike physical goods.

Hutagaol added that the new VAT rules would be applicable to “e-commerce, content providers, startups and other internet-based economic activities”.

A study by Google and Temasek Holdings last year pegged Indonesia’s internet economy at US$27 billion and predicted that it will grow to US$100 billion by 2025.

Singapore-based fintech startup CredoLab to expand to Africa

Singapore-based fintech startup CredoLab has announced its expansion to the Sub-Saharan African fintech, bringing on three new clients in the region — two banks and a leading airtime credit provider.

The expansion comes on the back of the  African Development Bank’s new Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI, an initiative designed to bring financial inclusion to 332 million Africans who remain underserved and excluded from the traditional banking sector.

Also Read: 3 fintech startups win the chance to pilot project with UNCDF

CredoLab’s digital credit scoring solution uses anonymous, non-personal, consented smartphone
metadata to predict the creditworthiness of users. With smartphone penetration in sub-Saharan Africa steadily increasing and predicted to double by 2025, the company expects to be able to capture a large part of this market.

“The growing penetration of Android smartphones and KaiOS smart-feature-phones currently outpaces the penetration of bank accounts in the continent,” said Peter Barcak, co-founder and CEO of CredoLab, in an official press statement.

“This presents an immense opportunity for fintechs like CredoLab to tap into behavioural data to assess the creditworthiness of any user and enable them to receive loans at fair terms, even in the absence of credit history,” he added.

CredoLab’s entry point into Africa was South Africa and the company expects to launch in Ghana, and Nigeria and Kenya in early 2020.

To date, CredoLab claims to have assessed over US$1 billion in loans issued by more than 50 lenders across 15 countries.

UnionSPACE set to opens in Jakarta’s domestic airport

Indonesia-based co-working space UnionSPACE has announced that it will set up a co-working space in Terminal 3, Soekarno Hatta Airport, which is Jakarta’s domestic airport. The venture was made possible through a partnership with Angkasa Pura Solusi, a foreign investment company that has ventures in areas such as airport consultation.

The new co-working space will be called APSpace.

UnionSPACE currently has seven locations in Jakarta and five locations across Southeast Asia, including Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. It is set to open locations in Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia and China.

SaltyCustoms partners with StarNgage

Influencer marketing platform StarNgage by Hashmeta has announced today it has signed an MOU with Southeast Asia-based apparel branding platform YEEFU by SaltyCustoms.

The partnership will see the two companies jointly design youth-oriented apparel by leveraging the star power of more than half a million active personalities on Instagram — essentially producing licensed apparel.

Using YEEFU, creators can crowdfund merchandising projects. If they are able to hit a minimum pre-order quantity, Yeefu will manage the design, inventory, manufacturing process and last-mile delivery, while the creators will receive the earnings.

Also Read: Why the traditional story arc is obsolete for brands

“As the world changes and moves into the digital age, brands have more opportunities for fan engagement and conversation. Here at YEEFU, we exist to spread positivity and inspiration to the next generation,” said King Quah, Co-Founder of YEEFU. Their first line of merchandise will be announced on starngage.com and released for sale on yeefu.store in August later this year.

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Image Credit : amadeustx

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The Malaysia-based courier marketplace will use the funding to focus on customer acquisition and recruitment

EasyParcel, a courier marketplace startup from Malaysia, announced that it has secured RM43.5 million (US$10.6 million) in Series B from Gobi Ventures and AirAsia’s rebranded logistics arm Teleport.

According to a report by Digital News Asia,  Gobi led the round but Teleport put in more investment.

The Series B round was also joined by current investors Axiata Digital Innovation Fund and several angel investors.

The company’s Series B round reportedly had been going on for almost a year before closing. “It was important to work out the best deal possible for all parties and to get the right partner fit,” Leong said.

The company has said that it plans to use the funding to expand into existing markets in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand, and focus on customer acquisition, as well as strengthen its talent pool by bringing in a new data team leader to scale up the team.

Clarence Leong, CEO of EasyParcel said: “The focus now is speed in execution, as we target to double the revenue in the next 12 months.”

As for scaling up, Leong expressed that EasyParcel is looking into tapping at traditional businesses, especially smaller SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), beyond its current e-commerce clients.

Also Read: South Korea’s Carelabs acquires online beauty and wellness concierge startup Eunogo

EasyParcel is a marketplace that connects courier demand with supply, seeking to enhance the operations of its digitally unsavvy courier partners.

EasyParcel was already working with AirAsia Teleport, previously RedCargo Logistics. The plan is for EasyParcel to potentially help fill spare capacity on Teleport planes.
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Image Credit: EasyParcel

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In its statement, the company said its goal is to support business travel and manage travel expenses

Singapore-based startup Travelstop announces that it has raised US$3 million in Pre-Series A funding led by Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Accel. Participating in the round are Strive (formerly GREE Ventures), and existing investor SeedPlus.

The new round will see Accel’s Prashanth Prakash joining the company’s Board of Directors.

Travelstop’s first funding was 10 months ago, a seed funding round of US$1.2 million led by SeedPlus, joined by travel industry veterans from Expedia and Yahoo!. In the seed round, the company also launched its business and travel and expense management product,

“Our immediate plan is to use the new funds to further invest in technology and to accelerate the adoption of Travelstop across Asia,” said Prashant Kirtane, Co-founder and CEO at Travelstop.

“Travelstop is building a locally relevant solution for the millennial generation of business travelers,” Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, gave a nod.

The startup also announces a partnership with Traveloka, the Indonesia-based travel technology company. The partnership seeks to deliver a more extensive inventory of flights and hotels to business travelers in Asia.

Also Read: South Korea’s Carelabs acquires online beauty and wellness concierge startup Eunogo

The partnership is expected to roll out in the next few months, along with other core features such as 24×7 travel management and travel insurance.

Recently, the startup was named one of the top travel startups to watch out for in 2019 by
Skift. Fellow Asian companies like Funding Societies and Carousell have adopted Travelstop for their business travel management needs in the region.

Travelstop uses machine learning and AI-powered personalisation to customise experience for companies and their employees and eliminate the need to research and book their travel. Travelstop also offers fully localised features for seven markets in Asia like Book For Others, Travel Policies, Group Bookings, Expense Reporting, and Invoice Billing with employers and travel managers in mind so they can manage their company travel and expenses more effectively.
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Image Credit: Travelstop

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