Its other human-less tech includes self-operating trucks, automated warehouses and unmanned stores

JD.com’s drones take flight to Japan in partnership with Rakuten [TechCrunch]

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com is taking its drone delivery system to Japan.

Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant, just announced a partnership with JD that will see its drones and unmanned vehicles become a part of Rakuten’s own unmanned delivery service efforts.

JD has been operating drones in its native China for a number of years, and it has wider expansion plans having recently gained a regional-level operating license. Its other human-less tech includes self-operating trucks, automated warehouses and unmanned stores, and it recently picked Indonesia for its first overseas drone pilot.

Woowa Brothers becomes ‘unicorn’ after raising US$320M [The Investor]

Woowa Brothers, the operator of Korea’s leading food delivery platform Baedal Minjok, announced on Dec. 21 that it has secured additional investments of US$320 million from global investors, making it the latest Korean “unicorn” — startups with an enterprise value of over US$1 billion.

The investments were led by its current investor private equity firm Hillhouse Capital, with equity participation by US-based Sequoia Capital and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, the company said.

Tencent to maintain aggressive investment stance in face of challenging 2019 [Channel News Asia]

Tencent Holdings said investment is central to its overall strategy and so it will maintain its scale of investment after an aggressive 2018, brushing aside near-term risks such as the bursting of China’s tech bubble as economic growth slows.

In the first detailed review of investment performance, President Martin Lau also said 2018 was Tencent’s best year as a record 16 portfolio companies went public, and that it had invested in more than 700 companies over the past 11 years.

The comments come as Tencent battles investor concerns of slowing growth in the video game and social media giant’s core businesses as the government increases scrutiny of online content and services.

Sachin Bansal plans to foray into financial services [The Economic Times]

Sachin Bansal, who co-founded Flipkart, a startup that grew into an e-commerce powerhouse, is venturing into the Indian financial services sector, which has drawn investments from the likes of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba to Japanese investment powerhouse SoftBank.

The billionaire has been in discussions with financial experts on the potential to launch a new venture in a sector that is being transformed by fast-paced technological change, said two people in the know of the matter.

HyperXchange to launch drones-based doorstep delivery in refurbishing industry [press release]

HyperXchange, a refurbished electronics brand in India, is testing a drone-based delivery network in India. The testing process is happening in Kolkata and the drone-based doorstep delivery of mobile phones will be provided in cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune , Bangalore etc near HyperXchange’s warehouses.

The company has partnered with AeroNext, a manufacturer of super-loaded drones, in order to reduce product delivery time by 75 per cent.

Drones will be the future of intracity and intercity medium for logistics and transport.

In the intracity segment, the delivery guys will collect the couriers (be it Amazon or Swiggy) from a drone station nearby the locality, thereby saving time and labour.

“We are currently evaluating the pros and cons of bringing this new age technology. The drone-based delivery pilot is meant to be an initial foray towards building an automated last-mile order delivery process — right till the customer’s doorstep,” HyperXchange Co-founder and CEO Dipanjan Purkayastha said.

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