Tag: Asia
Next Billion Users head Caesar Sengupta is leaving Google
Caesar Sengupta, the long-time head of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, is leaving the company next month, he said Monday. Sengupta, who additionally also led the company’s payments business in the past three years, is leaving the firm after nearly 15 years. A regular fixture at Google’s events in India,…
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Singapore-based M Capital Management closes $30.85M debut fund to invest in Southeast Asian startups
M Capital Management founding partners Joachim Ackermann (left) and Mayank Parekh (right) M Capital Management, a Singapore-based venture capital firm, announced today it has closed its debut fund, M Venture Partners (MVP), totaling $30.85 million USD. It plans to invest in 40 early-stage startups, primarily seed and pre-Series A, with…
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India tells court to block WhatsApp’s policy update, says new change violates laws
As WhatsApp spends months to address users’ concerns and confusion about its planned policy update, there is evidently one entity it hasn’t had much luck making inroads with: The Government of India. The Indian government alleged on Friday that WhatsApp’s planned privacy update, which goes into effect in two months,…
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Betting on China’s driverless future, Toyota, Bosch, Daimler jump on board Momenta’s $500M round
Across the street from Suzhou North, a high-speed railway station in a historic city near Shanghai, a futuristic M-shaped building easily catches the eye of anyone passing by. It houses the headquarters of the five-year-old Chinese autonomous driving startup, Momenta. Like other major Chinese cities, Suzhou, which is famous for…
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Financial API provider Brick is building the infrastructure for open banking in Southeast Asia
The adoption of financial apps is surging in Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, the region’s most populous country. Founded by fintech veterans last year, Brick develops APIs that make it easier for tech companies to add identity verification and access financial data from their users. It is currently partnered with…
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SoftBank, Tencent backs IP analytics platform PatSnap in $300M round
As enterprises around the world pour more money into research and invention to stay competitive, the need for analyzing the worthiness of R&D expenses also grows. One company serving that function is PatSnap. When co-founder Jeffrey Tiong was working in the medical devices industry more than a decade ago, he…
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