Tokopedia, Tencent, and Alibaba top the news this week. Here’s our staff favorites:
Minh’s pick: Tokopedia, Indonesia’s leading C2C marketplace, is valued at more than $20 million
Of course, the biggest news for us at Tech In Asia is our event Startup Asia, and our close look into the progress of Indonesia’s startup scene and that’s why I’ve chosen Tokopedia’s valuation as a piece of news. Essentially, it underlines Indonesia’s promising startup ecosystem and what we may see in the future. After all, Tokopedia is still growing very fast across the large Southeast Asian population.
Saiyai, Willis, and Josh’s pick: Snapchat now has a friend in Asia with Tencent investment
Snapchat is one of the apps that gets a lot of media attention lately. First it two rounds of investments worth $75 million, then it reportedly turned down a $3 billiondeal from Facebook. With Tencent’s investment could the startup expand in Asia, if it so desires, and will definitely add more value to the company.
Willis: With Tencent as one of its investors, it is quite clear that Snapchat is eyeing Asia. But it remains to be seen if the service would work well here.
Paul’s pick: Alibaba doubles down on NFC payments as Alipay partners with major Chinese retailer
A change is a-coming, and this time it’s in the form of e-wallets and NFC. These technologies were developed separately but it seems like they were practically made for each other. Alibaba is leading the way out of a cash-based society in China with an e-wallet app that works with offline transactions. Now it’s working with retailers like Yintai to lay the foundation for a revolution in how we pay for things every day.
Terence’s pick: International users can soon store the entire ‘Breaking Bad’ series for free, 333 times, thanks to Tencent
10TB is a lot of storage stage. That’s what Tencent is offering international users for its cloud storage service starting next year. This matters because Tencent is putting themselves in the direct path of startups like Box and Dropbox, who are monetizing by offering premium storage space to users. The Chinese giant could very well eat into their lunch.
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