Asia news roundup: Grab hires vocal senior Google engineer, WeChat Pay makes a major move

Steve Yegge joins Grab as its head of engineering, data insights / Photo credit: Gawker

News emerged today that Grab has made another big hire – possibly, its most high profile one yet. Elsewhere, big money flowed into the fintech space; while Google made another investment in China as it ups its game in the country.

Transportation

Grab’s latest big hire (Singapore/US). Steve Yegge, a prominent Google engineer that worked for the search giant for almost 13 years, has joined Grab as its head of engineering, data insights. He announced it in the most unusual way – by writing a 5,000-word screed decrying Google’s lack of innovation and extolling Grab’s virtues. “The main reason I left Google is that they can no longer innovate,” he wrote. He then gushed about Grab. “I’ve seen Grab’s hunger. I’ve felt it. I have it. This space is win or die. They will fight to the death, and I am with them,” he added.

At Google, Yegge created Grok, an internal tool used by engineers to, as he describes it, “navigate, understand, and refactor Google’s entire code base. It is the number one most-loved developer service inside Google, with a 99.9 percent satisfaction rating.” Before that, he led software development teams at Amazon.

He is known for another thing though: He accidentally published an internal rant about the struggling Google Plus, Google’s attempt at a social network. Yegge did not get into trouble, at least according to him. “Everyone just laughed at me a lot, all the way up to the top, for having committed what must be the great-granddaddy of all ‘reply-all’ screwups in tech history,” he wrote. (Medium)

Fintech

Dianrong chief technology officer Ling Kong on stage at Tech in Asia Singapore 2017 / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Dianrong gets US$70 million in extra funding (China). Japanese financial services firm Orix has invested US$60 million into the peer-to-peer lending portal, with a further US$10 million coming from an affiliate of Citic Securities. Dianrong raised US$220 million for its series D round last year. (Reuters)

Online lender NeoGrowth raises US$47 million (India). LeapFrog Investments led the . round, with participation from existing backers Aspada Investment Company and Quona Capital. Previous investors in NeoGrowth include Omidyar Network and Khosla Impact. (The Economic Times)

WeChat Pay makes big step outside China with overseas credit card integration (China). Expats living in mainland China and residents of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan will now be able to link foreign credit cards provided by JCB, MasterCard, and Visa to their WeChat Pay account. WeChat Pay owner Tencent said it’s the first time people without a Chinese bank account or Chinese-issued credit card can use the payments app. (Technode)

For the first time, people without Chinese bank accounts or Chinese-issued credit cards will be able to use WeChat Pay / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Nets and Ez-Link collaborate on hawker center digital payments (Singapore). The two payments providers have joined forces to launch their first interoperable payments system in the city-state. All Ez-Link card holders, as well as senior citizens and students using concession cards, will be able to make cashless payments on Nets terminals at hawker centers. (Nets)

Ecommerce

Milkbasket bags US$3 million pre-series A funding (India). The online grocery delivery platform secured the capital from Unilever Ventures, which led the round, and several other investors. It will use the funds to add more product lines and enhance its technological capabilities. (Livemint)

Life sciences

Investors, incubators, and accelerators