Dear readers,
On a recent trip to Vietnam for our first-ever Saigon Summit, I visited an eatery in Ho Chi Minh City and tested GPT-4o by taking a photo of my receipt and translating it via the AI.
It did a decent job, but if I had tried it a few minutes earlier, it might not have worked. That’s because my mobile connection, which I had bought as part of a data roaming plan, was spotty.
In hindsight, my Vietnam trip was a wake up call. Even as we witness the expanding AI bubble – and the footage of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signing his name on a woman’s bra is an indication of that – I’m reminded that plenty of opportunities exist outside of it.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
On the topic of connectivity, using the latest and greatest proprietary large language models (LLMs) is impossible without fast and reliable internet access.
In many parts of the world, getting a basic connection remains problematic – an issue that Elon Musk’s satellite internet company Starlink hopes to solve.
It launched in Indonesia to much fanfare, but our subscriber-only analysis details the company’s challenges in the country.
On a related note, while eSIMs can’t solve connection issues in remote areas, they could be a goldmine for the next generation of startups.
Airalo is perhaps the most prominent Southeast Asian startup in this space, but our article mentions other up-and-coming players.
As we scan the region, we see that other sectors are heating up, too. For instance, it’s hard to imagine the coffee industry in Singapore as a blue ocean. But that’s the case in Indonesia as its coffee boom enters a new phase, thanks to affordable brews.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Indonesia’s electric vehicle industry is also thriving: The country is seeking to surpass automotive powerhouse Thailand as the electric “Detroit of Southeast Asia.”
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