Dear readers,

Tech in Asia has been reaching out to the startup and venture capital community in recent weeks to find positive vibes amid the ill effects of Covid-19 on people’s health as well as the economic and business environment.

Yet some companies remain optimistic as we struggle to find our way through this pandemic.

For instance, Sequoia Capital India is open for business, despite the doom and gloom of Covid-19. It continues to invest because it believes that “the best companies get created in the tough times,” Abheek Anand, a Singapore-based managing director at the VC firm, tells Tech in Asia.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

One such company is Alibaba.

Back in 2001, Alibaba was a loss-making yellow pages startup. Jack Ma and his co-founders Joe Tsai and Savio Kwan managed to reduce the company’s costs to US$500,000 per month from US$2 million and bought it a runway of 18 months, allowing them to figure out a new business model.

Pivoting to become a cross-border business-to-business listing platform helped the company survive SARS in 2003. Today, Alibaba is among the world’s biggest tech companies, with a market capitalization that stands at US$564 billion.

Let’s remain optimistic during this crisis, which will eventually pass.

Here’s the rest of our premium content from last week:

Long reads

• Do food delivery platforms deserve the public beating they’re getting?
• Is Disney finding India’s Hotstar too hot to handle?
• Dubious practices, ‘profiteering’ taint Indonesia’s bid to regulate online lending

Rising startups

• Meet the 50 top-funded startups and tech companies in India
• 50 rising startups in Southeast Asia
• Online retailer Vestiaire Collective nets $64m to expand in Asia
• Bytedance, Falcon Edge join Dailyhunt’s $23.5m round
• Insurtech startup Axinan closes series A+ round, rebrands as Igloo

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I’ll speak to you again next week.

Let’s all stay home, be healthy, and keep safe!

Cheers,
Jonathan
Editor-in-Chief