A Didi booking station at Shenzhen Bao’an Airport Photo credit: Didi Chuxing
Here are the day’s top tech news stories, as curated by Tech in Asia.
Transportation
Didi buys Brazilian ride-hailing app (China/Brazil). China’s Didi Chuxing has agreed to acquire 99, Uber’s main rival in Brazil, for close to US$600 million. Didi led a US$100 million investment into 99 in January last year. It has also backed US-based Uber competitor Lyft and is pursuing a franchising model in Taiwan as it seeks to expand beyond its home market. (The New York Times)
Baidu and BlackBerry join forces for self-driving cars (China/Canada). The Chinese internet firm has signed a deal with the Canadian mobile device maker to co-develop autonomous vehicle technology. BlackBerry has signed similar deals with US chipmaker Qualcomm and Japanese auto parts manufacturer Denso to build self-driving cars around its QNX software platform. (Reuters)
OBike hits 10 million rides (Singapore). The bike-sharing firm has logged 10 million rides since launching in Singapore one year ago. It lags far behind its key competitors, however. Mobike clocked 20 million rides per day as of April last year while Ofo reached 32 million rides per day as of last month. (Tech in Asia)
Geofencing in action on the oBike app. Photo credit: oBike
Ecommerce
JD follows Alibaba into offline groceries (China). The ecommerce firm has opened the first of its new chain of 7Fresh supermarkets. Rival Alibaba launched its Hema supermarket chain in July last year as part of a wider push into brick-and-mortar retail. (South China Morning Post)
Fintech
Salim Group and Mitra Adiperkasa (MAP) eye digital payments services (Indonesia). Conglomerate Salim Group and retail giant MAP have applied to Bank Indonesia, the country’s central bank, for e-money licenses that would allow them to set up and operate digital payments platforms. (DealStreetAsia)
Media and entertainment
The News Lens (TNL) secures funding and acquires Inside (Taiwan). Taipei-based news site TNL has agreed to acquire Inside, a platform for tech news. It also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investor Felix Hong – the Taiwan country manager of Nest, a smart-home startup owned by Google parent Alphabet. (e27)
Editing by Eileen C. Ang
(And yes, we’re serious about ethics and transparency. More information here.)
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
