From left to right: Y Combinator’s Kevin Hale, 500 Startups’ Dave McClure, and Movida’s Taizo Son taking a selfie on stage at Tech in Asia Tokyo 2014.
Why are people upset over a US$400 juicer, and how is the Lazada-Alibaba tag team going to overtake Amazon? Why is Taizo Son moving to Singapore? Welcome to Last Week in Tech, where we look back at what happened in the tech and startup ecosystem in the last seven days. We’ve also collated a list of regional events to look forward to in the week ahead for your convenience.
Love it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments below!
Quick Bites
A snapshot of last week’s news in sentences.
Juicero’s juice packs taste the same even if you squeeze them by hand without their machine. Photo credit: Juicero.
The price of juice
- People realize that Silicon Valley’s Juicero is upselling a US$400 Juicer that can be easily replaced by their hands. (Ellen Huet and Olivia Zaleski / Bloomberg)
- In response, Juicero’s new CEO tries to convince people that its product is not all about the product’s packet-pressing abilities. (Jeff Dunn / Medium)
- Juicero is also suing another company for selling a similarly overpriced juicer with a name that resembles the word “juice.” Is this really the best time for a juice war? (Megan Geuss / Ars Technica)
Meanwhile, the rest of Silicon Valley wants to change the world
- Elon Musk tells Leonardo Dicaprio: 100 Tesla Gigafactories could transition the whole world to sustainable energy. (Chelsea Gohd / Futurism)
- Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 Conference: Augmented reality could effectively replace smartphones, tablets, and TVs. (Matt Weinberger / Business Insider)
Alibaba steps it up
- Lazada, Alibaba-backed ecommerce platform, shows its hand with a service consolidating Taobao Collection, Netflix, Uber, and UberEats. Is it a game changer? (Michael Tegos / Tech in Asia)
- Lazada’s HelloPay Group also merges with Ant Financial, Alibaba’s financial affiliate. (Eva Xiao / Tech in Asia)
- The merger might be in response to Alipay’s slipping stronghold as China’s payment leader – Tenpay has almost double the number of active users. (Eva Xiao / Tech in Asia)
Land of the rising Son
- Softbank looks to India for Softbank’s next big bet — a $1.5 billion investment in Paytm. (Sumit Chakraberty / Tech in Asia)
- While Masayoshi Son looks to India, his brother Taizo Son moves to Singapore with plans to invest $100m in SEA startups. (Nadine Freischlad / Tech in Asia)
This week in funding
- SEA funding in Q1 2017 didn’t look promising. It may be because no one knows where to put their money. (Terence Lee / Tech in Asia)
- Budget airline AirAsia bought 50 percent of trip planning service Touristly in a deal worth US$2.6 million. (Judith Balea / Tech in Asia)
- China’s media sweetheart Toutiao confirms their new funding. They are now worth US$11 billion. (Eva Xiao / Tech in Asia)
- Reports say that Go-Jek’s about to raise US$1 billion to fight off Uber and Grab in Indonesia. (Michael Tegos / Tech in Asia)
- HR software startup Swingvy raises US$1.1 million to increase their user base. (Catherine Shu / TechCrunch)
Bike-sharing isn’t sharing. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.
Must-reads
A collection of meaningful long-form reads.
- Bike-sharing has taken off, but it’s technically not part of the sharing economy. (Jeffrey Towson / Tech in Asia Community)
- This startup has created Slack for bots, a channel for bots to interact and collaborate with each other. (Sumit Chakraberty / Tech in Asia)
- Google set out to publish all the books in the world. They stopped at 25 million, and now no one is allowed to read them. (James Somer / The Atlantic)
Upcoming Events
Events to look out for this coming week. Want to list your event here? Email us and let us know!
What’s Now: Cloud & Cybersecurity
Wednesday, 26 April, 2017
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM SGT
Applied Innovation Exchange Singapore
6 Battery Road #12-02/03
“What’s Now Singapore” is a new series of technology talks which Capgemini Singapore is introducing at the newly inaugurated AIE lab, where guests can expect discussions on current and upcoming key technology trends, as well as benefit from first-hand opportunity to interact with subject matter experts and network with distinguished guests across industries. The inaugural session will cover Cloud and Cybersecurity, where you can hear from subject matter expert Franck Greverie, global head of cyber security and cloud, Capgemini.
Business development and building partnerships in tech
Monday, 24 April, 2017
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM SGT
GA Singapore, Spacemob
Level 3, 8 Claymore Hill
Entrepreneurs, small business owners, sales professionals, and career changers can all benefit from a greater knowledge of business development. This class held by Vidit Agrawal, Strategic Vehicle Partnerships Lead, APAC Uber, will cover an overview of the business development cycle, from outreach to developing and formalizing partnerships.
ProductTank #9: Building with AI
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
6:30 PM SGT
Zalora Singapore Office
Keppel Towers, 10 Hoe Chiang Road, #18-01
Singapore 089315
Chatbots are all the rage now – but true AI assistants are so much more than that. Take a deep dive into the challenges of building a real conversational UX and the underlying language & cognitive framework that’s necessary. This session of ProductTank features Jin Hian Lee, the technology co-founder of Mimetic.ai, the startup behind one of the world’s first AI scheduling assistants.
Tech in Asia Founders Meetup: Growth Hacking for Startups
Thursday, April 27, 2017
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM SGT
SG Innovate, 32 Carpenter Street
Singapore 059911
For April’s founders meetup, we will have a keynote presentation from Tech in Asia’s Head of Growth, Titan Lee. Titan is the mastermind behind Singapore’s most successful crowdfunding campaign, Pirate3D, which saw a whopping US$1.43 million raised. He was also behind the successful campaign raise for Singapore-based startup TinyMOS, which raised over three times its original goal.
This post Last Week in Tech: The Lazada-Uber-Netflix alliance and SEAsia’s sinking funding appeared first on Tech in Asia.
from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/lazada-sinking-juice
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