Here’s what you might have missed in Southeast Asian tech

Photo credit: think4photop / 123RF Stock Photo.

Grab is back in the headlines with additional GrabPay features, news from its HR department, and a Toyota partnership. Vertex is readying its third fund with help from Thailand, and Uber rolls again in the Philippines. Here’s some of the big news from Southeast Asia’s tech and startup ecosystem over the last seven days.

Singapore

Grab’s head of engineering departs. Grab’s vice president of engineering, Arul Kumaravel, has left the company for personal reasons. He joined Grav two years ago. The firm plans to make internal promotions and hire more senior tech talent from outside. (Tech in Asia)

Meanwhile, Grab also rolled out a peer-to-peer payments feature. GrabPay users in Singapore can now transfer funds to each other – a feature already available on rival app Go-Jek in Indonesia. The company also said that it would be working with merchants in the city-state to introduce its digital payments platform to hawker centers and other smaller businesses before the end of the year. (Tech in Asia)

Grab last week revealed that Toyota is part of its still ongoing US$2.5 billion fundraise. The Japanese automaker made a strategic investment with the goal of learning from Grab’s data and promoting services to Grab drivers. The ride-hailing firm already has a similar arrangement with Honda. (Tech in Asia)

Indonesia

Kata’s founding team. (L-R) Wahyu Wrehasnaya (CFO), Reynir Fauzan (CMO), Irzan Raditya (CEO), Ahmad Rizqi Meydiarso (CTO). Photo credit: Kata.ai.

Indonesia’s Kata.ai goes international. Jakarta-based chatbot platform Kata is launching in Taiwan and other Southeast Asian countries after raising a US$3.5 million series A round led by the Taiwanese Trans-Pacific Technology Fund. This makes Kata one of a few Indonesian startups to tackle international expansion early on. (Tech in Asia)

Lippo Group’s Ovo app makes a stellar hire. Jim Geovedi, an Indonesian security researcher who gained international fame by hacking satellites, has reportedly joined mobile wallet Ovo as new CTO. (Daily Social)

Thailand

Vertex Ventures is readying its third fund for Southeast Asia and India. The fund will be worth over US$150 million, and for the first time, it includes money from an external investor – Thailand’s Kasikornbank. The previous funds were fully backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. (Tech in Asia)

Philippines

Taguig City in the Philippines. Photo credit: Achim Voss.

Philippines lifts Uber suspension after it pays nearly US$10 million in penalties. Uber was banned in the Philippines for about a month because it had violated an order to stop accepting new drivers. (Reuters)

This post Here’s what you might have missed in Southeast Asian tech appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/southeast-asia-tech-news-2017-09-04
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