“If you resist artificial intelligence, you will be finished.” That was the message of HE Omar Sultan Al Olama, the Minister of State for AI Digital Economy for the UAE government, at the opening of the GITEX 2023 CTO World Congress.

His statement resonated with the crowd at the 43rd edition of GITEX Global, the world’s largest technology and startup exhibition in Dubai, where AI’s influence on companies’ presence cannot be overlooked.

Over 6,000 companies from 180 countries and thousands of attendees flooded to the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) for the five-day event which began on October 16, 2023. The United Arab Emirates’ annual technology event spans 41 exhibition halls, showcasing tech giants and startups specializing mainly in AI, cybersecurity, and mobility. 

The event also expanded significantly across Dubai Harbor, where Expand North Star, a startup focus event hosted by the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, took place concurrently. Dubai’s vested interest in AI – the technology that has taken center stage globally this year – was apparent in both events. More than 1,000 AI-infused companies were participating, according to organizers, as concerns over governance, regulations, and job security remain.

“AI needs to be unleashed, rather than confined and restricted,” Al Olama told reporters on the sidelines of GITEX 2023. In sharing the view of his administration, the Minister claimed that “governments’ responsibilities around the world should revolve around increasing awareness, reducing ignorance, and ensuring that people can access AI tools.”

Al Olama believes that the world is entering an era that separates countries that embrace AI and those that don’t. “That’s going to be the key differentiator. If you embrace AI, you will try. If you don’t, unfortunately, you will remain stagnant,” he told reporters.

Governing AI the right way: A hot topic at GITEX 2023

During his keynote address, Al Olama captivated the audience by advocating a global consensus on AI governance. He stressed governing AI use cases rather than the technology itself. He called for discussions to be more solution-focused rather than dominated by fears. “I think the current global discussion on AI governance is a non-starter,” he told reporters about regulating the technology during a media briefing on day two of GITEX 2023.

Al Olama, who became the world’s first minister in the AI field in 2017, believes that governments must openly address concerns around AI. “Fear should not dominate the discussion,” he reiterated. He, however, thinks tackling the issue of deepfakes is a global problem for governments.

“I think deepfakes need to be addressed, because they erode the people’s trust in the content,” Al Olama said. “It’s a big problem, so we must be heavy-handed with deepfakes.” The Minister suggested that governments should also take a firm stance against using tools that create misinformation, as these tools too can erode trust – this time in governments.

The Minister, who was recently named by Time magazine among the 100 most influential people in AI, highlighted the remarkable journey of the UAE as an early adopter of AI. A 2019 report on the Government Artificial Intelligence Readiness Index², which examined over 190 countries worldwide to determine its rankings, has placed the UAE at the top of the Arab world for its readiness to adopt AI technologies. 

By June of this year, special task forces within 30 government entities in Dubai had been formed to harness the power of AI to transform government operations and services. 

Some of those government bodies were present at GITEX 2023, and Tech Wire Asia had the opportunity to visit their booths and peek into their AI innovations.

Digital Dubai

Digital Dubai inaugurated the Dubai Government Pavilion at the GITEX 2023, bringing together more than 40 government and private entities in the Emirate of Dubai. Director general of Digital Dubai, Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, asserted that “the Dubai Government Pavilion at GITEX Global 2023 offers a glimpse into Dubai’s digital future, where emerging and advanced technologies play a central role in ensuring happiness among citizens and residents, offering them easy, quick, and integrated digital services.”

The Digital Dubai platform this year included 40 pavilions, each representing a government or private entity from various fields, who came together to strive for a common purpose – to position Dubai as a global digital hub and an inspiring international capital. Among the services showcased were the Dubai.AI platform, in partnership with the Dubai Center for Artificial Intelligence (DCAI). The platform  allows users to quickly and seamlessly access services and information about Dubai across various sectors. 

Dubai.AI was developed in partnership with government entities in the emirate. It can be populated it with accurate information and services from reliable sources, making that data available to all users.

There was also the ‘Al Maha’ project on cybersecurity, an advanced scanning tool designed to locate all government digital assets on the internet, whether they’re hosted in the UAE or abroad. 

The platform can identify vulnerabilities in these digital assets, classify them by severity, and suggest the most effective methods to address them. Additionally, Digital Dubai is introducing the Application Programming Interface (API) Tester, a portal that lets users, developers, and security officers evaluate and test their API endpoints. The API scanner will identify gaps and weaknesses in the provided API requests, primarily helping developers and users to patch and secure their APIs.

Digitizing Dubai’s Metro

At Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) pavilion were an array of AI projects and initiatives, including a smart gate for paying public transport fares through facial recognition. The RTA plans to roll out the smart gates next year, with plans to test it out at public transport stations where there is less volume of passengers before it will be rolled out across all stations after the Proof of Concept succeeds.

تعتبر البوابة الذكية التي تتيح دفع تعرفة #المواصلات_العامة باستخدام بصمة الوجه جزءاً من خطة الهيئة الاستراتيجية للتحول الرقمي التي تهدف إلى تلبية الاحتياجات التشغيلية والارتقاء بتجربة الركاب. قم بزيارة منصة #هيئة_الطرق_و_المواصلات "S1-E" في معرض #جيتكس2023 من 16 إلى 20 أكتوبر في… pic.twitter.com/dhwp3xVKpS

— RTA (@rta_dubai) October 17, 2023

The RTA plans to adopt the same facial recognition technology in all other modes of public transportation in Dubai, including trams, buses, abra (a traditional small ferry-like boat used to ferry people across the Dubai Creek), and taxis. The RTA’s goal is to move from physical and digital cards to a facial recognition system.

The convergence of AI and Arabic

The UAE has recently made strides in AI, having unveiled two major large language models – the underlying algorithm that powers generative AI – to prove its intentions of becoming a leader in the industry. At one of the government pavilions at GITEX 2023, the LLM models, Jais and Falcon, were showcased, and according to Al Olama, they have been well received by the public.

Jais, an open-source bilingual Arabic-English LLM, was developed through collaboration between Inception, an AI company in Abu Dhabi, the G42 unit, Mohammed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, and Silicon Valley’s Cerebras Systems. Jais is designed to make the Arabic language a prominent player in AI.

Conversely, Falcon is a flagship LLM by the UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII). Falcon 180B is closely ranked just behind OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 and matches the performance level of Google’s PaLM 2 Large, the model that powers Bard, according to the company. 

Driverless police patrol car

Adding to the variety of Dubai’s government entities showing their AI innovations at GITEX 2023 was an autonomous Dubai Police patrol car that could handle the city’s streets. The vehicle, equipped with a drone launcher, radar detector, and surveillance camera, will provide Dubai Police with an innovative and effective method for city patrolling. 

According to a spokesperson, the department has concluded its research and development phase, and the vehicle is currently in production. It will be operational on the city’s streets within the following year.

“It took 65 engineers five years of research to build the vehicle named Autonomous Police Patrol M02,” which, according to the spokesperson, can function with an accuracy rate of 99.9%.

The post What were the highlights of GITEX 2023? appeared first on TechWire Asia.

Four months after launching its Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub in Asia, Microsoft this week announced that it is incorporating its hub within the MYStartup platform in Malaysia, continuing its mission to fuel innovation amongst ambitious startups in the country who are eager to make their mark on the global stage. Through a collaboration with Cradle Fund, Malaysia’s early stage start-up influencer, Microsoft provides opportunities to local startups to upskilling opportunities, and personalized technical guidance.

The US giant signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti) in Malaysia yesterday, making way for the incorporating of Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub within the country’s MYStartup platform. MYStartup was set up earlier this year in line with the country’s Startup Ecosystem Roadmap (Super) and it consists of several accelerator programmes that will be carried out throughout the year with the objective to strengthen the start-up ecosystem and community in the country. 

That said, the MoU will lead to startups having access to the Microsoft Mentor Network along with free access to GitHub Enterprise and productivity boosts with Microsoft 365 as well as Azure cloud credits of up to US$150,000 to build their products. “As Malaysia accelerates towards realizing its MyDIGITAL ambitions, building a digital workforce across businesses and organizations will be key in empowering the nation’s inclusive digital economy,” Microsoft Malaysia said in a statement yesterday.

Therefore, startups under Cradle will also have access to Microsoft Azure Fundamental courses, to build digital literacy on cloud computing, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). These courses will equip participating startups with the skills to realize their ambitions and innovate product offerings while getting awarded a globally recognized certification that affirms their digital competencies.

“We often observe startup companies in Malaysia facing challenges in realizing their ideas. Most of them have potential and are competitive but struggle to make full use of existing technology. As such, Cradle is excited to work closely with Microsoft as a collaborative partner in improving technology expertise and to develop a more sustainable startup ecosystem in Malaysia,” Cradle’s action CEO Norman Matthieu Vanhaecke said during the signing ceremony in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Mosti’s minister Dr Adham Baba said this move by Microsoft Malaysia and Cradle is in line with the government’s desire to empower the technology ecosystem in the country, in addition to being a leading startup ecosystem by 2030 and further achieving inclusive, responsible and sustainable socio-economic development. The minister said he is committed to have his ministry provide support to more than 5,000 start-up companies with the target of five of them achieving “unicorn” status by 2025 and at the same time, increasing the number of “coders” to 10,000 people by 2030.

Launched in March this year, Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub is a platform that offers over US$300,000 worth of benefits and credits, giving startups free access to the technology, tools, and resources they need to build and run their business. It is also designed specifically for early-stage startups to lower the barriers of business creation, be a catalyst for entrepreneurship and innovation, and contribute to easing the journey from an idea to a unicorn. 

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Startups in Asia continue to see innovation and growth over the past two years despite the challenges brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Asia has become a hotbed of innovation as the startup scene blossoms on every corner.

According to CB insights, Asia was the top region for global venture deals in 2021. Funding was also up 89% from 2020 as more unicorns are produced. In fact, Asia is now home to three of the top ten countries leading in the number of unicorns created year on year through China, India, and South Korea, India, in particular, is facing the fastest pace with a unicorn being created almost every week. A recent report by Bain reports that Indian SaaS firms could corner about eight to nine percent of the global market by 2025.

With that said, Microsoft launches its Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub in Asia, to empower startups’ ambitions and fuel innovation to drive economic and societal progress for Asia and beyond. The new inclusive platform offers over US$ 300,000 worth of benefits and credits, giving startups free access to the technology, tools, and resources they need to build and run their business.

In fact, the Microsoft cloud is the platform of choice to empower the ambition of startups whether consumer or B2B SaaS solutions to enable them to scale across Asia and globally. For example, in China over the past ten years, Microsoft has supported the growth of over 700 start-ups.

The startup hub is expected to empower entrepreneurs to innovate and grow by connecting them with mentors who will provide them with industry, business, and technical support to guide them through their next business milestones. In addition, Founders will have access to Microsoft Learn and a variety of startup and unicorn programs to help them build connections with customers and accelerate their growth.

Designed specifically for early-stage startups, the platform is available to all startups in Asia, including those without third-party backing, as part of Microsoft’s commitment to empowering startups’ ambitions to drive innovation from Asia to the world.

For Jesus Martin, Chief Strategy at Microsoft Asia, creativity and innovation are accelerating Asia’s position to become the startup region of the world. As a trusted partner, Microsoft wants to empower the ambition of startups from an idea to a unicorn.

“As a platform company, our cloud services and solutions are designed to empower founders to concentrate on what they do best – innovate at their own pace. Our aim is to give startups access to the technology that will power their innovation, connect them with customers, and an ecosystem of developers, partners, and investors to help them scale in Asia and beyond,” shared Martin.

Martin also said that the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub was created following extensive research and conversations with hundreds of founders who explicitly shared their need for access to a digital ecosystem that promotes opportunities and democratizes innovation regardless of background, location, progress, or passions.

“We look forward to how our new offering will support more founders in Asia and provide access to the technology, tools, and resources they need to build and run their business,” explained Martin.

To support startups across Asia focused on sustainability and social impact, Microsoft also expanded Project Amplify, in collaboration with Accenture, enabling hands-on support and technologies, mentoring, and collaboration opportunities.

“Microsoft believes startups from Asia have the potential to change the world. In fact, they have already played a role in transforming Asia’s economy. Asian-born businesses have changed e-commerce, fintech, social media, and gaming. They have given us SuperApps, which are changing the way we live. As the cloud platform of choice, we will continue to work with our partners and regional ecosystem to get technology and resources in the hands of startup founders in Asia, to empower them to innovate and ultimately succeed,” concluded Martin.

The post Introducing the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub Platform appeared first on TechWire Asia.

The realization of Taiwan’s 5+2 innovative industries plan will soon materialize as the Cyber Security and Smart Technology Research and Development Building in Shalun, Tainan.

Under the island’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the building is poised to be the hub for startups and high-tech companies and the south Taiwan headquarters for Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA), a deep tech startup ecosystem building program.

The 5+2 innovative industries plan was initiated in July 2016 with seven areas of focus: intelligent machinery, green energy, biomedicine, new agriculture, circular economy, national defense, and aerospace, and transforming Taiwan into Asia’s Silicon Valley. 

With cybersecurity designated as part of the island’s national defense, an action plan was unveiled in 2018, including building a cybersecurity education and training system guided by industry needs. 

Increasing the number of people working in the cybersecurity field to 10,000 and providing assistance and support for establishing 40 cybersecurity startups are a couple of the action plan’s objectives for 2025.

A leading center for smart technology and green living

Tainan is set to be the leading center for smart green city living, with its Shalun area being developed as green energy technology and innovation ecosystem.

The new Cyber Security and Smart Technology R&D building is part of Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, an industrial park in Gueiren District, Tainan. 

“Few people wanted to move for work to Gueiren five years ago, but the hub in the district is expected to become the cradle of Asia’s most advanced cybersecurity technology, featuring innovative startups,” quipped Minister of Science and Technology Wu Tsung-tsong during the new building’s opening ceremony.

Taiwan mapped out its National Science and Technology Development Plan 2021-2024 to strengthen balanced regional development by spreading characteristic industry clusters throughout its northern, central, and southern regions. 

Taiwan’s 2030 vision 

The plan listed four goals towards realizing the country’s 2030 vision for innovation, inclusion, and sustainability:

1. Refine the talent cultivation environment and create competitive advantages for talent recruitment 
2. Improve the research and development ecosystem and allocate resources for the development of pioneering technology
3. Co-create economic momentum and build a solid ground for innovation
4. Enhance smart living capacity and realize a secure society

The most recent development initiatives expand on the 5+2 industrial innovation plan by focusing on six core strategic industries: digital and information industry, national defense and strategic industry, cybersecurity industry, green and renewable energy industry, medical technology, and precision health industry, and strategic stockpile industry.

A few days after the building’s opening, where President Tsai Ing-wen reiterated Taiwan’s commitment to fostering technological advancement with a humanistic approach, MOST announced that it would be transformed into a new science and technology council as early as March 2022. 

The new council will oversee the country’s overall technology development, which includes helping the cabinet and other government agencies to strengthen their technology development and decision-making in their operations and policies, as tech has become an index of its national competitiveness.  

The post Taiwan ramps up smart technology initiatives appeared first on TechWire Asia.

A successful pitch would guarantee them funding but there also several challenges that follow suit. A tech startup needs to be able to access technologies to start its business. And this would mean investing in these technologies, which can be pricey.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the venture capital (VC) investment landscape globally. However, in the Asia Pacific (APAC), it has not dampened the spirits of startups and organizations seeking early-stage funding. GlobalData’s Financial Deals database showed the share of early-stage funding rounds remained at more than 65% which is promising for startups here.

Tech startups rely heavily on the cloud to run their operations. While running a business entirely on the cloud does reduce costs for physical infrastructures, deciding how much to allocate for cloud services requires proper planning. Picking the right cloud vendor that can meet the scalability and changes in the business is key for startups.

As the cloud allows them to be flexible, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a suite of cloud-based solutions as well as training, certification, and support for startups and organizations of all sizes to expand their business ideas quickly and effectively.

According to Digbijoy Shukla, Business Development Lead, Startup Business Development ASEAN at AWS, startups can leverage cloud solutions as it enables them to launch faster, experiment more with lower risk and focus on their core value. A key feature of AWS is that it requires zero upfront cost as startups only pay for what they use instead of having to invest in servers upfront.

“The great thing about startups is the ability to start small and learn as you go. So long as you get the foundations right, such as ensuring you are secure by design from the outset, it won’t matter so much if you make the odd misstep along the way, because the consequences will be small,” said Shukla.

The startup journey

Carsome, the largest integrated e-commerce car sales platform in Southeast Asia, started as a simple platform to sell cars. Today, the brand is on its way to being a unicorn in Southeast Asia (SEA) as it continues to innovate the entire used car selling experience.

Fresh out of their acquisition of PT Universal Collection, a Jakarta-based offline car and motorcycle auction company, Carsome continues to see dynamic growth across its Southeast Asian markets. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, more car users are opting for used cars which have seen an increase in the region.

Carsome also announced that is plans to acquire listings platform, iCarAsia in a transaction worth more than US$200 million.

For Eric Cheng, co-founder and Group CEO of Carsome, startups need to be able to scale fast to adapt to the growing demands and trends of the market. The cloud enables them to do it with minimal disruption. Having started as a car comparison website, Carsome was able to transform its business into an integrated e-commerce platform for selling used cars within six months.

One of the reasons why Carsome was able to adapt quickly was because they were cloud-native and had no legacy infrastructures to worry about. Shukla explained that compared to startups, SMEs and large enterprises need to have a different approach in their cloud transformation journey.

For SMEs, the cloud journey is one of digital transformation, and how operations can be streamlined. Meanwhile, enterprises that have invested in tech before would need to migrate their operations to the cloud and leverage their existing infrastructures. Some enterprises have also invested in technologies that they do not need and are unsure of how to make the most of the services in the cloud.

Today, Carsome has a strong presence in the SEA region and leverages AWS for its platform. While they have been successful, Eric did mention that access to talented and skilled employees in technology is still a concern. Carsome is not the only business experiencing this as the shortage of skilled tech employees continues to be a growing concern in the region.

Thai fashion brand Pomelo entered fashion e-commerce in 2013. Today, the brand is using AI through machine learning to revolutionize the fashion industry in the region as well as enhance the customer experience.

Fintech apps are also growing in demand in this part of the world with more startups emerging in this sector. These include buy-now pay later startups that are leveraging technologies on the cloud to run and scale their business while ensuring they meet all compliance and regulations set by local governments.

With cloud-enabling startups to build their business much faster, the market is only going to get more competitive. As investors realize the potential startups can bring and are eager to invest in them, entrepreneurs should be looking at how they can innovate new ideas to fuel the growing digital economy.

The post Building a startup easily on the cloud appeared first on TechWire Asia.

The State of Finance App Marketing tracked data on finance app usage across the globe, across five categories of apps. They include digital banks, traditional banks, financial services, loans, and investments.

It was found that there were over 1230 fintech apps available in APAC, and marketers have spent US$ 244 million to acquire new users in 2020 alone. 

Within APAC, a total of 2.7 billion installations occurred between Q1 2019 and Q1 2021.

The bulk of the marketing was spent on investment apps and made up more than 65.5% of paid installations. The total number of paid installations reached 600 million.

India and Indonesia, together with Brazil, make up almost half of global fintech app downloads. This is not surprising, given that these mega developing markets comprise massive numbers of unbanked and underbanked customers, especially in Indonesia.

On the whole, developing markets show 70% more finance app installs as opposed to developed markets. Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam all saw fintech app demand grow in 2020.

Different sub-categories of fintech apps dominate in different markets 

Whilst investment apps tended to be the most popularly downloaded across the region, Indian users had a clear preference for financial services, which made up over 80% of downloads. However, the market still continues to be dominated by e-wallet apps.

Indonesians, on the other hand, over 75% of users have downloaded apps for either financial services or lending. This ties in with the trend seen in Indonesia where there is a large market of millennial SMEs and startups that can be served by the fintech sector. 

Furthermore, the merger of unicorns Gojek and Tokopedia may bring good tidings to enterprises as a whole as fintech services are planned to roll out under them.

In the Philippines, however, there was a 20% drop in lending apps and installations between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021. The Philippines is still a developing economy for fintech, with a growing presence of digital banks.

Fintech apps still at risk of being targeted by cybercriminals

On the whole, fraudulent installations have dropped by 15% across the APAC due to improvements in anti-fraud solutions. However, that is still a high number. This is particularly problematic for India and the SEA region as the rates of fraudulent installations hovered at around 40%. 

Nevertheless, on the whole, the SEA region has seen a 20% y-o-y reduction in fraud rate. Across APAC, bots are responsible for the majority of fraudulent installations in SEA and Japan, whereas India and South Korea are plagued by click flooding.

Key takeaways for enterprises in the region

The rapid growth of financial app installations in the APAC and SEA regions generally reflects the changing finance and banking landscape, as well as consumer demand, in these regions.

Digitalization and the pandemic have also rapidly catalyzed consumer demand for digital services, which contributes to the growth of startups and SMEs. 

Additionally, the SEA region, in particular, promises huge potential in consumer adoption of consumer fintech services as it is home to over one billion underbanked and unbanked customers.

Furthermore, regulators are far more amenable to handing out more digital banking licenses in countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, making it far more conducive to start fintech services here.

All these together present an opportune moment for more players, including investors to enter the fintech market and promote continued innovation to bring personalized services to individual and enterprise clients together.

The post Asia Pacific shows explosive growth in demand for fintech apps appeared first on TechWire Asia.

The use of emerging technologies in the biotech market is growing, with a market valuation of US$752 billion in 2020 alone. This is especially true in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, whose biotech market is expected to expand even faster, with a CAGR of 16.8% up to 2028. 

This speed can be attributed to improvements in healthcare infrastructure, supportive government policies, clinical trial services, and epidemiological factors. 

In the US, over 78% of the healthcare sector intend to or are already implementing digitalization efforts using cloud and other emerging technologies.

There is also growing interest by foreign companies to work or collaborate closely with regional APAC biotechnology players, making the region’s biotech market ripe for investment.

Insilico and its value proposition

Yesterday, Hong Kong-based AI-powered biotech startup Insilico Medicine raised another US$255 million, led by Warburg Pincus and over 25 expert biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and AI investors. These include Sequoia Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, and Baidu Ventures. Since its inception in 2014, this brings their total investments up to US$310 million.  

Insilico’s innovative and unique services revolve around the heavy use of deep learning to drive their efforts in drug discovery and development. Deep learning (DL) is a subset of machine learning (ML) under the umbrella of artificial intelligence (AI).

Insilico and technological disruption of the pharmaceutical industry

Traditional drug development from discovery to market exists on a continuum, divided amongst three to four stages, depending on the manufacturer. 

It takes approximately 10 to 12 years to achieve that, with most of the time spent on clinical trials. Complicating that, only about 14% of drugs manage to get regulatory approval (such as from the Food & Drugs Administration, or, FDA), with costs averaging US$2.8 billion.

As such, speed is the biggest challenge for pharmaceutical companies, and also why novel drugs cost so much while their patents are active. 

Before drugs can reach the clinical stage, it has to undergo several rigorous steps to demonstrate its strong efficacy and safety for clinical trial organisms, be it animals or humans. 

Typical development processes up to the nomination of a preclinical candidate can take approximately four and a half years or about 53 months. 

With Insilico’s method, it can shorten the process by as much as 66% (which is 18 months, or, one and a half years). Not only that, but it can also drastically reduce associated costs by 90% as compared to similar programs.

Powering drug development with AI

Insilico has built a strong, AI-powered, end-to-end drug discovery platform, which, according to their CEO, Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, has taken them seven years to develop.

The platform includes PandaOmics, an AI-powered novel target discovery engine; Chemistry42, a deep generative reinforcement learning system (which allows for de-novo design of novel molecules with the desired properties that do not exist in the known chemical space), and InClinico, which predicts clinical trial outcomes.

PandaOmics is a biology-solving engine, whereas Chemistry42 is a compound-generating engine. Both these engines have been built on years of modeling large biological, chemical, and textual datasets using deep learning. 

Insilico is the world’s first company that has managed to use AI to identify a novel target for a major pulmonary disease. How it works is that the algorithm generates novel molecules for that novel target. 

The novel target generated by PandaOmics presents a significant breakthrough and is relevant for a broad range of fibrosis indications. Chemistry42 then uses the newly discovered target as the basis for the structure-based design of a first-in-class novel small molecule inhibitor. This then completes the preclinical experiments required to nominate a preclinical candidate.

Next steps for Insilico

Since the launch of Chemistry42 in September 2020, seven out of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies have deployed its software, including Merck KGaA and UCB. 

Additionally, Insilico has deployed a drug discovery team and platform in China to work on multiple therapeutic programs targeting novel, difficult, and previously undruggable targets.

“Over the last two years, we have built an AI-friendly drug discovery team and a “frictionless drug discovery” ecosystem of about 80 contract research organizations and partners like the cloud robotics provider Arctoris, that specialize in specific assays, to generate disease-relevant machine-learnable proprietary data and to develop our own drug discovery pipeline”,

shared Dr Zhavoronkov in a message spotted by Tech Wire Asia.

He also stated that the company is preparing to innovate clinical development (which takes around seven or more years) using a similar approach. 

Fred Hassan, former Chairman, and CEO of Schering Plough Corporation, commented on behalf of Warburg Pincus,

“Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is a powerful tool to revolutionize the drug discovery process and bring life-changing therapies to patients faster than ever before.”

In the meantime, Insilico is ready to license its AI platform to pharmaceutical and biotech companies for on-premise deployment or via SaaS to expand their own AI-drug discovery processes.

The post Asian biotech startup Insilico is disrupting the pharmaceutical industry using Artificial Intelligence appeared first on TechWire Asia.

China’s largest ride-hailing firm, Didi Chuxing, last week made public the filing for its long-anticipated US stock market listing, setting the stage for what is expected to be the world’s most extensive initial public offering (IPO) this year. With an anticipated ground-breaking offering potentially setting it up to be more valuable than rival Uber Technologies, Didi is poised to begin stock-market trading in July.

Backed by Asia’s largest technology investment firms – SoftBank, Alibaba, and Tencent – the company however did not reveal the size of the offering. Sources familiar with the matter had previously told Reuters that it could raise around US$10 billion and seek a valuation of close to US$100 billion. Filing under its formal name Xiaoju Kuaizhi, Didi initially filed confidentially in April, and is still considering a listing between the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, according to reports.

Founded in Beijing nine years ago, Didi began as a taxi-hailing service before expanding into other forms of transportation. In 2015, it merged with another Chinese rival, Kuaidi Dache, to form what became Didi Chuxing. Didi has since been dominant in China. In 2016, Uber, which had been spending heavily to grow in China, sold its Chinese operations to Didi. Uber was then granted a stake in the resulting company. 

Didi now operates in 15 countries, including Brazil and Mexico, serving over 493 million annual active users and powering 41 million average daily transactions for the twelve months ended March 31, 2021.

Didi’s filing reflected the decline in its revenues by 8% to US$21.63 billion last year as passenger numbers slid during the pandemic. The company lost US$1.6 billion last year, though it reported a profit of US$30 million in the first quarter of this year.

Like most ride-hailing companies, Didi has historically been unprofitable. Didi claimed that an IPO would fund an expansion. Founders Cheng Wei and Jean Liu in a letter included with the filing said, “We aspire to become a truly global technology company. What we have learned and built is relevant across the globe — in Latin America, Russia, South Africa, or anywhere where affordable, safe, and convenient mobility is valuable.”

The mega IPO highlights the lucrative business opportunity presented by Asian tech giants for Wall Street’s big investment banks. Earlier this year, Singapore’s biggest ride-hailing firm, Grab, struck a US$40 billion deal with a special purpose acquisition company to go public in the United States.

Inevitably, Didi’s IPO will likely be closely scrutinized amid a wave of other technology offerings and as Beijing has begun to rein in domestic tech giants. Beijing kicked off its crackdown on so-called platform companies late last year, seeking to root out monopolistic behavior among internet companies. In early March, Didi Chuxing was one of several big tech companies in China that were each fined 1.5 million yuan (US$200,000) for unfair competition practices.

The post China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing sets the stage for a mega US IPO appeared first on TechWire Asia.

In recent years, the SEA region has been seeing rapid and sustained efforts and investment into various digital economy initiatives by both the public and private sectors. Tech giants have been creating waves; most recently the Tokopedia-Gojek merger, and earlier, Grab pushing for a US listing with a valuation of over US$40 billion. 

Vietnam’s economy primed for digital growth

With a population of 95 million, the successful communist-led country with capitalist economic policies is the third-largest nation in SEA after Indonesia and the Philippines. Backed by a stable political climate, progressive economic policies, and sustained growth, a lucrative opportunity exists for both local players and investors alike to tap into the country’s potential for economic greatness.

Additionally, the impact of the US-China trade war has positioned Vietnam to go big due to its proximity to China, ASEAN, and critical global supply chains. In 2015, the Vietnamese government announced a ten-year plan for a broad digital transformation of the country, with an ambitious plan to produce 10 startup unicorns valued at over US$1 billion apiece by 2030. 

Aiming to incorporate at least 10% digital adoption across all sectors and internet penetration of 80% for all households, the plan appears to be on track. 

Vietnam’s economy and key players

Estimates by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Co predict that the Vietnamese sector could grow to US$52 billion by 2025, which comes up to about a sixth of the massive US$300 billion SEA digital economy pie. The growth of the Vietnamese e-conomy presents multiple opportunities for investors, startups, and businesses alike. 

These include e-commerce services, digital finance, online gaming, and tech-enabled services to power Industry 4.0 (IR 4.0) progress. Like its ASEAN peers, a majority of Vietnamese residents remain underbanked, making digital financial services a highly attractive option for loans and payments. 

With the complication of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, consumers have naturally flocked to e-commerce to fulfill their purchasing needs, spurring a frantic e-commerce battle between the region’s online shopping titans, Sea Group-backed Shopee and Alibaba-backed Lazada.

Furthermore, the burgeoning digital enterprise ecosystem is heavily supported by demand for tech-enabled services such as cloud, big data, and IoT. Vietnam also shows vast potential for blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI), supported by a ten-year plan to develop AI in the country.

It is in these key sectors that opportunities lie for startups – a prominent enabler of digital growth, as well as the investors whose interests are piqued by the promise of great growth.

Grabbing the opportunity to grow SEA startups

SEA’s largest unicorn, Grab has been investing heavily in accelerators for startups around the SEA region from as early as 2018. Collaborating with both private and public players, Grab has been attracting startups intending to scale via mentorship opportunities, access to Grab’s customer bases, and even potential direct investment.

In 2020, the decacorn (startups valued over US$ 10B), recognized the potential of Vietnam’s digital economy, launching an accelerator for early-stage startups. Under their Grab Ventures Ignite accelerator program, five winners emerged, who won over US$1 million in investment and in-kind prizes from Grab and its program partners. 

These tech startups span the breadth of fields such as retail, insurance, logistics, and communications. Papaya Insurtech aims to improve employee wellness, whereas VBee is the first local startup specializing in AI voice solutions. In addition, GoDee brings smart city transportation solutions, Stringee communications API, and BePOS is an IR 4.0-powered point-of-sale solutions for retail.

Indonesia, SEA’s largest economy, is also seeing huge growth in tech startups, powered by the fintech sector. Recently, Grab announced the launch of a Bank Rakyat Indonesia-partnered accelerator under their Grab Ventures Velocity program for Indonesian startups.

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The merger between these two Indonesian goliaths will give birth to the financial behemoth ‘GoTo Group’, which will offer e-commerce, ride-hailing, food delivery, and financial services among other offerings. GoTo, a portmanteau of the first two letters of each partner’s brand, appears to be a viable contender in not just the Indonesian, but also other Southeast Asian (SEA) markets.

Tokopedia and Gojek: So what’s the deal, exactly?

S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates that the group has a combined valuation of about US$20 billion. Local and regional players, especially Gojek’s nemesis Grab, will see increased challenges as GoTo Group will be sure to pursue aggressive growth, not just in Indonesia, but in SEA as well.

Aside from each giant’s usual services, the deal will “present a variety of growth opportunities in financial services, including payments, consumer finance, and merchant lending,” said Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, financial technology analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “The combined entity’s fintech business will deepen its ties into both online and offline commerce in the archipelago nation, gaining an edge over its competitors.”, they added.

This puts GoTo Group a notch higher in the fight against regional competitor Grab, which recently doubled its valuation to US$40 billion in one of the world’s largest special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deals. Just last year, Grab was valued at a whopping US$16 billion. 

The natural synergies between Gojek and Tokopedia would also allow the technology giants to cross-sell into each other’s respective pools of customers and increase user stickiness within their ecosystem. Tokopedia’s e-commerce offerings could also be complemented with Gojek’s last-mile delivery solutions, or Tokopedia’s “buy-now-pay-later” schemes integrated with the services of Go-Pay and Gojek affiliate Bank Jago. 

Troubles in Unicorn Land?

While this merger may sound rather intimidating, it seemed to have arisen from troubling waters. Prior to this, both unicorns were seeing falling market shares and bleeding money despite being some of the largest players in their respective local markets, reported SCMP.

Gojek, particularly, was pushed to explore a merger with Grab last year to stave off the damage and expansion failures as their largest investor, Japan’s Softbank, made it clear that it wouldn’t be bailing out portfolio companies. 

This proposed merger, however, fell through as several reports claimed that Grab wanted a larger share and control. Additionally, the monopolistic nature of such a union would have been an issue due to anti-competition laws in the region and might result in the same fines Uber faced upon its acquisition by Grab.

Additionally, Gojek has been struggling to fight off Grab’s food delivery services, falling from a 90% market share in 2017 to just 50% in three years. Tokopedia, on the other hand, was facing intense pressure from Sea Group’s e-commerce platform Shopee. 

Shopee had been growing aggressively over the years, overtaking Tokopedia on multiple public metrics, and employing 60% more people within Indonesia. On the fintech front, both Gojek’s GoPay and Tokopedia have been facing stiff competition from OVO and ShopeePay, according to a Bank of Indonesia analysis in late 2019.

Tokopedia and Gojek’s impact on regional players

This marriage will undoubtedly make other regional players nervous, especially since the market for digital payments is rising, especially in Indonesia. Ant Group-backed Dana and Grab-backed OVO, both fintech players, will see heated competition, which might just result in another merger if rumors in June last year are to play out.

Grab commands a powerful regional presence which Gojek had been trying to pierce without success, making barely a dent in the Singaporean market. However, this merger might just give GoTo a major boost to penetrate other markets with a renewed power across multiple digital services.

At the same time, Chinese tech companies with deep pockets such as Alibaba (through subsidiaries like Alibaba Cloud) and Tencent have been strategically making moves to capture various facets of the SEA digital economy. Tencent has announced a regional hub in Singapore, whereas Alibaba affiliate Ant Group is exploring fintech. 

Whilst Shopee has grown tremendously, Alibaba Group-owned Lazada is still a leading e-commerce player in multiple markets. 

What’s GoTo’s goto plan?

Indonesia is home to over 273 million people, making up over a third of the entire SEA region itself. Indonesia is also the biggest economic contributor in the region, with the proof in its 2020 digital economy valued at US$44B, a massive spike after its US$8 billion valuation five years prior 

Research by Google, Temasek Holdings, and Bain & Co forecasts that Southeast Asia’s internet economy could swell to US$300 billion (about S$415 billion) by 2025, three times its current annual size. As Grab prepares itself for a US listing, so did the Tokopedia Gojek coupling – with both targeting a similar value of US$40 billion, according to the South China Morning Post last month.

This proposed IPO by GoTo will come on the back of more fundraising, and if successful, will be the first major IPO by an Indonesian tech startup. This positions Indonesia to be a mammoth presence in the SEA digital economy game, should all its players step up their game on the backs of these giants’ movements.

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Indonesia’s economy is set to rebound this year, with positive forecasts by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This is partly due to a ‘demographic dividend’, a phenomenon where a country’s working force outnumbers those that cannot. 

Startups in Indonesia, together with MSMEs a critical sector

Taking the workforce and youthful, millennial-owned landscape of business in Indonesia, Indonesia is set to achieve and drive strong economic recovery. In fact, millennial MSMEs will be the key force behind Indonesia’s economic rebound.

With the support of the government’s Economic Recovery Plan (PEN), the next step would be to capture this borrowers’ market of millennial MSMEs – most of whom will require additional capital to take that next step in their growth trajectory.

The banking conundrum

Startups and MSMEs in Indonesia intending to enhance operations and grow their businesses require funding. Some startups will have the opportunity to pitch and win seed funding or investments from venture capitalists or accelerators. But for the rest, they are left with either their own savings or loans from financial institutions.

However, millennial MSME founders often find that they lack the ability to acquire loans from banks. The issue with banks is that they often have archaic and stringent lending requirements that look at things like the business’s credit history and the founders’ credit history. 

Due to their young age and relatively recent economic activities, millennials who own MSMEs often find themselves without a healthy or perhaps no credit history at all, to facilitate loan approvals.

Startups in Indonesia propped up by fintechs post-COVID

As most of the workforce comprises young adults who are digitally savvy and increasingly well-connected, naturally their appetite for digital services is healthy and on the upswing. Over the years, this has led to a proliferation of digital startups and MSMEs that are tapping into that oh-so lucrative market of millennials and Gen-Zs.

Thankfully, the prognosis is good for fintech startups – their platforms will see continued usage due to their user-centric design, convenience, and ease of use despite any difficulties that might have been presented by the pandemic. This resilience would then translate into helping the startup and MSME sectors to survive, and with the proper capital, ideally thrive. 

The state of fintechs

While Indonesia has a large number of unbanked customers, almost half of them aren’t so keen to leverage fintech due to data privacy concerns. Nevertheless, MSMEs and startups will still be reliant on their presence to drive their growth. 

This trajectory towards fintech growth can be seen by how well investor sentiment is towards them. For instance, prominent local fintech Bukuwarung managed to raise a further US$60 mil to expand their services recently, managing to raise US$80 mil over five funding rounds.

And despite pandemic setbacks, new players continue to make their presence felt in the country. Bukuwarung is a startup focused on building bookkeeping, digital payments, and e-commerce solutions for MSMEs in Indonesia. Earlier this year, fintech newbie GajiGesa managed to raise US$2.5 million in their first seed round. GajiGesa is a financial wellness platform helping Indonesians achieve financial dignity and security from their work.

Indonesia’s overall economic growth

It is becoming increasingly evident how fintech plays an important role in the growth of Indonesia’s digital economy. With the opportunities presented by MSMEs and startups, fintech players ought to work on addressing consumers’ digital privacy concerns, one of the outstanding concerns in the archipelago. 

Fintechs, with their unique propositions, can position themselves as reliable and safe alternative financing options for the greater unbanked. When consumers and businesses achieve greater financial access and independence, so too, can the digital economy soar to greater heights.

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Although more details of the plan will be shared by the HKMA at a later time, five focus areas were highlighted. These include: 

1. Pushing banks to digitalize and adopt fintech;
2. Strengthening HK’s readiness for CBDCs through research;
3. Enhancing and adding to the city’s existing data infrastructures;
4. Increasing the fintech-savvy talent pool, and
5. Formulating policies and exploring funding possibilities for fintech projects

CBDC readiness to be ‘future-proofed’

Startup Genome in their Global Fintech Ecosystem Report 2020 ranked Hong Kong’s fintech ecosystem eighth in the world, beating multiple contenders from Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. 

As decentralized finance such as cryptocurrencies looms threateningly over the heads of financial institutions across the world, central banks are starting to fight back, most notably by developing their own sovereign digital currencies, which would rely on well-developed fintech ecosystems.

Naturally, Hong Kong sought to explore the possibility of its own CBDC, with its eyes set on offering both wholesale and retail options. The HKMA will further research efforts to increase the city’s readiness for CBDCs. It has indicated its intention to work with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) local Innovation Hub to research use cases, benefits, and risks of a retail CBDC. 

Of note, too, is their intention to continue collaborating with China’s Digital Yuan trials, with a view to boost cross-border e-payments between the two entities.

CBDC popularity on the rise

According to a BIS survey, 80% of banks globally are keen on exploring CBDCs. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes CBDCs can lay the groundwork for highly efficient payment systems — ones that promote financial inclusion.

Additionally, it can motivate a shared ecosystem between the general public, corporations, and the financial industry at large, to develop parallel innovations that will also leverage blockchain technology in non-payments-related areas.

China has led the CBDC race with its DCEP, supplementing its efforts with tough crackdowns on cryptocurrency activities. Elsewhere in Asia, Japan and Cambodia are some of the other APAC contenders who are also studying the viability of their own CBDCs.

Hong Kong on the rebound

In the government’s 2018-2019 budget, over HK$100 billion was allocated over three years towards four key development areas, comprising biotechnology, artificial intelligence, smart city, and fintech. Despite multiple economic setbacks, the city seems to be on track in its progress in these areas.

While an emerging digital powerhouse, Hong Kong hadn’t quite caught up to its SEA peers within the e-commerce and e-payments markets, although that is about to change soon. Ironically, while Covid-19 has severely impacted the world’s economies, Hong Kong like others has recognized a lucrative opportunity to stage a comeback through digital economy innovation and growth. 

HK consumers are far more digitally savvy, and demand for digital services is greater than ever in a socially distanced present environment. At first glance, their latest development strategy looks rather promising, albeit still mostly in its early stages. It would be interesting to see its development over the next quarter or two. 

Nevertheless, massive efforts have to be undertaken by multiple players if the city is to return as an Asian economic powerhouse.

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