China's mobility services race to US IPO

Asia Tech Review: 28 June 2021

Jun 28, 2021

Welcome back,

The listings and exits keep coming with China’s Didi leading the pack, pursuing by other mobility companies that include Lalamove. Full Truck Alliance, an Uber-like trucking service, listed in the US last week.

Elsewhere, there’s a huge piece of telco consolidation in Malaysia, a promising startup digitising SMEs in the Philippines raised big, and Korean fintech Toss is now valued at $7B, launching a neobank and keen to expand in Southeast Asia.

That’s all for this edition—see you next week,

Jon

China

Didi’s IPO will value it at $62-$67B—the ride-hailing firm is looking to raise $3.9B based on the midpoint of its price range. It’s an impressive feat but Didi had targeted $100B and its valuation isn’t much up from 2019—that’s thanks to fears over cash burn and crackdowns from the Chinese government

Didi is chasing to catch Full Truck Alliance, aka Manbang, which saw a nice 13% pop after its IPO last week. Its share price later dipped to just above its $19 listing price. Still, it’s on the dancefloor as they say in golf

Lalamove is close to following these two automotive peers. The logistics on-demand service has reportedly confidentially filed to raise at least $1B via a US IPO. China remains its biggest market despite a presence across Southeast Asia, Latin America and the US, as we wrote in a story in The Ken last year. Lalamove was valued at $10B in January after raising $1.3B

Meanwhile, Nasdaq-listed EV firm Xpeng will go ahead with a secondary listing in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, self-driving startup Pony.ai—which is backed by Toyota—may also take the plunge in the US

Not in the auto space, this time, but another queuing for public markets is grocery firm Dingdong, which is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund II. It is reportedly aiming for a $6B+ valuation in a US IPO. It’ll hope to have a better time than rival Miss Fresh which had a disappointing Nasdaq IPO as shares dropped by over 25% on the day

(So too are at least influencer studios, according to Bloomberg)

The UK has banned crypto firm Binance from operating

After disrupting the finance industry, Ant is now partnering. The firm is reportedly in discussions with Chinese state-owned firms to start a new credit-sourcing business. The friction its business caused by disintermediating banks is seen as a major factor that brought its monster IPO crashing down. Related: Alipay is being pressured to clamp down harder on crypto.

In what will surprise nobody, former staff at TikTok have claimed that ByteDance exerts tight control over the business despite the Chinese firm claiming it takes a hands-off approach. China HQ is involved in data and major decision-making, according to the former staffers. This just after the US rescinded TikTok and WeChat from a list that could have banned downloads in the US

China is using YouTube to spread propaganda counter reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang

Robo-taxi firm WeRide confirmed it has raised $600M across two funding deals in the last five months. It said its last valuation was $3.3B, with investors including Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi’s fund and state-owned PE fund China Structural Reform

Kuaishou, the number two to ByteDance’s Douyin short video app in China, claims to have cracked 1B monthly users across its apps, which also include two international video apps

Bitmain, one of the world’s biggest seller of Bitcoin mining equipment, is reported to have halted sales after Bitcoin crashed more than 50% in recent months

Apple is finally adding search ads to the Chinese version of the App Store. The iPhone-maker is also said to have had its lawyers send notes to serial leakers asking them to stop spilling the tea on its upcoming products…

Ever wondered where those viral factory videos from China originate from? Meet Factory TikTok.

India

Google and Jio Platforms announced a budget smartphone which is hoped to bring 4G and more advanced mobile experiences to an estimated 300M who are on basic devices/connections. Widening access is an important part of the Jio Platforms play and owning the device that does it, or helps make it happen, would be huge… if Jio can pull it off

Zoomcar has struggled to bring the Zipcar experience to India, but the startup now says it is eyeing a US listing via a SPAC to help it expand to Southeast Asia and the Middle East

Tata wants to channel Reliance and build a super app—but the complexity of tying together Tata’s various businesses and its acquisitions and investments cannot be overstated

India is investigating whether Google has abused the dominant position Android gives it when it comes to smart TVs

Zetwerk, which connects global companies with manufacturing partners in India and Southeast Asia, raised $30M in debt funding

Byju’s just got another $50M

B2b edtech startup Classplus landed a $65M Series C led by Tiger Global

Car servicing startup GoMechanic raised $42M led by Tiger Global Management as per previous reports

Neobank Novo raised $41M

Ecommerce management platform CommerceIQ raised $60M

ProgCap raised $25M to give collateral-free loans to retailers

Southeast Asia

A huge piece of telco consolidation in Malaysia will see Axiata and Telenor come together to create an entity valued at nearly $12B. The business will be Malaysia’s largest with 18M subscribers and Telenor isn’t finished with its business plays yet. “We believe that several markets in Asia should and will consolidate. We’re continuing to look at our portfolio and what opportunities that are in front of us,” the head of Telenor Asia, Jorgen C Arentz Rostrup, told Bloomberg.

GrowSari, a promising Philippines startup with corporate links that digitises small stores, raised $30M from investors including Temasek Holdings’ private equity unit Pavilion Capital, Tencent, International Finance Corporation (IFC). The Ken profiled Growsari last year

I looked into the battle to digitise Indonesia’s 60M SMESs—BukuKas and BukuWarung have raised over $100M this year alone

Bukapalak will hold its Indonesian IPO in July

A new study has shown that Facebook continues to promote content that incites violence against Myanmar’s coup protesters and amplifies junta misinformation

Disney is the streaming service to watch in Southeast Asia

Kredivo scored a further $100M in debt from Victory Park Capital—it initially got $100M in July 2020

Shopee is launching food delivery in Malaysia—its big plans in Indonesia haven’t yet come to fruition however

Japan

Campfire, a service that helps groups and creators raise money online, is poised for an IPO at a valuation of around $1.8B as this dramatically-focused Bloomberg profile—”Buddhist Monk Who Spent Years as Recluse Targets IPO for Startup”—reports

South Korea

Fintech startup Toss raised $410M at a $7.1B valuation—it plans to launch a neobank in September and pick up its international expansion, which to date includes a launch in Vietnam last year

Traditional retail group E-Mart is buying 80% of eBay Korean business for $3 billion, Reuters reported:

“With the deal, traditional retail giant Shinsegae gets a much-needed boost in the Korean e-commerce sector, where it has lagged after competitors such as No. 1 Coupang, while eBay Korea gains a powerful backer after years of underperforming, analysts said.”

AI startup VoyagerX raised $27M led by SoftBank Asia

Pakistan

The government plans to double down on IT to attract big names in tech—the goal is to double the industry to $6B by 2023 following models laid out by India, UAE and others

Asia Tech Review