Crypto firm Huobi acquired, Billdesk's $4.7B deal collapses and more

Asia Tech Review: 11 October 2022

Hi folks,

We’re belatedly back this week from Singapore, where I am trying to avoid post-Token 2049 flu/Covid after attending the popular crypto event. The show itself was huge, organisers estimated 7,000 attendees per day and, as media reported, there was plenty of buzz among attendees despite the general downturn in crypto and, well let’s face it… all things financial.

Without further ado, on to this week’s news wrap—see you next time,

Jon

China

The Biden administration has added 31 Chinese companies and institutions to an "unverified list" which will limit their ability to obtain regulated US tech products link

It looks like Huawei, however, is getting some help in the form of a former executive who is develop a fab to develop chips that will reportedly be bought exclusively by Huawei link (Huawei reportedly plans to develop 5G phones again despite being blocked by US tech link)

How did a trade publisher in Pennsylvania become a principal source of investigative journalism on the repressive apparatus Beijing uses against the Uyghurs?! A fascinating story… link

E-commerce sensational Shein has seen its valuation drop by as much as one third in secondary sales link

ByteDance also has red financial news as operating losses more than tripled last year to cross $7B—the firm spent heavily on growth, according to a financial report shared with employees that leaked out to press link

China continued tradition after cracking down on censorship evasion tools during the country’s 5-yearly party congress, a particularly sensitive period in which leadership is reshuffled link

Hong Kong

China-founded crypto exchange Huobi has been acquired by Hong Kong-based investment company About Capital Management's M&A fund—deal is undisclosed but reportedly over $1B link

India

Prosus has scrapped its huge $4.7B acquisition of fintech firm Billdesk—which would have been the second-largest piece of M&A in India’s consumer tech space—on account of “certain conditions” being unfulfilled link (Billdesk shareholders may sue in response… shades of Twitter and Elon Musk for India I guess… link)

Apple’s iPhone shipments from India have reportedly crossed the $1B market since April, and are on course to ship $2.5B annually from March—that is impressive growth but just a slither of the total value of Apple manufacturing link – Apple is already pushing more production to India around its audio products link

Following its success with budget smartphones, Reliance Jio plans to launch 4G enabled laptop priced from just $184 link

EV startup Euler Motors raised $60M at a valuation of $200M led by Singapore’s GIC link

India cracked down on and banned many Chinese apps, with TikTok the highest profile loser to be locked out of the country, but a Rest of World report showed that eight of the top hundred most popular apps are from Chinese companies link

The Indian central bank says it will launch a pilot Digital Rupee program “soon”—it plans to communicate features and benefits “from time to time” link

Microsoft has reportedly held conversations to lead a $100M investment in play-to-earn gaming platform Zupee—however it is also said that parts of the company have “expressed apprehension about optics around betting” link

Xiaomi is in a difficult spot in India after a court declined to lift a freeze on the company’s $676M asset trove, even though the firm claims the move has "effectively halted" its operations there link

Zenskar, which helps SaaS startups automate billing workflows, raised $3.5M link

Southeast Asia

Shopback has always been fairly under-the-radar and interesting, despite backers like Temasek—last week it closed $80M more from Temasek affiliated fund 65 Equity Partners link

An explosive story of how six Indian citizens were lured into Thailand with lucrative job offers, only to suffer a harrowing ordeal at the hands of ruthless crypto scammers in Myanmar link

A look at how Indonesia has been hit with a series of large scale hacks that have leaked vast troves of personal data, including an incident that exposed the person data of over 1.3 billion SIM card owners link

Vidio is showing how tricky Indonesia can be, the streaming service is keeping Netflix, Disney+ and others at bay with a local pricing and content strategy mixed with a major telecom partnership link

Klikit is an aggregator service that lets restaurants using food apps for takeout consolidate all order information into one platform—it just came out of stealth mode with a $2M raise from Global Founders Capital, Wavemaker Partners and a number of prominent angel investors link

Japan

Naver, the firm that helped start messaging app Line and many consumer internet businesses, plans to buy secondhand fashion marketplace Poshmark for $1.2B—the cash deal gives a 15% premium on Poshmark’s share price and the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023 link

SoftBank once revolutionised investing with the Vision Fund, but now Masayoshi Son is changing the strategy to make the firm more conventional—that means fewer deals, among things, with just one two investments August-September 2022 illustrating a slow down in pace as the global market struggles link

South Korea

A court dismissed an arrest warrant against an employee of Terraform Labs, the company behind Luna, in what would have been the first arrest following the crypto firm’s collapse link

Samsung posted a worse-than-expected 32% drop in quarterly operating earnings as the economic downturn ate into demand for electronic devices and memory chips link

Pakistan

Pakistan’s central bank revoked an in-principle and pilot operations approval that had allowed Tag, a Y Combinator-backed startup operating banking and payment services, to operate as an electronic money institution—Tag has been under investigation after allegations surfaced that it had forged documents to the central bank link

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