Respond.io puts Malaysia on the global software map with huge $62.5M investment
Hong Kong-founded AI startup is chasing conversation commerce growth worldwide
Welcome back to Asia Tech Review, your curated digest to keep up to date with tech news across Asia.
You don’t often see a Southeast Asian startup raise more than $60 million, let alone for a global software business, but we have the details of Respond.io’s newest round which does exactly that. India is also shooting the messenger on exam leaks, after Telegram was banned for a week.
To keep up with our issues, follow us on LinkedIn or WhatsApp. Please do share Asia Tech Review with people you know who want to get smart about Asia tech.
Respond.io puts Malaysia on the global software map with huge round
It’s not common to see a Southeast Asia-based startup raising a large round led by US investors, but Malaysia-based Respond.io did just that after it announced a $62.5 million Series B round.
The deal is led by Camber Partners, a New York-based fund with $350 million AUM that’s focused on software startups. Endeavor Catalyst, which is chaired by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, took part as well as existing investors.
Respond announced a $7 million Series A in September 2022 from backers including Headline Asia and AltaIR Capital. Prior to that, it raised $1.8 million in 2020 and an undisclosed seed round in 2018.
Respond helps businesses reach their customers using AI agents, chatbots and other automated messaging systems that tap into ad and social platforms, messaging apps, websites, offline channels and more. Its products span lead generation, lead conversion and customer retention across retail, automotive, healthcare and more. That’s not so different from how the business started in Hong Kong in 2017, but today it uses AI to handle those customer inquiries, leads and more without necessarily requiring human involvement.
Gerardo Salandra, Respond’s CEO and co-founder, said the company has reached $35 million ARR with 169% year-over-year growth. It serves 10,000 businesses in more than 180 countries, but now this funding is designed to double down on growth opportunities in North America and Europe. That could include M&A activity. Salandra told TechCrunch that there are already conversations ongoing on that front, as Respond seeks out acquisitions to add tech to its platform or bring in large customer bases.
This isn’t a Malaysian success story per se since Respond relocated to Kuala Lumpur from Hong Kong two years ago, having already raised around $10 million in venture capital funding. But it does show the potential to grow international companies from Southeast Asia whilst tapping into local talent, potential cost savings and avoiding potential geopolitical conflict.
Southeast Asia doesn’t have a massively strong track record of hatching software businesses, let alone global ones, so for that reason Respond is putting it on the map after attracting tens of millions from US investors. Interestingly, there aren’t a huge number of Asian funds backing the business with the exception of Headline Asia.
India scapegoats Telegram for exam paper leaks
In a classic case of shooting the messenger, India has banned Telegram for a week after the chat app was supposedly used to circulate leaked examinations.
The NEET undergraduate entrance exam for medical colleges, which is sat by more than two million students, was cancelled last month after it emerged that questions were circulating online ahead of exam day. In response, the government used India’s IT law to block access to Telegram in the “interest of sovereignty and integrity of India.”
Telegram’s desktop and mobile apps will be banned until 22 June, which means they will be delisted from app stores and blocked on mobile and fixed-line networks. Reuters reported that already Google and Apple will comply with the app store delistings, and ATR can confirm directly that Telegram is currently blocked on wireline broadband and mobile networks as of last night.
“This punishes 150 million ordinary Telegram users in India — not the insiders who leaked the exam materials,” Telegram CEO Pavel Durov wrote on X. “And the ban hasn’t stopped anything. The leaks just moved to other apps.”
The Internet Freedom Foundation called the move “a band aid solution” that’s a “disproportionate” response to exam fraud.
“This blocking comes in the final days of NEET preparation, when thousands of students depend on Telegram for study groups, doubt-clearing, and shared resources,” the foundation added.
Durov said Telegram removed hundreds of channels that had shared leaked materials and other scams in India, and made changes to its label that indicates messages have been edited to prevent backdating scam messages.
There’s not much more to say here other than a government minister seemed intent on finding a scapegoat for the incident. Examination leaks are hugely frustrating, my son was forced to resit nearly half of his exams over the last two months because exams leaked out in another country. Clearly tackling the root cause is the solution, not wildly striking out at platforms that impact tens of millions of people with no connection to the leaks.
It’s worrying to see India’s IT laws abused in this manner. Particularly given that local operators, Apple and Google have all fallen in line to allow this one-week ban to actually take place.
Deals
DeepSeek reportedly hit the first close of its inaugural funding round at 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) and a valuation of over $50 billion. But it adopted an unusual structure that keeps CEO Liang Wenfeng in control as backers put their capital in a limited partnership he manages, and are not allowed to sell their stakes for five years. [The Information]
Indian VC firms are increasingly backing AI startups founded by non-Indians. Peak XV invested in over 10 US-based AI companies in 2025, including Supabase and PostHog, while Activate backed ElevenLabs and DeVC wrote checks into six US firms. [Economic Times]
ESR, an Asia-Pacific real asset manager, made a strategic investment into Racks Central, a Singapore-headquartered data center platform, to fund a regional expansion that starts with Johor, Malaysia. [Racks Central]
Australian healthtech startup Everlab raised $65 million in a Series A led by Airtree Ventures, less than a year after closing a $15 million seed round [Everlab]
Markets
Japan’s largest taxi app Go, which claims a fleet of 85,000 cars, closed its first day as a public company up 10% after it raised ¥88.6 billion ($553 million) at a market value of ¥186 billion ($1.16 billion) from a listing on the TSE Growth market [Nikkei Asia]
Four of India’s biggest retail brokers, Groww, Zerodha, Angel One, and Upstox, secured licences to offer international equity investing [Economic Times]
AI and models
Alipay is getting its biggest makeover for years after the payment app rolled out an update featuring an AI agent, which helps give users access to over 10,000 services including ride-hailing. Ant is moving first as Tencent prepares to introduce AI bots in WeChat, its blockbuster messaging app. [South China Morning Post]
Alibaba has launched the Qwen Robot Suite, its first AI model lineup designed for robotics [South China Morning Post]
SoftBank Group will launch a cybersecurity service powered by OpenAI, targeting Japan’s top 3,000 companies across critical infrastructure including airports, power grids and transport networks [SoftBank]
The Trump administration is said to have considered export controls on Anthropic weeks, after a China-based company apparently accessed the model, before forcing its newest AI models offline [Washington Post]
The Economic Times interviewed the founders of Sarvam after their funding announcement and in light of the Anthropic situation [Economic Times]
Z.ai launched its newest flagship model, GLM-5.2, which adds stronger coding capabilities and adjusted reading effort levels. It also introduced IndexShare, an architecture it says reuses the indexer to reduce token usage and make new tokens cheaper to process [Z.ai]
In other news:
The CFO of the SoftBank Vision Fund is reportedly leaving the company [Reuters]
India’s Enforcement Directorate has charged eight people over a Coinbase spoofing scheme that netted more than $20 million from victims worldwide [The Block]