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Restaurant guide Zomato got off lightly after a hacker grabbed 6.6M user passwords
Restaurant guide and food delivery service Zomato looks like it is getting off lightly after it suffered a hack that compromised personal information belonging to 6.6 million users. The India-based company, which offers services in more than 20 countries worldwide, set off alarm bells when it revealed that a hacker had made off with 17 million user records. Read More
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Hong Kong’s Qupital raises $2M led by Alibaba to finance invoice loans for SMES
Qupital, a one-year-old Hong Kong-based startup that addresses cash flow issues for SMEs, has closed a $2 million seed funding round. The is certainly a notable size for an early stage investment in Hong Kong’s nascent but growing startup scene. The financing was led by Hong Kong-London firm MindWorks Ventures and the $130 million Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund which launched in 2015. Read More
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Thailand backs down on threat to ban Facebook
The government of Thailand has backed down on a threat to ban Facebook if it did not block content deemed to be illegal in the country. The ruling military junta last week said it would ban the U.S. social network if it did not disable Thailand-based users from being able to access a selection of 131 “illicit” posts, including content that violates lese majeste laws that… Read More
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Razer raises $50-100M from Horizons Ventures, inks phone JV with Three
Razer, the gaming company that acquired the Robin smartphone maker Nextbit earlier this year, is now opening the curtains on the next steps to make a deeper move into the mobile space. Razer has announced a strategic partnership with Three, the Hong Kong-based mobile phone carrier owned by Hutchison Whampoa. Read More
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Xiaomi puts the focus on India with plans to open 100 retail stores
Xiaomi is increasing its office retail presence in China as bids to gain ground stolen by rivals in its homeland, and now it is making that very same push in its second largest market, India. The Chinese company, which is valued at $45 billion, suffered a tough time last year as sales growth slowed — Xiaomi, notably, didn’t go public with sales figures for 2016 — but India… Read More
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Tencent doubles down on game studio Pocket Gems with $90M investment
Chinese internet Tencent has continued its recent investment spree after it backed U.S.-based game studio Pocket Gems to the tune of $90 million. Tencent invested in Pocket Gems back in 2015, when it put in a reported $60 million for a 20 percent stake. This time around the Wall Street Journal reported the investment as $90 million, which TechCrunch has confirmed independently. That deal… Read More
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Uber enters Myanmar with a licensed taxi service
Uber has launched its service in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma, over a month after going public with its expansion plan. With a population of 50 million people and rapidly increasing internet adoption, Myanmar is seen by many tech firms as a market with much growth potential. Grab, Uber’s chief rival in Southeast Asia, entered the country’s… Read More
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Xiaomi sneaks into North America with Mexico launch
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is preparing to enter North America, but it isn’t quite the launch you may be waiting on. The company, which was last valued at $45 billion by investors, has revealed plans to sneak into the continent by selling its Redmi Note 4 phone in Mexico. Fans can pick up the device from Coppel, Best Buy and Sam’s Club stores when it is stocked towards… Read More
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China’s bike rental startups are learning a lot about how people spend their free time
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. China’s bike rental startups have hogged the startup limelight and investor dollars this year. The trend has been impossible to ignore, both on the ground and in reporting. Ofo became the industry’s first unicorn, while Mobike has pulled in over $300 million in… Read More
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Media Prima buys Rev Asia for $24M to create Malaysia’s largest digital media platform
The U.S. isn’t the only market where media companies are consolidating to offer an advertising platform to rival Facebook and Google. While AOL (which owns TechCrunch) is in the process of acquiring Yahoo, over in Malaysia a similar consolidation was announced this week — although not quite on the scale of AOL-Yahoo (Oath?!) and its $4.48 billion price tag. Media Prima, a… Read More
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Ride-hailing giant Didi finally offers an English language option for foreigners in China
There’s good news for foreigners living in, or visiting, China after Didi Chuxing — the local ride-sharing leader — added support for English language and overseas credit cards to its service for the first time. Didi, which processes more 20 million rides a day across its various services, has always been a tricky one for non-Mandarin speakers and visitors. Personally… Read More
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Garena rebrands to Sea and raises $550 million more to focus on Indonesian e-commerce
Garena, one of Southeast Asia’s biggest tech startups, has picked up $550 million in new funding and changed its name. The Singapore-headquartered consumer Internet company told Bloomberg that it is now called Sea Ltd. to reflect is global expansion plans (and also because SEA is an acronym for Southeast Asia). Its new valuation was undisclosed. Read More
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A BuzzFeed would-be is paving the way for startups in Cambodia
Did you know Cambodia has its own BuzzFeed? Well, now you do! (And, yes, do note that I’m assuming you know of Cambodia and where it is located in the world.) In a country renowned for world-famous temples and fresh, spicy food — not to mention communist politics and one of history’s most atrocious genocides — lives Mediaload, a six-year-old online media company… Read More
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Indonesia’s Uber rival Go-Jek raises $1.2 billion led by Tencent at a $3 billion valuation
Go-Jek, the motorbike on-demand startup that is battling Uber and Grab in Indonesia, has closed a new round of $1.2 billion led by Chinese internet giant Tencent, two sources close the company told TechCrunch. The deal, which we understand was signed last week, values the company at $3 billion post money. It is expected to be officially announced “soon.” Go-Jek declined to… Read More
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UberEats launches in India, starting out in Mumbai
Uber has launched its UberEats service in India today, where it will initially be available in Mumbai. The company said it plans to expand the reach of UberEats in India to six cities before the end of the year, but it did not disclose which cities it will hit. Mumbai is as good a place to start as any, being that it is one of India’s three business hubs and a city with an… Read More
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Samsung now approved to test self-driving cars on South Korean roads
Samsung is working on self-driving cars — which shouldn’t surprise you if you know the company’s history and wide range of interests. What’s new, however, is that Samsung is the latest company to receive approval from the South Korean government to begin testing its self-driving tech on public roads in the country. Read More
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