Newsletter: Parallel Tech Universes Between Silicon Valley and China
Welcome to this week’s newsletter. This week, we have two feature stories about Kai-Fu Lee and an Indian entrepreneur, some latest market analysis and several upcoming releases.
Feature Stories
In celebration of Sinovation Ventures‘ 9th anniversary, Kai-Fu Lee looks back at the past nine years and shares his insights on the new parallel tech universes in China and the U.S., as well as the new model of VC + AI.
During the recent 2018 GMIC Beijing conference, Pandaily interviewed with Indian entrepreneur Palkush Rai Chawla, the co-founder of Elanic, a fast-growing e-commerce platform in India catered towards young housewives.
Market Briefings
On May 8, Alibaba Group acquired Pakistan’s largest online shopping platform Daraz Group which also operates in four other countries in Southeast Asia.
On May 3, Alipay announced the addition of two new money market funds to Yu’e Bao, the idle funds management platform within the Alipay app.
Alibaba Group published its financial report for the past quarter and for the fiscal year of 2018. Notably, its total yearly revenue, e-commerce revenue and retail platforms’ number of annual active users have all achieved the highest growth since its IPO in 2014.
Chinese short-video app Douyin or Tik Tok as it is in known overseas, has grossed 45.8 million downloads in the first quarter of 2018, surpassing Facebook, Youtube and Instagram to become the most downloaded iPhone app of the quarter.
New Releases
Xiaomi Mi7, to be released at the end of May, will have a full-screen display with an iPhone X-like notch and support 3D facial recognition, while the new Redmi S2 priced at 1,000 yuan ($157) will be equipped with 12 MP dual AI Cameras.
OnePlus 6 will be released on May 17th, with its specifications already available on the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Realme 1, the first product of OPPO’s e-commerce only sub-brand Realme will launch on May 15, exclusively on Amazon India.
Techbuzz China Podcast
We are happy to announce that the TechBuzz China by Pandaily podcast is now a part of the Supchina network! This week on TechBuzz China, our hosts Rui Ma and Yin-Ying Lu discuss two big stories in China tech. First, Rui talks about the upcoming initial public offering of Xiaomi which will be the world’s biggest since Alibaba‘s debut in 2014, and Ying-Ying shares the news of Baidu‘s new financial services spinoff called Du Xiaoman Financial that is already valued at $4 billion.
