Revolutionary Event Unveils Global Short Video Trends and Business Opportunities

FastMoss, a leading TikTok data analytics platform, is thrilled to announce the FastMoss Global Short Video Conference & Expo (FGVCon), a revolutionary two-day event set to take place from January 18th to January 19th, 2024, at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center.

FGVCon transcends borders and platforms, assembling industry leaders, top influencers, brands, sellers, agencies, and platform officials in the dynamic world of short-form video content. The conference not only highlights TikTok but also explores emerging opportunities on platforms such as Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, Amazon, Kwai, and more. Confirmed guests include Xiaobin LIU (VP & CMO of Miniso), Grace YANG (Founder & CEO of NextWave), Chris Pereira (Founder & CEO of iMPact), and renowned brands like Anker, F-Commerce, MeToo, among others. International guests from the US, Europe, Vietnam, Thailand, and more will converge in Shenzhen, China, to share their knowledge and secrets, collectively propelling the global short video and live streaming industry forward.

Top TikTok Influencers to Share Success Secrets at FGVCon

FGVCon marks the first Chinese conference of short video and live streaming industry to invite overseas top influencers and innovatively introduces China’s first “FGVCon”. The event features leading figures such as “Vietnam Viya,” top American TikTok influencers Jeremy Pugh and Janey, TikTok headliner Venny Albert (with 12.1 million followers), and Akash Ellahi (with 14.9 million followers), making their Chinese show.

In addition to confirmed influencers, the event will showcase other outstanding domestic and international talents from TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels and more.

First Collaboration and engagement with multiple Official platforms at once

FGVCon pioneers’ collaboration with multiple platforms, including TikTok, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, Kwai, Shopee, Lazada, TEMU, Amazon, and more. Confirmed guests include Yuki Yuan (Google’s YouTube Shorts), Vivian (Shopee), Liu Na (Kwai for Business) and more. These platform representatives will delve into market trends and consumer demands in Southeast Asian countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Indonesia, and Thailand. More mystery guests and platform representatives are confirmed, with detailed information to be gradually revealed.

The FastMoss Global Short Video Conference & Expo (FGVCon) emerges as a beacon of innovation and collaboration in the dynamic realm of the short video and live streaming industry. Assembled at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center from January 18th to January 19th, 2024, FGVCon promises an immersive experience, offering a deeper understanding of market trends and consumer demands from around the world.

The first installment of an annual digital summit for China-focused marketing, retail, and technology leaders is coming soon. DIGITAL+ SUMMIT 2023 is dedicated to fostering consumer centricity, implementing emerging technologies, and envisioning the future of retail. 

Main Themes of the Event

The Digital+ Summit 2023 will focus on three major themes: developing customer centricity, implementing emerging technologies, and foresighting the future of retail. 

Developing customer centricity: Track the evolution of Chinese consumers and craft seamless journeys from discovery to repeat purchase.

Implementing emerging technologies: Unleash the potential of AI, XR, and OMO for enhanced customer value in marketing and retail.

Foresighting the future of retail: Shape the retail horizon, navigate the future of social commerce, and prepare for what’s next.

The summit offers diverse elements, including keynote speeches, panel discussions, technology showcases, networking opportunities, and book signings by esteemed speakers and intellectuals.

Who Should Attend?

The DIGITAL+ SUMMIT 2023 is tailored for China-focused digital leaders, with a primary focus on B2C spaces and sessions directed at B2B cases too. 

This event is a must-attend if you are:

Brand marketing and commercial teams: This is your chance to explore topics relevant to marketing, retail, e-commerce, CRM performance, consumer insights, and digital strategy.

Tech giants and social media platform teams: connect with brands, and fellow experts, and participate in collaborative learning experiences.

Consultancy and agency leaders: gain valuable insights and networking opportunities to enhance your consultancy or agency services.

Learn – Play – Apply Format

We believe that we learn better when we are engaged. Our keynotes are short and dynamic, with plenty of opportunities for breaks, games, and showcases. We aim to ensure that you leave the summit feeling energized and empowered to make real changes.

What to Expect

Feel the inspiration: Immerse yourself in a dynamic digital community and dive into inspiration, creativity, excitement, and motivation.

Think with vision: Empower yourself with thought-provoking discussions, and cutting-edge insights and foster strategic visions of digital China.

Do with innovation: Equip yourself with practical tips, bold innovations, and forward-thinking solutions to create transformative outcomes right away.

Pre-Summit Online Sessions

We’re bringing a few pre-summit sessions right to your screens on Monday and Tuesday next week. Join these free online sessions on 16-17 October, hosted by top experts. Dive into the latest actionable insights on Chinese consumers, platforms, marketing, and sales. Online sessions are free of charge, delivered live via Zoom, and participation is limited to 100 registered guests. Sign up now to secure your spot.

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with the best minds in digital marketing, retail, and technology. Sign up for the DIGITAL+ SUMMIT 2023 and the pre-summit sessions today at www.chinadigitalsummit.com/online. The future of digital is here – be a part of shaping it.

In an era marked by unprecedented digital transformation, digital payment tools have emerged as indispensable enablers of commerce in both the online and offline realms. The future of payment is the future of commerce.

Over the past years, digital payment tools have revolutionized the way consumers and businesses engage in the online sphere, with this transformation not only offering customers flexibility but also encouraging repeat business and fostering brand loyalty.

At the 2023 INCLUSION Conference on the Bund, Douglas Feagin, head of Alipay+ cross-border mobile payment services and senior vice president of Ant Group; Tim Huang, head of corporate banking greater China, JP Morgan; and Shaozhang Ding, vice president of digital sales DFS Group, joined Roberto Chade, CEO, and co-founder of Dotz, to discuss how digital tools are unlocking growth for future commerce.

How are digital payments evolving?

Digital payment methods have come a long way, and their evolution is nothing short of revolutionary. Take Alipay in China, which currently serves over 1 billion consumers through its comprehensive lifestyle services app. 

Alipay’s success has also inspired similar innovations worldwide, as many countries have embraced new forms of digital payments.

One exciting development is Alipay+, which offers payment and marketing solutions for digital consumers and digitally enabled merchants to reach a total of 1.4 billion consumers globally.

An example that Feagin provided during the discussion was that of Alipay+ D-store, which was unveiled last year and is currently mainly used in the food and beverage sector, offering a one-stop solution that companies can use to quickly and affordably build digital stores across multiple platforms.

Digital wallets have become a bridge, enabling not just payments but also offering marketing tools and enhanced consumer engagement.

In the global travel retail industry, represented at this discussion by DFS Group, Alipay+ has assumed a pivotal role in engaging upper-funnel customers and creating international experiences. 

Similarly, companies like Dotz in Brazil are establishing digital payments as a “second currency” in the country, while they also collect data through their loyalty program and gain deep insights into consumer behavior and preferences.

Digitalization has been further accelerated in many countries over the past years as customers worldwide increasingly demand the convenience of mobile payments and digital services. This shift has fueled the adoption of advanced digital solutions and provided fertile ground for further innovation.

The evolution of digital payment methods, exemplified by platforms like Alipay and its global counterparts, is reshaping the way businesses engage with consumers, expand their reach, and secure transactions in an increasingly digitized world.

Misconceptions exist

However, misconceptions about digital payments persist, from consumer behavior to organizational readiness, as highlighted by the four speakers during the discussion. 

Despite the abundance of data and readily available technology, many companies struggle to harness them effectively in personalized communication. 

“Data is everywhere. Technology is available. But at the end of the day, we as consumers keep receiving magnified information communication from different companies that drive payments and consumer behavior,” said Chade, adding that this could be greatly improved if companies engaged in personalized communication and messaging.

From the organizational perspective, Ding stressed that digital transformation is an ongoing journey rather than a one-time event. “We need a lot of coaching, inspiration, education, and sometimes a baby step to help employees adapt to digital changes,” he said.

Like Ant Group’s expansion and investments in digital wallets around the world, Feagin said it reminds him of the significance of recognizing that not all countries are like China, where digital enablement is widespread. 

“Many of these countries are at a much earlier stage of development, so they don’t have that kind of embedded infrastructure.” Therefore, when seeking global expansion, companies need to be aware that countries at different stages of digital development require tailored approaches.

For instance, “beginning with simple peer-to-peer transactions, such as mobile phone top-ups and ride-hailing, can gradually lead to more complex use cases like online cross-border transactions,” said Feagin, adding that building comfort and confidence domestically is the stepping stone to international markets.

What will the future of digital payments look like?

The future of digital payments is poised to bring exciting possibilities, although predicting precisely how these tools will reshape the merchant-consumer landscape in five or ten years is a challenging task, given the rapid pace of change in the digital landscape. However, some key trends are emerging.

“Consumers of the future are likely to adopt a hybrid approach, combining online and offline experiences,” according to Chade.

He emphasized that this combination could offer the “best of both worlds,” where consumers enjoy personalized promotions online, transition seamlessly to the in-store experience, and make digital payments. But he said that he hadn’t seen many companies doing that yet.

Huang shared similar thoughts with Chade during the discussion. “I think it’s more important is, people want to buy things with experience. As they enjoy, they experience something, there’s always an impulse buy moment. You need to capture as a merchant.”

For travel retail, where decision-making often happens well in advance, connecting with customers before their journey will be crucial. 

“Travelers do very extensive research against their travel and also want to leverage all the information sources that would help them understand where they shop and what they should shop,” said Ding, adding that it’s “quite important” for them to connect the upper funnel customers before they travel.

Meanwhile, the influence of social media on consumer behavior will continue to play a significant role in shaping the digital landscape. 

While a lot of social media influences the things that people are already doing to follow the same pattern, leveraging more sophisticated forms of AI will help companies understand consumers on a deeper level and deliver products and experiences that align with their lifestyles and preferences.

The path forward is not without challenges, and collaboration among digital players and businesses will be essential. As the digital payment landscape continues to evolve, Ant Group and its partners look forward to innovating and driving this transformation to create a more interconnected and prosperous future.

This article was supported by Ant Group. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

With the theme of “Technology for a Sustainable Future,” the INCLUSION Conference on the Bund was held in Shanghai from September 7 to 9, bringing together global experts, scholars, and entrepreneurs to explore technological developments in economic industries.

On September 8, one of the events organizing committee members, Ant Group invited three overseas guests from the 10×1000 Tech for Inclusion program to the C3 Forum to share their views on the theme, “Building an inclusive digital economy with the new generation of innovators”: Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin (managing director of MADcash in Malaysia), Anbar Nawar (product manager at bKash in Bangladesh), and Opeyemi Praise (senior product manager at Sterling Bank in Nigeria). 

Underserved communities often face unique challenges when accessing and harnessing digital technologies. However, opportunities can emerge from developing the digital economy in these communities. The three guests individually presented insights into their local markets and the varied challenges involved in developing the digital economy.

10×1000 Tech for Inclusion Program Initiated by Ant Group and IFC

Before the panel discussion, the host briefly introduced the 10×1000 Tech for Inclusion Program, an initiative aimed at promoting tech inclusion and bridging the digital divide in underserved communities. 

The program focuses on providing support and resources to empower individuals and communities to fully participate in the digital economy. Its mission is to nurture and inspire at least 1,000 emerging talents and tech leaders each year for the next ten years. Currently, the program connects more than 5,000 individual talents in the global digital community, representing 96 countries and regions. 

Empowering women to build their own businesses in Malaysia

Fintech, short for financial technology, refers to the use of technology and innovation to provide financial services and solutions. It encompasses a broad spectrum of digital tools, applications, and platforms designed to enhance and streamline various aspects of financial activities, including banking, payments, investments, lending, and insurance.

MADCash in Malaysia is a financial service provider that offers a range of cash loan options to individuals in Malaysia, with a particular focus on underprivileged groups including women with limited educational backgrounds. MADCash offers personal loans with flexible repayment options, aiming to provide a hassle-free loan application process with minimal documentation requirements and fast approval times. 

MADCash stands for “multiply, assist, donate cash”, Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin, the managing director of MADCash explained at the panel. “We provide small funds for female entrepreneurs in our country who do not have access to credit. They cannot get loans since they are high risks for traditional banks, but we can help them build their small business,” she said.

In many developed countries and regions, resources related to education and employment are not equally accessible to women. Therefore, women face more obstacles in building their own startups, as most traditional banks often decline their loans for investments, due to factors such as credit history, educational background, and employment experiences. MADCash looks to offer one model for bypassing these traditional barriers.

Fostering trust in the digital economy for local customers in Bangladesh

bKash is a mobile financial service in Bangladesh, offering a diverse range of financial services, including money transfers, bill payments, mobile top-ups, and more, through a mobile app or USSD code. bKash has played a significant role in promoting financial inclusion in Bangladesh, especially among the unbanked population. One of the key advantages of bKash is its convenience. Users can easily send and receive money, pay bills, and make purchases using their mobile phones, without the need for a traditional bank account. 

However, a key challenge lies in ensuring trust and security in digital technology. Like any digital financial service, there is always a risk of fraud and unauthorized access to personal information. It is crucial for both bKash and its users to prioritize security measures and educate customers about safe usage practices.

“First of all, what we really struggle with is the dependency on cash. There is a huge difference between cities and semi-urban or rural areas,” Anbar Nawar, product manager at bKash, explained “People don’t have access to a lot of technological knowledge, so they are more prone to using cash, even if we provide them with enough awareness about our apps, and our services. No matter how easy that is, they feel more comfortable with cash.”

In addition to trust issues, Anbar also elaborated on other challenges, including employment difficulties for technological talents in Bangladesh, huge differences between urban and rural areas, and the need for financial-related education for local people.

Emerging markets and opportunities in Nigeria

Sterling Bank is a leading financial institution in Nigeria, offering a wide range of financial services to individuals, businesses, and institutions. It provides various financial services, including personal banking, corporate banking, asset management, treasury services, and electronic banking solutions. 

Similar to many banks in Nigeria, Sterling Bank has embraced digital banking to provide its customers with convenient and efficient banking services. This consists of internet banking, mobile banking, and other digital channels for transactions and account management.

“Last year, the total electronic transactions reached $1.7 trillion in Nigeria. It is projected to grow by 30% this year, at least, Opeyemi Praise, senior product manager at Sterling Bank, told the conference. “The internet penetration is 95% in our country. The challenge is that we need to advocate for overseas investors to localize their digital products for the local market.” 

Another key challenge that Praise mentioned was the need for educational training in financial and technological fields for the younger generations in Nigeria. Young people under the age of 30 comprise more than 70 percent of Nigeria’s population, he added, indicating enormous potential in the digital economy for this African country.

This article was supported by Ant Group. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

In a world of widespread economic uncertainty throughout most of 2023, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are looking for new technological solutions to accelerate their businesses in a volatile period following the sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A senior executive at China’s Ant Group expected digitalization driven by innovative technologies to become a key factor during the post-pandemic recovery, especially the prosperity of SMEs, while also reducing financial exclusion and enhancing data security. 

Speaking during a panel discussion at this year’s INCLUSION·Conference on the Bund in Shanghai, Yang Peng, President of the International Business Group at Ant Group, said that digital transformation could help deepen SME merchants’ ties to consumers, and drive commerce with more growth tools. He also called for more collaborations among organizations to unleash the full potential of the digital economy.

Fragmented payment landscape

As the pandemic fueled a surge in online shopping and digital payments worldwide, almost all economies of the world have adopted payment innovations, significantly accelerating the development of e-wallets, bank apps, and super apps with a pay button.

However, technologies and support systems behind payment methods are not coordinated. In some countries, there are dozens of payment logos covering up a tiny cashier space. Because of this fragmented landscape, businesses, especially SMEs, face an incredibly complicated payment management situation. 

“SMEs do need a helping hand on the payment side,” said Yang. “They should primarily focus on their businesses and services to serve their customers without spending too much resources on payment.

In 2016, Ant Group initiated efforts to develop Alipay+, a suite of cross-border digital payment and marketing solutions. According to Yang, today Alipay+ connects over 20 payment apps from Thailand to Italy, allowing consumers to use their familiar e-wallets wherever they go. This also allows merchants to focus on improving their products and fine-tuning their services, without the need to handle the maze of payment routes.

SMEs go digital

Payment is the end of a positive consumer journey but also could be the beginning of many new ones. According to Yang, digitalization solutions derived from digital payment can do more to help businesses and the economy, and “many SMEs are hungry for growth and want to harvest the benefit from digitalization”. 

Ant Group is expanding SMEs’ access to more digital technologies, which reduces the barriers to market entry and enables them to operate more efficiently, saving them both time and resources. In November 2022, the Chinese fintech giant further strengthened these efforts with the launch of its Alipay+ D-store solution, enabling SMEs to build their all-in-one store across platforms and connect with different payment channels in just a few minutes using a suite of toolkits.

In Southeast Asia, with a large infrastructure deficit, there is still very limited access to digital and financial services for SMEs. Still, the demand is booming. According to Timothy Utama, Information Technology Director at Bank Mandiri, Indonesia’s state-controlled lender, Indonesia is not as big as China, but there is a lot of water in between which becomes a demographic challenge for financial services.

“We have 3.6 million SMEs in Thailand, which accounts for roughly 44% of the country’s GDP. This can really be a contributing factor if you can make a change,” echoed Monsinee Nakapanant, Co-President of Thailand’s online payment provider Ascend Money.

Privacy computing is a key

The wider adoption of digital technologies brings an increasing demand for data collaborations, which is, however, hindered by concerns such as data security, privacy, and confidentiality.

“We believe privacy-preserving computing (PPC) is a very powerful solution to address that issue of trust and efficiency,” said Yang, “PPC processes privacy data by encryption processing, multi-party computing, and other techniques. With PPC, Company A can share insights generated from its big data with Company B, without the need to provide the raw data to Company B. In other words, data becomes available for use but not visible, which mitigates the data privacy concern and meets regulatory requirements.” 

Yang also sees the urgent need for increased collaboration among various stakeholders to promote the technology and build an ecosystem as it extends beyond the technology itself. He envisions a more connected digital economy in which each party can fully harness the potential of data in the next decade. 

“In this new technological era, collaboration is the new way to compete,” said Utama at Bank Mandiri. “People usually say data is the new ore, but I would say show me the way to extract the ore. This is difficult to monetize. We learn from our partners, work with them, and move forward together as a win-win.”

The comments come a year after Ant Group announced the open source of its privacy-preserving computing framework last July, a project that would enable data analysis for different use cases without the need for decryption of original individual data. The company released an updated version in July this year to further address the pain points in data collaborations among parties. 

Ensuring security with AI

The Asian tech and finance industry is also ramping up efforts to address some of the most pressing issues with new technologies, such as biometrics and artificial intelligence, as online fraud evolves in the region.

Ascend Money has been using biometrics and AI to detect suspicious transactions and prevent hackers’ invasions with the help of Ant Group. Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy posted losses of $1 billion from online fraud and digital attacks last year, according to Nakapanant of Ascend Money. 

Meanwhile, American Express enjoys the lowest fraud rates in the industry, as the world’s fourth largest credit card network rebuilt its platform entirely on an end-to-end, closed-loop, modern architecture. “That’s something you probably see as well on the Ant Group side,” Mohammed Badi, President of Global Network Services at American Express, said in the same panel discussion. 

Ant Group reported last December that it sends over 500,000 alerts to users on average each day via its transaction fraud detection system, which can identify potential fraud in seconds and has been deployed on its Alipay app and partners’ platforms. 

“You can’t have true innovation at scale if the platform is insecure and if you’re not compliant with the laws and regulations of the land,” Badi added.

This article was supported by Ant Group. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Microsoft for Startups convened a distinguished assembly of startup founders within the digital solution sphere, fostering a discourse on the latest digitization trends permeating the retail and consumer industry. This engaging dialogue emphasized the strategic utilization of a diverse array of software and hardware solutions, such as AI and computer vision technology, to further digitize the industry.

The discussion took place at the BEYOND Expo in Macao, featuring Christine Fang, Finance VP of Mars & Wrigley, China; Vin Shan, founder and CEO of iCC Grow; Keven Liu, founder and CEO of Skieer; Maggie Li, CMO of MRSTAGE; Claire Chen, founder and CEO of Clobotics; Xuan Zheng, founder and CEO of Chatail.

The conversation is the second panel of Microsoft for Startups’s AI+Retail and Consumer Tech Forum at the BEYOND Expo on May 11, focusing on digital transformation trends on retail and consumer industry. To learn more about Microsoft for Startups, click here or email at mfschina@microsoft.com.

Vin Shan, founder and CEO of iCC Grow

iCC is a company dedicated to solving brands’ traffic operation needs in private online scenarios using chat technology products. We leverage AI technology to assist brands in China in producing customized greetings and communications at scale. iCC addresses pain points by analyzing data from various scenarios, tracking user interactions and employee performance, and offering a comprehensive solution.

In chat scenarios, we know customer service teams are often busy. So, we provide intelligent chat scripts to help brands’ customer service teams communicate effectively. We have collected and organized a vast amount of chat scripts. Through copilot and AI technology, we provide them with warm and personalized chat scripts, including everyday greetings, which significantly ease their workload.

One of the notable client cases is Banu Hotpot in China. Every loyal customer who visits the chain restaurant is addressed by their specific name, such as “Mr. Zhang, welcome back! Here are the recommendations we have for you today.” These personalized chat interactions help generate additional business for an extra week, resulting in a 20% monthly revenue increase. Customers can get seamless interactions throughout the entire service chain, from pre-appointment reservations to post-visit feedback.

Keven Liu, founder and CEO of Skieer

Skieer is an application server that provides data and AI technology through our products, such as Skieer Octoparse, Skieer CEM, Skieer RPA, and Skieer data services.

It’s worth mentioning that Skieer Octoparse has stood out as one of the most widely used data collection tools worldwide. It assists brands, organizations, and even individual users in obtaining large-scale datas from the internet. As intelligent, user-friendly tools, it requires minimal technical knowledge. With only a web address, users can easily gather the desired data from the internet.

Skieer CEM is a comprehensive omnichannel customer experience management SaaS platform, which helps brands integrate and analyze customer feedback, sentiments, and opinions, compare differences between our brand and competitors to enhance customer satisfaction, improve brand reputation, and increase customer retention. It integrates self-developed NLP index sentiment analysis technology, and applies AI large models to multiple enterprise business scenarios such as product development, service optimization, and marketing.

Claire Chen, co-founder and COO of Clobotics

Clobotics uses computer vision technology and AI to provide software and hardware-integrated solutions. Our hardware component focuses on standardized data collection while leveraging cloud and analytics to deliver value to users in the wind power, and retail industries. In particular, we focus on the ESG wind energy sector and the new retail sector. Since today’s discussion primarily revolves around retail, we will delve more into our retail-related offerings.

Clobotics has conducted extensive machine vision model training for specific scenarios in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. We have developed a system that enables retailers to use smartphones to capture images of products on store shelves and receive instant feedback. Leveraging AI, our technology can accurately identify SKU quantities with an impressive precision rate of up to 95%. Additionally, we provide real-time analytics on metrics such as shelf share, out-of-stock rates, and other valuable insights.

For our fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) clients, agility is a key factor. When assessing agility, which key metrics are typically considered? One crucial metric is inventory management. Clients want to know the exact quantity of goods in the display. They need insights about their displays and promotions. Therefore, insights that help them evaluate performance become crucial.

Another critical factor is delivering a “wow moment” to retail customers, demonstrating that our offerings go beyond technology to provide comprehensive solutions. We aim to showcase a deep understanding of our customers’ business scenarios. By leveraging computer vision, we help clients to realize the potential of this technology in their operations. That’s why we focus more on solving business problems rather than offering technology alone.

Jeff Hong, founder and CEO of MRSTAGE

MRSTAGE specializes in providing real-time 3D virtual content and event services. We offer 3D livestream products and services, virtual short video production tools, and other SaaS solutions. We focus mainly on e-commerce, entertainment, online education, and corporate events.

The company leverages AI models and engages in real-time interaction, helping clients to build various virtual 3D live experiences. For example, it helped build a virtual version of Lenovo’s physical exhibition hall in Beijing, allowing users to access across borders and time zones.

Furthermore, MRSTAGE offers customized 3D digital virtual scene solutions, personalized digital avatars, and a range of consulting and scene-building services focused on mixed reality technology.

The company provides convenient and efficient tools for professional broadcasting clients like SMG and Oriental TV, as well as educational institutions and state-owned enterprises. For example, it developed a user-friendly software and hardware product that can help companies to start 3D virtual livestream in five minutes, which disrupts the traditional live broadcasting model and achieves high-quality production results with minimal investment.

Xuan Zheng, founder and CEO of Chatail

Chatail is a SaaS company that specializes in building private livesteam systems for brands, with a particular focus on high-end and luxury brands. The company helps globally renowned brands, including LVMH Group and Kering Group. Its expertise lies in providing professional solutions for private and public-to-private video live shopping, enabling brand clients to incorporate interactive and shopping videos at the core of their retail ecosystem, e-commerce platforms, customer service, and stores.

The brands we serve typically cater to well-off clients in China, and their requirements differ accordingly. Many of our clients place great emphasis on privacy and confidentiality.

We have a product called LIVE Button, which integrates with various entry points such as official websites, mini-programs, product details, nearby stores, and article content on public accounts. This allows customers to proactively schedule video and livestreaming services, offering a more immersive product detail page. For luxury items priced around RMB 20,000 or RMB 30,000 ($2,840 to $4,360), it’s challenging to effectively communicate their beauty and luxury through text and images alone. That’s why we have developed the LIVE Button to address this issue. It allows customers to independently schedule a consultation for a specific product, including the desired time and duration. Additionally, we remind customers that the brand representatives will not be able to see them online, ensuring their privacy is protected.

Christine Fang, the Finance VP of Mars & Wrigley, China, expressed her anticipation during the panel discussion for technology companies to assist users in harnessing the power of AI and ChatGPT-like tech. She highlighted that employees in traditional industries often lack the latest technical expertise, making it crucial for technology companies to help integrate AI into businesses effectively.

Fang emphasized that as a globally leading consumer goods company, particularly renowned for its chewing gum and confectionary products in China, Mars & Wrigley continually strives for digital transformation in response to the rising consumer market. Leveraging AI to empower various application scenarios is a key aspect of this transformation.

During the discussion, representatives from the aforementioned companies described how their products align with Mars & Wrigley’s digital transformation needs from a business perspective. It is evident that these companies possess excellent product portfolios to assist retail brands like Mars & Wrigley in achieving digital marketing success. The convergence of online and offline technologies is also a future trend, along with utilizing AI tools to drive cost reduction and efficiency improvement. It is essential to consider both the technological aspect and the alignment with business objectives to achieve a seamless fit for retail digital transformation.

In mid-May, Microsoft for Startups brought a portfolio of 10 exceptional startups to the BEYOND Expo 2023 in Macao, discussing with founders and entrepreneurs the potential of AI and AIGC in the retail, e-commerce, and manufacturing space.

The discussion, organized by Microsoft for Startups, focused on AIGC’s impact on retail and consumer industry and featured Ling Fan, founder and CEO of Tezign; Tianlan Shao, founder and CEO of Mech-Mind Robotics; Shawn Ding, vice president of Whale Tech; Ken Wang, founder and CEO of BOOLV. The conversation below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The conversation is the first panel of Microsoft for Startups’ AI+Retail and Consumer Tech Forum at the BEYOND Expo on May 11, focusing on AI & Generative AI technology’s impact on the retail and consumer industry. To learn more about Microsoft for Startups, click here or email mfschina@microsoft.com.

Ling Fan, founder and CEO of Tezign

Tezign provides software solutions that help businesses and brands deliver marketing content. We have built a digital infrastructure for creative content, offering global brands solutions for producing, managing, distributing, and analyzing various content. Tezign helps brands to do digital transformation by driving growth through content.

We are constantly seeking a path of growth that offers higher efficiency while offering better experiences. In the past, the process of developing and launching a product involved a lengthy content production phase. Creating the selling points, marketing, and generating interest in a product took significant time. However, Tezign’s system can now cut the timeline from months to days, or even hours.

As AI technology becomes a more ubiquitous underlying infrastructure, it will greatly impact brands and content production, creating significant changes.

Our first major change will occur in the way we interact. In the past, navigating complex systems required a series of clicks, but now we can activate them through conversations and chats. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, 95% of data are mostly unstructured content, which was previously difficult to understand. However, now we can associate it with metadata and access these data. Thirdly, there will be immense improvements in content production scenarios, enabling more efficient and higher-quality generation of text, images, and even videos.

The fourth aspect is the ability to comprehend content, leading to various efficient ways to use content. Take the intelligent question-and-answer systems for example. Recently, we collaborated with Visa on a 300-page document that required permissions. We can easily engage in natural language conversations with the system, such as asking which benefits to use when visiting Macau with a Visa card. Furthermore, with new AI capabilities emerging every day, we constantly integrate new AI capabilities into our content ecosystem.

Tianlan Shao, founder and CEO of Mech-Mind Robotics

Mech-Mind specializes in artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D vision solutions. By combining 3D vision, deep learning, and advanced AI algorithms, the company provides cutting-edge solutions for manufacturing, logistics, automotive, and other sectors.

By integrating 3D vision, artificial intelligence algorithms, and robotics, we can create various applications. For instance, in e-commerce warehouses, AI-powered robots can assist in order fulfillment. Take the example of a tire warehouse in Japan where previously manual labor was required to handle the tires. Now, with the combination of artificial intelligence and 3D vision, robots can navigate and perform tasks in a wide range of new scenarios. This combination of AI and 3D vision is transforming robots, enabling them to operate efficiently in various industries and revolutionizing processes such as warehousing and logistics.

Our company is now expanding beyond the industrial sector. We are involved in manufacturing, logistics, including some retail operations, and even departments like hospital pharmacies. As I showcased earlier, we are also venturing into areas such as electric vehicle (EV) charging applications. The range of scenarios we cater to is continuously expanding, which aligns with the regular trend of technological development. For instance, when personal computers (PCs) were initially introduced, they were primarily used by large enterprises, then adopted by small and medium-sized businesses, and eventually became commonplace for individuals, including toddlers. Similarly, the technologies we implement in various robotic applications are progressing rapidly.

One significant transformation brought about by advancements like ChatGPT is that every company can now become a technology company. In the past, companies focused on specific areas like design, coding, or internet services. However, today, there are no excuses, and every company can harness the capabilities of AI, such as ChatGPT, to become, in some sense, a tech company. Therefore, in my view, GPT will further accelerate the permeation of technologies like robotics, AI, and automation into all industries. In the future, every company will utilize AI technology, just as everyone now uses computers. I anticipate this transformation will happen rapidly, possibly within the next 1,000 days.

Shawn Ding, vice president of Whale Tech

Whale Tech, a fast-growing provider of AI-based systems for retailers and brands that can be used across sectors such as automobile, cosmetics, and more. Its systems help brands make informed decisions and maximize profitability, transforming the retail industry through technology.

By tracking how consumers behave in stores and how salespeople are pitching products both physically and digitally, Whale’s solutions help retail businesses identify gaps that they can address to drive growth across both online and offline channels.

In recent years, particularly last year, Whale Tech has expanded its presence to Southeast Asia and Japan, opening new offices and gaining numerous new clients and case studies. The diverse development of digital channels has brought about innovative and enhanced utilization of marketing strategies. For example, the automotive industry has seen a shift away from the conventional practice of only buying cars from 4S dealerships.

Meidong Auto has seen success with its structured sales model, which begins with an online livestream session and transitions to offline experiences before retaining customers in the private chats of WeChat. This approach has resulted in 26% of their automotive sales orders being generated through livestream. Many other brands have adopted this model, recognizing its effectiveness in attracting and retaining customers.

In the field of AIGC, Whale Tech recognizes the importance of identifying the smallest achievable business case and realizing it with speed and efficiency. For B2B clients, it’s important they are embracing digitalization. Without a foundation in digitization, it becomes challenging to implement AIGC strategies effectively. By leveraging digitalization as a starting point, we assist clients in identifying their most pressing pain points and providing solutions within the shortest possible timeframe.

Ken Wang, founder and CEO of BOOLV

BOOLV provides marketing video and content production tools, and helps brands and businesses find efficient solutions for video marketing. Leveraging AI and algorithmic models, BOOLV enables users to generate various product videos targeted for e-commerce scenarios and provides tools such as face swapping, converting model images into videos, adding in virtual spokesperson explanations, and generating diverse visual materials.

In the era of smartphones, most of our visual data are actually in photos, not videos. However, in the future, the application of cross-modal technology can transform images directly into videos, allowing for more dynamic and engaging visuals. With virtualization technology, even the human subjects in the videos can be entirely virtual. This advancement significantly enhances video presentation and sales processes, making them more vibrant and captivating.

We have done extensive training to make sure products can look real on generated models, while also conducting background training to enhance material placement, regeneration, and evolution. Furthermore, we focus on layout training to address image degradation issues on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In fact, we even offer customized solutions to help businesses shape their own unique intellectual properties (IP) and redefine their brand identity.

Unlike previous technologies, AIGC tech is more of a starter rather than a zero-to-one solution. It involves various intermediate stages where companies can make money. So it is up to companies to figure out when data integration becomes necessary, and how can users’ demands need to be met. Determining the return on investment (ROI) at each level requires user knowledge and understanding. Therefore, it is essential to focus on delivering value to users and understanding their specific needs. From the user’s perspective, they are more concerned with the outcomes you provide rather than the specific technologies or the frontend and backend experience. Ultimately, their primary concern is the impact on sales and the value you bring to their business. These are not solely technical issues but more user-centric ones.

In recent years, China has seen a growing trend of lifelong learning, with more people willing to invest in their personal and professional growth. For China’s more than 875 million labor force, their growing learning needs are diverse. Some seek to acquire new skills and knowledge to better their career prospects, while others want to learn for leisure, social interaction, and to enrich their retirement.

This growing trend compounding with the acceleration of digitization made online continuing education in China a new growth area. According to a report by Frost & Sullivan in September 2022, the market size of China’s adult learning industry has grown rapidly from RMB 383.3 billion in 2017 to RMB 566.4 billion ($56 billion to $82 billion) in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.3%. The market is expected to reach RMB 994.7 billion by 2026.

QuantaSing Group (NASDAQ: QSG), a leading Chinese company providing online adult learning courses, has developed a comprehensive and innovative platform that caters to the diverse needs of learners, who come from various ages and backgrounds. QuantaSing offers a wide range of adult learning courses, such as those that give users a basic understanding of financial concepts, to Chinese calligraphy, piano, and short video production.

To enhance learning results, QuantaSing also provides a dual-instructor learning mode, offering students both expert instructors’ courses and off-class tutor communication. QuantaSing’s sub-brands, JiangZhen and QianChi, offer personal interest courses that address China’s seismic economic and social shifts by empowering individuals to re-skill and explore hobbies. These courses are priced at a more affordable level than formal education providers, yet with a level of personalized guidance that is unavailable from free online courses. As a result, these courses have become a popular choice for working adults and retirees who are seeking to expand their knowledge and skills outside of traditional classroom settings.

Dual-instructor learning experience

One major pain point of online learning is that not all students are focused and engaged in a virtual classroom, making it difficult for teachers to target and reach those students that need more support. To address this problem, QuantaSing uses a unique dual-instructor learning system. Each course is first taught by an expert instructor in a large-class setting via livestreamed lessons and then supported by off-class tutors in the form of online study groups. The tutors provide individual guidance and daily support, such as responding to students’ inquiries, overseeing learning progress, coordinating course-related activities, assessing learners’ performance, and collecting feedback.

The benefits of a dual-instructor system primarily lie in its ability to help students achieve the best learning results. For one, the effectiveness of livestream lessons might not work to accommodate the learning needs of all students, which is why off-class tutors are essential. For example, students learning fine arts and calligraphy may need to show teachers detailed hand movements to improve, tutors can help facilitate that process more attentively than an expert instructor. Secondly, tutors can monitor learning progress at any time and respond to questions about the content of the online teacher’s classes. Both the expert instructor and the tutor must coordinate lesson planning in advance to ensure students internalize and use the learned knowledge.

In the two years of teaching millions of students across China, QuantaSing has proved that the dual-instructor system is an effective way to enhance the learning experience. For example, at QuantaSing’s Qianchi piano courses, learner Ms. Ge explored her passion for music. Ms. Ge has no prior piano experience, but under the guidance of the course and daily practice, she gradually gained confidence and developed a newfound love for music. Expert instructors and off-class tutors were crucial in her journey, providing personalized feedback and encouragement to keep her motivated.

In another instance, QuantaSing’s painting course has inspired learners like Ms. Li, a 55-year-old novice in painting from Hebei province, to discover a newfound passion for life. She registered as a user on JiangZhen and fell in love with the painting classes. Today, she proudly displays her artwork in her courtyard, which is a testament to the transformative power of the arts.

The dual-instructor system has allowed QuantaSing to provide a comprehensive learning experience that combines the expertise of top-notch experts with the personalized attention of off-class tutors, making it possible for users like Ms. Ge and Ms. Li to achieve their full potential in their chosen hobbies.

Sharon Chen is the CEO of AlphaPrime, a global health technology company. Prior to founding AlphaPrime, Sharon was the head of Verily China (Alphabet’s life science arm) and the Engineering Site Lead of Google Shanghai. Sharon is an IT veteran with 20+ years of rich experience in the industry, 15 of which were gained at Google. Sharon earned her bachelor’s degree in automation from Shanghai Jiaotong University, and her master’s degree in computer science from Texas A&M University.

Founded in August 2020, AlphaPrime focuses on developing SaaS solutions to accelerate clinical trials in life sciences by leveraging cloud computing, AI, and big data.

AlphaPrime’s clinical trials management SaaS platform AuroraPrime comprises a suite of products including Create for AI-assisted medical writing, Collect for electronic data capture, and Compute for clinical data analysis, to name a few. AlphaPrime is a full-fledged, configurable, and highly scalable system with some unique features that differentiate it from other clinical trial software alternatives on the market.

The company has recently completed a multi-million-dollar A+ financing, led by Han Kang Capital, followed by B Capital. The team at AlphaPrime consists of tech gurus and clinical experts with extensive experience in leading global companies, such as Verily, Google, Medidata, and Veeva.

Below is an interview with AlphaPrime’s CEO Sharon Chen. Text has been edited for brevity and clarity:

1. Can you provide an overview of AlphaPrime’s main business offerings and the company’s key differentiators in the health tech industry?

The life cycle of clinical trials in the medical industry can be broken down into three major scenarios: clinical trial design, data capture, and final analysis and report. AlphaPrime offers products that cover all three scenarios of the clinical trials life cycle in a unified, versatile, intelligent, and advanced manner.

Let’s talk about the first scenario, which is the protocol design of the clinical trials. It’s a crucial part of the process because it defines how the research will be conducted, what kind of data will be collected and in what ways, and how the report will be submitted to regulatories authorities such as the U.S. FDA and China NMPA to assess the efficacy and safety of drugs or medical devices.

The protocol’s design is eventually written down in the document, so AlphaPrime supports this with a very intelligent, template-based, collaborative tool called Prime Create. The key function of Prime Create is to support content recommended by the AI model, plus a collaboration tool for you to design, write and review the content very efficiently. Finally, there is an official approval process to sign off on the accuracy and completeness of the documents.

The second scenario is the data capture phase, which is a critical component of the drug development process. Electronic data capture, also known as EDC, is a well-established field with many offerings in the market. However, our advantage lies in the powerful features built around the collection process.

Our EDC product, Prime Collect, includes the randomization and Trial Supply Management system RTSM. This integration eliminates the need to switch between different systems and re-enter information.

Our company also offers decentralized trials, which is a remote way of collecting data empowered by portable or home devices, tele-visit, remote monitoring, and many other different offers. Our expertise lies in combining all these different data sources seamlessly, without any extra effort.

Overall, our comprehensive EDC and decentralized trial offerings make us stand out in the market, and we are confident in our ability to meet the diverse needs of our clients.

The final scenario of clinical trials is a crucial part of the cycle. It involves analyzing data and generating a final report that proves the efficacy and safety of the device or medicine being tested. This phase is essential for satisfying the requirements of regulatory departments. Prime Compute is a major product that facilitates this process.

The strength of the entire system lies in the provision of out-of-the-box standard templates and libraries, algorithms, models, analysis methods, and final visualizations. These features are designed to make the process of data analysis as seamless as possible. The aim is to minimize the effort required to analyze and report the data generated in clinical trials.

2. What are some of the key underlying technologies that help with AlphaPrime’s products?

I will highlight two key technologies: Clinical Logic Engine and Compose.

Clinical Logic Engine is our main strength of the AuroraPrime system. It is AI-powered, and it is the underlying engine of the system, driving the data flow and the processes.

Evidence-based data is required in a structured manner from the protocol design to the final report submitted to the regulatory body. However, due to the distributed and diverse nature of each segment of the cycle, different expertise is needed to work on different parts. This makes it difficult for them to communicate with each other or work together using the same language. To solve this problem, we built a Clinical Logic Engine to automate the process and translate data from one part to another.

For example, for certain diseases and phases of clinical trials, we broke down the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the visiting schedule, so the computer system can comprehend each element. This drives the automation of database building, allowing for the collection of clinical trial data in a structured manner. Eventually, it can populate the final clinical study report based on the initial protocol and the resulting biometrics. This back-end engine empowers the data flow throughout the lifecycle of a clinical trial.

We have developed a homegrown highly-adaptable (technically known as low-code) platform called Compose, tailored for the clinical trial industry. Our CTO, Xu Pengcheng, has led the effort for about two years to build this from the ground up.

We have a few applications built on top of Compose, such as Compute, which is our analysis tool and system to run analysis on top of the medical and operational data of the clinical trials. We also provide visualized reports and dashboards for clinical trials.

We want to tailor our offering of highly-configurable Coordinate, an ERP-like tool to manage clinical trials, known as Clinical Trials Management System in the drug development industry, to support the growing demand of the customization needs of our clients. We provide this tool via a set of out-of-box standard templates, and libraries together with a low-code platform for the customers’ IT department to be able to write simple code to fulfill their own SOP demands.

3. What other health scenarios can AlphaPrime’s products be used in?

AlphaPrime also focuses on consumer health development. The product family is called AuroraEssentials, which empowers the development and commercialization of consumer cosmetics.

The suite of products can be flexibly reassembled to support clinical trials for the cosmetic industry. They have quickly expanded from clinical trials to real-world evidence, utilizing de-centralized trials to collect more data.

4. How does the company plan to expand its reach outside of China, and what new markets is it exploring currently?

AlphaPrime life science is a global company from the very beginning, with offices or registered entities already in Singapore and Shanghai. We started from China because we see the strong demand of this fast-growing market. We really want to capture the wave of the opportunities.

The health industry — medicines, the device invented, the innovation from biotech or pharma companies — really needs to serve human beings across the globe. So the final market is global, and so is our company.

Our expanding market strategy is based on the whole market demands. For example, the United States is one of the major or leading markets, and we are planning to expand our business to the United States very soon. Europe is another giant market and we are working on that as well. Biotech and biopharma companies often use the Australian and Southeast Asian markets for their clinical trial market as well, so we will also look for opportunities in those markets.

In summary, we are looking at all the possible global markets and based on the priority of how soon and how quickly we can work with our biotech companies together.

5. What has AlphaPrime’s experience been like working with Microsoft for Startups?

We really appreciate the great support from Microsoft. AlphaPrime is one of the companies sponsored by Microsoft for Startups. Microsoft has been spending years supporting and empowering local startups here in China. We highly appreciate the great benefits of this program, including the office space offering at the beginning, Azure cloud capacity, and the co-marketing opportunities supported by Microsoft for Startups.

AlphaPrime’s public cloud-based SaaS platform uses Azure as one of our major cloud providers outside of China. AlphaPrime system is designed to comply with regional regulations, via a cloud-agnostic technique. We are ready to fully support US solutions in the States.

AlphaPrime is a Microsoft for Startups portfolio company.

To learn more about Microsoft for Startups, click here or email us to mfschina@microsoft.com.

To get started with Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, sign up here.

George Yan, founder and CEO of Clobotics, is a seasoned executive with over 15 years of experience at Microsoft. Before starting Clobotics, an AI solution company focusing on retail and green energy, he served as the CEO of EHang, an autonomous aerial vehicle company. He successfully led EHang to enter markets in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and China. He also built a successful industrial drone team from scratch and achieved rapid growth in its user base.

Clobotics is a computer vision company that provides data collection solutions for retail and wind power customers. The company holds multiple patents in retail and wind power. Retail customers use Clobotics for shelf management, availability, and pricing. The company’s platform also helps wind power customers acquire, process, and analyze time-sensitive data on wind turbines and automate dangerous processes such as inspecting, repairing, and optimizing.

The company was founded in 2016, headquartered in Shanghai, and with a research and development center in Seattle, and an Asia-Pacific sales center in Singapore. The name Clobotics is a word combination of the cloud, robot, and analytics, reflecting the company’s focus on the intersection of cloud computing, robotics, and data analytics.

Below is an interview with Clobotics’ CEO George Yan, text has been edited for brevity and clarity:

1. What kind of product and service does Clobotics offer? What technologies does your company focus on?

Clobotics is an ESG and AI company. We believe that all the technology we build needs to be specific to certain industries and have a bigger ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) impact on their customers.

Clobotics is a made-up word with three parts: cloud, robots, and analytics. The cloud is where all services and data are stored, and Clobotics is cautious about where the cloud sits, ensuring that customers’ data stays in their respective regions. Robots is the way Clobotics captures images and data. The better the robots are, the easier it is for processing and computer vision. Analytics is where Clobotics analyzes the data, which is what customers are looking for.

2. Clobotics works in both retail and wind power. These are two very different sectors and we usually don’t see startups working in a combination of these two. Why did Clobotics choose to focus on these two areas?

Our computer vision stack is a fundamental framework that can be applied to both retail and other industries such as wind and solar. The key is capturing and processing the data using a uniform model to achieve effective results. However, scaling the business requires finding experts in the industries who understand the data and can groom it effectively for customer response.

We believe that the fundamental technology and framework are quite similar in multiple different industries, and we picked two different industries to prove this point. The more insights we have into these industries, the better we can use the technology to apply to multiple industries.

3. Can you share with us a specific example in the retail industry where your company’s technology made an impact?

Our product on the retail side is in-store observation. For example, imagine a beverage company with over 200 different SKUs wanting to push its products out to all its stores. Once they do that, they want their people to go back and track if the products are on the shelf, stocked in the fridge, and at the right point of interest for the customers. All these things are done manually. We think a lot of things can be done digitally and via technology, including computer vision.

Essentially, if we can digitalize a store, we can open up that digital footprint to beverage companies or other snack companies for them to take a better view of what the store looks like. They get a massive amount of data that they can use for better analytics. This is a very important path for a maturing developed country like the United States but even more for emerging countries in Southeast Asia.

Previously, going to stores to take pictures and write down surveys would take about 30 minutes to an hour. Now, with our product, you can take a picture of the shelf, and all the pictures will get stitched together, making it easier to track where the product is. All that can be done in five minutes. Building efficiency for our customers on a daily basis is exciting for us. And the data we provide to these companies helps them understand how their products are varying in these countries. There isn’t a place with a second copy of that data anywhere, so having that information is super valuable for them to understand more of their business.

4. Can you tell us about a particularly challenging problem the company solved for customers in the wind power industry?

In the wind industry, we have developed an autonomous inspection service for wind turbines. Before our product came to market, engineers had to climb up the turbine with ropes and use binoculars and a mobile phone to look for defects, which was a strenuous and dangerous process. Accidents happen around the world every year.

After seeing this in some wind farms in China, we thought there had to be a better way to do this. So we decided to use a drone and built autonomous software to make the inspection process take less than 15 minutes. With just the push of a button, the drone can detect where the turbine is, where its blades are, and conduct the entire inspection without anyone on the ground. So we set on that journey four years ago. The inspection is only the tipping tip of the iceberg. We also built a repair robot after customers told us that “this is an area that if you want to grow your business, we really need some help there.”

So going from inspection to repair to that data-driven, decision-making is really what the customers in that industry told us.

5. Can you give us an example that illustrates the process of how the company’s technology is developed, from ideation to implementation?

The developing process is really a jigsaw puzzle. Every time that we go and sit down with a customer or visit a customer, the part of the jigsaw puzzle gets filled.

When we started on the inspection journey in the wind industry, a lot of people said this couldn’t be done. Because, how do you get a drone to fly autonomously? It has to be manual. And the wind blades are so much bigger now. And the wind tower is so much higher now. How can you really have a pair of eyes on the drone that can do this precision inspection? But we thought that this is something exactly that technology needs to do.

So we started looking at questions like: Are there enough drones available in the market that can do the work that we need. Are there enough cameras out in the market to do this? Are there enough gimbals out in the market to do this? So really, it’s a jigsaw puzzle that requires a lot of knowledge from different parties and different parts of the business.

When we list all technology pieces together, there won’t be a place where everything lines up, all technology is 100% ready. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Many technologies are only 60%-70% ready, but if you look at the technology trend and trajectory, it’s going to get there sooner or later. So you have to take a leap of faith and get on this journey a little bit earlier.

6. How does Clobotics plan to expand its reach outside of China, and what new markets is it exploring currently?

Clobotics does business on six continents and in more than 40 countries worldwide, serving large companies that want to expand to different regions. More than half of Clobotics’ revenue comes from global customers.

Clobotics sees Southeast Asia as a blooming area due to its younger population and thirst for newer technology. The company has engineering teams in Shanghai, Seattle, and customers in the Asia Pacific, China, Japan, the US, and Brazil. Clobotics serves its customers across the world, and it is a unique strength that helps the company increase its revenue internationally.

The company plans to have an 80/20 split between its revenues in China and globally. 80% global and 20% China.

7. Tell us more about Clobotics’ experience of working with Microsoft for Startups?

My career began at Microsoft many years ago. I usually joke with people that I believe in blue. I had a unique opportunity to be an engineer at Microsoft, coming to China to build its engineering center, and build a large part of the Microsoft China business. In the later part of my days, Microsoft gave me the opportunity to build the Microsoft cloud platform here in China.

My journey with Microsoft for Startups has been a personal one. When I was at Microsoft, we started the idea of having startups participate in the cloud journey. Microsoft for Startups came about once I started running a startup on my own. Obviously, I wanted to take advantage of what Microsoft for Startups can offer, not only in China but also having China as the center that connects the world. It is especially fitting for a company like ours, where a large majority of our business actually comes internationally.

Having China as a hub allows us to build and polish our products using that sandbox to grow our customer base. Once we reach maturity, it is easy to use the Microsoft network to go broad and go global and touch into their account teams and the services they offer. Once we make that connection, our business grows exponentially increases internationally.

Because of our connection to Microsoft for Startups, we have the opportunity to leverage their resources and expertise. We feel like standing on the shoulders of a giant, which will help us take the next step forward in our growth.

Clobotics is a Microsoft for Startups portfolio company.

To learn more about Microsoft for Startups, click here or email us to mfschina@microsoft.com.

To get started with Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, sign up here.

“Treasure hunting” on Taobao is part of our daily life. During this year’s Singles Day Global Shopping Festival, Alibaba has combined shopping, fun, and entertainment all into one. Business units across Alibaba’s ecosystem are using augmented reality, extended reality and virtual influencers to transform online shopping.

Three Chinese consumers are invited to try out some new features, such as virtual marketplace, and picture search on Alibaba’s shopping apps, Taobao and Tmall. Watch the video below to see their experience:

As Alibaba enters its 14th Singles Day shopping event, the e-commerce giant that founded the annual shopping phenomenon is pursuing new growth strategies this year by expanding the influence of its livestreaming channel and growing its membership program to cultivate loyal customers for its merchants.

More influencers joining Taobao Live

Chinese consumers are now used to shopping via Taobao Live, the livestream shopping platform embedded on Alibaba Group’s e-commerce marketplace Taobao. This year’s Singles Day event is set to attract more buyers to watch and shop on Taobao’s livestreams due to its continued rising attraction to influencers and the expansion of brand livestreaming. 

In the first hour of the first sales window this year, the number of views recorded by Taobao Live increased by 600%, compared with the same period in 2021. Over 500,000 new hosts have joined Taobao Live over the past 12 months, including key opinion leaders (KOLs) such as Luo Yonghao, a serial tech entrepreneur who used to stream exclusively on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

Chui Xue, President of Industry Development and Operation Center of Taobao and Tmall, Alibaba Group said that, “Livestreaming has become a storytelling format for delivering product information. Consumers are getting used to longing for a particular product through content consumption.”

Shifting to a membership strategy and building brand loyalty

As China’s largest online retailer, Alibaba is transforming consumer awareness into consumer loyalty as its domestic consumers reach the milestone of 1 billion. For Alibaba, brand loyalty memberships have become a key focus, as membership allows brands to interact most directly with consumers and, for some, ensure a higher degree of certainty over sales during and beyond the Singles Day event.

During the presale period from October 24 to 31, brands on Tmall gained in excess of 66 million new members. On November 1, 82 brands surpassed RMB 100 million in GMV generated from their members. More than 4,000 brands saw their member-led GMV more than double year-on-year, and brand members contributed more than 50% of the GMV for 2,700 prominent brands.

“11.11 is the most powerful engine for our merchants’ customer growth every year. Transforming consumer awareness into customer loyalty is key to generating the best return on investment. We will introduce technology and business innovations while enhancing supply-demand matching and loyalty membership management, to support our brand and merchant partners. Ultimately, we aim to turn customer assets into the most important driving force for merchants’ long-term business growth,” said Alibaba’s Chui Xue.

Bain & Company said in a report on Singles Day 2022 that retailers need a comprehensive understanding of their target customers to find the right loyalty levers for their business. “Alibaba is one retailer that has made strong progress in shifting focus from GMV to customer loyalty,” the report noted.

In this year’s Singles Day event, Alibaba aims to help millions of retailers attract and keep customers through its comprehensive brand loyalty membership programs.  

Loyalty is a better goal than GMV

With the macro challenges posed by the Covid resurgence in China, retailers are looking for better strategies to convince consumers to shop. In the Singles Day report, Bain & Co advised retailers to “stop fixating on the gross merchandise value (GMV) as a measure of success.” This year’s macro environment and the further saturation of the Chinese online retail market have made such suggestions all the more relevant.

“It doesn’t really matter if retailers breach the RMB 1 trillion mark for Singles Day GMV this year,” said the consultancy, adding that retailers should ask themselves a series of questions when shifting to a loyalty strategy, such as how to measure loyalty and high-quality growth, do investments in customer loyalty generate higher profits, and how to better integrate offline and online offerings.

Alibaba has been preparing for loyalty membership mechanisms for years. In 2018, the company established an ecosystem-wide loyalty program called 88VIP, giving members a 5% discount on more than 300 branded products and other membership privileges across Alibaba’s platforms. The program now has over 25 million members with an annual average spend of more than RMB 57,000.

Case study: Pet products find consistent growth through membership

One of the first sectors that benefited from membership loyalty programs is pet care. “Membership programs can bring in loyal consumers, and cultivate potential consumers,” said Claire Sun, the Onmi-SPT Associate Marketing Director of Royal Canin, a pet food brand with 1 million members and a decade-long presence on Tmall. She added that the company believes that “developing members through marketing and other means is important to the long-term growth of our business.”

Baby Care, an infant product brand, has operated brand memberships on Tmall since 2018. “We have always believed in membership operation as a new strategic growth point for the brand. So far, we have accumulated 15 million members through the brand membership program. I believe the brand membership system can help us better reach consumers,” said Yang Yang, vice president of the company.

As online retailers continue to navigate the current economic downturn, Alibaba is using the annual shopping festival to lay the groundwork to become more resilient. In a market that’s very used to online shopping and increasingly demands better quality services, the e-commerce giant hopes to support brands to secure steadier revenues through membership programs and recurring purchases.

Imagine a future scenario where patients don’t have to travel long distances or spend too much time talking to their doctors face-to-face, and where doctors can easily access their patients’ daily health data remotely, allowing patients, doctors, health plans and managers to remain seamlessly connected. 

Now, consumer electronics makers and scientists are seeing new possibilities for utilizing these tools — smartphones, apps, smartwatches — to help people live healthier lives though digital health treatment and detect problems early on. 

The growing trend of consumer digital health devices has contributed to the ongoing expansion of the digital health industry. The global digital health market recorded $145.57 billion in 2021, growing at a 16.9% compound annual growth rate from 2022 to 2028, according to US market research firm Vantage Market Research. 

The booming industry empowered more consumers to use health tools to monitor their own health. The health devices go beyond just tracking one’s walking steps, monitoring heart rates and calorie burns during a workout, or counting one’s sleeping hours. The tools can bring in a lot more in the future, potentially helping more people access quality healthcare and prevent costly surgeries and treatment by diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or other diseases early on. “Digital health is a cultural transformation that creates a new status quo, where the relationship between a doctor and a patient becomes an equal-level partnership,” said Dr. Bertalan Mesko, Director of The Medical Futurist Institute during an interview.

Dr. Timothy Weadon, Director of Hardware Engineering for Health from OPPO explained such trends to TechNode, saying, “One key aspect of change over the next five years will be bringing in clinically validated metrics and bridging the gap between some of the consumer device industry and some of the real medical industry.”

Weadon also believes that in the future, the telemedicine industry can be well promoted by consumer device companies with its high connectivity between the health data and digital health devices, and those devices will come in all forms, not just wearables. “I think that we’re going to start seeing more contactless care where you can have various monitors that follow your health metrics and quantify with you while having minimal interaction,” he added. 

New startups to revolutionize digital health 

From May to August, OPPO Research Institute Innovation Accelerator calls for innovative proposals from around the world, running regional demo events in Israel and India to find the most promising health companies to work with. In its innovative program, OPPO has selected ten startup teams for the regional roadshow in Tel Aviv, Israel. The candidates’ research areas also reflect the trend of digital health. OPPO saw two companies bringing innovative ideas to personal healthcare through smart wearable devices and the ability to integrate data analytics: Facense and Docdok Health.

Launched in 2015, Facense is an Israeli company that develops smart glasses with head-mounted sensors for continuous signal measurement to monitor metrics like head movement, steps, skin temperature, and blood pressure for applications in diverse health and wellness. For instance, according to the firm’s roadshow slide, its smart glasses can detect potential Covid symptoms based on those sensors.

Docdok Health is a company that provides CE-certified software as a medical device app that delivers data-driven personalized healthcare. The firm has a three-step concept: connecting healthcare providers with their patients as a basis for personalized healthcare, compiling meaningful patient data and running smart analytics to grasp patients’ full picture, and applying the gained insights to improve patient outcomes.

Among the winning teams at the Israel roadshow, OPPO saw a more practical-focused firm, Social Mind, which provides AI and evidence-based interventions for parents with autistic children, transforming autism care with high quality and wide-reaching.

“Digital Health is new and emerging. It needs community effort and engagement with other startups as well as health institutions.” In addition to innovative ideas, Weadon said he’s also looking for teams that bring creative ideas with a passion. “I think a good team is not only a team that works hard or has a good direction, but they need to have passion and motivation. I think it’s really important that people work with passion to develop the next thing.”

Preventive healthcare, find problems early on

OPPO is a strong advocate for proactive and preventive healthcare. It launched OPPO Research Institute Innovation Accelerator in May and has included digital health as one of the topics of the project, and the other is accessible technology, aiming to push the digitalization in health care, making health care services more personalized.

The company plans to achieve its preventive health goals by applying holistic design concepts to its digital health devices. “As an engineer, I think about things as a system,” said Weadon, “the point of the design is to have an impact to really enable and empower our users to have a better life and also to be able to go and enjoy the activities that they have and help them with those devices.”

When it comes to smartwatches, OPPO believes it’s about having real, accurate, clinically meaningful information and creating a full loop experience for users, so they can take that information and make decisions that lead to healthier lifestyles. And the firm builds its devices works in an invisible and nonintrusive way, hoping the users would set their devices and forget them.

Tuya Smart (NYSE: TUYA), a global IoT development platform service provider, listed its shares in Hong Kong on Tuesday. The new listing comes 15 months after the firm raised $915 million in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. 

Tuya is following an ongoing trend of US-listed Chinese companies seeking a dual listing in Hong Kong. Pricing its initial offering in Hong Kong at HK$19.30, the company plans to use the proceeds to enhance its IoT technologies and infrastructure, expand and enhance product offerings, and pursue strategic partnerships in the next five years. 

In the first quarter of 2022, Tuya has seen robust revenue growth in its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, bringing in $5.8 million – a yearly 147% increase – thanks to fast growth in its value-added services, such as monthly subscription revenue. The company’s newly launched smart private cloud product, Cube solution, has achieved important breakthroughs with new customers in the first half of this year. Despite the various challenges of the pandemic, Tuya is seeing strong growth in its enterprise-facing SasS service and overseas expansion. 

Founded in 2014, Tuya focuses on providing PaaS and SaaS to brands, OEMs, developers, and retail chains across a wide range of industries, including consumer electronics, hospitality, energy, lighting, and more.

Strong growth in SaaS

Many of Tuya’s SaaS customers are property developers and hotel owners looking to digitize their offerings. In May, Tuya reached a strategic partnership with China’s top mobile payment app Alipay. The two companies will jointly help hotels cut costs and increase efficiency by adding smart devices, hardware, and managing software. A Tuya-powered smart hotel aims to increase conversion rate by cutting down check-in and check-out times and increasing the interconnection between different devices in the hotel. 

Tuya also made substantial progress in its smart private cloud product, Cube solution. Several leading customers in different countries and industries have recognized the firm’s private cloud solution. Telkom Indonesia, the largest telecom operator in Indonesia with service coverage of over 55% of all Indonesian households and hundreds of millions of registered users, will use Cube solution to tap into the strong spending power of consumers in its network, accelerating the development of its Indonesian smart home appliance market. 

Overseas expansion

Tuya offers a holistic solution to companies around the world looking to digitize their products, including connectivity hardware, platform services, and app development. The firm has seen accelerated growth in partnering with overseas clients. 

For example, Malaysia’s leading hotel system integrator Core System Technologies is using Tuya’s hotel SaaS solution to create the first smart hotel in Malaysia. In Mexico, industrial lighting brand Dimas Lighting used Tuya’s software capabilities to complete the construction of its intelligent platform for commercial lighting and implemented several industrial lighting projects. 

Earlier this year, Tuya partnered with PEARL. GmbH, a leading German mail-order company and online channel for consumer electronics and smart home products. The two companies have agreed to work together to boost smart home adoption in the European market, introducing consumers to a wide range of smart home products, including light bulbs, smart sockets, and various other home appliances, all connected and controlled by a single mobile app developed on the Tuya platform.

Moreover, Tuya also announced a strategic partnership with Denver A/S, a leading European consumer electronics distributor, in June. The two companies will work together to promote a wide range of smart home products in Europe, including smart home and security products. 

The future 

Tuya was selected as a top 10 IoT supplier in IT research and consultancy firm Gartner’s 2020 report on “Competitive Landscape: IoT Platform Vendors.” Gartner analyzed hundreds of tech companies worldwide for the report. 

In 2021, Tuya was also included as a Sample Vendor in Gartner’s recently released report, Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Business Capabilities, which focuses on wide-scale digital change that will impact all industries and enterprises.

According to the report, the market penetration for digitally connected products is 1% to 5% of the target audience. Companies face many challenges in the process of adopting smart technologies, including internal frictions and the lack of a clear business strategy. This is where businesses like Tuya Smart can step in and help companies stay connected to customers, improve their products, and optimize their business models.

On March 31, the 2022 Asian Games, to be held in September in Hangzhou, released a series of digital franchises named “Asian Games in China” on Alipay mini-program, powered by AntChain’s digital collectible solution.

The lead characters of the three digital franchises are the mascots from China’s three Asian Games: “Pan Pan” of the 1990 Beijing Asian Games, “Five rams” (A Xiang, A He, A Ru, A Yi, and Le Yangyang) of the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, and “Memories of Jiangnan” (Congcong, Lianlian, and Chenchen) of the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.

Users can explore and buy these digital franchises through the Alipay mini-program “Smart Asian Games” and Topnod (鲸探), an Ant Group platform for collecting, exploring, and sharing digital collectibles. With a limited edition of 20,000 copies, each with a unique, immutable ID to ensure seamless copyrights protection.

With the rapid development in digital technologies, the global sports industry actively embraces digital transformation. In 2021, AntChain became the official global blockchain partner of UEFA Euro 2020 and UEFA National Team Football, with the winner’s scoring records uploaded to the blockchain for permanent storage for the first time.

According to Deloitte Global, NFTs or digital collectibles for sports media will generate more than $2 billion in 2022, about double the figure for 2021.

On Oct. 29, China’s Hubei Provincial Museum sold out all 10,000 digital pieces of the famous Sword of Goujian, a tin bronze sword owned about 2,500 years ago by the Chinese King Goujian of the Yue Kingdom (2032 to 222 B.C.).

The digitized sword is a detailed 3D model, allowing buyers to zoom, rotate, and view the fine prints and patterns. Wang Xianfu, the deputy director of the museum, told local news that digital arts can help promote traditional culture and allow people to study artifacts both online and offline.

Launched on an Alipay mini-program, AntChain Fan Points, the digital Goujian sword is one example of Chinese museums and galleries seeking blockchain tech to popularize prized ancient Chinese artifacts.

As the technology brand under Ant Group, AntChain offers innovative digital solutions built on technologies such as secure computation, Internet of things (IoT), and blockchain. In late October, it launched a new initiative called the Treasure Project, helping museums and galleries to publish and distribute selected collections in digital forms on its blockchain platform.

Now, museums that are owners of intellectual property, such as the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum and Hunan Provincial Museum, are working with AntChain to digitize their valuable holdings. Integrating technologies such as 3D modeling, IoT, and augmented reality, AntChain is also developing more interactive forms of these digital collections, letting users talk or engage with the digital arts.

Exploring how to make collections more attractive to the mobile-savvy younger generation, museums and galleries in China recognized this new trend not too long ago. In late June, Dunhuang Research Academy first worked with AntChain and issued two styles of digital artwork inspired by ancient murals in Dunhuang, a site in Gansu province known for exquisite paintings on cave walls. Buyers can set the artwork as a background for the payment interface in the Alipay app. Each reproduction was limited to 8,000 pieces and priced at 10 Alipay membership points and RMB 9.9 apiece.

Unlike the non-fungible token (NFT) trading craze elsewhere, in China, NFTs are viewed more as a form of technology derived from blockchain, rather than tradable digital assets. NFTs can host a unique piece of digital information on a blockchain that represents specific photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files. As each NFT is unique with an immutable and traceable ID, owners can easily prove and enjoy the copyrights they have.

Tech companies in China are exploring how NFT technology can benefit industries while discouraging speculative activities. According to Jiang Guofei, president of Intelligent Technology Business at Ant Group, “through the Treasure Project, AntChain will join hands with partners to promote the digital transformation of the culture industry, bringing new vitality to traditional cultures with innovative technologies.” On Oct. 31, a group of leading Chinese tech companies, including Ant Group, pledged to enforce more self-discipline on NFT-powered digital collectibles together with industry associations and academies.

Once users purchase digital artworks on Chinese platforms, usually priced below RMB 50 ($7.80), they aren’t allowed to resell the artworks. On Alipay, only after users have owned the digital art for at least 180 days, can they gift the artwork freely to an authenticated contact on the platform.

This article was supported by Ant Group. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Blockchain technology’s tamper-proof and distributed nature will be key to building mutual trust and enabling lower cost trade solutions that will allow small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to benefit from the coming economic recovery, Geoff Jiang of AntChain said recently.

In a speech at the Economist’s Global Trade Week conference, Jiang, President of Ant’s Intelligent Technology Business Group said that AntChain, an Ant Group technology brand, is using blockchain to simplify global trade for small businesses. The conference was held this year from June 28 to July 2.

AntChain’s solutions are already seeing wide global adoption, from cross-border trade, to artwork and food authentication, to the sporting world. 

European football authorities adopted the AntChain platform as their global blockchain partner for the Euro 2020 and 2024 championships, launching the football world’s first blockchain-enabled trophy, designed by Ant Group, at yesterday’s EURO 2020 final. Cristiano Ronaldo won the Alipay Top Scorer Gold Trophy with a record of five goals and one assist. The trophy, known in previous years as the “Golden Shoe,” carries a link to a blockchain record of goals scored during the tournament. Patrik Schick won the silver trophy, and Karim Benzema the bronze.

Blockchain can also be used to digitize the full end-to-end trade value chain, bringing certainty and trust to all participants along the chain, said Jiang during his speech at the Economist event. Blockchain technologies, including distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and encryption, can ensure trade data is trusted and tamperproof, as well as supporting automated payments and payment processing in business workflows, he said.

These features will lower the threshold to cross-border trade and allow more small businesses to take part in international trade. He cited the example of AntChain’s digital platform for international trade and financial services, called Trusple, short for “trust made simple.”

The platform allows trading partners to encode contracts, payments, and shipping data onto a secure ledger, automatically transferring money when shipping conditions are fulfilled. The system reduces the need for record-keeping and much complicated banking procedures, allowing merchants to save time and bolster efficiency. 

Ant Group also shared the story of one of Trusple’s first customers on its official Medium page.

Yuan Jing’s China-based company, Jingcan Glass Products, specializes in glass crystal ornaments and semi-finished products that are often incorporated into clothing and accessories. 

Most of her company’s clients are located overseas in markets such as India, Pakistan, Central America, South America, Europe, and the United States. In the past, Yuan had to bear the risk if customers failed to pay on time, as well as spending time on administrative steps like confirming orders, confirming invoices, and confirming bank remittances. 

With Trusple, Ant said, all she has to do is sign the contract, and the ensuring steps will run automatically. Trusple’s technology allows the buyer’s and seller’s banks to process payment settlements automatically through smart contracts. This process not only automates the intensive and time-consuming processes that banks traditionally conduct to track and verify trade orders, it also ensures information is tamper-proof.

“Business owners don’t need to understand blockchain hash rates or smart-contract oracles,” Jiang said. “Instead, they can focus on running their businesses more efficiently, while Trusple provides them with the guarantees and management to ensure timely payment and delivery.”

Jiang compared blockchain technology to global communications and trade revolutions such as the telegraph and shipping containers. Like these technologies, he said, the application of the blockchain to the real world economy will revolutionize international trade by transforming the global movement of all digital commerce.

“The future we are building will be exciting for SMEs. Buyers, sellers, and their banks will have near frictionless processes and settlements through smart contracts,” Jiang said. “The future will be more complex, but we believe technology can continue to improve to tackle the complexity.”

Editor’s note: This article was supported by Ant Group. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

COVID-19 has brought major changes to the world. As the global economic environment was being reshaped, digitalization also experienced unprecedented acceleration.

The 14th Asian Financial Forum, to be held online from Jan. 18 to 19, 2021, will gather more than 160 economists, political and business leaders, and financial and investment experts from all over the world to discuss global economic trends in post-pandemic recovery, sustainable development, responsible and innovative investment, financial technology, 5G, venture capital, and asset and wealth management.

The “Dialogue of Tomorrow” session will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on banking, insurance, financial technology, healthcare, and tech giants. Blockchain technology, central bank digital currency, wealth management technology, green finance, and inclusive finance will be among topics discussed in panels and fireside talks.

The Asian Financial Forum will offer perspectives from major financial institutions including AXA, Credit Suisse Group, FWD, HSBC Holdings, Standard Chartered Bank, and UBS Wealth Management; venture investors 500 Startups, Gobi Partners, and Eli Lilly; investment firms Calvert Impact Capital, and Dao Capital; and experienced entrepreneurs.

Notable Speakers:

Paul Romer | 2018 Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences

Paul Romer, economist and policy entrepreneur, is a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences and University Professor in Economics at New York University. He has spent his career at the intersection of economics, innovation, technology, and urbanization, working to speed up human progress.

Romer received the Nobel Prize for his work “integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis,” which integrated ideas and innovation into economic models for the first time, making clear the societal benefits possible when people join together and collaborate in new ways.

Stephen A. Schwarzman | Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Blackstone

Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Blackstone, a leading global investment firm with $584 billion in AUM (as of Sept. 30, 2020) and businesses in private equity, real estate, hedge funds, credit, infrastructure, and life sciences.

In both business and philanthropy, he dedicates himself to tackling big problems with transformative solutions. His major gifts have helped establish a new center at the University of Oxford to redefine the study of the humanities for the 21st century, create a college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, build a first-of-its-kind student center at Yale, renovate and expand the New York Public Library, and found an international fellowship program, Schwarzman Scholars, at Tsinghua University in Beijing to educate future leaders about China.

Lei Zhang | Founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital Management

Lei Zhang is CEO of Hillhouse Capital Management. In 2005, Zhang founded Hillhouse, an investment platform that partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build businesses and position them for long-term success. Hillhouse works with companies in the technology, healthcare, consumer, and business services sectors.

Zhang is deeply involved in educational endeavors. He earned his M.B.A and M.A. in International Relations from Yale University and is a member of the Yale Board of Trustees. He also serves as Chair of the Yale Asia Development Council. Before attending Yale, he earned his B.A. in Economics from Renmin University in China, where he is Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He is a founding Trustee and Chairman of the Development Council of Westlake University, China’s first graduate-level university dedicated to advancing research in the basic sciences. Zhang was also a founding donor of the Westlake University Endowment.

Alexis Ohanian | Co-founder of Reddit & Seven Seven Six

Alexis Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit, Initialized Capital, and a bestselling author based in San Francisco, California.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005, Alexis and his co-founder Steve Huffman started the Reddit website. The site quickly took off. In 2006, the two sold it to Conde Nast. In 2015, Ohanian returned as executive chair of the newly-independent Reddit and helped lead a turnaround. It is now the third-largest US website, and sixth largest in the world. In June 2020, in solidarity with the national outcry for social justice, and in an unprecedented act of leadership, Ohanian stepped down from his seat on Reddit’s Board of Directors and urged his company to seat a Black candidate in his place.

In 2016, he and Garry Tan co-founded Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that has over $500 million under management and a portfolio with $36 billion in market value so far. In mid-2020, Ohanian left Initialized Capital to work more closely on pre-seed investment efforts.

Click here to learn more about other speakers.

Business matchmaking opportunities and fintech zone

The AFF Deal Flow Matchmaking Session will provide investors and project owners from all over the world with a one-on-one meeting platform. The InnoVenture zone will support startups by building a platform for startups, as well as connecting international investors and potential partners.

The “Fintech Showcase”  and the FintechHK Startups Zone will introduce the latest financial innovation development and new-generation business concepts from more than 100 global financial technology solution providers and startups, covering financial management technology, payment technology, insurance technology, regulatory technology, quantitative and computational transactions, personal finance, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, big data, cloud computing, and network security.

Use promo code JBE284 to redeem your discount at registration checkout. Link to register: https://register.eventxtra.com/9bdb1402-cca9-4bbd-ac20-d21cd4d13b11

After eight months working with Fintech leaders and experts, global software engineers, computer graphic designers, digital artists, event and media professionals, Hong Kong Fintech Week (HKFW) will attract over 25,000 attendees from over 70 economies and present you the year’s most-anticipated industry event, with exceptional virtual content and business networking opportunities.

What to expect from the year’s most-anticipated Fintech event?

1. Hear from some of the greatest minds on the planet

Over 350 Global CEOs, founders, investors, and regulators will join from over 35 economies to share their visions and insights on what’s happening in the industry.

Participants will hear from some of the most influential global leaders, some of whom rarely appear at Asian conferences, such as:

You can even meet Sophia, the world’s most famous humanoid robot, by Hong Kong’s Hanson Robotics!

2. Dive into 100+ hours of content with 180+ sessions and 50+ workshops

Participants will have access to five live streaming channels over three days of the main conference, packed with world-class content on important industry developments such as:

• Virtual banks and a new generation of online insurers
• Regtech, Insurtech, and Wealthtech companies
• The evolution of central bank digital currencies and trade finance innovation
• Digital assets and blockchain applications in capital markets
• Artificial intelligence and big data and their latest applications in Finance
• Innovations in payments technology and remittances
• Open banking and open APIs
• Investments in Fintech startups and corporate VC funding trends
• Mainland China’s Techfin giants and unicorns
• Fintech development in the Greater Bay Area

No need to worry about missing a session, as you can re-watch all content on demand within 30 days after the event.

3. Explore and watch demos for 175+ Fintech startups among the 500+ Exhibitors

Connect with over 500 prominent exhibitors globally and learn about their cutting edge technology products and solutions across the financial services industry. Major sponsors include the Strategic Partner AMTD Group and Diamond sponsors Citi, Confirmation by Thomson Reuters, and OSL, as well as many global innovators.

Participants will also meet the 170+ most innovative and fast-growing Fintech startups across the world and seven finalists of the FintechHK Global Competition and witness the final pitches and the birth of the winners!

4. Not just another webinar

The virtual Hong Kong Fintech Week 2020 will deliver a superior remote conference experience. Trying to find the right business contacts among 25,000+ attendees seem impossible—but an AI-powered digital platform will solve this problem, bringing the virtual content and business networking experience to an unprecedented level across multiple devices from your home or office.

5. Network with 25,000 attendees globally and enjoy our lifestyle events!

While nothing can compare with face-to-face meetings, the HKFW organizer will offer efficient virtual networking channels to meet like-minded attendees from across the globe and achieve your business goals with our AI-powered matchmaking event app. Drop a message and you will be able to make meaningful connections with thousands of potential buyers, clients, investors, startups, and regulators!

Don’t miss this chance to keep up with the latest Fintech trends around the world and be a part of the global Fintech community. The fully virtual event will be held from Nov. 2 to 6 in Hong Kong. For a full overview of the program and speakers, visit www.fintechweek.hk.

Editor’s note: This article is supported by Hong Kong Fintech Week. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Artificial Intelligence is set to drive the future. We are now moving into the so called fourth industrial revolution, led by cutting-edge technologies, and AI is the core driver in this equation.

Back in June, we announced that TechNode Global is joining hands with iFlyek to boost the community of thriving startups and AI technology applications across Asia. Since then, TechNode Global and iFlytek have been organizing an AI-focused series of free webinars and will be hosting a Global AI Challenge in the Asia region. 

In partnership with iFlytek, TechNode will host the semifinals of the 2020 iFlytek AI Developer Competition on September 25 at 2 p.m. (GMT+8). Eight startups will pitch and share how they leverage AI to make the world a better place. RSVP below to reserve a place in the audience. Alternatively, we will live-stream the event on TechNode Global’s Facebook page. Stay tuned!

Exclusive Perks

If you are looking to build your solution using iFlytek’s speech synthesis, speech recognition, and natural language processing technology, feel free to sign up for iFlytek Activate credits today and take advantage of this exclusive offer.

TechNode’s community members are eligible for the following iFlytek offerings as part of the Activate Program: 
• One year of iFlytek Promotional Credits (up to $1,000) 
• TechNode Global Exclusive Offer (up to $3,000) 

Instructions 

1) Sign up for an iFlytek account
2) Check your user console and click the “Apply for more” button under the “Remaining Service Volume” field 
3) Fill in the Redeem Code (TechNodeGlobal2020) and submit a request 

For further inquiries, email us with the subject line “Inquiry about the iFlytek Activate Program”. 

TechNode Global, the international arm of TechNode, announced its partnership with Chinese AI Giant iFLYTEK on June 8, 2020, aiming to boost the community of thriving startups and AI technology applications across Asia.

Tapping the network of TechNode Global’s tech and innovation ecosystem across China and the Asia-Pacific region, the partnership provides various localized resources of AI technology by iFLYTEK’s open platform for the Asia market. The goal is to foster AI adoption among companies and help them draw on external resources in addition to their regional network.

With expertise and flagship events such as Tech Insights webinar and ORIGIN conferences in the region, TechNode Global will initiate a new AI-focused series of webinars and events in 2020 and will jointly host a Global AI Challenge with iFLYTEK in the Asia region. Meanwhile, iFLYTEK, with its upcoming open platform, will provide numerous resources to the region and dev-ops communities, helping companies in adopting AI into the daily operation of their businesses.

With a vast network in global innovation and entrepreneurship, TechNode Global is a spin-off of TechNode, aiming to be the #1 pan-Asia tech-focused platform with a focus on Pan-Asia cross-border business, events, and tailor-made marketing solutions for startups, VCs, corporates, and other industry pioneers. Being at the center of a unique worldwide tech ecosystem of startups, venture capital firms, industry resources, and corporate partners, TechNode Global supports and connects China’s startup ecosystem with the rest of the world, and facilitates interaction and cross-pollination between China and APAC.

“There is great synergy between iFLYTEK Open Platform and TechNode Global,” said Qi Shuxuan, general manager of iFLYTEK Open Platform. “We hope to strengthen this technology and innovation partnership with TechNode through the real-world application of our AI-powered technologies in this international strategy. The goal is to achieve cross-border integration of AI applications in various fields, generating positive energy and impact. We believe with the combined data, algorithms, expertise, and mutual support from both iFLYTEK and TechNode, we can empower our customers.”

“TechNode Global will continue to play an important role in supporting the tech startup ecosystem in Asia. The global expansion of China’s innovation is beneficial to the overseas innovation environment and TechNode Global platform is committed to facilitate the connection between China and the rest of the world, including Southeast Asia,” said Dr. Gang Lu, founder and CEO of TechNode.

In partnership with

Editor’s note: This article is first published on TechNode Global by Shi Hui Tan in partnership with Huawei Assistant. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Huawei recently showed off new, Asia-specific content that’s just rolled out to Huawei Assistant.

Keen to give it a whirl, TechNode’s editor, David Cohen, gave a review of the Chinese version of Huawei Assistant and Huawei Ability Gallery at our Shanghai office while our TechNode Global (Singapore) country manager, Shi Hui Tan, visited a Huawei store in the city-state to check out the international version.

If you can’t play the video above, click HERE.

Huawei is facing a big challenge outside of China where, as was reported in 2019, new versions of its smartphones lose access to popular applications and services including Google Play, Google Maps and the Gmail app. 

To overcome this, Huawei is launching its own version of these, including the revamped Huawei Assistant and the new Huawei Ability Gallery. It’ll be interesting to see if the big-name Southeast Asia apps will sign up for the Huawei Ability Gallery – it’ll be a crucial factor for Huawei to stand up against the competition. 

In partnership with

Editor’s note: This article is first published on TechNode Global in partnership with Huawei Assistant. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

How many apps are there on your phone? And of those, how many do you use pretty much every day?

I’d bet that, apart from games, it’s not that many. So wouldn’t it be useful to have quick access to your most loved and most useful apps in one place, with just one swipe?

How many apps are there on your phone? And of those, how many do you use pretty much every day?

I’d bet that, apart from games, it’s not that many. So wouldn’t it be useful to have quick access to your most loved and most useful apps in one place, with just one swipe?

That’s basically the idea behind Huawei Assistant, which puts your most essential apps and services – like sports results, stocks, and travel itineraries – onto smart cards that are accessible with one swipe.

Huawei says app developers get more views for their content or more clicks for their services by laying them out in cards inside Huawei Assistant. Globally there are 400 million monthly active users of Huawei phones, boosted by shipments last year of 240 million.

This points to the changing face of home screens across the phone industry as laid-out, real-time, and easily accessible content becomes more important. Device makers are betting that people – as they spend more time on personal devices rather than consuming media in more traditional ways – want to focus on their most used apps while also doing less tapping. For example, within Huawei Assistant, a user can see the weather, traffic reports, and upcoming reminders – all the crucial info they need within the next hour or so – in one glance, each ensconced in their own cards, all scrollable on one screen. No need for opening or closing any apps.

The ongoing evolution is so vital to the mobile industry that it already has a name: the “minus one screen.” And Huawei Assistant is a prime example of why it makes sense.

As well as these widgets, this handy screen also has an AI search bar, helping you find items on your phone as well as answers from across the web. Plus, it has shortcuts so you can access your most used actions with just one tap.

To help folks make the most of Huawei Assistant, there’s Huawei Ability Gallery, where you can find a bunch of new apps primed with smart cards.

New content

At a virtual press conference last week for Malaysia’s launch of the Huawei P40 series of phones, the company showed off new, Asia-specific content that’s just rolled out to Huawei Assistant.

One of these is a stocks card from Investing.com, which looks like this:

And this is how it looks on the same Huawei P40 when dark mode isn’t activated:

The smart card is customizable so that it shows the stocks you want to keep an eye on:

Plus, now there’s football results courtesy of the popular 365 Scores:

You can configure your teams to watch, from leagues across the globe.

Coming soon to Asia are smart cards for flight bookings, hotel reservations, taxi-hailing, and food orders.

These Huawei Assistant smart cards are not confined to your phone – they’ll appear on your Huawei TV or tablet as well, if you own those, exactly as you set them up on your phone.

Instant access buttons

Continuing with the theme of customization, Huawei Assistant has shortcut buttons, which appear above the AI Tips, where you can set up four icons for the most important things you need to jump to.

If you’d rather not configure your own, the phone will suggest a few buttons that it thinks you’ll need most often.

You’ll notice a fifth button – that allows you to browse a lot more handy shortcuts to tools and service on your phone and around the web.

Another useful card within Huawei Assistant is the AI Tips one, which shows things like notifications, reminders, or phone usage info.

Plus there’s Newsfeed, giving you real-time and popular news stories based on the language and region settings of your device.

And this is what the AI search bar looks like:

Huawei Assistant is fixing a problem that cropped up as soon as apps went mainstream – that all your useful information and fun content got siloed across numerous apps. Now’s the time to tap less but get more done.

Get more information about Huawei Assistant here.

Editor’s note: This article was sponsored by BMW China. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

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As autonomous driving technology is bringing up reformation of traditional automotive industry, BMW is actively adopting its innovation strategies. Opportunities go together with significant challenges, “The complexity of Chinese road condition is much higher than that of western countries, which requires designated solutions.” Peter Riedl said during an interview at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2019, Riedl heads up the Tech Office China under the BMW China R&D umbrella, which is the biggest R&D footprint outside Germany. Besides, he also mentioned other influence factors such as traffic laws applied by different regions, thorough communications and understanding are certainly needed.

BMW R&D Centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang structured the biggest research network outside of Germany, BMW’s headquarter. These R&D centers support cutting-edge topics like Electric Vehicle, Autonomous Driving, Connected Cars, etc. BMW Group stepped into Autonomous Driving R&D in the year of 2006. Currently, over one hundred tech experts in Beijing and Shanghai are striving together with their counterparts in BMW HQ and other European R&D teams to guarantee 7/24 efforts  on this topic.

BMW Group has become the first foreign OEM to be awarded the license by the Shanghai Government to test autonomous driving cars, which could be spotted in Shanghai International Automobile City. And to fasten the development of autonomous driving technology, BMW works closely with Chinese technology companies. In July, 2019, BMW announced its partnership with ChinaUnicom, Tencent and NavInfo (a leading digital map solution provider).

Except for co-operation with tech giants, BMW Group never stopped seeking the rising stars. Starting from 2015, BMW Group set up the BMW Startup Garage program, which is the venture client unit within BMW to provide startups a gateway into the multi-trillion dollar automotive industry. The BMW Startup Garage looks to become the early adopting venture client of top startups that can make a difference to innovation at the BMW Group. There are now more than 60 startups having become the alumnus of this program with their promising projects.

“The borderline between technology startups and automotive enterprises is blurring.” Said Riedl. He mentioned some of the cases he worked on with tech startups to TechNode reporter, for example the experiment of long-distance remote control under 5G networks with AI technologies.

“China market has always been highly-valued by BMW Group as the biggest single market for us and with its leading position now regarding autonomous driving technologies.” Based on a market forecast research conducted by IHS Markit, China would contribute over 14 million sales volume of autonomous driving cars by 2040, which is about 44% of global market share. China is highly possible to become the biggest market for autonomous driving cars.

“BMW Group always has continued and will continue expand China market and adapt its open innovation strategy here as we always did.”

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While global expectations are high on the potential for 5G technology to fast-track the development of cutting-edge sectors such as autonomous driving and artificial intelligence, a Hong Kong telecom executive has warned that superfast mobile networks could be more vulnerable to cyberattacks than their predecessors.

“The 5G systems are built around cloud-based technology and functions, so the cybersecurity threat is there. We have to protect our networks better than before,” KL Ho, senior vice-president of strategic wireless technology at Hong Kong Telecom (HKT), told TechNode on the sidelines of the electronicAsia trade fair in the special administrative region last month.

Cybersecurity obstacles

The debate over 5G and cybersecurity has become a global geopolitics issue, involving countries including the US, China, and EU members, as well as Chinese gear makers such as Huawei and ZTE.

The US, along with some of its closest allies such as Australia and Japan, has banned Huawei from participating in their 5G network rollouts. It is also actively lobbying other countries, especially EU nations, to exclude Huawei equipment from their 5G upgrades.

Though no EU nations have complied with the US’ call so far, the group published a report earlier this month warning that “hostile third countries” may force 5G suppliers to facilitate cyberattacks serving their own national interests. The reports’ findings echoed US government sentiment that Beijing could use a 2017 Chinese law to force Huawei to hand over network data to the government.

State-backed actors are perceived to pose the most serious threat, as they “can have the motivation, intent and most importantly the capability to conduct persistent and sophisticated attacks on the security of 5G networks,” according to the report.

Ho, however, believes that no “decent“ 5G equipment suppliers would assist their governments in conducting cyberattacks against other nations because such behavior would discredit them.

“The point is once they were found with solid evidence that they ever engaged in such conduct, they will fail in no time and nobody will trust them anymore,” said Ho.

HKT is undergoing a comprehensive tender process for vendors that intend to provide equipment for its 5G networks, Ho told TechNode, adding that the company’s principle of choosing 5G suppliers is “vendors with the best performance both technically and commercially.”

Regulatory challenges

HKT, the biggest wireless carrier in terms of subscribers in the special autonomous region, plans to launch 5G services in the city in the second quarter of 2020.

Ho confirmed that the release of 5G in Hong Kong had been delayed by six months to one year, compared with other economies.

In June 2018, HKT called on the local government to make “radical changes” to its spectrum policies and management to avoid “disastrous consequences” for the city’s role as a regional telecom hub.

The company secured the 4.9 GHz band spectrum for the provision of 5G last month from the city’s Office of the Communications Authority.

New opportunities

Ho believes that 5G will bring plenty of opportunities for startups to assist telecom operators in fields such as network construction and maintenance.

With the automation of 5G networks, he said, “we can not rely on engineers to manage the networks manually. We have to rely on some sort of artificial intelligence solutions.”

“Those are the areas where startups can bring in their expertise to help operators to build those solutions.”

With contributions from Coco Gao

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Companies in the telecom industry generate, process, and manage large amounts of data on a daily basis, yet, many of these processes are still done in an inefficient and insecure way.

Chinese blockchain startup QLC Chain is using blockchain to create a more trusted and safe environment for telecommunication services.

Chris Zhao, senior research and development lead at Chinese blockchain startup QLC Chain, spoke at the electronicAsia trade fair in Hong Kong earlier this month on how blockchain can be applied in the industry.

Combating fraud

Telephone scams and text messaging fraud has become prevalent around the world, especially in China. Blockchain, a decentralized technology that can be used to record any exchange of goods, contracts, transactions, could work as a means of fraud prevention.

Hong Kong-based QLC Chain sees the potential of the technology in providing a more secure and trusted environment for communication services. The company claims to be the world’s first infrastructure-level public chain with embedded telecom service capabilities. QLC Chain’s Counter Telecom Fraud Platform, launched this May, aims to help enterprise clients that use one-way short message services to combat scams and fraud.

According to Zhao, each SMS is recorded on the QLC Chain as a transaction, which also makes it faster for SMS-based billing and clearance.

The company has partnered with Shenzhen-listed cloud communication provider Montnets Group, whose clients include Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

If a bank has an account on the QLC Chain network, the user can track the ‘transaction’ on the blockchain to verify the authenticity of the sender and the text message, Zhao explained.

QLC Chain uses a different ledger structure to the traditional blockchain.

Through its unique dual consensus protocol combined with block-lettuce architecture, a form of DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), the company claims its blockchain scalability has reached 3,500 transactions per second (TPS).

Decentralized WeChat

The company is also working on a hardware solution for enhancing the privacy and security of messaging services. Confidant, launched a year ago, is a device that can be paired with an app on users’ smartphones. It provides encrypted messaging and private email services.

It is not the same as the much-hyped blockchain phone, Zhao said.

Currently, most blockchain handsets out there focus on the implementation of cryptocurrency wallet functions, whereas Confidant is trying to use a blockchain to provide secure communication channels for enterprise clients.

Zhao explains further that Confidant helps build a secure peer-to-peer network. The messaging or email account configuration settings, the content, and the data are transmitted via and stored with encryption in the hardware.

5G challenges and opportunities

There aren’t many blockchain companies in the telecommunication space at present.

“We can expect many opportunities upon the arrival of 5G, given that faster and more reliable connection can support more devices,” said Zhao. However, it also presents significant challenges for Internet of Things (IoT) blockchain firms like QLC Chain, he said.

With 5G, there will likely be more IoT devices on a network, which collectively will generate more data. This will pose a big challenge for blockchain-based systems.

It is, therefore, crucial to have a solution that can “prune” the ledger, Zhao said. The process removes non-critical and less relevant data from the blockchain so that it has a lighter footprint.

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Automated smart manufacturing plants where machines communicate with each other are no longer a thing of the future—they already exist in the US and China. As industrial sensors get cheaper and smarter, more of them are being deployed in factories and warehouses to track and analyze copious amounts of data. There exists a huge potential for blockchain-based solutions to further improve on automation levels in these industrial scenarios by ensuring machines are sharing the information with each other in an efficient and reliable way.

Pavel Romanenko, head of marketing and partnerships at Berlin-based startup ZkSystems, spoke at the electronicAsia trade fair in Hong Kong on Sunday on the links between the technology and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The fair ran from October 13 to 16.

Track, connect, and validate

Factories could be among the first industrial areas to feature fully automated machine-to-machine communication, which enables the network of things, including sensors, cameras, and industrial equipment to run more efficiently and cost-effectively.

“The most exciting thing about blockchain is that it enables automation and simplification of business rules because they can be autonomously executed by machines,” said during his speech Romanenko.

According to Romanenko, to enable automated communication, three main solutions are needed—smart sensors to track data, adequate network technology to connect a large number of devices, and a blockchain-based system to validate the integrity of the data.

ZkSystems runs a scalable blockchain protocol tailored for IIoT. The firm was recently selected to be part of UC Berkeley’s Blockchain Xcelerator program and is working with leading global companies such as Bosch, Siemens, and Oracle.

Sensors are smart enough to record and track data collected from the device and are fast becoming cheap enough to deploy at scale. With the impending 5G roll-out, connectivity will soon hit a level allowing thousands of devices to ‘speak’ to each other by way of communicating the information recorded. Another piece of the puzzle is the technology that can help create systems to validate data collected in an automated manner so that businesses can ensure the data is tamper-proof and reliable. This, Romanenko said, can be solved by blockchain.

In Germany, leading hardware and electronics manufacturers are quickly moving into the burgeoning blockchain space. There is a slew of startup projects still in stealth mode as the industry is still developing, he added.

For instance, German multinational Bosch is working with ZkSystems on a blockchain-based IIoT solution for its hydraulic power units, used in a wide variety of manufacturing applications. 

Some of the industrial manufacturers are choosing to rent out their equipment instead of selling it in one go. The equipment-as-a-service model is not only considered a more profitable model but another reason is manufacturers are able to collect usage data throughout the lifecycle of the equipment.

A blockchain-based enables a more precise and flexible payment model that is usage-based, Romanenko said. ZkSystems’ blockchain protocol allows businesses to keep track of data collected from the sensors such as the intensity of the hydraulic cycles of the power units and monitor each payment-triggering event in real-time. With blockchain, the process can be automated and eliminates manual audits of equipment usage.

IIoT in China and Asia

Germany is one of the leading manufacturing and industrial hubs in the world with an abundance of companies spanning the automotive, home appliance, electronics manufacturing sector, but there is another rising manufacturing economy—China.

There has been a lot of enthusiasm in the Chinese blockchain space, and large tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu are experimenting and adopting related solutions to improve business processes.

Romanenko told TechNode in an interview that, similar to Germany, there is a demand for alternatives to centralized solutions in China. However, in Asia, it is much easier for software companies to gain direct access to hardware companies. Compared to Germany, the Chinese ecosystem of hardware companies is much larger and more diverse and it can be advantageous for blockchain’s development in terms of IIoT. There are countless small and medium-sized hardware enterprises in China. Romanenko highlighted the country’s 3D printing industry as an example—home to hundreds of companies, it provides blockchain projects with vital opportunities to work and have access to hardware companies as potential clients and partners.

There is also an interest among German companies to work with their counterparts in Asia, Romanenko said. He believes that blockchain technology can also serve as an enabler for more international collaboration between companies because of its ability to enable trust and ensure the reliability of data. 

If there is a way to validate the source of data and do so automated manner, companies don’t have to rely on their business partner’s capability of managing and handling data on the other side of the world. “You just have to trust the algorithm, which validates the data,” Romanenko said.

“In the future,” Romanenko added, “machines will not only communicate with each other but actually make deals and do business with each other.”

Hangzhou audience saluting attendees at parallel sessions in Tokyo, Jakarta, and Sydney during the 2019 Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship (Image credit: Alibaba)

After working in the technology sector for more than a decade, Miffy Chen still remembers the early days of her career when she was the only female on her team and was constantly bombarded with the question “Are you really a computer science major?”

Now as a vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Alibaba AI Labs, Chen proves women are just as capable as men, even in technical fields where the latter are overrepresented.

Women in various roles from business owners to researchers are a force to be reckoned with in China and around the world. With female labor force participation at around 63% in China, the country’s women contributed 41% of GDP in 2017, a higher percentage than in most other countries including the US, according to a report by Deloitte China and women’s professional support network Lean In China.

Improving the economic empowerment of women could have more significant impacts on a global scale. Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, spoke in a video message during the Alibaba 2019 Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurs held on August 28 that the global economy could add $28 trillion by 2025 if women participated in the labor force to the same degree as men.

At the Hangzhou conference (picture above), which was created to hold dialogues on challenges and opportunities faced by females in different cultures and regions, we talked to women entrepreneurs and those in the tech sector to see how their lives are being impacted by the ongoing changes.

Woman in the digital era

Rapid advances in digital technologies and artificial intelligence are shaping China’s economy as well as its landscape for innovation. Several speakers at the event have already identified the transformation and development of technology as a major force in driving gender equality and empowering female entrepreneurs in China.

Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma, who has been very vocal about hiring females, told a packed house at the conference that women are going to be very powerful in the 21st century as people focus more on their wisdom and experience.

With their distinctive characteristics, including empathy, altruism, inclusion, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail, female entrepreneurs are reshaping how the world functions in the digital era, he added.

Ma believes women can integrate their distinctive characteristics into the design and development of products and services that would bring more “warmth” to the world.

Ma also pointed out that, based on purchase trends of female shoppers on Alibaba’s platforms, women often shop from multiple categories such as menswear, toys, and home supplies. Such pattern demonstrates that when women shop, they tend to shop for the entire family.

In addition to being a consumption power, women are also expected to make great advancements in the workplace.

More jobs will be created for women in the AI era. Take the voice assistant industry, for example, most AI-powered voice assistants, including Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, use female- voices, Miffy Chen points out. This is creating a new position for female voiceover artists.

Although the research and development units of AI assistant services are overwhelmingly staffed by male engineering teams, around half of design and testing teams at Alibaba are women.

Women are also much needed in AI tagging, a position that teaches machines to pronounce a word, to talk, and to identify pictures, in a similar way to how a mother teaches their kids to learn, Chen noted.

CTO of Cainiao Logistics Gu Xuemei (L), Alibaba Group Vice President Miffy Chen (R) (Image credit: TechNode/Emma Lee)

Gu Xuemei, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba’s Cainiao Logistics, believes her gender has had minimal impact on her career.

“Technology is a broad term. R&D workers at tech firms are usually stereotyped as male, although it’s improving,” Gu said. “In the future, the ratio of females in the tech sector will be higher given that creation and imagination, which females are known for, are two desired traits of future tech workers.”

Chen and Gu are far from the only females that have climbed to the top of the corporate ladder. An increasing number of women are heading senior positions in China’s tech firms as well as within the research field. For example, at Alibaba, one-third of the partners are women.

Self-made businesswomen

Chen Yan and her guide dog (Image credit: TechNode/Emma Lee)

Forty-year-old Chen Yan started her Taobao store in 2015 as the first blind female piano tuner in China. Now, she has trained nearly 100 blind people who would have little means of supporting themselves otherwise.

Chen was born with several visual impairments and completely lost it all in a car accident in life. Being blind, life has not been easy. “I wouldn’t have started a business if I had other choices because entrepreneurship is a tough journey,” she said.

For Chen, an online presence lowered the threshold for starting her own business, saving on costs when operating offline outlets and reaching more customers. In addition, AI-powered optical character recognition technology available on Taobao makes it easier for her and those in the blind community to shop and do business online. The technology reads the product description out loud, thus eliminating the need to read the text.

Ma Lingmin, a post-95 college graduate from southwestern China’s Yunnan province, spotted her entrepreneurial potential in livestreaming farm products. Over the past year, Ma Lingmin visited 36 counties and villages, helping farmers in poverty-stricken areas to sell their quality produce at decent profit margins.

Famous for her fruit-peeling skills, Ma Lingmin helps the farmers living in a village located in the mountainous Mengzi City to sell hundreds of tons of yellow ginger, native produce that was once very difficult to sell to the rest of the world. One of Ma Lingmin’s beneficiaries is Xiong Yilin, a disabled farmer who is the sole dependent of the family. Xiong is building up a new house for his family, instead of living under the same roof with livestock.

Ma Lingmin has attracted five million fans on Taobao by sharing beautiful rural landscapes as well as local treasures straight from mother nature, such as plums and sweet cucumbers.

Livestreaming is an effective marketing tool to introduce and recommend products to potential consumers. According to Taobao, sales generated by livestreaming on the platform exceeded RMB100 billion in 2018.

“Working six hours for 25 days per month as a livestreamer is stressful and needs lots of perseverance,” said Miffy Chen.

Similar to Jack Ma, Uju Uzo-Ojinnaka’s entrepreneurial journey started from her dedication to facilitating the online sales of peanuts, her hometown’s specialty. The Nigerian was hit by frustration in 2017 after she failed to find enough peanut suppliers in her country, the biggest peanut producer on the African continent. Inspired by the entrepreneurial story of Jack Ma, she started Traders of Africa (TOFA), now one of the most prolific online B2B shopping platforms in Africa.

A report, called 2019 Global Research Report of Female Entrepreneurship & Employment, unveiled by Alibaba Research and China Women’s University Research during the event concluded that many female entrepreneurs are finding it easier to run their own businesses in the digital age. Ordinary women, even without a background or any special selling points, can also make similar achievements.

49.3% of the entrepreneurs on Alibaba’s platforms are female, according to the report. The percentage of women shop owners on Alibaba’s online global retail platform AliExpress reached 53.7%。

Instead of focusing on niche and high-quality products that are particularly well suited to vertical markets, the e-commerce businesses of female entrepreneurs on Alibaba platforms are scaling up across sectors at exponential speed.

Industry-wise, female shop owners are expanding to traditionally male-dominated sectors, such as car maintenance, auto parts/accessories, and smart electronics.

The average turnover of Taobao stores run by female entrepreneurs surpassed RMB 200,000 in 2018, doubling the figure for 2014 and 30% higher than that for stores by male owners in the same period, the report added.

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Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma said on Wednesday that distinctive characteristics are helping female entrepreneurs in the digital era. These traits include empathy, altruism, inclusion, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail.

Woman entrepreneurs are not only adapting to the quickly evolving global landscape but also becoming the drivers behind fundamental changes, Ma noted as he addressed a crowded room at the 2019 Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship in Hangzhou.

“The digital era is a challenge for everybody. While everybody is equally scared and worried, the right way for us is to embrace the era by changing ourselves,” Ma added.

Digital technologies are shaping the modern world, and female figures are becoming a major force in pushing through change. The state has held for years that woman makes up 55% of entrepreneurs in the vaguely defined field of “internet businesses.”

Using Alibaba as an example, Ma explained that women make up 50% of the company’s design and customer service teams.

More than one-third of Alibaba’s founders were women while a similar percentage hold senior management roles. Women are well-represented within Alibaba. Ma said women employees were a major force behind Alibaba’s high-speed growth rate in the beginning years.

With the goal of encouraging women to pursue their professional and personal ambitions, Ma was among a lineup of speakers that included prominent female figures including Melinda Gates, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations undersecretary and executive director of UN Women, Japanese Parliament member Tomomi Inada, Olympic diving champion Guo Jingjing, model, and fashion designer Lv Yan.

Speaking to participants via video message, Gates drove home the message that investing in women’s economic empowerment, including entrepreneurship, is “not only the right thing to do but the smart thing to do.” She emphasized the global economy could add $28 trillion by 2025 if women participated in the labor force to the same degree as men.

“When we remove the barriers that prevent women from participating in the economy, the benefits don’t extend just to the women themselves. They extend to families, communities, even entire countries,” said Gates.

Tomomi Inada, a member of the Japanese Parliament, led a group of female politicians joining the Hangzhou event and offered insights on how to promote gender equality in her culture.

“In the political world, I have always believed that men and women should be promoted solely based on their ability,” she said. “That is true in a sense. However, this year marks my fifteenth year as a politician, and I have come to feel that ability alone is not enough to help women advance in the political field. That’s why I set up a parliamentary association with my friends here today [to promote this idea]”.

This year’s theme –“The World She Made”– highlighted the positive changes the world has seen and will experience, thanks to the female trailblazers who dared to break the glass ceiling they faced.

For the first time, the biannual conference was held simultaneously in four different cities around the world–Hangzhou, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Sydney–to allow participants to hold deep-dive discussions on issues and progress particular to their region and culture.

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Editor’s note: This article is produced in cooperation with AirAsia and Gobi Partners. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

China-based venture capital Gobi Partners and AirAsia’s cargo and logistics arm Teleport –previously known as RedCargo– announced on July 16 plans to co-invest $10.6 million in the B round of Malaysian e-commerce and parcel delivery platform EasyParcel.

The funding will be used to expand the startup’s offering for small-and-medium-sized enterprise customers in existing markets like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

While the deal, announced at Gobi Partner’s Malaysian headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, may seem run-of-the-mill, it highlights a recent change in sentiment among Chinese venture capitals, which are attaching greater importance to the SEA market.

Gobi Partners is one of the first Chinese venture capitals to set its sights on SEA. The Shanghai-based investor first set foot in the region in 2008. Growing with a global vision, Gobi Partners manages over $1.1 billion assets and is gradually expanding its scope of investments outside of China to include countries such as Australia, the UK, Britain, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the US, and Thailand.

It’s no secret that Chinese tech companies are pivoting to the SEA market amid a slowing domestic e-economy, a saturated local market, and more recently, tougher relations with the US. A preference for the market is gaining momentum among Chinese VCs as well. They are following the footsteps of their portfolios in doubling down on SEA expansion.

The shift has become increasingly obvious since the turn of the year. Chinese startups are caught up in a capital shortage with the amount raised plunging by 52% annually to $23.2 billion in the first half of 2019, according to data from consulting firm ChinaVenture. However, their investments in SEA hit $3.4 billion in the first half. Although the overall size is still relatively small when compared with that in China, that’s a nearly four-fold increase from the same period a year ago.

From China to SEA and beyond

With a young population, increasing GDP per capita and rising internet penetration, the ecosystem in SEA is expected to achieve exponential growth, much like what China was experiencing a few years ago. In addition to its huge potential, the market is also attractive to Chinese firms because they expect easier entry to the market by leveraging expertise and know-how learned from China.

“Gobi Partners has been about for 17 years. That in itself is a whole wealth of experience. We operated in China in the first ten years and then expanded to SEA. We are still growing, but with the good and bad things we have gone through in China, we are making wiser investment decisions when investing in SEA,” said Jamaludin Bujang, managing director for Gobi’s Malaysian operations.

In addition, Gobi is spreading to more areas by drawing upon the experiences gathered through SEA expansion. “We are setting up funds in the Middle East as we see the fact that places like Pakistan are perhaps two to four years behind SEA. We are repeating the pattern all over again in other parts of the world,” said Khairul Khairi, partner at Gobi Malaysia,

“We apply the data collected in China to SEA and now we are implementing the evolved data in Pakistan as well. In that sense, hopefully, our pattern recognition is better,” Khairi added.

SEA accelerates

To some extent, SEA is playing catchup by following the development tracks of China — the rise of e-commerce, and associated enablers like payments, supply chain, as well as a series of other infrastructure services like cloud computing. However, an advance look into China’s current situation allows the SEA to fast-forward and possibly leapfrog it, much like the way in which China’s ecosystem has gone when it significantly lagged behind the US.

“Two or three years back in SEA, every investment went into e-commence marketplaces, but now VC 2.0 in SEA is moving towards more e-commerce enablers in the supply chain, mobile payment, etc,” said Khairi.

Some of the most recent tech trends in China are also gaining traction here. Much like the social e-commerce boom led by Taobao merchants, SEA individual and part-time sellers on Facebook, Facebook Live and Instagram, are contributing to half of the total e-commerce volume in the region, Clarence Leong, CEO of EasyParcel points out.

Leong believes the social e-commerce boom put EasyParcel at the right juncture to cash in on the opportunity to empower small merchants by bringing more transparency in pricing, parcel tracking abilities, and different service levels.

“The social commerce merchants are at a disadvantage because they are small in the transaction as an individual business, but as a group, they already take a big chunk of the e-commerce transaction. But they don’t have the bargaining power with the couriers,” said Khairi.

China’s recent shift from consumer-faced to enterprise-targeted services is also already visible in SEA companies, according to Khairi. “We are seeing more SAAS and enterprise-startups coming. For example, fintech is more B2B than B2C now. When we started two years back it was always P2P lending for consumers. Now it is B2C and eventually it will be B2B,” he added.

Localizing with adjustments expected

Even though we look at trends in China, it doesn’t mean things can be 100% replicated here,” Bujang warned. Khairi echoed his point. “It will always require a certain level of customization, and fine-tuning,” he added.

While setting up a local office and hiring a local team are the first steps to building a SEA presence, localization also requires a change in mentality, according to Bujang. “Chinese startups are so used to having a big scale and big market. When coming to a smaller market, you really have to adjust the expectations as well. You have to adjust to slower growth,” he said.

The same applies to VCs. “Chinese VC is used to high valuations. You have to be really careful when entering a smaller market,” Bujang points out.

China’s on-going capital winter is a good lesson for the SEA region. In a strange way, it has helped the SEA VC and startup ecosystem to be realistic and adjust expectations to make more sustainable plans in the long-term, according to Khairi.

SEA is a more complex and fragmented region compared with China and comprises different cultures, traditions, and languages. Unlike China where the market is divided into camps led by tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, the market has yet to form market dominators that control the whole value chain, thus providing different competition dynamics for startups.

“The market is so fragmented; we are all frenemies. Your so-called competitor in Malaysia might be your friend in Singapore or Indonesia, you just have to be flexible to be able to work with everybody instead of one,” said Khairi.

Chinese companies usually adopt a cash-burning marketing strategy to grab market share, but in SEA, subsidies are very selective, only happening on a small scale in few sectors like ride-hailing, Bujang noted. “The companies are mainly competing through market forces,” he added.

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Luohan Academy, an open-research initiative by Alibaba Group, celebrated its first anniversary in Hangzhou this week, gathering Nobel Laureates, renowned economists, social scientists, tech pioneers, and professors from leading universities to tackle the disruptions and other issues we face from rapid digitization of the global economy.

The Academy was established last year to address the economic consequences and social disruptions caused by a tech-driven economy. Complementing Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, a global research program for cutting-edge technologies, Luohan Academy examines the implications that digital technologies will have on societies in the future.

Over two full days of presentations and panel discussions, participants aired their views on how to deal with the widening digital gap in the global economy and challenges in the job market caused by digital technologies. Other topics included whether a platform economy can be beneficial to all participants, whether we need new governance and regulations tailored for the digital age, what the new ethics underlying emerging technologies are, and how to ensure the changes we’re seeing make the global economy more inclusive.

Chen Long, director of the Luohan Academy, commented: “It was exciting to have over 200 renowned academics, including Nobel Laureates and economists, gather together, discussing and sharing their valuable insights on how to address universal challenges arising from the rapid development of digital technologies.”

“By drawing on the wisdom of global academics who come from different backgrounds and cultures, we hope the Luohan Academy can promote thought-provoking discussions on controversial, yet critical, issues facing society. These discussions could serve as a guidepost for social scientists, economists, educators, policy makers, and private sector leaders to examine what roles they can play to bolster inclusive growth. As such, we hope to shed light on the path toward  a more dynamic, balanced, and fair digital economy.”

In Chinese’s Buddhist teachings, “Luohans” are enlightened and empathetic beings who are willing to take actions to alleviate the world’s suffering.  Below are some issues discussed during the conference, with the intent to inspire more dialogue to maximize the benefits of technology in the digital age:

• Should we first embrace digital technology or first address and attempt to control potential risks? It took 46 years for electricity to reach 50 million users, 14 years for computers, seven years for the Internet and 19 days for Pokémon Go. Decision-making time is getting shorter, and the cost of missing out by failing to make a decision or by making the wrong one has never been larger.
• Will technology widen the gap among people around the world or provide a level playing field? The technological revolution we’re undergoing has increased the number of people the earth can support from one billion to more than seven billion. But it has also triggered two world wars. Today, the key is to narrow the disparity in wealth, so we ask ourselves how we can benefit as many people as possible at the fastest speed,
• How will automation affect employment for humans? iWill the ongoing tech revolution lead to new jobs and shorter working hours? What is the future of work? 
• How will technology affect money transfers and payments across borders? Will digital financial services lead to more risks, even as they become more popular? What uncertainties will we face from purely digital money?
• What are the ethics of artificial intelligence? When you have an autonomous driving system using AI, and the driverless car has to make a split-second decision, should an algorithm make the unconscionable choice between hitting an old man on the left side of the road, or a child on the right, if impact cannot be avoided?
• Who owns data in the digital world and who should benefit from it? The records of car drivers aren’t particularly meaningful to most individuals. But, if shared, they make navigation software more accurate. Sole ownership doesn’t create as much benefit as pooling data, provided privacy is protected.

Editor’s note: This article is part of our JLL proptech series, produced in cooperation with JLL, a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

What should we expect from the property technology (proptech) space in China? Is it growing as much as we expect? What are some of the innovative technologies coming out of this large traditional industry?

These are some of the questions we have asked throughout our deep dive into the proptech space. We’ve looked at the Internet of Things (IoT), exploring how it helps to reveal the inner workings of a building’s brain. We also examined the ways blockchain can help the real-estate industry, making for smoother, faster, and simpler transactions, as well as bigger picture look at the overall impact of technology on the whole space.

One important question remains: How much do we know about the players in the space that are actively working to change things?

The infographic above reflects the outcome of our research. In it, we present the names of the notable startups and companies across almost a dozen categories who are working to bring innovation to the proptech space.

The three key takeaways:

1. Innovation in the proptech space is multi-dimensional and complex.

Part of doing due diligence in the proptech space is understanding who are the players and where are they focusing their effort. Change in such an industry often requires the involvement of many stakeholders, such as corporates, governmental organizations, retailers, and consumers, taking a significant amount of time.

“Buyer behavior is often unpredictable and establishing immediate ROI is a key challenge,” says Anuj Nangpal, APAC Lead JLL Spark, a global proptech venture fund. “Startups often have to stretch across industries and levels to understand who their customers’ customers are, and serve them in order to see a change in their immediate sphere of effect.”

While such networked cooperation is not unique to the proptech space, the multi-faceted nature of working in this industry means that there is a need to deeply understand not only your partners but also who your partners interact with. This is because it is a heavily regulated industry and, more often than not, the final offerings to the consumer are largely similar.

For example, building many different housing complexes all aim to solve one basic need—accommodation. However, it is worth noting that the industry is highly differentiated between countries, and networks built up in one market usually are not transferable to another.

2. Proptech in China is more than just co-working or property management.

The proptech space is very much alive and well, and solutions have been proposed from adjacent industries such as environmental technology, data insights and analysis, and integrated supply chains, both in the B2B and B2C space.

“Enterprise technology is coming of age in China,” says Nangpal. “There is ABC (AI, big data, cloud) everywhere in the consumer space, but it is steadily making its presence felt in the B2B world. This will have deep implications on how real estate is transacted, managed and consumed.”

In fact, we have charted at least 11 distinct separate technological industries working to change proptech for the better.

The beauty of the proptech industry is that much of the space is still up for interpretation. Startups, and even multinational corporations, are all trying hard to redefine what proptech will mean for the consumer in the near future, given ever-changing natural and built environments. Companies in this space will have to serve not only the end users, but also will affect long-term government planning, climate change, and even how our children learn and play.

3. Proptech still has high barriers of entry for startups.

Companies in the proptech space tend to be larger and well-financed, and it helps to be backed by still larger companies such as JLL or other property-related conglomerates. As sales and technology cycles tend to be longer side in this sector, companies need larger sums to sustain cash flow and also R&D. Expect to see more consolidation in this field in China in the near future.

“Chinese cities now represent half of the top 10 most expensive premium office rental locations worldwide. We are witnessing exponential increase in IT spending by developers and asset owners,” Nangpal says. “Foreign investors have significantly increased their allocations to China. So we have a perfect mix for consolidation and innovation in tenant experience, property & asset management, capital allocation and space optimization.”

In addition to the physical barriers that impede entry into the proptech space, we observed that incumbent and prominent players have large amounts of social capital that arguably is even more important for operating in this industry, namely trust.

Often, deals and contracts are executed solely based on a high level of trust between partners. This is especially true in the case of deals involving governments. That’s another reason why consolidation is looking more likely is because startups can tap into the social capital of larger conglomerates thereby accelerating the implementation of new technologies in the market.

Editor’s note: This article is produced in cooperation with Merck Holding (China). We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

International business groups, for the most part, reflect their development histories, strength in capital accumulation, and ability to take a global perspective of the industrial landscape. They are the best in their field, and often the symbol of their industries. However, not all international business groups can retain leadership, especially in the face of new developments.

From new retail sales to mobile payments, across big data and artificial intelligence, China has become a competitive market for international business groups and companies alike as an emerging location for innovation. Learning how to adapt to the new environment in China, to achieve greater success, has become a challenge that traditional leaders are required to re-examine. In response to this problem, the Merck Group shared its approach at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2018.

On Nov. 19, Merck China Accelerator, along with TechNode, launched the TechCrunch Startup Competition Merck Stage – HealthTech. More than 100 projects from all over the world signed up to be part of this competition. It mainly focused on three major areas—healthtech, performance materials, and life science; and five directions—artificial intelligence, big data, biosensor technologies, liquid biopsy technology, and the Internet of Things.

After many screening rounds, 12 projects eventually presented on the final stage. Alongside the competition prizes, the top three teams will also be given the opportunity to communicate directly with Merck China Accelerator.

This communication channel not only affords the recipient a better chance of joining Merck China Accelerator, they will also have greater means to connect to Merck China departments, which will enable them to better contribute to China’s healthtech ecosystem.

“Merck is the oldest pharmaceutical and chemical enterprise in the world and has a 350-year history,” said Jerry Li, director of cross-sector innovation collaboration, Merck China Innovation Hub. “Merck has been able to do this for so long because we’ve always stay curious, and we’ve always followed the latest trends in technology,” Li added.

Li shared how the Merck Group had maintained its winning credentials at the round-table discussion on the topic “International corporates in China: Finding the right path,” at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2018’s main stage forum on Nov. 20.

In talking about how to make full use of this power in China’s opportunity-filled environment to achieve the next success, Li said: “We have started the Merck China Innovation Hub based on such a spirit. We will now make innovation the fourth pillar of Merck. Therefore, we’re opening accelerators in Shanghai and Guangzhou next year. We hope to recruit start-ups and forge partnerships with them.”

However, the advent of opportunities is often accompanied by the emergence of challenges. As a foreign enterprise, apart from pursuing win-win situations, the advancement of its own transformation and promotion is also essential. Li pointed out that doing business in China requires one to be very spontaneous. For example, a company’s innovation business model must make adjustments according to the market and the customs law, it also must respond to Chinese competitors because the market in China is very competitive.

“Taking an incubator in the United States as an example, they are willing to help startups, with the aim that they might own 5% of the company shares. This does not apply to Chinese companies as many Chinese companies are valued at 10 times the US companies and the real value might be many times more at the same stage. The Chinese companies will not agree to it. Therefore, many international companies that are venturing into China must change their strategies to accommodate to the Chinese market,” Li said.

When it comes to how to build this innovative partnership better from a practical perspective, Li believes that local partners are crucial in life sciences and manufacturing fields. “At the moment, if you are seeking cooperation in China, it is more practical to work with local partners in developing a common IP, which is the common intellectual property. The government will also welcome you to do this, and you will have to work closely with all stakeholders, including governments, start-ups, universities, some local businesses and you must establish a very innovative model of cooperation with them.”

In addition to the startup competition and the sharing of their philosophy, Merck has also provided China’s potential partners with closer exchange opportunities in one of the world’s leading healthcare corporates. As a classic part of the TechCrunch Shenzhen 2018, the Startup Alley has always been the focus for startups. This time, Merck China Accelerator is also creating more engagement with start-ups through its close contact with the companies. Its global connectivity has been further demonstrated by the interaction between healthtech start-ups and professionals from Hong Kong, Taiwan, US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Israel and other countries and regions.

At present, China accounts for 10 % of Merck’s global business volume. More localization strategies and exploration of cutting-edge innovations in China gives Merck stronger impetus in the market. Through TechCrunch Shenzhen 2018, Merck has shown the Chinese market its attitude. In the maturing Chinese technology innovation ecosystem, Merck and China’s healthtech startups will create a common opportunity for development of the market.

Editor’s note: This article was supported by Hujiang Education Technologies. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Online education is becoming increasingly popular in China. Driven by society’s deeply rooted obsession with academic achievements and the belief that education is one of the, if not the only, path to success. Online language learning and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education have gained more popularity among eager parents who seek to give their children a leg-up in the competitive schooling system.

According to official data, online education companies in China had attracted 144 million users as of June 2017. And with a growth rate of over 20%, the online education market is expected to represent more than one-fifth of the projected global market size by 2019.

China is experiencing fast growth with capital pouring into the sector. The policymakers are supportive—one of the primary emphasis of its 13th Five-Year Plan is on the growth of online education. The Chinese government has announced that it will invest an overall $30 billion in edtech by 2020.

This spells big opportunities for edtech industry in China. Ridding the tide of rapid growth is a staggering number of home-grown companies who have flocked to list in offshore markets, specifically in the US and Hong Kong.

Hujiang, an early comer to the Chinese online education space, is one of them.

In July, the company filed an IPO with the Hong Kong stock exchange. Hujiang would be the first edtech company to list in Hong Kong.

Becoming a full-fledged technology company

Technology has transformed our education system in many ways. The MOOCs (massive open online courses), for example, increase accessibility of education and give students of lesser means an opportunity to pursue better-quality education at a relatively low cost. This is merely scratching the surface considering how much potential technologies like AI and big data has in the education sector.

The Shanghai-based Hujiang was founded in 2001 when China’s internet sector was still nascent. The company has since grown to be one of the largest online education providers and was named one of the “2017 Top 100 Internet Companies in China” by the MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology).

The company believes that new technology should be deeply integrated into different aspects of their businesses. For example, using AI and big data to monitor students’ learning and design more engaging study experience.

According to its prospectus, Hujiang now provides online educational products and services to 186 million users worldwide, offering over 2,000 proprietary courses. Last year, Hujiang’s monthly active users (MAU) was ranked top among all edtech companies in China, Frost & Sullivan data shows.

Product innovation as a competitive advantage

In this lucrative yet fiercely competitive market, product innovation is a way to competitive advantage. The Hujiang has invested heavily in research and development, focusing on pushing out innovative products and applications.

The company is now driven by two major business segments, the proprietary course platform and the flagship CCtalk platform. The latter, launched in October 2016, is an online teaching platform that enables real-time interaction between teachers and students through features like two-way live video chat and virtual whiteboard.

“Our biggest strength is that we understand education as well as teachers’ needs. They need care and good services. Besides, by providing a complete supporting system, from login to transaction, from teaching to course scheduling systems, from student attendance to their learning analysis, CCtalk offers a one-stop service, even including marketing and renewal proposals. You could say, CCtalk is developed for teaching,” Kong Wei, president of CCtalk, previously shared at the 4^th World Internet Conference, Wuzhen Summit.

CCtalk became a FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) Global Immersion Partner for Harvard Business School in June. As of August, the average MAUs of the CCtalk platform reached 3.5 million, a significant increase from previous year’s 2.3 million. CCtalk offers courses in language, occupational skills, culture and science, and K12. As of August, there were well over 92,000 courses and over 63,000 self-employed teachers on the CCtalk platform.

Last year, the company launched an innovative e-learning program Hitalk, which aims to assist English learners improve speaking skills. The program allows users to learn through role-play simulations, by integrating big data and intelligent adaptive learning technology. According to the company, Hitalk is now capable of simulating nearly 1,000 real-world situations.

Boosting R&D capabilities

Technology innovation happens not only in product development but also in the operational aspects. Over the past few years, Hujiang has been putting significant emphasis on upgrading the technologies, as well as R&D.

The company’s prospectus shows a continued increase in resources devoting into R&D—from RMB 90.6 million in 2015, to RMB 165.2 million in 2016, to RMB 230.5 million in 2017.

“We consider our (education technology) capacity the key to ensure our success and have been focused on developing technological tools, media, processes and data resources that are crucial for facilitating learning and improving study performance,” the company said in a previous statement.

Efforts also go into beefing up technology capabilities: the company has developed an Intelligent Study System—one of the underlying technologies behind Hujiang’s platforms, apps, and services—which utilizes cloud computing and big data analysis to generate valuable user insights.

Hujiang currently has an in-house technology team of 600, who work closely with business and faculty teams to optimize AI and internet technology applications in their products and also the operation side of things. The company said it intends to further expand its technology team in the near future.

A look into China’s future: Unravelling China’s edtech landscape

Spend the money where it is most needed

China’s edtech market is rapidly evolving, highly fragmented and fiercely competitive. For even the bigger fish in the pond, it is still a tough survival fight.

By comparing Hujiang’s sales and marketing expenses with two publicly listed edtech companies in China—Sunlands (尚德机构) and 51Talk (无忧英语)—high operating expenses seem to be a struggle shared by edtech companies in China, where sales and marketing, and customer acquisition expenses are generally quite high. The intensifying competition in the industry is only driving the cost higher up.

Like many competitors in the market, Hujiang is also facing rising costs in sales and distribution efforts, as well as increasing expenditures on R&D and building technology capacity, but the company seems confident that devoting resources in the right areas is necessary to succeed in the wild, wild west.

Hujiang CEO Arnold Fu once said, “Hujiang was created as a non-profit BBS because I saw that many young people were driven to study online due to a lack of educational resources. When I decided to turn it into a startup, nobody believed that it would work. Because of this, I feel that it is very important that we recognize and support innovators and companies that are driving the revolution in education that is spreading around the world.”

Editor’s note: This article is part of our JLL proptech series, produced in cooperation with JLL, a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Closing a real-estate transaction can get messy. Buyers, sellers, brokers, legal representatives, mortgage providers, and of course, the government, all require forms and papers that must be stamped, scanned, faxed or dispatched via postal or delivery services.

Blockchain and real-estate transactions appear to be a perfect match since such deals need secure and immutable ownership records and trust is key. Blockchain technology potentially allows any two parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third parties such as intermediaries like real-estate agents. Although it seems unlikely that intermediaries would completely disappear.

In some countries, the real-estate industry is already embracing blockchain technology. In Sweden, property buyers and sellers can be verified by an identity solution from telecommunications company Telia. Georgia has plans to use blockchain to register land titles and validate property transactions with the help of Bitfury. The service will enable the nation’s government to verify and sign a document containing a citizen’s information and proof of ownership of property.

China already is experimenting with the technology in Xiong’an New Area, the country’s emerging city of the future.

“The use of blockchain in land registries will mark when blockchain becomes a mainstream technology for real estate and will facilitate a real acceleration in other real-estate uses,” said James Hawkey, Head of Retail China at real-estate firm JLL.

He said that the most basic use case for blockchain in property is putting a country’s land registry, or its equivalent, on blockchain. This would allow for all ownership and changes in ownership in property and property rights to be documented.

Hawkey added that creating digital records of property is a considerable hurdle, and that in some parts of the world records of any kind are absent. “This is a huge undertaking and requires government sponsorship,” he said.

Smart contracts

Self-executing contracts containing the terms of the contract between two sides, or smart contracts, are another key feature of blockchain. These contracts can verify documents and authorizations with the help of digital signatures. Because they are distributed—each action is recorded on multiple “nodes”—blockchain contains a foolproof record of every transaction ever made. This helps avoid double spending, fraud, abuse, and manipulation.

In Xiong’an, a blockchain-enabled project fund management platform is designed to help prevent misappropriation and interception of funds. Xiong’an, with the help of Ant Financial and other partners, is also preparing a blockchain-powered house-rental platform that provides accurate information on government-verified listings, tenants and landlords. This should help the city solve the widespread problem of property listings that are either heavily embellished or plain fake.

Smart contracts also allow for greater automation. For example, they can “know” when the end of a property lease is approaching and remind the landlord to return any deposits.

One Singapore startup does just that. “What we actually do is allow landlords to easily create digital contracts, and we are able to collect data from digital contracts and help them to power analytics platforms to generate reports,” said Ivan Lim, founder and CEO of RealEstateDoc, which focuses on the commercial property market.

JLL’s Hawkey says a key benefit for smart contracts is reducing time required and the coordination between parties involved—buyer, purchaser, agent, and mortgage lender. “This is perhaps the perfect use case for the smart contract. When conditions are met, the transaction moves forward,” he said.

There are many other applications. Chinese startup PutLink aims to help Chinese invest in overseas property by using mainstream cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“Blockchain makes payments safer, easier, and faster, it makes contracts unchangeable and reliable—you don’t have to fly overseas to sign it,” said PutLink’s Michael Su.

A fraction of the cost

An even more radical idea might be tokenizing real estate—a process of representing the ownership of real-world assets digitally on a blockchain ledger. Tokenization could turn property into something that’s like a company traded on the stock exchange where ownership can be fractional.

Zi Wang, former Google engineer and co-founder of US-based company Third Planet, said blockchain has a few unique applications or properties that allow us to think in new ways about real estate.

“One of the things we are working on is working with developers and investors to help lower the barrier for entry for average investors,” he says, citing fractional ownership as an example. A typical 10-story development is usually financed by banks, private equity or wealthy investors. Fractional ownership supported by blockchain could change that, he added.

“Instead of getting 10 investors maybe you could get 10,000 investors or a million,” said Wang. Such an approach could help make property more accessible, especially to young people struggling to afford a place of their own, he added.

Blockchain also could help add more data insights to an industry that is undergoing a data revolution. Many real-estate systems and processes are currently siloed meaning it’s hard to connect dots and derive conclusions.

Still, blockchain has its limitations and is not suitable for every type of system. It could even increase more costs if implemented incorrectly, according to a report from consulting firm Deloitte. Immutability, for instance, is considered one of blockchain’s superpowers but this could prove to be a burden since canceling orders and transactions can be a frequent occurrence.

Blockchain in the real-estate industry is still in its early stages of development. While some applications seem obvious, others will become clearer as successful case studies emerge.

Editor’s note: This article is part of our JLL proptech series, produced in cooperation with JLL, a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

The first “smart” device in the world is said to be a soda machine connected to the internet made by a student too lazy to walk to another building to check if there was any Coke in it. That was in 1982.

Today, thanks to cheap processors and sensors, it is possible to include almost anything into the Internet of Things, from smart pills to whole buildings.

IoT has a broad set of applications from healthcare to traffic management to agriculture to real estate.

One of the uniting themes for use cases is that IoT allows us to monitor and control locations over which we previously had little oversight such as inside the stomach or deep in the basement.

We spend much of our lives in buildings, from home to the office to the mall. IoT is helping us to understand the built environment better.

If we imagine a building as a living creature, the steel in the reinforced concrete could be seen as the skeleton, the water pipes as the vascular system, while the sensors and the IoT that connects them can be seen as nerves that send information to the brain—the building’s management system.

One of JLL’s roles is to help building owners install IoT sensors.

“Our Command Centre system uses a full range of IoT sensors to give owners real-time insights into what is happening in their building” says Chris Cheung, head of property and asset management at JLL East China.

“Sensors alert us to potential maintenance issues in the building, give early warnings of potential equipment failure, and enable our staff to focus on customer services, instead of spending time checking equipment,” said Cheung.

Sensors are an efficient way of understanding what is happening in a single building, or in a whole portfolio of properties. Is it too hot or too cold? Is there enough light, is it noisy, is it too humid? How often are your meeting rooms used, and do you really need all those workstations?

These are all questions that can be answered using environmental sensors connected by IoT and there is a strong economic incentive—they help to optimize energy use and space use.

Optimizing efficiency, for example, is the key driver behind WeWork’s adoption of IoT technology.

“There are things like proximity sensors under the desks, so we can tell how much time people are using their private desk instead of being in a meeting room,” said Julian Leung, WeWork’s product tech manager.

These insights can help a business determine how much space it is actually using and help them save costs, according to Leung.

IoT is also entering our homes. One of the first consumer appliances that went online was a fridge made by LG in 2000 and back then it was considered a bit of a joke. These days we are no longer wondering which of our devices will become smart next but which platform will take the lead.

In the West there are platforms such as IBM, Apple, Amazon’s AWS, and Microsoft’s Azure.

China is also building its own connected worlds. Xiaomi is offering smart home devices through its own app-based platform. Midea offers smart connectivity for appliances. Alibaba Cloud is offering the HomeLink platform. JD.com has WeiLian.

IoT is a big business. Gartner predicts that 20.8 billion connected things will be in use by 2020, and that this year the total spend on IoT devices and services will reach $3.7 trillion.

Greater China, North America and Western Europe are the regions driving the use of connected things. China has even inked IoT into its 13th Five-Year Plan.

Changing how we build

When it comes to property, IoT is not only saving energy and costs, it’s changing the way we create buildings.

Many of us know that feeling of drowsiness that starts when a work meeting goes on for too long but not many realize that this is not just because meetings are usually boring. How alert and creative we are depends on how well the meeting room is lit and the temperature and carbon dioxide levels inside.

“People may have wearables to monitor their heartbeats, people may have environment sensors to monitor air quality, but what we do is push further trying to understand how the people in the environment can really change their thinking, minds, and behavior,” says Xue Ya, president of Delos Asia, which is opening China’s first Well Living Lab project in Beijing.

The Well Living Lab not only tracks the building’s environment with sensors but also human reactions through wearables and surveys in order to design spaces that better fit people’s needs.

This is one among many examples how this massive amount of data collected through IoT are being used. However, in many cases with IoT projects, we are collecting data without knowing exactly what insights might emerge.

“The volumes of data collected are enormous. At this stage we only know what some of it means,” says JLL’s Cheung.  Now, a spike in power usage on a piece of equipment may mean that maintenance is needed. In the future, further data analysis may yield different insight.  “We are hoping to spot other patterns that we don’t know about yet,” said Cheung.

Editor’s note: This promotional article was supported by the Guangdong Industrial Design City. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Foshan’s Shunde held the 2018 Shunde Creative Design Week and China Design Day on December 9 to start a “design wave” in the Greater Bay Area, a move to upgrade the industry by creative design, to promote quality economic development.

Top design studios from China, US, Germany, UK, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey attended, sharing the latest information and ideas in design and synergizing innovative design achievements, to empower the manufacturing sector in the province.

A local government official said the conference is expected to integrate global high-end resources of design, technology, and industry to open a new starting point for Shunde’s design industry and make the city famous for “Design in Shunde,” enabling it to launch a path of quality development for the province and even the entire nation.

Building the new engine for a strong manufacturing zone

Innovation by design is the core value of the industrial economy, also an important criterion to measure the competitiveness of a country. Over 20 countries in the world have already brought the industrialization of industrial design into their national development strategies. Conforming to the wave of transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, Shunde, based on its solid manufacturing foundations, has built China’s first industrial park featuring industrial design in 2009 after cooperating with the provincial government, serving as the trendsetter of optimization and upgrading of manufacturing.

A total of 250 well-known design studios from Germany, US, France, Japan, Sout Korea, Sweden, Turkey, and other countries have been introduced to the GIDC until the end of 2017, with more than 8,000 designers to generate a design services industry of 700 million yuan and some 1,000 design patents. At the same time, GIDC efforts on outputting designs, designers, public service and construction standards of industrial parks, contributing to the national industry via its wide business scope at home and abroad.

Exploring new paths of high-quality development

The conference, themed “Design in the AI Era: Empowering high-quality development,” is hosted by GIDC and under the direction of Department of Industry and Information Technology of Guangdong Province and Foshan government. Co-organized by TechNode, Guangdong Industrial Design Association,  Shunde Industrial Design Association, and Guangdong Totin Investment, the conference is also jointly supported by Guangdong Industrial Design Innovation Services Alliance, Midea, Country Garden, Beijing Taihuoniao Technology as well as other organizations.

The conference was attended by top academics and scholars from the World Design Organization, Korean Institute of Design Promotion, Porsche, Midea, JD.com and Royole to exchange views on the four main agendas: “Design + AI”, “Design + Intelligence Manufacture”, “Design + Intelligence Experience” and “Design + Investment.” They also had an interconnected innovative brainstorming following the prospect of the integration of design and technology to figure out new ideas and paths of the high-quality development of the industrial economy.

More than a hundred enterprises from 8 countries—China, US, Germany, UK, France, Japan, S. Korea and Turkey – attended, including world famous companies and institutes such as IDEO, Porsche Design, Harman Kardon, Royal College of Art, Sloan School of Management at MIT, World Bank, Samsung Design Department, Y-CITY and Seoul Design Center. Domestic leading organizations such as JD, Xiaomi, Midea, Country Garden, Low- Carbon Design Society of Hong Kong, and Shenzhen Industrial Design Profession Association (SIDA) also debuted. Plus, a congratulatory video for the opening ceremony was presented by the president of World Design Organization Luisa Bocchietto.

The “Shunde Design” committee is a new measure to further promote the development of industrial design in Shunde, a move to build a decision-making consulting mechanism for high-quality operation and development.  The appointed experts are expected to seize the penetration and fusion of industrial design and manufacture, as well as the overall direction of their integration with science and technology, to facilitate the whole industry to into high level, internationalization, and branding.

At the same time, Shunde Industrial Design Association unites famous business incubation platform Huotainiao Technology and TechNode to issue a call for an “international technology industrial cooperation alliance,” converging science and technology, design and manufacturing industries to promote the integration of tech and design. Targeting to enhance the industrial competitiveness, the alliance will focus on “innovation-driven transformation and upgrading” and use the market mechanism to collect all creative resources to enlarge the value of design and to ensure the successful completion of technical projects for all the local leading enterprises. The establishment of the alliance is expected to boost the transformation of technology and deepen creative cooperation between Shunde and foreigners, to further accelerate Shunde’s win-win situation on opening up and development.

The Sino-Korean (Shunde) Design Center was also announced at GIDC. As Shunde’s the first project in collaboration with Korean Institute of Design Promotion, this marks another milestone of the internationalization of GIDC. The center is expected to advance Shunde’s cooperation with S. Korea on innovative design and promote the “seamless joining” of excellent Korea-designing products and Shunde’s manufacturing market, for the further optimization and upgrading of traditional industries in Shunde and high-qualify developing of industrial design.

Four sub-forums to promote achievements

Themed “Design in the AI era: Empowering high-quality development”, the conference also held a series of events such as design sub-forum, a special session for cooperation, a seminar and the Designers’ Night, to brainstorm ideas for high-quality development.

A forum entitled “Embracing International Design” is scheduled to be held on Dec. 10, with keynote speeches from MIT, World Bank and Y-CITY to have in-depth exchange on how industrial design connects international innovation with Chinese manufacturing, how to activate innovations of comprehensive industrial parks and how cutting-edge technology can empower industries, while focusing on the optimization and high-quality development of industries via “Design + Manufacturing”.

The “International Design Registration via the Hague System International Seminar” will open at Huaguiyuan in Shunde on Dec 13.  It is co-sponsored by the World Intelligence Organization (WIPO) China Office and Guangdong Administration of Market Supervision and organized by Shunde Market Supervision and Administration Bureau.

Following the conference, four special sessions for cooperations achievements on technology, creative design, entries of the competition and “Design in Shunde.” Spanning an area of 2,500 square meters, the sessions will welcome some 200 projects from tech unicorns and designing brands to release and showcase products.

A series of significant policies and planning over “Design in Shunde” will be announced, and four design parks with total square meters of 300,000 will be introduced at the same time to invite investment from the world. They are Chendajiao Creative Design Park, Guangdong Home Design Valley, Shunde Creative Jewelry Design Park, and Lecong International Creative Home Design City.

Plus, a Designers’ Night Gala was held on Dec 9 at GIDC to demonstrate the elegant demeanor of designers.

Showcase the development of industrial design in Shunde

As another highlight, a “Design in Shunde” exhibition was inaugurated in GIDC on Sunday and trial approaches were provided to the guests.

The industrial design in Shunde has just gone through a ten-year development since firstly set up in 2009. Starting from scratch, huge achievements have been realized in the past ten years. The GIDC is considered as the epitome of the development of industrial design after successively awarded “Demonstration Base for Neo- Industrialization” by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, “Demonstration Base for Industrial Design and Creative Industry” by the State Intellectual Property Office, “Demonstration Base for National Industrial Design” by China’s Industrial Design Association.

Therefore, the “Design in Shunde” museum will feature industrial design and display the best-design products panoramically. The exhibition is expected to reflect the history of China’s industrialization and the design wisdom behind through the mass-produced industrial exhibits of various periods.

A 1.5-billion-yuan investment

The Shunde government has formulated an action plan for Shunde’s development in the next three years, to define the blueprint of the boomtown and build “Design in Shunde” its new city card.

An investment of over 1.5 billion yuan was pointed out the action plan, as a special fund for the construction of “Design in Shunde”. The fund, invested by state-owned and social capital, will be used on six fields including expanding of the industry, innovation ability promotion, integration of different industries, importing and training of high-end talents and environment construction for the internationalization of industrial design.

Vital resources will put into a themed industrial park, to enlarge its floor area by 200,000 square meters in three years. Besides, the most important part is to further consummate the development planning of the GIDC. At the same time, a series of national industrial design institutes will be built to encourage leading design companies and to invent innovative original products.

Shunde is striving to build GIDC as the capital of industrial design in 2020, with a total of ten blocks in the boomtown all developing carriers and platforms for industrial design, and form a talent pool of over 10,000 industrial designers, to  shape a batch of leading design brands and enterprises and develop dozens of industrial design-led creative industrial clusters.

Editor’s note: This promotional article was supported by the Guangdong Industrial Design City. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here. Click here to buy tickets to the event.

China’s Shunde is going to host the 2018 DTech International Design and Science Conference on Sunday, December 9 to explore industrial design.

Co-organized by the local government, famous tech giants and media agencies, the industrial design feast will explore four core issues – “Design + Artificial Intelligence (AI)”, “Design+ Intelligent Manufacturing (IM)”, “Design + Intelligence Experience” and “Design + Investment” – for in-depth discussions among attenders including Hu Qizhi, Secretary General of Guangdong Industrial Design Association, Li Qiang, General Manager of Midea Smart Home, Christian Schwamkrug, the Design Director of Porsche Design, Soon-In Lee, Chair of Asia Design Network, David Waterman, Chief Designer of AT&T/VTECH, Du Baonan, CDO of SINGULATO, Gao Zheng, general manager of JD Product Crowd-Funding Division and other designing top guns.

When we talk about industrial design, we refer to the design of industrial products based on the designers’ own interpretation of engineering, aesthetics and economics. Can soda sales be affected by the refrigerators storing them? One company in Shunde successfully improved cola sales by over 13 percent by re-designing the traditional aluminum freezers to a glass one with AI technology. Their keen sense of life has redefined the freezers from a container to keep things inside cold to being a way to promote products. After intelligent upgrades on the system and outlook, the freezers can provide a better shopping experience for customers, as well as a showcase of products and their brands.

This is the charm of industrial design, with which a common freezer can be imbued with magical power, to bring a change to users’ experience, more profits of the products and more market shares to the vendors.

Located at the center of southern China’s Pearl River Delta, Shunde is one of the top three manufacturing regions in China. The dense industrial conditions have driven up the demand for industrial design, and mushroomed the prototypes to relevant business. In the 1990s, China’s leading home appliance builder Midea established a series of design centers in Shunde and absorbed the first group of talents here, after which Shunde started developing and exploring. In 2004, dozens of industrial design companies such as East Innovation set up in Shunde, enabling the district to step into cluster diversified development. In 2009, the booming technology has changed a lot of sectors, leaving a huge impact on the way products being designed and manufactured. The Guangdong Industrial Design City (GIDC) was created then and the industrial design industry in Shunde has entered a new stage thanks to the support from the local government. Following the sprouting of new industrial enterprises, designing talents poured into the boomtown

After ten years of development, the GIDC has become not only the home of the Shunde manufacturing industry, but also a wide platform of great aggregation effects. Spanning over 2.8 square kilometers with an investment of over 2.1 billion yuan, the GIDC is now a base for a large public-service cluster featuring industrial design, and has built a one-stop service outsourcing system involving market research, creative design, pilot plant test, manufacture, trade, exhibition, communication, training, hatching and public services. The industrial design enterprises born in cradle goad each other and grow up together, benefiting from the help and support of its six main platforms including trading, financing, intellectual property transforming platform, talent introduction and training, generic technology research and brand building.

Till now, over 300 industrial design headquarters have taken roots in Shunde, with nearly 50,000 designers and over 40 hi-tech design enterprises protechnicalhnology support to the entire industry. A document issued by the Shunde government in September said a 1.5-billion-yuan investment is planned for the area, a move to build the “Designed in Shunde” label. As the core of “Technical Shunde” construction, the new plan will focus on technology to develop a creative industrial cluster featuring industrial designs.

The new plan is expected to fill the gaps in intelligent manufacturing in China’s Pearl River Delta and become a superior innovative force for the national manufacturing industry, with a high-end platform and outstanding talent and government support. On December 9, the DTech conference will be held in GIDC after vigorous support from the World Design Organization, Korea Institute of Design Promotion, Guangdong Industrial Design and Innovation Services Alliance, Taihuoniao Technology, Midea, Country Garden and other companies and organizations.

Furthermore, human resource is another fuel to power the development of industrial design in Shunde. The Shunde Industrial Design Institute has signed an agreement with Shantou University in 2016 to train postgraduates unitedly and offer them R&D opportunities, trying to transforming the professional knowledge into practices. More cooperating with well -known associations and universities are being planned, together with other moves such as building a technical intelligent industrial park to gather more enterprises and organizations on smart manufacturing, to enhance the manufacture capital’s world influence and achieved world-class development.

Here’s the agenda:

Editor’s note: This promotional article was supported by Merck. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Innovation means the changing from the past to the future step by step. While the Merck Group celebrates its 350^th birthday, they not only are the witnesses of this era, but also the world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company, the world’s leading technology company in fields like healthcare, life sciences, and performance materials.

While the 5-year-old TechCrunch International Innovation Summit may seem young in comparison, behind the 60,000+ viewers, 2800+ start-ups, there are the dreams and enthusiasm for the next decade and the next hundred years.

At the Summit, Merck China will launch the Merck China Accelerator to explore China’s innovation ecosystem. A comprehensive technology innovation platform, the accelerator will showcase the history and future integration of innovative entrepreneurs around the world on the stage of TechCrunch International Innovation Summit 2018.

Six directions, three major areas

The first phase of the Merck China Accelerator’s recruitment campaign was launched on October 15, 2018, and will continue till January 25, 2019. Merck will screen potential start-ups to give support to their business. The selected start-ups will get to join the Merck China Innovation Center in Shanghai and will have the opportunity to work with Merck’s China business unit.

The Merck China Accelerator will focus on three major areas: medical health, performance materials, and life sciences, including artificial intelligence, big data, bio-sensing technology, interactive interfaces, liquid detection technology, and the Internet of Things.

On November 19th, the Merck China Accelerator will join hands with the TechCrunch International Innovation Summit Entrepreneurship Competition to provide more professional guidance to entrepreneurs through its strong strength in the global pharmaceutical and health industry. The TechCrunch International Innovation Summit will also help the participating start-ups to better move through the Merck China Accelerator with exclusive quality cooperation resources across 25+ countries and regions, 80+ investors and mentors, as well as 30+ domestic and international media exposures

On November 20th, Merck China will be at the main forum of TechCrunch International Innovation Summit and discuss the theme of “Overseas Group’s Enterprise Innovation Strategy in China”, sharing how Merck Group can leverage its global resources to develop its professional advantages.

Multi-dimensional ecological integration

Merck has a history of more than 80 years in China. Today, China’s innovation environment and rapid development provide Merck the opportunity to grow together with the country. As one of Merck’s most important strategic countries in the world, China has become another global innovation center for Merck. Through Merck China Accelerator, Merck China will provide an international platform for the development of start-up companies and strong corporate resource support. Merck’s insights into the industry and the cutting-edge technologies of start-ups are combined to create an innovative cooperation model that helps outstanding entrepreneurs and startups to take advantage of both sides while accelerating the global marketplace, creating a win-win situation.

As a benchmark enterprise for industrial internet innovation services, TechNode relies on its solid innovation ecology and unique international innovation resources. TechNode has already established cooperation with many domestic and foreign enterprises, such as CITIC Group, Unilever, BMW, Peugeot, Google, Amazon, AXA, and MasterCard TechCrunch International Innovation Summit acts as a connector between China and the global science and technology ecosystem. This cooperation with TechNode and Merck China Accelerator will fully integrate the existing advantages of both parties, bring more breakthroughs to the innovation industry in China and the world, realize the cross-border of technology and the industry, and collide more sparks.

Editor’s note: This article is part of our JLL proptech series, produced in cooperation with JLL, a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

China is a crowded country and finding a place to call home can be daunting. With locals pouring into cities in the largest urbanization in history, China will need 300 million square meters of new housing every year, according to McKinsey estimates. And it’s not just the residential market. As China moves its economy further towards service industries, demand for office buildings and retail space is burgeoning too.

But where there is demand there is also innovation. As China has demonstrated in fields like retail and mobile payments, tech companies are ready to leapfrog to new solutions. The convergence between property and technology is called proptech and it promises to solve many of the headaches associated with real estate in China.

Technology, of course, has always been a part of the industry. Construction workers are now being helped by drones, lasers and robots are determining the best position for apartment complexes, engineers are digitally building houses through BIM (Building Information Modelling) to test construction ideas, and 3D printing has given China a 17th-century style mansion in just one day. Proptech embraces these technologies and also brings new business models and new platforms that change how we live and work.

“Property globally is known as quite a conservative industry that moves cautiously. It has been relatively slow in adopting technology, but now things are changing fast,” said James Hawkey, a member of a JLL team focused on innovation and proptech. “Given the active development market, and the fast adoption of tech solutions, proptech is a great opportunity in China.”

Although proptech is categorized in different ways, its development has come in waves.
The first wave appeared 10 years ago with the rise of property-focused online portals and apps. The second wave drew from the wealth of data on real estate that has become available to offer companies more insight. It also offered consumers new ways to understand property through virtual and augmented reality. The third wave, proptech 3.0, is the next chapter and includes IoT, big data, smart buildings, and blockchain.

Enter your virtual home

Many proptech solutions are already well established: brokerage and property listing aggregator apps such as Lianjia (Homelink)—Chinas largest property unicorn—and Anjuke have fueled the rise of proptech 1.0.

More recently, real estate agencies are starting to draw users with VR and AR features—proptech 2.0. Companies such as Kujiale have enabled buyers not only to visualize their homes but also transport themselves miles away. 51VR provides large-scale interactive visualizations for property developers.

Savvy buyers are turning to even more specialized tools to seal their purchase: platforms such as Property Passbook leverage data to calculate the return on their investments.
In the commercial market, Haozu covers offices while Lepu covers retail property. There are many others, but market experts say there is still a long way to go. There is nothing yet approaching the market power of the US commercial property information company CoStar.

McKinsey calculates that up to 40% of the services sector in real estate is susceptible to automation. Real estate platforms are the first step towards automation, a huge help to those searching for property. Ultimately there is potential for more of the transaction process to happen online. While we are comfortable booking a hotel online now, how long will it be before we can lease an office or a shop through a similar process?

Ownership is overrated

Although owning your own house is still an essential rite of passage in China, the rise of the sharing economy has made people reevaluate the idea of ownership. China’s answer to Airbnb—Tujia— started by utilizing a resource that China has in abundance—empty apartments—to rent out to travelers.

Ziroom, backed by China’s tech conglomerate Tencent, offers renters entire or shared apartments on flexible lets—one month or one year.

“You can move house, you can choose how to pay the rent, you can order cleaning, repair, and get your invoices all through the app,” said Cherry Zeng, a customer of the platform.

The commercial market has also embraced the sharing economy. Coworking in China has experienced massive growth over the years. Local coworking companies like UCOMMUNE, KrSpace, and MyDreamPlus are no longer just for tech startups. Corporations are now keen to use coworking for greater flexibility and to connect with the startups that might disrupt them in the future.

Data is the key

Sharing spaces has also prompted companies to utilize spaces more effectively. To accomplish that, property management is relying on big data. Coworking spaces have some of the biggest incentives to apply these technologies.

WeWork China uses its tech platform to receive input from their members: which conference room they want to book, what kind of issues are they encountering in the building, which events are they interested in.

“Even before we speak about sensors and technology, these interactions in the software among the community already bring a lot of data,” WeWork’s Product Tech Manager Julian Leung told TechNode.

Data actively produced by the tenants is added to data gathered passively by proximity and environmental sensors. The software reveals which areas are used more often and combines it with noise levels, light levels, temperature, and humidity data from sensors to reach conclusions and recommendations.

Big data is much bigger than managing offices, however. Data-based applications have begun to run through the entire real estate industry chain. They can be used for forecasting demand, for preventative maintenance of building systems, and for making property valuation more accurate and quicker. It is fueling the development of new business models centered around platforms.

Data is also the key unlocking the rising trend of smart homes. Thanks to rising living standards, favorable government policies for IoT, a high number of internet users, and healthy competition in the market, China’s smart home market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 44% between 2017 and 2024.

Even garages are going through an informational revolution. Number plate recognition is now used to speed the payment process while sensors tell visitors how many parking lots are available. Smart garages can even employ robots. Jimu Tech’s parking robot uses autonomous driving technology to precisely place a vehicle with mechanical wheel gripper.

Robots and hardware are another component of the data revolution in property. Drones like the one made by the biggest UAV manufacturer in the world DJI do not just take pretty pictures for marketers, survey property and oversee construction, they can also be used in security and monitoring large warehouses and factories. Elsewhere robots are now being used to check inventory in large stores.

Smart buildings will eventually be connected to smart cities with machines exchanging all kinds of information between them. But all this data flying around the invisible cloud is at risk of being intercepted and used by hackers. To solve this, many are looking at blockchain. Taipei has become one of the first cities in the world to test out IOTA, a distributed ledger technology for IoT devices.

Blockchain and proptech 3.0

Blockchain has been making headlines since the explosion of cryptocurrency trading. However, we are only beginning to realize how multifaceted the technology really is. One of its greatest strengths is transparency. Its potential role in logging property rights is a great example. Sweden is already trialing blockchain for this purpose.

Blockchain may also completely upend how we process transactions and how we handle our contracts. No need for the countless paperwork and stamps typical in China.

“Blockchain makes payments safer, faster, and easier, it makes contracts unchangeable and reliable – you don’t have to fly overseas to sign it. It makes crypto land certificates acceptable and makes buying and selling easier,” said Michael Su from Put Link, a platform for real estate transactions, investment, and property rights transactions.

The first blockchain real estate projects are already becoming a reality in China. In March, Xiong An New Area, a newly built city not far from Beijing, created a housing lease management platform in cooperation between with Lianjia and Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial.

The road to proptech future may be driven with autonomous cars

We are still in the age of big data platforms, IoT, and the shared economy. Blockchain, autonomous driving, and the use of artificial intelligence for analyzing market data and building performance or replacing real estate agents is still in its infancy. Currently, we are still in the age of big data platforms, IoT, and the sharing economy.

“Proptech is just beginning. Now we are picking the low hanging fruit, using established technologies and data to create efficiencies and improve services,” said Hawkey.

Investments have been following the new proptech trends in China. According to data from JLL’s report Clicks and Mortar: The Growing Influence of Proptech, Mainland China has received the nearly 60% of Asia Pacifics proptech funding since 2012, a total of $ 6.6 billion since 2013. Most of the funding went to brokerage and leasing building powerhouses like Lianjia, Mofang Gongyu, Fangdd, and Aiwujiwu.

However, what we are seeing is not even close to what we can imagine. According to Hawkey the biggest changes to how we live are still in the making and some of them are not even in the proptech sphere.

“Our relationship with property is beginning to change, and companies are beginning to see property as a service. In the longer term, there is potential for buildings to be part of a truly smart city environment. Imagine for example that your autonomous vehicle suggests which office location you should go to, based on your schedule and where your team is.”

With the rise of autonomous vehicles, could the real estate mantra location, location, location cease to be relevant? The arrival of driverless cars promises a faster transportation that we could ever dream of. The way we think about our cities, our homes and workspaces could be transformed in the not so distant future.

Editor’s note: This article was supported by GeekPwn. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

You may have heard the machine learning term, “adversarial examples”, and perhaps even seen some demonstrations of it. However, have you ever seen a contest in adversarial attacks and defenses that happens in real-time?

To boost research on adversarial examples, GeekPwn 2018, the AI tech platform working on cutting edge security issues, has designed a Competition of Adversarial attacks and Defenses (CAAD) focused on image recognition security. Three sub-competitions are on the agenda for this year’s challenge, officially launched in May.

When a computer program and a person is showed an image, both view the images differently and have different opinions on what the image is. Is it a dog or polar bear, parrot or ostrich, car or plane? Want to know the answer and understand how a computer ‘thinks’ and sort out all the data? Then you’d better come to GeekPwn 2018.

Why are we doing this? Because this is the most current specific challenge in AI security and GeekPwn will show you the latest research results in this field.

Adversarial examples that have stumped human intelligence

Already used by millions of consumers as key components of smart homes, common AI devices include facial recognition access scanners, pupil-identified safes, cell phones and doors. On the surface, AI appears to have made everything more beautiful and convenient, but in fact, researchers have experienced more AI “failures” than successes, and some of the “failures” are caused by adversarial examples. Most AI classifiers are based on machine learning, and this can be potentially compromised by hackers. At GeekPwn 2016, Ian Goodfellow, a Senior Researcher at Google Brain, gave a demo of a machine vision deception.

He created a new image of a panda by adding minor perturbations, making a machine learning system mistake it for an image of a gibbon. These small changes are normally not even noticed by people, but they can be enough for a classifier to get it wrong.

Ian used a trick adversarial example to show that even the slightest change to a sample can deceive a neural network image classifier into making the wrong judgment. This demonstrates the current level of AI vulnerabilities.

Not long ago, the deceptive use of adversarial examples was brought to the next level. Today, adversarial examples no longer simply deceive machines. Now they can even fool humans. With the following image, both AI and humans will think the left-hand image is of a cat and the righthand image is of a dog. In fact, the right-hand image only includes simple adversarial perturbations of the left-hand image.

These examples all lead us to realize that machine vision is not as good as it’s made out to be. Adversarial examples can be primed to exploit existing vulnerabilities causing a security risk. They can be used to attack machine learning systems, even if they cannot obtain the underlying models. For example, if the visual system of an unmanned car could be deceived, what would happen to the distinction of people, vehicles and road signs? The consequences would be catastrophic.

In the long run, machine learning and AI systems are destined to become more and more powerful. Machine learning security vulnerabilities like adversarial examples may jeopardize and even control powerful AI systems. So, from the perspective of machine learning security, what defenses are possible?

One effective defensive strategy is training. In the process of training models, both clean and adversarial samples should be in the mix. As more and more models are trained, clean images will be more accurately determined, and the robustness of defense will also improve.

Fooling machine eyes with a human smokescreen?

To find the best strategies to defend against adversarial examples, and explore this exciting field, compete for $100,000 in cash prizes at the 2018 GeekPwn CAAD Challenge, co-directed by Google Brain’s Alexey Kurakin and Ian Goodfellow, and Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Dawn Song.

The contest will focus on adversarial examples that regularly cause machine learning classifiers to make mistakes. Three sub-competitions will be set up for confrontation attacks and defense research in the field of image recognition, helping prevent risk in AI and promoting the healthy growth of the sector. Each sub-competition will require the player to submit a program. Players can register independently and participate in more than one sub-competition.

• The first sub-competition is a non-targeted attack. The goal is to slightly modify an original image so that the classifier fails to identify it correctly.
• The second sub-competition is a targeted attack. The goal of is to slightly modify an original image so that the classifier misidentifies it as something else we set.
• The last sub-competition is a defense contest. The goal is to generate a classifier based on machine learning that can offer a strong defense against adversarial examples, able to correctly classify them.

In simple terms, GeekPwn invites the world’s top hackers to take the opportunity of CAAD to engage in “deep learning” through “combat training,” thereby effectively increasing the robustness and healthy growth of machine learning systems.

The CAAD Challenge will take place online, with registration between 10 May – 31 August 2018 and an awards ceremony in Shanghai. There will be a CAAD showcase challenge at the Las Vegas edition in August as well. The advisor team and judging panel will be composed of top experts in the industry, including Alexey Kurakin, senior Google R&D engineer; Dawn Song, professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley; Associate Professor at Tsinghua University, Zhu Jun, deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems; and Wang Haibing, director of GeekPwn Lab.

Apart from the CAAD challenge, GeekPwn2018 will also include a data tracking challenge. In the era of AI and big data, linking data from different sources in multiple dimensions and producing accurate results is advanced technology.

Can you analyze a virus app installed on a victim’s mobile phone, sifting through a huge amount of virus data to discover who’s behind it? As long as you can “play AI”, we welcome you to register and use your extraordinary tech powers to complete in these seemingly “impossible” challenges.

GeekPwn2018 will be held in Las Vegas (USA) and Shanghai (China) on the 10^th August and the 24^th October, respectively. Sign up here, and check the official website, geekpwn.org, to find out more!

Editor’s note: This article was supported by Kujiale. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

“If you are a building a really good design tool, the tool is not important. The designer’s idea is more important,”  said Wang Lei. “We want them to forget about the tool and focus on designing something.”

Wang sits on a chair in a busy exhibition hall. He nurses an iPad with both hands. A 3D model of the interior of a house fills its screen. “We are focussed on interior design,” he tells TechNode. “It is a big project in the concept of the building. It’s the last step, but it’s also really important.”

Wang is the vice president of COOHOM, the international arm of Chinese proptech company Kujiale (酷家乐). The company aims to provide designers with a cloud-based, interactive mixed reality platform for modeling inside spaces. The brands were born out of a need. Wang says that in many instances when homeowners employ contractors to decorate their new properties, “they don’t know what they are going to get.”

China has the highest rates of property ownership in the world. Since the country’s housing reforms in 1998, the market has experienced rapid development. Chinese banks extended RMB 1.9 trillion ($302 billion) in mortgages for new homes in the first-quarter of 2018, up over 11% year-on-year. This is, in part, driven by China’s rapid rates of urbanization. In 1990, just 26% of the country’s population lived in cities. This number swelled to 56% in 2015 and is expected to rise to over 60% by 2020.

Additionally, consulting firm McKinsey predicts that by 2022, 76% of these urban populations will be considered middle class, increasing national consumption from  RMB 29 trillion in 2016 to RMB 56 trillion in 2027. And most importantly for interior designers, 91% of the country’s millennials plan to use their money to buy houses in the next four years.

“In China, the home is really important for everybody,” says Wang. This has created an enormous market for interior designers, and internet-based solutions have proved popular. Kujiale is hoping to replicate its success in China internationally under its COOHOM brand.

Shaking up the industry

COOHOM believes that mobile devices are revolutionizing the process of shaping interior spaces, allowing for functionality that it is not available on a computer. Wang says that designers are utilizing mobile devices more frequently to create designs, in part due to their portability.

“In the old days, people printed the plot; you have to carry these things to the field,” he says. “With these devices, you don’t have to do that. It’s connected. It’s always connected to the cloud.”

By using cloud computing, designers have access to the projects they are focussing on wherever they have internet coverage, allowing them to work on projects inspiration strikes.

In Kujiale’s case, a library of 30 million projects exists on the company’s platform, accounting for 90% of all floorplans in China. These plans are obtained from both the government and designers. “This is the beauty of the internet. It’s actually crowdsourcing,” Wang says. “We are trying to figure out how we can get the same library in the United States and other places.” 

In addition to storing data in the cloud, the processing power of remote computers can also be used. “We use a server to do the rendering,” says Wang. Rendering, the process of “taking a photo” of a virtual 3D environment, is used by architects and designers to create a computer-generated representation of what a building or interior will look like.

“It would take about one day to render one image on an iPad. For our system, it would take a couple of minutes to do an HD rendering. We have hundreds on servers in our rendering farm in order to render designs much faster,” Wang explains.  

Augmenting existing design tools

Augmented reality (AR) is nothing new. Despite the term being coined in 1990, the first instance of the technology came about in 1968. The technology now has countless applications.  From gaming to medicine to design, revenue from AR hardware and software in China reached $249 million in 2016 and is expected to rise to $1.7 billion by 2021. The release of Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore have in no small part helped to bring the technology to mobile devices, thereby driving penetration. 

“We are thinking about AR in two ways,” says Wang. “The first thing: AR can be used as a measuring tool to help you to create a floor plan. You can use it as a ruler. The second thing: instead of just putting one piece of content on your floor, we think about designing in AR mode. So actually, we want to put the entire design onto the floor, and you can use your tablet to walk inside of your design project. You can walk inside the room in the real scale.”

He says that AR allows designers to see if a particular piece of furniture is a good fit for a space. The company works with manufacturers and designers to create 3D models of existing pieces of furniture that are on the market. These models are then imported into the system and manufacturers have the opportunity to open their product library to others on the platform. The company also encourages users to upload their 3D models.

In addition to AR, virtual reality (VR) provides a more lifelike opportunity for homeowners to view the work of designers in a virtual space. COOHOM uses the renderings it creates on its servers to afford homeowners the chance to walk through a virtual representation of their newly decorated home. “We want to provide you [with a situation where] what you see is what you get,” Wang explains. “In this case, we render 720-degree high-resolution images. You can go inside [in VR] and see the result before you implement the project.”

Wang says that despite being a tool for designers, these platforms are available for anyone to use. “We want to talk to designers because this is a designers tool,” but “as an individual person, if you want to DIY your home, why not?”

Editor’s note: This article was supported by GeekPwn. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

As devices get more powerful and increasingly complex, we need to put in place competent safeguards to protect what we value in the new digital world: our privacy, our data and our identities. Stealing something that we take for granted might sound like something out of a movie but rest assured that this future is not likely to be far off.

On a personal up to a national level, the need for strong cyber development is now greater than ever. Chinese-led technological advances are currently leading innovation in the areas of core technologies, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI), all of which are needed to support the development of stronger and more robust cyberspace enterprises.

AI is especially pertinent to this wave of change as newer technologies are increasingly more reliant on the processing and discerning power of algorithms to execute more complex operations. Many experts in the field such as Baidu President Zhang Yaqin have suggested that China will lead the world in AI in the near future and attributes it to having a very receptive and nurturing environment for AI development and experimentation. Every year, China sees increasing numbers of new unicorns, and the quickest moving companies, those that come out on top, are currently the ones that optimize the power of AI.

So how do we secure the new digital resources against hackers? The solution, in our opinion, is found in an old saying: “As iron sharpens iron, so does one person sharpen another”. In the world of people fueled by code and caffeine, there will always be a place for some friendly competition.

Through the 2018 GeekPwn Cybersecurity x AI Contest, Mr. Wang Qi, Founder of the GeekPwn Challenge, hopes to share a new approach to technology, using the term “frienemies” to describe the relationship between hackers and AI. Simply put, white-hat hacking and operating frameworks such as AI share a symbiotic relationship, and that improving one will inadvertently improve the other. However, if not managed well, AI can also have the capability to destroy our way of life. GeekPwn aims to foster trust and cooperation between the world’s leading hacker communities and to influence their abilities into a force for good.

At the upcoming GeekPwn 2018 edition, audiences will see first-hand how this relationship plays out, and how it can be used to improve our lives. Started in 2014 by the KEEN team, China’s most successful hacking collective, the GeekPwn contest is dedicated to encouraging global security experts to exploit the unknown vulnerabilities of the cyber world, and helping manufacturers improve their security systems.

As one of the world’s leading platforms for cybersecurity researchers, GeekPwn will enable security researchers and executives around the world to share their thoughts and findings on cutting-edge and future technology applications, including infrastructure, internet protocol, mobile payment, IoT, and AI.

GeekPwn will be returning to Las Vegas this 10th August 2018, along with a carnival session in Shanghai in October. Special Challenges include Competition on Adversarial Attacks and Defenses (CAAD), AI Data Tracking Challenge, Hacker Room Challenge, Robot Agent Challenge and PWN Everything Challenges, but in Las Vegas, the audience will be treated to three main challenges.

Competition on Adversarial Attacks and Defenses (CAAD)

CAAD (Competition on Adversarial Attacks and Defenses) is organized by the GeekPwn committee, Alexey Kurakin, Ian Goodfellow from Google Brain and Professor Dawn Song from UC Berkeley EECS.

CAAD focuses on image recognition, which consists of three sub-competitions. Participants can select any one to three of them to join. The 3 sub-competitions are: Non-targeted Adversarial Attack, Targeted Adversarial Attack, Defense Against Adversarial Attack.

Robot Agent Challenge

The Robot Agent Challenge will examine each team’s ability to build a robot agent that can successfully infiltrate a simulated lab environment. Contestants are challenged to control the robots to bypass an office’s laser intrusion detectors and surveillance cameras, leave a covert listening device, open a digital keypad safe, and boot target computers from USB devices.

Non-Vulnerability based PWN

The PWN Everything Challenge will see challengers use creative ways to identify vulnerabilities in our commercially available or widely used smart devices, AI products, libraries, frameworks or IoT products. The Non-Vulnerability based PWN calls for attackers to use new creative methods without exploiting target systems’ vulnerabilities.

These challenges have always been real crowd pleasers and have helped many international companies such as Tesla, Microsoft, and Sony find and secure vulnerabilities that might have otherwise been exploited.

Overcoming these challenges is what will enable a more secure and better future for all in this tech-dependent world. For more information, check out the rules and challenges at GeekPwn.org, or email the organizing team at cfp@geekpwn.org directly. See you in Las Vegas!

Editor’s note: This article was supported by G5 Capital. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

G5 Capital announced on June 5h that it has launched the Global Investors Alliance, a worldwide platform to boost cross-border investment and entrepreneurship in the tech industry and to seek the future unicorns around the world.

With an increasing number of international companies looking at domestic market and vice versa, startups often found it difficult to expand or raise fund overseas. In this case, this is where G5 Global Investors Alliance, G5 Capital and its parent company, Zhejiang Jiangong Real Estate Development Group Co., Ltd. (JGRE Group) try to aide in the first place.

“Investing in innovation and technology is a mission for us. Through the combination of tech and real estate, it is even more meaningful to carry on this path.” Annabel Yang, Executive Manager of G5, said on the launching ceremony.

Giving more service to partner venture capitals and entrepreneurs, G5 Global Investors Alliance will be a container of the international business ecosystem. On one hand, the alliance can provide entrepreneurs from all around the world a global feel of intelligent working place thanks to JGRE Group’s real estate background and its experience on operating top-grade office buildings. Also, the Alliance will help startups deeply connect with all the investor members (Plug and Play for example) in the industry and also help them get funding support.

On the other hand, the G5 Global Investors Alliance will share cross-border resources within the ecosystem, which will be a win-win cooperation.

G5 Capital will set up cross-border double-way incubation and acceleration channels in five countries including Australia, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and China. G5 will provide investment funds, working space, funding services, community event and more for entrepreneurs.

G5 Capital officially launched its office in Australia in last August, and collaborated with Sydney Startup Hub, one of the largest venture capital center in Sydney, in January this year. Through their monthly local events, G5 Capital has the connection and partnership tighter than ever with the local first-tier VCs, incubators, and universities. Back in China, this channel also provides Chinese startups an access to the Australian market. At the end of 2018, G5 Australia became one among the seven official overseas innovation centers of Zhejiang Province, which have helped many Chinese companies to reach a whole new market without trial and error.

In Hangzhou, G5 will push a series of regular roadshows and events to the local cross-border tech community, such as 48-hour Blockchain Hackathon, Australian Innovation Series, MIT-CHIEF Alumni Innovation Series, Global Top-50 Blockchain Contest, G5 x PNP Smart Building Accelerator, and so on.

“We will share our domestic and overseas channels and resources. With a good mechanism of co-investment, we will also attract more outstanding investors to join the alliance. In the future, our parent company will also select some high-quality partners from the alliance for more in-depth cooperation, including LP opportunities,” Annabel said.

—Translated by Wang Boyuan

Editor’s note: This article was supported by Hujiang. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

CCtalk, a subsidiary company of Hujiang EdTech, has become a FIELD Global Immersion Partner for Harvard Business School.

Harvard’s FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) Method is a year-long course for Harvard students to travel among 157 Partners spread across 13 countries. Combined, they will host more than 930 first-year students over the course of a year. The program is meant to strengthen students’ leadership skills and give them experience operating effectively in different cultures and business contexts.

“We are extremely grateful to Hujiang EdTech and all the FIELD Global Partner organizations for all they do on behalf of our students,” said FIELD faculty head Professor Juan Alcacer. “The students benefit immeasurably from this experience and we hope the partner organizations do as well.”

After months of remote collaboration, CCtalk had the pleasure of hosting a six-student team in Shanghai for a week.

“We are pleased to be working with Harvard Business School to provide students with a real-world learning experience in China,” said Arnold Fu, Hujiang EdTech founder, chairman and CEO. “It is a fruitful and meaningful journey. We feel certain that the students were able to gather insights here that they would never be able to glean from a classroom discussion alone.”

Hujiang EdTech prides itself in being one of China’s leading education and technology companies. 170 million users enjoy its diverse set of interactive online products geared towards a high-quality learning experience.

The students they hosted were tasked with finding ways for CCtalk to provide better services for their newly-registered iTeachers, the independent teachers that work with Hujiang EdTech. They conducted field research with consumers, interviewed Shanghai locals, and pitched ideas to their leadership team. The week ended with the students presenting their final solutions to Hujiang EdTech representatives.

“I’m grateful that CCtalk is chosen to be part of this program,” shared Kong Wei, CCtalk’s president, “which shows online learning is now widely recognized by the public. It’s a new beginning for us that we are able to gain professional views and solutions from both inside and outside to make the platform more user-friendly and enhance our capability of incubation of new and young iTeachers.”

Editor’s note: This article was written by Rita Ren, who is part of the organizing team of the Geekpwn AI/Robotics Cybersecurity Contest. A self-professed robotics geek, you’ll probably find her in a workshop rather than a shopping mall.

This article was supported by GeekPwn. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Imagine a laboratory sieged by secret agents. It seems an unlikely target, but our protagonists are searching for weaknesses that would grant them entry. They can creep in through ventilation shafts, dodge laser alarms, block surveillance cameras, and open safes. This scene seems to be a well-designed operation reserved for something out of a spy film.

But this is no movie. It’s a battle of design and skills, and with USD$30,000 up for grabs, the heat is piling on. Organized by GeekPwn and KEEN, the Robot Agent Challenge will test robot design, production, finesse, and control.

At the GeekPwn 2018 Robot Agent Challenge, competitors are invited to create remote-controlled or autonomous robots that can complete a series of complicated missions. Participants will choose whether to send their creations into the lab through a door, window, or ventilation shaft. The machines will be required to navigate a laser-filled corridor, granting them access to the laboratory.

Once inside, they will need to place an eavesdropping device, find a keycard, and open a locked safe. They will then have to block a security camera and attach a keylogger to a computer. Once these missions are completed, robots will receive corresponding points as score. Additional points will be granted if the robots can exit the lab safely.

GeekPwn’s 2018 highest scoring challenger in the Robot Agent Challenge will take home a USD$30,000 cash prize. We welcome participants to bring their creations to this global robotics enthusiasts’ battle and showcase their abilities to the world. The deadline for registration for the GeekPwn2018 Robot Agent Challenge is July 15 (Las Vegas) and September 30 (Shanghai). More information can be found at geekpwn.org.

In addition to the offline robot agent segment, GeekPwn 2018 is putting forward another crowd-pleaser, the world’s first real-world online Hacker Room Challenge.

This is not just a simple demonstration of how to crack a single smart device, but rather how to hack a set of different smart devices and create a working kill chain, targeting smart devices including   intelligent door locks, smart cameras, routers, intelligent safes, computers, mobile phones, and other smart products. We will reveal more details to be published later in June 2018.

While the Robot Agent Challenge happens in physical space, the Hacker Room Challenge can be considered the equivalent happening in cyberspace. Who will win in this offline-to-online confrontation? GeekPwn 2018 will reveal all.

Register here, or visit geekpwn.org for more information. Alternatively send an email to the organizers at cfp@geekpwn.org with your questions. We await you in the arena!

Editor’s note: This article was supported by Hujiang Education Technologies. We believe in transparency in our publishing and monetization model. Read more here.

Language learning used to be mostly massive open online courses (MOOC), and many startups have taken many different methods to improve user interaction language learning. Shanghai-based English learning platform Rikai Labs uses WeChat chatbot, 2010-born language learning social network italki uses Skype to allow its users to give language lessons to each other, and there are other solo app learning startups as can be seen from Busuu, Duolingo, and Memrise. Now a Chinese startup Hujiang is using AI to help you learn a new language and analyzes the interaction of students and a teacher on its live streaming platform CCtalk. For example, if the teacher joked in the class that created more engagement, the company analyzes data and provides that to the teacher.

Since live streaming started to take over the China market from early 2016, there has been a number of education platforms that have launched their own live streaming services for teachers to give lectures. These traditional education corporates like New Oriental, TAL (Tomorrow Advancing Life), live streaming platforms like YY, Douyu, and startups like Zuoyebang and Xiaoyuansouti.

At first glance, AI-powered CCtalk’s live class has little resemblance to a typical MOOC class— primarily one-way streaming without interaction using courseware or whiteboard.

When you first download the CCtalk app and register, the app asks you if you’re a student, white-collar worker, hot mom or cool dad (辣妈酷爸), or a free person (自由人). Such information is collected to provide tailored services to its users, such as the courses and news they might be interested in and to better understand users’ learning behaviors and habits.

Then you can tap keywords based on the language you want to learn and your interests, so I clicked on tags like “IT/ internet”, “French”, and “liberal arts and history.” Then you can access the main page, where you’ll see many different live classes you can attend.

Many live language courses are for English, Japanese and Korean, and users can attend the class they are interested in. These classes are at set times and there is a timetable with the title of the lesson and the time. Teachers on CCTalk often use powerpoint-like slideshows that contain the notes the teacher will use to teach the class. The teacher annotates on the presentation by typing, underlining and circling on it with a digital red pen.

I attended a Korean language live class given by a lady named Snow. On top of the courseware where she listed out dozens of words, she typed down a phrase using the word and was explaining each word with an example. (See the images below) Students typed down the questions to her, and she directly answered. Some users sent digital flowers to the teacher, which the teacher can cash in as a tip.

Teachers on CCtalk make money from the paid courses they teach, including live lectures, pre-recorded videos, micro classes (“微课” in Chinese) which lasts just a few minutes. The charge varies from courses to courses with a class fee ranging from RMB 9.9 ($1.5) to RMB 40,000 ($6,399). CCtalk puts it this way: Earn as you share knowledge (通过知识分享获得收入).

Once you tap on the second board on the app, you can see a timeline where students ask questions like “Do you have any book recommendation to learn Korean by yourself?”, “Can someone please translate this sentence for me?”, and other students or teacher’s answer. On the third page, you can choose to join the chatting group of Snow’s Korean course, which adds number to Snow’s number of followers.

While the CCtalk app looks rather simple and straightforward to use for language learners, the app is actually gathering big data from the teachers and students, to make the language learning much more efficient.

Using AI in language learning

“Typically when we talk about AI application in education, most of the apps focus on how to improve learning from learner’s perspective,” Dr. Lu Jian, a partner at Hujiang.com, and CEO at CCtalk told TechNode. “However, we are collecting data from both the student and the teacher. By mining the data, we learn from learner’s perspective, how to learn better, and from teacher’s perspective, how to teach better.”

CCtalk is a real-time interactive teaching platform that grew out of Hujiang’s (沪江) online teaching tools. In the course of doing online education business for over 10 years, Hujiang developed a suite of teaching tools called CCtalk, including audio-visual streaming, and digital whiteboard for independent teachers about a year ago, and later it became a platform business under it. Compared to CCtalk, Hujiang provides paid live or recorded online classes with B2C model: they develop the educational content and sell the classes to the students.

“Before AI, there was a field of study called adaptive learning (自适应学习), which tries to personalize the learning. It works by building a knowledge graph first, then it provides personalization based on well-designed evaluation tests,” Dr. Lu says.

‘Adaptive learning’ and ‘intelligent classes’ are mainly adopted on Hujiang Class (沪江网校). Adaptive learning is an educational method which uses computers as interactive teaching devices, and to personalize the teaching and mediated resources according to the unique needs of each learner. To adopt adaptive learning into Hujiang’s classes, a number of questions are given to students to evaluate how well he or she has learned.

“Dynamic knowledge points are supported by a test form and the student will be evaluated based on these knowledge points. Then we will create a personalized learning program in and different phases for different students. These are called intelligent classes (智能课程) or courses,” Dr. Lu Jian explains.

In this way, Hujiang has gathered big data on how much the students learn about the specific materials and uses the data in order to make learning tailored and personalized to students.

The AI application on the CCtalk platform is mainly for teachers to help teachers teach better. On the teaching part, CCtalk collects a variety of data on how the teacher holds the classes. CCtalk will record how many minutes the teacher spends for each page in the courseware, and send out these data and insights to the teachers.

“We cannot tell a teacher what to do, but a teacher has a review [of their current teaching method] in order to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Also, we have the data about the in-class interaction between the teacher and the students,” he says.

Many of their services are now based on big data and cloud technologies. For example, if the teacher joked in the class that created more engagement, say many students started typing “haha” instantaneously, the company analyzes data and provides that to the teacher. However, it seems that it will take more time for the company to actually figure out how AI can boost up the language learning and monetize it.

“We are not cashing on AI at the moment. Now many companies in education are exploring the potential of applying AI to education. We are at a stage trying out different AI applications. In a commercial point of view, we are yet to see how we can cash in on this,” Dr. Lu says.

Why attend live streaming classes

Dr. Lu said the live courses available on Hujiang platforms increased fivefold in 2015 in a speech at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou. He says there are several reasons for that. Firstly, students love interacting with teachers, and live streaming allows students and teachers to interact more.

“Rather than recorded online video classes, I think that live streaming resembles more traditional class in a sense that the students can have their questions answered. These live classes are attractive to students, and even students want to watch the video later. And many of them want to come to live classes,” Dr. Lu Jian says.

Secondly, live streaming for online class encourages more active interaction from the audience, which is a key difference between live streaming for an online class and live streaming for entertainment.

“The old way of live streaming for old entertainment, just like watching a movie, doesn’t require a lot of interaction. In that type of streaming, there is a longer delay. But in the live class, because students like to interact with a teacher, and the delay has to be short, typically under half second,” Dr. Lu added.

For many educators live streaming is still a tool, not a business model. There is speculation whether or not these live streaming classes can make money in an already saturated. However, the idea of live streaming class opens the door to narrow the gap between affluent families and those who live in rural areas with less financial freedom. In my personal observation, the classes on CCtalk seemed too technical for test preparation since the classes tend to focus on more on grammars and vocabularies than actual verbal interaction with the teacher. However, there were other paid classes than just languages on Hujiang, such as bride makeup, sketching, yoga class for pregnant women, and children’s ballet, which shows the decent establishment of Hujiang as a teaching tool for virtually any subject.