Also was the announcement of the Rice Bowl Malaysia Awards and a digital literacy push in Thailand

Zoom wins Rice Bowl Malaysia ‘Startup of the Year’ award

A last-mile logistics startup called Zoom has won this year’s award for ‘Startup of the Year’ at Rice Bowl Malaysia and will advance to compete for the ASEAN victory.

Other awards were given out at the event and they were as follows:

Aaron Sarma, the Founder and CEO of Touristly, won ‘Founder of the Year’ and the startup BuildEasy (an interior design company) won ‘Newcomer of the Year’.

Also Read: Deliveree raises US$14.5M in Series A funding round led by Gobi Partners

Finally, Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre’s accelerator programme won ‘Best Accelerator Programme’ and WORQ won best Co-working space.

Equity crowdfunding startup Akseleran launches P2P lending service in Indonesia

Indonesian fintech startup Akseleran today launched a new P2P lending service to complement its existing equity crowdfunding service.

Users can start investing in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for IDR100,000 (US$7.3) and expect to earn effectively 11.75 to 30 per cent annually. SMEs can borrow up to IDR2 billion (US$147,000) with a flat interest rate of 6.35 per cent.

In a press statement, CEO Ivan Tambunan said that the company aims to serve as a bridge between investors and SMEs.

Morris Chang, the Chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., to retire next year

Morris Chang, one of the most important figures in the development of IT technology, is planning to retire from his Chairmanship of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) next year, according to a report in Bloomberg.

Chang was successful in part because of his decision to target only production (aka only building chips). Rather than following the Intel model of developing the entire lifecycle of chip production, TSMC is only a production company. Its clients, like Apple and Qualcomm, handle the design process and outsource the production to TSMC.

Chang helmed a company that grew into the world’s largest pure-play chip foundry.

What is interesting about the retirement is the global chipmaking industry is exploding at the moment. The proliferation of smartphones is a major reason, but so is burgeoning markets like smart cars, homes and other IoT devices.

Chang will pass his ‘final-say’ role to Mark Liu, the President and Co-CEO.

Chang is 86-years-old.

Thailand set to deploy over 1,000 people to train rural residents in digital literacy

Thailand’s Digital Economy and Society Ministry is planning to send over 1,000 people to villages across the country to help train its rural population in IT literacy, according to the Bangkok Post.

The goal is to train just under 25,000 people.

A justification for the project is because the country wants its people to take advantage of a major infrastructure project to “bridge the digital divide”. The Ministry doesn’t want to have a situation whereby they spend millions of dollars to improve infrastructure but then have nobody understand how to take advantage of getting online.

At the beginning, every village will choose one person official to lead a training course for the residents.

Touristly now runs digital platform for Air Asia in-flight magazine

Touristly, mentioned above in the Rice Bowl Awards, is now running the digital platform for Air Asia’s in-flight magazine brand.

Called travel3sixty, the site includes a search function the sends users to booking platforms for locations across Asia. It also includes the typical articles most people expect from an in-flight magazine.

Also Read: 800 startups launched in India in 2017 to date, compared with 6K in 2016; Is this a good sign?

Last April, AirAsia bought a 50 per cent stake in Touristly.

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Copyright: kirillm / 123RF Stock Photo

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