Besides Snow, there are new rules to govern ride-hailing in Indonesia and a Grab-oBike partnership

Snow, a Korean app with features similar to Snapchat, raises US$50 million — [TechCrunch]

Snow, a South Korean app that has a similar video feature as Snapchat, announced today it has raised a US$50 million funding round from Sequoia Capital and SoftBank, according to TechCrunch.

The company was once considered a Snap clone for the Asian market but has killed its chat feature to double-down on the micro-video feature. According to the article, this money will be used to enhance its augmented reality and facial recognition tech.

In one piece of circular investment, Snow was created by Naver, the company behind LINE. LINE is also an investor in Snow.

Lazada to leverage Alibaba and build e-payment system in Indonesia – [The Jakarta Post]

Lazada is expected to completely transform its Indonesian payment system in the coming months by introducing an e-payment infrastructure built by Alibaba (which owns 83 per cent the company), according to The Jakarta Post. Indonesians can expect to see the system go online in the third or fourth quarter of 2018.

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The move comes amid a growing digitalisation in Indonesia.

Indonesian government set to monitor ride-hailing industry– [The Jakarta Post]

In Indonesia, Uber, Grab and Go-Jek are expected to comply with new laws set to go into effect at the end of January which allows the country’s government to monitor the ride-hailing industry, according to The Jakarta Post.

This means setting up a system with govern the rental industries that are commonly used in ride-hailing vehicles via stickers, permits and verified documents.

“We are committed to encouraging all of our partner drivers to fulfill whole requirements set up in the decree so that they can work in compliance with the prevailing law and regulations,” said Tri Sukma Anreianno the PR Head at Grab Indonesia in the article.

99.co acquires UrbanIndo — [e27]

99.co has acquired UrbanIndo.com, a property portal in Indonesia with 1.2 million listings. The move immediately jumps 99.co onto the main stage as it competes with PropertyGuru and iProperty in Southeast Asia’s largest country.

The financial details of the deal were not announced, but the company did say it plans further regional expansion and other acquisitions in the next 12 months.

Prior to the acquisition, 99.co had built a sales network of about 4,000 real estate in Indonesia and had helped them facilitate US$150 million in transactions.

Grab expected to make series of partnerships with bike-rental startup oBike – e27

The Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab and the Singaporean bike-sharing startup oBike announced today a signed MOU to bring GrabPay onto the bike company’s mobile app. The agreement will diversify oBike’s payment options (currently it uses EZ-link cards and a points system) and it adds a major merchant to Grab’s young payment system.

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The companies also hinted at two additional partnerships expected to be announced soon. No further details were revealed.

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The post Today’s top tech news, January 22: Snow raises US$50 million from Sequoia and Softbank appeared first on e27.