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We update you on the most essential news from Asia in tech, media, and business—the things you need to know that you probably haven’t heard in Western media.
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Reliance Courting Even More Investors and Customers 💰
Indian technology conglomerate Reliance has been on a fundraising spree all throughout 2020 and has raised over $20 Billion from investors over the last few months. These investors have included Facebook, Google, KRR, Qualcomm, and Intel, all of whom are likely thinking that a bet on Reliance is a bet on the Indian growth story. With this illustrious group of investors, what I’m about to say next may not come as a surprise. It has been reported that Reliance is offering to sell a $20 Billion stake in its retail business to Amazon.
Currently, Amazon competes against Reliance in the Indian e-commerce industry. If this deal goes through, the two rivals will turn into allies overnight. Reliance is currently the most valuable company in India and has also announced plans to deliver 100 Million low-cost smartphones by December, built on Google’s Android operating system. Regardless of whether or not the deal with Amazon happens, Reliance’s continued growth signals the growth of increasingly powerful Indian technology companies who are able to court some of the world’s biggest Western companies as investors.
TikTok’s Acquisition Saga Act IV: The Buyer is…Oracle? ⚖️
Ever since President Donald Trump declared that TikTok had to be sold to an American company, there has been huge speculation on who would end up as the final buyer. While it seemed that Microsoft would be the winner, on Monday Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin confirmed that the US Government received an official bid from Oracle to buy TikTok’s US operations. We should receive a decision later this week from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US on whether the deal will go ahead.
No one knows the exact details of the deal, but Bytedance (TikTok’s parent company) has referred to Oracle as its “trusted tech partner” and most people speculate that this is not an outright sale, but Oracle becoming the owner of TikTok’s US operations and the host of TikTok user data. Some people have accused Trump of favoritism, as Oracle is owned by Larry Ellison, one of Trump’s biggest political supporters. Considering China’s new export controls on technology, this Oracle deal leaves out TikTok’s actual source code and algorithms. There are many complicated pieces of this puzzle and this will not be the last technology conflict between China and the US. This evolving, half-political drama, half-business case study is truly an East West hurricane.
Korea’s Kakao Games IPO Makes Waves Around the World 🔥
South Korea’s Kakao Games became a publicly listed company last week, beginning the day trading at $20 a share and then ending the day at $52 a share. The $323 Million IPO broke records in Korea for being one of the most oversubscribed stocks in Korean history. Kakao Games is the gaming unit of the broader Kakao group, which owns Korea’s biggest messaging platform.
Kakao is the third big Korean IPO of this year, with the other two being SK Biopharmaceuticals and Big Hit Entertainment. The success of Kakao Games speaks to the broader growth of the gaming industry, which has seen huge success across the world as people spend more time gaming because of the coronavirus. With such major Korean business success stories this year, this should also inspire confidence in Korea’s growth story.
Update #70 - Reliance Courts Amazon, Oracle Buys TikTok, and Kakao Goes Public