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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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Indian Tech Unicorn Flipkart Decides On an IPO 🛒
Flipkart is India’s biggest e-commerce company and one of the country’s most successful tech startups. In India, Flipkart aggressively competes (and wins) against Amazon! In July, Flipkart raised another $1.2 Billion from Walmart and other investors including Tencent, Tiger Global, and Microsoft. This puts Flipkart in a comfortable place to deal with the coronavirus. Indian e-commerce is supposed to be worth $99 Billion by 2024 and Flipkart is poised to play a leading role in that growth.
Amidst their recent success, Flipkart has announced that they plan to take the company public sometime next year with a target valuation of $50 Billion. Flipkart is incorporated in Singapore but it might make sense to go public in the US, considering their connection with American retailer Walmart. In 2018, Walmart spent around $16 Billion to acquire a majority stake in Flipkart, which is still the single largest foreign direct investment in India. Walmart now owns about 80% of the company. If they can pull of an IPO in 2021, Flipkart will reach new levels of giant success.
Developing Verdicts on China’s Economic Outlook 🇨🇳
Chinese society continues to progress at a different pace from the rest of the world. The OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) has revised their latest growth forecast for China, reporting that China will be the only G20 country to see positive economic growth this year. Goldman Sachs expects the Chinese Yuan currency to strengthen over the next year. If China’s recovery is similar to the recovery the rest of the world will eventually experience, we can learn some things from China.
In China, online grocery and food delivery peaked during the coronavirus but has now stabilised as a more permanent habit for many people. E-commerce (and specifically livestreaming) has increased massively, which still remains at all time high levels of behaviours. At this point, cinemas are reopening in China and displaying a promising (though not amazing) recovery. If looking at China is looking into the future of post-Covid consumer behaviour, we will all be ordering online and going back to movie theaters. And maybe we can start looking even more to China as a place of the future.
China’s Very First Virtual Idol Talent Show 🤖
Speaking of futuristic China, the streaming platform iQiyi has announced the launch of a new ‘virtual idol variety show.’ This is a new talent show consisting entirely of 30 virtual CGI-created influencers ‘competing’ in different tasks to be crowned the winner. This will be called Dimension Nova, and the judges will be actual people who are popular idols—Esther Yu, Wang Linkai, and Angelababy. iQiyi is the same network behind Rap of China and The Big Band, two of China’s biggest talent shows.
Trying to digest the concept of a ‘virtual idol variety show,’ I’ve got so many questions and points I need to clarify, but overall I’m really excited to see how exactly this works. I’ve written about virtual influencers before and it’s a fascinating new take on marketing. The world’s first virtual influencer is considered to be Hatsune Miku, who was created in Japan in 2007. Since then, Japan and China have been the two countries who have most passionately embraced the virtual influencer concept. If this show takes off in China, maybe the rest of the world will eventually start creating virtual idol variety shows. Think about that.
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