East West Hurricane

I recently interviewed Nafez Dakkak. Nafez is originally from Jordan and currently lives in the UK, where he is the CEO of the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development. Nafez is also pursuing a part-time Master’s Degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Nafez spent most of his career working in the Middle East, where he founded the Ed Tech platform Edraak. Nafez took Edraak from concept to full execution, reaching over 250,000 learners across the Arab world in under 12 months and with the company now reaching millions of learners across the Arab world. He has been at the forefront of Ed Tech in the Middle East, and has written a seminal piece on the topic titled, “MENA: Ed Tech’s Sleeping Giant.” Nafez went to university in the US and currently lives in London.What did we talk about?His work with the Queen Rania Foundation and founding EdraakGrowing up across MENAThe evolution of the Ed Tech industry in the Middle EastAnalysing companies targeting cultural niches, particularly in the Arab worldThe global implications of remote work, Covid, and educationFleabag, The Queen’s Gambit, The Art of Persia, and The Anarchy by William Dalrymple, Invest Like The Best, Arabic podcastsFind Nafez on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/ndakkak This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I recently interviewed Yang Liu. Yang is originally from China and currently lives in the UK, where she is the Co-Founder and CEO of JustWears, a direct-to-consumer underwear brand.Yang is originally from Kunming, China and started her career working in startups in Shenzhen in 2011. Throughout her experiences, she has seen first hand the cultural differences between technology business leaders in China vs. the West and the evolution of China’s technology industry. She was also featured on Dragon’s Den! Yang’s career has given her unique first hand perspective in the development of Chinese Tech. She talked about her experience meeting Zhang Yiming, the founder and CEO of Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok. She talked about her admiration for Jack Ma—I never realised how of an emphasis he put on female representation in his company. It’s fascinating to hear Yang describe the differences between what character traits are admired in China vs. the West. Listen to this episode for some stellar cultural insight!What did we talk about?Yang’s experience working in the earlier days of Chinese tech back in 2011The evolution of China from ‘copycat’ to leading innovatorDifferences between the consumer market in China vs. EuropeHer approach to building a brand over timeThe Chinese CEOs she admires and why - Jack Ma, Zhang YimingThe differences between Western and Eastern business cultureYang’s Recommendations:General MagicDonald Trump’s Speech on Election FraudVenture Deals Audiobook This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Please share this newsletter with a friend! ⚡️Chinese Vaccines as Soft Power?In my recent interview with Peony Li, we talked about the idea of Chinese soft power. As Covid vaccines (hopefully) start to move the world out of the current crisis, China can play a huge role in this movement. There are several vaccines around the world, and a handful are being developed in China. While big name vaccines from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna are being scooped up by the major Western countries, emerging markets are turning to vaccines produced in China. Countries across South East Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are all in the middle of negotiations to receive the Chinese Covid vaccine. With unfavourable views of China at all-time highs in several countries, China needs to do whatever it can to improve its international reputation. If these vaccines don’t work as well as expected, there will be backlash. If the vaccines work well, this helps build a closer relationship between China and emerging markets. It’s a big gamble—with huge upside and huge downside. So far, initial results from Brazil and Turkey have been positive. Sequoia and KKR lead $2B round for Bytedance, valuing it at $180BNSequoia Capital and KKR are two of the biggest US investors leading the latest round of funding for Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok. This round values Bytedance at $180 Billion, and TikTok is expected to go public sometime next year. It’s a good reminder that there are many Western stakeholders with a lot of money invested in Bytedance who have a huge incentive to see it succeed. One of the realities of globalisation is the globalisation of capital. If the world’s biggest companies have a mixture of investors from literally all parts of East and West, the idea of national interests defined by corporations becomes trickier to understand. So whenever the next ‘Chinese app’ is under threat of being banned in the West, there are plenty of Western investors who don’t want to see this happen.Disney Hotstar, The International Growth EngineDisney+ has been one of the most impressive media stories of 2020. The Disney Plus streaming service launched in November 2019 and around a year later, the platform now has 86 Million subscribers. That’s incredible growth. For reference, when Disney first launched they forecasted that they would reach 60 to 90 million subscribers by 2024. Now they have revised their forecast to reach 260 million subscribers by the end of 2024. What drives this growth? One major factor is international markets. Disney Hotstar is part of Disney Plus streaming platform that focuses on Asian countries like India and Indonesia. Right now, Hotstar accounts for 30% of Disney Plus’s total subscriber base and has more room for subscriber growth than in Western markets. Rebecca Campbell, Disney Plus’s head of streaming recently said, “We are uniquely positioned for India because of the rapidly growing middle class and their purchasing power.”Indian Ridesharing With Global AmbitionsOla is India’s largest ride-hailing service, valued at several billion dollars and funded by investors that include SoftBank. Ola’s business was hit hard by the pandemic but they have recently announced the creation of a new factory in Tamil Nadu, which aims to be the world’s largest scooter manufacturing facility. At the beginning of this year, Ola launched its taxi-hailing service in the UK after previously launching in Australia and New Zealand. Ola has expanded into Europe and acquired Dutch electric scooter company Etergo several months ago. Now the UK is their big hope. Let’s see if Ola ‘the Uber of India’ can break into Europe. If they can, then we’ll have yet another example of tech innovation flowing from East to West.Stripe expanding into AsiaThe major US Fintech company Stripe plans to expand their Asian presence and has had a 40% increase in staff across the region this year. Digital Payments/Fintech is already huge in Asia - with plenty of challenges, lots of complexity, and an abundance of local competitors.One strategy that might be best for Stripe to follow is acquiring or investing in fintech companies rather than directly trying to compete with them. Earlier this year, Stripe led the funding round of Filipino fintech startup PayMongo. Stripe could follow a model similar to Chinese tech giant Tencent. Over the last two decades, a large part of Tencent’s growth has come from investing in companies and acquiring companies rather than creating their own competitors. That might be the best option for Stripe in a super competitive Asian fintech market.Indonesia’s New Sovereign Wealth FundIndonesia is launching a new sovereign wealth fund worth around $15 Billion to help finance infrastructure projects across the country. Japan’s Bank for International Cooperation plans to invest $4 Billion and the US Development Finance Corporation signed a letter of intent pledging $2 Billion. The Indonesian government is hoping to attract foreign investors to provide much needed capital, especially as they cope with Covid. One of the biggest and most interesting infrastructure projects is the creation of a brand new Indonesian capital city. The Indonesian government plans to move the capital city from Jakarta to East Kalimantan by 2024. This would reduce the burden on an overloaded Jakarta and place the capital in a more strategic location closer to the center of the country. I lived in Jakarta back in 2006 and remember how the city infrastructure struggled to keep up with growth. This reminds me of when I visited Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad. Islamabad was created in the 1960s as a new capital to replace Karachi, and you’ll notice that Islamabad feels a lot cleaner and more modern than Karachi. The Brazilian government did something similar by creating a new capital city of Brasilia in 1960. If you enjoyed this, please share East West Hurricane with a friend! 😁You can reach out to me and find more of my work here on Linktree…! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I recently interviewed Peony Li. Peony is originally from Hong Kong and now lives in London where she has her own stealth startup in the elderly healthcare space.Peony moved from Hong Kong to UK in her teenage years, driven by a desire to study, work, and live in the UK. After graduating from Cambridge, she started her career within investment banking, followed by an incredible role as Head of Investments at Founders Factory, and then Head of Operations at Daye. Afterwards, Peony was driven to entrepreneurship and inspired to build a great business of her own.Peony’s professional experience has brought her to the forefront of the most exciting businesses in Europe and her own life experience makes her attuned to China’s relationship with the rest of the world. When you hear Peony’s perspective, you’ll learn a lot about the Chinese experience and the evolution of Asia over the last two decades. We talked a lot about soft power, which describes economic and cultural influence within international relations. There’s a major difference between being Chinese and being from Mainland China, a nuance that’s often misunderstood in the West. Different generations of Chinese immigrants to the West have pursued different things. The role of China (and more broadly, Asia) within Western society will continue to grow and become one of the most important topics of the next decade.What did we talk about?Peony’s story through investment banking, technology, and startups The evolution of China’s economy and Chinese culture on the world stageThe role of soft power when talking about international relationsMisunderstandings and cultural stereotypes of the Chinese in the WestThe future of business relationships between the East and WestAs the world enters economic turmoil, the bright opportunity aheadPeony’s Recommendations:Jordan PetersonSara Blakely’s Masterclass on Self-Made EntrepreneurshipThe Wise Pen Pal campaign This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I recently interviewed Bea Trinidad. Bea is from the Philippines and we met through the On Deck Writer fellowship.Having grown up in Manila, Bea decided to go to university in Australia, where she set up her own restaurant and worked across the advertising and media industry. She is now back in Manila working on her family business in the culinary industry. Bea’s experiences make her a cross-cultural diplomat who has dealt with the true cultural complexities of working both in the East and West.When you hear Bea’s story, you’ll learn a lot about the differences in culture between a place like the Philippines and Australia. The Philippines, like many emerging markets, works differently compared to countries in the West and requires a sophisticated level of cultural understanding in order to get business done. It’s also important to consider that Philippines is heavily influenced by Latin culture, which is unique compared to other Asian countries. A large part of our conversation revolved around this topic! What did we talk about?The biggest business opportunities and coolest companies in the PhilippinesComparing business and life in the Philippines vs. AustraliaHow Latin culture influences the Philippines in terms of emotion and languageTypical misunderstandings in board rooms, kitchens, and more Crafting brand strategy and messaging in the middle of the coronavirusWhat makes the Philippines a major emerging market opportunityBea’s Recommendations:TV/ Film: The Godfather series, Rocky, The Queen’s Gambit, The Last DanceBooks: Barbarian Days, On Writing Well, Charles Bukowski, Atomic HabitsAudio: The Art of Happiness, Hollywood’s Bleeding from Post Malone This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️I’ve recently joined the OnDeck Writer Fellowship. I’ve met some great people and received some amazing advice regarding the frequency of posting newsletters. As per some feedback, I’m going to experiment with sending a news update on a weekly basis, rather than daily. It has taken A LOT of work to write 86 weekday updates over the last few months, and I think a weekly update should provide the same level of value.Of course, I will still be having interviews and longer-form analysis on topics in Asian tech, media, and business.Always feel free to reach out and give me any feedback!Everything is Bigger in ChinaA few months ago, I read an article in the Financial Times called The Asian century is set to begin. It sounds pretty obvious, but the FT put together the most cohesive, data-driven argument I had ever seen on the rise of China.Last week, billionaire hedge fund investor and macro-thought leader Ray Dalio wrote an article in the FT called “Don’t be blind to China’s rise in a changing world.” It’s another amazing article that succinctly summarizes why you should care about China.In the US, there’s a saying that “everything is bigger in Texas.” My takeaway about the modern world today is that “everything is bigger in China.’In 2020 so far, 23 Chinese companies have gone public on American stock exchanges, 180 companies have gone public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, 115 in Shenzhen and 99 in Hong Kong. Ant Group, a financial services company spun out of Alibaba, is in the process of going public on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchange. This will be the biggest IPO of all time, with the company aiming to raise $34.5 Billion on a $313 Billion valuation. The last biggest IPO in the world was Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, which raised $29 Billion last year. Many investors are betting on Ant Group as a bellwether for the Chinese economy, as Ant Group is essentially the biggest fintech company in China, a country of 1.4 Billion people who likely all need financial services.At the same time, Bytedance is making plans to take their short video app Douyin public, either in Hong Kong or Shanghai. Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, so does this mean a TikTok IPO comes next? Probably.I don’t think it’s hard to see that TikTok is following the path of Douyin, which is probably 18 months ahead of TikTok in terms of product development. As an example, TikTok just announced a partnership with Shopify to have a more integrated social commerce experience on the app. Douyin has had much deeper social commerce features for a while. As described in an article from SupChina last year, people on Douyin can directly buy products on the app after watching a video. You can also book hotel stays on Douyin, or coupons for restaurants.If you believe that TikTok follows Douyin’s lead, it’s kind of obvious to think what comes next in TikTok’s product road map…Western InvestmentsPeople working at Snapchat are probably in a good mood right now, as the company reported positive results at their most recent earnings call last week, which sent their stock price to all time highs of $44 a share.A big part of Snap’s focus is India, where their user numbers have grown 150% year-on-year. India is Snap’s biggest market outside of the US. Snap has created augmented reality training programs in Indian schools, Indian content on the app, and support for nine Indian languages.In Vietnam, Apple is building new factories and employing Vietnamese workers as part of their new supply chain. This has caused an increase in wealth within several rural Vietnamese towns who have experienced a local boom thanks to investment from Apple.Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino billionaire, is considering selling $8 Billion worth of his casino empire to focus exclusively on his properties in Macau and Singapore. For Adelson’s company Las Vegas Sands Corp, 63% of their revenue comes from Macau and 22% comes from Singapore. In the case of Adelson, the US might be too small a market for him to have as his focus.In line with this trend, China’s Box Office has suddenly become the world’s biggest for the very first time. In major part due to a quick Covid recovery, the Chinese film industry is functioning right now and has brought in more revenue this year than the US film industry. While still not at its full strength, Chinese cinema currently has a more predictable recovery plan vs. its US counterpart.We should also remain mindful of the fact that international perception of China is at an all-time low. Pew Research has released a report saying that many countries around the world like Australia, the UK, and Japan now have historically unfavourable views of China, partly due to the country’s response to Covid. The Rising Global InternetI’ll close with this. Benedict Evans, one of the world’s leading tech analysts, has written an article called The End of the American internet. Here are the opening two paragraphs.“When Netscape launched in 1994 and kicked off the consumer internet, there were maybe 100m PCs on earth, and over half of them were in the USA. The web was invented in Switzerland, and computers were invented in the UK, but the internet was American. American companies set the agenda and created most of the important products and services, and American attitudes, cultures and laws around regulation and speech dominated.This is not quite so true anymore. 80-90% of internet users are now outside the USA, there are more smartphone users in China than in the USA and western Europe combined, and the creation of venture-based startups has gone global.”You can find more of my work here on Linktree… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Christine Ng, Talent Acquisition at the Financial Times. Christine is originally from Hong Kong but came to study in the UK for university, which led to her getting a masters in Business Psychology & Organisational Behaviour. After working in finance, launching her own chatbot startup and recruiting both at agencies and in-house across startups, SMEs, and corporates, Christine moved to the Financial Times.At the FT, one of the world's leading business news and information organisations, Christine leads talent acquisition for all Product and Technology teams. Christine is actively involved in advising, mentoring, and training startups on their talent acquisition strategy, both in London and in Hong Kong. This interview is an experiment in audio and video. You will have the opportunity to listen to the audio interview above or the video interview below.Here are some links to the content Christine mentioned in our interview:BBC’s The Homecoming - “Historian David Olusoga concludes his series with the three African kings who stood up to empire, an irresistible crooner, race riots in Liverpool and the shaping of black British identity in the 20th century.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Analysing Pakistan’s Ban on TikTok 🇵🇰The government of Pakistan banned TikTok earlier this month, based on complaints around the app’s “immoral” and “indecent” content. Kalsoom Lakhani, a friend of this newsletter, has written an amazing article in the Atlantic Council outlining the consequences of this ban. The claim of “immoral” and “indecent” content has been used by the Pakistani government to ban other apps, including livestreaming app Bigo, and dating apps Tinder and Grindr.Kalsoom talks about the potential impact this has on Pakistan’s startup ecosystem. There has been significant positive momentum within Pakistan’s tech landscape over the last five years. A critical aspect of this is the increased interest of foreign investors towards Pakistani startups. Whenever a top-down ban by the government occurs, this affects how foreign investors assess the risks within a country like Pakistan. Compared to India’s ban of TikTok due to political tensions with China, Pakistan banned TikTok for reasons around morality. This sets a dangerous precedent that can challenge the livelihood of content creators on platforms like TikTok and shake the confidence of startups who now need to consider the potential situation of getting banned. Check out the full article here!The Shifting Attitude of Chinese Students in the West In a recent survey released by Chinese education startup Babazhenbang, we see that Chinese parents and their children are feeling increasingly hesitant to go to the West for university. 81% of affluent Chinese families are postponing their plans to send their kids abroad for higher education. The survey included stories from many parents who are now considering sending their children to universities in Asia rather than the typical destinations of the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.The top two reasons why parents have shifted their mindset include health concerns around the coronavirus and increased discrimination due to political tensions. With recent events like the US revoking the visas of 1000 Chinese students deemed ‘security risks,’ it’s understandable that people in China feel new levels of hesitation. The main revenue stream for Western universities is foreign students, who get charged higher rates than local students. Chinese students abroad spend about $55.7 Billion a year. It’s an open question as to how big of a financial hole this situation will create for Western universities. Oppo’s Smartphone Play in EuropeHuawei has faced challenges globally, getting variations of bans in the US and the UK. Amidst this challenge, Huawei’s biggest smartphone rivals like Oppo, Xiaomi and Vivo are doing pretty well. Oppo is currently the fifth largest smartphone maker globally but is now making big moves into Europe. Overall, Oppo forecasts 38% growth over the coming year and Xiaomi, another major Chinese smartphone maker, has grown market share 6 to 13% this year. In Europe, Samsung has 35% market share and Apple has 17% market share. Oppo has just struck a deal with Deutsche Telekom, the biggest mobile carrier in the European Union, to allows Oppo to sell 5G devices in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. The company has set a goal of achieving 5% market share in Europe by next year. This is only the second year that Oppo has been operating in Europe and sales have tripled in 2020. The shifting tides of global technology players show us how the momentum of large Chinese companies cannot be stopped. While compliance and regulation might still pose an issue for Oppo in the future, for now the company has found success where their rivals Huawei have not. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Vietnam and UK Agree to Free Trade Agreement 🤝On September 29-30, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. After the meeting, the UK and Vietnam announced their intention to finalise a free trade agreement between the two countries. Bilateral trade between the UK and Vietnam totalled $6.7 Billion last year, and Vietnam is the second largest Southeast Asian exporter to the UK after Thailand. This agreement is one part of a complicated chess game the UK is playing. Earlier this year, the UK also finalised terms for a free trade agreement with Japan.The UK is wallowing in the messy hangover of Brexit and struggling to cope with the coronavirus, all the while trying to recalibrate its economic future. Brexit will at the very least decrease the strength of the UK’s trade with the EU. And the UK’s harder line stance against China means that the UK will need to build stronger bonds with their other Asian allies. The UK has been increasing its investment in Asia, outside of China, both in terms of political ties and economic trade. It’s probably the right strategic move. Chinese Livestreaming Through the Lens of Viya 🤳How big is Livestreaming in China? One way to answer that question is by looking through the lens of Viya, China’s largest livestreaming star. Viya sells products online through hours-long livestreams she usually hosts on Taobao Live, the e-commerce shopping platform owned by Alibaba. Last year, Viya sold $6 Billion worth of products through her livestreams, which is about the same as the annual China revenue of supermarket chain Carrefour.Brands partner with Viya to reach her audience of millions and provide consumers with new perspectives on their products. Viya’s livestreams help customers learn more and develop a sense of trust before buying certain products, which range from food to cosmetics to rocket-launching services and more. Not every livestreamer has the talent and audience of Viya, but the scale and growth of livestreaming has inspired most of the the country. One third of China’s internet population has participated in livestreaming in 2020. The Growth and Popularity of Shein 👗Shein is a Chinese fast fashion retailer that has been getting really popular in the West. A recent survey of Gen-Z Americans found that Shein was the second most popular online retail brand, behind Amazon but ahead of Nike, Lululemon, Pacsun, and Urban Outfitters. The company was founded in Nanjing in 2008 and generated $2.8 Billion in revenue last year, with customers all over the world.Shein is a fast fashion e-commerce site like Fashion Nova or Boohoo, operating entirely online without any physical retail stores. The company sells primarily fashion items at low prices, usually lower than $20. Shein actually doesn’t target Chinese customers at all. Right now, Shein was one of the hundreds of Chinese apps banned in India. Their popularity seems to be increasing in America and given the political climate towards Chinese companies, they would probably benefit from keeping a low profile. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Ali Samir Oosman, who is currently leading Strategic Partnerships and Deal Flow at Microsoft for Startups, based in Dubai. Ali is originally from Karachi, Pakistan and has spent many years working within the startup ecosystem both in Pakistan and across the wider region. He has worked in both developed and emerging markets as an investor, advisor, and executive in areas like social development, digital mapping, insurance, venture capital and media.Having lived and worked in both the East and West, Ali has great perspective that you’ll see in this interview!This interview is an experiment in audio and video. You will have the opportunity to listen to the audio interview above or the video interview below. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Indian Podcast Consumption Rising Because of the CoronavirusIn India, people are increasing the amount of time they spend listening to podcasts. Major Indian podcasting companies like Gaana Podcasts and Aawaz.com have seen double to triple digit growth in listeners over the first half of 2020. With new increases in time spent on digital entertainment due to the coronavirus, the podcasting industry is one of the main beneficiaries. With a lot of local video production paused by the coronavirus, this also gives Indians another reason to listen to podcasts.This behaviour mimics similar trends we are seeing in the West. Time spent listening to podcasts has been steadily increasing over the last five years and the trend has continued through the coronavirus. As podcasting gets bigger, so does the commercial opportunity. More advertisers are looking to podcasts as a marketing channel to reach new audiences and Indian consumers can provide one of the world’s biggest audiences.Donald Trump’s New Target Might Be Ant GroupAnt Group, the Chinese tech company spun out of Alibaba, is planning an IPO later this year that would value the company at around $250 Billion. That would be the biggest IPO of all time and is going to take place as a dual listing in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. Given US-China tensions, some American politicians are looking to impose new regulations on Ant Group. Donald Trump is reportedly exploring sanctions against Ant and its payments app Alipay. US Senator Marco Rubio has also proposed measures to delay Ant’s IPO.Ant Group is a Chinese company that will be listing on stock exchanges in Chinese locations and the overwhelming majority of their customers are Chinese. Compared to TikTok’s huge international userbase, it’s less clear how the US can affect the outcome of Ant Group. I don’t think the US government will be able to create any major hurdle for Ant Group right now, but it might send a message of caution for any large Chinese tech company looking to do business in America. NBA Finals Finally Gets CCTV Broadcast in ChinaEver since the general manager of the Houston Rockets Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protests in October 2019, the NBA has faced increased scrutiny by the Chinese government and public backlash from segments of the Chinese population. Since then, CCTV (China’s state broadcaster) has not shown a single NBA game in the country. However, CCTV has finally decided to start airing NBA games again, starting with Game 5 of the NBA Finals last weekend. I’m often optimistic about the ability of culture and entertainment to overcome politics. The NBA has made major efforts to repair their relationship with the Chinese government and Chinese people. Of course, not everyone hated the NBA because of Daryl Morey’s comments, but the negative PR in China was big enough to cause a major blow to the sports organisation. Moving forward, this move by the CCTV indicates that the NBA should be on good footing to do business within their biggest international market. At the end of the day, I think people on all sides of the issue can put aside their differences, even just temporarily, in order to unite over their common love for basketball. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️The BTS Live Virtual Concert That Broke RecordsOver the last weekend, K-pop group BTS hosted a two-day virtual concert that was watched by nearly 1 Million people from 191 countries. People could watch the live concert from a variety of different angles and much like the virtual fans of sports leagues like the NBA, BTS fans could have their faces featured on screens at the stadium where the group was performing. This is the second virtual concert BTS has hosted this year. The first took place in June and was called “Bang Bang Con: The Live.” Technology like augmented reality and virtual reality was used to make the concert even more visually impressive and interactive. Several K-pop groups, like many other musicians, have hosted virtual concerts this year but this latest BTS concert broke the Guinness World Record for most viewers of a livestreamed performance. This cements their position as the world’s biggest musical group.Baidu Releases Free RoboTaxis in BeijingBaidu is the company behind China’s biggest search engine and is sometimes referred to as the Google equivalent in China. Similar to Google’s own work in autonomous vehicles, Baidu has been doing a lot of research in autonomous vehicles. Last weekend, Baidu kicked of a program of self-driving robotaxis in the city of Beijing called Apollo Go. For a test period from October 10 to November 6, people in Beijing will be able to hail Baidu’s electric robotaxis for free. The Apollo Go vehicles currently only drive within a predetermined set of specific routes but there are ambitious plans to expand further as soon as possible. Baidu isn’t the only tech company releasing self-driving vehicles. Others include projects from their rivals WeRide, Didi, and AutoX. Autonomous vehicles in China are progressing at a similar rate as the West, arguably even faster. When surveyed, Chinese consumers are currently more comfortable with self-driving cars vs. American consumers. As the world moves towards more autonomous vehicles, keeping an eye on progress made between rivals in China and the US is a look into the future of transportation.Shenzhen Pilots New Digital Lottery Powered by BlockchainIn the Chinese city of Shenzhen, local residents will be able to enter a lottery to win up to 10 Million yuan ($1.47 Million) of digital currency. For people who register for the lottery, they will be getting the chance to earn a digital ‘red packet’ of 200 yuan ($30 USD). In order to register, people will need to use iShenzhen, the local blockchain-based public services platform created by Shenzhen’s government. Blockchain is the decentralised technology behind many digital cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.If someone is chosen as a winner, they will receive their red packet through the official government digital wallet. Right now, you can use this digital currency to buy goods at a select number of stores across Shenzhen, but can’t transfer it to another person or into your own bank account. To those of you interested in the adoption of digital currencies, you’ll realise that this move by Shenzhen’s government is incredibly bold. China has goals to become a completely cashless society and believes that a digital yuan, backed and controlled by the government, is the best way to achieve this. While not everyone is going to support this idea, it’s going to be fascinating to see how China’s aggressive adoption of digital currency affects the country’s financial services industry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Jay Thornhill. Jay is an Australian-American whose one-year stay in China has lasted thirteen years. He is a cofounder and Head of Product Development at Baopals.Near the end of 2015, Jay and two close American friends, Charlie and Tyler, set out to make China’s largest online shopping platforms accessible and convenient for non-Chinese. They had no experience in ecommerce, no funding or guanxi, and plenty of legal, financial and technological uncertainty. However, they knew this problem needed to be solved, and there was nothing in the market like the solution they wanted.On March 1st, 2016, they launched Baopals (baopals.com). Baopals is a bridge to all products and sellers from Taobao, Tmall and JD, updating in real time and catered to foreign shoppers. In 4 years, the platform has helped expats in China purchase over 4 million items for CNY250 million in gross merchandise value. What are the most exciting trends you are seeing in China today?The speed with which China and its people build new infrastructure, adopt new technology, and take up new habits is a sight to behold. It’s taken for granted now that you can purchase anything you want with a few clicks on the phone and have it delivered to your door quickly and cheaply. Easy access to low-cost products and services is nothing new here, but consumers’ preferences are evolving too. Because China’s economy and culture changed so drastically the past 50 years, the generation gap might be wider here than almost anywhere in the world. The younger generation tends to be more open-minded, competitive, individualistic, and optimistic. A growing number want to carve their own paths, take more risks, try out more hobbies and interests, and live a more varied lifestyle than previous generations. It’s all relative, and China remains far off from the individualism and “pursuit of happiness” ethos of American culture, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of balance is struck going forward.How has the coronavirus affected your business and other businesses in your industry?At the start of 2020, the outbreak looked as if it was going to have a dramatic effect on China but not the rest of the world. A lot of expats in China hurried to fly back home or travel while waiting for COVID to get contained in China. Since Baopals is built entirely for non-Chinese shoppers, we saw a drop of about 35% in sales almost overnight as expats fled the country. Then the outbreak turned into a worldwide pandemic and the borders were closed, so it became clear to us we weren’t getting those customers back for a while, and we wouldn’t benefit from new foreigners arriving in China for a while.Because of lockdown measures, we had nearly all of our staff working remotely in February, which meant there were 3 or 4 of us working in a 3-story house built for a team of 50 and costing us an arm and a leg. Without an end in sight, we built new backend tools to better manage remote work, including a fully automated points and rewards system for our staff. When we saw how well everyone was working from home, we decided to ditch the office and we never looked back. The pandemic forced a lot of companies and individuals to experiment with remote work, and I think many have found it to be more viable than expected.Our numbers rebounded more quickly than expected, possibly from shoppers preferring online shopping more now than in pre-pandemic times. With the improved efficiency we’re set up nicely for growth, and we’ve recently soft launched international service to do just that.What is one thing people outside of China misunderstand about the regionOver the years I’ve become a bit guarded whenever the topic of China comes up with family or friends back home. I have to first assess whether they are genuinely curious about Chinese people and my experience in China, or whether they’re merely seeking to confirm views shaped by western media. If it’s the latter, then they likely won’t be receptive to certain ideas. For example, that many expats feel they enjoy more freedom and opportunity in China than they did in their homelands. Or the idea that Chinese people are not brainwashed – at least, no more brainwashed than the average person nowadays. Most Chinese are proud of their country’s achievements without blindly agreeing to all of the ruling party’s politics. They tend to be defensive when China is criticized, and they’re justified in feeling that western media has a negative bias towards China. The truth is often more nuanced than what is presented, and western media typically avoids anything positive that might be said about China. When one’s homeland is criticized by those who have little to no experience with the country, some defensiveness is to be expected. What are some companies you admire in China?China’s tech giants deserve a lot of admiration. Alibaba built the world’s best shopping platform in Taobao, with the most products at the best prices. The only problem is that it was built entirely for Chinese – and therein lay the opportunity for us to create Baopals, making Taobao easy for non-Chinese to enjoy.Tencent has created, in my opinion, the most useful app in existence. WeChat has grown from a typical messaging app to a do-it-all digital platform that those in China can’t imagine living without. It’s an ecosystem for social life, payments, media, online shopping, gaming, events, and a wealth of other services. One of the first things we did as a company was create our official WeChat service account, which allows users to easily shop on Baopals without leaving WeChat. The bulk of our content and payments come through WeChat, so much so that in over four years we still haven’t built stand-alone apps (they are coming, though!).I’m also a big fan of other platforms that make life in China more convenient, including DiDi (China’s Uber, with incredibly low fares and an English version to boot), Ele.me and Meituan for food delivery, and Hello Bike or Mobike for biking all over the city.What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone trying to get their business to thrive in this time period?If there’s any one-size-fits-all advice, it’s to focus on profitability above all else. That may seem obvious, but this seems to be forgotten all too often in the startup scene today. In the second year of Baopals, we got caught up in the hype of top-line growth, media attention, and potential fundraising instead of focusing on what really matters: the bottom line. Our sales doubled while our net profit fell nearly 70%. Once we shut out the distractions and honed our focus on profitability, we found all kinds of ways to improve efficiency and earnings. With the right focus, you can grow your net earnings and improve cash flow even when top line sales are falling. That helps you get through difficult times and thrive on the rebound.Quickfire QuestionsA - What’s the best thing you have watched recently? (Film, TV Show, Ted Talk, Youtube Video, etc.)I’m enjoying the sci-fi series Raised by Wolves, about androids attempting to raise children and build a colony after leaving a post-apocalyptic Earth. It’s well crafted, visually stunning, and thought provoking. I always enjoy science fiction for being imaginative and exploring the unknown, while ultimately being about us. It’s also a great way to take my mind off anything that might be stressing me out in the real world!B - What’s the best thing you have read recently? (Book, Article, Research Report, Tweetstorm, etc.)I’m a big believer in Bitcoin, and there are a lot of exciting things happening in the crypto space these days. Bitcoiners have long anticipated corporations and central banks beginning to hold Bitcoin reserves, so the recent news that MicroStrategy allocated the vast majority of its cash reserves (over $400 million) to Bitcoin feels like a watershed moment. News just broke that Square has also begun purchasing Bitcoin, and no doubt more corporations are discussing how to do the same.C - What’s the best thing you have listened to recently? (Song, Album, Artist, Podcast, Audiobook, etc.)“Burn the House Down” by AJR. Never mind the dark lyrics; you can’t help feeling good and adding bounce to your step with this song playing. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Michael Yang, CEO of TikTok Agents. TikTok Agents is a California-based TikTok Marketing and Advertising agency. Michael is originally from China, went to university in the US, and has worked across several companies in gaming and consumer tech. Michael’s professional and educational background gives him perspective on the East and West that I don’t hear often enough. I really enjoyed reading his answers and hope you will too.What are the most exciting trends you are seeing in China today?There are so many trends happening in China right now. 5G and AI both unleash great imagination and prospects for the country. As far as the industry I am working in, I think the most promising sector in the near future is the new consumer retail industry. With the rapid development of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, the time for a brand to go from creation to becoming a major player in the market is getting shorter and shorter. And the whole integration of online e-commerce stores with brick-and-mortar stores is getting better and better. I think in the near future, online and offline will be fully integrated. Merchants will be able to comprehensively evaluate and quantify store performance from multiple dimensions, and consumers can also have a better shopping experience. How has the coronavirus affected your business and other businesses in your industry?I run a TikTok marketing & advertising company in the United States. This year, affected by the pandemic, billions of people left their jobs and were forced to stay at home. It is during this time period that many creators jumped into TikTok to become TikTok influencers. Many users also found joy and relaxation by coming to TikTok. This has brought TikTok rapid growth in its worldwide user base, including rapid expansion in the US. Therefore, in terms of overall environment, the pandemic has created favourable external growth for TikTok. Of course, the impact of the pandemic is reflected elsewhere. For example, because of shelter in place in California, our team was forced to work online. This was the first time that I led the team through online collaboration. This is a new challenge for me and the team. Fortunately, our business is mainly online. We were able to accomplish most of our online tasks seamlessly, but we still need to improve on management and collaboration. What is one thing people outside of China misunderstand about the country?Wow, this is a very big topic. I think first, it depends on how you define the term “people outside of China.” I have lived in the US and the UK for the past 10 years, talking with people in different cities and different places. I have heard highly prejudiced opinions or bias about China, and I have also heard far-sighted and considerate views about China. I think this mainly depends on the person’s positioning and experience. Just like me 10 years ago, when I first set foot in the United States, I discovered that the United States was completely different from what I saw on TV in China. I only discovered and felt all of these things by experiencing them in person.Overall, a lot of foreign people have a fixed stereotype that the Chinese government uses heavy-handed control to suppress the people, and the Chinese people will need to accept rules that may lead to a lack of human rights or freedom. But in my opinion, China is a completely pragmatic country and society. The Chinese government’s management model is totally results-oriented. For example, since the start of the epidemic, many Western media outlets have blamed the Chinese government for shutting down Wuhan. However, the fundamental reasoning of the government is that everything needs to be results-oriented. They were controlling the pandemic, reducing the speed of spread, and halting the number of infections and casualties. That is the purpose of their work.So the foreigners were surprised and worried about human rights when the Chinese people were willing to accept the government’s compulsory control during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Chinese people were worried and surprised about the irresponsible and ridiculous actions of foreign people who refused to wear masks and quarantine. An important concept in economics is the trade-off between fairness and efficiency. An excellent social structure is able to maximize efficiency while ensuring fairness. In my view, Western society emphasizes fairness, while Chinese society emphasizes efficiency. The same principle is applied when we talk about doing business in China. If the result can be achieved in a short time, no matter what measures one may possibly use, it will be the most favorable choice.What are some companies you admire in China?Personally, I admire Bytedance. Bytedance’s products are very attractive and have strong user stickiness. As a young CEO, Zhang Yiming manages a team of more than ten thousand people. He has strong leadership and personal charisma, which makes him a role model for our generation.What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone trying to get their business to thrive in this time period?Hard times create heroes. The mission of starting any business is to solve problems and create value. In this year of frustration, loss, risks, and challenges, each of these “problems” need a solution. And every one of these solutions means an opportunity. So difficult times may also be a good thing for entrepreneurs. Without these problems, how can you talk about starting a business after all?Quickfire Questions…A - What’s the best thing you have watched recently? (Film, TV Show, Ted Talk, YouTube Video, etc.)The BBC’s documentary—The Planets. When I start to look up in the sky and realize how small human history is, I feel humbled and relaxed.B - What’s the best thing you have read recently? (Book, Article, Research Report, Tweetstorm, etc.)The Deer and the Cauldron - a historical fiction novel written by Jin Yong. It depicts precisely Chinese characteristics and values. I recommend it strongly if you are interested in knowing more about Chinese culture and social behaviours, especially the way government interacts with normal people.C - What’s the best thing you have listened to recently? (Song, Album, Artist, Podcast, Audiobook, etc.)10 Minutes of relaxing meditation music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️China’s Box Office Recovering Better Than Expected 🎞In the midst of China’s famous Golden Week holiday season, Chinese movie theaters are getting more business than expected. Total box office receipts in China within the first few days of Golden Week were $368 Million, which is 14% lower than the same period last year. Cinema owners have been pleasantly surprised by the recovery, citing facts that Chinese people might have more need for cinema entertainment, especially since they cannot travel overseas for this year’s Golden Week.On the other hand, the world’s second biggest cinema operator Cineworld announced that they will be cutting 45,000 jobs across the US and UK. While Western films like James Bond’s No Time to Die and the latest film version of Dune have been postponed until 2021, most domestic Chinese blockbuster films are still coming out this year, contributing to the optimism of China’s film industry. For many people working in Hollywood, China has been slowly rising over the past few years to become the most important cinema market. With the coronavirus, that entire process may have sped up.Stats around Livestreaming = Huge in China 🎥I’ve been enthusiastically writing about Chinese livestreaming for a few months in this newsletter. A recent report has come out saying that there were 309 Million e-commerce livestreaming viewers over the first half of 2020. That’s one third of China’s total internet population. This makes livestreaming the fastest growing internet sector in China. People from rural farmers to lawyers to property developers to major tech CEOs are now using livestreaming to sell products. Could we soon see a world where livestreaming becomes popular in the West? Certain cultural and technological factors make livestreaming more relevant to Chinese audiences right now, but the authenticity and interactivity of livestreaming is something I think will become more popular across the world. Western social apps like Instagram are already experimenting with this and I only see this trend growing even further.A TV Network in the Philippines Turns to Streaming 📺The largest TV network in the Philippines, ABS-CBN, has been denied a broadcasting license by the government, forcing the network to go off the air in June. Part of this stems from a dispute between the network and Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. While ABS-CBN has struck a partnership with another network in order to create a new brand that will start broadcasting on free TV later this month, ABS-CBN has still been forced to get creative over the last few months.Instead of closing down, ABS-CBN has shifted all of their programming to social media and their own streaming platform iWantTFC. While ABS-CBN’s core business is still reliant on success in broadcast TV, they have seen good results from their online platforms in terms of views and new digital subscription revenue. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I foresee a world in the future where major networks are online-only, rather than TV broadcast networks. While ABS-CBN had to do this because of a government order, the world is moving into the direction where even the most traditional TV companies are shifting to digital. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️China’s Golden Week is Tourism Health Check 🗺Right now is China’s ‘Golden Week,’ a national holiday that usually involves people traveling both domestically and internationally. Given the coronavirus, most people in China are adjusting to how they approach Golden Week this year. China’s tourism ministry reported that 425 Million people have travelled domestically within the first four days of Golden Week, which is lower than the 542 Million people from last year. Overall tourism revenue from the first half of Golden Week is reported to be $45.9 Billion, which is a 31% decrease from the same time last year.Trip.com, China’s largest online travel agency, has said that domestic travel bookings are at about 80% of pre-pandemic levels. These numbers are all very large, but overall shows a decline in travel and tourism-related spend. While restrictions have been pretty much lifted and people still flocked to major tourist sites this week, the travel industry is still in trouble. This shows signs of recovery, but there’s still a long way to go before consumption and tourism reaches pre-Covid levels and people feel safe enough to travel. Burberry is First Luxury Brand On Chinese reality TV 🧣Much like in the West, reality TV shows are a super popular category in China. As I’ve written about before, some of the most popular Chinese shows are based around street culture—like hip hop and street fashion. One example of this now is the show “Street Dance of China,” a hit show produced by streaming platform Youku. For brands, these reality shows are great opportunity to form a creative partnership and get in front of young audiences.Well Burberry has now become a trailblazer as the first Western luxury brand to partner with a Chinese reality TV show, “Street Dance of China.” Burberry has launched a co-branded box with the show and souvenirs from the show have also been featured as free gifts with certain Burberry purchases. And there was a special livestream on Tmall, where people could buy a limited edition Burberry item inspired by the street fashion on the show. In a world where it’s difficult for a brand to stand out, especially in China, having more of an integrated commerce partnership with a hip, young TV show will probably work better than just running ads.Alibaba Partners With Swiss Duty Free GiantChinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has just announced a partnership with Swiss company Dufry, the world’s largest operator of airport duty free shops. Dufry was founded in Basel, Switzerland in 1865. The two companies have now entered a joint venture where Alibaba purchased a 10% stake in Dufry for $273 Million. People estimate that the logical next step is for Alibaba to start launching airport duty free stores across China. Right now, the state-owned China Duty Free Group dominates airport stores across the country.When I think of offline commerce, I usually don’t think of airport duty free stores. However, duty free retail in China has grown 31% over the last two years, reaching a size of $7.6 Billion. Alibaba is always looking for growth, and this partnership with Dufry gives them much more legitimacy to get into duty free retail. At the same time, Dufry is aware of the huge opportunities in China that could be essential to the future of the company. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Netflix Releases Controversial Indian Documentary ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’ 💰There’s a new show on Netflix called ‘Bad Boy Billionaires,’ which profiles four Indian billionaire businessmen who are currently under investigation for fraud. Netflix had planned to launch the show last month but Subrata Roy of the Sahara Group had filed an injunction preventing the show from being released. Since Roy is one of the four billionaires profiled in the show, his legal team argued that the show would damage his reputation. However, an Indian state court lifted an injunction over the last week and now ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’ is live on Netflix in India. Netflix has faced some challenges in India before, receiving complaints and censorship challenges against content deemed offensive. From Netflix’s perspective, the company is arguing for free speech and their own financial well-being. The new ‘Bad Boy Billionaires’ show is just the latest incident the American company is facing in their Indian operations. The four billionaires they chose to profile have some of the most high profile legal cases in the country—Roy is currently out on bail and two of the other billionaires are currently in the UK facing extradition to India.India Plans To Launch Their Own App Store 📲Last week, a group of prominent Indian tech companies formed a coalition against Google’s Play Store, vowing to create their own app store. This comes after Paytm, India’s largest tech startup valued at $16 Billion and with 350 Million users, was pulled from the Google Play Store—a decision Paytm’s CEO called ‘arbitrary’ and “a sanction by an American company on an Indian one.” Google’s reasoning was that some of the cashback and prize functionality of Paytm violated their policies against online casinos and gambling.Google also had plans to create a new 30% fee for any in-app purchases in the Indian Play Store in 2021. This caused particular outrage for Indian startups as in-app purchases are a primary revenue driver for Indian startups vs. Western startups. Due to pressure from this Indian coalition of companies lobbying against the Play Store, Google announced yesterday that they are deferring this new 30% fee to 2022. At the same time, Paytm has launched their own mini-app store. Indian technology companies are developing more clout. This bold decision would have been unthinkable a decade ago, and the Indian companies would have had significantly less leverage.China Investigates Google’s Android Mobile Operating System 🤖Meanwhile in China, the Chinese government is planning to launch their own antitrust investigation into Google’s Android mobile operating system. The antitrust complaint was initially filed by Chinese tech company Huawei, who is accusing Google of anticompetitive practices that have hurt local Chinese companies. An official investigation is expected to be announced soon. There are many motivations behind this. The tensions between the US and China spill over from politics into business. It’s not a coincidence that Huawei is filing the antitrust complaint against Google, as Huawei has been blacklisted by US President Trump. The ongoing drama regarding the forced sale of Tiktok adds even more fuel to the fire. And looking beyond international politics—we can see both in India and in China that Western tech giants like Google are getting more and more pushback, which is a function of the growing leverage of Asian countries. And unfortunately for Google specifically, the company is now being accused of antitrust violations both in the US and China! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Ken Uehara, an award-winning filmmaker based in London who currently works at UniDays and previously worked at UNILAD. Ken is half-Dutch, half-Japanese, and grew up in Manila, Philippines.Having lived and worked in both the East and West, Ken has great perspective that you’ll see in this interview!This interview is an experiment in audio and video. Compared to all the previous written interviews, you will have the opportunity to listen to the audio interview above or the video interview below. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Disney’s Asian Hope Is The Realest Fairytale 🏰It’s a tough time for Disney. Earlier this week, the company announced that they will be laying off 28,000 employees in the US, primarily people working at their theme parks. Disney has laid part of the blame on California’s governor Gavin Newsom, who refuses to allow Disneyland to reopen. Disney is truly an international company and outside of the US, they have theme parks in Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo. While all of their parks closed down earlier this year, the Asian parks are now back open.Shanghai Disneyland reopened in May; Tokyo Disneyland reopened in July; and Hong Kong Disneyland reopened last week, after a couple months closure between July and September. Parks and resorts is the single biggest revenue driver for Disney. Given their restrictions in California, Disney should be looking to their Asian properties as their biggest opportunity for immediate growth. While Disney has suffered from the poor reception of the recently released film Mulan, they can look to their Asian parks as a potentially strong revenue stream in the time of covid. For now, it looks like Disney’s potential Asian customers could have a bigger impact on their bottom line than their Western customers.Apples Launches New Public Health Initiative in Singapore 🍎Apple has partnered with the government of Singapore to launch a new mobile app called LumiHealth, which provides users with a personalised program to encourage healthy physical activity through the Apple Watch. This is one part of a broader program created by the Singaporean government called the Smart Nation Initiative, where technology will be used to find solutions to improve the lives of all Singaporeans. The LumiHealth app was a joint project by Apple, the Singaporean government, and a group of physicians and public health officials. The app provides users with a set of wellness challenges that they can complete using their Apple Watch. The app is meant to be very interactive, personalised and provide strong incentives such as cash rewards. Users must have an Apple Watch and must download the LumiHealth app in order to participate. From my point of view, I have more faith in technology companies providing better wellness solutions than government. But what could be even better is a public-private partnership, like this one between Apple and the Singaporean government. And honestly, if you were to rank the world’s governments by level of competence, Singapore would be near the top of the list. Apple gets more Apple Watch sales and App downloads, and the Singaporean government should get healthier citizens. Considering the scrutiny Apple is facing from many governments around the world, getting into a cozy relationship with Singapore’s government should have long-term benefits.Declaring The Golden Age of Southeast Asian Tech 🏆Tech in Asia is a brilliant publication covering Asian tech news. You may remember my interview a couple months ago with Andrew Baisley, Managing Director of Tech in Asia Studios. From October 19-22, Tech in Asia is hosting a Virtual Conference called “Southeast Asia’s Golden Age: 2021 and Beyond.” The enthusiasm of that title is underscored by some key takeaways and highlights Tech in Asia has put together in this article, which talks about the biggest growth drivers, opportunities, and challenges in Southeast Asian tech.Over the last two years, the top-funded startup vertical in Southeast Asia has been logistics and transportation, indicating the need for the fundamental infrastructure of the digital economy. Covid poses challenges to the growth of the tech industry, but there are still untapped opportunities in verticals like food, health, education, and more. These facts are just a preview of a full report that goes into much more detail. You can get the full report by signing up for the 2020 Tech in Asia Virtual Conference! At the end of the day, Southeast Asian tech is at an all time high, and growth is expected to rebound in spite of the coronavirus. The young, fast growing, dynamic region of Southeast Asia can’t be stopped. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Lessons from China’s Domestic Tourism 🛫All over the world, professionals in the travel industry are struggling because of the coronavirus. In China, the tourism industry isn’t doing as poorly as you might expect and right now, Chinese domestic tourism is going through a strong recovery. From all time lows at the beginning of the year, the Chinese domestic tourism industry has emerged out of the global pandemic by doing some innovative things. Livestreaming has been used as an entertainment/commerce channel for most travel companies, who are using livestreams enthusiastically to sell products. Ctrip, China’s largest online travel agency (OTA), has put on several livestreams hosted by their co-founder James Liang. On each livestream, James Liang really puts himself out there by dressing up in traditional Chinese outfits and selling products related to major domestic tourist destinations. And each livestream has sold millions of dollars worth of products. Airlines, hotels, and destinations are all using livestreams to sell aggressive discounts. For example, China Eastern airlines now has an ‘all you can fly deal,’ which allows you to travel on an unlimited number of domestic flights over a several month time period. You can find even more examples in this presentation from Jing Daily and Dragon Tail Interactive. I hope other countries can take some inspiration from the Chinese travel industry.The ASEAN Tourism Plan 🌏A.S.E.A.N. stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is an intergovernmental organisation you might think of like the UN of Southeast Asian countries - Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. All of these countries have suffered from drops in tourism due to the coronavirus. Beginning with an agreement on joint tourism cooperation several months ago, the ASEAN nations are trying to work together in order to encourage more inter-country tourism.Malaysia and Singapore currently allow cross-border travel for essential services, and Tourism Malaysia is looking to open up a travel bubble with other ASEAN nations. Vietnam has also proposed a travel bubble with their ASEAN neighbors. Unfortunately, new covid spikes keep pushing back these well-intentioned plans. In the short term (and for who knows how long), we’re moving to travel bubbles that will first start opening up at a regional level, such as within ASEAN, within Europe, or between Australia and New Zealand. Thailand’s Wealthy Tourist Strategy 💸Next week, Thailand will begin receiving its first foreign tourists, flying into Phuket from Guangzhou, China. Since April, foreign visitors haven’t been allowed into Thailand. The tourism industry makes up 11% of Thailand’s GDP, and is expected to contract dramatically this year. On the flipside, Thailand might have a tourism advantage, since there have been zero cases of local transmission of the coronavirus over the last hundred days. This might make Thailand appear to be a safe, attractive tourism destination.At the same time, Thailand is looking into a broader mass-scale border opening at the beginning of next year. The Thai government has also discussed the possibility of issuing new special tourist visas to attract more foreigners and new local investment incentives to attract international investors to come to the country. Two days ago, I wrote about the Japanese government creating a new startup visa category for foreign university graduates. Because of the coronavirus, it seems that every Asian country will slowly start rolling out new incentives to attract foreign tourists, investors, and businesses. So if you’re looking to travel, work, or live in Asia in the near future, you may have more options now than ever before. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️China’s Vow to Go Carbon Neutral by 2060 ☁️Last week at the UN General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared China’s new public plan to go carbon neutral by 2060. As the world’s biggest climate polluter, China’s announcement was a major step forward in the human battle against climate change. Making this statement is one thing, but actually marshalling the resources and regulations to make this happen is a different story. This requires the replacement of pretty much China’s entire current energy system. It was a bold move for Xi Jinping that many people did not expect. This should also prompt a response from the US, the world’s second biggest carbon emitter. President Donald Trump has not set any specific targets for the US and actually plans to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement in November. There are political undertones to the conversation around climate change, which is now opening as another front in the tensions between the US and China. With this new declaration by Xi Jinping at the UN, China wants to increase its soft power as China comes across as a forthcoming team player.Virtual Events and Experiences in Indonesia 💻The events industry, like many other industries, has had to pivot their model because of the coronavirus, shifting many of their events from offline to online. You have seen this across the East and West. And in Indonesia, it’s a similar story where local tech companies are responding to more online demand by creating new virtual products, such as KiosTix and Gojek. KiosTix is a ticketing management company that launched an online event hosting platform in April called KiosLive. This new platform focuses on providing a space for musicians to host live concerts online and also has interesting features like allowing people to simultaneously order food delivery while watching an online event.Gojek is the multi-billion dollar Indonesian tech company best known for their ride-hailing app. Gojek has been expanding into other areas in a quest to become more like a SuperApp, and they launched GoPlay Live in July. This is a new on-demand live video platform for people to host large events. In September, Gojek launched a similar product called Loket Live Studio, which is focused more on helping content creators host online events. Gojek has also integrated features like live shopping and virtual donations into these platforms. Whether these companies succeed or new startups come into the picture, the commercial opportunity of online events is huge in a country like Indonesia, which has a population of 260 Million people.Hiding Your Chinese Apps in India 🕶Since the Indian government banned hundreds of major Chinese mobile apps a couple of months ago, some Chinese companies have been trying to figure out workarounds to get back into the Indian market. One common tactic is sneaky rebranding. For example, Chinese company Kuaishou had an app banned earlier this year called Kwai. However, Kuaishou has just launched Snack Video in India, which is very similar to the banned Kwai app. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and there are always going to be ways to get around the rules. Some have reported Chinese developers now teaming up with Indian developers to be seen as an Indian company. Other Chinese companies are registering as new companies with a Southeast Asian headquarters. And technically, one could argue that if the Indian government bans a specific app then a thinly veiled clone app should be allowed…until the new clone app is banned. The Indian government has actually followed up with more ban lists that specifically target these new clone apps. Either way, India is so big that many Chinese companies can’t afford to lose access to the market. Or at the very least, they will do everything in their power to stay connected to Indian consumers. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Apple Opens First Online Store in India - It’s Just The Beginning 🇮🇳On September 23, Apple launched its first online store in India. What does that mean? Now, Indians can go online to order Apple products and services directly. You might be surprised to learn that this is the first time this has ever been possible in India. In the past, you could only purchase Apple products through authorised local partners offline. It has also been hard for Apple to open a retail store in India considering local government regulations. These regulations are being relaxed and Apple plans to open their first offline retail store in India sometime next year. The Indian government has also offered billions of dollars in incentives for smartphone makers to move more of their operations to the country.Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India two years ago, which now allows Apple to sell more affordable phones for the market. This is the 38th country in the world where Apple has launched an online store. But as you know, India is the 2nd biggest country in the world by population. Opening an online store (and eventually offline retail) indicates just the beginning of Apple increasing their marketing investment within the country. India is becoming a more important market for Apple and we should start seeing more investment soon.Japan Wants More Foreign Entrepreneurs - Are You In? 🗾The Japanese government will now start offering a two-year entrepreneurship visa for foreign students graduating from a Japanese university who want to open up a business in the country. Previously, it was a lot more difficult to stay in Japan after your graduation. These sorts of programs usually come with lots of hidden details, but at the very least it signals that the Japanese government is taking an interest in attracting more foreign entrepreneurs to the country. At least within my world of friends, colleagues, and influences, Japan has a really strong, positive brand. These ‘country brands’ will matter more in the increasing world of remote work. And I’m personally predicting mass significant global migrations in both students and workers in the aftermath of the coronavirus. As a country, there are a lot of things you can’t control about what makes you attractive. But laws and regulations around visas play a big role in the decision-making to attract more people and you can definitely affect that. Let’s see how seriously the Japanese government wants to invest in this and let’s see how many people—especially entrepreneurs—end up moving to Japan over the next years. Even More Investing in Asia from KKR and SPACs 🌏KKR, one of the world’s biggest private equity funds, has just finished raising a new $11 Billion dollar fund to focus on investments in Asia. This is the biggest Asian-focused private equity fund ever raised. In related news, Hong Kong-based Pacific Century has combined with the investment fund of Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel to create a new $625 Million SPAC focused on Asia. SPAC stands for Special Purpose Acquisition Company, which is a new financial tool to help private companies go public through an acquisition.This new Asia-focused SPAC is called Bridgetown Holdings and is specifically targeting companies in Southeast Asia within sectors like tech, financial services, and media. For small startups or bigger companies across Asia, this means that there are more foreign investors and potential acquirers. You can usually interpret a trail of money as a leading indicator for economic growth. These new Western investment vehicles focusing on Asia show us that the global investment community is looking even more to Asia’s fast-growing companies.*BONUS* TikTok Marketing & Advertising 101At the urging of some readers, I wanted to share something else I’m working on outside of East West Hurricane. If you are a company struggling to achieve the marketing results you really want, I would highly recommend you looking into TikTok. I fully believe it’s currently the world’s most underrated marketing channel. I’ve put together a crash course on TikTok, which you can check it out here.! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

It was December 2018 and I had just walked into an office building. I escaped from the hot, sweaty outdoors into the cool air conditioning inside. I took the elevator to the eleventh floor and soon found myself in a conference room sitting across the table from the CEO of an artificial intelligence (AI) startup. But I wasn’t in San Francisco or New York or London. I was in Karachi, Pakistan. The founder/CEO of this startup had received his master’s degree in AI from Stanford University and was blowing my mind describing his company’s product. A few minutes into our meeting, his COO walked into the room and apologised for being late. This COO had received his MBA from the University of Michigan.Both the CEO and the COO were born and raised in Pakistan, and went to the US for school. After years of academic and professional achievement at the highest levels in America, they decided to come back to Pakistan.Their stories are indicative of a broader trend in the country’s development. In 2005, the city of Karachi was a lot more dangerous. The country of Pakistan was in a lot more turmoil. If you were a young, ambitious high school student with the means to afford it, your likely choice was to get a one-way ticket to a university in the West.And when you went to school in a Western country, your goal was to stay in that country after you graduate, get a job, and eventually walk the path to citizenship.While that’s still a common path, the tides are slowly shifting. Part of that is because Pakistan provides better opportunities now vs. fifteen years ago.I asked the two startup founders sitting in front of me, “Why did you decide to come back to Pakistan?” They replied telling me that the Pakistan they grew up in is completely different from the Pakistan of today. The country is now safer and more stable. The opportunities are bigger and more untapped. And considering their Western pedigree, they would have a huge competitive advantage in Pakistani business. And part of them really wanted to help contribute to improving their home country. Twenty years ago, that romantic notion of helping your country would be considered a lot more foolish and futile for Pakistanis. In 2020, it’s becoming more common for the younger generation. But the altruism is combined with a very rational assessment of Pakistan’s commercial opportunities.Pakistan is a country of 212 Million people, the fifth most populous in the world. 65% of Pakistan’s population is under the age of 30. Pakistan is one of the fastest growing emerging markets.You can see the obvious billion dollar opportunities - in e-commerce, fintech/digital banking, edtech, and much more. Whether it’s next year, in five years or in ten years, we’re going to start seeing more Pakistani tech unicorns, startups with a valuation over $1 Billion. Currently, there are none.It’s playbook that you can see play out as countries become wealthier. The biggest e-commerce and fintech companies in Southeast Asia are worth billions of dollars and are continuing to ride the Asian wave of growth over the last decades.As much as you feel love for America as an international student (which I personally experienced), you always have some sort of connection with your family, friends, and the identity of your home country. If your home country is struggling, then you’re less likely to want to go back after you graduate. What we see today is that when emerging markets are growing, people from those emerging markets are more likely to go back after university. My previous interview guest Rashi said the same thing about Indian international students in the West increasingly returning to India for job opportunities. She said, “Another misunderstanding is that people just assume all Indians aspire to come to the West. That may have been true twenty years ago but not now, when opportunities are more attractive in India. I don’t think all people in India look to the US and say ‘that’s where I want to be’ or ‘that place is miles ahead.’”The story of growth, optimism, and hope I heard from these two Pakistani founders is something I would like to see in every country around the world.After our meeting, I walked out of the building with a smile. Pakistan is a great country with huge opportunities and good people.That AI startup in Karachi, founded by two Western-educated Pakistanis, is the kind of company I’m interested in hearing about. Most Western tech reporters won’t bother covering them. But that’s one of the reasons why I have created East West Hurricane, to share stories like this.And these two founders I met in Pakistan are the tip of the iceberg. There are going to be many more people from Asia who get educated in the West, and return to Asia to start their entrepreneurial journey. There’s already a phrase for this in China = ‘Sea Turtles.’ This is the term given to young Chinese who may have studied and worked overseas, but have now come back to China to pursue their career and startup companies. And it’s not just China. Here are some notable examples from around Asia:Colin Huang - Founder of Pinduoduo, China’s largest social commerce company currently worth $89 Billion; masters degree from University of Wisconsin.Nadiem Makarim - Founded Indonesian tech startup Gojek in 2010, now valued at $10 Billion; undergrad at Brown University and MBA from Harvard Business School.Chatri Sityodtong - Founded One Championship in 2011, Asia’s biggest MMA promotion; undergrad at Tufts University and MBA from Harvard Business School.Whether it’s Chinese Sea Turtles or Pakistani Sea Turtles or Indonesian Sea Turtles, more people are swimming back to Asia. Because they can see that Asia’s future is brighter than its past. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️European Fintech Companies Strive for Success in Southeast Asia 💳As you may have noticed from my previous articles, fintech in Southeast Asia is one of the biggest business opportunities in the region. The quality of financial services in Southeast Asian countries is quite poor; mobile penetration is high; and the coronavirus is pushing even more consumer behaviour online. This article from Sifted highlights how Asia is the main priority for European fintech companies thinking about international expansion. Companies like Revolut, Thought Machine, and Transfer Wise see Asia as their biggest opportunity and have made recent moves to establish a presence in the region. They face competition from local Southeast Asian players and Chinese players, on top of government regulation on topics like digital banking licenses. The articles notes how many European fintechs are prioritising expansion in Asia over any other region, including North America. In the global fintech world, it seems that Asia is increasingly becoming seen as the ultimate prize.Kuaishou’s Next Step in Growth Leads to IPO 📽Kuaishou, the Chinese short-form video app that serves as primary rival to Douyin (the Chinese TikTok), has had a stellar year. Much like Douyin, TikTok, and most other mobile entertainment apps, Kuaishou’s growing user numbers and engagement have also led to major increases in revenue. To cap off their success in 2020, Kuaishou has announced that they plan to go public in Hong Kong early next year.Kuaishou’s latest valuation is $28 Billion, which makes them one of the top 20 most valuable tech startups in the world. The company was founded in Beijing nine years ago and has around 300 Million daily active users. This year, the e-commerce livestreaming behaviour has exploded on the app, with 170 Million people doing daily livestreams. While TikTok might go public in the US next year (depending on the latest news in the acquisition saga), Kuaishou is purposely choosing the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which is at least partially impacted by the difficult state of US-China relations.Pinduoduo’s Moving Even Deeper into Groceries Pinduoduo is China’s premier social commerce app, a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq worth $93 Billion dollars that is only five years old. They set very ambitious goals and usually achieve them. One of the next priorities for Pinduoduo is selling groceries and helping the Chinese agricultural industry. Pinduoduo has just announced a strategic partnership with China Post, which is basically China’s national postal system, like the US Postal Service of China.Right now, the China Post has the ability to deliver products anywhere in the country. With a Pinduoduo partnership, this expands the levels of access for both sellers and buyers on the e-commerce platform. Now even more remote farmers can sell their produce more easily on the platform and buyers can receive their goods more quickly through China Post. Fresh produce is one of the most commonly sold items on Pinduoduo, and one of the main sales methods comes through livestreaming. This should help take China’s agricultural industry into the future, even just by one further step. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Indian Unicorn Zomato Plans to Go Public Next Year 👇Zomato, the Indian food delivery company, has just raised $250 Million and described their plans to go public in the first half of next year. As previous interview guest Rashi has said, Zomato is a prime example of an inspiring Indian tech startup that has found global success. The 12-year-old company is currently worth $3 Billion and this new fundraising round was partly to provide more cash reserves in the time of the coronavirus.While Zomato has struggled a bit because of the coronavirus, their latest announcements are optimistic for the future. Another Indian competitor in food delivery Swiggy has eliminated hundreds of jobs this year. At a global level, food delivery companies are benefitting from the coronavirus as eating at home becomes a forced, newer behaviour. If Zomato can hold on and succeed with this new investment, they should be able to have a large IPO next year. That would be a major success story for Indian tech.Tencent Wins Contract to Broadcast Premier League in China After the Premier League cancelled their $665 Million agreement with PPTV earlier this month, it was unclear how Chinese fans would be able to watch matches from England’s biggest football league. Last week, the Premier League announced the signing of a one-year broadcast deal with Chinese tech giant Tencent. Tencent will have the exclusive rights to play Premier League games in China, hosted on their platforms including WeChat, QQ, and Tencent Video. The TV rights to England’s Premier League are some of the most sought after in the world. And China has hundreds of millions of football fans eager to watch the games. For the Premier League, China is their most lucrative emerging international market and TV rights is the biggest revenue driver for the league, as with most sports leagues. However, the sports industry is in a precarious position considering that full stadium attendance is currently impossible, and sponsors/advertisers might want to renegotiate their deals in light of Covid. In the situation of Tencent and the Premier League, right now the Premier League needs Tencent more than Tencent needs the Premier League. Before Covid, it was the other way around.Youtube Shorts Launches in India 🎥With TikTok still banned in India, many companies are trying to fill the TikTok-sized consumer hole with their own mobile apps. This includes local startups, but also American companies like Triller, who have partnered with India’s JioSaavn, part of Reliance group. Another example is Youtube, who have just launched YouTube Shorts in India. YouTube Shorts is basically a short-form (less than 15 seconds) video app that gives people different creative tools to upload a video with background music. Much like Instagram Reels, this is a blatantly opportunistic move to capitalise on the short-video trend that has been best captured by TikTok. While YouTube Shorts has been launched first in India and then will expand globally, India is the one market where YouTube Shorts won’t have to compete with TikTok. So long as TikTok is banned in India, the country is now the world’s biggest market ‘up for grabs’ for any short-form mobile video app. And that’s a very big opportunity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Ryan Molloy, CEO of RedFern Digital. RedFern Digital is a full-service marketing agency based in Shanghai that helps international brands succeed in China, with a particular focus on e-commerce. Their clients have included Burger King, Fireball Whisky, and Panasonic. Ryan is originally from the UK, but grew up in Suzhou and has been living in China for most of his life. Prior to RedFern, Ryan worked in market research and consulting. Having lived and worked in both China and the UK, Ryan has a great East West perspective that you’ll see in this interview!What are the most exciting trends you are seeing in China today?There are two main angles to trends in China. You’ve got platforms and you’ve got consumers. And we’re constantly trying to find our balance between the two.Chinese platforms are so dynamic. Douyin changed their commission structure this week. Little Red Book changed their commission structure the previous week. These little changes have major and immediate impact on both our strategy and profitability. Although I hate it, it keeps me on my toes. Our digital strategy for brands last November is completely different than the strategy today. A client might say to us ‘Well this isn’t what you told us six months ago.’ and we’ll reply, ‘Well things have dramatically changed over the last six months and some platforms we don’t even use anymore!’The other angle is consumer trends, because China is very young in the way people react to products. Consumer trends in China will just hit all at once. For example, I was talking to a friend who works in the Japanese hair dye industry. I was telling him how hair dye is this insane recent trend in China. Everyone in our office has multi-colored hair now. One year, everyone had these little stems and flowers in their hair. And each time, I kept asking myself, ‘Where did this start?’ You talk about trends in the West and they’re more vague, larger concepts. In China, they’re right in front of you.In China, modernisation is still pretty new and Chinese people want to add their own spice to modern trends. When consumers come up with something new, it’s always very different. We had plant-based food become a hit recently. Within the first week of this trend, there were 10 million searches on Baidu. All of these trends suddenly appear and we have to jump on them quickly. Part of our job is go out and help these brands in the West realise the opportunity. As an example, we are working with a Western plant-based meat company right now. Based on what we’re seeing in market, we might approach them and say, ‘You guys have to come to China.’ We had a similar case with Sara Lee cheesecakes. Who would’ve thought that cheesecakes would become a big thing in China? In the West, cheesecake is something we’ve always had. We’ve seen the category change a little bit and maybe there are new flavors like chocolate cheesecake, but the category hasn’t dramatically changed. But in China, the category is born overnight. I like that.How has the coronavirus affected your business and other businesses in your industry?Our business is up a lot. We’re likely going to double this year. We were struggling in the first four months of 2020 and then things started turning around in April or May. I think a lot of global brands are looking to China since it’s now been open for so long relative to other countries. But at the same time, I definitely see the overall industry struggling. I interviewed six applicants for a role at our company yesterday. All of them had come from advertising agencies that had gone out of business because of Covid. We work in the young, digital e-commerce space and lots of brands now have to put their product online. So e-commerce is a necessary channel for your brand. On other hand—events, traditional media, traditional advertising agencies or anything considered not 100% essential for your business are the first things a major brand will cut this year. What is one thing people outside of China misunderstand about the region?People misunderstand how difficult it is. That is the number one thing. Brands might sell in the US and UK by dropping off a few containers that find their way to a supermarket. You can do a large campaign on Facebook or Instagram and you’ll get traction if your product is good. In China, offline retail is so segmented. The top 100 chain stores are the same size as Tmall. In the US, CostCo and Wal-Mart will take something like 20% of the market but in China you have this situation where there are so many offline stores, it’s hard to break in. For brands doing e-commerce in the West, there’s pretty much Amazon. In China, there are like seven main e-commerce platforms. You need to decide which ones to choose, how to work with them, etc. Western brands are also very overconfident. People believe that in China a product will just sell itself, since the purchasing power of China is growing. That doesn’t easily happen because there’s a lot of competition. People also underestimate the scale of China. I was speaking to a client the other day and there were clearly misaligned expectations on how many people you can reach with a certain ad budget. If you come into China with a $50,000 ad budget, you’ll be able to reach one suburb in Shanghai. You won’t hit the entire East Coast of China.What are some companies you admire in Asia?One that’s really, really impressive is Pinduoduo. We haven’t worked with them personally, since all of our brands are premium. That said, all of your products end up getting sold on Pinduoduo, whether you like it or not. We have a set distribution price, but Pinduoduo usually picks it up, makes a tiny margin, and has the investment to bring in a huge number of users. I think their user base might be bigger than Tmall now. All of the e-commerce companies in China are extremely impressive. In comparison to Amazon, the number of tools that Chinese e-commerce companies have to drive more purchases are really insane.In terms of Western companies, the most successful ones really understand what Chinese consumers are looking for. They understand the power of e-commerce. They grow as many channels as possible, using marketing with direct channel relevance rather than just making this big, loud noise everywhere. They make the packaging simple. They make their brand story simple. Some Western brands can have tiny market share in places like the UK while having a much more dominant market position in China.One good example is the milk brand A2. They do fresh milk, powdered milk, and more. They told a story from Australia, managed to own their IP in China, and are now making billions of dollars here. They did a great job and followed the playbook we usually suggest to clients—they started with small, direct activations. As they got bigger, their marketing budget grew and now they’ve got some of the most famous Chinese celebrities in their campaigns. They were also investing in Chinese marketing within Australia, like targeting Chinese tourists and Chinese students in Australia. What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone trying to get their business to thrive in this time period?Go online. If you look at the sales of retail in the West, they’re not necessarily down. We know that certain categories and clients in the West have had an increase in sales during Covid. People still need to eat food and still want to buy things. If you don’t have an online offering, then people can’t access your products. The second thing - brands need to be faster in their adaptability. The geopolitical situation has now meant that we can’t just make decisions over six months. Brands need to change their business quickly in order to match things like Covid. We’ve worked with some large food and beverage companies who don’t know what to do right now. I kept thinking to myself, ‘You guys have the ingredients. You should make a retail product. Why not?’ Brands need to move more quickly. We’ve seen smaller brands be very agile, increase their budgets and do well in China this year. Although at the same time, a lot of brands have suffered.Quickfire Questions…A - What’s the best thing you have watched recently? (Film, TV Show, Ted Talk, Youtube Video, etc.)I watched a really good British movie yesterday. It’s called Tyrannosaur. It’s not about dinosaurs. It has Olivia Coleman and is a great story, though quite depressing. It shows the power of circumstances people find themselves in that although they might appear to be bad people, they aren’t necessarily bad people.  B - What’s the best thing you have read recently? (Book, Article, Research Report, Tweetstorm, etc.)I read Shoe Dog a few months ago. I’m not really into business books but thought that was a good balance between life lessons and business lessons. C - What’s the best thing you have listened to recently? (Song, Album, Artist, Podcast, Audiobook, etc.)‘Postcards from Italy’ by Beirut. I was listening to that song this morning. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

‘Brain drain’ refers to the concept of smart, ambitious people migrating somewhere away from their home country in order to find a better life. One common example of this refers to people from poorer countries in places like Asia moving to places like the US for school and job opportunities. The classic story you might hear is the earnest, ambitious kid who left their home from somewhere in India or China in order to seek a better life in America.Well let me tell you, the world has changed and especially right now, East West ‘brain drain’ is turning into East West ‘brain gain.’One of my good friends is from Korea. He went to high school in Seoul and then ended up studying at one of the top universities in the US for his undergraduate degree. Afterwards, he worked in finance in New York and was accepted into Wharton for an MBA earlier this year. He was really looking forward to attending, but uncertainties around the coronavirus have changed everything. And because of the confusing situation around both student and work visas for international students in the US, he has decided to defer his MBA by a year. He may end up not attending business school at all.When he told me this story, I started thinking about what could have been. If he ended up going to Wharton, he probably would’ve stayed in the US, gotten a job there, eventually got a green card, bought property, paid taxes, and lived out his life as a high-functioning, productive member of the United States of America. But now, he’s working in Hong Kong. This is a loss for the US, and a win for Asia. My friend’s story is emblematic of a broader shift in human capital across the world. People are moving because of the coronavirus, and that changes the makeup of the globe. There are hundreds of thousands of Asian international students around the world right now in a similar situation to my friend. Several of my previous posts have dealt with Indian, Chinese, and Korean students (the three biggest international student populations for the US) increasingly deciding to not go to the US for education.The US is expecting a major drop in international student enrolment. This is partly because of the coronavirus, partly because of changing visa regulation and partly because of geo-political tension between the US and China.It’s a topic very close to me, as I was an international student myself who studied in the US for both high school and college. Similar changes are happening in other countries. This year, Australian universities have experienced a decline in international student applications from Asian countries. The Australian Department of Home Affairs saw a 46% decline from India and 20% decline from China compared to the previous year. Countries like the UK and Canada seem to be suffering less, but there’s an existential crisis going through the heads of every international student office at a Western university. For many Western universities, seeing a decline in international students is like a big retail store seeing a decline in their most profitable customer segment. But for the international students’ countries of origin, this results in a positive ‘brain gain.’ Tons of Asian students looking to stay closer to home for the foreseeable future could make a huge impact on Asian economies.I moved from London to New Zealand two months ago, which was never part of my plan. There are close to 50,000 New Zealanders who have come back to the country since the beginning of the year, and it’s expected that the number will significantly increase depending on the coronavirus.For a country of 5 Million people, that’s a sizeable chunk and represents close to 10% of the overseas New Zealand population. This ‘brain gain’ of some of the most internationally minded, ambitious New Zealanders is a hot topic in the country right now. Little stories like mine and like my Korean friend’s will all add up and reshape the way the world works. Just like the saying ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ I believe that one country’s loss is another country’s gain. And right now, the biggest losses in human capital are in the West and the biggest gains are in the East. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Amidst Political Tension, More Chinese Companies Look to Singapore 🇸🇬Bytedance, the Chinese company who currently owns TikTok, plans to invest billions of dollars into their Singapore office that will serve as their greater Asia headquarters. The plans include the creation of a new data center and hundreds of new jobs. In addition to Bytedance, both Alibaba and Tencent have announced that they are opening new regional headquarters in Singapore. In the middle of a trade war between the US and China, these Chinese tech companies see Singapore as a place to invest their resources. TikTok is on the verge of getting sold to Oracle in the US. Hundreds of major Chinese apps have been banned from India. Hong Kong is experiencing controversy over new Beijing-imposed security laws. Amidst all the geopolitical drama, Singapore is seeming like an increasingly attractive place to be if you want to do business in Asia. These companies doubling down on Singapore strengthen the importance of the city as a global tech hub. The wave of Chinese tech companies is the 21st Century’s biggest shift in global economic power. Singapore might end up becoming one of the biggest beneficiaries of this.The Underrated Love of Chinese Hip Hop Fans 🎧When you think hip hop, you probably don’t think of China. Well, one of the biggest Chinese TV shows of the last five years is the hip hop reality audition show called Rap of China, which achieved billions of views online and turned aspiring rappers into household names. And this summer, there are new Chinese shows that aim to capitalise on the hip hop trend. In addition to the latest season of Rap of China, there’s also Rap Star on Mango TV and Rap for Youth on Bilibili.Rap of China debuted in 2017 as the original Chinese hip hop show and in a short four year period, the hip hop industry has evolved significantly. 2020 brings the fourth season of Rap of China, and one of the judges is GAI, the winner of the show’s first season. As these new shows like Rap Star and Rap for Youth have started coming out, rappers associated with each show have actually began referencing each other in diss tracks. As this beef between rappers should make clear to you, hip hop is becoming a staple of modern Chinese pop culture.Indian Companies Might Have New Options To Go Public 🏦‘Going Public’ is an important milestone in the lifecycle of a company, oftentimes signalling that a company has reached a new stage of growth and maturity. Right now, Indian companies are not allowed to go public on a major foreign stock exchange (like the Nasdaq or NYSE) until they first go public in India. This has caused some problems in the past. The $1.84 Billion Indian startup MakeMyTrip decided to leave India and incorporate in Mauritius so they could list on the Nasdaq. It’s not good for India if their most promising businesses don’t want to incorporate in the country.So the Indian Ministry of Cultural Affairs has recently been working on a way to change the current laws. A new government proposal should allow Indian companies to list on foreign exchanges without needing to list in India first. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s directionally moving towards that outcome. Doing this should encourage more Indian startups to stay in India and also attract more global investors to invest in Indian companies. If the government can pass this law, it will help the country capitalise on its growing role in the world of technology and business. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️New Chinese Report Fuels Controversy Around Delivery Drivers 🏍Last week, an investigative report on the conditions of food delivery drivers went viral in China. The report outlined the working conditions of drivers for food delivery companies like Meituan and Eleme. Drivers are required to deliver food within a certain time frame, and otherwise will have their pay cut by failing to meet that standard. Drivers are often overworked, easily penalised for delays out of their control, and have to deal with hazardous job conditions.In response to this report, Meituan and Eleme announced new flexibility around drivers’ delivery time and pledged to review driver conditions. The PR fallout won’t be easy to fix, however. We live in a world where the gig economy has created all new types of issues around modern working conditions, both in the East and West. Last month, a court in California blocked an order to enforce a new law AB5, which would require ride sharing companies like Uber and Lyft to classify drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. These two companies were granted a temporary stay to submit appeals, but there’s still a chance AB5 will be enforced and both companies have publicly considered shutting down their services in California. While AB5 doesn’t exist in China, I’m sure that both Meituan and Eleme are keeping an eye on the precarious relationship between their companies and their ‘gig worker’ delivery drivers.A Profile of SEA Group - Singapore’s First Unicorn 🦄This KrAsia article profiles the story of the founding of Sea Group, the Singaporean tech company now worth $65 Billion. Sea owns Garena (the biggest gaming publisher in Southeast Asia), Shopee (the biggest e-commerce company in Southeast Asia), and Sea Money, a digital payments platform. Sea has been a publicly traded company since 2017 and has been one of the world’s best performing stocks over the last year, significantly outperforming even the most hyped companies like Tesla.I have a few observations from this article. All of the three Singaporean founders are originally from China, and you can see the influence of Chinese tech in their company. Their first success was in the gaming industry through Garena, and their game Free Fire is still the highest grossing mobile game in Southeast Asia and Latin America. They used the profits from Garena to launch SeaMoney and Shopee, which was basically inspired as a Southeast Asian version of China’s Taobao. I admire the ambition to branch out into three different, large tech companies, and I don’t see that level of tech diversification apart from companies like Tencent and Alibaba. Another learning, Garena didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel with their products. My impression of their story is as triumph of execution rather than innovation. And it’s incredibly impressive.Telegram Becomes Go-To App for Pirated Content in India 😲Telegram is a popular private messaging app that provides end-to-end encryption for people chatting and interacting with each other securely. For a while, Telegram was infamously known as the company that raised over $1 Billion worth of cryptocurrency in an initial coin offering (ICO). Today in India, Telegram has become well known as a platform for sharing pirated content like films, TV series, and games. Some of the most popular Indian media properties have been frustrated by piracy on Telegram, and a Hindi newspaper even filed charges against Telegram when it discovered PDFs of the newspaper were being distributed on the platform. By 2022, it’s expected that OTT players will lose $3 Billion in revenue from India due to piracy.Pirating content is a behaviour that happens all over the world, but in India’s fast-growing, huge economy, the country is on track to potentially become the world’s biggest consumer of pirated entertainment. Telegram has 40 Million users in India and is the largest single market for the messaging app. Technology will never be able to completely prevent piracy, but the Telegram situation outlines an interesting tradeoff of privacy with piracy. The more secure a messaging app, the easier it is to share pirated content. Telegram also benefits from laws around the legal provision ‘Safe Harbour.’ Like Youtube and other digital platforms, Telegram itself isn’t directly responsible or legally liable for illegal content since they are an ‘intermediary’ and don’t create the content themselves. So this will remain a problem for India’s entertainment industry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Anup Dhalwani, one of the sharpest product minds I know in Silicon Valley. Anup is originally from India, and has spent over a decade working both at high growth startups and some of the world’s most important tech companies like Facebook, Uber, and Snap. Having lived and work in both India and the US, Anup has true East West perspective and I’m happy to share our conversation. You can find Anup on Twitter —> @__anoop and here’s an introduction from Anup…I’ve created technology products from the ground up as an entrepreneur starting with Ospinet, a consumer healthcare product many years ago. The last few years I’ve invested time in shipping products in the consumer space at Facebook, Uber, Snap and other companies. As a startup advisor I help about 2-3 startups at any point in time scale their offerings or find product-market fit. I came to the US in 2008 as an engineer and have built startups and worked in tech my whole career, except a couple of years at McKinsey & Co. after business school. Over my many years shipping products I’ve developed a sense for what makes successful tech companies in the Valley tick and what features separate the winners from everyone else. The other area I’ve gained a lot of insight on is what makes a consumer product successful. There are some higher order features that are a must but then there is always some secret sauce. I love spending time with my family, watching foreign language movies, and generally building products and helping other entrepreneurs build and ship successful products.What are the most exciting trends you are seeing in Asia today?Many come to mind but a couple standout: 1) Innovating from Asia for a global market and 2) Adapting a global trend for the Asian market. Both of these are meta-trends but I feel capture the key trends in a Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) way.On 1) I think the single best example is Postman [which was founded in Bangalore]. If you’ve ever dealt with startups that have an API layer, you’ve seen this be a key part of their API strategy. Postman recently raised a massive private round and I think it serves as great proof and inspiration for an entirely new crop of startups from Asia building for a global market. Postman used many of the best practices that’ve made Silicon Valley SaaS type companies successful, including the classic ‘Freemium Model.’On 2) We see the other end of the spectrum. Taking a concept like Instacart and making an Asian version of it successfully. My friend Albinder started Grofers in India and it’s a massive hit because he and his co-founder could tailor it for the Indian market. This is an example of the second key trend I am seeing. I anticipate both of these trends to continue and fork over time, spawning new models.How has the coronavirus affected your business and other businesses in your industry?It’s an understatement to say there has been a massive impact of the virus on all industries. Within consumer tech though, it’s a different story. It’s been a boon for many of the core consumer companies. The reason is simple. As people are staying at home and are not able to spend time with friends and family in real life, they’ve had to expand their use of social media (which was already quite high) and similarly we’ve seen people start using Robinhood for trading in record numbers. So the companies that were well poised to benefit from a pandemic did just that. There is another crop of companies that got hit hard though, especially in the travel space. From AirBnB to TripActions to expense reimbursement cards and others. Not to mention WeWork, which was already in a tough spot. So it's a case of haves and have nots even within the consumer technology space.What is one thing that people outside of Asia misunderstand about the region?The number one thing would be how upwardly mobile the region is. People, especially the younger ones, are very focused on increasing their standard of living and until the pandemic hit, they were executing quite well on that. Now the employment picture has become a bit bleak. However, I am confident this will be a short term hit and the region will come roaring back.The other thing people might misunderstand is that building technology products for the Asian market isn’t as easy as it is in the USA. The reason is the amount of diversity from language to local regulations is quite a lot. While many might know about the amount of diversity in the region, its impact on shipping products might go unnoticed. For example, alcohol and age related laws are different state to state within the same country sometimes, and if you are a food delivery app for example, you’d need to account for that diversity.What are some companies you admire in Asia?In technology, Flipkart, Oyo, Grofers are some of the modern ones but there are a lot of companies from the 90s and 00’s that laid the foundations albeit from a services standpoint, like Infosys.Outside of technology, I think there is a vast range of companies and industries I admire. One example is Sula Wines in India. They’ve done an amazing job of fusing the wine business with lifestyle and culture. There are many, many such examples I feel aren’t as known outside.What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone trying to get their business to thrive in this time period?Borrowing from Taleb, the one thing I’d say is try to be antifragile. The world is only going to get more volatile in the coming years and simply being robust won’t help you thrive. If your startup’s business model isn’t one that will benefit disproportionately with volatility, it’ll be hard to thrive. More and more it seems the world is living in the ‘tails’ of a distribution where Black Swan events come from and have driven almost all of the outcomes in human history. We’ve already seen this with the pandemic (which isn’t even a Black Swan as it was predictable and predicted) and even there we saw companies like DocuSign benefit and those like AirBnB get hit (the antifragile vs fragile model).Quickfire Questions…A - What’s the best thing you have watched recently? (Film, TV Show, Ted Talk, Youtube Video, etc.)I’ve seen some recently uploaded old Steve Jobs clips from the 80s and 90s, which to this day are some of the most outstanding marketing examples I’ve seen.B - What’s the best thing you have read recently? (Book, Article, Research Report, Tweetstorm, etc.)I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring the art world and there's a bunch of really great art podcasts I’ve been discovering. There isn’t one specific channel or podcast but rather a collection I’ve been curating and thats’ been a lot of fun.C - What’s the best thing you have listened to recently? (Song, Album, Artist, Podcast, Audiobook, etc.)The Biggest Bluff, it’s a great book about Poker and how it applies in life. And then, Kings of Crypto on Audible. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️PUBG Finds Distance Away from Chinese Ownership 👋The hugely popular video game PUBG was one of the hundreds of Chinese mobile apps banned by the Indian government last week. A few days after the ban went into effect, PUBG has removed Chinese company Tencent Games as their official game publisher and distributor. PUBG is created by a Korean company, but Tencent Games officially distributes the game in India. The hope is that this new change should allow PUBG to satisfy the Indian government enough to revoke the ban. PUBG had 40 Million users in India before the ban, many of whom were emotionally devastated by having the game banned. If this allows PUBG to continue operating in India, maybe this is an option for other companies with tenuous connections to China. Moving forward, it’s going to be hard to figure out what level of Chinese connection a company will need to have in order to satisfy the Indian government. Most Indian tech companies have already received money from Chinese investors. On the other hand, completely native Chinese companies, headquartered in China and with majority Chinese ownership, may struggle to operate in India while political tensions are high. Since PUBG is technically Korean, they have a unique-ish loophole.English Premier League Pulls Chinese Broadcast Deal ⚽️The English Premier League has just cancelled their $665 Million agreement with PPTV, the company that was supposed to be their broadcast partner in China until 2022. Allegedly, Suning Holdings (the owner of PPTV) failed to make a payment of $210 Million to the Premier League that was due earlier this year and therefore this was considered a breach of contract. While that’s the official messaging, many people speculate that the increasing political tensions between the UK and China have played a role in this decision. To be clear, there was definitely disagreement between the Premier League and PPTV over whether broadcast fees should have been paid earlier this year. Considering Covid’s effect on football matches, you could argue that the value of the product of the Premier League broadcast rights has decreased. The Premier League has given $438 Million worth of rebates to broadcast partners for the three-month pause in games, but PPTV was not included. The Premier League, like all sports leagues, has lost a lot of money due to covid and the path forward for commercial sports is unclear. What’s next? Right now, it looks like they will be looking for another Chinese partner to broadcast games in the country. Much like how Indian PUBG fans consider it a tragedy that the game was banned from their country, I’m sure Chinese football fans are upset that it’s now harder to watch games of their favourite teams. While sometimes it feels trivial, sport is an important part of culture. Surely, the rights to broadcast the Premier League are a valuable asset to many Chinese companies.Netflix to Release Their First K-pop Documentary 🇰🇷If you want to know one of the hottest global music trends, you need to know K-Pop. K-Pop refers to popular music coming from Korea. With K-pop group BTS currently #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, the worldwide level of K-pop interest is at an all-time high. Streaming platform Netflix will be launching their very first K-pop documentary on October 14. The new documentary focuses on the female K-pop group Black Pink and is called ‘Black Pink: Look Up The Sky.’ Netflix, like most other Western platforms, has been increasing their investment in international content, most notably in Asia. Earlier this year in June, Black Pink’s music video for the single ‘How You Like That’ broke the world record for number of Youtube views in 24 hours. Fittingly, their record was broken by fellow K-pop band BTS’s song ‘Dynamite,’ which was released last month. Last year, Black Pink became the very first K-Pop group to perform at Coachella, arguably the biggest music festival in America. The key takeaway is that K-Pop is a growing global phenomenon that has reached yet another pop culture milestone. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️The Chinese Bottled Water Billionaire You Haven’t Heard Of 💦Chinese company Nongfu Spring made its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange earlier this week, surging 85% higher than their IPO price. Nongfu Spring is a company headquartered in the city of Hangzhou that makes bottled water. The company was founded by Zhong Shanshan, who briefly became the third richest man in China with the share price at its peak, giving him a temporary net worth of $50 Billion. Nongfu Spring was founded in 1996 at Qiandao Lake in Zhejiang province, an area known for its natural beauty. Over the years, the company has built a strong brand around building ‘natural products,’ primarily focused on bottled water but also extending into tea, coffee, and other beverages. The investor interest in the company seems to be based on the new post-Covid trend of Chinese consumers placing importance on their health and wellness. With a market cap of around $48 Billio, Nongfu still has lots of room to grow and capitalise on what is becoming a global trend of increased demand for products perceived to be healthy and natural.India’s Film Industry Targeted by Western Streamers 🇮🇳While the Indian film industry has been struggling due to the coronavirus, Western streaming companies like Netflix, Disney, and Amazon have been acquiring several Bollywood films to host on their platforms. Struggling Bollywood studios have sold blockbuster films that were originally intended to receive a theatrical release. Since India is a huge priority market, now these Western platforms can provide better Indian content for their customers. India is a huge entertainment market - the country produces more films and sells more movie tickets than any other country in the world. The tough situation for Bollywood studios is similar to other markets around the world, such as the US and China. In the film industry, there has been this concept of the theatrical window—usually several weeks or months where a new film is distributed through theaters and is not allowed to be broadcasted on any other platform, like an online streaming platform. In China, the US, and now India, the theatrical window has been shattered by the coronavirus, as companies like Disney are now taking blockbuster films directly onto streaming platforms. And across all three of these countries, movie theater companies are angry at the ‘violation’ of the theatrical window on top of their own coronavirus-related closures. Disruption in the entertainment industry is a global phenomenon, and the stakes are very high in Asian countries like China and India.Surveys and Data on American Business in China 📊The South China Morning Post reported on data released by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, who creates an annual survey for American businesses operating in China. In this world of increased political and economic tension, it’s fascinating to parse through the data in order to understand how American businesses in China have been affected. 92% of the respondents say that they have no plans to leave China and 5% say that they do plan to leave the country. 85% of the respondents are companies who have operated in China for over a decade. One major concern brought up by American companies—if President Trump actually bans WeChat and this applies to American businesses in China, this could be a huge problem. Another concern reflected in the survey—many Chinese workers have less of a desire to work for an American company, given the current relationship between the two countries.You have to wonder what’s going through the heads of people running American companies in China. The biggest source of fear must be the lack of certainty around what’s going to happen next in the US-China relationship. Also, right now China’s economy is one of the world’s healthiest and fastest growing in a post-covid situation. Companies who have a long-term strategy in China seem willing to ride out these short-term fluctuations. The way I see it—no matter what happens over the coming months, China’s mid- to long-term importance will continue to increase. And every international business should keep that in mind. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Korea’s Big K-Pop Export is Worth Billions 🎤The Korean government released a report saying that the new #1 single ‘Dynamite’ from K-pop band BTS will generate $1.4 Billion for the Korean economy. It’s an estimated amount (I wonder how many holes you can poke in the methodology), but South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism factored in new economic activity and 8,000 new jobs created by the song. The report claims that the song’s popularity also leads to sales of Korean cosmetics, food and beverage, and more. In 2018, the Korean government estimated that BTS’s contribution to the economy that year was $3.5 Billion.Whatever the exact economic activity generated by BTS, K-Pop definitely increases Korea’s brand awareness and increases tourism. This can trickle down into a micro-level, with increased demand for Korean goods, Korean cuisine, and so on. I wrote last week how ‘Dynamite’ is the first song from an Asian act to get a #1 single on the US Billboard Hot 100 since 1963. Previously, Korean musician Psy got to #2 on the Billboard charts in 2012 with his song ‘Gangnam Style.’ BTS’s musical career probably has more longevity and already has more appeal than Psy. The Korean Wave keeps on coming! Alibaba Starts B2B Sales of Livestreaming Tech 🎥Alibaba will now start selling their livestream technology to other companies. Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao has livestreaming functionality called Taobao Live, which is the most widely used livestreaming e-commerce platform in China. The Taobao livestreaming product was first released in April 2016 and now the overall Chinese livestreaming industry is expected to reach $129 Billion by the end of this year. Alibaba has set a 2020 goal to achieve $73 Billion in gross transaction volume for e-commerce livestreaming by end of the year. As I mentioned in a previous article this week, other platforms like Kuaishou and Douyin are also setting aggressive targets for their livestreams.Livestreaming is THE big new trend for e-commerce in China and Alibaba owns one of the main livestreaming platforms with Taobao Live. With this new business decision, Alibaba has basically spun out a B2B SaaS product, which means they are selling livestreaming technology as a service to other enterprises. It’s hard to really comprehend this in the West, because the livestreaming behaviour is so tiny compared to China. One way to picture this—imagine Alibaba has created video technology like Zoom, but it’s primarily used by people hosting livestreams where they sell products. And now they’ve put that in a bundle together to sell to enterprise clients. It’s a pretty good idea, and it’s a pretty huge opportunity.China’s Post-Covid Boom in Autonomous Retail While many shops in China are ‘back to normal’ after the worst parts of the coronavirus, we need to start examining what normal really means. One big trend in China right now, especially Post-Covid, is ‘autonomous retail.’ Autonomous retail refers to stores that use technology to directly replace typical staff you would find in retail experiences—which often involves vending machines, no cashiers, and unstaffed shelves. Most of these experiences still include some small group of staff, but the development of technology decreases the need for human staff over time. One example of this is the F5 Future Store in Guangzhou, which uses robotic arms to serve food to customers who place their orders from electric ordering terminals. Over the last four years, the Chinese autonomous retail category has doubled and the total number of autonomous retail customers is expected to go from 91 Million this year to 245 Million in 2022. It’s interesting to read about these new retail experiences happening in Asia, and I wish I could see it myself in person. There are so many non-obvious changes to our daily life that have been accelerated by Covid, and autonomous retail might be one that becomes ‘normal’ more quickly than we realise. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Chinese Audiences Reflect on New Mulan Film 🇨🇳To people in my generation, we remember watching the animated Disney film Mulan back in 1998. I was too young to realise that the film was not well received in China at the time. So far, it seems like Disney’s Mulan remake has touched on a similar nerve for many Chinese viewers. The new $200 Million live-action version of Mulan came out on Disney+ a few days ago after much anticipation. Despite some controversy around lead actress Liu Yifei posting about the Hong Kong protests last year, Disney expected this new Mulan to do well in China.While the film will officially be released in Chinese theaters on September 11, pirated online versions have already appeared on the Chinese internet and tens of thousands of people have already written reviews on Chinese ratings site Douban. Right now, the film has a 4.7 out of 10 rating. Chinese reviewers have complained about the film’s Western writers generally misunderstanding Chinese culture. The problem of Hollywood whitewashing ‘Asian’ films has been perceived to be improving against the backdrop of successes like Parasite and Crazy Rich Asians. There’s still a chance that the film will do well when it comes out in Chinese theaters in three days on Friday. Whether Disney misses on Mulan or not, they can’t ignore the huge Chinese film market.China’s Millennials Riding Solo 🕴In traditional Chinese culture and throughout most of Asia, people are expected to marry and start families at a young age. The first thing my relatives in the Philippines ask me is if I have a girlfriend and when I’m getting married. But today, this trend is starting to shift as young people do these things later in life and increasingly pursue a single life living in big cities. The number of single people in China reached 200 Million last year, and the number of single people living alone is expected to reach 90 Million by 2021. Another country that has seen this happen more quickly is Japan, where the government has even provided subsidies to encourage dating. Chinese companies are capitalising on this new consumer class of young, single working professionals, which would have been a smaller group in previous generations. Chinese hot pot restaurant chain Haidilao has started putting teddy bears in empty chairs as companions for solo diners and other restaurants have started building dining booths for individuals. ‘Solo dining’ is becoming a popular content category on social media and appliance companies are starting to create mini-appliances for people living alone. It’s interesting to see how business adapts to changing consumer demand. From a cultural perspective, I’m most happy with the fact that being young and single is now seen as less negative in Chinese society. An Indian Funeral for PUBG Mobile ⚰️To you, it might just be a silly video game. But for millions of Indian gamers, PUBG Mobile was an immersive, social entertainment experience that played a meaningful role in their lives. So when the Indian government banned PUBG last week, it hit harder than the hundreds of other banned Chinese mobile apps. Arguably, losing access to PUBG could be considered even more impactful than India banning TikTok, since many gamers (especially young men) spend more time playing video games than they do consuming social media. A group of young gamers went viral in India this week for recording a video of themselves holding a pretend funeral procession for PUBG. On a more serious note, I think this highlights the disparity between public policy and popular culture. While the political conflict between India and China continues, people will suffer in many ways. If things like media and entertainment need to become regionalised, it could lead to interesting new developments for companies that understand popular culture. In the meantime, fans of PUBG will continue to suffer. All they wanted was a video game to play with their friends. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Disney Launches New Indonesian Streaming Platform 🕹This last weekend, Disney launched their own streaming service specifically for the Indonesian market called Disney Plus Hotstar. The ‘Hotstar’ refers to the Indian streaming company that Disney acquired in order to roll out across Asian markets. This new service will feature tons of local Indonesian content and also includes a partnership with Indonesian telco Telkomsel.Indonesia is the biggest market in Southeast Asia and has always been an attractive country for Western multinationals looking to expand across Asia. The timing of this launch should be positive—as overall streaming consumption has increased because of the coronavirus. Two local rivals, Hooq and iFlix, have recently shut down, which allows more room for Disney. Indonesia’s population is still price sensitive to paying for premium content, so the initial pricing strategy is really important. In partnership with Telkomsel, Indonesian consumers can purchase data and content bundles from Disney at different levels and over a set of options around subscription length.SoftBank + Unacademy = Growing Indian EdTech Scene 🎓The investment firm SoftBank has just injected $150 Million into Indian online education platform Unacademy, with the startup now valued at $1.45 Billion. Unacademy is a five year old company whose valuation has now tripled over the last six months. As a fund with the ability to write some of the biggest checks in the world, SoftBank’s latest investment is an encouraging sign for the hot Indian EdTech Scene.Online education is booming around the world because of the coronavirus, and India is one of the largest countries to witness this. Unacademy works by connecting teachers with students through a subscription service that includes live video lectures and exams. The company has 30 Million users and 350,000 paying subscribers, which is a 4x increase since February of this year. Overall funding raised by Indian ed tech startups in 2020 has increased seven times since the same time period one year ago. In an age of many winners and losers because of Covid, online education continues to be one of the biggest winners.Kuaishou’s E-Commerce Plans 🎥Chinese mobile video app Kuaishou is one of several competitors in the Chinese digital media market. In an attempt to both differentiate and grow, Kuaishou recently announced ambitious new plans for expansion. They plan to incubate 100,000 businesses and help them achieve $146,000 in annual sales this year. They also have a goal to build 100 industrial bases, train 100,000 new livestreamers, and host 1,000,000 e-commerce livestream sessions over the coming year.What’s the motivation behind these plans? Growth, timing, and opportunity. Across the board, all Chinese companies engaged in e-commerce have seen booms in usage because of the coronavirus, and livestreaming has become the most popular e-commerce subcategory. One of Kuaishou’s biggest rivals, the Bytedance-owned Douyin, has similar plans to expand their livestreaming capability. Many Chinese companies realise the power of livestreaming and they need to move quickly to get an advantage against their competitors. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️K-pop’s Big Hit Entertainment Plans an IPO 🎤Big Hit Entertainment is one of the world’s largest K-pop agencies and this week they announced their intention to go public. Big Hit Entertainment plans to raise $812 Million in an IPO that would be the biggest Korean IPO of the last three years. Big Hit manages the absurdly popular K-pop group BTS, who has become one of the world’s most popular music groups and grossed $170 Million from live events in 2019, which made them the fifth largest live music act in the world. BTS’s latest single ‘Dynamite’ just reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, which is the first time an Asian act has done this since 1963. K-pop’s popularity has increased massively over the last few years, which contributes to the growing wave of Korean influence in global pop culture. This Korean cultural wave also includes the major film success of Parasite and the growing popularity of K-drama. I’m super bullish on the continuing influence of Korean culture on the world stage. It’s all part of this increasing relevance of Asia that East West Hurricane was built to witness and document.India Issues New Ban That Includes PUBG Mobile On Wednesday, the Indian government announced a new list of 118 Chinese mobile apps that are now banned in the country. This comes after the government banned 59 apps just over a month ago, including TikTok. The big news from this round is that one of these apps is PUBG Mobile, which was one of the most popular games in India. For PUBG, India was their largest market with 175 Million downloads and 24% of their total downloads globally.As per the previous group of banned Chinese apps, the Indian government is citing security reasons as the reason for the ban. First TikTok, and now PUBG? Brendan Ahern, who writes the newsletter China Last Night, described it best when he called this situation an “Indian Teenagers’ Worst Nightmare.” The Global Times, a Chinese publication, has described the move essentially as a way for the Indian Prime Minister to deflect away from domestic failures, especially related to Covid. Whatever the truth behind the decision, it seems like we could start seeing more regional technology - where legislation makes internet services like social media and gaming different on a country by country basis. Bilibili’s New Content Acquisition 🎥Bilibili is kind of like ‘the Youtube of China,’ with over 170 Million users and a particular focus on ACG, which stands for Anime, Comics, and Gaming. As the platform grows, their strategy is increasingly to expand outside of the initial ACG niche. On Monday, Bilibili announced a $66 Million strategic investment in Huanxi Media, one of China’s largest media production companies. This gives Bilibili exclusive broadcasting rights to a large part of Huanxi’s TV and Film productions. The two companies also agreed on other partnership revenue opportunities like joint merchandise, film production, and shared ad revenue. A Western equivalent of this would be like Youtube investing into a major film studio like Paramount Pictures in order to have exclusive rights to broadcast their content on Youtube. As I’ve written about previously, Bilibili is an interesting company that has made tons of progress recently, including a listing on the Nasdaq in 2018 and continued growth over the last two years. They also received a $400 Million investment from Sony in May. Keep your eye on Bilibili, because another priority for them is international expansion. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Sea Group Gets Bigger and Bigger 🎯Sea Group has been one of Southeast Asia’s biggest tech success stories. The eleven-year-old company owns Shopee (E-Commerce), Garena (Gaming), SeaMoney (Fintech) and their share price has increased 880% over the last 18 months. This KrAsia article makes the bull case for Sea potentially becoming the dominant Southeast Asian tech company, similar to a combination of Chinese Alibaba and Tencent. Shopee is currently the most popular e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Garena is the biggest games publisher in Southeast Asia.Relatively speaking, there is more white space for technology companies in Southeast Asia vs. China. The technology startup scenes are currently less developed in Southeast Asia when compared to China. While not all parts of Sea Group are profitable, their performance is formidable and they continue to grow. I remember when Andrew Baisley mentioned Sea in our interview last month. Considering their incredible accomplishments, they are relatively unknown in the West and I look forward to keeping a closer eye on Sea.Pinduoduo’s New Goal for Farm Produce 🍑The massively impressive Chinese interactive e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has just set yet another ambitious goal. Pinduoduo aims to sell $145 Billion worth of agricultural goods by 2025. The company already sells tons of produce. Based of their official Q2 results, Pinduoduo sold $58 Billion worth of agricultural goods in 2019. 38% of Pinduoduo’s users made purchases within the fruit and vegetables category on the platform. Currently, 2.5% of China’s agricultural goods are sold online and the structure of agriculture and produce is much more fragmented vs. the West. The US has much more industrial farming while China has a larger number of small farms. Compared to their rivals like Alibaba and JD.com, Pinduoduo has placed special emphasis on agriculture. If they are able to succeed, they might inadvertently create the most forward thinking agriculture e-commerce in the world. The Digital Sports Platforms in China ⚽️For several years, growing the local sports industry has been a key priority of the Chinese government. With such a large population, this presents huge opportunities for companies looking at sports fans. There are currently 213 Million people in China streaming sports online, which will likely continue to grow in the aftermath of Covid. This article highlights the top five sports news and streaming platforms: Tencent Sports, PP Sports, Sina Sports, CCTV-5, and Alisports.Out of all the popular sports in China, two in particular stick out—Basketball and Football. The NBA is the most popular foreign sports league and the Chinese Super League is the most popular local sports league (CSL). For Western leagues, tapping into China is generally their biggest international opportunity. These sports platforms are growing off the back of increasing Chinese sport interest, which makes the sports industry one of the hottest to watch over the coming years. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️New Chinese Rule Has Potential to Affect TikTok Sale ✋On Friday, China’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Technology changed a rule that would ban the export of technologies related to “artificial intelligence” and “personalized information push service based on data analysis.” Any Chinese company selling that technology to a foreign buyer now has to go through new layers of scrutiny. And both of those quoted technologies are key components of TikTok, the Chinese company currently being forced to sell its US operations. On Sunday, Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company, issued a statement saying they would “strictly comply” with any new Chinese regulation. At this point, TikTok’s acquisition is imminent and its unclear how this new rule will affect the deal. It was expected that the official TikTok announcement of an acquisition would happen sometime this week but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that talks slowed down this past weekend after the new Chinese rule change. I still think the deal will go through, but this shows how important of a political football TikTok has become for both the US and Chinese government.New Access to Financial Services for Filipinos 🇵🇭In the midst of Covid, 27 Million people in the Philippines are unemployed. It’s estimated that only 2 out of 10 Filipinos have a bank account and even fewer have credit cards. At the same time, 7 out of 10 Filipinos are mobile internet users and more people have digital wallets rather than credit cards. Against this backdrop, several fintech startups are beginning to see big opportunities in the Philippines.The Philippines is a huge country with a population of 106 Million. Companies like Hong-Kong based fintech Cashalo entered the market in 2018 and have offered products like ‘buy now pay later’ credit schemes and personal loans. Since there is not a strong credit scoring system in the country, extending credit to Filipinos can be risky for startups. Regardless, companies like Cashalo, BillEase, and Home Credit have seen millions of app downloads and are still bullish. The Potential Weakness of Western Celebrity Beauty in China 💄Nearly half of all global beauty industry growth is expected to come from China over the next five years, an increase in sales representing $38 Billion. This article from Jing Daily highlights the changing consumer preferences of young Chinese consumers. Several Western celebrities like Victoria Beckham, Kim Kardashian, Miranda Kerr, and Rihanna have launched their own beauty brands but success is not always guaranteed from a Western brand name. Local Chinese beauty brands, known as c-beauty, are increasingly more relevant products for local Chinese buyers and are also more affordable than Western celebrity beauty brands.While the article doesn’t necessarily mean Western celebrities are struggling to launch beauty brands in China, I think it says a lot about Chinese consumers. Modern Chinese consumers are more proud of their national identity and correspondingly have stronger support for local brands. Twenty years ago, it would have been sufficient to launch a foreign brand in China and people would buy your product because it’s foreign. Today, there are much higher standards for Chinese market entry and there is more support for local brands. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Ant Group’s Relationship with PaytmAnt Group, the fintech company that was spun out of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is on track to have the largest IPO of the year, with a planned $200 Billion public offering in both Hong Kong and Shanghai. In their recent filing documents, Ant revealed that they have a 30% stake in One97 Communications, which is the owner of Paytm, India’s largest digital payments company and most valuable startup. This matters because it adds a new layer of risk for both Ant and Paytm, given the currently strained and complicated relationships between China and India. The Indian government has recently imposed new restrictions on foreign investment that has especially affected Chinese investors in Indian companies. Earlier this year, Indian startup Zomato had $100 Million of investment coming from Ant that was temporarily blocked by the Indian government. The truth is that more than half of the top 25 biggest Indian tech companies have at least one Chinese investor. Until political tensions or legislation changes, Paytm will be making sure to distance themselves from their relationship with Ant.China’s Valentine’s Day Sales Festival Last week was China’s Qixi Festival, one of the biggest sales holidays of the year that is often compared to Valentine’s Day. This festival is especially important for beauty and luxury brands. This year, we saw more of the same record breaking post-Covid e-commerce growth that China experienced during the 618 Festival in June. Of course, many European luxury fashion brands like Salvatore Ferragamo and Estée Lauder paired with Chinese KOLs to do livestreams. The early data from the Qixi Festival indicate strong year-on-year growth across categories.JD.com released a report saying that luxury goods saw a 20-30% increase in sales. Gold, silver, and jewellery sales increased over 100% and intercity flower orders increased 33%, perhaps indicating more long-distance relationships in the time of Covid. It’s still amazing to me that Chinese e-commerce sales festivals keep breaking records. Part of this might be pent-up demand from a restricted lockdown Covid period, but it also indicates the sheer size and scale of Chinese buyers coming online. Facebook Threatens to Sue Thai Government Over CensorshipThe Thai Government recently ordered Facebook to shut down a Facebook group that contained over one million members critical of the Thai monarchy. The group was shut down but now Facebook is threatening to file a lawsuit against the Thai government to challenge the order. There are certain laws in Thailand that prohibit defamation of the monarchy and the most harsh sentences for breaking the law include extended jail time. As a former Facebook employee, I still feel a strong connection to the company that was such an important part of my life. I can understand the difficulty in balancing respect for local laws while also fighting for certain principles and ideas the company values. For several years, I thought that Facebook was not putting sufficient investment into their government and public policy teams. Given all the scandals, government scrutiny and new regulation over the last three years, I’m sure Facebook has reevaluated the importance of public policy. It will be interesting to see how the situation plays out in Thailand. In some countries (like Pakistan, India, and Vietnam), Facebook has actually been temporarily banned by the government for violating local laws. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Pinduoduo Joins Nasdaq-100 as Fastest in History 📈Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo just became the quickest company in history to reach the Nasdaq 100, which is an index of the top 100 largest companies on the Nasdaq stock exchange by market cap. This means that Pinduoduo has reached a new level of success that places them in the same list as Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. Don’t forget—Pinduoduo is only five years old and was founded in 2015. As I’ve written before, Pinduoduo has one of the most impressive growth stories in Chinese tech. They are one of the very few Chinese companies on the Nasdaq 100. Others include Pinduoduo’s rival JD.com and China’s largest search engine Baidu. Given tensions between the US and China, JD has opened a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Baidu has considered delisting from the Nasdaq. Whatever happens with Pinduoduo’s listing in the future, we should still take note of this world class achievement.Douyin to Cut Off Third Party Sellers 🎩Douyin is a short mobile video platform sometimes known as the TikTok of China, as it is owned by the same parent company Bytedance. Compared to TikTok, Douyin has a lot more advanced e-commerce features that plug directly into the user experience. One way people can buy products off Douyin is by clicking on a link during a livestream that directs them to e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com. As of August 26, however, users will no longer see third party seller options like Taobao and JD.With 500 Million monthly active users, Douyin is looking to sell products directly on their platform and cut out third party middle men. By selling directly from Douyin’s shop, they take a larger percentage of the sale. This is similar to a situation if Amazon were to kick out third party sellers from their platform. Many people look to Douyin as a future signal for TikTok’s product roadmap. Regardless of how TikTok’s sale proceeds over the coming weeks, we can expect deeper shopping and commerce integrations within the app, just like how things are already happening on Douyin.Tokopedia Launches New Lending Platform 💳Tokopedia, one of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce companies, has just released a peer-to-peer lending platform called Dhanapala. This allows small businesses around Indonesia to access loans and a set of different financial services to support their enterprise. This shift from e-commerce to financial services makes a lot of sense, but what’s interesting about the timing is that Tokopedia is currently being investigated by the Indonesian government about a security breach earlier in May that exposed the information of 15 Million users.In the midst of this scandal, you can imagine that Tokopedia’s reputation for trust and safety will be at risk and might harm the success of Dhanapala. While it’s generally perceived that people in Southeast Asia have fewer privacy concerns compared to people in the West, especially in Europe, recent scandals like this one from Tokopedia are making privacy a more important issue to Asians. In a situation like this, the next step might be new government regulation around privacy and data security. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

In my ongoing quest to better understand Chinese pop culture, I made the decision to watch this show called Fourtry.Fourtry is a Chinese reality TV Show where a group of five celebrities go to Japan and try opening up a successful fashion boutique in the middle of Tokyo. Fourtry was created by iQiyi, a Chinese video streaming platform with over 500 Million monthly active users, one of the many ‘Netflixes of China.’ The first episode became the number one trending reality show on Chinese platform Weibo, reaching 19.8 million viewers. The celebrities in the show are some of the biggest in China: Kris Wu is a Canadian-Chinese pop idol with 49 Million followers on Weibo. He got his start as part of the K-pop band EXO and has gone on to become a major film star, singer, and model for fashion brands like Burberry.Angelababy is a Chinese model, actress, and entrepreneur with over 100 Million followers on Weibo. She has recently starred in Hollywood films like Independence Day: Resurgence and also set up her own venture capital fund AB Capital.Rounding out the five main characters is singer Wilber Pan, actress Jinmai Zhao, and rapper Fox.The show explores their trials and tribulations with selling clothes in the trendiest part of Tokyo. Kris Wu was also the host of the super famous show Rap of China and is sometimes referred to as “China’s King of Streetwear.” Fourtry attempts to capitalise on the emerging Chinese street culture trend. Compared to Western reality TV shows, I noticed a few differences in Fourtry.EditingThe editing was out of this world. Special effects, while crude, were heavily emphasised in almost every situation to accentuate the emotions felt by each cast member in that particular moment.Product PlacementThe show was sponsored by Vivo, along with other major brands like Pepsi, Mazda, and Ikea. The Vivo product placement was incredibly blatant in certain scenes and a Vivo logo would frequently appear in the bottom right hand corner of the video. Sometimes the camera would awkwardly pan to a sponsor’s product shot without much relation to the conversations between the cast. I thought this explicit acknowledgement of sponsors actually made things feel more natural. Rather than hiding the sponsorship, it was front and center. Another show I’ve watched recently is J-Style Trip on Netflix. It’s a reality TV series with a similar format. Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou travels around different cities around the globe with a group of friends and their adventures are recorded on camera. While the sponsorship seemed less blatant compared to Fourtry, the editing was similarly wild and vivid.I’m beginning to think this over-the-top editing in media is a Chinese characteristic that is also reflected in the design of mobile apps.Compared to the UX of Western mobile apps, Chinese mobile apps are a lot busier. To Western eyes, Chinese apps might look crowded and confusing. Here’s an example of bullet comments, a common way for people to leave comments on video platforms such as Bilibili. Admittedly, this is an extreme example above, but bullet comments are used very often across several apps. These features might be overwhelming to Westerners, much like how Fourtry’s editing seemed crazy to me. Why does Fourtry exist? Because the creators of the show recognised the opportunity to capitalise on a recent Chinese consumer trend of street fashion, especially among younger audiences. iQiyi collaborated with dozens of fashion brands to allow people to buy the specific clothes they saw in the show directly on e-commerce channels. iQiyi also hosted a Fourtry Popup in Shanghai. So iQiyi made money not only by advertising on the show, but also by selling products after the show.As much as some people might consider reality TV a lowbrow genre, it’s one of the truest reflections of our popular culture. Fourtry, as with all popular Chinese media, can tell us a lot about culture and consumer preferences.I’m not yet an expert, but I have to admit that Chinese reality TV is quickly become my guilty pleasure to watch at night. Depending on how deep I go down this rabbit hole, I can always shift careers to become a reviewer of Chinese TV shows.This Week’s Most Popular Update:Update #55 - Hong Kong Stock Exchange, SEA Luxury, and Fake Universities This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Triller Partnership With India’s Reliance 🎥Triller is one of the biggest competitors to TikTok globally. It’s a US-based short-video mobile app that was released in 2015 and is very very similar to TikTok. Since the controversy around TikTok has increased over the past year, Triller has seen a huge increase in user numbers, with now 250 million total downloads globally. This week, Triller announced a partnership with JioSaavn, the Indian music streaming platform owned by Indian conglomerate Reliance. Users will be able to create Triller videos directly on the JioSaavn app. JioSaavn has over 100 million monthly active users and provides services in India similar to Spotify. As I’ve written about before, Reliance is one of the biggest and most influential companies in India. They have received billions of dollars in new funding from companies like Facebook and Google over the last few months and are best placed to capitalise on India’s digital transformation. Last week, it was reported that Reliance was looking to potentially acquire TikTok. It looks like those talks may have fallen through as this partnership with Triller would be directly competitive against TikTok. With this new relationship, Triller now has a powerful ally with Reliance and even more chances of success in India.Didi Expands to Russia and More 🇷🇺This week, Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing announced that they have expanded their service to Russia. It’s focused on the specific region of the Tatarstan Republic, with operations in the city of Kazan. Didi has also been expanding in South America over the last few years and has set the goal of achieving 800 million active users globally. CEO Cheng Wei announced earlier this year that Didi has reached the milestone of 1 billion rides outside of China.Didi is basically the Uber of China. In 2015, Uber had actually launched in China and became a major competitor to Didi. The fierce battles between the two companies resulted in Didi eventually acquiring Uber China in 2016. Ride-hailing has become one of the biggest tech industries and there are strong rivals in many different countries, like Uber, Careem, GoJek, and Grab. Watching where Didi plans to expand says a lot about their specific strategy. Didi expanding in places like Russia and South America also means they are not expanding in the competitive Southeast Asian markets, where ride-hailing is dominated by companies like GoJek and Grab.Who Wants TikTok, Who Is Leaving TikTok ⏰It’s wild how a single Chinese video app has created a geopolitical storm and one of the most contentious tech acquisitions in recent history. Ever since President Trump issued an executive order requiring TikTok to be sold by next month, several major US companies have been reported as potential buyers. At first, the obvious frontrunner appeared to be Microsoft. Now there has been talk about Oracle, Netflix, and most recently Walmart interested in buying TikTok. Most of these actual acquisition conversations happen behind closed doors, so we really won’t know the truth until things become official.At the same time, Kevin Mayer, TikTok’s American CEO who joined the company four months ago, has just resigned from his new role. One can imagine that being TikTok’s CEO right now is probably one of the world’s toughest jobs. Again, we will never know the full story as major executive departures like this are usually the result of several internal factors unknown to the public. I am still bullish on TikTok. Amidst all the commotion and drama, the underlying product and audience are still unprecedented successes and that won’t die easily. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Chinese Autonomous Cargo Drones Fill the Skies ⛅️If you happened to be standing in a field in northwest rural China last Friday and looked up into the sky, you would have seen China’s largest delivery company SF Holdings complete its very first autonomous cargo drone flight. This was a major milestone in unmanned air drones operating with major capacity. The SF Holdings cargo drone was said to be able to fly with a payload of up to 1.5 tonnes. The target markets for these new drones are rural areas in China that struggle to receive deliveries given their geography.In the US, Amazon has presented their own delivery drones that have the ability to transport packages weighing 2 kilograms across a distance up to 24 kilometres. Other major drone companies in the US include Sabrewing, Nautilus, and Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet. Drone technology will likely become a major part of logistics and supply chains for countries across the world and the potential market size is pretty huge. There’s enough room for many big drone companies, but the leading technology will likely come from China and America. Hong Kong Businesses Explore Virtual Solutions 💡Tourism, Restaurants, and Retail are some of the industries most affected by Covid. In the first half of 2020, visitor arrivals to Hong Kong were down 90% from the previous year. To survive and hopefully thrive through this time period, many of these tourism-related businesses realise that they need to explore digital business models. Cosmetics brand Sasa started livestreaming to Mainland Chinese customers in order to sell their products online instead of relying on tourists visiting from Mainland China. As another example, health and food company AbouThai started hosting online livestreams to sell their products.Shifting your traditionally physical business online isn’t easy for everyone. For some people, this requires completely new skillsets that might not currently exist amongst their employees. Businesses that understand how to sell their products online will have a competitive advantage in a difficult economy. And for the labour market, digital marketing skills should become even more valuable.China Opens Doors to More Europeans ✈️China has eased their travel restrictions on visitors coming from 36 European countries. Earlier this year, almost all foreigners were restricted from entering China, even if they had work permits and family in the country. Travellers to China still have to go through a 14-day quarantine and take mandatory Covid tests and to be specific, it’s Europeans with a valid residence permit who can now apply for a visa to enter China. So there is still a long way to go before travel is normalised.This incremental step in the direction of progress indicates China’s slow, but steady confidence in the country’s recovery. The idea of easing travel restrictions on a country-by-country basis is something we will start seeing more often. Here in New Zealand, the government is discussing the idea of soon creating travel bubbles — allowing people from specific, low Covid-risk countries to eventually travel to New Zealand. For China, I’m sure the government is making very deliberate steps to decide which countries to open up travel bubbles with. The health of your country will become a more important factor in your ability to travel around the world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Ant Group Makes It Official, Time For An IPO 📈This week, Ant Group filed for its initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with a goal to raise $20 Billion and an estimated company valuation of over $200 Billion. This will make Ant the biggest IPO of the year and likely the biggest IPO of all time. Ant Group owns Alipay, a fintech and digital payments platform that has over one billion users, $15 Trillion in transactions processed last year, and $10 Billion in revenue throughout H1 2020. It’s pretty much the premier fintech company of China and possibly the whole world.Funnily enough, the previous record holder for ‘world’s biggest IPO’ was Alibaba, the company founded by Jack Ma that also spun out Ant Group. Unlike Alibaba however, Ant has decided not to list on a US Stock Exchange. Ant is a prime example of a company that is literally one of the world’s biggest and influential, but most people in the West are unaware of what the company does. This cultural blindspot places Ant in a position to take advantage of the world’s fastest growing emerging markets, which are in places like Asia.Chinese Reality TV Returns Post-Covid 🥤A popular type of program in China is Reality TV shows. While the regular TV season was delayed because of the coronavirus, things are now relatively back to normal. With this reopening comes new opportunity for brands sponsoring these TV shows. International beverage brands (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) are the most popular sponsors of Chinese reality TV, including Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Absolut Vodka. Major luxury automotive brands like Mercedes-Benz and BMW are also sponsoring China’s biggest reality TV shows.I’m currently watching Fourtry, which is a popular Chinese reality TV show about celebrities who try to create a fashion boutique in Tokyo. Compared to Western reality TV shows, Fourtry strikes me as more in-your-face with the sponsorship, video production, and commercialisation. Having worked in marketing, advertising, and media across several continents, I have noticed the cultural differences in how customers respond to advertising. In China, brand partnerships and sponsorships seem more direct and explicitly selling.China Mobile’s Strategy for Gen-Z 🗼China Mobile is one of China’s largest telco companies and their new product M-Zone is geared towards Gen Z audiences. To appeal to this target audience, M-Zone has been promoting their 5G services and AI by partnering with streaming platform Mango TV to celebrate youth culture through interactive content. M-Zone worked with popular Chinese influencers, used virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR), and created tons of content they streamed across several digital platforms.All companies targeting younger audiences next to adjust their marketing strategy. Whether in the East or West, reaching younger audiences requires your brand to understand the latest technology, influencers, and interactivity. China Mobile’s latest campaign for M-Zone is very futuristic and embraces some of these cutting-edge trends for the sake of relating to younger audiences. It’s pretty forward thinking and I don’t see this type of marketing from Western telcos. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️The Purchase Potential of Female Consumers in China 👚There’s a term in China called “Little Sisters,” which refers to Chinese women between the ages of 20 and 40, a key group of consumer spending. For companies looking to advertise to Chinese consumers, the ‘Little Sister’ target audience is becoming even more important. In Mainland China, women make three out of four purchases. There have been several hundred-million dollar mergers and acquisitions in China over the last few months in industries such as personal care, baby care, and health care. The people behind these deals were all targeting female Chinese consumers. As a sub-segment of the ‘sheconomy,’ the Chinese cosmetics industry has become the second largest in the world after the United States. In Q2 2020, cosmetic sales in China increased 16 percent year-on-year. The recovery of cosmetics post-Covid has been very rapid compared to other industries. In the West, consumer goods companies put a lot of effort into positioning their marketing towards female consumers. The same thing is now happening in China as we see the rise of ‘Little Sisters.’Rise of the East Asia Super League 🏀The East Asia Super League (EASL) is a new professional basketball league that will feature teams from countries across Asia, including China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. The inaugural season will begin in October 2021 and the league has a ten-year agreement with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). The first season will have eight teams and the plan is to increase to sixteen teams by 2023. Asia is the biggest untapped market for Western sports leagues. With over two billion potential sports fans in Asia, pretty much every sports league from European football to American basketball makes Asia their main international priority. While it’s interesting to look at what the Premier League and NBA are doing in Asia, some of the most exciting developments are sports leagues native to Asia. Another example apart from the EASL is One Championship, which has become one of the fastest growing and biggest sports properties in the world. One Championship is an eight-year-old mixed martial arts sports organisation based in Singapore and operating across several Asian countries. While you could call One Championship something like ‘the UFC of Asia,’ One has actually overtaken the UFC in global online viewership numbers.The Best Performing Stock Market in Asia 🇵🇰What is currently the best performing stock market in Asia? Right now, that title belongs to Pakistan, whose KSE-100 Index has rebounded with a 36% increase since March. While the country is still suffering many covid-related effects in its economy and the overall health of society, there are a few investment funds from places like Sweden and Dubai who have made early, contrarian bets on Pakistan. It’s too early to draw long-term conclusions from this, but Pakistan’s rebounding stock market should bring at least a moment of positivity and pride.I’ve personally visited Pakistan three times and worked with organisations there ranging from small startups to universities to multinational conglomerates. For years I have been saying that Pakistan is the most underrated emerging market and perhaps most misunderstood country in the world. Over the last couple of years, the country has made both critical progress and large missteps. In the time of covid, I’m cautiously short-term optimistic and definitely long-term bullish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Hong Kong Stock Exchange Is Looking for More 🏦Given Hong Kong’s reputation as a global financial center, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is one of the world’s most important stock exchanges. In terms of total IPO fundraising size, Hong Kong has been world’s biggest stock exchange six out of the last ten years, capitalising on China’s growth. For mainland Chinese companies, listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is an attractive, obvious option. This KrAsia interview with Christina Bao, Head of Global Issuer Services at HKEX (Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited), highlights some of the hot topics being discussed regarding the role of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Because of US-China political tension, many Chinese companies are choosing to delist from the US and instead list in Hong Kong. On top of that, HKEX is making major marketing efforts to attract Southeast Asian companies to list in Hong Kong. The next generation of Southeast Asian tech companies will be an attractive target for all stock exchanges around the world, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange might have the best chance of being the home of their new listings.Luxury Consumption in Post-Covid Southeast Asia 💅Many Southeast Asian countries continue to suffer from the coronavirus, but there’s a surprising new trend around the demand for luxury goods in this region. A recent study by iPrice Group has recorded significant increases in the amount of Google Searches across Southeast Asia for luxury brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Increases in search volume have also been recorded for luxury watches like Rolex and sportswear brands like Adidas/Yeezy. This study doesn’t explain why, but that leaves us with some interesting hypotheses.Are people searching for more luxury goods to take advantage of Covid-related sales and discounts? Are people searching because more overall commerce is happening online? Another concept people are describing is “revenge spending,” when people decide to spend even more money after a significant period of deprived demand because of the coronavirus. Considering the current boom in sales in China as the economy reopens, you can definitely see examples of revenge spending. Whatever the reason behind these increases in luxury search volume in Southeast Asia, this makes it even more important for your brand to have a high-quality online presence. Your ‘virtual’ storefront might matter more than your physical storefront. Alibaba Clamps Down on Fake University Admission Letters 🎓Before getting shut down by Alibaba’s security team, merchants on Alibaba’s online marketplace Taobao were selling faked university admission letters for as low as $28. The results of the Gaokao, China’s national college admission exam, were released recently—essentially deciding where millions of high school students around the country would be attending university. There was a high profile case in local news describing a high school student who got caught with a fake admissions letter to prestigious Tsinghua University.Taobao is huge, with 874 Million monthly active users. On such a big marketplace, you can expect that there will be a certain percentage of fake, counterfeit, or illegal goods. There is an entire category of ‘informal services’ people can trade on the platform, and these fake university degrees are just one example out of many. With new demand for new industries resulting from the coronavirus, I’m sure there will be many new hustles people will sell as an informal service on Taobao. Overall, Alibaba is still thriving despite the coronavirus, with increased revenue and user engagement. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

I spent the last week in the city of Napier, here in New Zealand. New Zealand is in this surreal, dreamlike situation. On August 9, the Ministry of Health declared 100 consecutive days without local coronavirus cases. The only cases in the country came from people traveling into New Zealand from other countries.However, a new cluster of cases was discovered a week ago and the city of Auckland went into lockdown with a Level 3 alert. The rest of the country is on Level 2, which means that most places are still open—schools, businesses, restaurants, and hotels.While staying at my hotel in Napier, a hotel employee told me that things were understandably slower because of the coronavirus. Typically, there would be busloads of Chinese tourists coming to stay at the hotel but now there are none.Tourism is New Zealand’s biggest export industry, contributing to 20% of total exports. The biggest source of New Zealand tourists come from Australia, followed by China, followed by the US. To deal with this gap in tourists because of the coronavirus, New Zealand’s travel industry had tried using technology to solve their challenges. In June, Tourism New Zealand hosted a two-hour livestream of penguins hanging around the Christchurch International Antarctic Centre. The livestream was hosted on Chinese app Weibo and 1.6 Million viewers tuned in to see the penguins.Two professional travel influencers Xiaomo and Ahou have partnered with Tourism New Zealand on a series of New Zealand-themed livestreams on Weibo. Travel companies all around the world are experimenting with livestreaming. The purpose of these livestreams is to entertainment, inform, and hopefully make a sale. You could reach more Chinese people virtually vs. physically. So could you also make more money virtually vs. physically?Last year, New Zealand Tourism partnered with Viya, China’s biggest livestreamer, who flew to Auckland to showcase a host of local goods. Within a four hour livestream where she reached 10 Million Chinese viewers, Viya sold $30 Million worth of New Zealand products including skin cream, honey, and cereal.And China is New Zealand’s largest trade partner. In 2008, New Zealand became the first OECD country to sign a free trade agreement with China, which still exists today. On top of tourism, China receives goods from New Zealand in industries such as dairy, wood, and meat. The interests of this small island nation may not create earthquakes on the global stage, but it can carve out a profitable niche for buyers and tourists from China. While New Zealand can’t welcome Chinese tourists, the internet still allows you to connect with Chinese buyers.In the meantime, hotels around the country will have to rely on domestic tourism.This Week’s Most Popular Update:Update #52 - Unicorns, Joyy, and Disney Indonesia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Sea Group is Booming 📈As a combination of e-commerce, gaming, and financial services, Sea Group is one of the best positioned companies in Asia to benefit from the coronavirus. They just reported their Q2 earnings, where they experienced 93% year-on-year revenue growth. Free Fire, one of their mobile games, reached 100 Million monthly active users and became the highest grossing mobile game in Latin America and Southeast Asia.Their e-commerce app Shopee competes directly with Alibaba/Rocket Internet backed Lazada and is in a strong position right now. Shopee was the number one ranked app in Southeast Asia on Android, in terms of downloads, monthly active users, and time spent. In Indonesia, Shopee’s largest market, Shopee experienced 130% year-on-year revenue growth. SeaMoney, Sea’s digital payments arm, added five million new users over the last quarter. Sea’s areas of focus (gaming, e-commerce, and financial services), are quite literally some of the best bets you could make in a post-covid world. From their Q2 results, it shows.Bigo Moves From Hong Kong to Singapore 🇸🇬Joyy Group, a competitor to TikTok in the social/video/mobile app space, operates a group of apps including livestreaming app Bigo Live and short video app Likee. Both of these apps were part of the recent Indian ban of several Chinese mobile apps. While the scrutiny being faced by Joyy is a lot less than TikTok/Bytedance, this Chinese tech company still realises the importance of optics and positioning in the current business environment. Joyy has recently moved its servers from Hong Kong to Singapore, in an attempt to distance themselves from Chinese association. Bigo was originally founded in Singapore before being bought by the Chinese Joyy Group, and 91% of their 460 Million monthly active users are in international markets outside of China. Considering their revenue and user base is so heavily weighted internationally, it’s critical that Joyy keeps governments happy. Otherwise, they could start facing similar threats as TikTok.Chinese Electric Scooters, With the Help of Vin Diesel 🏍Yadea Group Holdings is a Chinese electric scooter company currently worth around $22 Billion. Due to the coronavirus, demand for electric scooters has been increasing and Yadea has seen 91% year-on-year growth in H1 revenue. The company sells 162 electric scooter models and exports around the world. American actor Vin Diesel, best known for his roles in the Fast & Furious film series, is one of the main faces behind the Yadea brand. 90% of Yadea’s revenue still comes from Mainland China, so employing an international Western star like Vin Diesel might help increase their brand’s appeal outside of China. Electric vehicles, and in this specific case the subsegment of electric scooters, is a rapidly growing market. 30% of mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles were electric in 2019, and that number is expected to reach 77% by 2040. Consumer behaviour in China, which soon may translate around the world, has influenced people to turn to electric scooters for economic, environmental, and safety reasons. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com

Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪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.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️Shenzhen Becomes World’s First 5G City 🗼The Chinese city of Shenzhen claims it has become the world’s first city to achieve stand-alone 5G coverage. This means that you can receive 5G cell phone service and high speed wireless internet across the entire city. Chen Rugui, Shenzhen’s mayor, made this announcement in a press conference earlier this week. There are apparently 46,000 5G stations in the city, more than any other city in the world, and 5G tech providers Huawei and ZTE are both headquartered in Shenzhen. Shenzhen’s history symbolises the ascent of modern China. From becoming a special economic zone in the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping to now being called Silicon Valley of China, Shenzhen may be home to the new forefront of 5G technology. China has prioritised developing 5G infrastructure and applications as a national policy, with most other major Chinese cities already aiming to achieve similar levels of 5G coverage as Shenzhen very soon. Apart from making everything faster, there are many ways (some hard to predict) that the power of 5G technology could change the way many parts of society operate. However it changes things, we might see it first start to happen in Shenzhen.Bytedance’s Other Ventures in Education 🎓While Bytedance might be best known as the Chinese company that owns TikTok, many people don’t realise that Bytedance is a multi-faceted tech holding company that operates several diversified business ventures. And with all the scrutiny TikTok faces, Bytedance may need to double down on their other companies. One major area of focus for Bytedance right now is education. The company has launched two new online learning apps in China—Xuelang and Qingbei Xiaoban.Xuelang offers one to three hour long livestream classes for K-12 students and also courses for professionals. Qingbei Xiaoban focuses on small online classes run by a teacher with a limited number of concurrent students. These are just the latest in dozens of apps launched by Bytedance over the last few years, including other education apps. As I have written about before and has been profiled in publications like the FT, edtech (education technology) startups have really benefitted from the coronavirus, especially in Asia. It makes sense for Bytedance to treat education as a strategic priority. People have described Bytedance as an App Factory, so launching several edtech experiments at once is a typical strategy for them.Live Chinese E-Sports, Back in Business 🎩Many people across China have been attending large social gatherings in the relative aftermath of the coronavirus, including places like Wuhan, which hosted a packed music festival in a water park just a few days ago. This week, Honour of Kings, one of China’s and the world’s biggest competitive e-sports games, hosted the Honour of Kings World Champion Cup 2020. This was the first live, physically attended e-sports event of the year since the coronavirus outbreak. Things have changed, however.While the event took place in a stadium in Beijing with a capacity of 19,000, only 2,000 tickets were available for fans. As has become the norm, attendees had their temperature checked and mobile health codes scanned before entering the event. In fact, you could only purchase tickets to the event if you had a level 30 Honour of Kings account, which means you are a high ranked player in the top percentile of gamers and most likely a superfan. Whether you like these ideas or not, they present some pretty interesting options for stadium attendance and ticketing that could also be utilised in other countries around the world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com