Chinaccelerator Daily Digest 2020/01/14

CHINA:

1. Ex-Baidu senior VP closes debut angel fund Longzhong Xinyi Fund at $29m

2. Bytedance and Tencent reach music licensing deal

3. Alibaba to send red packets worth RMB 2 billion during Spring Festival gala

4. Alibaba claimed that Taobao Livestream 淘宝直播 created 4 million jobs in 2019

5. Rural farmers sell produce online as China steps up poverty alleviation efforts

6. Chinese e-cig startup Relx launches flagship shops

7. Cross-border e-commerce company Yangmatou 洋码头 raised 8-digit RMB in Series D, invested by Sina Weibo. 

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MOBILE-ONLY MARKETS:

1. India orders investigation into alleged anti-competitive practices by Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart

2. Indian neobank epiFi secures $13.2m in seed funding to bankroll product launch

3. Indian logisitics management startup Pando raises $9m

4. Bank Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) pumps US$1M into Indonesia Mall, encourages local MSMEs to grow online

CROSS-BORDER:

1. Trump to halt civilian drone program over China tech concerns

2. US makes final plea for Boris Johnson government to block Huawei from UK’s 5G network

3. Verlinvest infuses $8m in online beauty products retailer Purplle

OVERSEAS:

1. Visa to acquire Plaid, the fintech powering Venmo and other banking apps, in $5.3 billion deal

2. Samsung acquires TeleWorld Solutions to help build 5G infrastructure

3. Adobe Experience Manager now offered as cloud-native SaaS application

4. ToursByLocals snaps up its first funding, C$33M, to link sightseers with guides globally

5. Skyqraft, a startup using AI and drones for electricity power-line inspection, raises $505K

6. Jolt raises $14.1M for its ‘pay-monthly’ business school

7. TradeGecko, a Singapore-based startup selling inventory management software, lays off a quarter of its staff

8. Singaporean fintech startup Klub bags $2m from Sequoia’s Surge, others

9. Singapura Finance is the latest to join digital license race, partnering digital payment startup MatchMove

Image Credits: Technode