CDP Institute

APAC is home to more than half of the world’s population, and the health market size is expected to reach more than $300 billion by 2030 – making health brands’ investment and presence in the region more important than ever. To continue expanding its reach in this key market, Havas Group announced that it has acquired Bastion Brands, Australia’s leading independent health communications agency. Bastion Brands will integrate into Havas Health & You (HH&Y), the world’s largest global health network.

Deloitte Digital has acquired three Australian digital experience consultancies – Melbourne-based Blended Digital, and Sydney-based companies New Republique and Venntifact. The acquisitions will bring in 70 new staff to push Deloitte Digital’s headcount to more than 1100 across Australia.

PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia Tbk (GoTo), the Indonesia merged entity of Gojek and Tokopedia, announced that its gross revenue is up 30% year on year to Rp5.9 trillion ($375 million), above the middle point of guidance range, as all segments registered growths.

Asia’s superapps have hopped on to a hot new trend in the tech industry: workforce reductions. An example is Grab, which reported strong third quarter growth, yet despite its positivity, said it would make cost cuts and that includes plans to pause or slow hiring in various corporate departments.

Finkargo, a startup founded a year ago in Bogota, dedicated to supporting operations and providing financing for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to trade internationally, announced that it has obtained a US$75 million structured loan from Community Investment Management (CIM). Finkargo says that financing is one of the barriers that most affects the internationalization of these types of companies. MSMEs face a foreign trade credit rejection rate of over 50%.

Trully, a platform focused on digital fraud prevention announced the raise of a US$4.1 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures. In the region, customer identity verification remains the main challenge to reduce fraud in digital channels, as 44% of frauds carried out were related to this problem. Trully developed software to improve the authentication of KYC (Know Your Customer) systems and prevent identity theft and financial fraud through facial recognition using machine learning to obtain more accurate data.

Laid-off employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters are accusing Twitter of “deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana” and trying to “silence and intimidate” them after they were fired.

Leta, a Kenyan B2B supply chain and logistics SaaS provider launched last year to optimize fleet management, is looking for growth opportunities in West Africa, even as it scales operations in its existing five markets with a a $3 million pre-seed funding.

Nestcoin, one of the startups leading crypto and web3 efforts in Africa, announced that it was laying off several employees and slashing the salaries of those left to stay, by as much as 40%. The news is, in part, connected to the downfall of crypto exchange FTX.

Oracle India plans to focus on healthcare and public sector verticals to drive growth in the region. It will also strengthen its partner ecosystem and increase hiring of skilled and specialised workforce to serve the growing demand for its offerings. The company sees healthcare as a big market opportunity as the sector had been inert in introducing innovation to its system.

US communications platform Zoom Video Communications Inc. has sought approval from the Indian government to introduce its Zoom Phone service in India as it seeks to challenge rivals Microsoft and Cisco in this market. Zoom Phone is a voice over internet protocol (VoIP) based service that allows businesses to make phone calls using the cloud-based Zoom software platform.

Magnite, the world’s largest independent omnichannel sell-side advertising platform, released a study entitled “India Embraces the Streaming Era” that found ads on streaming platforms capture more attention than ads on social media. Nearly two thirds of India’s streamers (64%) are more responsive to advertising on streaming platforms, with many stating they often search for the product (48%) and make a purchase (33%) after the fact.