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.
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.
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%.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.