Malaysia-based integrated car e-commerce platform Carsome Group Inc, has announced the closing of its latest fundraising round, which brings the group’s liquidity position to approximately $200 million. It is noted that in 2022, the group’s revenue grew 250 percent to $1.5 billion, with the newly established regional retail line Carsome Certified contributing 35 percent of total revenue.
Vietnam, which has become known for favorable tech infrastructure and affordable labour costs, has become an attractive location for top Australian financial institutions. ANZ Bank, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and NAB, have establish digital hubs, and NAB launched the NAB Innovation Centre Vietnam (NICV) in to enhance technology and customer experience.
Short video app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, said it would invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia over the next few years, as it doubles down on the region amid intensifying global scrutiny over its data security. Southeast Asia, a region with a collective population of 630 million — half of them under 30 — is one of TikTok’s biggest markets in terms of user numbers.
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.