This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 8, 2021 - November 14, 2021

Digital and e-commerce solution provider Exabytes has entered into a joint-venture agreement with Open DC, a telecom-hub data-centre provider.

Both parties signed the JV agreement on Sept 20 to establish Open DC Penang Sdn Bhd (ODCP), which will be owned on a 51:49 basis by Open DC and Exabytes respectively.

Upon incorporation, ODCP will own and operate the data centre currently operated by Exabytes in Suntech Penang Cybercity. The partnership aims to establish more initiatives and potential collaborations with regional players, both within Malaysia as well as the rest of the Southeast Asian market.

The partnership will enhance the current data centre infrastructure as well as see the development of new products and services for the local internet ecosystem, complementing both the local and federal digital development road maps.

Additionally, low latency connectivity, carrier-neutral data centres, telecom hubs and digital hubs will be made available to the general public via the data centre’s infrastructure. The data centre will also offer edge computing, Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 capabilities as well as data and cloud services disaster recovery and business continuity services.

Exabytes CEO and founder Chan Kee Siak said the strategic partnership with Open DC will propel Penang as a potential data centre hub to support small and medium enterprises and multinational corporations in Malaysia, making it a prominent internet hub.

“We aim to rejuvenate the data centre and cloud ecosystem in Penang and Northern Malaysia while helping businesses in Penang prepare for Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0), which is aligned with the government digital blueprint,” he added.

Touch ’n Go (TNG) eWallet is joining Visa’s Fintech Fast Track Programme, which allows TNG to access Visa’s global network of partners and affiliates.

TNG will also be developing a Visa prepaid card solution tied to the TNG eWallet. This is expected to be available to TNG eWallet users in 2022. The card will offer TNG eWallet users additional cash-out options by enabling last-mile withdrawals at Visa-enabled ATMs domestically and globally. 

According to the Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes study 1, both contactless cards (92%) and digital wallets (81%) are widely used in Malaysia. Data shows that 77% of users currently use both.

With the upcoming Touch ’n Go Visa prepaid card, Malaysians can enjoy the best of both worlds, as the card complements Touch ’n Go eWallet’s existing network of QR merchants in Malaysia with Visa’s broad network of more than 70 million merchant locations globally.

Vimigo has introduced a performance reward system that emphasises attracting the right talent and retaining these individuals through world-class incentives.

The system aims to revolutionise employee management for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), providing them with a better capacity to attract quality talent and retain employees with minimal effort.

The platform enables employers to set specific, achievable goals for each employee, incentivising them with multi-tiered rewards after every achievement. Long-term goals and career progression maps can also be designed to provide employees with further clarity on their potential within the company.

In conjunction with its recently established partnership with pitchIN, Vimigo will be launching an equity crowdfunding (ECF) campaign, thus expanding its reach to further assist Malaysia’s SMEs to achieve sustainable growth.

In the last two years, SMEs have faced challenges in securing adequate financial support while ensuring continuous positive cash flow for survival. Through its collaboration with pitchIN, Vimigo will be looking to connect with a wider network of businesses nationwide, further ensuring that more businesses have access to its solutions while opening up avenues for sustainable funding opportunities with ECF.

“We understand that in today’s economy, financial support, whether in the form of loans or securing investors, is not easy to obtain. With interest rates skyrocketing and the start-up investment circuit becoming more and more competitive, we want to offer sustainable alternatives to our partners while providing them with our in-house solutions,” said Shane Mun, founder of Vimigo.

“Vimigo’s collaboration with pitchIN is geared towards exposing our SME partners to the opportunities that ECF can bring, and our upcoming ECF campaign via the platform is a testament to that credibility.”

Xsolla, a leading video game commerce company, is helping game developers scale their business worldwide.

Recently, rulings have been made regarding the payment methods for Apple’s App Store and Google Play, allowing app developers to direct users to other payment methods, bypassing high in-app purchase (IAP) margins.

Through Xsolla Web Shop, developers can expect up to 40% revenue growth and to reach new players in new geographies previously unavailable to them. 

Currently, developers face many challenges such as discoverability, declining profit margins and lack of control over the user experience, access to localised payment methods, cross-game marketing, more efficient user acquisition and effective collaboration with creators and influencers — all of which Xsolla Web Shop hopes to resolve.

“Xsolla anticipated this seismic shift earlier this year, when we launched multiple products that are being actively used by some of the world’s largest game companies to increase profit and build closer relationships with their mobile and PC players. We’ve now combined these products and learnings into an elegant new solution called Xsolla Web Shop,” said Chris Hewish, president of Xsolla. 

Combined with the fact that both Apple and Google explicitly state that cross-platform games can sell IAPs outside of mobile apps, it becomes clear that developers stand ready to unlock their full global revenue potential, increase profit margins and build stronger relationships with their players.

“Through Xsolla Web Shop, we are helping game developers think about and scale their mobile games across multiple platforms to expand their business into new markets and to grow their audience,” said Anton Zelenin, head of game commerce at Xsolla.

“The opportunities are even greater, and we’ve seen amazing success stories from partners who have integrated this solution.”

Malaysian game developer, Mason Games, has officially launched in the market with two hyper-casual titles. Scoopy The Ice Cream Adventure and Math Cat are now available for download for free on the Google Play store.

This is part of the publisher’s plan to develop a slew of popular hyper-casual games with an Asian influence, targeted at the growing hyper-casual gaming market in the region.

Hyper-casual games are usually very easy to play, have a simple user interface and are available for free. This presents a significantly lower barrier to entry for those who are not traditionally gamers. The pandemic has also led to a sharp increase in gaming, especially on the hyper-casual front, with new users joining en masse during the lockdowns across the region.

Singapore-based Acclivis Technologies and Solutions and IBM are collaborating to deploy IBM Cloud Satellite across Asia.

Acclivis, the leading technology services provider in Asia-Pacific, and IBM will leverage hybrid cloud capabilities to help enterprises — including those in highly regulated industries — accelerate their digital innovation, while assisting them in maintaining data sovereignty and achieving regulatory compliance.

Acclivis will be able to use IBM Cloud Satellite to extend services such as IBM Watson to its clients’ data centres, bringing analytics closer to where the data resides.

The collaboration will see IBM leveraging the regional data centre coverage of Acclivis in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand to host and manage data.

The partnership will combine IBM’s strength in delivering security-rich and open hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise with Acclivis’ network of data centres and internet connectivity across the region. Together, they will be able to deliver security-rich and open cloud services to the region, leveraging IBM Cloud Satellite and Acclivis’ extensive data centre footprint.

IBM Cloud Satellite brings IBM Cloud services to any environment where data resides — whether at the edge, on premises, or on multiple public clouds. It is designed to enable clients to access cloud services with speed across any environment.

Yahoo has announced that it is exiting China, the third major US tech platform to do so, after LinkedIn and Epic Games. It said in a statement posted over its website that its “suite of services will no longer be accessible” in that country.

The US internet company told Reuters in an email: “In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment  in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of Nov 1.” 

Yahoo launched its domestic internet operations in China in 1999. Its news and community services there were terminated in September 2013, after its local email service was discontinued and it closed its last remaining physical presence in the country in March 2015, when it shut down its research and development operations in Beijing.

Gobi Partners, a Pan-Asian venture capital firm headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai, has appointed Paul Ark as partner and head of environmental, social and governance investment.

Ark will be focusing on the implementation and strengthening of ESG practices in the company and among its portfolio companies. Prior to joining Gobi, Ark managed a US$100 million global corporate venture capital fund for Siam Commercial Bank’s Digital Ventures group.

British American Tobacco (BAT) has promoted Robert Goossens as marketing director in October, according to Marketing Interactive. 

Goossens, who has been with BAT for over 17 years, was previously the regional head of consumer marketing for Asia Pacific Middle East from August 2019 to September 2021. Prior to his regional role, he was brand director for the Japanese market and worked for the company in Europe.

Thomas Hundt, CEO of Smart Axiata, the Cambodian subsidiary of Axiata Group, is the group’s new chief strategy and technology officer.

In his role, Hundt will be pivotal in driving group-wide innovation and technological advancement in the region. He will also be instrumental in securing new and long-term growth opportunities as the company strengthens its top management to deliver its digital transformation agenda.

Hundt will step down from his CEO position and relocate from Cambodia to Kuala Lumpur. In the meantime, Smart Axiata chief financial officer Feiruz Ikhwan will assume the role of acting CEO. 

Digital Penang, a state government agency, is holding its first hackathon in collaboration with Finexus Group and TNG Digital, with prizes worth RM75,000 up for grabs.

Through the virtual hackathon, participants will compete to create a fintech digital product that will be judged based on three criteria: innovation, business viability and integration completeness.

Finexus — a financial technology solutions provider — will be opening up its 40 MyXaaS application programming interface on its MyXaaS Innovation Platform for the hackathon event including:

• e-wallet/international prepaid card (Visa or Mastercard); 

• applicant identification and verification (e-KYC);

• automated customer due diligence(background check and credit scoring);

• merchant plug-in (e-commerce); and

• technical guidance and advisory

Finexus’ MyXaaS is a new one-of-a-kind platform offering infrastructure, software and financial as a service. It is open to start-ups and mid-growth companies as well as to technopreneurs and socialpreneurs to accelerate, catalyse and enable the development of their digital business ideas for a speedier go-to-market presence.

The hackathon will be held from Nov 12 to Dec 10, allowing participants ample time to create innovative and viable products. The results will be announced by the end of the year. To register visit https://bit.ly/dphackathon.

The popularity of Squid Game prompted gamers to create an online version of the programme, for which you need the Squid cryptocurrency to play. On Oct 26, it was worth a modest one cent, but by Oct 29, it had exploded in value, reaching US$4.39.

But Squid has been criticised for not allowing investors to resell their tokens. The dystopian South Korean serial tells the story of a group of people forced to play deadly children’s games for money.

Squid is what is known as a play-to-earn (P2E) cryptocurrency, where people buy tokens to play in online games where they can earn more tokens or earn real money by collecting rewards in a game. These can then be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or fiat money.

One of the popular P2E platforms is Pokemon-inspired online game Axie Infinity, which allows gamers to earn cryptocurrencies Axie-Infinity (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) by rearing virtual pets (Axies).

It is time to go green! In the Monopoly: Go Green Edition board game, players buy, sell and trade properties, and invest in greening them up. Players can build wooden greenhouses to collect more rent and invest in solar and wind utilities.

In this edition of the Monopoly game, greenhouses and dice are made of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood from well-managed forests.

Meanwhile, the tokens are made of plant-based plastic derived from sugarcane, a renewable raw material. The package, game board, game guide, money, cards, storage bag, insert and money tray are made from 100% recycled paper. The game is for two to six players, ages eight and up — a perfect addition to family game nights.

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