And its founder says that had the app been created or treated like an ordinary communication tool, it would have not been as successful as it is.

“WeChat, actually, is a communication tool but for us it’s [built to be] a lifestyle,” Allen Zhang, the creator of WeChat, said during a four-hour speech at Tencent Holdings’ annual WeChat conference for developers and partners held in Guangzhou last week.

If the multi-purpose messaging and social media app had been built merely as a communication tool, its capability would have been limited, he said.

So, its creators tried to imbed the app with people’s lifestyle needs in order to influence the general public, said Zhang who is senior executive vice president and president of WeChat Group.

As the head of QQ Mail Mobile at the time, Zhang in 2010 led a team of 10 developers to create the first version of WeChat in less than 70 days. He joined Tencent in 2005 and became the head of QQ Mail Mobile after his Foxmail business was bought by Tencent.

WeChat last September reached an important milestone by achieving 1 billion active users. The app and its ecosystem of mini-apps have become a feature in daily life for the majority of Chinese people who seemingly rely on it to do all of their daily chores, from messaging to paying bills to booking public services.

During its journey so far, the app has achieved many breakthroughs, the 49-year-old executive said.

“We changed people’s lifestyles on payment with WeChat Pay mobile payment, they get more friends from checking mobile phones with contact lists, they feel lucky when they get red packets or ‘Ang Pao’ at Chinese New Year,” said the so called Father of WeChat.

With the “People nearby” feature, “it means there are friends always with you in all corners of your lives,” he said.

During his speech, Zhang highlighted WeChat’s Mini Program as one of its core innovative features.

WeChat has tried to build an ecosystem within their app and the Mini Program is a key element in completing that ecosystem, Zhang said.

Launched in 2017, the built-in Mini Program connects online and offline merchants and extended services, such as WeChat Pay, to create a digital and smart living experience that is truly mobile.

Uses have no need to get out of WeChat in order to browse or download external apps in order to see or get other promotions, Zhang said.

“It has already achieved a huge success, but is still improving – especially the search tool that will lead customers to exactly what they are looking for,” he added.

More than 600 million people use the Mini Program at least weekly for services or products from over 200 industry segments, according to WeChat. The number of transactions increased six-fold in 2018. And the feature has now opened for business owners to create their own mini apps in the WeChat ecosystem.

Zhang encouraged developers to develop a Mini Program, allowing high quality programs to proliferate and ensure that users can find just the right program at exactly the time they want it.

The two-day event, the WeChat Open Class PRO 2019, is the firm’s largest annual event. It is a venue for developers and partners to discover the latest digital trends in China and share unique perspectives and the best practices for WeChat.

At the conference, WeChat released its 2018 data report showing that continued growth on the number of people connected to the app. Its usage grew across all age groups, but especially among those over age 55 years who had the fastest growth of any age group last year.

The report claimed that the number of messages being sent continued to rise, with 45 billion messages sent daily, up 18 per cent on the previous year. The number of audio and video calls daily has reached 410 million, an increase of 100 per cent from 2017.

Businesses are also rapidly adopting WeChat, including WeChat Pay, its digital payments platform service, along with its Mini Program to extend mobile and to better connect with customers.

The number of monthly payments by WeChat Pay in 2018 in some industries had seen a considerable increase over the previous year. The retail industry’s monthly WeChat Pay users jumped 150 per cent in the year, and the food industry’s hit a 170 per cent increase.

Monthly users turning to WeChat to pay for public transportation last year soared 470 per cent from 2017. Monthly WeChat Pay users for public medical and healthcare services increased 290 per cent year on year.

There’s more than one way for a startup to grow to global dimensions and achieve “unicorn” status, and Southeast Asia offers that opportunity to build on initial success due to its large population and expectations the region is “the next China”.

The region’s population is around 655.6 million, almost half that of China’s 1.415 billion people. And Southeast Asia is twice as big as the United States with its population of 326.8 million.

According to a recent Google-Temasek study, the Internet economy of the region will reach US$240 billion by 2025. It is already the world’s fastest growing Internet economy, with 480 million Internet users expected by 2020, up from 260 million now.

Southeast Asia boasts many large corporates that increasingly focus on innovation and would like to disrupt their industry.

Thus, RISE is positioning itself as the regional corporate innovation accelerator for Southeast Asia. The company’s mission, says Supachai Parchariyanon, the RISE founder and chief executive officer, is to drive 1 per cent of the gross domestic product for Thailand and the region through its corporate innovation platform.

“To increase GDP by 1 per cent is equal to creating 1 million new jobs for people,” said Supachai.

RISE has already added 0.1 per cent to the GDP, he claims, and that is worth around $400 million (Bt12.7 billion). This number is derived from adding the total valuation of all the startups under the RISE accelerate programme that have raised three years of funding, along with the total value of real business when startups and corporates work together.

In 2019, it aims to increase this impact to $1 billion, or around 0.25 per cent of GDP. RISE plans to rapidly ramp up its executive training from 1,000 to 10,000 senior managers this year. And it will oversee the Corporate Innovation Summit 2019, on March 28-29. Later, it will host RISE Innovation Week in the third quarter of this year.

Together, this programming aims to help Thailand to become the region’s hub of corporate innovation.

“It is not just another tech summit, but more like the APEC summit where the leaders of Asian countries participate. More details will be disclosed soon,” said Supachai.

Thailand’s main strength lies in its large number of large corporates, he said. In 2018, around 60 per cent of the total number of startups received investment from Thai corporates. To drive the country’s economy, collaboration between corporates and startups is key. For example, he said, “the latest rounds of investments of Grab and Gojek were funded by corporate venture capitalists.”

For Thailand, and Southeast Asia generally, to grow through digital disruption will require the drive that comes from corporate innovation. And RISE is a pioneer in corporate innovation. Now the largest corporate innovation accelerator in the region, RISE has graduated 1,000 startups, from 20 countries around the world, and with 50 per cent from SEA, in the past three years. Total valuations are almost $1 billion.

“Our mission to help corporates do innovation. Working with startups is one of the other ways, and startups can help corporates reduce costs or increase revenue,” said Supachai.

RISE also helps corporates innovate though its Corporate Innovation Academy, which features an “intra-preneur” programme.

Through its many detailed programmes, the academy helps corporates build their own innovation startup culture, practices and units. About 1,000 executives from large Thai corporates underwent RISE training, with these corporates together accounting around 25 per cent of the country’s total marketing capacity.

Moreover, under its “venture builder” programme, RISE has set up two joint ventures with public companies, helping them to build new business through bringing in startups as third parties. In the last quarter of 2018, RISE expanded this component in two ways. It set up seaX funds (SEA Exporetential Fund) in the US worth $50 million (Bt1.5 billion) to make seed investments in startups. And it has already invested in two startups in Y Combinator.

“Our mission is to not only gain returns, but also to be a strategic investment for corporates, to leverage startups for corporate innovation, it is likely to sourcing startups to corporates though funding,” said Supachai.

It now has a database of 10,000 corporates in SEA, and plans to expand this throughout SEA with a variety of events and activities.

RISE has collaborated with Bank of Ayudhya Public Co Ltd, or Krungsri Bank, to establish the “Krungsri RISE” fintech accelerator, which has graduated a total of three batches. All 12 startups from those batches have attracted investment. In the latest batch, 100 per cent of participating startups were plugged in to Krungsri Bank.

Making an impact

“We focus on the real business impact rather than the number of startups receiving funds, since we are a corporate innovation accelerator,” said Supachai.

After the end of batch one, Krungsri set up a Bt1 billion fund, and dedicated investments for three years in startups from Krungsri RISE Accelerator. The challenge was not accessing money, but finding startups of sufficient quality to warrant the investment injection.

For each batch, RISE has accelerated about 10 to 15 startups. In batch one, FINNOMENA, a Thai fintech startup in wealth management, received US$3.2 million (Bt102 million) in its Series A round funding from Krungsri Finnovate and two investors, Benchachinda and 500 TukTuks.

Meanwhile, in batch two, Baania (Thailand) received investment from Krungsri Finnovate, PTT, AddVentures by SCG, and 500 TukTuks. Investment in batch three will be announced soon.

“In every batch, we have had successful cases. Not every startup in our programme can be plugged in with Krungsri,” said Supachai.

As well, RISE operates the Thailand National Accelerator of the Digital Economy and Society Ministry, where 500 startups joined the programme in one year. Around 100 of these startups received funding from the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa) across stages of funding.

“We connected these startups into our networks in 20 counties worldwide,” said Supachai.

RISE also helps PTT run its own accelerator, operating in five countries – Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

The company  will deploy the accelerator programme in these countries and recruit startups there.

Around 70 per cent of startups from this programme can join PTT Group’s business.

“We have the secret sauce to accelerate corporates to move as fast as startups, so we called our accelerator the three-month ‘growth accelerator’”, said Supachai.

RISE is also helping government agencies to nurture corporate innovation. It is now working with agencies in six ministries to redesign their governmental services.

For example, it is aiding the Revenue Department in redesigning the donations e-receipt system used for tax deductions.

Pornthip Kongchun, Jitta co-founder and chief operations officer, says the company now offers two main services – jitta.com for individual investors and Jitta Wealth.

The jitta.com website is a free-of-charge service that aims to attract facilitate individual investors to use jitta.com as tools for their investment portfolio. Jitta Wealth is a paid portfolio service for investors.

Seven stock-exchange markets are available through jitta.com in the US, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, UK and Hong Kong. In 2019, it hopes to increase its information to cover 16 stock markets, covering the majority of the world’s exchanges.

The company will expand to oversee markets first with jitta.com services, followed by Jitta Wealth. Singapore and India are two main new markets for jitta.com this year, and local partners there are already helping to build brand awareness in those markets.

Jitta Wealth will then be introduced to those markets.

The jitta.com services have been on offer for five years, and the site can boast 150,000 monthly active users, of which around 80 per cent are Thais with the remainder foreigners. In 2019, jitta.com aims to increase active monthly users to 300,000.

A portfolio management service under jitta.com uses an algorithm to recognise and learn investment patterns and returns, and constantly advance the quality of its machine learning and big-data analysis.

The portfolio management is a free service for the 150,000 monthly active users, but so far only about 13 per cent of them are drawing on the function.

“We have developed financial big data, which is used to analyse models of investing and investment returns,” said Pornthip.

Jitta Wealth is a private fund, and Jitta is expected to soon acquire a licence. Jitta Wealth also uses the jitta.com’s algorithm to manage the private fund.

Given that Jitta Wealth mostly uses technology in its fund management, it can offer lower-cost management fees and profit commission fees than traditional private funds. It charges a management fee of 0.5 per cent per year per investment value, and 10 per cent as its profit commission fee.

“Jitta.com does not generate revenue for us,” said Pornthip. “We focus on delivering stock information for investors’ consideration to manage their investment portfolio. Our revenue will come from Jitta Wealth, as a wealth management service run by automated investment using technology.”

According to the Bank of Thailand, Thai people who have money in their saving accounts worth between Bt1 million to Bt25 million together account for Bt4.6 trillion.

This group of around 1.5 million people are the targeted customers for Jitta Wealth.

Jitta Wealth is scheduled to offer services in the second quarter of 2019. Last year, two asset management service providers, Phillip Capital Thailand and Merchant Partners, partnered with Jitta to use Jitta’s information to manage their private investment funds for their customers. These two partners will be partners in Jitta Wealth.

“We will have a back-end system, and they will oversee funds and trading,” said Pornthip.

The goal of Jitta Wealth is to have over 1,000 customers by the end of 2019.

“We will gradually grow in acquiring customers for Jitta Wealth, since we need to educate the market,” he said.

Jitta Wealth will first target jitta.com’s 150,000 users. To use Jitta Wealth, people are required to make an investment of at least Bt1 million.

The Jitta Wealth service is run and operated by Jitta Wealth, a subsidiary of Jitta and will initially offer services for Thais to invest in three stock exchange markets – Thailand, the US and Vietnam.

Jitta plans to raise its pre-series A funding in the first quarter of 2019. The investment will go to expanding both jitta.com and Jitta Wealth in the country and the overseas market over the next couple of years, as well as to increase resources by 50 per cent from the current about 20 people to around 30 people in 2019.

“We do not need to double our staff since we focus on automation investment systems with technology. We will add more people in sales, marketing, service and support, as well as operations where we need engineers to develop advanced machine learning and big data analytics,” said Pornthip.

The mission of Jitta is to offer technology to facilitate people worldwide to reach value investment information.

“We started with the middle income people who have savings of at least Bt1 million to utilise their wealth,” said Pornthip. “In the future, we will expand to help people who have less than Bt1 million of savings to utilise their wealth by using Jitta technology and algorithms.”

The Internet service provider and YouTube will provide free 2GB data for a month to watch video clips via YouTube Kids, an app for families and kids. The give-away runs from January 12 to April 11, with other service providers later included in the programme.

DTAC will also partner with top YouTube content creators, including Kru Noklek, Dek Jew Chill Out, Lovely Kids Thailand, Pororo, Madame TV, and Brianna’s Secret Club, to provide informative programming and entertainment content to celebrate National Children’s Day.

Given that many children watch YouTube daily, DTAC wants to help reduce the likelihood that they will access inappropriate content, says Panthep Nilasinthop, senior vice president and head of digital sales, services and marketing division, for the company.

To help reduce that risk, DTAC (also known as Total Access Communication) joined forces with YouTube as part of an online ecosystem intended to benefit Thai children and youth by helping inspire them to make good choices and develop their creativity.

“DTAC aims to run a children-friendly business by designing products and services for child and youth under age 18, of which 82 per cent of them surf the Internet via their mobile phones,” said Panthep.

Moreover, the YouTube Kids app allows parents to choose the times that the Internet can be accessed to ensure it suits their households.

The app helps parents discipline their kids by limiting Internet playtime, resulting in a happier and more meaningful family time.

Jeerapat Sukanghong, creator of Kru Noklek on YouTube, said that the behaviour of Thai children is going through rapid changes. They love to learn something new all the time, especially from YouTube.

YouTube is like their big school, says Jeerapat. They spend more time on YouTube than they do at their school.

The Kru Noklek channel on YouTube has 8 million viewers per day. Thus, content creators can be compared to teachers, as they are responsible for what the children are exposed to.

Parents must monitor and advise their children about proper access to numerous types of content, says Jeerapat.

The outstanding feature of YouTube Kids is the parental control. Apart from the classification of children-appropriate content into two groups by kids’ ages, parents can set limits on watching time through a built-in timer.

Parents can also create a separate profile for each kid, with up to eight plans. Each profile has a separate set

of viewing preferences, recommendations and personal settings.

Mana Treelayapewat, dean of the School of Communication Arts at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said political parties have been using social media much more to try and win votes due to the online platforms’ high penetration among the country’s 50-million-plus voters.

For the upcoming election, the number of first-time voters age 18 and up is estimated to be around seven million, and social media are their preferred means of communication.

Most social networks are being used to present the parties’ policies and activities and the details of MP candidates, Mana said.

Voters will have to be on guard against the dissemination of content that’s subtly distorted to win votes, he said. Traditional media outlets can also be misled by such inaccurate content, so they too must carefully vet it before publishing or broadcasting.

One tactic employed by social-media experts engaged by political parties is to spread alternative views and partial truths in ways that benefit the parties. This is done by misleading the audience to discredit rival parties or by falsely favouring their own parties and candidates.

Parties also use Twitter for quick and real-time communications with their base, while turning to Facebook for group communications and engagement. The Line platform can be used for both one-on-one and group communication. For controversial and viral video content, YouTube is used together with other platforms to spur social media interest.

“The role of micro-influencers is growing rapidly because they play a similar role to that previously done by party canvassers, especially with regard to discussing party policies,” said Chanut Kerdpradub, a social-media communication specialist.

Micro-influencers on the Web and mobile devices are also useful for reaching niche and special-interest groups, whose votes are crucial to election outcomes but are often hard to reach and activate before the vote.

Content on social media can influence more than just first-time and young voters, Chanut said. Senior citizens tend to prefer Line, for example. Overall, political parties will aim to use social networks to penetrate specific voter groups with customised contents based on data analysis and artificial intelligence tools.

Chanut said traditional media will see their role and influence decline in the coming election due to the rapid digitalisation of the Thai economy and society. Social media are also seen as more efficient and cost-effective in getting the message out, while also allowing parties to devise more innovative campaigns and communication strategies.

In fact, politicians in this vote will have the best of both worlds, discussing big themes with the masses while also delivering customised content to specific voter groups, he said. The parties also have to prepare to an unprecedented degree for crisis management to respond to fake or misleading news.

Most first-time voters are “native” users of social media with a high degree of competence with the technology, Chanut said, while traditional media such as TV outlets are relatively unknown to them, so parties with creative and effective social-media campaigns will have a significant advantage.

For the upcoming election, key factors that could decide the election involve age and rural versus urban voters, where older provincial voters are more supportive of populist policies while younger urban voters who use social media are less likely to support populist policies.

Sakulsri Srisaracam, head of the Convergent Journalism Department at the Panyapiwat Institute of Management, said subtle social-media content, especially fake and misleading news, will play a crucial role in the election outcome because it’s often hard for voters to discern the truth of reports. Truths and half-truths will abound as the election nears, resulting in more alienation among voters, he said. There thus needs to be an “election literacy” component on social media.

Nuttaputch Wongreanthong, a digital marketer, said social media are not like broadcasting since it is much easier to slip through unverified content, such as via the use of personalised and dynamic ads on Facebook and Google.

In this format, each group of voters gets a different message aimed at their specific behaviour, preferences, biases or frames of reference.

Targeting highly personalised content for each voter does not bode well for a democracy, he said, because voters are supposed to make judgements based on the same set of data in a free and fair election.

As a result, the Election Commission’s mission is to ensure that social-media content is properly vetted. Poomjit Sirawongprasert, Thai-directory editor for Curlie.org, believes that fake and misleading news will be prominent in this election campaign as parties aim to gain advantages over rivals, particularly for the swing votes among young and first-time voters.

And we’re closing in on the next decade of innovation that takes us into 2030, where we at Dell Technologies predict we’ll realize the next era of Human-Machine Partnerships – where we will be immersed in smart living, intelligent work, and a frictionless economy.

We made some bold predictions last year – some coming to fruition a bit faster than others…there’s still much to do in advancing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, and autonomous systems are continuing to take shape as organizations build the digital backbone to support them.

So what’s in store for 2019?  Read on to see our top predictions for 2019 as we enter the data-driven digital ecosystem.

We’ll be more immersed than ever in work and life 

Virtual assistants continue to be pervasive in consumer technology – smart home technologies, “things” and connected cars – learning your preferences and proactively serving up content and information based on previous interactions.  We’ll see this machine intelligence merge with augmented and virtual reality in the home to create truly immersive experiences – like a virtual sous chef that can help you whip up an easy meal for the family.  And you’ll be more connected to your personal health with even more intelligent wellness tracking devices that can capture more information about the body, like heart rate variability (HRV), sleep patterns and more that you can easily share with health care providers for better care.

Immersive intelligence will also follow us to work.  Our PCs and devices we use every day will continue to learn from our habits and proactively boot up with the right apps and services at the right time.  Advances in natural language processing and voice technologies will create a more productive dialogue with machines, while automation and robotics will create faster, more fluid collaboration with technology to get more done.  And, with augmented and virtual reality applications creating on- and off-site immersive experiences – people will have access to the data they need to do work whenever, wherever they are.

Data gold mine will spark next “Gold Rush” in tech investments 

Organizations have been stockpiling big data for years. In fact, it’s predicted that by 2020, the data volume will reach 44 Trillion gigabytes, or 44 Zettabytes.  That’s a lot of data. Soon they’ll finally put it to work as Digital transformation takes shape.

As they derive more value from that data – with insights driving new innovations and more efficient business processes – more investments will be born out of the technology sector.  New startups will emerge to tackle the bigger challenges that make AI a reality: data management and federated analytics where insights can be driven from virtually everywhere, and data compliance solutions for a safer, smarter way to deliver amazing outcomes.

5G will have us livin’ on the edge

The first 5G devices are slated to hit the market sometime next year with the much-anticipated next-generation network that promises to completely change the data game in terms of speed and accessibility.  Low-latency, high-bandwidth networks mean more connected things, cars and systems – and a boat load of AI, Machine Learning and Compute happening at the edge, because that’s where all the data will be generated.

It won’t be long before we begin to see micro-hubs lining our streets – mini datacenters if you will – that will also give rise to new “smart” opportunities for real-time insights happening on the corner of your street.   Cities and towns will become more connected than ever, paving the way for smart cities and digital infrastructure that we predict will be thriving in 2030.  And it’ll be a game changer for industries like healthcare or manufacturing, where data and information being generated out in the field can be quickly processed and analyzed in real time – versus having to travel back and forth to a cloud – and then readily shared with those who need it.

Data forecast will call for more clouds 

Last year we predicted the arrival of the Mega Cloud – a variety of clouds that make up a powerhouse operating model as IT strategies require both public and private clouds.  So far that’s holding true. The public vs. private cloud debate will continue to wane as organizations realize that they need to effectively manage all the different types of data they’ll be processing.  A recent IDC survey pointed to more than 80% of respondents repatriating data back to on-premise private clouds – and we can expect that trend to continue, even with projections for public cloud growth.

Multi-cloud environments will drive automation, AI and ML processing into high gear because they give organizations the ability to manage, move and process data where and when they need to.   In fact, we’ll see more clouds pop up as data becomes increasingly distributed – at the edge in autonomous car environments or in smart factories, in cloud-native apps, in protected on-prem centers to meet a host of new compliance and privacy standards and of course, the public cloud for a variety of apps and services that we use every day.

Move over Millennials, Gen Z will clock into the workplace

Millennials are going to have to make room for the next generation with Gen Z (born after 1995) badging into the workplace over the next year – creating an increasingly diverse workforce spanning five generations!   This will create a rich range of experiences in life and technology.  98% of Gen Z will have used technology as part of their formal education, many already understand the basics of software coding and expect the only the best technology to be a part of their work experience.

Gen Z will spark a new evolution in technology innovation for the workplace and create more opportunities for technology literacy and on-site learning for new skills with older generations of workers.  AR and VR will become increasingly commonplace and close the skills gap across an aging workforce – while giving Gen Z the speed and productivity they demand.

No more weak links or waste: Supply chains will get stronger, smarter and greener 

Believing in the many advantages to running a sustainable business, organizations will follow our lead and begin to accelerate ways to design waste out of their business models through new innovation in recycling and closed loop practices.  To help, we at Dell are sharing our blueprint for turning ocean bound plastics into recycled packaging and turning soot from diesel generator exhaust fumes into ink for printing on boxes.

We’ll see advances in supply chain traceability, by scrutinizing and harnessing emerging technologies to identify precise opportunities to course correct.  Blockchain will likely play a role as well, to ensure trust and safety in sourcing, while also securing information and data about goods and services along the way.

There’s never been a better time for technology – with innovation in 5G, AI and Machine Learning, cloud and blockchain throttling full steam ahead. I’m willing to bet that we’ll make great use of those 44 zettabytes of data in 2020.   We’ll unlock the power of data in ways never before imagined before, transforming everyday business and everyday life.  So buckle up – we’re riding full speed into the Data Era – and 2019 is going to be one heck of a year.