Ricult had previously raised $600,000 in earlier seed funding including a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This brings the company’s total funding to date close to $2.5 million.

Founded by MIT alumni, Ricult is a digital platform to increase the efficiency of the agricultural value chain in developing countries, helping lift smallholder farmers out of poverty. The start-up has already launched in Thailand and Pakistan, providing farmers with tools that employ machine learning to analyse satellite imagery and microclimate weather data. The data allows farmers to better predict crop yields, pest prevention, proper fertilisation, key harvesting times and optimal crop rotations.

Aukrit Unahalekhaka, co-founder and CEO of Ricult Thailand, said the company is a double-bottom line start-up, “where we don’t only care only about the financial profitability of the company, but also the social impact that we can create for the smallholder farmers and their communities.

“We want to make sure that our technology can really help make the farmers’ lives better and make the agricultural value chain more efficient,” said Aukrit. Ricult also provides services to agricultural businesses, including input suppliers and food processors. Its solution can help them accurately target their sales and sourcing.

Who doesn’t like cash? Our love affair with the stuff is millennia old and still going strong everywhere.

Everywhere except for Hangzhou, that is. The nine million residents of this city in eastern China are proud of belonging to a “cashless” society thanks to the payment apps in their smartphones.

Cash may be king elsewhere, but here the smartphone reigns.

The largest cashless city in the world is home to tech giant Alibaba, which pioneered Alipay, China’s most popular online payment platform.

Mobile payments in China now total about $16 trillion (Bt530 trillion) annually, according to the Financial Times. The market is dominated by China’s two tech titans – Alibaba and Tencent.

Alipay, operated by Alibaba-related Ant Financial Services Group, accounts for about 54 per cent of China’s online payment market while WeChat Pay of Tencent hosts 40 per cent, according to http://www.marketingtochina.com.

Alipay now has over 870 million users globally, 520 million in China alone. The WeChat app meanwhile boasts 1,040 million active users per month in the first quarter of 2018.

In a recent visit to Ant Financial headquarters in Hangzhou, the writer joined a group of international journalists on a trip through the world’s most digitally integrated supply chain and saw how the city is fast developing into a cashless world.

Barcodes in the blue colours of Alipay and green of WeChat Pay are seen at every shop and service, from street stalls to department stores and public buses.

Whether a small stall in a back street selling plum juice for 12 yuan (Bt60) or a 400-year-old traditional Chinese medicine shop, customers can pay with their phones.

The city is so advanced that customers can “smile to pay” at a KFC restaurant. In alliance with Ant Financial, the KFC facial-recognition service allows customers to pay simply by smiling at one of the fast food restaurant’s self-service screens.

During our tour of a night market, fresh market and walking street, all vendors and users The Nation talked to echoed the same points: app payment is very convenient, and solves the problem of fake banknotes and of losing your wallet or cash.

A spokesman from Ant Financial told us of a “dramatic” robbery in which thieves had struck at three convenience stores. They managed to get away with just 500 yuan (Bt2,500).

This is the benefit of a cashless society, he said.

Cashless embraced

Our morning at Hangzhou’s Wen’Er street vegetable market brought the sight of customers queuing with mobile phones in one hand, ready to scan the QR payment code while ordering produce from vendors. Shop owners said upwards of eight out of 10 customers used apps to pay. However, there were still people paying by cash.

Gan Jin Fang, who sells fresh seafood at the market, complained that she had lost money because cheating customers paid her with fake bills. But with app payments now taking over, she and her husband can concentrate on preparing their wares without worrying about counterfeit notes.

Gan uses money received from customers’ Alipay accounts to pay her suppliers. She neither has to go to the bank to deposit the takings nor withdraw money later to pay her suppliers.

“That’s very convenient. I felt unsafe having to carry cash and go to the bank,” she added.

Even elderly join bandwagon 

You might think mobile payments is a trend only adopted by young people, but market vegetable seller Jiang Gou Fang said the number of her elderly customers using the apps is gradually increasing. But poor eyesight means they sometimes key in the wrong figure, she admitted.

“I will also tell them to be more careful when using the mobile payment. But if the figure is wrong, I return the money to them through the app as well. See, it’s very convenient!”

For Gao You Zhen, who sells tofu at the market, receiving payments through Alipay helped her secure a loan from Ant Micro Loan, which helps out to small enterprises.

Ant Financial uses big data and AI to assess users’ creditworthiness based on their purchase, payment and other commercial activities within the Alipay app and partner platforms before approving the loan, a spokesman for the firm said.

The fintech firm offers several kinds of incentives to encourage users to adopt their payment app. For example, they offer shoppers discounts at some shops when paying through Alipay, while merchants get a free doctor’s appointment when they accumulate a certain credit.

The company also has staff instruct elderly vendors in how to use Alipay, Xia Jin Lian, the 55-year-old owner of a rice shop at the market, explained. Xia faces few problems with the system since it is the customers’ responsibility to scan the QR code.

Chen Shuihua, chief of Wulin night market in Hangzhou, has set an international benchmark by turning the whole market into a cashless domain. In September last year, all 180 stalls in the six-year-old downtown market began accepting mobile payment.

Chen said vendors no longer need to worry about payment and transactions, which frees them up to concentrate on their service. Also being freed up is the Hangzhou traffic.

All 8,000 public buses began accepting mobile payment almost two years ago, which has encouraged more people to use public transport, said Luo Xuqi, a representative of the public bus company. “We also offer a seamless service for visitors who don’t have city bus cards, as they can pay by mobile phone,” he added.

Chinese dream

For Wang Zhimin, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, this futuristic world is a boon.

As a child he dreamt of not needing a wallet, since he had a habit of losing stuff – including his money.

“Now my Chinese dream has come true. It’s easier for me to carry just my mobile phone when going out,” said Wang, who is also director of Institute of Globalisation and China’s Modernisation.

Huang Tianyi, a 23-year old postgraduate student at Shanghai International Studies University, used to lose her wallet and bus card, but since she started using a mobile payment app almost five years ago her worries are gone. “Of course, for me, a smartphone is more important than cash. It’s very convenient [to pay this way] as long as I don’t lose my phone. I just go out with my key and mobile phone, without carrying any money. Otherwise I might lose my cash,” Huang said.

Like other young Chinese, Huang seldom uses cash. Before the semester began she brought 500 renminbi (Bt2,500) in cash from her hometown and she still has 100 yuan left four and a half months later.

Huang uses a payment app to buy things and services – to call a cab, buy a public transport card, cinema tickets, air tickets, to pay for her mobile-phone card, and more. She also puts money into her student card and pays tuition fees via the app.

Not always seamless

However, Huang has experienced some difficulties due to mechanical payment errors. Embarrassed to find herself without any cash backup, she had to borrow from friends.

Nowadays she only carries cash when she travels. Hotels in China ask for a cash deposit of 100-200 renminbi (Bt500-1,000) although most accept full payment by app.

So is cash about to disappear from China?

Absolutely not, Huang replied.

In modern cities such as Shanghai or Hangzhou, you can go out without cash every day, she said. But China has a huge population of 1.3 billion and not everyone has the know-how to use a smartphone or download and use the apps, she added.

Builk plans to improve the service with artificial intelligence and blockchain technology and expand its business to all 10 Asean countries.

Patai Padungtin, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Builk One Group, the developer of the construction contractor platform, said that joining hands with AddVentures by SCG as a strategic partner would boost Thailand’s construction industry to catch the global digitisation trend by fully utilising a technological platform. They aim to develop a B2B purchasing-buying process for the construction industry and expand the platform to all Asean countries.

Builk One Group, a Thai start-up, has been operating since 2009. It is the first start-up in Asia that provides the construction business management software for free.

Currently Builk.com, an online cost-control system, serves more than 25,000 small and medium-sized contractors in five Asean countries – Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.

The distinctive point of Builk.com is its cost-control feature, which helps contractors control the project’s workflow including budgeting, cost accounting, expenses and revenue via the online system. It also keeps SME contractors aware of turnover with real-time updates, and manages workflow efficiently.

Apart from Builk.com, it also has other services including Pojjaman2, Builk.com, Yello Smart Purchase, Jubili, Ploy and KwanJai.

Pojjaman2 is a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for large-sized contractors; Yello Smart Purchase is an online system of purchasing construction materials for contractors; Jubili by Builk is a sales management and customer relations system; Ploy is a sales-construction-transfer management system for property developers; KwanJai by Builk is a maintenance and after-sales service management for property developers.

Joshua Pas, the managing director of AddVentures by SCG, said that the contractor and construction materials business has grown continuously in Thailand and Asean.

In 2017, the total market value of construction materials among Thai contractors was estimated to be worth more than Bt68 billion. More than 75 per cent of the value was generated by SME contractors, many of whom still run their business with inefficient procurement and cost management systems, he said.

“Builk’s technology can help solve these pain points and enhance the efficiency of procurement and cost management system for an estimated 80,000 contractors in Thailand alone. This cooperation will boost the competitiveness of the region’s construction industry and help contractors reduce costs and manage their businesses in real time,” said Joshua.

Following this investment, SCG will support Builk to scale up and strengthen its marketing, distribution, logistics and supply chain by cooperating with dealer networks and penetrating international markets, where SCG has a strong customer base. Before deciding to provide funding and tightening the partnership, AddVentures by SCG made a commercial deal with Builk in the first quarter of 2018 to explore the best option to generate maximum benefit to the supply chain of construction businesses.

AddVentures by SCG was launched in mid-2017 to invest in start-ups domestically and globally. The investment was aimed at helping SCG adopt new innovations in order to boost its competitiveness and provide better products and faster services to lift consumers’ quality of life.

The event will take place from November 1 to 3 at the Impact Forum, Hall 9, Muang Thong Thani.

Dr Thanes Weerasiri, president of the EIT, said: “This year we are presenting creative innovations that are key to our country’s transformation into a smart nation.”

Dr Tossaporn Sreeiam, president of National Engineering Conference, said: “There will be discussions to offer new knowledge in engineering, new engineering trends from around the world with more than 50 topics in total. These topics draw attention from engineers and those interested in technology, with more than 8,500 registered attendants in total, as well as around 1,500 Asean and foreign engineers.”

Dr Uttama Savanayana, minister of industry, will talk about industrial strategies and Siri Jirapongphan, minister of energy, will talk about energy strategies.

The forum organisers said it would highlight the importance of engineering technology and how it will move the country forward and link economies around the world, in line with Thailand’s 20-year national strategy. The government has planned to invest Bt5 trillion to increase the country’s GDP by at least 4.5 per cent a year.

Engineering businesses must move faster and keep up with global trends in order to support various industries, whether they are mega projects or small- and medium-sized enterprises, the EIT said.

Thailand aims to become a high-income country by 2036.

The activity was hosted at C asean by International Computer Driving License (ICDL) Thailand, the leader in International Standard of Digital Literacy.

This project was targeted to encourage the young workforce/talents to have digital capabilities at the international level.

Voradis Vinyaratn, Executive Director and Acting Managing Director of TCCtech, said, “TCC Technology, as a private entity, is ready and aims to become a key contributor to develop human capital towards digital literacy. Our objective is to create most benefits for all parties, including the personnel competency, organisation and society.

“We realise that any business opportunities, whether in the past, present and future, are shaped by two significant factors – technology and workforce. However, typically, human resources are sometimes unable to catch up with current advanced and complicated technologies. This challenge has led to insufficiency of market-qualified workforce, especially in the digital era.

“TCC Technology realises the importance of people development. We understand that although our country is in the beginning stage of producing Digital Talents to fulfil Digital Workforce Models, the challenge has to be addressed urgently. We need cooperation from all related parties.”

Digital technology is impacting on workforce requirements, particularly in industries. Many organisations are seeking skilled resources with digital knowledge and ability while emphasising employee development to have creativity, know-how and expertise in digital technology at international level.

“I believe that not only organisations and institutions but students are also aware of the technology advancement effect,” Voradis said. “This stage has reflected youth attitude towards technology challenge as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. ICDL Digital Challenge 2018 can be considered as one of all great stages that urge young generation to aware and be prepared in order to enter real labour market in the digital era. We are honoured to be part of the contributors to this digital-driven project.”

In Spain, Italy and Poland, an explanatory, protest statement about the upcoming vote came up when the online encyclopeead of the usual web page on whatever celebrity, legal case or historical event users had searched for.

“The directive would threaten online freedom and would impose new filters, barriers and restrictions to access the web,” Wikipedia Spain said in its statement.

“If the proposal was approved in its actual version, actions like sharing news on social networks or accessing news via a search engine would be more complicated on the Internet.”

It added that Wikipedia would be “at risk” and asked users to phone their MEPs.

The overhaul of European copyright law is divided into several sections, one of which is the reform criticised by Wikipedia and others who have warned it will lead to blanket censorship by tech giants.

Another reform would force online platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay for links to news content, which news agencies including AFP have hailed as a “major step”.

The European Commission has replied saying that “Wikipedia and other online encyclopaedias would not fall within the scope of the Commission’s Copyright proposal.”

But Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales and Greens MEP Julia Reda, a leading campaigner on the issue, insist that it will.

Thursday’s parliament vote is not final, but only sets out the negotiating position of MEPs.

There then follow negotiations with member states for a final position, during which the full extent of the law and whether it does apply to Wikipedia will be worked out.

Austria, which has just assumed the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, has said this will be difficult, so there will have to be some sort of compromise.

The leading social network offered no details but its admission confirmed reports of a widening investigation into the misuse of private data by Facebook and its partners.

“We are cooperating with officials in the US, UK and beyond,” a Facebook spokesman said in response to an AFP query.

“We’ve provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged to continue our assistance as their work continues.”

The Washington Post reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission and FBI as well as the Justice Department are looking into the massive breach of users’ personal data and how the company handled it.

Facebook shares closed the shortened Nasdaq trading day down 2.35 percent to $192.73, heading into an Independence Day holiday with investors mulling what effect the investigations may have on the California-based internet giant.

Facebook has admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked by British consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which worked for US President Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the European Parliament in May and said the social media giant is taking steps to prevent such a breach from happening again.

Zuckerberg said at a hearing in Brussels that it became clear in the last two years that Facebook executives didn’t do enough to prevent the platform “from being used for harm.”

Zuckerberg was grilled about the breach in US Congress in April.

It remains unclear what if any penalties Facebook may face from the latest requests but the tech giant is legally bound to comply with a 2011 consent decree with the FTC on protecting private user data.

Any SEC inquiry could look at whether Facebook adequately disclosed key information to investors.

The glitch active between May 29 and June 5 has been fixed, according to Facebook, which has been striving to regain trust in the aftermath of a Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.

“We know that the ability to block someone is important,” Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said in a blog post.

“We’d like to apologize and explain what happened.”

Blocking someone on Facebook prevents them from seeing posts in a blocker’s profile; connecting as a friend, or starting Messenger conversations.

Blocking someone also automatically “unfriends” the person.

“There are many reasons why people block another person on Facebook,” Egan said.

“Their relationship may have changed or they may want to take a break from someone posting content they find annoying.”

People are blocked for harsher reasons, such as harassment or bullying, Egan added.

The software bug did not restore any severed friend connections at the social network, but someone who was blocked could have been able to reach out to a blocker on Messenger, according to Facebook.

“While someone who was unblocked could not see content shared with friends, they could have seen things posted to a wider audience,” Egan said of the glitch.

The vast majority of the more than 800,000 people affected by the bug had only one person they had blocked be temporarily unblocked, according to Facebook.

People affected by the bug will get notifications encouraging them to check their blocked lists.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year was grilled by the European Parliament and the US Congress about a massive breach of users’ personal data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Facebook admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked by British consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which worked for US President Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign.

Japanese tech giant, Line Corporation, has committed to making major investments in key new areas deemed to have much potential, including financial technology (fintech) and artificial intelligence (AI). The company, last week at its annual conference, made an official announcement to “redesign” all of its services, both current and new.

The redesign will focus on the relationships between Line’s services and users, and the concept will be embedded into all Line services from now on. The company sees “redesign” as a concept anchored in a new vision and was the theme of Line Conference 2018, held in Tokyo, Japan last week.

Takeshi Idezawa, Line Corporation president CEO, told the conference that the company would now shift much of its investment and effort to create many new services, including fintech and AI.

Blockchain technology is the next big thing for Line Corp’s investments, with the company making plans to incorporate blockchain technology throughout its business.

“We will use blockchain technology to establish a token-based economy to redesign the relationship between users and services. Users and services will be involved in a co-creation. The ‘Line token economy’ is built on Line’s blockchain platform. Tokens issued by Line will be used not only for Line’s services, but also to enable others to easily take part in the Line token economy concept. Line token economy is the vision and is under development,” said Idezawa.

“We put a lot of investment in new areas, included AI and fintech, especially blockchain. The financial sector is the most important focus sector for us. We aim to tackle the payment services in the Asia region, which mostly depend on cash. We can learn from the China market, where they have had success in smartphone payment, but for our business model we will not follow them. Based on our service, we are getting more data from transactions and we can utilise that data for our users,” said Idezawa.

He said the company is redesigning financial services to enable participation by the huge number of people who do not have bank accounts are unable to access financial services.

The company will also redesign its commerce services, as it seeks a large increase in growth, and also redesign the AI voice assistant.

“These three are the next huge challenges for us and we will put a lot of effort in these,” said Idazawa.

Idezawa said Line Corp’s revenue in 2017 was 160 billion yen (Bt47 billion), around half derived from advertising with the rest coming from games and stickers.

Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and Indonesia are the key markets, with a combined 165 million users and offering Line huge potential for growth. The company uses “hyper-localisation” as the its key strategy to optimise Line’s assets in each potential market.

He added that Line has teams dedicated to blockchain research and development, and sees a need in continuing to educate the market and recruit more talent expert in blockchain technology.

“AI, fintech, and blockchain are areas in which we are looking for a lot more talent,” said Idezawa.

Line Blockchain Lab was established in April as a research organisation within the company and tasked with designing and developing dApp services. Then in May the company founded “unblock” as a subsidiary to develop token-economy related technologies, and joined a global blockchain project called “ICON”. Line also announced, “BITBOX”, its cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency global exchange, which supports more than 30 coin types and is available in 15 languages. Bitbox will launch this month.

Smart portal 

In its redesign of the company and its services, Line will move beyond being primarily a messenger service company to instead position itself as a “smart portal”, a vision it first announced in 2016, said Jun Masuda, director and chief strategy marketing officer. “We are not a messenger company and do not rely on messenger services,” Masuda insisted. “In the market, our messenger service is strong and is our fundamental infrastructure. We will continue to add on new features and new services. But in the markets where our messenger is not strong, we will approach with other new services. For example, B612 is quite successful in the Chinese market.”

Idezawa said that as a “smart portal”, Line Corp already offered communication and content services, and now is the time to move to offering financial services including securities, themed investments, insurance, virtual currency, loans, asset management and more.

For example, Line Corp has joined hands with Folio to provide asset management services starting sometime in 2018 in Japan. It also worked with Nomura to establish Line Securities Corporation to offer asset management services. And, it collaborated with Sompo Japan Nipponkoa to offer non-life insurance services. It also plans to launch Line Kakeibo, a personal financial management service, in the near future.

As for artificial intelligence, Line continues to work on bringing extensions of its AI assistant Clova to the market. Masuda said that Clova will come in more characters such as Doraemon and Minion and will be more connected to home appliances under the smart home concept. It has also joined hands with Toyota to launch Clova Auto as an AI assistant for cars.

Line Thailand 

Ariya Banomyong, managing director of Line Thailand, said the hyper localisation strategy will be followed here, including the focus on fintech and AI and the launch of content and some services to the Thai market in the second half of 2018.

“The big differentiator for Line is we are doing technologies to reach people and to smoothly embed them into their daily lives. We are a tech company with humanity,” said Ariya.

The Line Ad Platform is being redesigned for launch in the Thai market soon and AI and other fintech services are tentatively scheduled for a 2019 launch in the local market.

“Thailand is a very important market for Line; we are the second-fastest growing market following Japan in terms of the number of active monthly users. We have 42 million users and dominate with penetration of 95 per cent of Internet users in Thailand,” said Ariya.

Line is also the dominant platform in Thailand, with an average 63 minutes daily spent on Line during the average 216 minutes per day spent on smartphone.

Line has positioned itself as smart portal, with Thailand offering users six groups of services –games, content, online-to-offline (Line Man), business solutions, payments, and other new services.

“All services we offer to Line users in Thailand, are done under our hyper-localisation strategy. For example, Line TV and Line Today are successful services. Line TV has already become the number one TV re-run platform, while Line Today has become the number one news portal in terms of the number of publishers (120) and in having 32 million monthly active users. Moreover, Line Man is also the number one brand in terms of awareness compared to competitors,” said Ariya.

For Payment, Rabbit Line Pay, a joint venture company between Line Thailand, Advance Info Services (AIS), and Rabbit, aims to become the number one mobile payment in Thailand.

Redesigning services 

At the Line Conference 2018, the parent company also announced many services now being developed under the redesign concept. For example, Line Music Video and Line Ticket are new services to be launched in the Japanese market after its success with the Line Music service. Line Music is the leader in Japan’s music streaming market. Line Music is also very popular, with over 9.7 million monthly active users. It offers more than 46 million songs and has around 1.3 million monthly ticket users.

In Japan, music streaming in the first quarter of 2018 hit a 49 per cent share of music distribution sales, already surpassing downloads with a share of 44 per cent.

“Line is changing artists’ business model from downloading of their CDs to experiencing streaming and events,” said Masuda. And Line Ad revenue is also healthy, said Masaki Hamura, executive officer and head of advertising business strategy for Line Corporation. Line Ad revenue grew from 6 per cent in 2012 to 40 per cent in 2017.

Meanwhile, the combined total of Line Official Accounts and Line@ Accounts topped 2.5 million in June 2018. Line Ads Platform, Line Sales Promotion, and Line Accounts Connect have been redesigned to both appeal to emotions and provide benefits. In Thailand, there are around 2 million Line@Accounts and 240 Line Official Accounts. Ariya said that local user would soon see the redesign of the Line Ads Platform for the Thai market.

Finally, Line Pay has also been redesigned under a “payment revolution” concept. It started from its home-based Japanese market, where it redesigned payment infrastructure for small and medium business, which are the majority shops in Japan. It offers zero investment for initial set-up costs and zero transaction fees for three years from August 2018 to July 2021.

It has also launched a QR Code payment app for SMB, Line Pay for Merchants. In order to attract a greater numbers of users, it offers incentives of 3 to 5 per cent using QR/barcode payment.