The London and Bangkok-based company has seen revenues more than triple in the past year and now counts over half a million recurring paid users across sectors including retail, hospitality, banking and other service-based industries.

This round will provide Eko with funds to further accelerate its expansion in Europe and North America.

Eko’s platform, which is currently used by hundreds of companies including leading groups such as Thanachart Bank and True Corporation, has been built to solve a growing problem for businesses that rely on mobile-first, distributed non-desk based workforces.

These companies have increasingly seen their employees create informal communication chat groups and processes using existing consumer applications, which in turn creates security, confidentiality and GDPR issues.

Eko’s solution solves this problem by providing a secure platform for employees and management to communicate and collaborate in real time. It provides users with a host of easy-to-use functionality, including communications, business process management (workflows), project management and knowledge management. It is also highly flexible, providing numerous APIs that allow for the integration of legacy systems and bots.

Since launching its sales, business and partnership operations in Europe earlier this year, the company has seen its global sales pipeline grow by more than 10 times, with the majority of client opportunities now coming from Europe and North America. Eko has established a strong partner base in Europe and is currently engaged in pilots with many of the region’s largest businesses.

Moving forward, it plans to spend funds to continue the expansion of its European and US teams with the aim of significantly increasing the company’s partner and customer base in the regions.

Korawad Chearavanont, Eko’s founder and chief executive, noted that the EU’s economy is roughly seven times larger than that of Southeast Asia’s, while that of the US is roughly the same size as Europe.

The difference in the size of the enterprise IT market is even wider as the EU and the US spend heavily on software. Thus, if Eko is to achieve the necessary scale to become a serious global player in the mobile enterprise market, continued growth in these markets is critical.

Eko’s team of over 100 is spread out among offices in Bangkok, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and New York. The latest round comes on top of $8.7 million previously raised, including an A round led by Gobi Ventures, a Seed round led by 500 Startups and a strategic investment from Itochu Corporation.

Suphattraland is working with the Drug Discovery and Development Centre and partners to create a research and development centre, the Suphattraland Excellent Agriculture Research Centre Hub (SEARCH), along with the Thailand Equatorial Fruit and Herbal Park.

The centre will collect fruits and herbs from countries that share Thailand’s equatorial latitude, said Suwat Faprathanchai, managing director of Suphattraland. Those countries are Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Mexico.

Srung Smanmoo, deputy director of R&D and innovative product development for Drug Discovery and Development Centre at Thammasat University, said SEARCH is a collaboration between the university’s centre and others partners including Suphattraland.

Also involved is the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology or Biotec. It will also provide R&D services and set up a health and anti-ageing innovative product centre, as well as social enterprises and a company CSR centre, along with a digital marketing channel to support the private sector and market.

SEARCH will function as an R&D and innovation network centred in the nation’s eastern region. It would build on current knowledge and know-how, while linking a network of R&D researchers in the region and nationwide to support both the government and private sectors.

“I think that SEARCH will create an R&D and innovation ecosystem between researchers, government and business in Rayong province and nationwide,” said Srung.

“As result, it will support business sustainability and improve

the quality of life for people in Rayong and the Eastern region of the country.

Meanwhile, SEARCH will also promote smart agricultural farming,” he added.

Chotchai Buadit, general manager at Suphattraland, noted SEARCH will have a role in R&D and manufacturing innovative processed fruit and herbal products focused on good health and anti-ageing.

But its work with go beyond that to also develop an innovative products distribution channel for outstanding local products through an innovative products shop or outlet for customers and visitors seeking products to improve their health and ageing.

In the first step, the shop or outlet would provide eight innovative products including Durian Mineral Facial Spray, an anti-acne and scar removal spray. Chotchai said it was the world’s first deodoriser and disinfectant spray to offer the benefit of killing germs and with the power to destroy bad odours.

Another product is fizzy tablets that ensures each bite of a diner’s fruits and vegetables are safe from pesticides and food-borne pathogens.

Another product is an anti-wrinkle and fine-lines removal serum from a silk protein- hyaluronic acid hybrid. The hybrid serum is the world’s first to combine the power of moisture-locking silk protein with hyaluronic acid to boost hydration as well as the minimise the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. The serum is best for visibly improving skin’s elasticity and tone, said Chotchai.

This powerful serum is formulated with the highest level of silk protein, hyaluronic acid and vitamin A.

A clothes-cooling spray with the ability to cool for more than two hours will also be available, as will a fruit infused honey. Also, a cooling spray suitable for those suffering from osteoarthritis will be for sale. Products that block sugar absorption and diet products will also be available.

“We offer innovative processed durian and mangosteen in both tapioca and alginate pearls. Our edible tapioca and alginate pearls are formulated with different source of soluble fibres, which exhibit sugar-absorption blocking and satiety properties,” said Chotchai.

“People who want to control their weight and diet would still enjoy the richness of the taste of durian and mangosteen while eating durian and mangosteen tapioca or alginate pearls.”

Suphattraland is offering free visits to its fruit garden during December 3-5 for those interested in smart agricultural gardening.

DISTRUST AMONG candidates led the Democrat Party to opt for blockchain technology last month when it was choosing its new leader. It was the first time digital technology had been utilised in Thai politics.

More than 120,000 votes were cast using the Thai-developed Zcoin blockchain during the November 1-9 vote.

Zcoin is an open-source, decentralised private cryptocurrency system featuring anonymity for its users with data stored on the blockchain.

Poramin Insom, founder and lead developer of Zcoin, helped Democrats tap the potential of this new technology, which also offers greater transparency and other benefits.

According to Poramin, candidates for the party’s leadership and its internal election commission were concerned about how to store the voting data securely, fearing there could be fraud and unfairness in the election.

Storage of data on blockchain prevents unauthorised changes, since any alteration requires a consensus among majority stakeholders.

Though Zcoin blockchain ensures voters’ anonymity, the party chose an option that allowed results to be cross-checked, Poramin told The Nation Weekend.

It was Thailand’s first large-scale electronic voting with two sets of data involved: identification documents and vote tallies, he explained.

The data were encrypted and stored on an IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), a decentralised and distributed file-storage system.

The IPFS hashes were then stored on the Zcoin blockchain, which acted as a decentralised immutable database that could be audited by the party’s election commission and its three leadership candidates.

The voting data could only be decrypted if all five groups involved – three representatives of each candidate, the election commission and the Democrat Party itself – were present and in agreement.

It was a tight race for the two top candidates, former premier Abhisit Vejjajiva and his challenger Warong Dechgitvigrom, with Abhisit winning 67,505 votes and Warong close behind with 57,689 votes.

“The unique circumstances of this election made Zcoin’s blockchain a good fit to record votes and sets the stage for future deployment of e-voting systems in the country,” Poramin said.

However, he said, preparations for the use of blockchain should have been made much earlier in order to ensure a smoother process. After all, technical errors would have prompted sceptics to suspect cheating and would have given the new technology a bad name.

In his view, Thailand has the potential to utilise this technology in a national election and it would be possible to do so in the next few years with growing demand from voters and candidates.

He said election organisers could develop electronic-voting machines and use blockchain to store the data.

“I believe we’ve achieved a huge milestone in our country’s political history and hope other political parties or even governments, not just in Thailand but elsewhere in the region, can look to using blockchain technology in enabling large scale e-voting,” Poramin said.

Meanwhile, new political players such as the Moderate Party and Future Forward Party are also keen to use new technology.

Moderate Party founder Chumphon Krootkaew said party members use computers and smartphones as their main communication tools.

“So most of the time, we are working online. We discuss and hold meetings on the Internet,” Chumphon said. “Everyone can basically work from home. And this saves us so much time and money because we don’t need a bricks-and-mortar office.”

The party stores membership data and other documents mainly in soft files, he said. Although sometimes some of the data have to be collected traditionally in paper form, they are recorded digitally afterwards, he explained.

Though the Moderate Party has yet to obtain legal standing, Chumphon said that once it is officially registered, it will launch a website and make it a hub for administrative work and communication.

The Future Forward Party relies extensively on cloud computing in its operations.

Party registrar Klaikong Vaidhyakarn said administrative affairs, internal communication and emails, as well as the donation system, are all connected through its official website, futureforwardparty.org. Party members work and coordinate via the website, and even the decision-making process within the party is done online.

About 40 per cent of the members also use this system to vote for branch leaders and executives, Klaikong said.

The system is trustworthy, with a verification protocol that matches the standards of online banking applications.

Like the Moderate Party, Klaikong said his party allowed members and staff to work online.

This allowed better participation as well as flexibility since they don’t have to be at the office and could work anywhere, he added.

Targeting five enterprise markets segments – property, retail, insurance, government agency, and independent software vendor (ISV) – with a customization strategy that enables customers to design their own cloudsystem with support from highly qualified service team skillful in the applications of leading technology vendors. All these services have been offered to more than 30 organizational customers through their business partners who represent a solid platform for becoming a market leader in the public cloud market in Thailand within three years, SiS said in a press statement.

Somchai Sittichaisrichart, Managing Director of SiS Distribution (Thailand) Public Company Limited., said, “According to IDC data, it is forecasted that worldwide public cloud service spending this year would reach 160 billion US dollars (or around five trillion baht), up 23.2% from 2017. In Thailand, it is estimated that cloud service and data center market would grow 35%, compared to last year. Business organizations constantly search for a service provider with highly experienced teams and local data centers which can deliver flexibility and ease of management and ensure compliance with relevant regulations. With over 20 years of experience in IT wholesale business and exposure to various types of organizations, today SiS is quite strong in terms of products and technologies. Also, we have global partners that are all leaders of cloud-based software and hardware vendors, and our key partner in Thailand, Interlink Telecom Pcl., is a leading fiber optic network and data center service provider in the country.”

“As of now, we’ve provided cloud services to more than 30 medium and large enterprises entirely through business partners. With combined strengths of SiS and Interlink Telecom, I’m confident that our cloud and service solutions presented today can deliver value-for-money and competitive pricing, flexibility in cloud service management, and international standards,” Mr. Somchai added.

Nattanai Anuntarumporn, Managing Director of Interlink Telecom Public Company Limited., said, “Today digital disruption has totally transformed business operations. The results of Pure Storage’s Evolution 2017 research revealed that 66% of businesses in Thailand planned to use more public cloud services within the next 18-24 months. Cloud will be used as a platform for enhancing the operational capacity of businesses in the modern era. A data center, which is a key component of cloud services, will also play an equally important role. Since we started this business, we’ve invested in two data centers. As for our partnership with SiS, I’m sure that this collaboration will be a driving force that can help upgrade the level of cloud management of business organizations. Our company uses both data centers for hosting SiS Cloud Services.Interlink Data Center has been constructed in accordance to a Tier 3 Data Center standard. The data center has been also certified for ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 27001. Our newest data center, Genesis data center, has also attained internationally recognized PCI and ISO/IEC 27001: 2013 certifications as well as Tier 3 certification from Uptime Institute, including the certification of design documents and constructed facility. These four standard certifications far exceed those of our competitors. As a result, our data center facilities are highly stable and secured. Furthermore, we can increase flexibility to meet ever-changing business needs in the digital era and ensure that the overall cost of business management is expended in the most cost-effective way. Also, we’re equipped to satisfy the needs of business customers effectively, and we can assure them that our data centers are the best in Thailand.”

Pantana Na Takuathung, general manager of Cloud Business Unit of SiS Distribution (Thailand) Public Company Limited., said, “SiS’s cloud services are superb because we are a local service provider and our data center is located here. So, our customers have easy access to our solutions for correcting, testing, and fine-tuning. Our primary focus is to provide flexibility for fine-tuning custom services to suit each customer’s needs and to ensure compliance with relevant regulations. For example, the financial sector’s regulation stipulates that data center must be located in the country. Most importantly, when using a local data center, data transmission speed is definitely faster than that of overseas service providers. Also, with Interlink Telecom as our strategic partner, we can offer high-speed fiber optic network services which connect our nationwide customers to our cloud. Currently, we’re providing six categories of services, including

●     Data Center on Cloud (IaaS)

●     Disaster Recoveryto Cloud (DRaaS)

●     BackuptoCloud (BaaS)

●     ContaineronCloud (PaaS)

●     VirtualDesktoponCloud

●     ERPonCloudPoweredbySAP B1

In addition, we have over 2,000 highly skilled and competent business partners in addition to

in-house teams of technical experts. Strategically, our cloud services are provided entirely through our business partners, and we always use leading technologies for the provision of our cloud services, such as VMware, Nutanix, Veeam, Trend Micro, HPE, Fortinet, and Microsoft. Moreover, SiS has a variety of products that enable customers to customize a cloud system to suit their own needs. Other key factors that contribute to our competitiveness and growth include flexible services and a business model that drives business growth for us and our business partners. In addition, our prices and specifications are also quite competitive. Recently, most business organizations that have enjoyed our cloud services are insurance companies, real estate developers, and government agencies. Most of them run their core business applications such as ERP on a cloud platform because they consider that security and stability as their main system requirements. Under these circumstances, I’m confident that we can expand our service provision to a greater number of independent software vendors (ISV) in 2019.”

SiS cloud services are available on two data centers of Interlink Telecom Pcl.: Interlink IDC and Genesis Data Center which meet ISO 270014:2013 and Tier 3 data center standards. Both data centers are interconnected with a high-speed fiber optic network, and it is equipped with an integrated security system for deterring denial-of-service (DoS), distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), web application firewall, IPS, and advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks. They also have backup and system recovery capacities in an event of disaster at the main sites. Notably, we guarantee delivery of high service quality with monthly uptime SLA of 99.90% and 24/7after-sales service.

Steve Chia’s firm, for example, has utilised artificial intelligence technology to develop a facial analytics system and software that integrates with other software to support biometric payments using smart vending machines.

Le Tach Pte’s system can track both females and males, as well as allow customers to pay via their smile. The result is that customers can now access and purchase goods from a smart vending machine by making a facial recognition payment – after first registering their face with their bank accounts. When they want to purchase products from a smart machine, they then need only smile in front of the machine. The machine will identify the customer and allow them to automatically pay the product charge.

The firm can now boast around 1,000 vending machines in Singapore, of which about 40 per cent are embedded with Internet of Things technology (IoT). The firm’s next step is to apply its facial recognition technology to support their older vending machines.

Octobox offers an alternative approach that also draws on digital technology – an automated vending kiosk that allows biometric palm payment. Customers who want to participate in the new e-payment system set up a personal account by registering a scan of their palm, explains Ng Kiat Seng, operations director at Octobox. When customers then visit a shop that has signed up for their biometric palm-payment vending machines, such as to purchase a food item, they just scan their palm at the display screen. The vending machine then will identify and verify the customer’s payment before they decide which products to select.

“Palm-print recognition technology can be deployed in many ways. As palm vein patterns are unique to every individual, a high level of accuracy and security is ensured,” said Ng. “Customers who want to participate in biometric payment just register for retail credit and their palm print will be taken. After registration, customers may access the kiosk door by scanning their palm print for identify verification. Once verified, the door will be unlocked automatically and once done, the door will close automatically. Payment will be auto-deducted once the door is closed and a bill summary (digital receipt) will be sent to the user’s registered email. It is easy to use.”

As well, “the system can track customer demand”, said Ng.

The smart-vending kiosk is embedded with a Wi-Fi connection. It is able to sell fragile items such as eggs, salads and fresh food. Customers can touch and feel the item before it is opened. As well, the system collects data and tracks sales, leading to increased customer satisfaction level through accurate demand forecast. As result, shops and businesses are able to understand the market conditions, identify market targets, and ensure cost savings by using corporate analytics and marketing analytics.

The firm has now partnered with DBS bank to provide smart vending machines. Its target markets are offices, national parks, condominiums, schools, hospitals and industrial areas.

Ng said the firm has spent one year to develop the Octobox smart vending kiosks, and will roll them out in Singapore starting next month with the target of 100 smart kiosks in the city by next June.

The firm has plans to next expand its smart vending kiosks to Taiwan and Malaysia.

The dramatic arrival of the $993 million spacecraft — designed to listen for quakes and tremors as a way to unveil the Red Planet’s inner mysteries, how it formed billions of years ago and, by extension, how other rocky planets like Earth took shape — marked the eighth successful landing on Mars in NASA’s history.

“Touchdown confirmed,” a mission control operator at NASA said, as pent-up anxiety and excitement surged through the room, and dozens of scientists leapt from their seats to embrace each other.

“It was intense and you could feel the emotion,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, in an interview on NASA television afterward.

Bridenstine also said President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had watched on television and called to congratulate the US space agency for its hard work.

“Ultimately, the day is coming when we land humans on Mars,” Bridenstine said, adding that the goal is to do so by the mid 2030s.

The vehicle appeared to be in good shape, according to the first communications received from the Martian surface.

But as expected, the dust kicked up during the landing obscured the first picture InSight sent back, which was heavily flecked.

France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) made the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, the key element for sensing quakes.

The principal investigator on the French seismometer, Philippe Lognonne, said he was “relieved and very happy” at the outcome.

“I’ve just received confirmation that there are no rocks in front of the lander,” he told AFP.

Next, InSight must open its solar arrays, as NASA waits until later in the afternoon to learn if that final, crucial phase went as planned.

The spacecraft is meant to be solar-powered once it reaches the surface of Mars.

Entry, descent, landing

The spacecraft is NASA’s first to touch down on Earth’s neighboring planet since the Curiosity rover arrived in 2012.

More than half of 43 attempts to reach Mars with rovers, orbiters and probes by space agencies from around the world have failed.

NASA is the only space agency to have made it, and is invested in these robotic missions as a way to prepare for the first Mars-bound human explorers in the 2030s.

“We never take Mars for granted. Mars is hard,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for the science mission directorate, said on Sunday.

The nail-biting entry, descent and landing phase began at 11:47 am (1940 GMT) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, home to mission control for Mars InSight, and ended one second before 1953 GMT.

A carefully orchestrated sequence — already fully preprogrammed on board the spacecraft — unfolded over the following several minutes, coined “six and a half minutes of terror.”

Speeding faster than a bullet at 12,300 miles (19,800 kilometers) an hour, the heat-shielded spacecraft encountered scorching friction as it entered the Mars atmosphere.

The heat shield soared to a temperature of 2,700 Fahrenheit (about 1,500 Celsius) before it was discarded, the three landing legs deployed and the parachute popped out, easing InSight down to the Martian surface.

Goal: 3D map of inner Mars

InSight contains key instruments that were contributed by several European space agencies.

France’s CNES made the SEIS instrument, while the German Aerospace Center (DLR) provided a self-hammering mole that can burrow 16 feet (five meters) into the surface — farther than any instrument before — to measure heat flow.

Spain’s Centro de Astrobiologia made the spacecraft’s wind sensors, and three of InSight’s seismic instruments were designed and built in Britain.

Other significant contributions came from the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika and the Swiss Institute of Technology.

“It is wonderful news that the InSight spacecraft has landed safely on Mars,” said Sue Horne, head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency.

Together, the instruments will study geological processes, said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

By listening for tremors on Mars, whether from quakes or meteor impacts or even volcanic activity, scientists can learn more about its interior and reveal how the planet formed.

The goal is to map the inside of Mars in three dimensions, “so we understand the inside of Mars as well as we have come to understand the outside of Mars,” Banerdt told reporters.

In an online video posted on Monday, He Jiankui, a biological researcher, announced that twin baby girls, Lulu and Nana, born healthy a few weeks ago, were conceived through in vitro fertilization and genetically edited for immunity to HIV infection.

“The mother started her pregnancy by regular IVF with one difference. Right after sending her husband’s sperm into her eggs, we also sent in a little bit of protein and instructions for gene surgery,” said He, from Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, speaking in the video. “Lulu and Nana were just a single cell when the surgery removed the doorway through which HIV enters to infect people.”

He, believed to be in Hong Kong to attend the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, a three-day conference due to open on Tuesday, could not be reached for comment on Monday. But his announcement sparked heated controversy over concerns over medical ethics and effectiveness.

The Shenzhen Health and Family Planning Commission said on Monday that it had not received any ethical assessment application for the study, which is a prerequisite for such experiments.

The Associated Press reported on Monday that He sought and received approval for his project from the ethics committee of Shenzhen Harmonicare Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and an approval document from the hospital circulated online on Monday.

However, the Shenzhen commission said the hospital’s ethics committee was not valid because the hospital did not register the committee’s establishment with the commission as required.

The commission has started an ethics investigation and will release the results to the public, it said. The hospital would not comment on Monday.

Southern University of Science and Technology said on Monday that it was not aware of the research, as He did not report it to the school.

A worker places an embryo in a storage tube at a laboratory in Shenzhen. [Photo/Agencies]

The university said the academic council of its biology department, where He works as an associate professor, thinks that the research seriously violated academic ethics and rules. The university said it would immediately set up an independent investigation team for the matter.

A regulation released in 2016 by the former National Health and Family Planning Commission — now the National Health Commission — requires health institutions to establish ethics committees with authority over biological or medical research involving humans that would have to approve the research.

On Tuesday, the commission told its provincial branch in Guangdong to investigate the matter and handle it according to laws and regulations. The information should be made public in a timely way, it said in an official release.

Bai Hua, head of Baihualin, a nongovernmental organization that promotes the interests of people with HIV/AIDS, said on Monday that the parents of the twins were likely to have HIV.

He Jiankui spoke with Bai in April 2017, hoping to find people with HIV for the research, Bai said, adding that he spread the news and about 200 showed interest.

“Of the group infected with HIV, many have special conditions such as inability to conceive naturally, but the reality is that they cannot have babies through IVF in hospitals,” he said. “Many of them thought the research gave them a chance to have babies who do not have the risk of getting HIV.”

Mixed reactions

On Monday, more than 120 scholars from prestigious universities and institutes from China and abroad such as Tsinghua University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology strongly condemned the research in a signed statement, saying it lacks effective ethics oversight and amounts to human experiments.

In the statement published on weibo.com, they said any attempt to change human embryos with genetic editing and allow the birth of such babies entails a high degree of risk due to inaccuracies in existing editing technologies.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said: “Genetic editing technology is far from mature and could have unforeseen consequences for the subjects.”

Some researchers are trying to use genetic editing technology to treat people infected with HIV, so the virus will not replicate and be transmitted to others, he said. “Animal experiments should be done to assess gains and risks for the subjects, before the possibility of doing this with humans.”

Some scientists in Hong Kong for the summit think it could induce serious problems for a person’s immune system, while others think people should not be overly scared because it would not affect the core genome.

Tsui Lap-chee, president of the Academy of Sciences of Hong Kong, said if one gene is edited, it will affect others that interact with it. And the whole genome, a collection of genes, may also be affected.

Robin Lovell-Badge, group leader and head of the Division of Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the Francis Crick Institute, said “gene editing is not something to be scared about”, and he doesn’t think what He has done will affect a human’s core genome. Side effects may not be very serious as there are millions of healthy people with the exact same mutation.

Zhou Mo in Shenzhen contributed to this story.