When Microsoft's Bill Gates said in 1994 that "banking is necessary, banks are not", financiers and analysts alike dismissed the claims as the wild musings of an over-imaginative techie.Fast forward a few decades and that vision is fast becoming reality.Grab is one of the most dominant super apps in Asia, offering rides, food delivery and now, financial services.That includes loans, insurance, payments and investments – all accessed through a mobile phone app.Launched in 2012 a

Singapore-headquartered super app Grab's plans to go public in the United States (US), in what is the largest blank cheque company deal ever, is testament to the growth prospects of Southeast Asia and Singapore's start-up ecosystem, analysts and industry players said.Grab, which started out as MyTeksi to address the safety concerns of taxi commuters in Kuala Lumpur, announced on Tuesday (13 April) its agreement with Altimeter Growth, a special purpose acquisition c

Lily (not her real name), a Malaysian woman in her late 20s, told The ASEAN Post that she once took a Grab ride for a short 10-minutes journey from her apartment in Petaling Jaya, a city in the state of Selangor to a train station nearby her home.

The tech world was recently abuzz with news that Grab was in a favourable position to acquire its long-time rival, Gojek.

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum (WEF), it will take another 163 years for East Asia and the Pacific region to reach gender parity at its current rate.

Southeast Asia’s unicorns are now supposedly worth US$57 billion after the recent addition of four new companies to the exclusive club, but how realistic that figure is remains to be seen.Singapore’s Bigo Tech (streaming and social media), Trax (image-recognition), ONE Championship (media and sports) and Zilingo (e-commerce) all passed the US$1 billion valuation mark between September 2018 and September 2019, making for a total of 14 unicorns in the region according to a report released last

Tiny Singapore had embraced electric scooters in a big way, but deaths and fires linked to the two-wheelers have prompted authorities to introduce tough rules that could put a brake on their runaway success.The contraptions have popped up in cities worldwide but pedestrians in many places have come to see the silent machines as menaces, and authorities have been scrambling to regulate them.Tens of thousands flooded Singapore, becoming particularly popular among commuters and workers deliverin

ASEAN cities are notorious for their traffic. A 2019 report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), found that cities in the Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar are among the most congested, and congestion is costing governments millions of dollars daily.

The millennial generation of Southeast Asia comprises of half of the region’s 644 million population. The region’s high internet penetration and growing middle class is driving the adoption of digital financial services.

Commercial fleets and two-wheeled vehicles are expected to be the biggest drivers of growth in ASEAN’s electric vehicle (EV) market.A recent report by consultants Bain & Company estimates that the region’s annual new investment in passenger EVs will grow to US$6 billion by 2030, and will require another US$500 million in new charging infrastructure as service providers support electrification needs. Combined with the billions more ASEAN will have to invest in EV-related telec