Thanks to rapid development in Southeast Asia, ASEAN’s middle class is set to grow and become a critical segment of society, acting as a vital engine of growth in the region. It is expected that the middle class will rise from 29 percent in 2010 to 65 percent of the population by 2030.

Singapore based Cocoon Capital recently announced a new US$20 million fund following its first US$7 million fund launched in 2016. The fund aims to bridge growing industry demands for more seed-stage funding in the region.“With the billions of dollars available in venture capital in the region, only a fraction is targeting seed-stage companies and Cocoon Capital seeks to help fill this gap”, said Will Klippgen, co-founder and Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital.

The future of technology lies in the life sciences. With technology advancing at a rapid pace, the field of life sciences is no longer just limited to hospitals or laboratories. Instead, discoveries made in life sciences are now starting to be integrated into everyday mass consumer goods.An example of this can be seen in many smartphones in the market today.

A unicorn has finally arrived in the Philippines. In October last year, Philippine-based startup Revolution Precrafted, a company that develops and designs prefabricated homes and hotels among others, raised its series B round of funding co-led by Singaporean venture capital firm K2 Global. The round of funding raised an undisclosed amount that brought the startup over the billion-dollar mark, making it the first unicorn to come out of the Philippines.

The impact new technologies have when it comes to initiating change in the world has never been more apparent than during the last two decades. Ever since the advent of Web 2.0 in the early 2000s, technology has advanced rapidly. Within that time span new technologies have revolutionised all aspects of our lives. People are now more connected, work has become a lot easier and transactions have become seamless.

When the region’s internet penetration rate started to grow in the mid-2000s, many users in Southeast Asia started yearning for their very own “Amazon”, an e-commerce site where they could simply place an order online and have their goods delivered to their doorstep. Fast forward to 2018, and their dreams have come true with Lazada. The popular e-commerce portal currently serves six markets in Southeast Asia with millions of users.

With the aviation industry’s strong growth and the shortening of travel times to almost any point on the globe, the world has become a much smaller place. Journeys which just a generation ago would have taken weeks can now be achieved in a day or even less. As for passengers, commercial flight has provided much more than just time-savings.

Earlier this month, the Maharashtra government in India signed a Memorandum of Understanding with British billionaire and Virgin Hyperloop One chairman, Richard Branson to build a hyperloop between Mumbai and Pune. The hyperloop system between Mumbai and Pune will be built by Virgin Hyperloop One and will cover a distance of 150 kilometres.

The competition between ride-hailing apps in the region could slowly become a one horse-race as the tech world has been rocked with rumours of Uber exiting the region. The speculation began after Japan’s SoftBank made a US$1.25 billion investment in Uber that effectively made them the company’s largest shareholder.