Also, A JV partnership to result in Thailand’s first data centre, and India’s ride-hailing service Ola to invest in scooter sharing startup Vogo

Indonesian culinary supplier marketplace Stoqo raises Series A round from Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India [Deal Street Asia]

Stoqo, an Indonesia-based culinary supplier marketplace aimed at small restaurants and hotel owners reportedly just closed a Series A round co-led by Monk’s Hill Partners and Accel Partners India.

Deal Street Asia was the first to share the news upon the story shared by two people familiar with the investment.

Stoqo was founded by Aswin Andrison and Angky William just a shy one year ago under PT Stoqo Teknologi Indonesia. According to Andrison, Stoqo focuses on Business-to-Business (B2B) culinary supplier and seeks to become a pioneer in this sector.

“We gave an easy access to buyers, especially those in culinary business, in getting the basic, daily needs like rice, eggs, oil, flour, vegetable, fresh meat, and other produces. Stoqo aims to fulfill this need to be more accessible and efficient in the best price,” said Andrison in a statement shared by SWA.

Also Read: Indian edtech startups Toppr, DataTrained raise funding

Right now, Stoqo has more than 2,000 produces available on its platform and has gained over 5,000 downloads from Google Playstore. Next, Stoqo is looking to expand to other cities in Indonesia.

Singapore’s STT GDC partners with TICON to bring Thailand’s first data centre to the country [Press Release]

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), Singapore-based data centre service provider announced that they are now in the final step of completing the joint venture partnership with TICON, the smart industrial platform provider in Thailand. The joint venture will allow their first data centre to be built on a 75,000 square metre (15-rai) site in Ramkhamhaeng district, situated in central Bangkok, that would be finished by 2020.

This first data centre is in line with the Thailand 4.0 initiative that seeks to develop the digital economy in the country, as well as the Thai government’s National Digital Economy Masterplan, in which the digital economy is expected to see robust growth and contribute up to 25% of Thailand’s GDP by 2027.

“We believe in the market potential of expanding our focus into developing Thailand’s digital economy and transforming urban living with Smart Cities. Developing digital infrastructure in the form of state-of-the-art data centres is one of the key investment areas we are embarking on in this new economy. This partnership will allow us to best serve the digital growth plans of our customers,” said Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi, Chairman of the Executive Committee of TICON Industrial Connection Pcl. (TICON),

Furthermore, TICON’s representative added that they are confident that the data centres’ operation will match the global standards in key markets such as Singapore, China, India and the UK, as well as maximising the local expertise of TICON in understanding the needs of the Thai market and navigating its regulatory environment.

Myanmar’s largest private bank KBZ Bank works with treasury management solution Finastra to eliminate manual operation [Press Release]

Kanbawza (KBZ) Bank, Myanmar’s largest privately owned bank has selected treasury management solution Finastra to automate the tedious operational work by enabling straight-through-processing (STP) using the company’s product called Fusion.

By moving away from manual treasury processing operation, the bank believes that it will result in a faster, more efficient services that can help the bank grow both transaction volumes and revenue and reduce operational risk. The bank also seeks to scale more effectively without sacrificing current levels of manpower across all its treasury business operations.

“Market dynamics are changing rapidly due to increased modernization and digitalization within Myanmar’s banking sector. Finastra’s capability is helping us to overcome high operational overheads associated with manual processes, reduce time-to-market for new products and bring our operations and systems in line with the standards of sophisticated developed markets both regionally and globally,” said Win Lwin, Managing Director of KBZ Bank.

Fusion Treasury by Finastra is a single, integrated, front-to-back solution, built to cover all aspects of a bank’s operations in treasury, capital markets, derivatives, and risk and compliance. The solution enables financial institutions to integrate and automate systems and streamline treasury operations.

Prior to this partnership, Finastra has supported other financial institutions in Myanmar like Yoma Bank, AYA Bank and First Private Bank.

Microsoft’s Azure manages to cover almost all Southeast Asia regions with its cloud capability [SG Channel Asia]

Microsoft Azure Availability Zones are now generally available across Southeast Asia, as the tech giant’s cloud system arm continues to expand cloud capabilities regionally.

The Azure Availability Zones are designed to be a solution for mission-critical applications.

“As a high-availability offering that protects your applications and data from data centre failures, Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region with each one of them made up of one or more data centres equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. To ensure resiliency, there is a minimum of three separate zones in all enabled regions,” explained Patrik Bihammar, cloud and enterprise lead at Microsoft Singapore.

Furthermore, with the introduction of Availability Zones, the vendor can now offer a service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.99 per cent for uptime of virtual machines. The company believes that it will build upon their extensive cloud portfolio to enable customers to design resilient applications for comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy.

Through the addition of these regional zones, customers will now be able to synchronously replicate applications and data using Availability Zones within an Azure region for high-availability within Singapore, and asynchronously replicate across Azure regions for geographic disaster recovery protection.

India’s ride-hailing service Ola seeks to invest US$100 million in Indian scooter sharing startup Vogo [Channel News Asia]

Indian ride-hailing service Ola is reportedly to invest US$100 million in Vogo, a domestic scooter sharing startup. When the investment comes through, the two-wheelers fleet will be added to Ola app to broaden the range of vehicles it offers.

Vogo provides services in the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The company will use the money to expand its fleet by 100,000 scooters.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

Meanwhile, Ola’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal said, “Our investment in Vogo will help build a smart multi-modal network for first-last mile connectivity in the country.”

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Image Credit: STT GDC

The post Today’s top tech news, December 19, 2018: Indonesia’s culinary supplier marketplace Stoqo raises Series A funding from Monk’s Hill Partners appeared first on e27.