The Quasiinvestor

Trends and Companies in Southeast Asia

  • Agritech – Seeding A Sustainable Future

    Agriculture technology, or Agritech, is the application of technology in the agriculture industry, to improve various aspects of it, such as, crop yields, soil health, water efficiency, and livestock management. It encompasses various technologies, including precision agriculture, data analytics, robotics, biotechnology, and farm management software. It has been an area of keen interest for investors…

  • Games in Southeast asia

    Gaming is an activity that is fascinatingly antithetical to the stereotypical Asian culture of pragmatism, hard work, and a focus on academics. Ironically, Asia has an outsized contribution to the global gaming market, which has arguably reached escape velocity in recent years, accelerated by COVID-19-induced movement restriction requirements. Most recently, with the return to normalcy,…

  • DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) and Joining one

    Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a widely touted use case of blockchain technology (decentralized and autonomous), allowing people to gather in groups (organizations) in a borderless, web-native way. While the internet has allowed for mass coordination, it still has a lot of friction and costs involved in it. Like traditional companies or social clubs, members…

  • Enhancing cross-border payments: Ripple vs. Stellar

    Cross-border payments is estimated to be a c. $44b market in 2020, according to McKinsey estimates. While this was negatively impacted due to restricted travel regulations as well as international supply chain disruption globally, an increase in the adoption of e-commerce as well as digital payments provided a lift to this sector. However, cross-border payments…

  • Crypto Exchanges – Centralized (CEX) and Decentralized (DEX)

    Introduction There are 4 main ways to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, each with pros and cons. Centralized exchanges (CEX) process the largest amount of cryptocurrency volumes. According to Coingecko, Decentralized exchanges (DEX) volume is just about 5% of total trading volumes. The largest CEX, Binance, has about $14b of 24-hour volume, while the largest DEX,…

  • Blockchain and cryptocurrencies – is this time different?

    With a c. $2.5t market value and c. 300m users at Oct 2021, the digital asset universe is too large to ignore, and crypto-based digital assets could form an entirely new asset class. This scale was reached as a result of a crypto boom over the past year and there has been a long list…

  • Oxygen – Manage both your personal life and freelance work

    There has been a large influx of challenger / neo- banks, which are technology-led and are aiming to disrupt the monolithic traditional banking business models, innovate and personalize products, and streamline processes. These banks range from traditional banks forking out their own brand of next-generation banks, as well as newcomers that tout disruption through the…

  • TrueLayer – The missing puzzle piece in digital banking

    More than a decade has passed since the Global Financial Crisis, and many have likened the seemingly decoupling of Wall Street and Main Street of late to the irrational exuberance of the past. Much of the time since then has arguably been focused on cleaning up — making sure that unfounded market optimism will not…

  • Acko – Promoting insurance accessibility in India

    As the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread globally, it is now commonly viewed to be a financial crisis masquerading as a health crisis and might change the world irrevocably. According to a survey conducted by IPSOS, there is increasing anxiety about personal finance and employment, with little comfort taken from the…

  • Snapask – Tutoring at your fingertips

    Uber, despite the toxic culture it purported to have extolled, and bad behavior that for a long time went unchecked (e.g. sexual harassment, discrimination, etc.), has left an indelible dent in the world, through incredible innovation that put it in a special group of companies whose brands have become verbs (e.g. Google). It is hence…