PingWest SYNC SEA 2019 summit came to a close on December 6 in Singapore. Themed "Shape the Future", the summit is the first of its kind, hosted by a major online tech news media with Chinese background and reporters around the world, and aims to bridge the tech industries from both China and Southeast Asia, the fastest growing market around the world.
"Our goal was to break down barriers and introduce the Southeast Asian technology ecosystem and entrepreneurs to Chinese technology companies and investors looking to expand overseas," said Thomas Luo, Co-Founder, CEO and Chief Editor of PingWest during the conference's opening ceremony.
The technology summit featured more than 300 industry leaders and investors, ranging from leading companies such as Ant Financial, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, Twitter, ZEGO Technology and household names in the venture capital business such as Sequoia Capital, Plug and Play Tech Center and Golden Gate Ventures. Guests across the board went in-depth on topics such as using data intelligence to empower Southeast Asia, applying AI in the region's booming fintech industry, cloud computing, biometric identification, blockchain, and investments across all stages.
Caixin and Lianhe Zaobao (Nanyang Sin-Chew United Morning News) were among the 20 top domestic and Singaporean media outlets that participated in and reported on the PingWest SYNC SEA 2019.
Global Industry leaders presented their views and discussed the future of innovation and trends that will redefine the industry. Wu Shilin, Head of Global Business of Zoloz, the leading financial-grade biometrics identification company incubated within Ant Financial, detailed the company's technological advancements strategy for future data and biometrics recognition applications. The company provides financial-grade electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) technology to leading banks and financial institutions across the world.
Wu said during his speech that the digital identity started with single factors like username and password, then it is enhanced by additional secure factor like SMS, token, smart card. Nowadays, digital identity has evolved into simple authentication in smart phone with biometrics recognition technology, which the SE Asian market could take advantage of as the penetration of high-speed mobile internet continues to improve.
One of the company's missions is to help banks and financial institutions provide more and better services to the 1.7 billion people in the region who were previously unbanked, allowing them to open new accounts, apply for loans and invest online on their smartphones, in the mean time saving institutions hundreds of millions of hours by streamlining their services.
During his speech in the enterprise artificial intelligence sector of the summit, Lawrence Lu, managing director of Asia and Singapore at Tongdun Technology detailed the growing fraud risk SE Asia is facing as its internet industry is picking up pace, and how companies can mitigate it with the help of advanced artificial intelligence.
SE Asia suffered the most from fraud in the Asia-Pacific region, accounting for almost 40% totaling 650 million U.S. dollars in loss, according to various data sources. Data crunched by Lu's company shows that bot attack is the most common method used in fraudulent activities in the region, accounting for 64.2% across six SE Asian countries polled.
Tongdun Technology helps businesses mitigate risk by incorporating highly advanced algorithms into risk management systems to easily identify suspicious patterns and fraudulent transactions. "We are confident that our technology can help institutional clients to deliver better risk management that effectively avoid fraud," Lawrence Lu said during a morning keynote at the SYNC SEA 2019 conference.
The Southeast Asia cloud computing industry has expanded both in term of the investment and the service offered. Alibaba Cloud and Google Cloud, two largest cloud computing service providers in the region were featured on PingWest's conference.
Dr. Derek Wang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Singapore said cloud empowers digital economy in Southeast Asia and give both large companies and small & middle-sized enterprises the necessary push, as cloud providers like Alibaba often provide a great deal of assistance to help customers succeed.
"There has been an increase in demand on how to enter the Southeast Asia market from large companies as well as SMEs. Alibaba will provide consultations and technology infrastructure needed," said Wang, adding that the company is confident in helping local businesses of all sizes and backgrounds to grow in the region and transfer their success to other parts of the world. Alibaba Cloud now has 56 availability zones across the world, of which 7 availability zones are located across SE Asia in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Mark Johnson, APAC Head of Enterprise Specialists at Google Cloud said the U.S.-based cloud provider focuses on using its award-winning machine learning technology to help customers better analyze massive amount of data, and detect threat more quickly and precisely.
PingWest 2019 SEA conference also aimed to foster relationships between global and local investors with companies and entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. Pieter Kemps, Principal at Sequoia Capital, said that SE Asia possess huge potential and the firm has been shifting its focus and investing more time and its funds in the market.
"Southeast Asian technologies is starting to boom. You can see that fresh capitals is flowing in as investors realized that technology companies here can achieve the same growth rates of some of the current fastest-growing companies around the world," said Russ Neu, partner at Quest Ventures.
Held on the evening of December 6, the cruise dinner was sponsored by Bank of Singapore. Industry leaders, start-up founders and venture capital firms attended the event, covering topics such as investment in Southeast Asia, AI, as well as fintech and lifestyle. While enjoying delicious food and wine and participating in interactive games, industry leaders strengthened their ties with PingWest to continued cross-border cooperation.
