PressLogic, a Hong Kong-based social media content and data analytics startup, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A+ round from Meitu, developer of the popular Chinese selfie app. PressLogic will use the funds to launch its new lifestyle brand GirlStyle and enter e-commerce with its proprietary algorithms, which predict what topics will trend on social media among specific groups.

The new round brings PressLogic’s total raised to $15 million. Meitu first acquired a minority stake in PressLogic last year.

After launching a data-analytics service for social media managers called MediaLens in 2016, founders Ryan Cheung and Edward Chow began creating social media publishing and marketing brands in order to show potential clients how their technology could boost audience engagement. PressLogic, their social media publishing platform, now claims a total of 8 million Facebook and Instagram followers and over 700 million monthly content impressions across its social media profiles and websites, with about 75 percent of its visitors aged 18 to 34.

MediaLens still serves as PressLogic’s core technology, underpinning its content brands, as well as the insights it provides to partners in order to increase their social media engagement and return on investment. CEO Cheung (Chow serves as PressLogic’s CTO) told TechCrunch that MediaLens “creates a pipeline from data sourcing to content suggestion to optimization” and has an edge against its competitors because it is able to make more granular suggestions about what content is likely to be popular among specific groups based on trending topics.

With its new round of funding, PressLogic will launch GirlStyle, a lifestyle and fashion-based social network targeted to young women, as an app and website in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Korea, and Malaysia by the end of this year. In terms of e-commerce, CEO Cheung (Chow serves as PressLogic’s CTO) says the company will start by focusing on skincare and cosmetics by leveraging data from its online traffic and readers.

PressLogic hasn’t revealed if Meitu’s photo imaging technology will be integrated into its platform, but Cheung says it would like to extend MediaLens’ analytics to images, too, since data from photos and videos shared on social media is potentially valuable, but still difficult to transform into the kind of insights that help predict what content will go viral next.

Tink Labs, a Hong Kong startup that develops smartphones that hotels provide to their guests for free, is raising a new round of up to $300 million to further its international footprint, TechCrunch has come to understand.

The startup is in the final stages of completing the deal that could give its six-year-old business a post-money valuation of at least $1.5 billion, two sources with knowledge of discussions told TechCrunch .

It isn’t clear at this point which investors are part of the round, but once source said Tink Labs has made an effort to court hotels and travel firms as investors since it believes they could provide strategic value beyond simply capital. But any hoteliers would likely provide smaller checks, with more established investors picking up the bulk of the round.

Tink Labs declined to respond when contacted for comment by TechCrunch.

The company’s existing investors include manufacturing giant Foxconn (via its FIH Mobile unit), Sinovation Ventures — the investment firm from ex-Google China head Kaifu Lee — and Cai Wensheng, an angel investor who is the founder and chairman of Hong Kong-listed photo app firm Meitu. It also snagged money from SoftBank this summer after the Japanese firm invested in a joint-venture for the Japanese market. That deal appears to have been hugely successful since Japan is Tink Labs’ largest market with over 810 hotel deployments.

To date, the firm has announced over $170 million in funding. Its most recent deal was a $125 million investment in 2016, but a source close to the company said it landed an undisclosed deal in the past year that took its valuation over the $1 billion mark and made it one of Hong Kong’s first unicorns. Bloomberg reported last year that it had closed $40 million, but that was never confirmed nor announced by Tink Labs, so this round could mark its official coming out as a billion-dollar business.

The company has 17 offices worldwide while its website claims it has deployed phones in over 1,700 hotel locations worldwide, predominantly in APAC and Europe, with over 12 million customers using them. It said in March that it plans to reach one million hotel rooms by the end of this year — half of which will be in Europe — and this new money is likely earmarked for further global growth. To give an indication, there are currently over 90 open positions listed on Tink Labs’ careers page.

The company was founded by CEO Terrence Kwok, now 26, and it moved into the hotel concierge phone space after first developing a device rental service that targeted travelers at airports.

Tink Labs remained focused on offering connectivity to travelers, but it shifted the focus to hotels because it believes it can help foster a closer relationship between hotel brands and their guests. Tink Labs says that active users typically engage with the device for just over one hour per day, while it claims to have lifted hotel revenue by four percent when adopted.

Its Handy product is a smartphone for hotel guests that takes the pain out of mobile roaming. You can make calls and send messages like a normal phone, but it also includes details of services available at your hotel and nearby activities. It even hooks into the hotel’s telephone system so you can order room service before you get back to your room, call a colleague via their room number, or phone the helpdesk if you’re out and about but need help talking to a taxi driver in the local language.

The concept has proven popular with hotels — global brands using Handy include the likes of IHG, Sheraton, Novotel, Mercure and Holiday Inn — and, in perhaps the ultimate validation, a series of knock-offs have surfaced with their own Handy clones.

Tink Labs has pushed itself (and Handy) as a platform for enabling sales, both for hotels and ‘preferred’ venues in cities, with pricing starting at $1 for each device in a room per day.

While this new funding round is in its final stages before being closed, there is one intriguing wrinkle. Tink Labs seems to have flirted with the idea of an ICO, even though most token sales have shifted to essential private, rather than public, sales.

The company is seeking to hire a “strategy associate (with ICO experience)”, according to a listing on its jobs site that has been online for most of this year. Despite multiple requests for information from TechCrunch, Tink Labs has not provided further details on its plan for crypto. However, with this new round soon to be in the bank and the general crypto market declining significantly this year, an ICO would seem unlikely.

Hong Kong may become the next country to regulate crypto exchanges after its securities regulator announced that it is exploring ways to apply quality control and protect consumers from the volatility and uncertainties of digital currencies.

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said it is “setting out a conceptual framework” that could be used to regulate crypto exchanges since they currently operate outside of current regulation, which is focused on traditional investment.

“Some of the world’s largest virtual asset trading platforms have been seen operating in Hong Kong but they fall outside the regulatory remit of the SFC and any other regulators. Owing to the serious investor protection issues identified and having regard to international developments, the SFC considers it necessary to explore in earnest whether and if so, how it could regulate virtual asset trading platforms under its existing powers,” the SFC wrote.

The commission has said it intends to work with the industry itself to define what regulation should look like.

The SFC did hedge its move, however, by saying that there is no guarantee that it will introduce licenses at the end of its research period. In particular, it voiced concern as to whether exchanges “would satisfy the expected anti-money laundering standards, given that anonymity is the core feature of blockchain.”

There’s also no immediate sign that Hong Kong will be requiring exchanges to be licensed.

“Those exchanges that want to be regulated by us will be set apart from those that don’t,” SFC CEO Ashley Alder told a conference according to a report from Reuters.

Japan is best known in crypto circles for its introduction of exchange licensing. Some in the industry have criticized the Japanese regulations as being too tight. Those voices include Binance, the world’s largest trading of cryptocurrencies, which abandoned plans to seek regulation in Japan because it placed limits on which tokens can be offered to users, its CEO Changpeng Zhao previously told TechCrunch.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

There’s concern for the freedom of the press in Hong Kong after the government declined to renew the visa of a veteran Financial Times’ editor, dealing an alarming blow to the country’s thriving journalism community.

Victor Mallet, the FT’s Asia news editor who is also vice-president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, is effectively being expelled after he was denied a new work visa without reason. The incident follows a controversial FCC event in August, chaired by Mallet, which featured pro-Hong Kong independence activist Andy Chan.

“This is the first time we have encountered this situation in Hong Kong, and we have not been given a reason for the rejection,” an FT spokesperson told HKFP, which was first to report the news.

It is common for the Chinese government to turn down visa renewals for reporters — for example, BuzzFeed’s Megha Rajagopalan had her annual visa rejected last month after she published stories on the plight of China’s Uyghur Muslims — but Hong Kong has long been a bastion of free speech and free press. A range of global media uses the country as their regional HQ for that very reason, while a substantial amount of Chinese reporting is conducted by Hong Kong-based journalists on account of the trickiness of Chinese media visas. Expelling a reporter — and without reason — runs contrary to that.

“This is unprecedented. We expect foreign journalists to have this kind of visa rejection happen in China, but it has never happened in Hong Kong because Hong Kong has a tradition until recent years of respect for free speech,” Human Rights Watch’s Maya Wang told the New York Times.

The situation appears to be a direct response to Chan’s interview at the FCC, which was strongly criticized by the Hong Kong government and China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. Former Hong Kong leader CY Leung went so far as to suggest that the FCC should be forced to give up its lease (which he incorrectly claimed was government-subsidized) while he claimed that hosting Chan was tantamount to giving “criminals and terrorists” air time. His successor Carrie Lim called the FCC event “regrettable and inappropriate.”

Chan’s Hong Kong National party, which pushes back on increased influence from Beijing, was formally outlawed last month. The ban, the first of its kind since the UK handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, was made “in the interests of national security, public order or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Asia-based accelerator program Zeroth is getting a major infusion of capital after digital media company Animoca Brands agreed to invest over $3 million into its businesses.

Animoca is listed on the ASX with a market cap of around $40 million. It is best known for its range of mobile games which include the Doraemon and Garfield brands but it has been pushing to broaden its focus into artificial intelligence, blockchain and more.

The relationship is not new. Animoca previously invested US$1 million (A$1.39 million) in Hong Kong-based Zeroth last December, and now it is following up to take a majority stake in Zeroth’s operational business and also joining its fund as an LP.

According to an announcement, Animoca is paying up to US$1.08 million (A$1.5 million) for a 67 percent share of Venture Classic Limited — Zeroth’s operational business — in addition to a $2 million commitment to Zeroth’s fund, which it will join as an LP.

Zeroth founder Tak Lo played down suggestions that the deal constitutes an acquisition, telling TechCrunch that the deal represents an important addition of capital and know-how for the business.

He added that the program will continue to operate independently and there are plans to expand its scope and geographical focus, although he declined to provide more details. He added that the Zeroth fund remains wholly owned.

Zeroth has graduated 33 companies from three batches to date, taking an average of 6 percent equity. Some has gone on to raise from other investors, including Fano Labs (which is now Accosys) which raised from Horizons Ventures, the VC firm founded by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-Shing.

Animoca has also been a part of the program. Its OliveX health and fitness spinout graduated Zeroth before going on to raise funding of its own.

“We were impressed by Zeroth’s rise to one of the most influential AI accelerators in Asia as well as a major investor in blockchain,” Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands said in a statement. “As Animoca Brands continues to expand its AI and blockchain initiatives, Zeroth provides us with an excellent strategic match, invaluable resources, and access to high-potential ventures and technologies.”

It’ll certainly be interesting to observe how Zeroth, which was founded 18 months ago, will continue with a third-party closely involved. Animoca has been a part of the business for some time, and TechCrunch understands that Lo and his team are talking to other prospective LPs who are likely to come on board soon to give more balance and capital.

OneDegree, a Hong Kong-based insurance technology startup, announced today that it has closed a Series A totaling HKD $200 million (about $25.5 million). Half of that amount was pledged by investors to OneDegree pending regulatory approval through the Hong Kong Insurance Authority’s new fast-track licensing program for online-only insurers. The company, which participated in Cyberport, the Hong Kong government’s startup incubator, claims this is the largest ever fundraising round for a pre-revenue insurance tech startup in Hong Kong.

OneDegree is currently not disclosing its list of investors because its new shareholders are being vetted by the Insurance Authority, founder and CEO Alvin Kwock tells TechCrunch, but it includes institutional investors and family offices. The South China Morning Post reports that speculation among brokers peg Tencent and Alibaba as probable backers.

OneDegree has developed an online insurance platform that lets consumers purchase personal lines and health insurance products without needing to consult with an agent. Instead, they find and buy policies through an app that is connected to a backend that automates claims processing, policy management and customer service.

The startup will initially sell medical insurance plans for pets. While there are more than 500,000 pet dogs and cats in Hong Kong, only about 2% to 3% are covered by insurance, compared to 42% in the United Kingdom, says OneDegree. The startup blames this on ineffective distribution, since pet insurance has relatively low premiums and is therefore overlooked by insurance agents, even though the number of pet dogs and cats in Hong Kong is increasing at an average annual growth rate of 3.5% and their owners are a relatively affluent demographic.

OneDegree plans to use its Series A to on tech development, launching new products and marketing. The funding will also serve as risk capital once it launches its insurance business.

In a press statement, Cyberport chairman George Lam said “As a key driver of digital technology development in Hong Kong, we are definitely excited to see local fintech start-ups like OneDegree successfully securing recognition from renowned institutional investors and attracting sizable funding that will enable faster growth.”

Meituan-Dianping is reportedly aiming for a $55 billion valuation in its upcoming initial public offering in Hong Kong, but the company’s net losses and increasing competition from Alibaba are already raising questions about whether that is too ambitious, despite the company’s market leadership in China. Meituan-Dianping, which bills itself as a “one-stop super app” that offers everything from food delivery to travel bookings, has set an IPO price range of HK$60 to HK$72 (about $7.64 to $9.17), with a valuation of $46 billion to $55 billion, according to Reuters.

That is still less, however, than the valuation of about $60 million it targeted earlier, according to a June 25 report from the Wall Street Journal. Meituan-Dianping runs the leading online marketplace for services in China by gross transaction volume and also acquired bike-sharing startup Mobike earlier this year.

Meituan-Dianping was said to be valued at as much as $30 billion when it raised a $4 billion Series C round led by Tencent in October 2017.

But the company’s tight margins and losses, much of which were incurred on marketing and user acquisition, are raising concerns about Meituan-Dianping’s valuation, especially after Xiaomi’s underwhelming debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in July. Despite reports that it sought a valuation of $100 billion, Xiaomi ended up with a $54 billion valuation after raising $4.7 billion.

A document filed today with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange didn’t provide more information about IPO pricing or valuation, but it did give some insights into the company’s financials. It said that Meituan-Dianping’s total revenues increased by 161.2% to RMB 33.9 billion in 2017, and by an additional 94.9% from RMB 8.1 billion in the four months ending in April 30, 2017 to RMB 15.8 billion in the same period of 2018.

In 2017, the platform generated over 5.8 billion transactions, totalling RMB 357 billion in gross transaction volume. It served 310 million transacting users and 4.4 million active merchants, with each transacting user making an average of 20.3 transactions in the 12 months ending April 30, 2018.

Meituan-Dianping recorded a gross margin of 9.3% for food delivery in the four months ending on April 30, 2018, while its second-largest business segment, in-store, hotel and travel services, recorded gross margin of 88% in the same period. Overall, the company had gross margin of 25.5% in that time frame.

In the same periods, however, it also recorded high net losses. In 2017, the company said it recorded net losses of RMB 19 billion, as well as net losses of RMB 8.2 billion and RMB 22.8 billion for the four months ending on April 30 2017 and 2018, respectively. Meituan-Dianping said the losses were due in changes to the fair value of its preferred shares, user acquisition expenses, including incentives to attract users and delivery riders, and new product launches.

The pressure of acquiring new users and marketing expenses probably won’t ease up anytime soon, as Meituan-Dianping faces down rivalry from Alibaba. The e-commerce giant used to be an investor in Meituan-Dianping, but offloaded its shares to focus on building its own online-to-offline services, including a combination of Ele.me and Koubei which recently raised $3 billion from investors including SoftBank.

TechCrunch has contacted Meituan-Dianping for comment.

With the growth in cross-border payment services and ‘challenger’ bank cards for consumers, you’d be forgiven for wondering where the options are for small business — where cash is particularly precious.

They do exist. One of the newer options is Neat, which is nested in Hong Kong but open for business worldwide.

The startup started off following the same track as the likes of Monzo, Starling and Revolut in Europe, developing a ‘new’ kind of account free of branch-based banking and tedious paperwork. But quickly the team realized that its service was being adopted in large by startups and SMEs as a way to get more flexible financing and perks like install balance/billing.

Neat still offers a consumer service in Hong Kong, but it places a heavy focus on developing its business service. Right now, that helps companies who can’t apply for credit cards get a Neat Mastercard which can be used for trivial (but important!) items such as monthly bills for services, flights, hotels and more. There’s no credit involved since the cards and account are debit-based.

Beyond the basics, Neat Business customers can use their account to handle employee payroll, business invoices, receive money and really pay all other bills that would require a credit card without using their personal one, as is so often the case for early-stage startups. More advanced features include expense cards for employees, while detailed company reporting and automated accounts are planned for introduction soon.

The company is based in Hong Kong, but Neat’s service can be used overseas, and indeed it already is.

Co-founder and CEO David Rosa, a former managing director of Citi Bank Asia Pacific, told TechCrunch that the company has customers in over 100 countries since account holders don’t need to be resident in, or incorporated in Hong Kong, to qualify for the service.

That said, a large portion is based in or associated with Hong Kong as it stands today, but Rosa — who started the business in 2015 alongside CTO Igor Wos — said he wants to change that and grow the userbase globally. The fact that Neat is working on introducing multi-currency solutions, as well as accountancy software integrations, is sure to help widen its appeal to those based outside of Hong Kong.

In a further validation, Neat recently snagged $2 million in funding to develop its tech and increase marketing. Those investors included Singapore’s Dymon Asia and Portag3 Ventures, which is the VC arm of Canada-based Power Corp, a public listed international management firm with a market cap of $9 billion. The Neat deal represents the Portag3 Ventures’ first investment in Asia and its CEO is bullish on how the duo can work together.

“From Hong Kong, we can reach the world. There’s a lot to be done here especially because of the China angle,” Rosa, who has lived in Hong Kong for 17 years, said.

WeWork may be doubling down on Asia, having initially focused its efforts on China, but that isn’t stopping local players from hatching ambitious expansion plans of their own.

One of those eying new markets is Hong Kong-based Campfire, which tries to stand out from the crowd with industry-focused spaces. Today, the startup announced it has raised an $18 million Series A ahead of planned expansions to three overseas countries: Singapore, Australia and the UK. It previously raised $6 million in March 2017.

Two-year-old Campfire’s business right now is in Hong Kong, where it has eight locations which include co-education, co-retail and co-living sites, as well as more standard co-working venues. In the case of its fashion-focused location, that even includes runway, photo studio, fabric facility and 3D printer.

The new capital comes from a trio of real estate firms in Hong Kong, they are Kwai Jung Group, Fast Global Holdings — which is a subsidiary of Rykadan Capital — and Sa Sa. In the latter case, Sa Sa is actually a cosmetics brand that operates across Greater China and parts of Southeast Asia, but the firm owns a significant retail footprint. That includes the building that houses Campfire’s ‘V Point’ space in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, so the relationship is already well advanced.

A Campfire representative confirmed that the capital is all provided up front and equity-based, in other words it is an investment in the business not specific locations or joint ventures, as is sometimes the case with investment deals in co-working firms.

Going beyond Hong Kong, the group is set to open its first overseas space in London (Shoreditch) with co-working locations in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore planned thereafter. Further down the line, it is looking to move into “global gateway cities,” with the likes of Tokyo, Osaka, Bangkok and Brisbane among those that are on the list.

Co-working is sufficiently developed worldwide that most countries across Asia have a number of local players who compete with WeWork, the global leader valued at $35 billion, either now or else soon in the future. Some of the more developed of that bunch include Singapore’s JustCo, EV Hive in Indonesia and China’s Ucommune. WeWork has actually been busy consolidating its position, having snapped up Spacemob in Southeast Asia and its main rival in China, Naked Hub.

Logistics on-demand service GoGoVan became Hong Kong’s first billion-dollar startup via a merger last year, and now is doubling down on growth after raising $250 million in new capital.

The new round was led by InnoVision Capital, with participation from the Russia-China Investment Fund, Hongrun Capital and Qianhai Fund of Funds. Two other notable investors include Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics subsidiary — Alibaba is already an investor via its Hong Kong entrepreneurship fund — and 58 Daojia Group, the parent of the ’58 Suyun’ business that merged with GoGoVan.

There’s more capital coming soon it seems, with GoGoVan saying in an announcement that the $250 million is “the first phase of its new round of funding.” Despite reaching unicorn status via the merger, GoGoVan didn’t disclose a valuation for this new round.

The company plans to use the money to expand its business into new markets, and in particular India and Southeast Asia, having focused on China primarily to date. Together with 58 Suyun, GoGoVan claims to cover 300 cities with some eight million registered users and 2,000 staff.

The service itself is anchored around short distance logistics and trips, but GoGoVan CEO Steven Lam explained that the company plans to soon introduce a door-to-door option and other offerings that “simplify logistics and delivery services.”

GoGoVan’s main rival is Lalamove, a fellow Hong Kong-based logistics startup. Lalamove raised $100 million last year at a valuation of nearly $1 billion. While GoGoVan’s exit was its merger, Lalamove is looking to remain independent and it has begun thinking about an IPO, which could take place in Hong Kong, its head of international Blake Larson told TechCrunch.

GoGoVan and Lalamove are two of the last that remain standing from what was once a very cluttered field as the rise of Uber saw dozens of companies sprout up as an ‘Uber for logistics’ services. The secret to their survival? Getting deep into the Chinese market is one crucial factor, but from talking to the two companies over the years, both cast the ‘Uber for X’ buzzword aside and concentrated on working with SMEs and repeat business customers rather than the shallow (and fickle) consumer market.

Uber’s Cargo service, for example, offered on-demand logistics in Hong Kong but it didn’t live long before being shuttered.

A month after it filed for a much-anticipated Hong Kong IPO, Xiaomi has revealed a little more financial information after a monster 621-page document disclosed a $1.1 billion (seven billion RMB) loss for the first quarter of the year.

The IPO, which could raise up to $10 billion value Xiaomi at high as $100 billion, is set to be the largest IPO raise since Alibaba went public in the U.S. in 2014. That prospect got a boost with a dose of positive financial growth despite a loss incurred by one-off payments.

The document filed was an application to issue a CDR as part of a dual-listing that would include Mainland China, showed that Xiaomi’s revenue for the quarter jumped to 34 billion RMB, or $5.3 billion. That’s compared to 114.6 billion RMB ($17.9 billion) in total sales for all of last year, according to digging from TechCrunch partner site Technode.

While Xiaomi posted a loss for the quarter, the firm actually posted a 1.038 billion RMB ($162 million) profit for the period when one-time items are excluded. Xiaomi previously registered a 43.9 billion RMB ($6.9 billion) loss in 2017 on account of issuing preferred shares to investors (54 billion RMB) but it did post a slim profit in 2016.

The company is ranked fourth based on global smartphone shipments, according to analyst firm IDC, and it is one of the few OEMs to buck slowing sales in China.

China is, as you’d expect, the primary revenue market but Xiaomi is increasingly less dependent on its homeland. For 2017 sales, China represented 72 percent, but it had been 94 percent and 87 percent, respectively, in 2015 and 2016. India is Xiaomi’s most successful overseas venture, having built the business to the number one smartphone firm based on market share, and Xiaomi is pledging to double down on other global areas.

Interestingly there’s no mention of expanding phone sales to the U.S., but Xiaomi has pledged to put 30 percent of its IPO towards growing its presence in Southeast Asia, Europe, Russia “other regions.” Currently, it said it sells products in 74 countries, that does include the U.S. where Xiaomi sells accessories and non-phone items.

Despite its design progress, relative age as an eight-year-old company and the fact it is shooting for a $100 billion, Xiaomi left some spectators disappointed when it wheeled out a very iPhone X-looking new device earlier this month. While the company claims the Mi 8 is packed with new technology, it’s hard to look past the fact that a number of its visual designs are identical to Apple’s flagship smartphone. Xiaomi could have made a stronger statement of intent with the launch, but it will hope its financials can do the talking as it moves into the last moments of preparation before its public listing.

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