Cathay Innovation attended CES in Las Vegas this year – we visited the exhibitions and held meetings with our ecosystem of corporates to discuss the evolution of various technologies. As usual, the event continued to be massive, with more than 4,500 exhibiting companies and 180,000 attendees. […]
Category: Blog
Connecting African Entrepreneurs to the world with the first Pan-African Venture Capital Fund
Africinvest and Cathay Innovation proudly announced today the launch of Cathay Africinvest Innovation. This new fund is the largest venture capital fund in Africa with nine offices interconnecting the entire African continent. Our aim is simple: contribute to changing the financing and development of startups in this continent of 1.3 Billion of people. How so? By providing the […]
Do not miss 5G, the highway to the Artificial Intelligence revolution!
As the debate heats up around the prices and providers of 5G, we should all keep in mind that its outcome will shape the global communications market for a long time to come. 2019 may not be the year of 5G’s distribution to the vast majority of consumers, but it is the year when key […]
Where East meets West: Consumer Fintech at a crossroads — A South East Asia Story
Innovators around the world have heralded fintech as a force that will remake the storied financial sector. Investors agree. In the first three quarters of 2018 alone, venture capitalists invested $32.6 billion in 1,164 companies — almost double last year’s $17.9 billion invested globally. Already, fintech startups are impacting consumers lives: in 2017, an EY survey across twenty […]
Insuretech’s real promise: growing the pie
In Silicon Valley, the typical narrative around any innovation follows a similar pattern: [Insert industry] has not changed in [Insert arbitrary large number] years. They are still using [insert choice of antiquated technology: fax machines, excel sheets, mainframe computers] to conduct their business. Therefore, technology startups are poised to disrupt it — with a new approach, […]
How we early-backed Cootek, now China’s most global software company, with 132 Million DAU in 240 countries, going Public on the NYSE on September 28
Sometimes, taking a company public only takes only three years, like with Cathay Innovation invested Pinduoduo, but most of the time it takes much longer. September 28 2018 is a very special day for us, because it is the day CooTek is going public on the NYSE (NYSE:CTK) at a multi billion dollar valuation. We invested […]
PinDuoDuo: how they became the fastest growing commerce company ever
PinDuoDuo (PDD) rang the Nasdaq bell last week and ended day 1 trading at a valuation of ~$30 billion. As an early investor supporting the Company, we witnessed first hand what they did to achieve this amazing milestone. Below is a summary on what PDD is and how they become a commerce giant. […]
Help your ecosystem and your ecosystem will help you, the lesson taught by the uncontainable rise of PinDuoDuo
The US e-commerce ecosystem today is clearly dominated by a few giants, often making it harder for startups to innovate. Here’s an example, with each quarterly earnings call, Amazon continues to conquer US commerce and steamroll its competitors. Today, Amazon’s e-commerce market share in the US is nearly 50%. That’s more than three times the […]
Why I joined Cathay Innovation
I am an optimist. The mantra that startups can “change the world” (for the better) has long motivated entrepreneurs and investors. What’s most exciting is from where this change is coming from. While the global technology industry has been historically concentrated in one place — Silicon Valley — it is increasingly coming from everywhere. Remarkably, nearly […]
Peek, the company that is powering your next local experience
Studies show that more than half of US tech unicorns are founded by immigrants. When we met Peek’s founders, we were immediately convinced that Ruzwana Bashir and Oskar Bruening embodied the spirit and dedication that you can only really have when you come from abroad with the idea to create something big and special from […]