The latest big tech IPO out of Asia is Coupang, a likely $50B listing called the “Amazon of South Korea”. More on that annoying phrase in a moment. But first, let’s take a moment to be thankful for being in the Asia tech space. It’s just awesome. It’s just one cool company after another. Last […]
Luxury marketplace platform Farfetch has had a long courtship with JD, Alibaba and Chinese consumers. In the next update, I’ll go into my thoughts on Farfetch as a stand-alone company (basically, not good). But the more interesting questions for investors are: Is Farfetch going to get bought? What is the private market value to Chinese […]
Long-term investors search for high quality companies they can buy and hold. They ignore the near-term swings in stock prices and, instead, try to capture the larger creation of value in the enterprise over time. It’s a long-term wealth creation strategy. And it really works… …for a small number of companies. Yes, the results of […]
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses the five biggest trends in digital China and Asia for 2020-2030. These trends include the rise of smart devices, smart IoT logistics platforms, new manufacturing, smart cities, and digital finance. Towson believes that China and Asia will become the world’s largest and most innovative digital ecosystem in the next decade.
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses the competitive landscape between Farfetch and Secoo in the luxury e-commerce market in China. He argues that Farfetch has the global reach and brand recognition, while Secoo has the strong local presence and relationships with luxury brands. Towson believes that the winner of this race will depend on which company can execute its strategy better and adapt to the ever-changing Chinese market.
This is a follow-up to my article on conversational AI with He Xiaodong at JD (article here, podcast here). I also spoke with Tao Mei, who is Vice President of Cloud & AI – and Technical support Vice President of JD. We talked about how AI was being used in fashion, which is a fascinating […]
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson interviews the Vice President of Cloud & AI at JD.com about how AI is transforming the fashion industry. They discuss three key areas where AI is having an impact: personalization, supply chain management, and product development. For example, AI can be used to recommend products to customers based on their past purchases, track inventory levels and optimize shipping routes, and design new products that are more likely to appeal to consumers.
I had a fascinating discussion with He Xiaodong of JD. He is the head of Deep Learning, NLP and the Speech Lab. And the Deputy Managing Director of JD AI Research. I did a podcast about this called Products with Personalities (Podcast 31) but I wanted to post some of his slides from our talk. […]
There was an interesting report about China ecommerce trends released by Coresight Research, which specializes in retail meets tech consulting. It’s run by Deborah Weinswig, who I’ve crossed paths with a few times in the last couple of years. I find their research to be very data-driven and generally close to my own thinking. So […]
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson interviews He Xiaodong, the Vice President of JD.com’s Cloud & AI division, about conversational AI. They discuss how conversational AI is evolving from chatbots to intelligent assistants with personalities. For example, Xiaodong explains how JD’s Smart Customer Service has been designed to have the personality of a young woman, in order to better connect with its customers.