GrabTaxi may have won the first rounds. At the end of 2014 Easy Taxi pulled out of Indonesia and was laying off staff in Malaysia, while GrabTaxi Holdings had raised almost $340 million in venture capital and loans; Japan’s SoftBank is its biggest investor.
* Rocket’s Asian Ups and Downs—Forbes Asia
By Susan J. Cunningham Forbes Asia Philippine Long-Distance Telephone's 8.6% stake in Rocket Internet is a no-brainer: Telecom and Internet giant PLDT is a pioneer in online and mobile payments, and Rocket’s own payment system, Payleven, quickly foundered in 2012 when the first Rocket e-commerce sites were being established in Asia. For many poorer residents... Continue Reading →
* Keeping Up With Rocket’s Southeast Asian Adventures
Rocket’s founders, the three German Samwer brothers, still have a reputation as cloners, flippers and operators of grueling, ruthless workplaces with high staff churn. Rocket executives readily acknowledge that their sites are copycats, usually of sites pioneered in the U.S. ...
* All about Thai caves—The Nation
"Discovered" may not be the most accurate term. Frequently, local villagers have known that a cave existed, but they had never ventured very far within because they feared ghostly occupants or lacked proper lights and equipment. The recent teams of foreign cavers therefore have often found themselves to be the first people to enter an underground chamber with a 15-metre high roof or to see a thousand-year-old flowstone resembling a frozen waterfall.
Susan J Cunningham 