Hello Betamax, I'm not much of a gambler, but I have been known to hit the blackjack tables on occasion. I always set a limit, though, and I've never walked away from the tables after losing more than I can afford. But I wonder what it would be like if I had millions to blow on some crazy bet, like investing an insane amount of money in a company just so I could task the CEO with doing something I could never accomplish on my own.  Sounds crazy? That is basically what Meta did when it invested US$900 million in Cred, an India-based mobile payment app. The CEO of that company, Kunal Shah, was immediately promoted to global CEO of WhatsApp, where Meta is hoping he can finally give them a competitive product to dominate mobile payment markets. Too rich for my blood, but one hell of a bet all the same. Why would Meta do this? Money, of course. The company currently earns US$2 billion a year in advertising on WhatsApp, an estimated half of which comes from India. Since it already has the app in everyone's hands, Shah just needs to convince India's population to use it to pay their bills. India's mobile payment market could be worth as much as US$65 billion by 2030, a nice payout for the US$900 million Meta invested last week. If the company is successful there, they'll then likely try to export it to the rest of the world. But that's still a big IF. In this week's top story, Samreen Ahmed writes about what Indian tech insiders think of Meta's newest gamble and whether it will be successful. Some are betting against it. Super apps - the direction that Meta seems to be pushing WhatsApp - haven't always done well in India. Let's not forget that Meta's bets on the market haven't always been successful either. The Metaverse flopped. The company's Reality Labs has reportedly lost more than US$77 billion since 2020. The EU slapped them with a record 1.2 billion euro fine for privacy violations. Convincing Indians to allow Meta to handle their bills might require more trust than the tech giant has earned from users. Also on the theme of betting, our second story looks at K25.ai, a site that attempts to combine the live excitement of Twitch with online gambling - that is, if they can get regulators to agree. Finally, our last featured story is a Q&A with Kevin Aluwi - Gojek co-founder and now a venture partner at Lightspeed - who talks about Southeast Asia's main AI bottleneck, how AI is making startups leaner, and why he'd consider building again. Scott Shuey, senior editor |
