13 Southeast Asian tech firms to watch
From AI programmes that polish your English language skills to a firm launching backpack-sized satellites from a barge in the South China Sea, here are some of Southeast Asia’s brightest deep tech start-ups
Southeast Asia has long been viewed as a follower when it comes to developing technology, but in recent years, home-grown tech companies have begun to mushroom. Here are some of the brightest hopes among the region’s deep tech start-ups that have maintained – at least until now – a relatively low profile.
ELSA SPEAK (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, VIETNAM)
This mobile app helps non-native English speakers improve pronunciation using AI technology. Users interact with a virtual assistant named ELSA that can detect and fix pronunciation mistakes. ELSA is also tailored to help reduce certain accents such as Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean. The start-up is backed by Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund 500 Startups and won a global tech competition at the Texas-based event South by Southwest EDU in 2016.
EQUATORIAL SPACE INDUSTRIES (SPACE, SINGAPORE)
With an area smaller than New York City, Singapore might not seem the ideal place to launch rockets into space, but Equatorial Space Industries thinks otherwise. The start-up claims its rocket can soar from a retrofitted barge on the South China Sea. It specialises in launching backpack-sized nano-satellites and offers services to Southeast Asian businesses.