Can South-East Asian tech’s hot streak last?

WHEN UBERSPACSPACSPAC came to South-East Asia, the Silicon Valley ride-hailing giant coaxed customers into cabs with free ice cream, a tactic it had deployed in Western markets. Grab, a local rival based in Singapore, plied riders with durian, a pungent tropical fruit that repels many Westerners but is beloved of people in places like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. GrabDurian, as it called the effort, delivered several varieties of the fruit (as well as desserts made from the stuff). After years of brutal rivalry Grab acquired Uber’s South-East Asian operations in 2018. The tale lives on as a lesson for doing business in the region, which is home to nearly 700m people. Digital services such as ride-hailing and food delivery can thrive—so long as they adapt to local conditions.Now it is Western investors who are salivating. In the past year South-East Asia’s internet-startup scene has got hotter than Thai chilli peppers. The market capitalisation of Sea, another Singaporean group that listed in New York in 2017 (and whose name alludes to the shorthand for South-East Asia widely used in the region), has quintupled in the past year, to a mighty $125bn. On April 13th Grab said it would go public on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company (). The deal values the company at nearly $40bn. Gojek, an Indonesian ride-hailing group valued at more than $10bn, could merge with an e-commerce firm called Tokopedia, before also considering listing via a in New York. Traveloka, another local unicorn (as unlisted startups worth $1bn or more are known), is reportedly in talks to list in New York via a . All told, the region’s half-dozen biggest internet darlings are worth nearly $200bn.