🏗️💽 Guess What? Malaysia Is Now The Most Attractive Data Centre Market in Asia

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Here’s what we got for you:

• 🌊 The SEA - Malaysia is emerging as the most attractive data centre investment market

• ⛵ SEAppets

• 💰 SEA Deals

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Markets 📈

The SEA 🌊

A few months back, I wrote about the data centre market in SEA and how Malaysia was at the bottom of the top 10 Asia Pacific list.

Well turns out things have taken a turn as Malaysia is emerging to be the top destination for data centre investments in the region.

🏗️ The Data Centre Market

• In recent years, tier 2 markets in Asia Pacific are seeing an increase in demand for data centre development, with cloud service providers looking to open dedicated Cloud regions in these markets rather than servicing them from key hubs like Singapore and Tokyo

• Knight Frank’s Data Research Report highlights that the Southeast Asia 5 (SEA-5) countries - Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines have seen significant interest due to their large populations and lack of development which means growth

• Knight Frank came up with a SEA-5 index that takes into account

  • Recent data centre take up and supply figures

  • Existing and future Cloud availability zones

  • Sub seas fibre connectivity

  • Population sizes

  • GDP growth etc

Malaysia is leading the SEA-5 market with 113 MW of take-up in 2022. This growth is due to the expansion in Johor and Kuala Lumpur and is supported by the country's strong GDP growth and new cloud regions from AWS and Google.

Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand have lower take-up figures and limited cloud demand, but this may change as global data centre operators and cloud service providers establish a presence in these markets.

🤷‍♂️ Why Malaysia?

• Malaysia's data centre industry has seen significant growth over the past decade due to an increased interest in cloud services, government initiatives and a Singapore data centre moratorium

• Early colocation operators like CSF Group, Basis Bay and VADS in Kuala Lumpur paved the way until 2010 when NTT GDC entered the market as one of the first foreign operators. Since then, most international operators have entered through acquisitions

• But the real driving force is the arrival of cloud service operators opening dedicated cloud regions to serve the Malaysia population and thereby committing to deploy a significant amount of capacity across various data centre facilities

Ohh and also because Singapore has pretty much reached capacity leading to spillover into the next best place - Johor which is a part of Malaysia.

SEAppets ⛵

1. Thunes, a global cross-border payments firm headquartered in Singapore has secured a Payments Institution license from France's Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution, allowing them to offer cross-border payment services to non-bank financial institutions in the EU. They have raised USD 30 million and have a valuation of USD 776 million. The company currently supports 80 currencies, offers payments in 130 countries and provides 300 payment methods.

2. Green and Smart Mobility Joint Stock Company (GSM), a company founded by the owner of Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) maker VinFast has officially launched Green SM Taxi, the first pure electric taxi service in Vietnam. The service is available in Hanoi and will soon be available in five more provinces and cities. The cars are VinFast electric vehicles, noiseless and carbon emissions-free, with intelligent entertainment features. Green SM Taxi will be available in Ho Chi Minh City in April 2023.

3. NusaTrip, a Jakarta-based online travel agency has acquired the Vietnamese online B2B hotel platform VLeisure. This will allow VLeisure to market its hotel management SaaS products to SMEs in Vietnam and Southeast Asia using SoPa’s capital and NusaTrip’s technology. NusaTrip will continue to acquire more travel agencies in Southeast Asia to build a regional travel platform that will benefit from the booming travel market in the region.

4. Ronin Network, a gaming-focused sidechain from Sky Mavis, recently upgraded its technology to become more secure and robust. Additionally, Sky Mavis plans to add more games to the chain. RON, the token that governs Ronin Network, has grown to over USD 100 million in value since its launch in February 2021 and has already handled over 423 million transactions.

SEA Deals 💰

1. Pickup Coffee, a Philippine-based coffee startup has raised USD 26.7 million in a series A1 round and has a new valuation of USD 119.5 million. Go Ventures, Openspace Ventures and Kickstart Ventures participated in the round. The company makes premium beverages accessible between USD 0.9 and USD 1.8 and has a coffee app in the works. The Philippine coffee market is expected to grow 6% annually until 2025.

2. JSW One Platforms, a B2B e-commerce venture of the JSW Group has raised USD 25 million from Mitsui & Co., Ltd in a Series A funding round. The funds will be used to strengthen the market presence and enhance tech capabilities, such as credit, logistics, and technology and to expand operations in India. Mitsui believes its investment will lead to a restructuring of the supply chain. Mitsui is a global trading and investment company with a diversified portfolio in 63 countries.

3. MindX, a Vietnamese edtech startup has raised USD 15 million in a Series B round led by education-focused private equity fund Kaizenvest. The funds will be used to develop products and services and enable global access to the digital workforce. Vietnam has seen a surge in edtech investments, with other startups such as Edupia, Virtual Internships, VUIHOC, Marathon and Azota raising funds in 2020.

4. Alibaba has invested USD 353.7 million into its subsidiary Lazada this year, despite its shrinking revenue and increased losses in the financial year ending March 2021. Lazada has a presence in 6 countries in Southeast Asia and is competing with other e-commerce sites, such as Shopee and Tokopedia. The platform has seen an 80% increase in annual active customers and a 70% increase in monthly active customers between March 2020 and September 2021.

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