👾📲 The Hell is Bondee? Is It Just Another Hype?

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Here's what we got for you:

• 🌊 The SEA - Bondee - The Next Gen Social App

• ⛵ SEAppets - Southeast Asia vs Latin America

• 💰 SEA Deals  

• 🖼️ AI Image of the day

• 🐣 Tweet of the day

Markets 📈

If you've been scrolling your phone while visiting your dad's sister's house during this Chinese New Year, chances are you saw people on social media sharing a cutesy 3D avatar of themselves.

The new social media that's taken Southeast Asia by storm is called Bondee and boy do we have a treat for you today.

🤷‍♂️ What is Bondee?

• Quietly launched on the 17th of January, the new social networking app has quickly become the most popular app in Asia, with more than 1 million downloads on Google Play

• But the app is only available in selected countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea

• It is created by Metadream, a Singapore-based tech startup. The company is betting on Meta being right about the metaverse

🛠️ So what do you do with the app?

• With a tagline "live with your friends", Bondee lets users customize their avatars and decorate their own virtual rooms

• You can also visit your friend's room, chat with them or do stuff with them like dancing and camping etc.

• There is also a "floating" feature where users could sail through the platform to meet new people and find messages in bottles

• It's basically the social media of The Sims

👾 Wait, there's more

• You bet they are including NFT and blockchain technology into the app. How?

• Well the company haven't really rolled it out yet but it seems like it's in the works

🤔 Thoughts

• To be honest, I'm quite sceptical about the app

• In order for a social networking app to succeed, you need 3 things: scalability, stickiness and moat

• Scalability: I gotta give it to Bondee. Not sure about their DAU (daily active users) but 1 million downloads in 2 weeks is pretty impressive.

• It's still too early to say for now but if people use the app, love it and start inviting their friends to the network then there's a shot here for Bondee

• Stickiness: This is the most important factor for a social networking app to succeed. The app needs to be sticky

• If people go on the app to just chill with friends then it will become sticky, if people go to consume content then it won't be sticky

• Moat: I don't see why Meta or Twitter can't roll out something similar. Bondee has first mover advantage but Meta and Twitter have the resources

Btw remember Clubhouse? Do you know anyone who still uses it?

Twitter Spaces is still a thing but Clubhouse? I wrote a thread on why Clubhouse won't work right when it was taking off. There's also one thing Clubhouse had back then that unfortunate for Bondee, is long gone - the lockdown.

SEAppets ⛵

1. TechInAsia has an amazing chart showing the similarities between the two emerging markets from opposite sides of the globe - Southeast Asia and Latin America. 

Ok, I gotta admit I was shocked to see that e-commerce penetration in Malaysia is the lowest in SEA. Just to give you an idea, matured e-commerce markets like Korea, the States, and China are all having more than 8% e-commerce penetration rate. Is that opportunity I smell?

2. Gojek, the Indonesian Super App has appointed Sumit Rathor as the new general manager of Gojek Vietnam. Rathor joined Gojek in 2019 as regional head of Gojek Indonesia and has more than 20 years of experience in strategy, operations and finance. Gojek has said it now has more than 200,000 drivers and tens of thousands of food merchants in Vietnam.

3. Thailand's Flash Express, the country's unicorn that uses AI to determine the fastest and cheapest routes, is expanding its footprint across the region. The main focus of the year? The Philippines. But it is also eyeing the Vietnam market.

4. This VC thinks that Malaysia has the potential to be a global leader in the B2B SaaS industry. His take? Because there are many multinational companies here that have different resources to service the world and also because we're cheap.

Not really a strong argument if you ask me.

SEA Deals 💰

1. Monde Nissin Corp, a Philippine-listed food producer announced it had acquired a 15% stake in Figaro Coffe Group for USD $15 million. In 2021, the company raised USD $1 billion in the country's largest-ever IPO. Figaro operates and franchises a network of restaurants including Fiagro Coffee, Angel's Pizza and Tien Ma's.

2. Based in Indonesia, dental clinic chain Satu Dental is said to be raising USD $7 million in funding from existing investors Alpha JWC Ventures and a new investor Susquehanna Venture Capital to expand its footprint in the country. 

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AI images of the day 🖼️

Selfie with Picasso

Tweet of the day 🐣

GaryVee: Wake up when you're 30, you have all the time in the world 🥴

Me: Woke up in my 30s with a kid **Submitted to the rat race**

That's a wrap for today. See you all tomorrow! 👋