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Ride-hailing start-up opens seventh R&D centre Malaysia

According to a recent report, the leading Online-to-Offline (O2O) mobile platform in Southeast Asia, announced the opening of its new Research and Development (R&D) centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where the company was first founded in 2012.

The R&D centre is the ride-hailing app company’s seventh, and an extension to its global R&D footprint that already includes teams based in Bangalore, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Seattle and Singapore.

The Kuala Lumpur centre underlines the company’s commitment to nurturing deep tech talent in its home region.

The ride-hailing app plans to hire 100 tech employees for its Kuala Lumpur R&D centre in its first year of operations, including software engineers, data scientists and data analysts. The team will focus on developing and enhancing real-time communications features such as VOIP calls via the company’s chat app, building new and exciting web products for the firm and improving and developing new safety measures through machine learning.

An example of how the company uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance safety is its Driver Fatigue feature, that calculates a “fatigue score” based on factors like how long the driver has been on the road, time of day, rest between shifts and even his or her age and profile. When a driver hits a high fatigue threshold, they will be sent a notification to take a break.

Since the end of 2017, the company has doubled its tech headcount across its six R&D centres and plans to add 1,000 new tech roles in 2019. The company’s expansion of its R&D network will support its continued growth and evolution as it moves to become the first everyday super app in Southeast Asia.

This year alone the company has seen accelerated expansion into payments, as well as new verticals such as food, grocery and parcel deliveries. The ride-hailing app company has also expanded its presence from 30 cities at the start of 2017 to 235 cities today.

In Malaysia, the company is in more than 30 major cities and townships across the country.

While the majority of the team will continue to work on core transport projects, the growth in the company’s tech bench will fuel continued development of its platform which is a suite of APIs for partners to integrate their services with the company, as the company prepares to see a surge in partnerships and services over the next 12 months.

The firm is also boosting its AI capabilities as it aims to leverage on its data – one of the largest datasets of Southeast Asia – not only to improve and develop new services but also to solve some of the region’s most complex challenges such as congestion and financial inclusion.

The chief technology officer stated that the firm doesn’t build tech for tech’s sake. They build it to solve problems, to create opportunities, to lift people and economies. That’s why the company will continue to fortify its team and invest in talent, to meet the scale of its ambition and the challenges it wants to solve.

The company’s decision to establish an R&D centre in Malaysia is an extension of its philosophy of developing highly localized solutions in the countries where the firm’s consumers reside while tapping into the best specialised tech talent around the world.

It was also noted that the company’s model of distributed engineering teams allows the company to access specific sets of expertise in each of its R&D centres around the world, such as machine learning, predictive data analytics, mobile-first technology, and consumer-focused user experience.

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Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

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CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

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Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

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SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

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HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

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IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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