TechTouch Asia

- L’Oréal has launched its 2026 Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program for startups across South Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (SAPMENA) - Winners secure a fully funded commercial pilot with one of L'Oréal's 40 international brands - Entering its third year, the programme has seen startup winners from Australia, India, Singapore and UAE - 2026 innovation themes tap into greater potential for AI-powered commerce, creator and affiliate ecosystems, and circularity solutions L’Oréal is officially calling for the next generation of tech pioneers to co-create the future of beauty. Applications are now open for the  2026 Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program  across the SAPMENA region.  The biggest  Beauty Tech  open innovation competition of this geographical scale, the  Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program  seeks to discover, support and nurture promising startups from the South Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa region. The co...

AI experimentation is accelerating at the enterprise level, but the real challenge begins after the pilot phase. While organisations are actively exploring agentic AI and automation, many are still thinking about how to operationalise these technologies securely and reliably across their environments. Increasingly, the focus is shifting from isolated AI tools toward orchestrating AI agents, automation, systems, and people within governed, end-to-end workflows.  TechTrade Asia polled Sharath Keshavamurthy (SK), Director of Engineering, South Asia at UiPath, on why pilots stall, where enterprises encounter friction, and what it takes to operationalise AI successfully within complex business environments. Keshavamurthy works closely with enterprises across the region on proofs-of-concept (POCs), automation programmes, and agentic AI initiatives. He was formerly an enterprise automation practitioner, and is now as part of UiPath’s engineering organisation.  TechTrade Asia : Sin...

Organisations are now applying structured, evidence-based methods to verify that AI systems perform as required. Comprehensive AI quality assessment is now a necessary complement to trustworthiness and mitigating AI risks. To advance this further, Resaro and Partnership on AI (PAI) hosted a closed-door working session at ATxSingapore that focused on the key questions at the centre of AI assurance: how to define, measure, and verify that an AI system is actually fit for deployment, and how to decide which AI solution is best suited in a given context. Source: Resaro. Fireside conversation between Singapore Minister of State (MoS) for Digital Development and Information, Jasmin Lau (centre), PAI CEO Rebecca Finlay (right) and Resaro Co-CEO April Chin (left). A fireside conversation with Singapore Minister of State (MoS) for Digital Development and Information, Jasmin Lau, PAI CEO Rebecca Finlay and Resaro Co-CEO April Chin was a session highlight. MoS Lau encouraged ...

- Kaplan, StarHub, INSEAD, HEPMIL Media Group, Singapore Global Network and Panasonic Asia Pacific adopt Agentforce 360 to drive business growth, productivity and improved customer experience Salesforce, the AI customer relationship management (CRM), has announced strong customer momentum in Singapore. This follows the company's commitment in 2025 to invest US$1 B in its Singapore business through 2030 to accelerate the nation’s digital transformation and Agentforce adoption.  Leading Singapore organisations are transforming their business through Agentforce 360 by building critical systems of the architecture required in the agentic AI era.  Agentforce brings humans, agents, apps, and data together on one trusted, unified platform, providing the essential infrastructure required to convert raw intelligence into real work and business outcomes.  “The momentum behind Agentforce 360 shows that businesses are moving past experimentation to value realisation. Our...

By Eng Sheng Guan, CEO, Fiuu As digital commerce becomes more embedded in everyday life, businesses are paying closer attention to what keeps customers coming back. Across Southeast Asia, this is becoming a more urgent business priority. The region’s digital economy crossed US$300 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025  (Bain), showing how quickly online and digitally-enabled commerce have become part of daily transactions.  As that growth continues, the payment experience is no longer just back-end infrastructure. It is increasingly part of how businesses build trust, reduce friction, and encourage repeat purchases. The next phase of payment innovation will not only be about giving customers more ways to pay. It will be about making every payment moment feel fast, familiar, and secure enough for customers to return . Source: Fiuu. Eng. That shift is playing out in different ways across the region, but the direction is clear. In Malaysia, e-payment transactions grew 25% ...

By Surabhi Pandey, Communications Specialist, 1XBet Retention has become the most misunderstood metric in digital product strategy. Many consumer apps still treat it as a discount problem. When engagement dips, they reach for vouchers, push promotions or limited-time offers. Growth becomes a cycle of paid reacquisition. Loyalty becomes transactional. The user stays for the deal, not the product.  Image generated by Google Gemini based on content in this opinion piece. Gaming, sports and other high-engagement digital platforms operate differently. They retain users not because they are cheaper, but because they are structurally engaging. Their design principles are built around progression, feedback, real-time interaction and clear reasons to return. The best platforms do not trap attention. They earn it. For consumer apps facing rising acquisition costs and shrinking attention spans, the gaming and sports platform playbook offers lessons worth studying, provided they understand t...

- Agnes AI delivers globally-ranked agentic and image AI performance - Offers cost-efficient AI access for emerging markets - Supports national push to upskill tech professionals Agnes AI, a Singapore-headquartered AI model company that has built and trained its own multimodal foundation models entirely in-house, is now a top-10 lead across three independent AI benchmark rankings.  The company said its proprietary models have entered the global top 10 AI labs ranks. The latest rankings on Claw-Eval and Artificial Analysis follow a top-10 AI labs placement on PinchBench , a globally-recognised agentic model evaluation benchmark. According to the company, it is the first Singapore-born AI model company to enter the global top 10 across these international AI lab rankings. Agnes AI noted the benchmark results also provide independent validation that a Singapore-born AI lab can compete on the same global leaderboards as the world’s most-recognised AI companies. “Singapore’s ...