Latest news with #market intelligence
Zawya
24-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
HKTDC to create boundless business opportunities with four major trade fairs in October 2025
Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have enjoyed robust bilateral trade relations on a range of products and services over the years. Adding to the Hong Kong's business advantages, Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) gathers the latest market intelligence and form partnerships to develop business for corporations. Mr Daniel Lam, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa, HKTDC announced here today that four international trade fairs will be held this autumn in Hong Kong, which will offer ideal platforms for traders and suppliers from the UAE to expand their businesses into new markets. These fairs are: Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) (13-16 October 2025) electronicAsia (13-16 October 2025) Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) (27-30 October 2025) Hong Kong International Outdoor and Tech Light Expo 2025 (28-31 October 2025) The UAE is Hong Kong's 11 th largest trading partner. Until November 2024, the total trade value between the two places reached over USD 14.8 billion. In which, the UAE was Hong Kong's 6th major export market with a total export value of over USD 11.2 billion and 17th largest import source with an import value of over USD 3.5 billion. Hong Kong Tech Pavilions to Present Innovations at GITEX Global 2025 and Expand North Star 2025 The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), in collaboration with the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), is proud to present the Hong Kong Tech Pavilions at two major events in Dubai: GITEX Global 2025 (October 13–17) and Expand North Star 2025 (October 12–15). Featuring over 20 innovative Hong Kong tech companies, the pavilions will showcase the city's growing prowess in innovation and technology, connect Hong Kong ventures with global investors and foster strategic partnerships in the Middle East. Portfolio of the Autumn Tech Fairs Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition): electronicAsia: 13 – 16 October2025 Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre 6 – 23 October 2025 Click2Match (Online) The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) will host two prominent exhibitions in Hong Kong from 13-16 October — Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) (EFAE) and electronicAsia (eAsia), which is co-organised with MMI Asia Pte Ltd. Both events will take place from 13 to 16 October 2025, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, showcasing the latest smart products, electronic components, and innovative solutions. In 2024, the two fairs brought together some 3,200 exhibitors from 19 countries and regions. Entering its 45th edition, EFAE continues to connect international exhibitors with buyers worldwide, showcasing groundbreaking products and solutions aligned with evolving tech trends. The 2025 fair will focus on three areas: AI and robotics: A diverse range of cutting-edge robots from leading brands including Ti5robot, PADBOT, and many others will be featured, highlighting their transformative potential across industries. A dedicated event space 'RoboPark' will also be set up at the fairground to demonstrate different use-cases of robots, offering insights into how robotics and AI are transforming everyday life and business operations through innovative real-world applications. Digital Entertainment: Products and solutions for entertainment, including immersive digital experiences, travel gadgets and outdoor entertainment items. Silver Economy: Fitness and health technology products specifically designed for the elderly. Various zones will be set up facilitating buyers in sourcing products. The highlighted zones include: Hall of Fame: A collection of electronic products from well-known brands around the world. A new 'RISE Avenue ' will be set up to showcase up-and-coming brands in Robotics, Gaming Accessories & Entertainment. Adventure Hub —an exciting new area full of fun and discovery. One highlight is the Immersive Experience Zone, where visitors can enjoy experience like VR sports games and metaverse journeys. Tech Hall: Showcasing IoT solutions and products that support smart living/lifestyle/city. Events such as Tech Trend Symposium will take place, where industry leaders will converge to explore the trends shaping tomorrow's world. The Startup Zone will showcase promising new startups and emerging ideas. A curated series of start-up events will be held to foster connection, collaboration, and growth. eAsia, on the other hand, will cover various electronic components, parts, and related solutions. During the two exhibitions, forums, presentations, and other events will be held, inviting experts share insights and provide valuable networking opportunities for industry professionals. Additionally, start-ups will have excellent platforms to promote innovative ideas, seek support from investors and gain advice from experts on business development. In 2024, the two fairs attracted over 60,000 industry buyers from 136 countries and regions. HKTDC Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) 27 – 30 October 2025 HKTDC Hong Kong International Outdoor and Tech Light Expo 28 – 31 October 2025 The 27th Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) will be staged from 27 to 30 October 2025 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Hong Kong International Outdoor and Tech Light Expo will also see its ten th edition from 28 to 31 October 2025 at the AsiaWorld-Expo. Under the theme 'Illuminated Design For a Smarter Future', the twin lighting shows will gather more than 3,000 exhibitors, forming a world-renowned lighting marketplace with enormous business opportunities. The Hall of Connected Lighting at the Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) will continue to be the spotlight of the show, showcasing pioneering designs, innovative products, and smart and IoT-enabled solutions from renowned international companies and brands. The famed Hall of Aurora will bring top-notch manufacturing brands to display an array of lighting accessories and products under one roof. The Commercial Lighting zone will feature high-quality reliable and versatile lighting products that suit applications like offices, retail stores, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, and more. The Residential Lighting zone will gather functional and decorative household lighting products. The popular LED Lighting zone will display a wide array of energy-efficient lighting, whereas the LED Essentials zone will bring a comprehensive range of lighting accessories and parts to the fair. The concurrent Outdoor and Tech Light Expo will be held from 28-31 October and serves as a comprehensive one-stop sourcing platform, showcasing a diverse range of outdoor commercial and industrial lighting solutions in shaping a smart city. The Expo introduces a Smart Pole and Solution zone, showcasing innovative solutions to optimise energy efficiency, while enhancing the quality of life for urban residents. The Horticultural Lighting zone will feature an array of new products, including cutting-edge plant lighting technology and a selection of lighting fixtures ideal for outdoor parks and domestic gardens. The Outdoor and Public Lighting zone continues to highlight lamps designed for outdoor public spaces and advertising purposes. The Technical & Professional Lighting zone goes beyond offering various lighting fixtures tailored for professional settings such as warehouses and production facilities. During both fairs, a diverse fair programme of networking receptions, seminars, buyer forums and exhibitor forums will be held for industry players to expand their professional networks and learn first-hand about market developments. Innovative Lighting Design Forum and Connected Lighting Forum will return at the Lighting Fair (Autumn Edition) while a seminar related to circular economy in lighting industry will be organised at the Outdoor & Tech Light Expo. The fairs will be held in EXHIBITION+ hybrid model, complemented by the "Click2Match", an online smart business matching platform that will operate from 20 October to 7 November, providing a convenient and efficient platform for traders to connect. In addition, the "Scan2Match" function also enables offline-to-online connections. By using the HKTDC Marketplace App, buyers can scan the dedicated QR codes of exhibitors to bookmark their favorite exhibitors, browse product information, view e-floor plans, and chat with exhibitors even after the fair to continue the sourcing journey.
Bloomberg
24-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Lightyear Raises $23M Series B, CEO Martin Sokk Says European Investment Needs to Be Fixed
CC-Transcript 00:00What do you do with this capital? What does it say about the investor confidence in your business and how you deploy that 23 million? Thanks for having me. I think like European investing really needs fixing at the moment. So we're looking to the Europe and there is so many countries, there's so many borders. Every country has their own taxation regulation, their markets, exchanges and so on. So we need to bring this together. So we are looking to deploy our capital into two different places. Like one is making sure that the infrastructure is there. So everybody in Europe has an access to the global markets, but in their local means. So UK people have UK stocks and taxations and everything. Hungarians have the same, but in Hungary and so on and so on. The second part is I think what what's really talked about at the moment is like how do you elevate the experience, the customer experience? So for us, our customers are really happy with that kind of simplicity and everything, like how do you approach the stock market? But hey guys, right now in interesting position, what can elevate this experience quite a bit more? So we're actually launching right now our Layer tooling. So they're calling it market intelligence. So like giving you a clarity, how do you invest, how do you understand what's happening? Everything in your portfolio, in the market, in the broader sense overall, who do you see as your competitors then? Martin You provide this investment platform. You're trying to get more people in Europe to invest, to think about investing, to take their money out of savings accounts, invest some of these are in tax wrappers as well, depending on which jurisdiction, who are you competing with, who are the incumbents that you're trying to take market share from? It's actually pretty wild because if you think about where's the money? So money shows, where's the competitors and my knees in the bank, like in every market in Europe that banks are dominating investment landscape. But at the same time, banks are not really focusing on investments. Investments is like safe business. They're focusing on credit. And by giving loans and mortgages and all this stuff. So nobody really focus on making the investment experience better. So for us, what we see right now is that creating this kind of localized experience in every single market is actually bringing money from banks to the investment platforms. And this shift is happening right now in Europe. It happened 40 years ago in the US and now it's happening in Europe as well. So you have $1,000,000,000 in customer assets. You've reached that milestone. What is growth looking like right now for the business as you look towards the end of the year and across the region, across Europe, where are the strongest growth drivers? Which region is the strongest driver of that at this point in terms of momentum for the business? So we can see that growth is still about like free every year and like the growth comes from like for us it's like three times. Yeah, every year. So like to focus like it shows like how Europeans really need a good product. Like today you go to the bank and it's like a product what you had like 20 years ago. So like while you're using your mobile phone, you have like all this modern apps and whatnot. It's like feel such a disconnect. So people need that, but they also need for a long term investing. So like the, like money and the capital that comes on our platform, it's not so much of with day trading. It's more about like investing in a long term feeling or what. And like we can see that money almost never leaves our platform. So of comes in in the region wise we can see that Europe is underserved. Most of the places like you look into like we have UK, Spain and Portugal, which is maybe a more kind of more advanced markets. But in other side you have like Baltics and Hungarians and so on where you have almost nothing on a market. So you need to have this kind of ramp up where you can have a ten next better product. So how much of this is about a cultural shift in Europe where you go to the US and it's very common to see people day trading, investing the US, So the platforms there, people are used to that, they're used to taking bigger risks. Do we need a cultural shift? Is there a cultural barrier to adoption? Oh yeah, definitely. Because I think us have advantage of like to have really dominant stock market and people invest in the local stuff often. So they invest in us, they invest in us. Nothing like nothing really in Europe but the Europeans, like UK people invest in UK market and the U.S. market and Germans invest in German and us. And like you need to have this kind of understanding of like fragmentation, like how to bring it together. So what I, what we see is that like a younger generation is like more open to the kind of investment landscape of less savings. So they're like thinking about the future. So it's really nice to see this kind of behavior of like money moving into like long term ETFs and and stock markets and local stock markets, which is really cool to see in Europe. And talking to the US, Robinhood has pushed pretty aggressively into Europe. Do you see them as a competitor? Should Robinhood be worried? Not really. I think like Robinhood is like focusing on mostly kind of the active trader. They have tried to come to the Europe multiple times, have never been really successful. I think like they're missing the kind of understanding that Europeans are a little bit different than people in the US because we need to invest in local stuff and we have all local taxation and local currencies and so on. So you need to have a local investment platform, not just like US version in the Europe. That doesn't really work by the end of 2026. What do customer assets look like for you? What does RR look like for you in terms of annual recurring revenue? What are your targets and what is your sense of ambition over the next 12 months, the next 2 to 3 years? Give us a sense of how big you want this business to be. So our business is it's a slow one in many ways because your hands. People's money and people are bringing their money on the platform. They're more careful usually than just downloading run them up. So what we see right now is our growth is actually accelerating. So we are going free at the moment. We don't see this coming down any anytime soon. If you're looking at assets in the European market, there is like about £19 trillion across the Europe. There's a lot of money already. It's most in the bank. So they're going after that. But I think the big question here is how do you bring more Europeans into investing? Because there's about 20%. The Europeans will only invest at the moment. So if you think about like moving that to 40% or 60%, like in the US, that's a big, big shift. And this is like what actually moves the European GDP in profit and creates the guy to successful investor. Since 80% of Europeans are not yet investing. No. Yeah, I'd say we need to change that and that's the opportunity. MARTIN Thank you very much indeed for.
Daily Mail
24-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Lightyear app launches AI features to make investing less 'expensive, clunky and exclusive'
Investment platform Lightyear has unveiled new artificial intelligence features which it says will help to drive retail investment in the UK. Lightyear, which recently passed $1billion in assets under management, said its new AI tools will help to make UK retail investing 'affordable, simple, and accessible as opposed to expensive, clunky, and exclusive'. It comes as the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has launched a campaign to promote retail investing, while 'targeted support' reforms will come into play next year. Martin Sokk, co-founder and chief executive of Lightyear, told This is Money: 'Retail investing in the UK is still full of friction, and Britain is still a nation of cautious investors, so there's much more to do here. 'We're using AI to bridge the gap, to help people make better-informed investing decisions in real time.' Lightyear on Thursday launched three AI market intelligence tools on its platform, which it says will 'level the playing field' by giving users access to market insights that were previously only accessible to institutional investors. These tools include 'lightning updates', which will send summarised news to a user's portfolio screen when a stock they own or are tracking makes a significant move. The platform has also launched a 'why did it move' feature, which allows users to select any period on a stock's price chart to find out why the price changed at that time, such as due to earnings, sector swings or global events. Investors can also access bull and bear cases for a stock, with both angles drawn from analyst sentiment and certain trusted sources of financial information. Lightyear says it will continue developing its AI capabilities over the next few years, including by adding wealth management options for investors, and that AI was 'integral' to its long-term strategy. Future AI developments could offer portfolio breakdowns and analysis, contextual tax help and what it calls 'self-driving money' - automated money management based on the investor's personal goals. Sokk said: 'AI in the financial sector is not just a phase. Companies that are building with this in mind will be the ones that succeed in the long run.' 'We believe AI will drive a lot of technological progress in the next five to ten years, so it's an integral part of our long-term strategy. 'Our new AI-powered market intelligence tools are just the beginning.' The platform said it has raised $23million in a series B funding round, with the new funds committed to launching its AI suite and further developing its AI offering. The funding was led by European-Japanese VC firm NordicNinja, as well as Superangel and SpecialistVC, as well as Bolt founder and chief executive Markus Villig. Rainer Sternfeld, partner at NordicNinja, said: 'We believe that AI will play a powerful role in every aspect of our future, and the investing sector is not immune to that.' On Thursday Lightyear also launched its platform in Sweden, Denmark and Bulgaria.
