Daily Briefing: Novo Tellus to invest in Catalist-listed Grand Venture Technology; Gov't wants more citizen translators to improve translation in four languages: MCI

And how a Singaporean AI startup makes waste collection recycling easy.

From DealStreetAsia:

Private equity firm Novo Tellus has signed a conditional placement agreement to invest $23.6m (US$17.7m) in Singapore’s Catalist-listed semiconductor supplier Grand Venture Technology (GVT), according to the stock exchange announcement.

The investment will be made through NT SPV 12, the Cayman Islands-based, wholly owned subsidiary of Novo Tellus PE Fund 2 L.P. The fund invests in mid-market technology and industrials sector firms in Southeast Asia.

NT SPV 12 will acquire 71.5 million new ordinary shares of GVT or 23.4% of the company’s enlarged share capital. The issuing price of $0.33 per share represents an 18% discount over the volume-weighted average price of $0.40 per share based on the trades done on the SGX-ST on 11 January 2021.

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From ChannelNewsAsia:

The Ministry of Communication and Information hopes to engage more citizen translators to translate materials and spot errors, and expand the government’s "collective capability for getting translation right," Senior Minister of State Sim Ann said on 15 January.

The volume of translated text being put out by the government has increased, she said, noting that an average of more than 300,000 words are outsourced to be translated each month.

"That's a few full-length novels right there...And we want to make sure that, despite the high volume and also the very fast paced environment that we work in, we want to get translation right," said Sim, speaking to the media at a briefing on Friday.

Recently, the organisers of the 2020 National Day Parade apologised for errors in the Tamil text that was broadcast live on Television.

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From e27:

Waste management—an unromantic topic—is often a neglected but critical environmental service.

Organisations and smart cities collect and analyse waste and recycling data to improve their service performance and profitability. Many of them have invested millions of dollars in waste management technologies, such as sensor technologies, radio frequency identification and software systems, which help in collecting operational data.

However, there still remains a gap in analysing and extracting actionable insights from this data and using it to improve waste collection, recycling, pricing, performance, and sustainability.

Two Singapore-based entrepreneurs, Vladimir Chuchkin and Dr. Elias Willemse, are determined to bridge this gap using new-age tech tools.

Read more here.