Here's What You Need To Know When Buying A Vehicle For Your Growing Business

Despite global economic setbacks, businesses have been redoubling their investments to foster better growth once the economy rebounds. The current upward trend of business vehicle purchases is a major example of this. Commercial vehicle sales broke 24 million units in 2020, according to Knoema. Whether this trend was driven by panic buying or by inventory surplus driving down prices remains to be seen, but in the face of a growing vehicle shortage, it may be wise for businesses to purchase their own vehicles now while prices have not climbed back up yet. If you’ve been wondering how best to facilitate that for your business, read on.

 

Leasing for more flexibility

 

Leasing is one of the most common ways growing businesses finance their vehicle purchases. It requires the least amount of monetary commitment. Lease costs are often only less than 10 percent the full price. This averages out at around $460 per month, with lease periods often lasting 3 years. It’ll take a few lease periods to fully own the vehicle, but you can opt out at any time if you decide that you can no longer afford it. This flexibility is perhaps one of the best advantages for businesses who are still in the process of growth, when it’s still up in the air whether things will keep going well in the future.

 

Buying new to dodge maintenance costs

 

Purchasing a new vehicle is the most expensive method, but it’s also the most hassle-free. If your business has a lot of disposable funds that are just going to get dissociated into trivial upgrades that you probably don’t need anyway, it might be better to just pool them together to buy a new car. Brand new vehicles require practically zero maintenance and come with the latest quality of life features. In contrast, depending on the age of the vehicle you buy, you may need to set aside over $400 for the yearly maintenance of a secondhand car, and that’s not accounting for the myriad complications that might result from age. Buying new lets you circumvent that. The only problem is the price tag. But even if you decide to buy new, there are still ways to cut down on costs. If you’re savvy enough to hunt for good prices and deals in your area, you can get a brand-new, fully reliable vehicle with money to spare. You just need to take account of all the dealerships near you to compare car makes and models, and get discounts that are available at the moment.

 

Buying secondhand to save money

 

Secondhand purchases carry the one-off benefits of buying a new car, but without the hefty price tag. Alternatively, if you take out a car loan, you can immediately own a car for lower monthly payments than you would get if you leased a car. This method of accessing a business vehicle is ideal if you have some money to spend, but not enough for a brand new car. Used cars boil down to a cost-benefit assessment of maintenance and lower purchasing price. If you can justify your overhead for an older car, this may be the more advantageous way for you to obtain a business vehicle. As with purchasing new, learning how to shop around and having a good eye for cars can net you a reasonably reliable vehicle for a fraction of the price of a new one. 

 

It may not be the best time for everyone to buy a business vehicle, but for those who can afford to do so, this might be their only window in a long while. If getting your own company vehicle is vital to your continued growth, then you’re best advised to figure out a way to get your hands on one while supplies last.

 

Microsoft Unveils Its First Beta Version for Windows 11

Microsoft has released the first beta of Windows 11, and this version will be available for those who have enrolled in its Windows Insider Program. Until today, getting access to Windows 11 was tedious as the users had to install the Dev Preview, which Microsoft says is meant for "highly technical users" as it has rough edges. According to Microsoft, the beta release is less volatile, with builds being validated by Microsoft.

To install the beta version, you will need a compatible computer. The hardware will work with the next version of Windows. The company has said that it will be paying close attention to how well the 7th Gen Intel and AMD Zen 1 CPUs will be working during the testing period so that it will be possible t to run the beta on those computers. The beta release is good news for those who have installed the Dev preview as it helps them get their hands on Windows 11 as soon as possible.

For those who are still running Windows 10 but want to join the beta, you can register for Microsoft's beta program on its official website. Microsoft says that the Beta Channel releases are highly stable than Dev Channel. And it is comparatively easy to switch to the latest Beta channel as it only requires a quick reboot.

 

eCloudvalley Achieves AWS Machine Learning Competency

eCloudvalley Technology has become the very first Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner from ASEAN to achieve the AWS Machine Learning Competency status. This means that eCloudvalley Technology is AWS certified when it comes to offering a range of services and technologies to help businesses create intelligent solutions, from enabling data science workflows to enhancing applications with ML.

Achieving AWS Machine Learning Competency will help eCloudvalley serve a growing market in the Asia Pacific region looking to automate operations. The company has so far helped mobile advertising solutions and content developer PureTech Global to leverage AI to optimize their billing revenue by implementing a time-series forecasting model using Amazon Forecast, a fully managed service that uses machine learning to deliver highly accurate forecasts, to predict the optimal times for sending renewal notices for each of PureTech’s applications. “We have benefited from the support received from AWS and eCloudvalley, and continue to benefit from AWS’s advanced cloud capabilities like machine learning,” said John Lim, Chief Technology Officer, PureTech Global.

“We are delighted that eCloudvalley is the first AWS Consulting partner in ASEAN to achieve this competency. We look forward to innovating together and continuing to serve our customers in Southeast Asia with innovative and validated AWS Partner technology and consulting offerings,” said Conor McNamara, Managing Director, AWS ASEAN.

 

Luye Pharma Signs a Distribution Agreement with Zuellig Pharma

Luye Pharma Group has announced that it has signed an agreement with Zuellig Pharma, which will give the latter exclusive rights to distribute its central nervous system drugs Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate, immediate release) and Seroquel XR (extended release formulation) in Malaysia and Brunei.

“We are very pleased to collaborate with Zuellig Pharma again. By leveraging its business network and channel resources together with Luye Pharma’s in-house sales and marketing capabilities, we believe the distribution partnership will help better improve the accessibility of Seroquel products for patients in these two markets,” said Andy Siow, APAC Regional Director of Luye Pharma (International). “Meanwhile, we are also looking forward to working with more business partners, integrating resources from all sides to bring more high-quality and evidence-based innovative drugs to benefit patients in need.”

Luye Pharma has been continuously working to improve business capabilities around the globe and exploring growth opportunities. In Asia Pacific, Luye Pharma’s business footprint covers 15 countries and regions, with the company continuing to further expand in various markets through the establishment of its in-house sales and marketing team in Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong SAR, and Taiwan, China, as well as in other markets, through in-depth collaborations with a number of global partners in the region.

 

Influencers Can Now Showcase Their Brands and Sell Products Online With PopBox

AnyMind Group has announced the launch of PopBox, an online retail store for influencers where they can showcase and sell their own brand and products. Currently, PopBox is being made available in Thailand and Japan.

Apart from being a great platform for the influencers, PopBox will also enable the consumers to discover and purchase a wide variety of products from influencer brands. AnyMind Group has said that it will make PopBox available in other Asian markets soon.

Thai influencer brands 11am Shop by MayyR and Land of N by Nisamanee Nutt, and Japanese influencers such as Kanockstar and Mukuena have already listed on PopBox. Although these merchants are currently part of the AnyCreator influencer network, AnyMind has plans to open PopBox up to any influencer in near future.

“Since the start, we have constantly developed new products and business models and we can now provide platforms that form the next-generation business infrastructure for the digital economy, similar to a super app for running a business. PopBox adds to our vast amount of offerings for influencers and content creators that span content monetization and distribution, brand collaborations and the creation of influencer brands,” said Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group.

 

 

Alphaus Makes an Entry into Southeast Asia

Cloud Financial Management company Alphaus has made an entry into Singapore. The company plans to provide its suite of cloud financial management solutions to the fast-growing MSP Cloud Comrade in Singapore.

This move into Singapore will mark its journey of expansion in the Asia-Pacific region where it plans to pioneer in simplifying billing/spend management and tackling cloud waste for companies. Its SaaS products serve it as a catalyst to faster, greater, and better adoption and use of the cloud.

“The SaaS solutions from Alphaus for billing management and cloud cost optimization provide us with the requisite tools, information, and intelligence to achieve these seamlessly. These tools are integral to our operations and in use 24/7. Alphaus’ Wave and Ripple go a long way in helping maximize ROI, one of the key value propositions for moving to the cloud,” said Andy Waroma, Co-Founder & Co-Managing Director of Cloud Comrade.

Alphaus was founded in 2015 and is backed by DNX Ventures, NTT DoCoMo Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Archetype Ventures, Accord Ventures and 500 Startups. The company counts NTT Data, Nomura Research Institute (NRI), and ISI-Dentsu, as its clients. Headquartered in Japan, the company has a growing Global Delivery Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia comprising 10 team members. Alphaus is looking to further expand in the APAC and Oceania regions.

 

Rapid.Space Cloud Announces New Japan Zone

The European company Rapid.Space has launched its first point of presence in Japan in partnership with Nexedi KK. The company has a presence in over 200 points all around the world.

This new zone will provide its clients in Japan the advantages of Rapid.Space hyper open architecture including open source software, open hardware and transparent, open services.

Rapid.Space will be offering its flagship virtual machines "VPS" (195€/month for 256 GB RAM and 20 cores) and "VPSBrute" (495€/month for 1 TB RAM and 64 cores), as well as web acceleration via its global CDN (content delivery network) and SDN (software-defined networking) through this Japan zone. These offerings will help its Japanese clients meet their high computational requirements.

"We are very proud to be growing our global infrastructure with the presence of Rapid.Space cloud in Japan. It is a country with one of the most innovative and technologically advanced economies — but also one with significantly higher cloud infrastructure costs. Here, we hope to carve out our niche with our Rapid.Space high-performance, hyper open virtual machines and access to our global CDN and SDN while also adding more points of presence throughout Japan," said Jean-Paul Smets, CEO of Rapid.Space.