| Latin America
When he leaves office in October, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will also leave behind a significant YouTube legacy. In 2023, he was deemed Latin America's most-watched streamer, as his daily press conferences hit 49 million hours of watched content that year. López Obrador, whose populist policies often faced opposition from the country's traditional media, also fueled the surge of YouTubers who posted content supporting him. There were reports of Mexican migrants in the U.S. claiming that these YouTubers were a significant source of pre-electoral information, like El Chapucero. — Daniela Dib from Mexico City South Asia
Bangladesh's proposed budget for the current financial year, announced on June 6, has extended a tax exemption to those making an income from any of at least 19 tech-related businesses including AI-based solution development, digital graphics design, data entry, and cybersecurity. But there is a catch. This exemption will last three years and be allowed only if all business transactions of the eligible resident or non-resident Bangladeshi are cashless. All in all, it's a good day for digital payment businesses in the country. — Durga M. Sengupta from Bengaluru Southeast Asia
Malaysia is setting up a gig workers' commission to ensure fair wages, social security protection, and dispute settlement for platform workers. The government agency will scrutinize contracts and hold companies responsible for unfair working conditions. There are about 3 million gig workers in the country, about a fifth of the total workforce. Singapore is also due to pass a law this year to provide social security and injury protection for gig workers. — Rina Chandran from Bangkok Africa
Startup failures are never fun to write about, but they almost always come with lessons, especially when the failure follows significant hype. That is the story of Gro Intelligence, a New York and Nairobi-based agriculture tech startup founded in 2013. After 12 years of struggling to find product-market fit, and raising nearly $125 million, the company is shutting down. It set out to build the "world's largest agricultural data platform," but never really figured out what to do with this data and how to build sustainable revenue. — David Adeleke from Abuja China
China's leading on-demand delivery company, Meituan, beat analyst expectations to post a 25% year-on-year revenue increase in the first quarter, making a profit of $745 million. "We effectively captured the industry rebound and invigorated local consumption," Meituan's chief executive said in last week's earnings call. Our latest story is all about how the company managed to make food delivery so cheap through its group order program that even lower-income consumers can afford to order frequently. But drivers tell us they are working more for less pay while delivering batched orders.— Joanna Chiu from Vancouver | 
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