ScoutAsia by Nikkei & The Financial Times

What ScoutAsia by Nikkei & The Financial Times does

ScoutAsia is a B2B intelligence platform that aggregates Asia-focused business news and corporate data for multinational enterprises, financial institutions, and policy organisations. Jointly developed in 2018 by Nikkei Inc. and The Financial Times and operated through the Singapore-based joint venture Nikkei FT ScoutAsia Limited, the platform pulls more than 5,000 articles per day from over 100 Asian business and financial media outlets and combines them with corporate records on 5.5 million private and public companies across 26 Asian countries. Its core technology stack layers two AI capabilities onto the content base: ScoutAI, which performs 3-sentence article summarisation and topic classification across 69 themes, and a domain-tuned machine translation pipeline co-developed with Institute of Language Understanding Inc. that renders approximately 400 Nikkei articles per day from Japanese into English. The platform also offers Connections+, a premium add-on providing interactive corporate-relationship mapping backed by registry data from Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China.

The business runs on annual corporate subscription contracts, with pricing negotiated directly and a free trial funnel on the website; the product is sold primarily to equity funds, commercial banks, trading houses, policy think tanks, and manufacturers expanding across Asia. Distribution supplements direct enterprise sales with embedded partnerships into the Singapore Exchange Titan OTC trading platform and an MoU with Malaysia's CTOS Digital Berhad, plus co-marketing arrangements with JETRO, the Japan-ASEAN Center, and the Ireland-Japan Chamber of Commerce. The ScoutAsia service has been formally announced for discontinuation effective October 30, 2026, ending the joint venture's product offering roughly eight years after launch.

Name

ScoutAsia by Nikkei & The Financial Times

Legal name

Nikkei Inc.

Website

https://scout.asia

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

ScoutAsia is a B2B Asia-focused news and corporate data platform, jointly developed by Nikkei and the Financial Times in 2018, serving enterprise subscribers with AI-translated news, company intelligence, and corporate-relationship mapping across 26 Asian markets.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Asia Business Intelligence Platform

NAICS

Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910)

SIC

Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

B2B / Industrial Market Research (MPAAALAA)

Keywords

• Asia business intelligence
• Corporate data platform
• News aggregation services
• Financial market data
• Due diligence research

Headquarters

HQ city

Hong Kong

HQ country

Hong Kong SAR China

HQ region

Asia

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Corporate Subscription: Access to most ScoutAsia content is only available under corporate subscription plans. The platform offers named subscription plans including ScoutAsia for Titan OTC and ScoutAsia Japan. Pricing is not publicly disclosed; subscriptions are negotiated on a corporate basis.
2. Connections+ Premium Add-on: Premium add-on feature (Connections+) covering corporate registry data and relationship mapping for Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China is available as a paid optional extra on top of base subscriptions.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

ScoutAsia is a B2B Asia-focused news and corporate data platform jointly developed by Nikkei and the Financial Times. It aggregates over 5,000 English-language news articles daily from 100+ Asian business and financial media sources and combines them with corporate data on 5.5 million private and public companies. The platform uses proprietary AI (ScoutAI) for article summarization, topic classification, semantic search filtering, and personalised email alerts, and offers a premium Connections+ add-on for corporate relationship mapping using registry data from Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China.

Product overview

ScoutAsia is a unified B2B intelligence platform jointly developed by Nikkei and the Financial Times in 2018, providing AI-driven news and corporate data on Asian markets. The core ScoutAsia platform aggregates over 5,000 English-language news articles daily across Asia from 100+ major business and financial media sources, combined with corporate data on 5.5 million private and public companies. ScoutAI — the platform's built-in AI layer — powers article summarisation, topic classification (69 themes), semantic search filtering, and personalised email alerts. The platform's premium add-on Connections+ (launched 2020, additional cost) provides interactive corporate registry maps and relationship visualisation for Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China. ScoutAsia for Titan OTC (2021) extends Nikkei-translated content to SGX's Titan OTC trading platform. The entire ScoutAsia service is scheduled to terminate on October 30, 2026.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Scout AI: Proprietary text analytics AI technology that reduces noise in news searches and automates article summarization, identifying 3 core sentences to summarize each article.
• Connections+

Products and services

• ScoutAsia Core B2B platform aggregating over 5,000 English-language news articles daily from 100+ Asian business and financial media outlets, combined with corporate data on 5.5 million private and public companies across 26 Asian countries. Provides ScoutAI-powered article summarisation, advanced multi-faceted search filters, and personalised email alerts for enterprise subscribers including financial institutions, policy think tanks, manufacturers, and trading houses.
• Connections+ Premium optional add-on to the base ScoutAsia subscription that enables interactive relationship maps showing direct and indirect, past and present connections between persons and companies. Provides access to corporate registry data from Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China, and generates alerts for leadership and shareholding changes at target companies. Targeted at compliance, due diligence, and investigative research use cases.
• ScoutAsia for Titan OTC Subscription plan providing real-time AI-translated Nikkei headlines and excerpts on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) Titan OTC trading platform's Content Hub. Serves users trading equity index, FX, interest rate, and commodity derivative products with Nikkei news about Japanese companies, stocks, share indices, FX, interest rates, dividend indices, and commodities, with full article access via ScoutAsia.
• ScoutAsia Japan Subscription plan focused on Nikkei content and corporate data on both listed and unlisted companies in Japan. Designed for non-Japanese speakers at multinational companies, embassies, government agencies, and corporate executives in Japan who want English-language access to approximately 400 AI-translated Nikkei articles per day alongside original Japanese content.

Quantifiable outcome

• 5,000+ news articles delivered per day across Asia
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability7 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered strategic, core and minor.

• CTOS Digital BerhadstrategicStrategic or Co-development Partner · 10 January 2023Nikkei signed a Memorandum of Understanding with CTOS Digital Berhad, Malaysia's leading credit reporting agency and holding company of Thailand's Business Online Public Company Limited (BOL). The MoU covers potential collaboration in strategic areas including developing news monitoring services on CTOS's platforms via ScoutAsia, and powering Nikkei products with CTOS's global business information.
• Singapore Exchange (SGX)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 December 2020SGX partnered with Nikkei FT ScoutAsia Limited to integrate real-time AI-translated Nikkei content (from Japanese into English) on SGX's Titan OTC trading platform. Headlines and excerpts from Nikkei news articles are displayed on Titan OTC's homepage. The service covers Japanese companies, sectors, stocks, share indices, FX, interest rates, dividend indices, and commodities. Launched in 2021.
• HandshakescoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2019Singapore-based DataTech company Handshakes came on board in 2019 to power the ScoutAsia platform with its award-winning AI and data analytics technologies. Handshakes provides the AI backbone for ScoutAI features and platform analytics capabilities.
• Japan-ASEAN CenterminorGTM or Marketing PartnerScoutAsia co-organises events and webinars with the Japan-ASEAN Center to reach Japanese companies expanding into ASEAN markets.
• Ireland-Japan Chamber of Commerce (IJCC)minorGTM or Marketing PartnerScoutAsia co-organised a Special Briefing & Networking event with IJCC as its Knowledge and Information Partner, featuring Nikkei Asia Editor-in-Chief Shin Nakayama.
• Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO)minorGTM or Marketing PartnerJETRO co-sponsored and supported multiple ScoutAsia seminars including events in Osaka, Nagoya, and online. JETRO officials have spoken at ScoutAsia-hosted seminars.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Emerging players

• Crunchbase: Crunchbase provides private company, funding, and intelligence data via subscription, overlapping with ScoutAsia's sales prospecting and long-list creation use cases for enterprises and investors.
• AlphaSense: AlphaSense is an enterprise market intelligence and search platform using AI/NLP for content discovery across broker research, news, and filings, with comparable AI-driven summarisation and topic-monitoring features to ScoutAI.
• CB Insights: CB Insights is a market intelligence platform focused on private companies, transactions, and emerging technology trends; comparable to ScoutAsia's emerging-market intelligence layer and corporate research use cases.
• Tracxn: Tracxn is a private company intelligence and deal-sourcing platform with strong Asia and emerging-market coverage, competing for the same corporate research, sales prospecting, and competitive intelligence use cases.

Direct peers

• Dow Jones Factiva: Factiva is the closest direct competitor to ScoutAsia: a subscription news and business intelligence platform aggregating global media with company and executive data, sold to enterprises including financial institutions, corporates, and consultancies.
• EMIS (Emerging Markets Information Service): EMIS provides deep emerging-markets news, company data, and research across Asia, Latin America, and EMEA, closely mirroring ScoutAsia's Asia-focused B2B intelligence proposition for enterprise subscribers.

Broad incumbents

• Bloomberg Terminal / Bloomberg Intelligence: Bloomberg is the dominant broad incumbent in financial and corporate intelligence, offering news, company data, analytics, and translation/localisation that overlap directly with ScoutAsia's offering as a small, specialised competitor.
• LSEG (Refinitiv) Workspace: LSEG/Refinitiv is a broad incumbent in financial market data, news, and company intelligence, providing overlapping content, translation, and analytics to enterprise and trading-desk customers competing with ScoutAsia for the same Asia intelligence wallet.
• S&P Capital IQ Pro: S&P Capital IQ Pro is a broad incumbent company intelligence platform with deep financial data, screening, and relationship-mapping features that overlap with ScoutAsia's Connections+ relationship visualisation.

Regional players

• DealStreetAsia: DealStreetAsia is a regional PE/VC and startup intelligence outlet focused on Southeast Asia, comparable to ScoutAsia's Asia-focused news and corporate data for investment and corporate development professionals.

Market position

Strengths3 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about ScoutAsia by Nikkei & The Financial Times