On August 29, eclicktech’s Singapore AIxDTC Closed-Door Exchange Event concluded on a high note. Guest speakers from Manus, PlaudAI, Twilio and PayPal, alongside attendees from Google, Shopify and Stripe, as well as CEOs and CTOs of numerous local Singaporean startups, gathered for lively discussions on new paths and opportunities for global brand development and technological evolution in the AI era. Daisy Wu, CEO of eclicktech, also joined the guests for in-depth exchanges and networking.

01 Chinese Enterprises' Global Expansion in Full Swing: Social Media and Localization as Core Challenges and Opportunities

As revealed in a16z’s 5th Global Top 50 AI Products List updated on August 28, the representation of products from Chinese teams has further increased. Steven Xiang from PayPal’s Enterprise Client Department shared in his opening remarks:

"The global AI and SaaS market is unprecedentedly active today. Hundreds of AI startups focused on consumer applications have emerged worldwide, spanning content generative AI (image, video and music generation), SaaS services (efficiency improvement, process optimization and automation), and vertical AI applications in education, healthcare and e-commerce."

"PayPal attaches great importance to the innovation and development of this sector. We will provide one-stop support from merchant onboarding, technical integration to customer service to help these enterprises succeed in global expansion. With over 400 million wallet users worldwide, PayPal will also provide strong support for consumer-side user conversion and incremental acquisition for these global enterprises."

In the subsequent dialogue, Riven Gao, Head of DTC Brand Technology Department at eclicktech, pointed out:

"Compared with the previous shelf-based e-commerce global expansion model, DTC brands such as Plaud, Fufusquishy and Custype have achieved more efficient growth in recent years by leveraging social networks and KOL/KOC reviews to drive consumer-side viral growth. This stands in sharp contrast to the shelf-based sales model of platform e-commerce players like Temu and Shein. For example, a stress relief toy DTC merchant we serve grew from around 300,000 YouTube subscribers to 9 million in just over a year."

Tony Wang from Twilio added: "According to Twilio’s data, besides the first-tier players Temu and Shein, emerging DTC brands such as Halara and Shopsider are also growing at a considerable pace. Enterprises are also paying close attention to localization compliance and the effectiveness of communication channels. Consumers in different countries have varying preferences for instant messaging apps such as SMS, WhatsApp, LINE and Viber, which have a non-negligible impact on marketing and communication effectiveness."

Steven further shared: "In the e-commerce DTC sector, global consumers’ increasingly cautious spending attitude is making the 'affordable alternative' trend more prevalent, presenting a noteworthy opportunity. For DTC enterprises, especially physical DTC brands, deeply understanding consumer needs in large target markets will be more conducive to the long-term healthy development of brands."

02 When AI Meets DTC: Breaking Conventional Thinking to Find New Growth Paths

With continuous breakthroughs in large model capabilities and the rapid evolution of inference and multimodal technologies, 2025 has been hailed as the "Year of Agentic AI", playing an increasingly important role in intelligent marketing and brand globalization.

At the event, Felisa Fei, Head of AI Industry Go-to-Market Solutions at eclicktech, introduced eclicktech’s Singapore-based Intelick SGAI Solutions Team and its end-to-end marketing solutions for AI global enterprises and products, which cover three stages of marketing growth needs for growing AI companies:

1. Pre-PMF Stage: Acting as a growth partner to help develop a must-do checklist and validate user feedback through advertising to determine product development direction;

2. PMF Validation Stage: Continuing as a growth partner to develop integrated marketing campaigns, gain exposure and user feedback, accelerate channel content building and media communication, and refine products to validate market value;

3. Post-PMF Scaling Stage: Adopting combined campaign marketing to build a proprietary market growth flywheel, break free from single-point performance delivery, form a comprehensive data model, and drive rapid product iteration and user growth.

Felisa also previewed that eclicktech will launch the world’s first self-developed SEO AI Agent — SEOpage.ai on September 2, marking the birth and application of the next generation of AI SEO technology and a true SEO AI employee.

Subsequently, Riven Gao, Head of DTC Business at eclicktech, launched the new DTC Website Building and AIO Solution. With an integrated "building and optimization" strategy that deeply integrates website construction, performance optimization and AI empowerment, it helps DTC brands transform from the traditional reactive response model to a proactive, data-driven and predictive growth model.

Riven believes that in the AI era, fierce competition among DTC brands will impose more stringent requirements on technical support, including handling peak traffic, massive transactions and global expansion. eclicktech’s DTC Website Building and AIO Solution provides enterprise-grade full-feature deployment to ensure DTC brands can address various challenges brought by high growth from the outset. Meanwhile, in terms of conversion rate optimization, it forms a closed loop from problem identification to solution implementation and continuous optimization, achieving sustained business revenue growth.

It is evident that eclicktech has accumulated rich service experience in the AI and DTC fields and achieved rapid deployment from products to solutions and delivery services, emerging as a reliable growth partner for numerous DTC brands and AI startups.

03 Product is King: Demand Insights and Exceptional Experience Drive Competitive Differentiation

In the highly anticipated keynote panel discussion, Evan, Head of User Operations, Growth and Monetization at PlaudAI — which just launched its new Note Pro product on August 28 — engaged in a wonderful discussion with Riven on the topic of "AI Hardware-Software Integration Innovation and Global Marketing".

Evan stated: "PlaudAI has always believed in the philosophy of 'conversation is intelligence'. Compared with previous products, the new Note Pro is more intelligent, which reflects our unremitting pursuit of user experience through hardware chip upgrades and extensive software adaptation development. Currently, PlaudAI has established global hardware and software development and operations teams, with over 1 million users in more than 170 countries and regions."

Regarding the cooperation with eclicktech, Evan mentioned: "PlaudAI allows users to pre-experience some AI capabilities directly on the DTC website through technological innovation. eclicktech has also provided strong support for the technical optimization of PlaudAI’s DTC website. We will conduct more in-depth cooperation in refined localized operations and programmatic SEO in the future." Lin Li from Shopify added: "Shopify has now launched enhanced AI capabilities and data insights, and will work with eclicktech to provide more comprehensive support and efficiency improvements for merchants."

Subsequently, Zhang Tao, Co-founder and CPO of Manus, had an in-depth discussion with Ben Liao, Founder of BestStock.ai, on the topic of "The Future Development Trends of General and Vertical Agents". Zhang Tao shared the "detours and pitfalls" the Manus team encountered during initial direction exploration, noting that "even Manus’s earliest prototype was not well-received by the market". However, by observing real user behavior with AI products, the team firmly established its goal of creating "general-purpose AI products that can serve a broader range of ordinary users around the clock".

Regarding the development trend of vertical agents, Zhang Tao believes:

"Vertical agents have great value and future development space. For vertical agents, customers and scenarios are very clear, and optimization goals are therefore relatively definite — which is precisely a major challenge for general agents in continuous optimization and iteration. Meanwhile, vertical agent teams also need to focus on two key issues: understanding vertical domain data and the usage habits of existing industry tools."

Ben then gave a live demonstration of the newly launched US stock analysis vertical agent. He pointed out:

"The global AI market is expected to reach $244 billion by 2030, with demand for AI analytical tools and services in the US financial sector growing rapidly. BestStock.ai was developed precisely to address the overwhelming information, severe data fragmentation, time-consuming research and relatively rigid functions of existing analytical tools in the financial market. It uses AI technology to help every independent thinker build a personalized model for information collection, filtering, organization and analysis, providing strong support for their financial decision-making."

Daisy Wu, CEO of eclicktech, concluded: "It is a great pleasure to gather with all of you in Singapore and exchange insights and practical experiences in the AI and DTC fields. We look forward to in-depth discussions and cooperation with more outstanding partners and clients in the future."