DBS crowned Southeast Asia's most valuable brand in Kantar BrandZ 2026 ranking

The region's Top 30 brands are now worth US$165 billion and outperform global peers on Meaningful Difference.

Shopee, Lazada and POSB rank amongst the fastest-growing brands

SINGAPORE, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Kantar, the world's leading data, analytics and AI business, today unveiled the third edition of its BrandZ™ Southeast Asia ranking and report, revealing that Southeast Asia's Top 30 most valuable brands are now worth a combined US$165.3 billion. The ranking highlights the resilience of the region's strongest brands, whose value has grown 26% since 2024 despite a challenging global economic environment. Growth has been broad-based: 18 brands have grown, 16 at a double-digit pace, with four more than doubling their value. This was driven by strong consumer relevance and clear differentiation in increasingly competitive markets.

The rankings also highlight the continued dominance of Financial Services, which accounts for more than half of the total value in the Top 30. Banking brands occupy five of the top 10 positions, demonstrating the strength of consumer trust and the growing importance of financial brands in people's daily lives.

Telecommunications remains the second-largest category, led by Thailand's AIS, while Retail continues to gain momentum through the growth of e-commerce leaders Shopee and Lazada.

Valued at US$24.5bn, DBS has overtaken BCA to become Southeast Asia's most valuable brand, more than doubling its value since 2024. This growth is driven by strong brand foundations, anchored in a clear commitment to sustainability and financial security – a positioning that has earned it recognition as Asia's Safest Bank for 17 consecutive years. Its proposition also travels well beyond its home market, demonstrating its ability to scale a meaningfully different offer across multiple markets.

Kantar BrandZ Top 10 Most Valuable Southeast Asian Brands 2026:

2026 Rank  (vs 2024)	Brand	Category	Brand value 2026 (US$M)	2-year change (%)
1 (+2)	DBS	Financial Services	24,545	121 %
2 (-1)	BCA	Financial Services	22,661	-20 %
3 (+1)	AIS	Telecom Providers	14,612	65 %
4 (+3)	Shopee	Retail	10,428	116 %
5 (+1)	UOB	Financial Services	7,768	18 %
6 (-4)	BRI	Financial Services	6,438	-43 %
7 (+2)	Marina Bay Sands	Travel Services	6,092	38 %
8 (-3)	Mandiri	Financial Services	5,488	-34 %
9 (+1)	True	Telecom Providers	5,373	45 %
10 (-2)	Telkomsel	Telecom Providers	4,726	3 %

2026 Rank 
(vs 2024)

Brand

Category

Brand value
2026 (US$M)

2-year
change (%)

1 (+2)

DBS

Financial Services

24,545

121 %

2 (-1)

BCA

Financial Services

22,661

-20 %

3 (+1)

AIS

Telecom Providers

14,612

65 %

4 (+3)

Shopee

Retail

10,428

116 %

5 (+1)

UOB

Financial Services

7,768

18 %

6 (-4)

BRI

Financial Services

6,438

-43 %

7 (+2)

Marina Bay Sands

Travel Services

6,092

38 %

8 (-3)

Mandiri

Financial Services

5,488

-34 %

9 (+1)

True

Telecom Providers

5,373

45 %

10 (-2)

Telkomsel

Telecom Providers

4,726

3 %

Scaling success: how top risers are accelerating growth

The fastest-rising brand in the Top 30 is POSB (People's Own Savings Bank), leaping eight places to No.13, and increasing its value 126% to $4.4bn. Singapore's oldest bank has strengthened its purpose – 'Neighbours first, bankers second' – through community-led initiatives, and emotionally compelling storytelling. Its innovative 'Treat Yourself Right' campaign, using GenAI to bring consumers face-to-face with their future selves, demonstrates how technology can deepen engagement while reinforcing brand meaning.

Among the 24 brands featuring in both the 2026 and 2024 rankings, those with the strongest growth also have the widest international reach, highlighting the commercial advantage of translating locally-built brand meaning into regionally relevant offers. Singaporean brand Lazada (No.12; $4.5bn; +105%) has succeeded with a strategy based on quality, authenticity and trust. It offers consumers peace of mind in a complex e-commerce landscape through its '100% Legit' guarantee, and this narrative resonates across diverse markets, supporting sustained growth and strengthening consumer confidence.

Commenting on the results, Rika Sharma, Executive Managing Director, Southeast Asia and Singapore, Kantar, says: "Southeast Asia's most valuable brands have earned their place by building deep, meaningful connections with consumers around enduring human needs that transcend markets and cultures. While many are already firmly embedded in people's lives, sustaining growth in the years ahead will require greater ambition and innovation. The strongest brands will be those that expand into new spaces, create new sources of value for consumers and sharpen their differentiation in ways that justify premium pricing. Achieving this consistently will depend on a more strategic application of consumer and market understanding, powered by AI-enabled intelligence that helps turn brand decisions into measurable business impact."

Newcomers combine bold positioning with cross-market relevance

Six new entrants join BrandZ's Southeast Asian ranking this year, spanning five categories and five markets: Malaysian telecom provider CelcomDigi (No.14; $4.2bn), Vietnam-founded EV manufacturer VinFast (No.15; $4.0bn), Malaysian retailer 99 Speedmart (No.21; $2.6bn), Indonesia's Mayapada Hospital (No.24; $2.4bn), and financial services brands SCB (Siam Commercial Bank) (No.28; $1.4bn) from Thailand and BDO (No.29; $1.4bn) from the Philippines. Each newcomer has broken into the Top 30 by establishing a clear point of differentiation that cuts through, and by amplifying that difference through focused, effective communications.

VinFast exemplifies this approach through its 'For a Green Future' mission, combining accessible electric mobility with ecosystem innovation, such as its GreenSM Taxi services. This clear, future-facing positioning has supported rapid expansion within Southeast Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, Indonesia's Mayapada Hospital has built momentum by positioning itself as a provider of world-class healthcare within the region, reducing the need for outbound medical travel. Its strong, digitally led communications reinforce its premium, progressive credentials among consumers.

Key trends from the 2026 Kantar BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable Southeast Asian Brands report include:

• Southeast Asia's Top 30 outperform the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands on the three fundamental drivers of brand growth - Meaning, Difference and Salience - signalling their strong connection with consumers and their readiness for sustained future growth
• Consumers increasingly see Southeast Asian brands as 'worth it'. By demonstrating clear Meaningful Difference, these brands reinforce perceptions of value for money and justify premium pricing.

The 2026 Kantar BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable Southeast Asian Brands ranking, full report and in-depth analysis are now available at: www.kantar.com/campaigns/brandz/southeast-asia

For category-level competitive insights, Kantar's free BrandSnapshot tool, powered by BrandZ, offers at-a-glance intelligence on 15,000 brands worldwide. Explore it here.

ENDS

About Kantar: Kantar is the world's leading marketing data and analytics business. We deliver the intelligence needed to power brand growth in the AI era. We provide the signals that help organisations act quickly and confidently. We empower brands to make effective marketing decisions based on predictive evidence. And we help them craft powerful growth strategies rooted in the connection between consumers, brands and enterprise value. All this is powered by our uniquely robust human and synthetic data, our unrivalled IP, our AI-native platform and the team of global brand experts that bring this all together.

About Kantar BrandZ: Kantar BrandZ is the global currency when assessing brand value, quantifying the contribution of brands to business' financial performance. Kantar's annual global and local brand valuation rankings combine rigorously analysed financial data, with extensive brand equity research. Since 1998, BrandZ has shared brand-building insights with business leaders based on interviews with 4.6 million consumers, for 22,392 brands in 54 markets. Discover more about Kantar BrandZ here.

The Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Southeast Asian Brands is the most definitive and robust ranking available. The ranking is based on interviews with more than 120,000 respondents, on 2,050 brands in 85 categories. The ranking focuses exclusively on consumer-facing brands, and brands must meet the following criteria:

• The brand must have originated in one of the following markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand or Vietnam
• The brand must be owned by a publicly listed company or by a company that publishes full financial statements in the public domain.

For more information, please contact:

Amanjit Singh, Marketing Director- APAC, Kantar | Amanjit.singh@kantar.com  
Mishuelle Wee, Digital Marketing Manager, Kantar | mishuelle.wee@kantar.com  

 

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DBS crowned Southeast Asia's most valuable brand in Kantar BrandZ 2026 ranking

Productivity agent WorkBuddy, creative agent Miora, and Model-as-a-Service platform TokenHub to help Indonesian enterprises leap from AI experimentation to real-world deployment

HONG KONG, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, expanded its international suite of AI agent solutions to the Indonesian market at its AI Executive Day summit held in Jakarta today.

The summit brought together more than 150 Indonesian enterprise leaders, technology executives and partners to explore how AI agent solutions can execute practical workflows in day-to-day business environments — from workplace productivity and creative production to model access and enterprise automation.

Enabling Indonesian enterprises to deploy AI Agents in real-world scenarios

Indonesian enterprises are moving fast on AI, with 57% naming it their top priority for the year ahead, and 66% planning to deepen their focus on agentic AI, according to a recent industry study^[1].

Building on this momentum, Tencent Cloud introduced its suite of AI agent solutions to help enterprise teams and individual professionals automate workflows, moving beyond chatbots and content generation toward agents that plan, execute and automate multi-step tasks.

One of the key solutions unveiled is Tencent WorkBuddy, an agentic AI workspace productivity solution that turns a single instruction into a complete, ready-to-use deliverable. It is designed for office users to orchestrate agents to perform tasks like market research, data analysis and data illustration, drawing on specialized "Experts" across fields such as finance, law and marketing and more. It also enables users to integrate their large model of choice via APIs, and manage agentic workflows remotely through Discord, Slack and Telegram. Since launching in China, WorkBuddy has surpassed 8.85 million monthly active users within its first month, cementing it as one of the most widely embraced agent workplace solutions.

In addition, Tencent Cloud showcased Tencent Design Miora, an AI-native creative studio with persistent memory that helps designers, content creators and marketers maintain visual consistency across brands and campaigns. From a single natural-language brief, Miora orchestrates multiple Skills to deliver a production-ready asset pack — spanning graphics, video, 3D and UI — compressing creative cycles from weeks into hours.

As enterprises run more models and AI agents, token consumption rises quickly. In response, Tencent Cloud's Model-as-a-Service platform, TokenHub, provides enterprises with API gateways to leading large language models, enabling businesses to aggregate multiple models and optimize for both cost and performance through centrally managed access and flexible token allocation.

Together, these offerings join Tencent Cloud's portfolio of more than 400 solutions for overseas markets, extending secure, practical, enterprise-ready AI to customers across Indonesia.

"Indonesian enterprises are increasingly looking to move from AI experimentation to real adoption," said Jimmy Chen, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Vice President of APAC at Tencent Cloud International. "With agents like WorkBuddy and Miora, we help local organizations shift execution-heavy work to AI, so their teams can focus on smarter decisions and innovation. We're committed to Indonesia for the long term, and we look forward to partnering with more enterprises here as they modernize, adopt AI with confidence, and scale globally from Indonesia."

Supporting the growth aspirations of Indonesian enterprises across sectors

Tencent Cloud has deepened its support for digital transformation across Indonesia, working with enterprises in telecommunications, digital platforms and financial services to scale on dependable cloud foundations and adopt AI in practical ways.

Taking center stage at the summit was Tencent Cloud's recent collaboration with XLSMART. In a panel discussion, Yessie D. Yosetya, Director and Chief Information Technology Officer of XLSMART, joined Poshu Yeung, Senior Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Head of Tencent Cloud International, to discuss the operator's large-scale cloud transformation and the role AI played in it. Tencent Cloud supported XLSMART in modernizing its operations on Tencent Cloud's infrastructure without disrupting the millions of people who rely on its services each day, while applying AI across the project to take on repetitive engineering effort and improve the efficiency of its digital operations.

"For a business serving tens of millions of customers, the real value of this transformation is not just a smoother platform — it is the agility to move faster, launch sooner, and keep improving without disruption," said Yessie D. Yosetya. "With Tencent Cloud, we consolidated onto a modern cloud foundation with zero downtime and put AI to work across the project. That gives us a base to keep innovating on, and the confidence to scale for what comes next."

Recently, Tencent Cloud has also supported GoTo, Indonesia's largest digital ecosystem, in one of the most significant cloud migrations the region has seen, moving more than 1,000 of its on-demand services onto a more scalable, resilient foundation for its future growth.

In financial services, Tencent Cloud supports the core operations of banks such as Bank Neo Commerce with its database solutions such as TDSQL, giving them the reliability to serve millions of customers as they widen consumer access to banking. Its eKYC solutions help institutions such as BRI verify customers remotely and guard against fraud, while its content delivery network helps DANA, one of Indonesia's leading digital wallets, deliver a fast, consistent experience across the archipelago. In addition, Tencent Cloud's capabilities are empowering new customer experiences for Telkomsel, as it uses Tencent Cloud's AI-powered solutions for content generation and palm-based verification processes.

Underpinning all of this is Tencent Cloud's global infrastructure, which spans 66 availability zones across 23 markets and regions, including three in Indonesia. Tencent Cloud remains deeply committed to the Indonesian market, supporting local enterprises as they scale at home, expand globally, and put AI to work in practical, real-world ways.

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About Tencent Cloud:

Tencent Cloud, one of the world's leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

^[1] https://www.ey.com/en_id/newsroom/2026/04/indonesias-tech-investment-momentum-build-with-genai-and-sovereign-cloud-driven-by-security

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Tencent Cloud Expands International AI Agent Suite to Indonesia to Accelerate Enterprise AI Adoption