TechCrunch |
- Max Q: Astra’s launch goes sideways
- Apple’s rumored iPhone satellite support may be for emergency calls and messages
- Gatik expands autonomous box truck operations to Texas with $85 million in new funds
- Power Global eyes India’s auto rickshaw industry with swappable battery and retrofit kit
- US giants top tech industry’s $100M+ a year lobbying blitz in EU
- South Korea passes ‘Anti-Google law’ bill to curb Google, Apple in-app payment commission
- LoftyInc Capital launches third fund at $10M for a more diverse portfolio of African startups
- Motional reveals its Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric robotaxi
- Prosus acquires Indian payments giant BillDesk for $4.7B, will merge with its PayU fintech group
- Dance launches its e-bike subscription service in Berlin
- This Sequoia- and Henry Kravis-backed prediction market wants to turn opinions into money
- Coral Capital closes third fund with $128M for startups in Japan
- Southeast Asia “omnichannel” health startup Doctor Anywhere gets $88M SGD
- Rugged showcases its layout-printing construction robots
- Daily Crunch: China sets three-hour weekly time limit for under-18 gamers
- Square to launch a new paid subscription, Invoices Plus
- New Zealand-based student well-being platform Komodo raises $1.8M NZD
- Foreign investors have a bigger role to play in growing Latin America’s startup ecosystem
- Zoom announces first startups receiving funding from $100M investment fund
- Prive has raised $1.7 million to build a more configurable e-commerce subscription platform
| Max Q: Astra’s launch goes sideways Posted: 31 Aug 2021 04:33 AM PDT Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. We had a few launches this week, including SpaceX’s first one after one of its longer recent pauses in activity. Astra hoped to have its first commercial payload mission go well, but instead it had one of the more visually interesting takeoff mishaps in private spaceflight. Astra’s launch drifts and then nearly recovers Image Credits: Astra Astra’s launch from Kodiak, Alaska was its first attempt since it nearly reached orbit with a successful test last year. The engines all lit as planned, but almost as quickly, one of those went out and the result was a rocket that nearly toppled over, before floating horizontally for a while, while the remaining engines redistributed power to ultimately start the vehicle climbing skyward. It’s perhaps more impressive that the Astra rocket didn’t crash and burn right away, even if this was ultimately a failure. The rocket eventually climbed to an altitude of around 160,000 feet before Astra’s flight engineers issued an abort command and the vehicle returned safely to Earth after the engines cut off. This was a disappointment because the mission was meant to be Astra’s first commercial flight, since it was carrying a simulated test payload on behalf of client the U.S. Space Force. But it also was still technically a test, and the company says it gathered a lot of valuable data from the roughly 2.5 minutes that the rocket was flying before the abort command was given. While the newly public Astra’s share price took a hit on the news, I think the more instructive bit for the company’s long-term fortunes will be how long it takes to recover from this mishap and try again, and also what the result will be of that follow-up mission. SpaceX breaks in its new landing barge Image Credits: SpaceX SpaceX’s return to flight was another of the Commercial Resupply Services flights it performs for NASA to the International Space Station, and this one went smoothly as usual. The cargo included a new robotic arm for use on the station, as well as interesting experiments including live ants. The launch also saw SpaceX use its new ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ autonomous drone ocean landing ship for the first time. This is the third drone ship that SpaceX has in its fleet, and everything went smoothly with the landing for a successful recovery of the first stage booster used for the flight. Blue Origin launches suborbital, non-crewed flight Image Credits: Blue Origin Blue Origin has launched its 17th New Shepard reusable rocket mission, though this one wasn’t as impressive as its last effort: No Jeff Bezos on board. Unlike that first human spaceflight, there weren’t any passengers in the capsule this go around, but there were a healthy collection of experiments. One of those was a NASA experimental landing system component that’s going to be used eventually for the agency’s lunar landing vehicle. The interesting subtext here is that Blue Origin is actually suing the agency over its award process for the human lander contract, which selected SpaceX (and only SpaceX) as a lunar lander vehicle provider earlier this year. Rocket Lab goes public Image Credits: Rocket Lab Rocket Lab is now a public company, trading under the name RKLB on the NASDAQ after a SPAC merger. This is one of the largest private space companies yet to go public via any means, and our own Aria Alamalhodaei spoke to Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck to get the low-down on the company and what it means to be a member of the public markets. Meanwhile, ispace is creating a larger lunar lander that can make it through lunar nights. Its existing small lander design isn’t intended to last long in the dark, since its power reserves would deplete quickly and also the super low temperatures are not kind to most electronics. Join us at TC Sessions: Space in DecemberLast year we held our first dedicated space event, and it went so well that we decided to host it again in 2021. This year, it’s happening December 14 and 15, and it’s once again going to be an entirely virtual conference, so people from all over the world will be able to join — and you can, too.  |
| Apple’s rumored iPhone satellite support may be for emergency calls and messages Posted: 31 Aug 2021 04:01 AM PDT The rumored satellite features for future iPhones are reserved for emergency uses only, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. A few days ago, a report by well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the next iPhones will come with support for Low Earth Orbit satellite calls and messages. Gurman’s sources said, however, that Apple isn’t turning its devices into actual satellite phones, at least for now. Instead, the tech giant is reportedly developing at least two emergency-related features relying on satellite networks. The first feature is called Emergency Message via Satellite and will be added as a third protocol, alongside iMessage and SMS, to the Messages app. It’s apparently codenamed Stewie inside the company and will allow users to text emergency services even when there’s no signal, which sounds especially useful during emergencies in remote locations, such as mountains and forests. The tool will also give users a way to text their emergency contacts simply by typing Emergency SOS in the recipient line. Messages will be restricted to a shorter length, but the senders’ contacts will get a notification for them even if their phone is set to Do Not Disturb. Satellite messages will appear as gray bubbles instead of blue or green so they can be easily identified. Eventually, the feature could handle phone calls, as well. Apple is also reportedly working on a second satellite feature that will allow users to report crisis situations like plane crashes and fires. This system will give users a way to report the incident at length and will ask them specifics, such as if anybody needs search-and-rescue services or if anybody in the vicinity is armed. It can also automatically send authorities the reporter’s location and their details from the Health app, such as their medical history, age, medications and information like height and weight. The feature can also a notify the reporter’s emergency contacts for them. While both features sound useful, their availability is restricted by satellite location and reach. They might not work for some regions, and in some cases, users may have to walk outdoors in a certain direction where their iPhone can connect to a satellite. Also, Gurman’s sources said it’s unlikely that the features will be ready before the year ends, which means the next iPhones expected be announced sometime in September won’t be able to send messages via satellite yet. Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Engadget.  |
| Gatik expands autonomous box truck operations to Texas with $85 million in new funds Posted: 31 Aug 2021 04:00 AM PDT In the two years since Gatik AI came out of stealth, the autonomous vehicle startup has launched pilots with Walmart and Canadian retail giant Loblaw in its bid to prove that self-driving technology combined with box trucks is the secret economic sauce for hauling goods short distances. Now, the company is expanding into Texas — its fourth market — with a fresh bundle of capital. Gatik said Tuesday it has raised $85 million in a Series B round led by new investor Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture arm of Koch Industries. Existing investors Innovation Endeavours, Wittington Ventures, FM Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Trucks VC, Intact Ventures and others also participated. Gatik has raised $114.5 million to date. “We are very much in expansion mode in growth mode and felt that Koch Industries would add the most value,” Gatik CEO and co-founder Gautam Narang said in a recent interview, adding that he views the company as a strategic investor. Gatik has been shuttling goods as part of pilot programs for Walmart in Arkansas and Louisiana and in Ontario, Canada for Loblaw Companies Limited. Gatik also struck a manufacturing partnership with Isuzu in 2020 with an aim to mass produce medium duty autonomous trucks by early 2023. Unlike other autonomous delivery companies, Gatik isn’t targeting consumers. Instead, the startup is using its autonomous trucks to shuttle groceries and other goods from large distribution centers to retail locations. For instance, Gatik uses about five box trucks to carry goods for Loblaw. On one route in Arkansas, Gatik has removed the human safety driver, which means some of the autonomous box trucks used to carry goods are now “driverless.” The goal is to remove safety operators from all of its box trucks. Gatik said it has opened an autonomous trucking facility in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone, a 26,000-acre industrial, mixed-use, and residential planned development in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that has become a hub of transportation and logistics. The company is already carrying freight for several customers, which it declined to name. Narang did say that the trucks deployed in Texas are based on the Isuzu platforms. The company plans to have presence in multiple cities within Texas, Narang said. Its move to Texas follows other autonomous vehicle technology companies such as Aurora, Kodiak Robotics, TuSimple and Waymo that have set up shop in the state. The decision to expand into Texas was driven by its status an international shipping hub, the regulatory environment that supports autonomous vehicle testing and deployment on public roads and favorable weather. Narang added that the abundance and variety of potential customers will also allow it to have a multi-tenant operation. This means it can use the same truck throughout the day for multiple customers. The new funding will be used add more vehicles to its fleet of Class 3-6 multi-temperature autonomous box trucks and hire more employees, particularly in Texas. Today, Gatik’s roughly 70 employees are spread between its headquarters in Palo Alto, engineering center in Toronto and operations in Arkansas and Louisiana. Narang said they plan to double the number of employees to around 150 people in the next six to nine months.  |
| Power Global eyes India’s auto rickshaw industry with swappable battery and retrofit kit Posted: 31 Aug 2021 04:00 AM PDT In India, a country that is more densely populated and has lower rates of car ownership, auto rickshaws and other two- or three-wheeled vehicles play a central role. While many auto rickshaws on Indian roads are already electric, they tend to rely on lead-acid batteries that need to be replaced every six to 11 months. Power Global, a two-year-old startup, wants to disrupt the auto rickshaw market by offering a retrofit kit for diesel-powered vehicles and swappable battery pack to transition the more common lead-acid batteries to lithium-ion. Power Global was founded by Porter Harris, who had previously engineered the batteries for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. He also worked as the chief battery engineer at EV startup Faraday Future. Thus far, he estimates Power Global has been around 95% self-funded – thanks in part to the sale of his SpaceX stock. "I've been looking at the Indian market now for about five years," he told TechCrunch in a recent interview. The opportunity is certainly ripe, with some market research firms estimating that the electric rickshaw market in India will grow to $1.3 billion by 2025. It's also dire: last year, 15 out of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world were in India, according to air quality technology company IQAir, and much of those emissions are due to transportation. By offering two separate products for diesel-powered or electric rickshaws – the retrofit kit, which Harris said will fit over 90% of current models, and the "eZee" swappable battery – Power Global is aiming to capture almost the entire auto-rickshaw market. Harris says the company already has around 48 dealers ready to sell their products, thanks largely to Power Global co-founder Pankaj Dubey's extensive history working with Indian dealerships over his career with Hero Motors, Yamaha, and Polaris. And that's a real benefit, because much of Power Global's plan is dependent upon an extensive dealer network that can get people signed up to the swappable battery subscription model and help drivers buy and install the retrofit kits. The main source of revenue will come from getting drivers on the energy-as-a-service monthly subscription model via Power Global's "eZee" swappable batteries. "It’s a totally different business model," Harris said. "We can’t translate petrol or gas solutions and try and make that work for electric, it’s really a whole new thing. Our viewpoint is: a lot of kiosks, a small amount of [battery] modules per location."  Image Credits: Power Global (opens in a new window) The company wants to launch on the outskirts of New Delhi, National Capital Region to start, with the eventual goal of planning a kiosk every three kilometers or so. Drivers will also have the option to take the battery home and charge it using a Power Global home charger. On the user side, the company's also developing an app that will allow drivers to see stats like how many kilometers they've traveled that day, their remaining battery life and where they can find the nearest battery swapping kiosk. Power Global expects its batteries to last four and a half to five years. The company plans to use the batteries for stationary energy storage application once they’re taken out of the eZee ecosystem. Harris said there are plans to eventually tie those batteries in with small solar panels to provide energy to rural areas. Once the battery has been completely depleted of all its useful life, Harris said it'll be sent to a recycler. The company aims to release its eZee swappable battery product in the first quarter of next year, followed by the retrofit kits. It has opened a battery production plant in Greater Noida, India, which it anticipates will produce about a gigawatt-hour – which is about 10,000 Model S packs –this time next year. That'll make it one of the largest domestic manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries in the country. By the end of 2022, Power Global aims to have at least 10,000 vehicles on the eZee swappable system. While Power Global is in discussion with some U.S.-based companies interested in the eZee product, Harris said the focus is ultimately further east. "Do we really need another solution for the top 10% of the world? No, we don’t. Let’s focus on the other 90% of the world and actually make a difference."  |
| US giants top tech industry’s $100M+ a year lobbying blitz in EU Posted: 31 Aug 2021 03:39 AM PDT The scale of the tech industry’s spending to influence the European Union’s tech policy agenda has been laid out in a report published today by Corporate Europe Observatory and Lobbycontrol — which found hundreds of companies, groups and business associations shelling out a total of €97 million (~$115M) annually lobbying EU institutions. The level of spending makes tech the biggest lobby sector in the region — ahead of pharma, fossil fuels, finance, and chemicals — per the report by the two lobbying transparency campaign groups. The EU has a raft of digital legislation in train, including the Digital Markets Act, which is set to apply ex ante controls to the biggest ‘gatekeeper’ platforms to promote fair competition in the digital market by outlawing a range of abusive practices; and the Digital Services Act, which will increase requirements on a swathe of digital businesses — again with greater requirements for larger platforms — to try to bring online rules in line with offline requirements in areas like illegal content and products. Tackling online disinformation and threats to democratic processes — such as by updating the EU’s rules for political ads running online and tighter regulation of online ad targeting more generally is also being eyed by Brussels-based lawmakers. The bloc is also in the process of agreeing a risk-based framework for applications of artificial intelligence. Data reuse is another big EU regulatory focus. At the same time, enforcement of the EU’s existing data protection framework (GDPR) — which is widely perceived to have been (mostly) weakly applied against tech giants — is another area where tech giants may be keen to influence regional policy, given that uniformly vigorous enforcement could threaten the surveillance-based business models of online ad giants like Google and Facebook. Instead, multiple GDPR complaints against the pair are still sitting undecided on the desk of Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. A small number of tech giants dominant EU lobbying, according to the report, which found ten companies are responsible for almost a third of the total spend — namely: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Huawei, Amazon, IBM, Intel, Qualcomm and Vodafone — who collectively spend more than €32M a year to try to influence EU tech policy. Google topped the lobbying list of Big Tech big spenders in the EU — spending €5.8M annually trying to influence EU institutions, per the report; followed by Facebook (€5.5M); Microsoft (€5.3M); Apple (€3.5M); and Huawei (€3M).
While China (or Hong Kong) based companies were only found to comprise less than one per cent of the total, suggesting Chinese tech firms are so far not invested in EU lobbying at anywhere near the level of their US counterparts. “The lobbying surrounding proposals for a Digital Services pack, the EU's attempt at reining in Big Tech, provides the perfect example of how the firms' immense budget provides them with privileged access: Commission high-level officials held 271 meetings, 75 percent of them with industry lobbyists. Google and Facebook led the pack,” write the pair of transparency campaign groups. The report also shines a light on how the tech industry routinely relies upon astroturfing to push favored policies — with tech companies not only lobbying individually but also being collectively organised into a network of business and trade associations that the report dubs “important lobby actors” too. Per the report, business associations lobbying on behalf of Big Tech alone have a lobbying budget that “far surpasses that of the bottom 75 per cent of the companies in the digital industry”. Such a structure can allow the wealthiest tech giants to push preferred policy positions under a guise of wider industry support — by also shelling out to fund such associations which then gives them an outsized influence over their lobbying output. “Big Tech's lobbying also relies on its funding of a wide network of third parties, including think tanks, SME and startup associations and law and economic consultancies to push through its messages. These links are often not disclosed, obfuscating potential biases and conflicts of interest,” the pair note, going on to highlight 14 think tanks and NGOs they found to have “close ties” to Big Tech firms. “The ethics and practice of these policy organisations varies but some seem to have played a particularly active role in discussions surrounding the Digital Services pack, hosting exclusive or skewed debates on behalf of their funders or publishing scaremongering reports,” they continue. “There's an opacity problem here: Big Tech firms have fared poorly in declaring their funding of think tanks – mostly only disclosing these links after being pressured. And even still this disclosure is not complete. To this, Big Tech adds its funding of SME and startup associations; and the fact that law and economic experts hired by Big Tech also participate in policy discussions, often without disclosing their clients or corporate links.” The 14 think tanks and NGOs the report links to Big Tech backers are: CERRE; CDI, EPC, CEPS, CER, Bruegel, Lisbon Council, CDT, TPN, Friends of Europe, ECIPE, European Youth Forum, German Marshall Fund and the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies. The biggest spending tech giants were contacted for comment on the report. We’ll update this article with any response. We have also reached out to the European Commission for comment. The full report — entitled The Lobby Network: Big Tech’s Web of Influence in the EU — can be found here.  |
| South Korea passes ‘Anti-Google law’ bill to curb Google, Apple in-app payment commission Posted: 31 Aug 2021 03:30 AM PDT After a number of delays, South Korea's National Assembly today voted to approve the passage of its "Anti-Google law." Nicknamed after the search giant but more wide-ranging, the law will prevent Google and Apple from forcing developers to use their in-app billing systems when building apps for their two market-dominating app stores . This is the first time globally that a government has intervened to prevent Google and Apple from imposing their own payment rails on in-app purchases. Google and Apple have been increasingly under scrutiny over the restrictive aspects of their respective systems in other market, and so now many will be looking to see if the move in South Korea becomes a tipping point, where the two might be subjected to similar measures in other countries. Most imminently, Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is also considering regulations for digital payments system of Apple, Google and WeChat, according to media reports. South Korea's preliminary committee voted on Wednesday, 25 August to proceed with the revised Telecommunication Business Act, seeking to restrict Google and Apple from charging app developer's commission on in-app purchases. Since August 2020, lawmakers in South Korea have proposed bills to prohibit the global tech companies from wielding their dominance in the app payment market. Google in March 2021 reduced its commission to 15% from an original 30% for all in-app purchases to appease app developers. But four months later, it announced that it will push back its new in-app billing system to March 2022. Meanwhile, Apple in August proposed a settlement in a lawsuit filed against it by software developers in the US that notes Apple will allow app developers to direct their payment options outside of their iOS app or the App Store, although it didn’t go as far as allowing developers to include alternative methods of payment within app themselves. Apple said in its statement, “the proposed Telecommunications Business Act will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their purchases, and features like ‘Ask to Buy’ and Parental Controls will become less effective.” Google could not be reached.  |
| LoftyInc Capital launches third fund at $10M for a more diverse portfolio of African startups Posted: 31 Aug 2021 02:04 AM PDT LoftyInc Capital, a pan-African VC firm, announced today that it is launching its third fund — LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 3 — at $10 million for tech startups in Africa. The firm has reached the first close of $5.5 million. Some of the limited partners in the vehicle include those from its second fund, FBNQuest Funds, syndicates from The Green Investment Club, HNIs from multinationals like Google, Facebook, and ExxonMobil; and Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson, among others. So far, LoftyInc has written checks to over 20 startups since it began raising money for the fund. They cut across various industries like e-commerce, fintech, healthcare, logistics, and media in different regions within and outside Africa. In Francophone Africa, the company has invested in Afrikrea and Star News Mobile. Then in Omnibiz, RXAll, Sudo Africa, Tech Advance, Aladdin, Flex Finance, Star Kitchens Group, and EPump across West Africa. For LoftyInc’s portfolio in North Africa, there’s Odiggo, Illa, Tagaddod, and Instadiet. Akiba Digital, Beamm, and Zazu Africa make up LoftyInc’s portfolio in South Africa, while Cashback and Dash are the startups funded in East Africa. LoftyInc also has Diasporan interests in OjaExpress and FitMatch. LoftyInc runs three funds simultaneously. The second fund, which is its first formal VC fund, is largely focused on Nigeria. On the other hand, this third fund follows the thesis of LoftyInc’s first fund: investing in startups across different markets and sectors in Africa and the diaspora. The fund says it wants to take big bets on markets outside the Big Four — Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. Operating three fundsA month ago, TechCrunch covered one of Africa’s most important angel investors Olumide Soyombo. He is one of the few giants in a game that includes LoftyInc founder and general partner Idris Bello. Bello likes to describe his 12-year venture into technology and entrepreneurship as an “Afropreneurship journey.” While in business school in the U.S, he realized that the next wave of innovation that Africa as a continent needed rested on the shoulders’ of up-and-coming founders. With that in mind, Bello started LoftyInc Allied Partners alongside other entrepreneurs as an enterprise development company. It spun off a technology hub and venture accelerator called Wennovation Hub and also the venture arm called LoftyInc Capital. In 2012, the firm launched the first fund — LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 1 — as its pre-seed stage investment vehicle. The fund act more like a syndicate or an angel group of which investors includes senior executives in key industries across Africa.  L-R: General partners [Marsha Wulff (sitting), Michael Oluwagbemi (standing), and Idris Bello (right) Five years later, as the founding partner, Bello teamed up with a long-time advisor Marsha Wulff, an early investor in healthtech company Teladoc. They launched the second fund, LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 2, alongside Michael Oluwagbemi, who also acts as a general partner at the firm. From 2017 to 2020, LoftyInc wrote checks worth over $1.2 million in nine rounds to six Nigerian startups — Printivo, RelianceHMO, Epump, YouVerify, Shyft Power Solutions, and Flutterwave (at pre-Series A). Flutterwave serves as LoftyInc’s first exit, one which Bello said returned 3x to its LPs. It was this successful exit that laid the foundation for the third fund. “When we exited our Flutterwave stake in February, our LPs wanted us to raise and put together another fund because we made returns for them. At first, we wanted to do a $2.5 million fund but after making enquiries from LPs, it rose to $4 million. Then eventually we just decided to make it $10 million, so we could invest in more startups,” Bello said to TechCrunch. But when you look at Bello’s status in the African tech ecosystem and what similar Africa-focused funds are raising these days, one may wonder why the investor isn’t raising more. His answer to that: “I always say this — my approach is very different. I’m quite organic which is evident in how we moved from a group of angels to LPs. I feel once you get up to $50m to $100m, your problem becomes good deployment, especially in Africa. And what I’m doing is to build a smaller base to a pyramid so when I’m raising a large fund, it won’t be a problem deploying the funds.” Another point he makes has to do with the limited partners involved. Most of the firm’s LPs in this third fund hold C-suite and managerial positions in banks and other multinationals. Bello argues that if Fund 3 can make good on its promise to make fantastic returns for these individual LPs, it will be a no brainer to onboard the institutions they work with for a bigger fund. “We want to build an ecosystem of African investors. After that, we’ll start building up the institutions to also partake in making investments.” LoftyInc has a robust deal flow and views about 30 decks per week, according to Bello. He says the fund receives this much flow because the founders of portfolio startups are the firm’s strongest source of proprietary deals. And that’s what he thinks differentiates LoftyInc from other VC firms. For instance, in a brief chat with TechCrunch, Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson mentioned that before anyone knew about his startup, LoftyInc already backed him. And to him, it only makes sense to do the same by sourcing deals and investing in the fund. In addition, the firm, via its first fund, also has an extensive investor base of African origin who live in and outside the continent. Per Bello, this angel network double as venture scouts for the firm. “We usually invest before any major investor does, hold the hand of new founders, source their initial clients within our large portfolio of over 65 African startups and our large African-based angel and LP network. “We also provide meaningful introductions to regulators, partners, mentors, top hires and experienced board directors. Also, founders want us in their deals because they have seen us attract both early and later-stage investors to prior ventures.” In terms of what LoftyInc looks for in companies it invests in, there’s a bias towards those who go for a large market with little or no competition, a product that users love, and execution. As with most VC firms out there, LoftyInc claims to be sector agnostic. However, there’s some affinity towards startups playing in the IoT, fintech and healthtech space, Bello said. LoftyInc’s first fund, mostly catered to by angel investors, is most bullish at the pre-seed stage. This year alone, the group has done over 50 pre-seed deals. For the others, the focus is on seed to Series A deals with an average ticket size of $250,000. While LoftyInc’s target for Fund 3 is $10 million, Bello tells TechCrunch that the firm is hoping to achieve a final close above that figure before the end of Q4 2021.  |
| Motional reveals its Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric robotaxi Posted: 31 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT Motional revealed Tuesday the first images of its planned robotaxi, a Hyundai all-electric Ioniq 5 SUV that will be the centerpiece of a driverless ride-hailing service the company wants customers to be able to access starting in 2023 through the Lyft app. The purpose-built vehicle, which will be assembled by Hyundai, is integrated with Motional’s autonomous vehicle technology, including a suite of more than 30 sensors including lidar, radar and cameras that can be seen throughout the interior and exterior. That sensing system provides 360 degrees of vision, and the ability to see up to 300 meters away, according to Motional. The company, which was born out of a $4 billion joint venture with Aptiv and Hyundai, intentionally showcases the numerous sensors, president and CEO Karl Iagnemma said in a recent interview. “We see so many competitors bending over backwards to try to hide this sensor suite and conceal it in these big plastic casings,” Iagnemma told TechCrunch. “And the fact is, you can’t hide the sensors. They need to be where they need to be and they’re an important part of the car and a key part of the technology. So our strategy was to celebrate the sensors, and to adapt the design language of the vehicle and carry that through the design of the integrated sensor suite.” Motional has not announced where it will launch its first driverless robotaxi service. It’s likely that it will be in one of the cities it currently is testing and validating its technology, a list that includes Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.  Image credit: Motional The base of Motional’s robotaxi is the Hyundai Ioniq 5, an electric vehicle revealed in February with a consumer release date expected later this year. The consumer version will not be equipped with Motional’s autonomous vehicle technology. Unlike some AV developers, Motional didn’t chose a shuttle design or even a larger van for its first robotaxi. Iagnemma said that the company’s research shows the vast majority of taxi or ride-hailing trips are for two or fewer passengers. The Ioniq 5 is the right size vehicle for Motional’s use case, he added. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the first vehicle based off the automaker’s dedicated battery electric vehicle platform called the Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP). The vehicle — both the consumer and robotaxi version — is equipped with an 800-volt electrical system. This higher voltage system is able to supply the same amount of power as the more common 400-volt with less current. The 800-volt system, which debuted in the all-electric Porsche Taycan, is lighter, more efficient and allows the vehicle to charge at a faster rate. That fast charging rate will be an important benefit for Motional’s robotaxi service.  Image Credits: Motional The robotaxi version of the Ioniq 5 will be assembled by Hyundai, a noteworthy detail, Iagnemma said. “This is vehicle that will come off the assembly line looking, as you see it in the pictures,” Iagnemma said. “This is not a scenario where we’ll take a base vehicle, move it to a different line, take the components off and then reintegrate or retrofit it. Inside the robotaxi are displays to allow riders to interact with the vehicle during their ride, such as directing the robotaxi to make an extra stop, according to the company. The robotaxi still has a steering wheel and other features found in traditional vehicles operated by a human driver. Riders will not be permitted to sit in the driver seat.  |
| Prosus acquires Indian payments giant BillDesk for $4.7B, will merge with its PayU fintech group Posted: 30 Aug 2021 11:33 PM PDT More major consolidation underway in the world of payments: Prosus — the Dutch tech giant that bundles together Naspers’ fintech, e-commerce and other international investments and businesses outside of South Africa (including a big stake in Tencent) — today announced that it would pay $4.7 billion to acquire BillDesk, a payments provider based in India. Prosus plans to combine BillDesk with PayU, its existing global fintech and payments business, which already has a strong presence in India. The deal has been rumored to be in the works since about July. The proposed acquisition will make PayU one of the bigger online payment providers globally with some $147 billion in payment volume annually. But the proposed all-cash deal is not only a significant consolidation move in the world of payments: it also underscores Prosus’ continuing focus on developing markets and specifically India. Prosus said that the deal — one of the biggest ever made by Prosus, and one of the biggest M&A moves in India — will give its fintech holdings in India a cumulative investment value of over $10 billion. That is part of a long-term strategy for Prosus (and Naspers) that stretches back nearly a decade involving a number of other acquisitions and investments in startups — including DotPe and Indiagold — in the region. The proposed acquisition will require approval from the Indian regulator Competition Commission of India. In a call with reporters Tuesday, Prosus and PayU executives said they don’t expect much hurdle in receiving the approval as PayU and BillDesk offer complimentary businesses. BillDesk’s network is used by India’s largest banks and by a large number of merchants across utilities, telecom, insurance, mutual funds, travel and e-commerce verticals. "Payments and fintech is a core segment for Prosus and India remains our number one investment destination,” said Bob van Dijk, group CEO of Prosus, in a statement. PayU — formed out a combination of various interests in fintech and payments that Naspers (and then Prosus) had acquired over several years, is currently active in some 20 markets. India represents a huge market for financial services, with a digitally-savvy consumer base with a rapidly expanding middle class with disposable income. Within that, PayU has positioned itself as a strong player. Specifically, it has been highly competitive in the Indian online merchant acquiring market – both on price and in-field sales effort. PayU India has a dominant share in the payments gateway business where it traditionally competed with BillDesk and CCAvenue (owned in part by Infibeam) — and of lately, Sequoia Capital India-backed RazorPay.
BillDesk has been around since 2000 and its investors had included Visa, General Atlantic, and the State Bank of India. PitchBook estimated that its valuation was around $1.53 billion in 2019 when it last raised money. Tracxn estimated that the founders still owned just under 30% of the company ahead of this acquisition. BillDesk, already a big contractor for several government departments, is among the firms that has applied for the license of NUE, a new retail payments networks proposed for India that is expected to compete with established UPI railroads. BillDesk has teamed with Amazon, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Pine Labs, and Visa for the license. Anirban Mukherjee, CEO of PayU India, suggested on a call today that Prosus may explore expanding BillDesk’s business outside of the world’s second most populous nation — though a concrete decision hasn’t been made, he cautioned. "We believe this transaction will stimulate both innovation and competition within India's digital payments industry,” said Laurent Le Moal, CEO of PayU, in a statement. “This will not only help to strengthen India's digital economy, but also bring financial services to those who may have historically been excluded. This ambition is fully aligned with the Government of India's vision of 'Digital India' and is a key objective for PayU across all the communities we serve globally.” PayU today said that its domestic and cross-border payments business as of March 2021 was up 51% year-on-year across its operations in India, Latin America and EMEA, a mark of the overall boom that we have seen in the global digital payments market in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Other businesses PayU operates include credit solutions across India and five other markets. Prosus itself is also an active investor, with stakes in remittance company Remitly and others — representing a pipeline for strategic partnerships, but also potentially future acquisitions.  |
| Dance launches its e-bike subscription service in Berlin Posted: 30 Aug 2021 11:00 PM PDT German startup Dance is launching its subscription service in its hometown Berlin. For a flat monthly fee of €79 (around $93 at today's exchange rate), users will get a custom-designed electric bike as well as access to an on-demand repair and maintenance service. Founded by the former founders of SoundCloud and Jimdo, the company managed to raise some significant funding before launching its service. BlueYard led the startup's seed round while HV Capital (formerly known as HV Holtzbrinck Ventures) led Dance's €15 million Series A round, which represented $17.7 million at the time. The reason why Dance needed so much capital is that the company has designed its own e-bike internally. Called the Dance One, it features an aluminum frame and weighs around 22kg (48.5lb). It has a single speed and it relies on its electric motor to help you go from 0 to 25kmph. And the best part is that you can remove the lithium battery and plug it at home — something that is desperately lacking in VanMoof's e-bikes. This way, you don't have to carry your entire bike up the stairs. People living in apartments will appreciate that feature. Users can expect to charge the battery after riding for 55km.  Image Credits: Dance The Dance One uses a carbon belt so that it doesn't require much maintenance. At the front of the bike, there's an integrated smartphone mount that should be compatible with popular cases designed for this type of mounts. You can control the level of electric assistance with buttons of the handlebar. There are three different modes: high assistance, low assistance or no assistance at all. The bike comes with a front and rear lights that you can activate with a button as well. When it comes to brakes, Dance has opted for hydraulic discs. You can optionally add a basket or saddle bags at the back of the bike. Like other popular e-bikes from VanMoof or Cowboy, you can lock and unlock the Dance bike from a mobile app. The company has integrated GPS and Bluetooth chips in the frame of the bike. Of course, you should also use a traditional lock in addition to the smart lock. On paper, it looks like a nice e-bike for city rides. Users will have to pay €79 per month to get access to a bike. There are no time commitment or upfront fees. If you want to subscribe just for the summer, you can do that. If you have an issue with your bike, the company will send a mechanic to fix it for you. Dance has been trying out the service with hundreds of beta users and "thousands" of bikes are now available for new users. While the company is focusing on Berlin for now, it plans to expand to other German and European cities in the future. Dance will compete with a handful of other services around Europe, such as Swapfiets, or Véligo in Paris. It'll also indirectly compete with on-demand shared bikes, such as Lime and all the various city-led public-private bike-sharing services around Europe. And of course, some people will end up buying their own e-bike. But Dance seems like a well-designed offering with a nice-looking bike and a lot of flexibility for the end user. I'm sure the startup will have no issue finding customers who are looking for a seamless end-to-end experience.  Image Credits: Dance  |
| This Sequoia- and Henry Kravis-backed prediction market wants to turn opinions into money Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:21 PM PDT More than 15 years ago, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, which was acquired by Nasdaq in 2008, and another since-sold exchange called HedgeStreet, both announced they intended to offer something called event contracts to investors. The idea was to allow people to bet “yes” or “no” on questions about future events that were structured as all-or-nothing options, and to pay a fixed amount when an outcome either occurred or did not. At the time, it was a novel but controversial idea; it also failed to generate enough interest from investors to succeed. Now, Kalshi, a young, New York-based, 33-person startup is testing the waters anew and it’s doing so with the help of some heavyweight investors that include Sequoia Capital, Henry Kravis, Charles Schwab and SV Angel that have collectively provided the company with $36 million in funding to date. Their enthusiasm ties in part to a major hurdle that Kalshi — founded by former MIT classmates and researchers Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara — overcame last year by winning approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to run a derivatives exchange. Mansour says Kalshi’s small team worked closely with the agency at every turn to ensure it would pass muster. “This was quite the process, as the more problems you face, the more problems emerge,” he says now of the endeavor. Bringing aboard a former head of clearing at the CFTC as Kalshi’s head of regulation also helped, he says. Kalshi is also emerging during a time when people are consuming more, and sometimes narrower, news stories through their social media feeds and elsewhere. That matters, suggests Lopes Lara, because the “contracts are pretty much tied to news and things that are going on in the world and relevant in the world right now.” Indeed, though a tie-up with a social media platform would probably be ideal, one way the startup is getting in front of information junkies is advertising on the question-and-answer site Quora. (Other, more “partnership-based” tie-ups are coming, add the founders.) In the meantime, Kalshi is on a mission to prove it can entice a new generation of traders — both retail and institutional, accredited and unaccredited — to bet on all kinds of possible outcomes, like whether or not Turkey will join the European Union by June of next year, which is one contract on the platform currently. Kalshi — which has a clearinghouse partner that holds the funds from all users to ensure that every contract is collateralized — is seeing some traction. Since launching in March, the platform has attracted 4,000 users who have agreed to its “yes" or "no” contracts that have just two outcomes and that pay either 100% if an investor bets correctly and zilch if the investor bets wrong. It’s a respectable but conservative amount of users. The founders suggest things will begin to pick up at a faster clip this fall, given that Kalshi has a “few avenues for acquiring users and growing our user base,” says Mansour. One if these is the consumer product that people have so far been experimenting with and which is available to anyone who wants to enter into a contract at its website. More impactful, potentially, Kalshi also has “a few brokers that we’re going to partner with . . . to allow people to trade event contracts the same way they trade stocks, or commodities, or options on their preferred brokerage app,” says Mansour, adding that “by brokers, I mean the Fidelities and Charles Schwabs of the world.” Adds Lopes Lara, “People who use Robinhood or Coinbase or other brokers are our first target, given how much they already understand about investing and are interested in these types of questions and event-based thinking for their investments.” What interested parties should know not to expect are event contracts around sports outcomes (“that’s very much like gambling, and we don’t [facilitate] that,” says Lopes Lara.) Owing to federal regulations, certain other areas are also very much off limits, including events contracts tied to geopolitical events, like whether a war will breakout, and political events. (For example, though users might be tempted to bet on whether or not California Governor Gavin Newsom will be recalled in September, they’d have to drum up that action elsewhere.) As for what happens if Kalshi takes off and other brokerages or other large financial institutions attempt to create their own event contract offerings, Mansour insists that it wouldn’t be so easy for them. “A lot of the work that we’ve done over the last two-and-a-half years is [intellectual property]. Every single detail of operations was built for event contracts. It would take a bit of time — especially for some of these bigger institutions — to really get into the space.” Only time will tell. Other investors in Kalshi include Y Combinator and Tinder cofounder Justin Mateen. Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital sits on the company’s board.  |
| Coral Capital closes third fund with $128M for startups in Japan Posted: 30 Aug 2021 07:00 PM PDT Coral Capital, a Tokyo-based venture capital firm, announced today that it has closed its third fund, Coral Capital III, raising $128 million (14 billion yen). Coral Capital's total assets under management (AUM) is now $275 million. Limited partners in the vehicle include Mizuho Bank, Mitsubishi Estate, Shinsei Bank, Pavilion Capital, Founders Fund, Dai-ichi Life Insurance, GREE, and undisclosed domestic and international institutional investors. Coral Capital, founded by two partners James Riney and Yohei Sawayama, will continue to invest in seed and early-stage companies in Japan, deploying first checks from $500,000 to $5 million, and follow-on funding, CEO and founding partner Riney told TechCrunch. "We have made a few large follow-on investments – $20 million into SmartHR and $17 million into Graffer. we also allocated a significant portion of our latest fund for follow-on investment," Riney said. About 30% of its third fund is from global investors including the US, Asia and Europe, and Coral Capital wants to be a bridge between its Japan-based portfolio companies and global venture capital community for reaching international scale, Riney continued. What makes the latest fund unique is that it has a longer fund life that can be extended to 14 years, Riney said. "We want our founders to focus on building without the pressure of a VC looking for a quick exit," Riney told TechCrunch. Its previous two funds had about 10 years of fund life, Riney noted. Riney and Sawayama, who were co-founders of 500 Startups Japan, launched their first fund in partnership with 500 Startups in February 2016. Coral Capital has set up its $45 million second fund, Capital Fund II under their own brand name, in February 2019. Coral Capital has invested in over 80 companies in Japan and exited 7 companies so far, according to Riney. It has made a raft of investments including SmartHR, Graffer, GITAI, and Kyoto Fusioneering. The company will focus on investing digital transformation in areas including SaaS, insurance, fintech, healthcare, deep tech, fusion engineering companies, robotic companies, Riney told TechCrunch. The Japanese startup ecosystem is striking its stride now compared to 9 years ago, Riney said. As Riney and Sawayama started investing in seed and early-stage startup companies back in 2012, the startup world was a black box in the country, according to Riney. There was less than a billion invested into startups every year and hardly any unicorns in Japan, and there was not enough information available in Japanese on building companies, he said. Many startups in Japan are now forgoing an early IPO and raising larger amounts in later stage rounds, Riney said. Japan's annual startup investment is estimated at $5 billion, with six unicorns including Coral Capital's portfolio company, up from just about $600 million in 2012. The $5 billion in annual startup investment is nothing when you consider that the U.S. and China attract tens of billions, and even neighboring country Korea attracts about $4 billion and produced Coupang, a decacorn, Riney said. "We can do better, and we will" and Coral Capital will continue to support and play an important role in driving the ecosystem forward in Japan, Riney added. Coral Capital also plans to double down on its media outlet, Coral Insights, and recruit staff for building its community. Many startup founders, employees, and investors publish content on their learnings, raising the bar for everyone in the ecosystem and Japan is starting to look a lot more like Silicon Valley, Riney said.  |
| Southeast Asia “omnichannel” health startup Doctor Anywhere gets $88M SGD Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:00 PM PDT Doctor Anywhere, a startup that takes an "omnichannel" approach to healthcare, announced today it has raised $88 million SGD (about $65.7 million USD) in Series C funding. The round was led by Asia Partners, with participation from Novo Holdings, Philips and OSK-SBI Partners. It also included returning investors EDBI, Square Peg, IHH Healthcare, Kamet Capital and Pavilion Capital. As part of the round, Asia Partners co-founder Oliver Rippel and Novo Holdings Equity Asia senior partner Dr. Amit Kakar will join Doctor Anywhere's board of directors. The company's Series C, which it claims is one of the largest private rounds raised by a Southeast Asian healthtech company, brings its total funding to more than $140 million SGD. Doctor Anywhere's omnichannel approach means that in addition to online consultations, it runs in-person clinics, provides home visits, medication deliveries and operates an in-app marketplace for health and wellness products. Founded in 2017 by Lim Wai Mun, Doctor Anywhere claims it now serves more than 1.5 million users. It is available in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, and recently established tech hubs in Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh City. Lim told TechCrunch in an email that when he started working on Doctor Anywhere, there were already successful telemedicine platforms in the United States, the United Kingdom and China, but the model was still nascent in Southeast Asia. A former investor, Lim began Doctor Anywhere as a side project because he had older relatives who could not leave their homes for medical visits. Doctor Anywhere launched as an online-only telehealth platform, but "we quickly realized that physical presence is very important in order to build trust with users," Lim said. As a result, the company started its home care services and physical clinics. According to Doctor Anywhere's estimates, the COVID-19 pandemic fast-tracked the adoption of telehealth services in Southeast Asia by at least five years. The company saw more demand for online medical consultations, medication deliveries and marketplace purchases. "In the past year, we have more than doubled the size of our network, from around 1,000 providers at the start of 2020 to currently close to 2,500 medical professionals across Southeast Asia," Lim said. In response to the pandemic, Doctor Anywhere launched an online COVID-19 Medical Advisory Clinic last year to provide on-demand consultations for people with suspected symptoms. It also created an online mental wellness module with psychologists. Lim said the company has seen an increase in demand for mental health-related services, like insomnia and anxiety. Other telehealth startups in the region include WhiteCoat, Speedoc and Doctor World. Lim said Doctor Anywhere wants to differentiate by quickly launching new products in response to user inquiries, and "cultivating a balance between technology and human touch." The funding will be used to deepen Doctor Anywhere's presence in its current markets and expand into new ones. It also plans to scale its tech infrastructure and big data capabilities for a better online-to-offline user experience, and will introduce new medical specialty modules, shorten medication delivery times and develop personalized healthcare plans.  |
| Rugged showcases its layout-printing construction robots Posted: 30 Aug 2021 03:26 PM PDT Few robotics categories are poised to benefit more from the events of the past year than construction. It's a booming field that could benefit massively from automaton, a fact that's only been amplified as the pandemic brought many nonessential businesses to a standstill. We've seen a number of players in the category raise notable rounds over the past year or so, including Toggle, Dusty, Scaled and SkyMul. Founded in 2018, Houston-based Rugged Robotics raised a $2.5 million seed round back in 2019. While the company isn't actively raising at the moment, it has already begun to roll out its technology in early pilots, including a partnership with Massachusetts-based construction-firm Consigli.  Image Credits: Rugged Robotics "We had a client that was pretty progressive looking," said Consigli's Jack Moran. “It's a building where we were controlling the core shell of the project, as well as the fit-out, which was pretty complex — lots of odd shapes that would be a challenge for us.” Rugged's self-described "layout Roomba” was used to help build a 10-story building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, effectively drawing blueprints on the ground of the space that amounted to around 40,000 square feet per floor. The partnership effectively finds Rugged taking a key step from its early research and development mode to commercialize. "The layout process is the most important task in the construction process," Rugged founder and CEO Derrick Morse said in an interview with TechCrunch. "Marking where things are installed defines where things are built. A mistake made during layout trickles into the overall construction process and it results in rework, delays and additional expenses." The team is still small, with a headcount of around six full-time employees, including co-founders with backgrounds at NASA and Samsung. The team currently has three robots, with plans to expand to five. They print dot matrix ink patterns on the ground to give construction teams a real-world orientation for the buildings they’re creating.  Image Credits: Rugged Robotics A member of the Rugged team travels to the site with the robot to supervise the robot as it executes on its plans, with the startup charging the construction company through a RaaS (robotics as a service) model. "We have insatiable customer demand," said Morse. "We have several multibillion-dollar contractors that are excited to do pilots and demos with us. We'll be growing the organization and fleet in the upcoming 12 months, and we'll likely be bringing in additional capital to enable that growth."  |
| Daily Crunch: China sets three-hour weekly time limit for under-18 gamers Posted: 30 Aug 2021 03:10 PM PDT To get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 30, 2021. The startup world is gearing up for Y Combinator Demo Day this week, but the rest of tech isn't taking a pause. So we have Apple news, Telegram news, antitrust news, video game news, you name it. But we have some TechCrunch news to start: Ryan Reynolds is coming to Disrupt to talk about his company, Maximum Effort. That's pretty hype. And we're going to be talking about software. A lot. — Alex The TechCrunch Top 3
Startups/VCReady for a broadside of startup news? Good. We have what you need. But first, as a sign of the times, Telegram just crossed the 1 billion download mark. That's an achievement, sure, but also goes to show that maybe consumers do care about privacy after all.
How Amazon EC2 grew from a notion into a foundational element of cloud computingIn August 2006, AWS activated its EC2 cloud-based virtual computer, a milestone in the cloud infrastructure giant’s development. “You really can't overstate what Amazon was able to accomplish,” writes enterprise reporter Ron Miller. In the 15 years since, EC2 has enabled clients of any size to test and run their own applications on AWS’ virtual machines. To learn more about a fundamental technological shift that “would help fuel a whole generation of startups,” Ron interviewed EC2 VP Dave Brown, who built and led the Amazon EC2 front-end team. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Big Tech Inc.
TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Are you all caught up on last week's coverage of growth marketing? If not, read it here. TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you're a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we'd like to hear about why they loved working with you. Community
Join Danny Crichton on Twitter Spaces tomorrow, Tuesday, August 31st at 1 p.m. PDT/4 p.m. EDT as he talks with Azeem Azhar about his upcoming book, "The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society," which will be released on September 7, 2021.  |
| Square to launch a new paid subscription, Invoices Plus Posted: 30 Aug 2021 02:26 PM PDT Square’s popular free invoicing software is becoming the company’s next big subscription service. The company is poised to announce a paid subscription offering called Invoices Plus, which will offer sellers a set of advanced features, including some that had previously been available with the free service. The service itself had been quietly introduced to individual sellers, but has not yet been publicly announced. Some sellers who were already using Square Invoices were recently alerted to the upcoming changes via email. In the announcement shared with some sellers (the details of which can also be viewed here on a Square Seller Community forum), the new subscription will include a series of features that were released in the past year as part of a limited trial. This includes multi-package estimates, custom invoice templates and custom invoice fields. These will now become a part of Invoices Plus, as will two other features: the ability to automatically convert accepted estimates to invoices and the ability to build milestone-based schedules (three-plus installment invoices). Square’s announcement said it will introduce a “trial” button next to these features in the Square Invoices software to alert customers to the upcoming capabilities (see below).  Image Credits: Square website Square’s free invoicing software will not go away, the announcement noted. Sellers will be able to send unlimited invoices for free, as well as estimates and contracts, with the free plan. Free users will also be able to use invoice tracking, reminders and reporting tools. The free plan has historically relied on processing fees to generate revenue. At present, this is 2.9% + $0.30 per invoice paid online by check or debit card plus a 1% fee per ACH transaction, per Square’s website. (Fees are slightly lower on in-person transactions and slightly higher for “card on file” transactions.) Pricing for the new, paid subscription has not yet been publicly announced. A Square employee had explained the reasoning behind the change on the community forum site. They noted that many of Square’s other products — like Square Online, Appointments, Square for Retail and Square for Restaurants — also offer both a free and paid tier. And although Square charges processing fees for Square Invoices, they aren’t enough to fuel its product development. With Invoices Plus, they said, the company aims to compete more directly with paid invoicing apps and products and the more advanced features those products offer. Reached for comment, Square confirmed to TechCrunch Invoices Plus is a software subscription the company plans to announce shortly. But the company didn’t want to share more details until the news is official. References to the new subscription have also already made their way to the Square app’s code, where they were spotted by iOS developer Steve Moser. The code indicates users who previously used some of the paid-only features will be able to still use them for the time being. But as the announcement also noted, sellers would not be able to use the paid features for free the next time they’re creating new files with Square Invoices.  Image Credits: Steve Moser The new service arrived shortly after Square announced earnings, where it noted its seller business brought in $1.31 billion in revenue (out of the total of $4.68 billion) and $585 million of gross profit in the second quarter, driven in part by continued strong online growth. The company also announced its plan to acquire the buy now, pay later giant Afterpay in a $29 billion deal, speaking to its interest in chasing the broader payments market. The deal also offers Square a way to connect its different products by allowing Afterpay customers to pay their monthly installments through Square’s Cash App, the company said. An integration between Square and Afterpay is something that could be seen further down the road, as well, one could imagine. That’s something Square also hinted toward in a response to another seller on its community forum site, where a rep updated an older answer to share news of the acquisition, adding Square didn’t “have integration timelines to share at the moment.”  |
| New Zealand-based student well-being platform Komodo raises $1.8M NZD Posted: 30 Aug 2021 02:00 PM PDT Adolescence is a turbulent period and its challenges are being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even in the best of times, teens dealing with personal and school problems might have trouble talking about them. New Zealand-based startup Komodo is a student well-being platform that wants to give students a place to communicate with staff, while providing schools with data to help them spot and address issues like depression or bullying. Founded in 2018 by Chris Bacon, Matt Goodson and Jack Wood, the startup announced today it has raised $1.8 million NZD (about $1.26 million) in seed funding led by Folklore Ventures, with participation from Icehouse Ventures and Flying Fox Ventures. Individual investors included employee engagement platform Culture Amp co-founder Rod Hamilton; Chloe Hamman, Culture Amp's director of people science; leaders from learning platform Education Perfect; and Kristi Grant, the director of people experience at Auror. Some of Komodo's clients and partners in New Zealand and Australia include Marist College Ashgrove in Queensland; St. Andrew's College in Christchurch; the Australian Boarding Schools Association (ABSA); Independent Schools of New Zealand; and the Council of British International Schools. Komodo was originally created to monitor the well-being of youth athletes, based on research Bacon performed while earning a Ph.D. at the University of Canterbury. A lot of its clients were schools, and that's when the team began to expand Komodo's scope. "The draw for us was witnessing specific examples," Wood told TechCrunch. "We had schools coming back to us saying 'we've got a kid that's been bullied for the past three months who hasn't even remotely felt confident to approach a staff member and start talking about it. We've finally seen that come up in Komodo and they feel happy they have a confidential channel to voice that concern.'"  Komodo co-founders Jack Wood and Chris Bacon. Image Credits: Komodo Komodo has a web application and a mobile app, which is what most students use. The platform can be customized by schools and includes psychologist-designed surveys and questions about topics like how students feel about going to school, socialization and relationships or major transitions like starting high school or preparing for university. The amount of time students check into Komodo depends on their school. At some it's once a week, others once every two weeks or month. Schools use the platform differently based on their environment — for example, if they're learning remotely, they may do more frequent check-ins. For schools, data collected from surveys can help them see trends emerge and catch potential problems earlier, like cyberbullying. Before implementing Komodo, its founders say some schools did well-being surveys a few times per year, but many of them relied on staff and teachers' intuition — for example, if a student who is typically outgoing suddenly becomes withdrawn. Komodo gives them a more efficient way to identify and address issues, though Wood and Bacon emphasize that it's not meant to replace person-to-person interactions. "Ultimately our bigger vision is facilitating and getting well-being support to students as early as possible," said Bacon. The founders have spent a lot of time talking with Culture Amp's Hamilton "about how it's really important that the individuals you're providing data to can actually understand and use it on a regular basis," he added. "The key part for us [is] to provide visibility and psychologists who can come in and support [school staff] even more." Komodo's seed funding will be used to add more psychologists to its in-house team, develop the platform and expand into more schools in Australia and New Zealand before other markets, including the United States.  |
| Foreign investors have a bigger role to play in growing Latin America’s startup ecosystem Posted: 30 Aug 2021 01:43 PM PDT There has been significant hype around Latin America's startup success. For good reason, too: Startups have raised $9.3 billion in just the first half of 2021, almost double the amount in all of 2020, and mega-rounds are a growing trend. But while the industry hails the rise of the region's ecosystem and its growing fleet of unicorns, Latin America's startup story has a far longer past. And it's one we should keep in mind as entrepreneurs and investors around the world forge the region's future. People often ask me: How are consumers different in Brazil? How does the Peruvian market behave compared to the United States? These questions don't really see each country for its inherent value, but instead gear people up to expect the unexpected from a historically economically disadvantaged region. In fact, the evolution of business shares far more similarities across countries than we might expect. Latin America's market has evolved over a very long time — as long as Silicon Valley and any other hub. This region has a global outlook, spectacular universities, a diverse population and an army of entrepreneurs.
It's important for investors outside of Latin America to get involved in fundraising at earlier stages, when founders need extra support from everyone around. That's why the unicorns and megadeals should come as no surprise: They're the natural evolution of the ecosystem, of more capital generating more success after years of hard work. As Latin America has grown, competition has grown even more intense in the United States. VCs have more money than ever, and it's getting increasingly expensive to invest in North America. So they're looking to diversify their investments with high-potential opportunities abroad. Big funds are now dedicating resources to exclusively targeting Latin America, from SoftBank creating a region-specific fund, to Sequoia saying it will pay more attention to the region. These incoming investors must bring more than money to ensure that entrepreneurship continues to grow in a healthy manner, rather than set it off balance. Investors should bring a local strategy that makes them an asset to Latin America's startup ecosystem. Investors should look for younger marketsMost Latin American companies reaching unicorn status and going public now were started around 2012. This is not very different from the timeline of businesses in other markets such as the United States. For instance, e-commerce giant MercadoLibre launched in Argentina around the time eBay was emerging. What this tells us is that foreign investors would do well to keep a sharp eye on emerging opportunities beyond heavily covered markets like Brazil and Mexico. There is a huge opportunity to do what local investors did in Brazil and Mexico years ago, and play a significant role in the next chapter of countries with blossoming markets like Colombia, Peru or Uruguay. U.S. investors remain shyThe amount of VC capital being funneled into Latin American startups has surged since 2017, with angel investment close behind. However, much of this investment comes from local and regional investors. Every top university in Brazil has a pool of angels. Investors in the Andean region cover Peru, Chile and Colombia. If today's ecosystem is flourishing, it's largely because native investors are lighting the spark. Meanwhile, U.S. investor presence at the early stages is still low and risk averse. It's much harder for a pre-seed or seed startup to get foreign investor interest than when they've already reached Series A or B. Investors also tend to come in on an ad hoc basis or as outliers brought about by a mutual contact. Foreign investors are the exception, not the rule. It's important for investors outside of Latin America to get involved in fundraising at earlier stages, when founders need extra support from everyone around. Investors should be pursuing a long-term strategy that will bring more consistency to the local ecosystem as a whole. Money is not enough, investors should bring dedicated resourcesYour contribution as an investor is largely about the resources you can offer. That's especially challenging for a foreigner who has less of an understanding of the local industry and lacks a network and people on the ground. While investors may say their your regular value offering is enough — network and U.S. customers — in truth, this won't necessarily be of much use. Your hiring network might not be ideal for a Latin American company, and your thorough understanding of the U.S. market might not reflect developments in Latin America. Remember that the region has a plethora of VC organizations who have worked with local startups over the course of a decade. Latin America is a very welcoming and open market, and local investors and accelerators will happily work with foreign investors, including in deal-sharing opportunities. It's crucial to create incentives within the ecosystem, which — like in the United States — largely means matching founders with unique opportunities. In North America, this often happens organically, because people are on the ground and actively engaged with what's happening in the region, from networking events, to awards, and grants and partnership opportunities. To create this in Latin America, foreign investors need to dedicate a team and money to their regional commitments. They will have to understand the local industry and be available to mentor founders with diverse perspectives. In my experience helping EA, Pinterest and Facebook land in Latin America, we always had someone on the ground or working remotely but fully dedicated to the region. We had people focused on localizing the product, and we had research teams studying similarities and differences in user behavior. That's how corporations land their products; it's how VCs should land their money. Only disrupt when it adds valueThe idea is for foreign investors to strike a balance locally while creating disruptions when it helps startups look outward rather than attempting to overhaul steady, positive internal growth. That can mean encouraging companies to incorporate in the United States to make it easier for investors from anywhere to invest or preparing the company to go global. Local investors can help investors new to the region understand the balance of things that should or shouldn't be disrupted. Don't be surprised when Latin America's apparent “boom” starts happening in other emerging markets like Africa and Asia. This isn't about a secret hack coming in from the outside. It's just about creating the right environment for local talent to flourish and ensuring it maintains healthy growth.  |
| Zoom announces first startups receiving funding from $100M investment fund Posted: 30 Aug 2021 01:05 PM PDT For more than a year now, Zoom has been on a mission to transform from an application into a platform. To that end it made three announcements last year: Zoom Apps development tools, the Zoom Apps marketplace and a $100 million development fund to invest in some of the more promising startups building tools on top of their platform. Today, at the closing bell, the company announced it has made its first round of investments. Ross Mayfield, product lead for Zoom Apps and integrations, spoke to TechCrunch about the round of investments. “We’re in the process of creating this ecosystem. We felt it important, particularly to focus on the seed stage and A stage of partnering with entrepreneurs to create great things on this platform. And I think what you see in the first batch of more than a dozen investments is representative of something that’s going to be a significant ongoing undertaking,” he explained. He said while they aren’t announcing exact investment amounts, they are writing checks for between $250,000 and $2.5 million. They are teaming with other investment partners, rather than leading the rounds, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t working with these startups using internal resources for advice and executive backing, beyond the money. “Every one of these investments has an executive or senior sponsor within the company. So there’s another person inside that knows the lay of the land, can help them advance and spend more personal time with them,” Mayfield said. The company is also running several Zoom chat channels for the startups receiving investments to learn from one another and the Zoom Apps team. “We have a shared chat channel between the startup and my team. We have a channel called Announcements and a channel called Help, and another one that the startups created called Community,” he said. Every week they use these channels to hold a developer office hour, a business office hour (which Mayfield runs) and a community hour, where the startups can gather and talk amongst themselves about whatever they want. Among the specific categories receiving funding are collaboration and productivity, community and charity, DE&I and PeopleOps, and gaming and entertainment. In the collaboration and productivity category, Warmly is a sales tool that provides background and information about each person participating in the meeting ahead of time, while allowing the meeting organizer to create customized Zoom backgrounds for each event. Another is Fathom, which alleviates the need to take notes during a meeting, but it’s more than recording and transcription. “It gives you this really simple interface where you can just tag moments. And then, as a result you have this transcript of the video recording, and you can click on those tagged moments as highlights, and then share a clip of the meeting highlights to Salesforce, Slack and other tools,” Mayfield said. Pledge enables individuals or organizations to request and collect donations inside a Zoom meeting instantly, and Canvas is a hiring and interview tool that helps companies build diverse teams with data that helps them set and meet DEI goals. These and the other companies represent the first tranche of investments from this fund, and Mayfield says the company intends to continue looking for startups using the Zoom platform to build their startup or integrate with Zoom. He says that every company starts as a feature, then becomes a product and then aspires to be a line of products. The trick is getting there. The goal of the investment program and the entire set of Zoom Apps tools is about helping these companies take the first step. “The art of being an entrepreneur is working with that risk in the absence of resources and pushing at the frontier of what you know.” Zoom is trying to be a role model, a mentor and an investor on that journey.  |
| Prive has raised $1.7 million to build a more configurable e-commerce subscription platform Posted: 30 Aug 2021 12:22 PM PDT Prive, a months-old, San Francisco-based startup founded by two former Uber product managers, just raised $1.7 million in pre-seed funding to create what it describes as a far more customizable e-commerce subscriptions platform for D2C brands. The round was co-led by Patrick Chung and Brandon Farwell at XFund and Ben Ling from Bling Capital, with participation from Defy Partners, Halogen Ventures and Uber executives. Founded by Claudia Laurie and Alex Craciun — who both spent two-and-a-half years at Uber and decided, based on their learnings about pricing and incentives, to leave the company earlier this year — Prive aims to better enable small retailers to compete with behemoths like Amazon. The broad idea is that by plugging into existing APIs from Shopify and other e-commerce platforms, Prive can form an opinion that it sells to merchants about what customers tend to buy on a recurrent basis. Maybe it sees that people who buy razors also tend to buy toothbrushes on a similar cadence, for example. It passes that information along, then helps the brand create more customized, and flexible, offerings so that their shoppers are presented with items they might want, as well as can more easily cancel items that are starting to pile up. “The market opportunity is huge, and the existing [e-commerce subscription] tools are just scratching the surface,” notes Laurie. Indeed, according to the group eMarketer, subscription e-commerce sales have grown 41% from the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and it foresees that 3% of U.S. retail e-commerce sales will come from subscriptions this year, totaling $27.67 billion. That’s up from $10 billion in just two years. Of course, a lot has yet to be built, which is where the pre-seed funding comes in. Right now, Prive is a seven-person team with some serious competition, namely from Recharge, a seven-year-old, Santa Monica, California-based subscription e-commerce company that in May raised $277 million in growth capital at a post-money valuation of $2.1 billion. As of that announcement, Recharge had roughly 330 employees and was fueling the subscription service for what it said was 15,000 merchants and 20 million subscribers worldwide. Other rivals include nine-year-old Bold Commerce (it has raised $44 million altogether), and 10-year-old Chargebee, which has raised around $220 million over the years, according to Crunchbase data. “E-commerce ‘subscription’ is an incredibly hot buzzword,” Craciun acknowledges. But he also thinks today’s current product offerings are just scratching the service. Clearly, investors are willing to gamble that he’s right, and that Prive could be a team that proves it. “Current tools can create more headaches than they actually solve,” says Craciun. “There is a lot of rigidity in today’s subscriptions that makes it very difficult to identify the right recurring mix of offerings. We’re here to break down that mental model.”  |
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