TechCrunch |
- Moovit partners with smart cane company WeWALK to enhance mobility for visually impaired
- Instant grocery delivery startup JOKR bags another huge round to enter unicorn status
- Here’s what’s happening today at the iMerit ML DataOps Summit 2021
- Facebook is making two-factor mandatory for high-risk accounts
- Hotel Engine raises $65M at a $1.3B valuation as corporate travel rebounds
- Uber intros several safety features, including one that records audio during a ride
- Mexican BNPL player Kueski secures $202M in debt & equity as it nears $100M+ in ARR
- Shiftsmart, a marketplace matching shift workers to employers, grabs $95M
- Meru.com takes in new capital toward its goal of being LatAm’s ‘Alibaba’
- Karamba Security raises another $10M for its IoT and automotive security platform
- Segway makes its first foray into sidewalk robot delivery with Coco partnership
- Falcon Edge Capital eyes raising a fund of over $10 billion
- When grandma falls, SafelyYou is there to catch her (on video)
- Kayak co-leads Life House’s $60M Series C to ‘reimagine’ the hotel experience
- Tesla is now selling a $1,900 electric Cyberquad ATV for kids
- Toronto-based VFX startup MARZ raises $5.3M to develop AI technology solutions
- Swiggy to invest $700 million in instant grocery delivery service
- Bounce’s first electric scooter features swappable battery, costs less than $500
- Apple announces the 2021 App Store Award winners and most downloaded apps of the year
- Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services
| Moovit partners with smart cane company WeWALK to enhance mobility for visually impaired Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:04 AM PST Intel-owned Moovit, a mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) provider with a globally popular trip planning app, has partnered with WeWALK, a smart cane company, to help visually impaired people reach their destinations safer and more efficiently. WeWALK’s app will now be integrated with Moovit’s Transit API, which combines official local transit agency information with crowdsourced information to get the best route for each journey, so that visually impaired users can navigate safely on public transit, according to Jean Marc Feghali, WeWALK's R&D lead. The partnership follows several Moovit integrations with micromobility companies, such as Lime, Bird and, most recently, Superpedestrian, to display their shared electric scooters and bikes within the app. Moovit has also launched new business units, such as on-demand transit for riders in transit deserts, as well as a partnership with Mobileye, another Intel company, to provide an autonomous ride-hailing service. It seems Moovit, which currently operates in 3,400 cities, is trying to be everywhere and cater to everyone, and that definitely should include the visually impaired. Transportation tech specifically geared toward the disability community isn’t exactly plentiful, but a few helpful innovations are starting to crop up. For example, Ashirase, a Honda incubation, recently launched with an in-shoe navigation system that is somewhat similar to WeWALK’s cane. While the cane itself provides analog ground-level obstacle detection via the shaft, the smart device attached to it provides upper body obstacle detection that’s facilitated by an ultrasonic sensor. The user is warned about obstacles detected at various distances through haptic feedback generated by vibration motors built into the cane. “Indeed, WeWALK can do much more, including providing directions to bus stops,” Feghali told TechCrunch. “Through Bluetooth, the smart cane connects to our WeWALK smartphone app, which we consider to be one of the most comprehensive and accessible visually impaired navigation apps available. Our app integrates with the Moovit service and our custom-built navigation engine and app interface to provide walking and public transport navigation and urban exploration features.” Once users put their destination in the app and select the route, the cane guides the user on their journey step-by-step through audio directions and low vision mapping, directing users to transport stops and notifying them when the next transport vehicle is arriving. The system also alerts the user when boarding and when the user has reached their stop, so they know that they’re at the right stop and when to get off. The best part for users is not having one hand on their phone and another on the cane. The cane has a built-in touchpad on the handle that’s connected to the app, allowing users to make gestures so they can interact with their phones to find out where they are, check transit timetables and nearby transport stops, and navigate to their destinations. “For instance, if a user is navigating to Imperial College London, the smart cane will announce the route options and guide the user step-by-step through each phase,” Feghali said. “For walking directions, WeWALK will announce, ‘Head 12 o’clock on Buckingham Palace Road for 50 meters and turn right, 3 o’clock, onto Station Road.’ At the metro station, WeWALK will notify the user of the right train to board when it arrives and will warn the user before they need to get off.” The timing of the partnership syncs with International Persons with Disabilities Day, to be observed on Friday, and will hopefully give visually impaired people more autonomy and freedom of movement as they try to access opportunities for employment, education and social activities. "While blind and partially sighted people have more independence than ever before, getting around via public transit can still be daunting and overwhelming,” Yovav Meydad, Moovit's chief growth and marketing officer, said in a statement. “Through our partnership, we aim to instill more reassurance in people by breaking down some of these mobility barriers, empowering them to access more opportunities available to them." |
| Instant grocery delivery startup JOKR bags another huge round to enter unicorn status Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:01 AM PST Online grocery sales are in single digits right now, but new data suggests it will top 20% by 2026 due to more consumers getting comfortable buying their groceries this way over the past two years. JOKR, an instant grocery delivery startup based in New York and operating in the Americas, is getting out ahead of that demand with its frictionless shopping experience and delivery within minutes of purchase.  Image Credits: JOKR The company took in $260 million in Series B, just five months after raising $170 million in Series A funding that was led by GGV Capital, Balderton Capital and Tiger Global Management. The new round also lifts JOKR into unicorn territory with a valuation of $1.2 billion, and the company touts itself as "one of the fastest companies to reach unicorn status in history." All of that is also after launching the company eight months ago, Ralf Wenzel, founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. "We were not planning to raise so soon — we had sufficient capital after raising the substantial round in July," he said. "Since then, we built out in so many different countries and began getting a lot of interest in what we were doing. Our existing investors wanted to double down on our phenomenal and healthy growth, as well as new investors. We are now well capitalized and happy about it." GGVl, Balderton and Tiger Global all returned for this new upsized round and were joined by a group that included Activant Capital, Greycroft, G-Squared, HV Capital, Kaszek, Mirae Asset, Monashees and Moving Capital. Wenzel didn't disclose specific growth figures, but did say that its gross merchandise volume is growing, on average, 15% each week and customer retention remains high as over 50% of its new customers come to them organically. JOKR has also increased its number of warehouse hubs, now operating 200 in 15 cities, like New York, Mexico City and Sao Paulo, some of which have achieved operational profitability, Wenzel said. He plans to deploy the new capital into expansion within its existing geographies, gaining more traction down to the neighborhood level. For example, there is potential for a hundred more hubs surrounding Sao Paulo, Wenzel added. He also wants to launch in additional cities in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile in Latin America and expand in the United States — more to come soon on that, Wenzel teased. In addition, JOKR will focus efforts on new customer acquisition and growth with marketing and data science and technology development, particularly around procurement and supply chain. Since its last funding round, the company also released a new version of its product and app, offering a more personalized and curated experience as it shifts away from just offering convenience items. JOKR also aims to be carbon neutral within its processes by the end of the year. "As we have said before, our vision is not just convenience and on demand, but to a more comprehensive grocery inventory that covers fresh produce, meat, dairy and packaged foods," Wenzel said. "On the fresh side, we are increasing our offerings across geographies and becoming more personalized than the alternative grocery store." |
| Here’s what’s happening today at the iMerit ML DataOps Summit 2021 Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST And we're off to the data races! Yes, today iMerit ML DataOps Summit 2021 dives deep into the data science solutions that power artificial intelligence and machine learning. It's shaping up to be a productive and opportunity-filled day. Don't have a pass yet? No problem — they're free. Simply register here and then get ready to get busy. Here's a quick look at what you — and more than 2500 other attendees — can experience today. Check out the event agenda for full descriptions and exact times, and then get ready to learn, connect and network! First up: Product demos you won't want to miss.
Now serving up a flight of presentations: Emerging AI Companies Are Driving A Paradigm Shift in ML — Hussein Mehanna (Cruise) and Ragavan Srinivasan (Facebook AI) discuss the emergence of AI native companies and the paradigm shift being driven by advances in ML and robotics. Just as web transformed business, then the emergence of mobile and cloud, autonomous technologies are redefining the companies building products that simply cannot exist without AI. Bringing Complex Conversational AI to Production in RPA — Robotic processing automation (RPA) is a game-changer for enterprises looking to streamline customer service, create new operational efficiencies and realize cost savings. Hear from Infinitus Co-Founder and CEO, Ankit Jain as he shares how RPA is taking complex conversational AI to new heights. Fireside Chat with Former U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil — Join former U.S. chief data scientist, DJ Patil and iMerit CEO, Radha Basu as they discuss what's needed from data science for artificial intelligence to advance and potentially achieve human-like intelligence in the future. These industry veterans will explore the complex relationship between technology and humans; what's needed for humans and AI to work together to bring new opportunities to market that will truly have a societal impact. Finally, don't miss exploring the companies showcasing their tech and talent in the virtual expo: Alectio, Alegion, Dataloop, Datasaur, Deepen AI, Labelbox, Lightly, Picterra, Superb AI and Taskmonk Technology. iMerit ML DataOps Summit 2021 happens today — and you still have time to join this world-class data-dive. Simply register here for your free pass. |
| Facebook is making two-factor mandatory for high-risk accounts Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST Facebook, a recently added subsidiary of Meta, said it will make two-factor authentication (2FA) mandatory for high-risk accounts likely to be targeted by malicious hackers. The move is part of a major expansion of Facebook Protect, the social networking giant’s enhanced security program that’s intended to protect the accounts of people who may be at particular risk, like human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials. The initiative helps these accounts adopt stronger security protections by simplifying security features — including 2FA — and providing additional security protections for accounts and Pages, including monitoring for potential hacking threats. The program was piloted in 2018 and expanded ahead of the 2020 U.S. election in a bid to try and stop abuse and election interference from spreading on the platform. It's now enabled on more than 1.5 million accounts, according to Facebook, and is expanding to more than 50 countries by the end of the year, including the U.S., India, and Portugal. The company is planning a further expansion in 2022. Of the 1.5 million accounts already enrolled in Facebook Protect, almost 950,000 have 2FA enabled, a feature that Facebook said has been “historically underutilized across the internet.” Facebook says it wants this feature to be used by all high-risk accounts, and is making it compulsory. This means if a user identified by Facebook as high-risk does not enable 2FA at once a set period has expired, they won’t be able to access their accounts. The company said users won’t permanently lose access to their accounts, but will need to enable 2FA in order to regain access. "2FA is such a core component of any user's online defense, so we want to make this as easy as possible," said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Security Policy at Facebook. "To help drive wider enrollment of 2FA, we need to go beyond raising awareness or encouraging enrollment. This is a community of people that sit at very critical points in public debate and are highly targeted, so for their own protection, they probably should be enabling 2FA." Gleicher added that, in early testing, mandating Facebook Protect saw more than 90% of high-risk users enroll in 2FA. In order to balance the protection the tool provides against the potential consequences — such as critical voices being locked out of their accounts — 2FA will first be required in places Facebook "has the necessary resources in place to smoothly expand," such as the Philippines and Turkey. The company will also focus on regions where an upcoming election could create an important civic moment. Facebook says that, while its own figures show that less than 4% of its global monthly active user base has not enrolled in 2FA, it currently has "no plans" to mandate the feature for all accounts. |
| Hotel Engine raises $65M at a $1.3B valuation as corporate travel rebounds Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST With the pandemic heading into its second year, people all over the world are traveling more for work again. If you've flown anytime in the past few months, the packed planes are in part evidence of that. Further evidence that travel is rebounding lies in the number of people staying in hotels, and the money going into startups that serve the industry as well as travelers. Hotel Engine is the latest such startup, having just raised $65 million in a Series B round at a $1.3 billion valuation. Returning backer Telescope Partners led the financing, which also included participation from new investor Blackstone. Notably, the investment values the Denver-based company at nearly 9 times higher than the $150 million valuation it achieved when it raised $16 million in a Series A round in 2019 — its first round of funding after bootstrapping for four years. Hotel Engine describes itself as a "Lodging Performance Network." Or in other words, the startup is a B2B members-only, global booking platform that aims to provide companies access to better lodging rates as well as tools and insights designed to "optimize their travel programs." Meanwhile, it partners with lodging providers (better known as hotels), who benefit from gaining access to more "high-value" business travelers, according to founder and CEO Elia Wallen. Wallen started Hotel Engine in 2015 as a "simple" booking tool designed to support the hotel lodging needs of clients of another company he'd founded, Travelers Haven. That startup was more of a short-term corporate housing company.  Image Credits: CEO and Founder Elia Wallen / Hotel Engine For the first two years, Hotel Engine was more of a side project for Wallen with admittedly "limited investment or attention." But in 2018, he began to get more serious about it and began dedicating separate resources to the company, which led to triple-digit growth in a year's time. "Since then, we've been on an incredible growth trajectory,' he told TechCrunch. And notably, Hotel Engine is something that many startups are not: profitable. Between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2021, Hotel Engine experienced a 201% increase in core bookings revenue and increased its customer base by 60% to over 40,000 companies. It also added 100,000 people to its membership base, bringing the total to more than 550,000. Meanwhile, its headcount has swelled from 119 to 300 over the same time period. The company expects to hire another 400 people in 2022. Wallen believes Hotel Engine is unique in the way that it leverages technology to connect businesses and lodging partners globally. "Our approach allows our customers the ability to centralize their lodging needs on one platform from sourcing and negotiation to booking and reconciliation," he said. "Our technology provides significant savings and world-class customer support on a no-contract platform." Looking ahead, the company is eager to expand its international footprint.  Image Credits: Hotel Engine Ramzi Ramsey, managing director at Blackstone, believes that Hotel Engine provides "a unique and differentiated" experience, especially for industries that have historically been underserved by traditional travel booking companies that do not specialize in group or long-term stays. By providing a set of fintech and expense management software tools to make the booking process less painful, Hotel Engine has seen "explosive growth" in recent years, he points out. "For example, Hotel Engine has expanded the addressable market for hotel providers by facilitating upfront payments, as many companies do not have the working capital for large group or long-term stays," Ramsey wrote via email. "As the economy reopens, we expect Hotel Engine to be a strong secondary beneficiary of the recently passed $1.2 trillion U.S infrastructure bill." Telescope Managing Partner and Founder Mickey Arabelovic joined Hotel Engine's board as part of the new funding round. "Since our investment in late 2019, we've worked closely with Elia and the Hotel Engine team, and are consistently impressed by their passion, tenacity and singular focus on business lodging," said Arabelovic in a written statement. "There is no other company that delivers a friction-less, easy-to-use solution for travelers, and they're just getting started." |
| Uber intros several safety features, including one that records audio during a ride Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST Uber is adding several new safety features to its app, including an audio reminder to riders to wear their seat belts, allowing riders or drivers to record audio during rides, and detection of unexpected route changes or stops before the final destination. The updates are designed to help both riders and drivers feel safer during trips, Uber said. "Many people admit to not always buckling up in the back seat, especially on shorter trips, and that can create an uncomfortable situation for drivers,” Kristin Smith, road safety public policy manager at Uber, told TechCrunch. “We think introducing an audio reminder can help reinforce the message that people need to buckle up in every seat, every time. This feature builds on a number of seat belt awareness campaigns we've launched over the past several years. We've partnered with GHSA on our ‘Make It Click’ Campaign and have worked to educate riders and drivers on the importance of wearing a seat belt." The seat belt feature will begin to roll out to some users later this month and expand nationally early next year, according to an Uber spokesperson, who also said the impetus for the audio alert came from feedback from drivers who bear the brunt of responsibility for paying off tickets. At the start of the trip, the driver’s phone will have an audio alert reminding riders to buckle up, while a push notification is sent to the rider’s phone. The audio recording feature, which has been live in Latin America for around two years, will begin rolling out in the U.S. next week as a pilot in Kansas City, Louisville and Raleigh-Durham. Drivers and riders can choose to record audio by tapping the shield icon on the map screen and selecting “Record Audio.” If a driver has opted into the feature, riders will get a notification within the app before the trip begins. The audio files are encrypted and stored on the rider’s or driver’s device, and no one, including Uber, can listen to the recording, according to the company. If a user submits a safety report to Uber, they can attach the audio file to their report and a trained Uber safety agent will decrypt and review the recording as evidence to help determine what happened and what to do next. Finally, Uber is enhancing RideCheck nationwide on Thursday, a feature the company added in 2019 to detect possible crashes or unusually long stops during a trip using GPS data and sensors in the driver’s smartphone. Now, RideCheck has expanded to detect when a trip ends unexpectedly before reaching the final destination or when a driver goes off course. When the system detects possible issues, both the rider and driver will receive a RideCheck notification prompting them to let Uber know through the app that all is well or take other actions like pressing the emergency button or reporting the issue. Over the summer, dozens of women represented by a handful of California plaintiffs’ firms filed suit against Uber over alleged sexual attacks by drivers in multiple U.S. states. Both Uber and Lyft have faced claims for years of drivers assaulting passengers, but those lawsuits have either ended in voluntary dismissals or settlements as the companies have consistently denied liability, according to Bloomberg Law. Many of the new claims against Uber are based on negligence, asserting Uber has been aware of the danger of sexual assaults committed by drivers and hasn’t taken reasonable preventative steps, all the while advertising safe rides to the public, according to the law firm bringing the case in California referenced above. Some firms are claiming “common carrier” negligence, saying that Uber is classified as a transportation company under California law and therefore owes its passengers a better duty of care. Several of the cases are also claiming product liability, saying that Uber’s product, the app-based platform connecting riders and drivers, fails to keep passengers safe. The new safety features, in particular the audio recording and updates to RideCheck, could be moves by the ride-hailing giant to cover its bases in the midst of lawsuits. Uber did not comment on the claims against the company, instead pointing out that the audio recording feature has been present in 14 Latin American countries since 2019, where 70% of riders and drivers surveyed in Rio de Janeiro said the feature made them feel safer when using Uber. Also in 2019, Uber came under fire for its safety transparency report, which revealed that the company had received nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018 on its platform. The report prompted a probe from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which later fined Uber $150,000 for refusing to hand over data about drivers and riders who were sexually assaulted. (Uber also agreed to pay the CPUC $9 million to be spent on addressing physical and sexual violence in the state.) The CPUC specifically wanted incident details including date, time and location of assault — information that Uber’s GPS capabilities and these new safety features, like reports of shortened rides, could potentially provide. An Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch that nothing specific had prompted the enhancements to RideCheck. “We are just adding additional situations as the tech is now ready and riders are coming back,” they said. |
| Mexican BNPL player Kueski secures $202M in debt & equity as it nears $100M+ in ARR Posted: 02 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST Kueski, a Mexico City-based "buy now, pay later" and online consumer lender, announced today it has secured $202 million in equity and debt funding. StepStone Group (formerly known as Greenspring Capital) led the $102 million equity round and Victory Park Capital led the $100 million debt financing. StepStone was joined by other new investors including One Prime Capital and Glisco, as well as existing backers Altos Ventures, Cathay Innovation, Richmond Global Ventures, Rise Capital, Tuesday Capital, Angel Ventures and Cometa. With the latest financing, Kueski has now raised over $300 million in equity and debt capital. Altos Ventures led its Series B in 2019. The company declined to reveal its current valuation or hard revenue figures, but CEO and founder Adalberto Flores told TechCrunch he expects it will "soon achieve the $100 million+ ARR milestone.” Flores founded the company in 2012, technically before "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) was cool. He was motivated after he, his friends and family experienced difficulty in getting access "and how terrible the user experience was in accessing financial services in Mexico." For example, he says, his father owned a stable and profitable business with almost 100 employees and yet, he was unable to access credit. Also, the experience of having to visit a bank branch physically can be a daunting experience "since you can become a target for robbers if they think you have cash," according to Flores. "This situation is a prevailing issue in Mexico, and Mexico has the fifth highest rate of unbanked citizens globally," he said. "Almost two-thirds of people are employed in the informal economy, meaning they are paid in cash, which is never deposited into a bank account. These circumstances lead to a challenging environment where financial institutions have little to no information to determine someone's credit repayment ability." As a result, 80% of the consumers in Mexico lack access to a credit card and because of this, 78% of merchants don't have a POS terminal. Flores founded Kueski because he wanted to expand access to basic financial services to Mexico's population. Instead of relying on credit bureau information, the company uses contextual data such as device information, real-time behavioral data and sociodemographic data, and many other types of data sources that are then analyzed by its artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to predict an applicant's repayment ability. "The vast dataset that we've been able to build after receiving six million unique applicants provides Kueski a powerful data network effect that allows us to more precisely predict an applicant’s ability to repay a loan," Flores said. Overall, the fintech has three products: Kueski Pay (BNPL), Kueski Cash (its inaugural offering focused on personal loans) and Kueski Up (interest-free earned wage advances) — all of which Flores says have seen "very strong growth" in the past 12 months. In particular, three-year-old Kueski Pay had "210x" Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) growth from November 2020 to November 2021. During that same time frame, its Cash product grew by 320%. Kueski Up is its newest product. Since 2012, the company has granted nearly 5 million loans online. "Our goal is to become a financial super app focused on the Mexican consumer," Flores told TechCrunch. One unique aspect of Kueski's services, according to Flores, is that the company allows users to generate a credit history because it reports when customers pay on time (or default on a payment). Like many other fintechs, Kueski saw increased demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. "During the pandemic, Kueski’s growth has been historic and as a company we have been able to take advantage of this moment to reduce the friction that users had when making online purchases, which includes having to visit a convenience store and prepay the full purchase price before getting their order confirmed," Flores told TechCrunch. "From a credit perspective, the results were fantastic. We were able to update our AI and machine learning models on a daily basis, when banks typically update theirs every six months." The new funding will be used to continue growing the BNPL footprint in Mexico and build new products for Mexican consumers. Today, the company has nearly 500 employees, up from 223 in September of 2020. It plans to also use its new capital to reach almost 1,000 employees by the end of 2022. Recently, Kueski reached the milestone of integrating thousands of merchants (such as Steve Madden and Sally Beauty) into its BNPL "ecosystem." That's up from 49 at the beginning of the year. Currently, Kueski Pay is integrated with Walmart, the largest retailer in Mexico, and offers purchases from other retailers and services such as Kipling, VivaAerobus, Nautica and Xiaomi Shop. Specifically, in the fourth quarter, Kueski plans to launch its BNPL product in brick-and-mortar stores, which it says provides an alternative to the traditional high-interest financing plans that have been offered by Mexican banks "for decades" and are still popular due to the lack of alternatives. Kueski will also soon launch an application in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.  Image Credits: Kueski Merchants love Kueski Pay, according to Flores, because it has allowed "hundreds" of companies to increase their online sales by up to 70%, eliminating chargebacks and increasing the average ticket by up to 50%. "We will close the year with over a million unique users that have transacted with us through one of our financial products," Flores said. "We think that buy now, pay later is just getting started in Latin America. In Mexico, BNPL represents a huge opportunity for us, considering how few people have access to traditional banking, the role cash plays in our society and the limited range of available payment methods." Kueski is currently focused on the Mexican market, but it is planning to expand to other countries in Latin America in the future. Greenspring Managing Partner Jim Lim said his firm is excited by the opportunities in the BNPL sector in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. "We are delighted to be partnering with the undisputed market leader, Kueski," he said in a written statement. Altos Ventures’ Anthony Lee believes that the fact that Kueski has “leveraged years of technology development and consumer lending data” to launch its buy now, pay later product gives it “valuable market experience that is simply unavailable to newer entrants.” “Because of this, the company can better underwrite consumers and uniquely support merchants in a way that its competitors cannot match,” he wrote via email. Of course, Kueski is not the only BNPL player in Mexico. Nelo, a startup founded by former Uber international growth team leads, began offering buy now, pay later services to Mexico earlier this year. Its ultimate goal is to expand to all of Latin America. Earlier this month, it raised $20 million in an effort to help it advance on that goal. |
| Shiftsmart, a marketplace matching shift workers to employers, grabs $95M Posted: 02 Dec 2021 05:01 AM PST The holiday shopping season kicked off last week with some lackluster results, but employers are still in dire need of workers. The tight labor market, driven in part by "The Great Resignation," is highlighting the need for more tech-enabled tools for connecting employers with available workers. Shiftsmart, a New York-based labor management resource, is the latest to see some love from investors, bringing in $95 million in Series B funding for its workforce management software that matches hourly workers with open shifts across a variety of industry verticals and roles. Since forming in 2015, the company has amassed a network of over 500,000 workers in over 50 countries who have flexibility and control over where they work, how much they work and how fast they can get paid, while employers can customize their staffing needs and reduce turnover. "On the demand side there were already different pieces in place, but on the supply side — the workers — was what we thought was the innovation," Aakash Kumar, founder and CEO of Shiftsmart, told TechCrunch. "We are making it easy so you can create a profile, flip an app and work when you want. The gig economy was point-to-point logistics, but the ability to control your own schedule is something we are going to extend forward." The latest funding round gives Shiftsmart $117 million in total investments. D1 Capital led this round with participation from Imaginary Ventures, Spieker Partners, Oakridge Management Group and S12F, alongside several industry executives and institutions. Jeff Leventhal, managing partner at S12F, said he believes in the empowerment of workers and how they are treated and thought Shiftsmart's approach not only gave workers flexibility in their day, but also a lot of opportunity to work for different companies and in different roles. The days of shift work that involve "coming in at 2 p.m. or you are fired, is a dated concept," he said. "One of the hard things to get right is user experience, but Shiftsmart is level-setting the world," he added. "The company gets in uniquely correctly. Marketplaces are hard to build and get working, but Shiftsmart's technology is meant to be flexible for both the employer and employee." Shiftsmart touts a customer list that includes Circle K, Humana, Deloitte, Airbnb and the Small Business Administration. The company previously raised venture capital about three years ago, but as revenue continued to double or triple each year, Kumar said it became time to look at another round, especially of lately as employers faced labor shortages. "We help employers expand the total size of their market by breaking the work down to the shift level," he added. "Your odds of finding someone to do a three-hour shift a few times a week will be a lot higher than finding someone willing to sign up for 40 hours per week and get paid every two weeks." The new funding will go into scaling its verticals, which include audits and contracts, retail and global logistics and into launching new verticals like healthcare. The company will also do additional hiring. It has 60 employees currently, which is up from about 30 people a year ago. Much of the technology built for staffing centered around knowledge workers, but a number of companies like Shiftsmart, focused on hourly workers, have also received investor attention lately. For example, in November, the messaging platform for shift signups When I Work closed on a huge round — $200 million, while Fountain brought in $85 million and Seasoned grabbed $18.7 million for its tool for restaurant workers. Earlier this year, we saw Homebase, which raised $71 million earlier this year, and Workiz, which focuses on home services pros, raised $13 million. With all of that competition, as well as companies that manage hourly workers in-house, Kumar said Shiftsmart's differentiator was how it partners with its customers, which can use the platform with Shiftsmart's labor force or with its own. "It's an exciting time for the business, and the global labor shortage has made it critical," he added. "Our main focus is how to scale up operations to be able to absorb demand and create more unique experiences for workers as we learn more about their behaviors." |
| Meru.com takes in new capital toward its goal of being LatAm’s ‘Alibaba’ Posted: 02 Dec 2021 05:00 AM PST Sourcing and importing goods from overseas can go very wrong, leaving companies in a position of not receiving what they paid for or even getting nothing. Manuel Rodriguez Dao, co-founder and CEO of Mexico City-based Meru.com, and co-founder Federico Moscato, learned this the hard way when they were sourcing goods for another company and faced problems, among them getting the items that were originally offered. In 2020, they joined with Eduardo Mata, Virgile Fiszman and Daniel Ferreyra to start Meru to help small and medium companies avoid the same fate. Today, the company announced $15 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Valor Capital and EMLES Ventures and included individual investments from a group of founders. To date, the company raised $17 million. Meru's technology includes a marketplace and app that connects local and foreign manufacturers to the rest of the supply chain with a simple process and no price asymmetries, initially working between China and Mexico. It is working directly with quality certified factories, Rodriguez Dao told TechCrunch. The traditional way of sourcing can make small businesses lose up to two days a week navigating through the process, which often includes up to five intermediaries. On top of that, 80% of transactions result in fraud, on average, he said. In contrast, Meru customers can select and purchase products in minutes with a guarantee from the company that they will receive those products and at the best market prices, Rodriguez Dao added. The company was part of Y Combinator's winter batch in 2021, and the new funding will assist Meru to become a one-stop shop for small businesses with the ultimate goal of becoming the Alibaba of Latin America, Rodriguez Dao said. "We began working remotely in China and learned that among global transactions, the same pain points are happening across emerging markets," he added. "We want to make sourcing and procurement safe through technology-enabled distribution, similar to Alibaba, so we connect parties across the supply chain and get them access to discounted prices." Just a year in and Meru already has more than 10,000 registered users and operates seven product categories. It also has fintech partners to assist with financing. It went from six employees last August, when Meru launched its marketplace, to now 210 employees in both China and Mexico. The company will deploy the new funding into adding new verticals and categories, technology development and scaling its team. It is growing 40% to 50% in revenue monthly. "Meru is building an integrated B2B marketplace that allows Latin American SMEs to acquire much more efficiently from Asia, all through a single point of contact," said Antoine Colaço, managing partner of Valor Capital Group, in a written statement. "By providing access to thousands of products, taking care of all logistics, billing and follow-up processes and incorporating financial solutions, Meru will help strengthen the links between the global supply chains of LatAm and Asia." |
| Karamba Security raises another $10M for its IoT and automotive security platform Posted: 02 Dec 2021 05:00 AM PST Karamba Security, an Israel-based security startup that focuses on the IoT and automotive industry, today announced a $10 million extension to its $12 million Series B round from 2017. This extension was led by automotive startup VinFast, a member of Vietnam’s Vingroup conglomerate, which itself is reportedly looking to raised $1 billion for VinFast. South Korea’s Samsung Venture Investment (SVIC) also participated, in addition to existing investors YL Ventures, Fontinalis Partners, Liberty Mutual, Presidio Ventures, Glenrock, Paladin Group and Asgen. This round brings the company’s total funding to $27 million. “National and individual risks of cyberattacks on IoT devices and connected vehicles have driven strong regulatory requirements,” said Ami Dotan, Karamba co-founder and CEO. “IoT device manufacturers and automotive OEMs are in an urgent need to comply with such regulations, without changing R&D processes, delaying time to market, or increasing product manufacturing costs. Karamba's one-stop-shop offering of products and services has driven strong market traction of such OEMs and IoT device manufacturers, who are attracted to Karamba's seamless security throughout the device lifecycle.”  Karamba Security's XGuard Given this need from the IoT and especially the automotive industry it’s probably no surprise that an organization like VinFast was interested in investing in the company. Since its launch, Karamba has focused on providing a security solution that can protect a device throughout its entire lifecycle, without disrupting a company’s R&D and supply chain processes. Karamba, which recently launched its cloud-based incident analysis service, says it currently has 80 “successful engagements” with Fortune 500 companies. One of its largest recent engagements involved securing a fleet of 800,000 units in over one hundred countries. "Based on our view of the market and extensive technical evaluation, witnessing first-hand Karamba's core technology and learning from other OEMs, we see how well-positioned Karamba is to help our companies leapfrog ahead on their paths to cybersecurity," said VinFast deputy CEO, Ms. Pham Thuy Linh. |
| Segway makes its first foray into sidewalk robot delivery with Coco partnership Posted: 02 Dec 2021 05:00 AM PST Segway sees a future for sidewalk delivery robots and is now preparing to be the burgeoning industry’s go-to manufacturer. The company, which has supplied electric scooters for almost all of the major shared micromobility operators, is partnering with Los Angeles-based delivery robot startup Coco to build 1,000 partially automated, remotely piloted sidewalk robots. Coco will begin deploying the robots in Los Angeles and two other U.S. cities during the first quarter of 2022. This new shipment of Coco Ones, as the company is branding them, will add to its existing fleet of 100 Coco Zeroes, a “box on wheels” that the company first built to prove out its business model. Coco has also placed an order for an additional 1,200 vehicles, which it expects to be able to deploy by May or June 2022, pending potential contracts, according to Sahil Sharma, SVP of vehicles at Coco. Segway has been conducting R&D on robotics for years and even formed a dedicated division in 2016. That was the same year the company unveiled its Loomo robot, which is basically a scooter base with a little robotic head that includes an Intel RealSense RGB-D camera, speech recognition and self-driving capabilities. Loomo was more of an experiment than a business opportunity; this partnership with Coco is the first time the company is deploying its “robotic mobile platforms” at scale for delivery. Tony Ho, Segway’s VP of global business development, said it also signals a longer term shift into the robotic delivery space. “This is just the beginning of our partnership,” Ho told TechCrunch. “We will stay on the product side of things, and Coco will be the operators. So it’s a bit similar to the micromobility space where we provide the vehicles and hardware and they provide the relationship with the city and the staff and the whole operation behind it. Right now, we’re seeing this almost like it was with scooters in 2017, where the whole industry is booming. It’s a land grab.” Segway’s e-scooter and e-bike business is thriving, says Ho, noting it will provide leverage to scale growth in robotics by sharing vehicle learnings and supply chain resources. “Coco is a really young company, so they were smart enough to focus on what they do best and outsource the supply chain scaling to Segway,” said Ho, who mentioned the partnership with Coco is not exclusive. “We are very serious about this and it’s our company strategy to back the winning horses to scale up quickly.” The market size of autonomous delivery robots globally is expected to reach $236.59 million by 2027, and a range of players have sprouted recently to try to control a piece of that pie. Starship Technologies, a competitor in the sidewalk space, has raised a total of $102 million worth of funding; Kiwibot recently expanded its reach among college campuses; and Nuro, which operates on the roads, just raised $600 million and announced a partnership with 7-Eleven. In August, Coco raised a $36 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $43 million, money that was in part used to fund the Segway vehicles. Segway says it expects sidewalk robots to be the most efficient method of achieving first and last mile delivery, particularly in dense urban areas during rush hour. “From the product point of view, a simpler design with make operations more reliable, less breakdowns, lower upfront capital investment,” said Ho. “Labor shortages caused by the pandemic only accelerated the acceptance of robots. Also, slower moving and smaller payload vehicles are pedestrian friendly on sidewalks and are welcomed by cities.” Most robotic delivery startups aren’t actually autonomous yet, and Coco is no exception. Its vehicles, which are built with cameras, GPS and some compute power, are remotely piloted, but have some basic automated driving functionality. For example, they can drive in a straight line and stop if an obstacle pops up, which allows for one pilot to monitor more than one delivery at a time and take over for tricky bits like pedestrian crossings. “We’re taking a very business-first approach to this,” Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco, told TechCrunch, noting that waiting for full autonomy to happen will only delay market entry. “A lot of people talk about L4 and L5, 90% autonomy. We really want to understand how many pilots do we need to do a given volume of delivery in this area. We built it from the ground up thinking what makes sense for our business and how should we build technology to support that, rather than saying, ‘How can we simplify the self-driving car?’ Our pilots are central to our operations and always will be central to our operations, so let’s build the product around them to make them as efficient as possible.” Coco’s system takes the data collected from its various routes and uses that information to train the machine learning algorithms within its self-driving software. But the real advantage of having a fleet at scale is the ability to map more areas of the community and find faster and easier routes for the robot, says Rash. “We can learn from the fleet what the most efficient segments are, because we care about every second of the delivery, so we try to map the city to create the most efficient routes, which takes into account connectivity, sidewalk infrastructure, pedestrian traffic, car traffic,” said Rash. “We learn a lot from the whole fleet. It’s not just about autonomous. We collect all this information to make sure that we can navigate the city as efficiently as possible.” |
| Falcon Edge Capital eyes raising a fund of over $10 billion Posted: 02 Dec 2021 04:56 AM PST Falcon Edge Capital, the New York-headquartered investor that has emerged as one of the most aggressive in recent years, is pushing to make its most ambitious bet yet. The firm is in early stages of talks to raise a fund of over $10 billion, sources familiar with the matter told me. The talks have yet to be finalized and the size of the fund may change, some of the sources cautioned. The sources requested anonymity as they are not authorized to speak about private matters. Falcon Edge declined to comment. A single fund of $10 billion or larger will be among one of the largest of its size globally. Falcon Edge plans to deploy the capital globally with the new fund, some of the sources said. Europe will be one of the key markets that Falcon Edge is looking to dig into deeper, one of the sources said. Founded by Rick Gerson, Navroz D. Udwadia, and Ryan Khoury in 2012, Falcon Edge is currently one of the most aggressive private market investors in the world. It manages over $5.5 billion in assets across public and private markets. This year, it has been very active in a handful of markets including the U.S. and India, the world’s second largest internet geographies where it has minted at least 5 unicorns in 2021 including CRED and Mensa Brands. And at least one more is in the works: Social commerce startup DealShare is in talks to raise more than $200 million at a valuation of over $1.7 billion from Falcon Edge and Tiger Global, TechCrunch reported in late October. Edtech startup Cuemath is in the market to raise at a unicorn valuation, too, according to a person familiar with the matter. At a virtual conference early this year, Udwadia, a former professional tennis player and investment banker, said Falcon Edge Capital likes to get aggressive when most other firms are cautious about the market conditions. And it slows down its dealmaking when everyone else is writing checks at a frenetic pace. The data appears to back the claim. The firm has made over 40 investments in the private market this year, more than those it made in the past four years put together, according to CB Insights. Udwadia did not respond to a request for comment. Falcon Edge Capital typically likes to invest in startups when they are either at an early-stage or when they are showing signs of becoming a “category-killer,” Udwadia said at the conference, which was held by TiE. Its check size varies from $1 million to $5 million for early-stage startups and ranges between $50 million to $150 million in late-stage startups. “We don’t really play very much in the middle,” he said. The firm, a Tiger Global grandcub, has borrowed many of the older firm’s strategies. Like Tiger Global, Falcon Edge is also very quick and aggressive with its investments. Instead of evaluating a startup in ad hoc, Falcon Edge also maps the entire space and assesses whether it’s bullish about the category itself, he said. |
| When grandma falls, SafelyYou is there to catch her (on video) Posted: 02 Dec 2021 04:02 AM PST The life of a tech journalist can be soul-sapping. I talk to so many founders — capable, smart, well-connected, experienced founders — who are working on problems that genuinely just don’t matter. They might have successfully raised money. Perhaps they even rounded up a team of smart people like them. They are solving problems that even if they execute everything A++ and they change the world exactly in the way they envision, even if they make their board and VCs happy, it’s ultimately so fantastically futile. I don’t want to name any names. Not to inspire existential angst, but if you’re reading this, and you’re feeling a twinge of “god what am I doing with my life,” well, sorry, friend, I am talking about you. SafelyYou reminded me of all of the above because the company is so profoundly the opposite of all of that. The team is solving a problem that is huge and will continue to grow at a rate that is absolutely terrifying: “When I started this company, I didn’t even really know how big of an issue it was. I was just thinking about my own family,” said George Netscher, founder and CEO at SafelyYou. He explains that all the women in his family older than his mother have Alzheimer’s. His driving force is that it seemed as if it would be only a matter of time before the illness made its way to his mother. “As it turns out, it affects one in three people over 85, one in nine over 65. 20% of Medicare dollars are being spent in this arena, and things are about to get a lot worse. By 2030, it’s expected that the costs globally of dementia are going to double. In addition, the number of potential caregivers will be cut in half.” SafelyYou describes a national healthcare crisis that cannot be solved with human power alone — a trend we are seeing across every aspect of the healthcare ecosystem. So instead of trying to find a way to train more nursing staff, SafelyYou is solving part of the problem with a software solution: Fall detection for patients in care and nursing homes. The company just raised its $40 million series B, led by Omega Healthcare, who also prepaid $10 million to install SafelyYou’s solution across close to 1,000 healthcare facilities. Also participating in the financing is SCAN Group, a mission-driven organization dedicated to keeping seniors healthy and independent. SCAN is supporting SafelyYou's growth in order to expand the availability of its fall management technology to a wider range of older adults. SCAN Group is the parent organization of the SCAN Health Plan, one of the nation's largest not-for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. The two new strategic investors join existing investors Eclipse Ventures, Foundation Capital, Founders Fund and Data Collective Venture Capital, and the new round raised SafelyYou's venture funding total to approximately $70 million. “We were immediately attracted to the mission of SafelyYou, which is not only an innovator and industry leader, but also supports our focus on improving senior care facilities for both staff and residents,” said Vikas Gupta, senior vice president, Acquisitions and Developments at Omega Healthcare Investors. “SafelyYou reflects our passion for improving the lives of seniors, especially those who are most vulnerable — our residents suffering from various forms of cognitive impairment including Alzheimer's and dementia.” The company’s technology solution is simple, but powerful. It installs cameras in each of the rooms where a care home resident might experience a fall. The feeds are all routed to a computer appliance in the care home and constantly monitored by an AI. The trick is that the cameras are not continuously recording — this is important to maintain the dignity and privacy of guests, while still promising the medical help needed. When a fall is detected, the video is recorded, and the care home team can be alerted. Because the fall itself was recorded and can be reviewed, the care team knows whether the resident hit their head on the way down or whether it was a less serious fall. Without this information, the right thing to do is always to send the resident to the hospital — but by reviewing the video, it’s possible to see whether that’s necessary.  George Netscher, CEO and co-founder of SafelyYou. Image Credits: SafelyYou I don’t often do this, but I have to admit that I have a very personal story here that I’d like to share — for really stupid reasons (forgetting to eat), I sometimes faint. That happened to me a couple of months ago. When I came to, I realized I had fainted and fallen. As a very tall and very clumsy human, that’s a real problem — falling from 6.5 feet height is enough to sustain very serious head injuries. As luck would have it, I was also in the middle of recording a video presentation, so I knew there was a video recording of my fall. I reviewed it groggily and wondering if I should be dialing 911. When I saw the footage, I realized I had just gone down like a sack of potatoes, without bumping my head on anything. Shaken (but not stirred), I was able to continue with my day without a trip to the hospital, which saved me hours of my life and hundreds in dollars in co-pays (because, well, healthcare in this country in so fantastically broken). These types of situations are so profoundly scary — but most people aren’t willing to subject themselves to 24/7 surveillance to avoid a trip or two to the hospital. SafelyYou’s solution would have prevented this as well, but in a context where I wouldn’t have had to sacrifice my privacy to a care team. “I am not a repeat entrepreneur. This is a company that I plan to be with forever. I’m doing this because it is a calling. And the same is true for my whole executive team,” says Netscher. “All of us share a personal connection to Alzheimer’s disease; a very close connection, like a parent or a son with Alzheimer’s or another kind of cognitive impairment. We all think quite differently, but we’re all here for the same mission.” And that mission is shining ever so brightly at the moment; the company has thousands of cameras out in the field and has captured more than 30,000 fall events in its history. Of course, this also means that SafelyYou is building up a unique data set of computer vision around residents falling. Understandably, that’s where a significant chunk of the money raised in this round is going. “We have more [in-care home video fall] data than anyone’s ever had here. That is what enables the AI to run with such high accuracy. That enables our product in two ways. It’s not just a technology, it’s a technology-enabled care program, and there’s a pretty heavy emphasis on the human element as well. We detect when somebody had a fall with super, super high accuracy — higher accuracy than anyone’s ever had. Today, we generate one false alert per camera, every two years. We take a lot of pride in that,” explains Netscher. “We know more about falls than anybody’s ever known. We’ve watched more falls than anybody in the world. So we have this expertise that we have an obligation to share. And so we publish our learnings regularly, and we are looking at ways to use our dataset to release a bunch of additional features.” “I still pinch myself that I got all these VCs to believe that this is financially scalable, when really what we care about is just helping people and our own families,” concludes Netscher. |
| Kayak co-leads Life House’s $60M Series C to ‘reimagine’ the hotel experience Posted: 02 Dec 2021 04:00 AM PST Life House, a boutique hotel operator that has built software aimed at helping independent hotel owners and operators, has raised $60 million in a Series C round of funding co-led by new investors Kayak and Inovia Capital. Existing backers Tiger Global, Derive Ventures, Thayer Ventures, JLL, Trinity Ventures, Sound Ventures and Cooley LLP, among others, also participated in the financing, which brings the company's total raised since its 2017 inception to just over $100 million. Rami Zeidan started Life House after nearly a decade of working in different areas of the hotel industry. The New York-based company started out as a hotel brand and operator for independent hotels, developing its own software in an effort to become "the best operator." Its goal was to fix "the broken and complex hotel operational model" before morphing into a combination of tech provider, hotel manager and boutique hotel brand. Today, the company is announcing that in addition to the capital raise, its software is "comprehensive and mature enough" to sell directly to global hoteliers and operators that want to own the on-site management of hotels. With the move, Life House has essentially evolved from a tech-enabled hotel operator into a (70-person) SaaS company. "We've been pretty efficient," said CEO Zeidan. "In the past four years, we've spent just a little over $20 million. Now we have three times that, so we're excited about what that's going to translate into in terms of product."  Founder and CEO Rami Zeidan. Image Credits: Daniel Dorsa The fact that Kayak, one of the world's largest travel sites, is one of its lead investors is notable. CEO Steve Hafner said his company plans to "reimagine the hotel experience" with Life House as its software and operations partner. “Our investment will help accelerate innovation and the expansion of Kayak's hotel initiatives," said Hafner. "We share a vision that independent hotels can improve operations and profitability through better technology — they also have a great team and top-tier VC co-investors. Rami and team are combining hands-on operations with agile software development — it's a great combination." Life House currently manages the operations of close to 50 hotels in North America. At the time of its $30 million Series B in January of 2020, branded hotels made up about 50% of the startup's portfolio. Today, about 85% of its portfolio is not branded Life House and rather consists of third-party hotels that are using its software via a white-label agreement. "Now we’re launching the sale of our SaaS products to third-party hotels that we don’t manage," Zeidan told TechCrunch. Its software over the years has "consistently" increased its hotels profitability by over 200% and net revenues by over 45%, according to Zeidan. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Life House has grown over 600%. Put simply, the company's mission is to serve as a one-stop shop and make it easy for anyone to own, create and operate any hotel of any shape or size and do so "maximally profitably." It helps owners with things like revenue management and dynamic pricing, financial reporting and accounting, general operations as well as branding and design. "Hotels today are complicated to operate and they’re essentially owned by people or firms as investment assets," Zeidan told TechCrunch. "And so, the fundamental goal is to deliver profitability and value to the financial asset of the real estate. Our approach to solving this problem is being extremely profitability-centric with the platform that we’re building, so that everything that we sell to hotels directly drives an improvement in profitability."  Image Credits: Life House Life House is initially focused on small hotels where it believes owners are particularly underserved, and which represents nearly half of the market, but has plans to grow out of that in good time. "We see a world where we ship iPads and we're initially focused on small hotels where we can grow quickly with minimal competition, but there's no reason why we can't eventually be the best solution for any sized hotel," Zeidan said "Our software really does care about the guest experience and can be used at the most luxurious of hotels. It has now been proven to be extremely helpful, no matter what kind of hotel it is." Thus far, its hotels have ranged in size from 14 rooms to 375 rooms. It has under management a range of hotels — from a $2,000 a night chateau in the Berkshires to two motels in the Midwest. The CEO believes that the fact that Life House was a user of its own software has been a big advantage. "It can take time to build a lot of software in the hotel management ecosystem," he said. "But we had a really fast feedback loop that allows us to innovate really quickly. Also, we really understand hotels and guests." The new capital will largely go toward hiring, particularly software developers, product folks, engineers and building out its sales organization. Inovia Associate Pranit Tukrel believes that while travelers are increasingly attracted to boutique and lifestyle independent hotels versus commoditized brand hotels, minimal tech adoption on the part of such hotels have often left them at a disadvantage compared to their larger competitors in terms of pricing, lead generation and cost management. "There is a clear opportunity for Life House to manage these underserved independent hotels and provide a true economic benefit via its end-to-end technology suite," Tukrel wrote via email. "Thanks to its strategic real estate and channel partners, LifeHouse has a unique position to become the leader in small independent hotel management. Traditional managers such as Marriott and Hilton are not investing in this end market, as it is not as rewarding in the public markets to try and win share with smaller (50 key) independent hotels versus large standardized properties." |
| Tesla is now selling a $1,900 electric Cyberquad ATV for kids Posted: 02 Dec 2021 03:50 AM PST Tesla hasn’t yet shipped the Cybertruck, or the full-size Cyberquad that made a splashy debut at the introduction of its Blade Runner-esque pickup truck, but you can get a mini Cyberquad designed for the kiddos starting in 2-4 weeks if you order one right now from its website. The Tesla ‘Cyberquad for Kids’ is available to purchase on Tesla’s site for $1,900 — a steep price relative to your average Power Wheels, but the lowest-priced vehicle in Tesla’s existing lineup by far. And the Cyberquad’s materials are a cut above your average battery electric kid car, with a “full steel frame,” along with cushioned seating and fully adjustable suspension. It may be the cheapest Tesla you can buy, but it’s also the most limited when it comes to range: You’ll get up to around 15 miles on a full charge, which takes five hours to wooer up, according to the company. It’s also not going to break any land speed records, with a speedometer that tops out at 10 mph (which you can limit to a max of 5 mph for safety if desired). That’s still plenty fast for a kid’s ride-on vehicle, which is probably why Tesla labels this one as designed for kids at least 8 and up, with a max weight of 150 lbs. The Cyberquad for Kids is only available in the U.S. for now, and Tesla doesn’t guarantee delivery in time for Christmas though this would be an impressive thing to unwrap under the tree (better than a whistle). Meanwhile, the actual Cybertruck that inspired it is delayed to the end of 2022, and it’s still unclear if the full-size Cyberquad will arrive then, though Elon Musk has suggested it’ll ship alongside the all-electric pickup in the past. |
| Toronto-based VFX startup MARZ raises $5.3M to develop AI technology solutions Posted: 02 Dec 2021 03:00 AM PST Technology and visual effects startup Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies (MARZ) has raised $5.3 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by Round13 Captial with participation from Rhino Ventures and Harlo Equity Partners. MARZ plans to use the funding to grow its core VFX business and accelerate the development of its ‘AI for VFX’ technology solutions. The Toronto-based studio launched in 2018 and is developing AI solutions that aim to address some of the challenges faced by the entertainment industry regarding VFX capacity shortage spurred by streaming wars, the corresponding explosion of on-demand content and the importance of VFX in driving subscriber growth. “We will use the funds to accelerate research and development of our 'AI for VFX' solutions, of which there are two AI products currently in development,” MARZ co-founder and co-president Jonathan Bronfman told TechCrunch in an email. “In line with this, funding will be allocated to the hiring of key personnel in our research, engineering and product organizations. The funding will also be used to grow our hardware capabilities and infrastructure, which will help to meaningfully shorten AI research and development, as well as increase capacity efficiency for both our AI products.” Bronfman said that while the majority of funding will be allocated to the development of proprietary AI solutions, it will also help the company accelerate its growth in its traditional VFX services business, which he says is synergistic with MARZ’s AI business. The company has worked on 88 projects in its first three years since launch, including Marvel’s “WandaVision,” HBO’s “Watchmen,” Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” and Apple TV+’s “Invasion.” MARZ completed 13 projects in its first year, 21 in its second year and 54 in its third year. MARZ has grown from 45 employees in 2019 to 194 today, with plans to grow its team to 300 over the next year. Of the current employees, more than a quarter are focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Although the company is based in Toronto, MARZ is a remote-first company with a distributed workforce based in cities around the world, including Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal, Madrid, Los Angeles, Melbourne, London, Moscow, Mumbai, and Mexico City. “Our mission is to democratize VFX and in doing so to empower creatives around the globe to produce the most ambitious video content possible — whether that be a streaming service or Hollywood studio, gaming studio, metaverse developer, or a talented up-and-comer who wants to integrate VFX into their social media content.” Bronfman wrote. The company plans to create a suite of automated AI-driven products that are integrated into both VFX and gaming technology. For Hollywood, MARZ’s products will aim to allow for the ability to create more ambitious content. Regarding other markets like the end consumer, Bronfman says MARZ’s solutions will aim to make VFX accessible for the first time ever. "MARZ is one of the fastest-growing VFX studios in the industry with a reputation for leveraging technology to deliver a best-in-class product within record timelines," said Brahm Klar, a partner at Round13 Capital, in a statement. "By partnering with MARZ, alongside some of Canada’s most successful investors, we can work closely with the team to build on the company’s extraordinary success so far." |
| Swiggy to invest $700 million in instant grocery delivery service Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:30 AM PST Swiggy, India's top food-delivery startup, will invest $700 million in its express grocery delivery service Instamart, significantly intensifying the competition for quick commerce in the world's second largest market. The SoftBank-backed startup, which initially launched Instamart in two Indian cities in 2020, said on Thursday that the quick grocery delivery service is now available in 18 cities and clocking over a million orders per week. Fast-grocery delivery is making quick inroads in markets across the globe and investor money is piling up. Instacart plans to launch a 15-minute or less grocery delivery service in the U.S., The Information reported this week. Deliveroo has expanded into this space in the UK; Getir of Turky is promising a 10-minute grocery delivery in Chicago. Zapp, a UK-based startup that promises delivery of essential items within 15 minutes, is raising about $100 million from Atomico, GIC, and Lightspeed, two sources familiar with the matter told me. Zapp couldn’t be immediately reached out for comment. In India, too, more startups are beginning to explore the space. Mumbai-based Zepto is aggressively expanding its quick-delivery startup in several Indian cities. The startup, which launched its app this year, recently announced a $60 million fundraise and is already in talks to raise a much larger round, according to a source familiar with the matter. (Zomato, Swiggy’s chief rival in India, too, previously tried to enter this space but shuttered its effort after poor traction.) Swiggy said it is adding one seller-run dark store to its platform each day. The startup is hoping to make its deliveries in 15 minutes by January 2022 by setting up the network of dark stores close to the majority of its customers, it said. "At our current growth trajectory, Instamart is set to reach an annualised GMV run rate of USD 1 billion in the next three quarters. With our food delivery business trending at a USD 3 billion annualised GMV run rate, and Instamart's super-charged growth, we're very excited about our convenience mission coming to life in a very big way," said Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and chief executive of Swiggy, in a statement. The announcement comes at a time when Swiggy, which has raised $1.25 billion this year, is finalizing a new fundraise of over $500 million that would value it at over $10 billion, TechCrunch reported two months ago. Invesco is leading the round, the report said. |
| Bounce’s first electric scooter features swappable battery, costs less than $500 Posted: 02 Dec 2021 01:00 AM PST Bangalore-based Bounce on Thursday priced its first electric scooter at as low as 36,000 Indian rupees ($480), considerably undercutting the heavily-backed rival Ola as the mobility war intensifies in the world’s second most populous nation. The startup, backed by B Capital and Falcon Edge, launched its first electric scooter called the Bounce Infinity E1 that features a swappable battery and several other unique features including tubular frame, hydraulic telescopic front suspension and twin shock absorbers at the rear ithat it said are designed for the Indian roads. Customers will be able to swap the battery once it discharges from a nearby swapping station. The startup is building a network of swapping stations, for which it is tapping thousands of gas stations as well as mom and pop stores, in several Indian cities, Bounce said. “It’s pretty big, not just for us but we believe that it’s a game-changer for India as well,” said Vivekananda Hallekere, co-founder and chief executive of Bounce, in an interview with TechCrunch. The startup said it has tested the swappable battery for over 200 million kilometers.  Vivekananda Hallekere, founder of Bounce, outlining the challenges holding back the adoption of EVs in India. (Image credits: TechCrunch) Bounce has already set up a factory in the Indian state of Rajasthan and is planning to set up another one, Hallekere said. He said Bounce is setting aside $100 million to invest in the electric vehicle business in the next one year. The startup is hoping that most of Infinity E1 customers will purchase the scooter without the battery. In the state of Gujarat, the variant will be available for $480 and the price will slightly vary in other states depending on government subsidies. Customers will also be able to purchase the scooter with the battery and charger for 68,999 Indian rupees ($921). Depending on the state subsidy, the price can go as low as 59,999 Indian rupees ($800; as is the case in Gujarat). Those opting to go for the Bounce Infinity E1 without the battery will pay for swapping each time they replace an empty battery, the startup said. “This pushes the running costs of the scooter down substantially, by as much as 40% compared to conventional scooters,” the startup said. The Bounce Infinity E1 can run as fast as 65 kmph and lasts for about 85 kilometres on one charge, the startup said. It will ship in five different colors and can be customised. Customers will also have full visibility about the vehicle’s performance as well as will have the ability to trace and remotely lock the scooter. India is the world’s largest two-wheeler market. Two-wheelers — scooters and bikes — command over 80% of all vehicles sold in the country Electric vehicles are yet to make inroads in the country. In recent years, scores of entrepreneurs have started to make a push in the space as the nation attempts to cut its carbon emission. India is currently the third-largest carbon-emitter after China and the U.S. SoftBank-backed Ola recently launched its electric vehicle that is priced at 99,999 Indian rupees, or $1,350. Ola has delayed the shipping of its scooter several times. It’s hoping to make its electric vehicles a big success and counting on it becoming a headline as it eyes the public markets, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Bounce said it will take pre-orders for the Infinity E1 scooter starting today. It will start shipping the scooter in early March. This is a developing story. More to follow… |
| Apple announces the 2021 App Store Award winners and most downloaded apps of the year Posted: 02 Dec 2021 12:01 AM PST Apple today released its anticipated annual list of the best apps and games of the year across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch. This year, children’s app maker Toca Boca won iPhone App of the Year for “Toca Life World,” and Riot Games’ “League of Legends: Wild Rift” was the iPhone Game of the Year. Other winners included the iPad App of the Year “LumaFusion” from LumaTouch; iPad Game of the Year “MARVEL Future Revolution” from Netmarble; Mac App of the Year “Craft,” from Luki Labs Limited; Mac Game of the Year “Myst,” from Cyan; Apple TV App of the Year “DAZN,” from DAZN Group; Apple TV Game of the Year “Space Marshals 3,” from Pixelbite; Apple Watch App of the Year “Carrot Weather,” from Grailr; and the Apple Arcade Game of the Year: “Fantasian,” from Mistwalker. Typically, the award winners represent relative newcomers to the App Store, those who have taken advantage of Apple technologies in interesting ways, or those that gained special attention during the year. For example, last year’s award winners reflected how the pandemic played out in the world of apps, when home workout app “Wakeout!” won iPhone App of the Year and “Zoom” won for iPad. But this year’s iPhone App of the Year, “Toca Life World,” is an interesting pick for another reason. Its maker, Toca Boca, this March celebrated its ten-year anniversary. In the time since the launch of its first app, the company has gone on to release over 40 other kids’ apps — or as Toca Boca likes to call them, digital toys. “Toca Life World” is the culmination of a lot of this work, as it connected the prior “Toca Life” apps into one connected experience. Apple praised the award winner for “still masterfully iterating on the art of play and self-expression for kids,” ten years later. The pick also serves as a subtle reminder amid a year that’s seen much App Store backlash and upheaval, that developers are building long-term businesses on the App Store and Apple has helped play a role in supporting that success, including through awards like these.
Apple also praised other winners, remarking how streaming service “DAZN” guided local sports culture into the global spotlight. Meanwhile, Apple is quietly building out a SportsKit framework for Apple TV and iOS apps, which DAZN could one day utilize, perhaps. Apple also touted “Carrot Weather’s” best-in-class meteorological forecasts, which compete with Apple’s default Weather app and use data from Apple-owned Dark Sky. Apple promoted LumaFusion’s ability to make video editing faster and less intimidating and document editor Craft’s “efficiency and artistry.” But it’s hard to ignore that those apps also compete with Apple products — iMovie and iWork’s Pages, respectively. If anything, much of the list is a reminder of how closely the fates of third-party apps are tied to Apple’s own software developments.
The past year has been a transitional one for the App Store, which has faced increased regulatory scrutiny, new legislation in global markets, and various lawsuits over the App Store’s commission-based business model — including the ongoing one with Epic Games, now under appeal. As a result, Apple has adjusted and clarified its policies and even reduced its commissions in some cases, as dictated by the market demands and settlement agreements. Despite the changes, the success and quality of many apps, award winners included, remains high. In announcing its year-end winners, Apple also dubbed “Connection” as the top Trend of the Year and celebrated a number of apps and games that had a lasting impact on people’s lives with this theme in mind. This list included the cooperative and competitive game “Among Us!” from InnerSloth; dating and networking app Bumble (whose top rival, Match, happens to be a noted App Store critic); design resource Canva; local eatry guide focused on Black-owned businesses, EatOkra; and social network for women Peanut, which launched its audio chatrooms this year. “The developers who won App Store Awards in 2021 harnessed their own drive and vision to deliver the best apps and games of the year — sparking the creativity and passion of millions of users around the world,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, in a statement. “From self-taught indie coders to inspiring leaders building global businesses, these standout developers innovated with Apple technology, with many helping to foster the profound sense of togetherness we needed this year,” he said. The award winners will again receive physical App Store awards, which are inspired by the signature blue App Store icon, which is set into the 100% recycled aluminum used to make Apple products, with the name of the winner engraved on the other side. Apple also released its lists of the most downloaded apps of the year, as usual. In the U.S., the most downloaded apps are as follows: Top Free iPhone Apps
Top Paid iPhone Apps
Top Free iPhone Games
Top Paid iPhone Games
Top Free iPad Apps
Top Paid iPad Apps
Top Free iPad Games
Top Paid iPad Games
Top Apple Arcade Games
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| Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services Posted: 01 Dec 2021 11:24 PM PST Gozem, a super app that provides a host of services — including transport, e-commerce and financial services in Francophone Africa — has raised $5 million in Series A financing, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The Togo- and Singapore-based company received investment from AAIC, Thunes (TransferTo), Momentum Ventures (SMRT), Innoport Ventures (Schulte Group), CMC Ventures (National Express) and Liil Ventures (Mobility ADO). It follows the $7 million raised in previous seed rounds via three tranches from investors such as U.S. firm Plug and Play Ventures, Launch Africa, BANSEA and Virtual Network. In total, the multi-vertical application has raised over $12 million. Gozem was founded by Gregory Costamagna, Raphael Dana and Emeka Ajene. The startup kicked off operations in Togo in 2018 as a motorcycle ride-hailing service. A plan to replicate the model of Grab and Gojek in Southeast Asia saw Gozem expand its transport verticals to include taxi and tricycle services across multiple cities in Togo and Benin. As the pandemic hit, the platform halted its geographic expansion moves and went vertical. It introduced e-commerce and logistics plays, allowing merchants to list an inventory of products users want and get them delivered through its drivers. Then the company launched an asset financing option for its drivers, employing a lease-to-own model for vehicles and associated equipment. On a call with the founders, the chairman, Costamagna, said the three verticals work together to increase the disposable income of drivers. Gozem's premise is that it creates a win-win situation wherein its drivers become the next middle-class population in Francophone Africa while its super app plans take effect flawlessly. "So people [merchants, suppliers, companies] that find a lot of interest working with them [riders], will then work hard and provide a lot of different services to our customer base," he said. "And when we do this, we increase their disposable income by sending them more passengers, more delivery trips by adding more merchants on our platform and finding companies that want to use delivery services. We also reduce their cost of operation through asset financing because they have no formal alternative and it's generally informal and expensive." Since Gozem started the lease model, it has provided up to 1,500 vehicles to drivers. Costamagna, in a statement, said the funding will help Gozem increase the figure to over 200,000 before 2025.  Image Credits: Gozem Now that Gozem is present across 13 cities, having moved to Gabon and Cameroon with over 800,000 registered users and completed more than 5 million trips, the founders say the company is setting sights on providing digital banking services and lending to its users. It's a model other super app companies across Africa have adopted in the past, such as Nigeria's OPay (which has since shelved its super app plans to strengthen its financial services arm) and SafeBoda more recently. Other players like North Africa-focused Yassir are also looking to offer banking and payment services. Gozem plans to use its existing network of marketplace users (drivers and merchants) as agents across all the cities it operates in. This way, individual users can exchange cash for mobile money via the Gozem app. "I think we have a fantastic differentiator. Generally speaking, our competitors are the telco, which offers mobile money services, and sometimes you have standalone digital wallets as well," said Costamagna. "What we're trying to offer is an integrated wallet solution that is included in a suite of different services. And so the key difference in the market is this. Before Francophone Africa minted its first unicorn in the form of fintech startup Wave, which shed some light on the opportunities that abound in the market, Francophone Africa has been largely left out of the tech and startup disruption sweeping across other African regions, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. It was the very reason why the founders started Gozem in the first place, they told me. "Almost 95% of the money and the attention goes to always four, five countries in Africa … Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt," said Dana. "But generally, Francophone Africa is a bit left on the side on all the significant traction. This is where we've seen the big opportunities in Francophone as a nice market." And having built companies in Singapore before Gozem, Dana and Costamagna brought Ajene on board, adding his on-the-ground African expertise to a team with vast knowledge of the Southeast Asian market. Three years in, Gozem is now 250-staff strong in its four markets. The company will use the Series A financing to expand into more Francophone African countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal and Ivory Coast. The company is also looking to improve its asset financing model while fully launching its financial services. "Where we operate on the continent is kind of what some might call second-tier African markets. But we have an opportunity and believe in the model we're pursuing. It's really a wide berth where there's lesser competition, as discussed across all our verticals. While we are operating in four countries, we want to be embedded across the region over the next year," Ajene said. |
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