France’s Sendinblue, an all-in-one digital marketing platform, raises $160M

As more companies and brands put the internet at the core of how they run their businesses these days, it’s giving a strong push to the growth of startups that are building tools to help them. In the latest development, Sendinblue, an eight-year-old French startup that has built a platform to help small and medium organizations run all of their marketing — from email, SMS and chat marketing through to automation services, Facebook ads and retargeting — has picked up $160 million in funding.

Bridgepoint, Bpifrance, Blackrock, and previous investor Partech (which led Sendinblue’s $35 million in Series A in 2017) all invested in the round.

The money will be used to help the company build out its presence in North America — where it grew 100% last year — and to continue to add more tools to the mix, both organically and by positioning itself as a consolidator, acquiring smaller marketing tech startups. The company is also building CRM tools and other adjacent areas in the SMB back office so you can see how it might evolve. It’s profitable and is active already in some 60 countries with some 180,000 customers on its books.

The huge funding, for a startup that may not have been on many people’s radar — you could say Sendinblue has come out of the blue — is a sign of the times.

SMBs (like retailers and brands doubling down on e-commerce) have long used the internet for marketing, but the recent pandemic, with its social distancing measures, has highlighted just how many people are spending time (and spending money) online, which has led to a boost in how organizations are using the internet to communicate with customers.

“The whole covid pandemic has accelerated our business,” said Steffen Schebesta, who runs the company’s North American operations (and joined the company when his startup, Newsletter2Go, was acquired several years ago). “We’ve seen a lot of SMBs finding that they need to digitize in order to survive.”

It’s also notable that it’s a French startup raising a large growth round: it’s a signal of how companies from the country are scaling, filling out a mission that French President Emmanuel Macron set out to see the country produce (and invest in) more unicorns.

Sendinblue’s funding news comes on the heels of another French martech company, Sarbacane, also raising a lot of money in recent weeks (France has been known for adtech, but seems that it also has a strong line in marketing tech). Further afield, we’ve seen a number of other startups in the space raising significant rounds this year, including Yotpo, Movable Ink, Adverity, and more.

There seems to be room for all of these, and more. Schebesta described a typical customer for Sendinblue — whose primary goal is to “enable small and medium businesses to be on equal footing with bigger companies in terms of the tools they can use, having access to everything in one platform at an affordable price — as one that may have “outgrown” Mailchimp with a need for more tools and more sophistication. 

While the company’s bread and butter and focus will always be SMBs, in the meantime it’s also picked up a number of high-profile and high-end customers too, including Louis Vuitton, the candy giant Haribo, Fujitsu, Amnesty International and Greenpeace. 

“Sendinblue is positioned in a growing market as more and more SMBs are going digital, especially in the past few months of lockdown,” said Olivier Nemsguern, Partner at Bridgepoint, in a statement. “We seek investments that meet a critical market need. Sendinblue is the perfect example of a company that will make an impact.”

“We have invested in Sendinblue because the company offers innovative solutions for SMBs and has a strong track record of achieving high growth in the U.S. and European market,” added Louis Molis, investment director at Bpifrance. “We’ve seen that Sendinblue’s value is globally extensible and will increase in importance as integrated marketing becomes more important.”

“Sendinblue has quickly become the leading digital-marketing platform for SMBs,” said Bruno Crémel, General Partner at Partech. “As demand for all in one platforms increases, Sendinblue has a unique ability to succeed. We are thrilled to continue to support Sendinblue as the company accelerates its next phase of international growth.”

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eFounders unveils its next batch of enterprise SaaS startups

Since 2011, European startup studio eFounders has launched 27 companies with a focus on software-as-a-service companies trying to improve the way we work. Some of them have been quite successful, such as Front and Aircall.

And the company is working on its next batch of startups. “We're particularly inspired by the new wave of productivity tools, that is ever more collaborative and flexible,” eFounders co-founder Thibaud Elziere said in a statement

In exchange for financial and human resources, eFounders keeps a significant stake in its startups. Ideally, startups raise a seed round and take off on their own after a year or two.

Here’s what’s coming up from eFounders.

Canyon

Canyon is a product for legal teams that want to ditch Word, PDF documents and emails. It starts with a central hub to hold all your drafts and documents. This way, you can track progress, get the latest document version and see the context around a document. Given that it is tailored for legal teams, it should work a bit better than a shared Dropbox folder.

You can create templates to reuse them later, see related emails directly in Canyon’s interface and invite other people so that they can have a look at what you’ve been working on.

Image Credits: Canyon

Kairn

Kairn is a task manager that tries to get out of the way as much as possible. When you’re working on your computer, you can add tasks directly from the app that you’re already using.

For instance, you can imagine adding a task by starring an email conversation in Gmail, forwarding a message to a WhatsApp bot or starring a message in Slack. There’s also a quick add window that you can trigger with a keyboard shortcut.

Read my full article on Kairn:

Kairn is a new task manager focused on speed

Image Credits: Kairn

Crew

Crew is focused on new hires and job applications. Given that many companies are actively looking for interesting candidates, Crew isn’t just a way to passively collect applications.

It lets you create automated workflows and handle everything you’d expect from a recruitment platform.

Image Credits: Crew

Collective

Collective is a product for freelancers who want to work together and form groups. It should make it easier to send a contract to a client that involves multiple freelancers working on the contract. Collective will make it easier to remain legally compliant.

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Allbirds CEO Joey Zwillinger on the startup’s $100 million round, profitability, and SPAC mania

As people spend less time out in the world and more time daydreaming about when a vaccine will arrive, lifestyle shoes are only gaining traction.

One obvious beneficiary is Allbirds, the San Francisco-based maker of comfortable, sustainable kicks that launched in 2016 and quickly became a favorite in Silicon Valley circles before taking off elsewhere.

Though the company saw its business slow this year because of the pandemic, its products are now available to purchase in 35 countries and its 20 brick-and-mortar stores are sprinkled throughout the U.S. and Europe, with another outpost in Tokyo and several shops in China.

Investors clearly see room for more growth. Allbirds just closed on $100 million in Series E funding at roughly the same $1.6 billion valuation it was assigned after closing on $27 million in Series D funding earlier this year, and blank-check companies have been calling, says cofounder and CEO Joey Zwillinger. He talked with us earlier this week in a chat that has been edited for length and clarity.

TC: Your shoes are sold worldwide. What are your biggest markets?

JZ: The biggest market by far is the U.S., and the same day that we started here in 2016, we also launched in New Zealand, so that’s been very good to us over the last four years, too. But we’ve seen growth in Japan and Korea and China and Canada and Australia. We have a network of warehouses globally that lets us reach 2.5 billion people [who], if they were so inclined, could get their product in three days. We’re proud of the infrastructure we’ve set up.

TC: We’ve all worn shoes a lot less than we might have expected in 2020. How has that impacted your business?

JZ: We’re growing but definitely not at the same pace we would be had the pandemic not occurred. We’re predominantly digital in terms of how we reach people, but stores are important for us. And we had to switch [those] off completely and lost a portion of our sales for a long time.

TC: Did you have to lay off your retail employees?

JZ: A large portion of our retail force was unable to work, but we were luckily able to keep them fully paid for four months, plus [some received] government benefits if they got that. And now all of our 20 stores are up and running again in a way that’s totally safe and everyone feels really comfortable.

We also donated shoes to frontline workers — 10,000 pairs or around a million dollars’ worth.

TC: What does Allbirds have up its sleeve, in terms of new offerings?

JZ: We just launched our native mobile app, and through it we’re able to give our more loyal fans exclusives. It’s a really cool experience that blends technology with fashion. You can try on shoes in a virtual mirror; you’re given information [about different looks] that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

We also launched wool-based weather-proofed running shoes in April that have blown away our expectations but [were fast discovered by] people who haven’t really been running for 10 to 15 years and are running again [because of gym closures]. It’s a super high-stakes category and one that’s hard to break into because people buy on repeat. But we spent two years making it. It’s not like we launched it because of the pandemic. It’s a shoe for 5K to 10K distances — it’s not a marathon shoe or a trail shoe — and that we’ve been able to clearly articulate that speaks to its success, I think.

TC: What about clothing?

We launched underwear and socks last year in a small launch. We developed a textile that hasn’t been used before — it’s a blend of tree fiber and merino wool because our view is that nature can unlock magic. Underwear is typically synthetic — it’s made from plastics — or cotton, which isn’t a great material for a whole bunch of reasons. [Meanwhile] ours is phenomenal for temperature control; it also feels like cashmere.

TC: Patagonia really advertises its social and environmental values. Do you see Allbirds evolving in a similar way, with a growing spate of offerings?

JZ: I’m incredibly humbled by [the comparison]. Given their environmental stewardship of the retail sector, we hope we’re compared to them. But they are much more of an outdoor brand — not a competitor so to speak. And we’d love to share more of the retail world with them so we can do our environmental thing together.

TC: You just raised funding. Are you profitable and, if not, is profitability in sight?

JZ: We’ve been profitable for most of our existence. Having some discipline as we grow is good. We’re not close to the profitability that we’ll eventually have, but we’re still a small company in investment mode. After we emerge from the pandemic, we’ll enter a ramping-up phase.

TC: Everyone and their brother is raising money for a blank-check company, or SPAC, which can make it a lot faster for a private company to go public. Have you been approached, and might this option interest you?

JZ: Yes and no. Yes we’ve been approached, and no, we’re [not interested]. We want to build a great company and being public might be something that helps enable that for a whole bunch of reasons. But we want to do it at the right time, in a way that helps the business grow in the most durable and sustainable fashion. Just jumping at the opportunity of a SPAC without doing the rigorous prep the way we want to, we’re not super focused on that

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Google Pixel 4a will be released in India on October 17

Yesterday Google announced the Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5, but neither of them is coming to India for the time being. Yet Google subsequently confirmed that the Pixel 4a, which came out in August will be hitting the country on October 17. Google's official account revealed the release date and confirmed that the Pixel 4a will be sold through Flipkart. Its price wasn't confirmed, so we'll have to wait until October 17 for that. The Google Pixel 4a is powered by the Snapdragon 730G and packs a 5.81" OLED display of FullHD+ resolution. The smartphone boots to Android 10 and comes in a...

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New camera features coming to the Google Pixel 5

Google’s Pixel 5 doesn’t bring any major changes the to the camera hardware. The 2X telephoto camera from the Pixel 4 has been replaced with a new 16MP ultra wide camera with f/2.2 aperture and 1µn pixels. Meanwhile, the main camera remains unchanged from the Pixel 4. It’s a 12.2MP 1/2.55” sensor with f/1.7 aperture, Dual Pixel AF, and OIS. We don’t yet know how much the image quality can improved solely based on software advancements as we don’t yet have the device. Until then, let’s go over the camera features that are debuting with the Google Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G (they have...

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Google TV is the Android TV skin for the new Google Chromecast

With the announcement of Google’s new Chromecast device today, “Google TV” is debuting with the new hardware. “Google TV” was Google’s first smart TV platform that was co-developed with Sony, Qualcomm, Google, and Logitech that first launched back in 2010. It was an OS for TVs that offered support for streaming apps, and as a core TV operating system. The platform would eventually be succeeded by “Android TV” until this day. The new Google TV is still based on Android TV, but it’s a UI skin that’s unique to the new Google Chromecast for now, though Google did say that it would be adding...

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Indian startups explore forming an alliance and alternative app store to fight Google’s ‘monopoly’

Google, which reaches more internet users than any other firm in India and commands 99% of the nation’s smartphone market, has stumbled upon an odd challenge in the world’s second largest internet market: Scores of top local entrepreneurs.

Dozens of top startups and firms in India are working to form an alliance and toying with the idea of launching an app store to cut their reliance on Google, five people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The list of entrepreneurs include high-profile names such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of Paytm (India’s most valuable startup), Deep Kalra of travel ticketing firm MakeMyTrip, and executives from PolicyBazaar, Sharechat and many other firms.

The growing list of founders expressed deep concerns about Google’s “monopolistic” hold on India, and discussed what they alleged was unfair and inconsistent enforcement of Play Store’s guidelines in the country.

The conversations, which began in recent weeks, escalated on Tuesday after Google said that starting next year developers with an app on Google Play Store must give the company a cut of as much as 30% of several app-related payments.

Dozens of executives “from nearly every top startup and firm” in India attended a call on Tuesday to discuss the way forward, some of the people said, requesting anonymity. A 30% cut to Google is simply unfeasible, people on the call unanimously agreed.

Vishal Gondal, the founder of fitness startup GOQii, confirmed the talks to TechCrunch and said that an alternative app store would immensely help the Indian app ecosystem.

TechCrunch reached out to Paytm on Monday for comment and the startup declined the request.

In recent months, several major startups in India have also expressed disappointment over several of the existing industry bodies, which some say have failed to work on nurturing the local ecosystem.

The tension between some firms and Google became more public than ever late last month after the Android-maker reiterated Play Store’s gambling policy, sending a shockwave to scores of startups in the country that were hoping to cash in on the ongoing season of Indian Premier League cricket tournament.

Google temporarily pulled Paytm’s marquee app from the Play Store citing repeat violation of its Play Store policies. Disappointed by Google’s move, Paytm’s Sharma said in a TV interview, “This is the problem of India’s app ecosystem. So many founders have reached out to us… if we believe this country can build digital business, we must know that it is at somebody else’s hand to bless that business and not this country’s rules and regulations.”

Google has sent notices to several firms in India including Hotstar, TechCrunch reported last month. Indian newspaper Economic Times reported on Wednesday that the Mountain View giant had also sent warnings to food delivery startups Swiggy and Zomato.

Vivek Wadhwa, a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, lauded the banding of Indian entrepreneurs and likened Silicon Valley giants’ hold on India to the rising days of East India Company, which pillaged India. “Modern day tech companies pose a similar risk,” he told TechCrunch.

Some of the participating members are also hopeful that the government, which has urged the citizens in India to become self-reliant to revive the declining economy, would help their movement.

Other than its reach on Android, Google today also leads the mobile payments market in India, TechCrunch reported earlier this year.

The giant, which has backed a handful of startups in India and is a member of several Indian industry bodies, invested $4.5 billion in Mukesh Ambani’s telecom giant Jio Platforms earlier this year.

India’s richest man Ambani, who runs oil-to-retails giant Reliance Industries, is an ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Jio Platforms has attracted over $20 billion in investment from Google, Facebook, and 11 other high-profile investors this year.

The voluminous investment in Jio Platforms has puzzled many industry executives. “I see no business case for Facebook investing in Jio beyond saying we need regulatory help,” said Miten Sampat, a high-profile angel-investor on a podcast published Wednesday.

“This is a white-collar way of saying there is corruption involved, and if the government gets upset, I have invested somewhere with some friend of the government. All of us are losing at the benefit of one company,” he said. Sampat’s views are shared by many industry executives, though nobody has said it on record and in such clearer terms.

Google said in July that it would work with Jio Platforms on low-cost Android smartphones. Jio Platforms is planning to launch as many as 200 million smartphones in the next three years, according to a pitch the telecom giant has made to several developers. Bloomberg first reported about Jio Platform’s smartphone production plans.

These smartphones, as is the case with nearly 40 million JioPhone feature phones in circulation today, will have an app store with only a few dozen apps, all vetted and approved by Jio, according to one developer who was pitched by Jio Platforms. An industry executive described Jio’s store as a walled-garden.

A possible viable option for startup founders is Indus OS, a Samsung-backed third-party store, which last month said it reaches over 100 million monthly active users. As of earlier this week, Paytm and other firms had not reached out to IndusOS, a person familiar with the matter said.

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Realme Narzo 20 trio moves 230K units in first sales

Realme unveiled the Narzo 20 family with three members - Narzo 20A, Narzo 20 and Narzo 20 Pro. The aggressively priced trio has resonated well with the customers according to the numbers from the first flash sales - the entire stock of over 230,000 units was taken in minues. The achievement was announced on Twitter by Madhav Sheth, CEO of Realme India and Europe. He revealed that the middle child Narzo 20 sold over 130,000 units, while the Narzo 20A was second with 51,000+ and the Narzo 20 Pro sitting in third with 50,000+ devices. The trio covers a reasonably wide price range...

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Hailo challenges Intel and Google with its new AI modules for edge devices

Hailo, a Tel Aviv-based startup best known for its high-performance AI chips, today announced the launch of its M.2 and Mini PCIe high-AI acceleration modules. Based around its Hailo-8 chip, these new models are meant to be used in edge devices for anything from smart city and smart home solutions to industrial applications.

Today’s announcement comes about half a year after the company announced a $60 million Series B funding round. At the time, Hailo said it was raising those new funds to roll out its new AI chips, and with today’s announcement, it’s making good on this promise. In total, the company has now raised $88 million.

“Manufacturers across industries understand how crucial it is to integrate AI capabilities into their edge devices. Simply put, solutions without AI can no longer compete,” said Orr Danon, CEO of Hailo, in today’s announcement. “Our new Hailo-8 M.2 and Mini PCIe modules will empower companies worldwide to create new powerful, cost-efficient, innovative AI-based products with a short time-to-market – while staying within the systems’ thermal constraints. The high efficiency and top performance of Hailo’s modules are a true gamechanger for the edge market.”

Image Credits: Hailo

Developers can still use frameworks like TensorFlow and ONNX to build their models, and Hailo’s Dataflow compiler will handle the rest. One thing that makes Hailo’s chips different is its architecture, which allows it to automatically adapt to the needs of the neural network running on it.

Hailo is not shy about comparing its solution to that of heavyweights like Intel, Google and Nvidia. With 26 tera-operations per second (TOPS) and power efficiency of 3 TOPS/W, the company claims its edge modules can analyze significantly more frames per second than Intel’s Myriad-X and Google’s Edge TPU modules — all while also being far more energy efficient.

Image Credits: Hailo

The company is already working with Foxconn to integrate the M.2 module into its “BOXiedge” edge computing platform. Because it’s just a standard M.2 module, Foxconn was able to integrate it without any rework. Using the Hailo-8 M.2 solution, this edge computing server can process 20 camera streams at the same time.

“Hailo’s M.2 and Mini PCIe modules, together with the high-performance Hailo-8 AI chip, will allow many rapidly evolving industries to adopt advanced technologies in a very short time, ushering in a new generation of high performance, low power, and smarter AI-based solutions,” said Dr. Gene Liu, VP of Semiconductor Subgroup at Foxconn Technology Group.

Hailo raises $60M Series B for its AI chips

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Watch the Xiaomi Mi 10T series announcement live here

Xiaomi is about to unveil its Mi 10T series, and we expect two flagships on stage - the Mi 10T and the Mi 10T Pro. A Mi 10T Lite might be joining them too - we've heard less about that one, but that's likely down to its mid-range nature. The event is scheduled for 12 noon UTC and will be streamed live for all fans to enjoy. We’ve embedded the video below so you can tune in from the comfort of your home or office. The Mi 10T and Mi 10T Pro are expected to be pretty similar with the camera being the key difference. While the vanilla version will bring a 64MP main shooter, the Pro...

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will get EA Play on November 10th

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers would be able to access EA Play for no additional cost. The company shared more details about the rollout. Console players will be able to activate their complimentary EA Play subscription on November 10th.

Microsoft is also launching the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on November 10th. As a reminder, EA Play includes back-catalog games from EA, such as Fifa 20, Madden NFL 20, Battlefield V, Mass Effect games, Dead Space games, etc.

The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription include access to Microsoft’s library of games, an Xbox Live Gold subscription, Microsoft’s cloud gaming service xCloud and soon EA Play. It costs $14.99 per month. If you just subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass for $9.99 per month, you won’t get EA Play.

On Windows, Xbox Game Pass (and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) subscribers will able to download EA games in December. Unfortunately, you’ll have to create an EA account, download the EA client and link your Xbox and EA accounts.

If you’re already paying for EA Play and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that grants you access to EA Play, your EA Play subscription will be canceled and your remaining time will be converted to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you had between 50 days and 3 months left, you’ll receive one month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you had between 4 and 6 months remaining, you’ll receive 2 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. You can get more details in the FAQ.

Microsoft is using this opportunity to confirm that some Bethesda games will be added to its subscription service. Doom Eternal is coming on October 1 for instance.

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Apple removes two RSS feed readers from China App Store

It looks like Apple is scouring its Chinese App Store for any remaining services that may not sit well with Chinese censors. Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds, said this week that their iOS apps have been removed in China over content that is considered “illegal” in the country.

Apps get banned in China for all sorts of reasons. Feed readers of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, are particularly troubling to the authority because they fetch content from third-party websites, allowing users to bypass China’s Great Firewall and reach otherwise forbidden information.

Those who use RSS readers in China are scarce, as the majority of China’s internet users — 940 million as of late — receive their dose of news through domestic services, from algorithmic news aggregators such as ByteDance’s Toutiao, WeChat’s built-in content subscription feature, to apps of mainstream local outlets.

Major political events and regulatory changes can trigger new waves of app removals, but it’s unclear why the two RSS feed readers were pulled this week. Inoreader, a similar service, was banned from Apple’s Chinese App Store back in 2017. Feedly is also unavailable through the local App Store.

The history of China’s crackdown on RSS dates back to 2007 when the authority launched a blanked ban on web-based RSS feed aggregators. The latest incidents could well be part of Apple’s business-as-usual in China: cleaning up foreign information services operating outside Beijing’s purview, regardless of their reach.

Prior to its ban, Fiery Feeds had about 1,000 monthly active users in China, it told TechCrunch. Its iOS version was available in China without the use of a VPN, though some of the synced services it supported were blocked. Reeder and Apple cannot be immediately reached for comment.

“It seems [the ban] comes from the Chinese government, so I do see any use in appealing to Apple,” said a spokesperson at Fiery Feeds.

Apple has in recent times come under fire for deferring to censorship demands from China, a major market for its smartphone and app sale. The behemoth has purged its Chinese App Store of VPN services, video games, and podcast apps that lacked local authorization. In other words, the iOS publishing procedure for apps and podcasts in China is increasingly subject to Beijing’s scrutiny.

At this rate, Apple’s latest pledge to commit to “freedom of information and expression” would offer little assurance to its investors who have voiced concerns over Apple’s app takedowns in China.

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Google to start enforcing its 30% cut of in-app purchases next year

As you may know Google takes 30% from in-app purchases on most apps in the Play Store and the company has now declared that it plans on enforcing it more strictly starting September 30, 2021. Google said that about 97% of the apps in Play Store already use the store's system for in-app purchases and are compliant with the policies. Still major apps like Spotify and Netflix, for example, ask for your credit/debit card directly, circumventing the Google system and the commission that comes with it. Recently, Epic Games found itself in hot water with both Google and Apple after refusing...

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Apple to release new emojis with iOS 14.2

While the current version of iOS is iOS 14.0.1, Apple is already testing iOS 14.2. The company released an early beta version of the update yesterday, and it includes a new set of emojis, as Emojipedia spotted.

Apple already shared an early look of the new emojis back in July. Overall, there will be dozens of new emojis this year. Emojis will also be more diverse and inclusive than ever with new variations of existing emojis.

Earlier this year, the governing body in charge of approving new emojis, the Unicode Consortium, approved 117 new emojis as part of Unicode 13.0. Operating system developers and social network companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and Mozilla, then draw their own versions of the new emojis and release them on their platforms.

In this release, you’ll find a transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more.

My favorite is arguably disguised face:

Emojipedia compiled those new emojis on a single image:

New emojis in iOS 14.2 beta https://t.co/883idFLiJn pic.twitter.com/KMmATUf6NQ

— Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) September 29, 2020

When it comes to new variations, there will be a Mx Claus, a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs Claus. Tuxedos are no longer limited to men and veils are no longer limited to women. You’ll be able to send an emoji with a woman wearing a tuxedo and a man wearing a veil.

You can expect the full release of iOS 14.2, iPadOS 14.2 and macOS Big Sur in a month or two.

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Lee Fixel’s Addition leads $35 million investment in India’s Inshorts

Inshorts, which operates a popular news aggregator app in India, has raised $35 million in a new financing round led by Lee Fixel’s Addition as the Indian startup looks to scale its adjacent, social network platform.

For Fixel, who wrote several high-profile checks to Indian firms while running Tiger Global, InShorts is the first Indian startup he is backing from his new VC firm. Fixel, who also invested in InShorts when he was at Tiger Global, has backed about six startups through Addition including New York Area-headquartered Odeko, which offers ordering and supply chain tools to cafes, Synk, which develops tools used to identify vulnerabilities, and dLocal, which operates a cross-border payment processor to connect global merchants to emerging markets.

SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners, also participated in Inshorts’ new round, which values the startup at about $125 million, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

Azhar Iqubal, founder and chief executive of Inshorts, told TechCrunch in an interview that the startup raised the capital to further scale Public, a social network it launched in April 2019.

Public is a location-based social network that connects individuals to people in their vicinity. Think about people living in the same society, or people in a mall or within a few miles from each other.

Public, which is available in several major Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi, is allowing shop owners to drive e-commerce, serving as a classified platform and allowing recruiters to hire people from neighborhood, said Iqubal.

The app, which also provides entertainment and news services, has amassed over 50 million monthly active users, he said. More than 1 million videos are being created on the platform each month.

“There are more than 10,000 urban centres in India and existing social networking apps that are aimed at connecting friends leave room for a location-based play,” said Iqubal.

In the next few months, Iqubal said Public will attempt to deepen its penetration across India. In the future, he wants to expand Public outside of India as well, he said.

Inshorts, which is profitable, competes with a handful of players in the country including DailyHunt. Interestingly, both DailyHunt, co-run by Umang Bedi (former head of Facebook India) and Inshorts have expanded to explore opportunities in the space of social networks.

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Emjoy picks up $3M to get more women tuned into sexual self-care

Barcelona-based Emjoy, an audio app for women that sells a narrative of sexual self-care and empowerment, has picked up $3 million in seed funding led by JME Ventures, with existing investor Nauta Capital participating.

The femtech startup believes it has lit on a major opportunity to target women with sex-positive subscription audio content that’s focused on sexual empowerment, intimate education and sensuous entertainment — all wrapped in unapologetically direct digital marketing.

Nor is it alone in seeking to build a brand around such ‘female first’ audio content. (Another startup that springs to mind in this ‘mindful sex’ space is Ferly, for example.) But Emjoy reckons there’s all to play for in this nascent space — which it says is benefitting not only from progress toward female empowerment in recent years but the rise in popularity of podcasting and audiobooks.

“My inspiration for founding Emjoy is based on my personal experience and the experiences of many girlfriends of mine. All of us had normalized not climaxing when having sexual encounters,” Andrea Oliver, CEO and co-founder tells TechCrunch.

“When I began researching this I came across the pleasure gap, with some studies showing that 40% of women have some type of sexual dysfunction. Having been in the VC world and having seen the tremendous success of startups in the mental health and fitness spaces, I was shocked when I could not find an app focusing on sexual wellbeing.”

“What sets us apart from competitors is offering a broad library of both wellbeing and entertainment audios, being extremely trustworthy and reliable because of our in-house sex therapist, partnering with sexual wellbeing experts, and finally being a product company that offers more than just content,” she goes on, discussing the competitive landscape. “An example of this is our ‘Daily Routines’ feature, which allows our users to take 30-day challenges to create new habits, such as accepting their bodies.”

Oliver moved from Nauta Capital, where she’d been working with startups, to founding her own business in January 2019, along with co-founder Daniel Tamas, CTO — taking in an initial €1M from her former VC employer to get the app to market.

Emjoy launched worldwide in early 2020 and went on to clock up 80,000 registered users in its first six months. It now has 150,000 active users globally, with the U.S. and the U.K. its main markets (NB: content is currently only available in English).

Almost 10% of “recently acquired” active users paying a subscription, per Oliver.

“The women who use Emjoy are typically in their 20s, and while most are cisgender we have also received tons of positive feedback from trans and non-binary folk. Really, Emjoy is about getting to know what you like and enjoying yourself, regardless of the gender of your partner(s),” she says.

“We are building a wellbeing brand for women because we see that sexual wellbeing is a major part of overall wellbeing. We want to normalize this,” Oliver adds, nothing that Emjoy’s “wellbeing positioning” includes “entertainment content with our erotic stories”.

The startup’s team has grown to 11 people at this point — including an in-house sex therapist. Most of Emjoy’s content is produced in house at this point.

Discussing its approach to content, which the app touts as “backed by science and supervised by our in-house intimacy therapist”, Oliver says: “For each theory or guided session we try to find a scientific study to back what we say, and we work with our in-house sex therapist who creates most of the content and supervises it. We also partner with external collaborators who are experts in different fields such as sexual trauma, body acceptance, relationships etc.”

“It is important to offer science-based content because most of the sexual content that is available today, in blogs or on YouTube, for example, is very untrustworthy. We want to be a trusted and safe environment for our users,” she adds.

The new seed funding will be ploughed into making more content — with plans for additional collaborations with “leading academics, experts and influencers within the sexual wellbeing and education space” — and the overarching aim of building the “category-defining” app in the female sexual wellness space.

Asked why he’s excited about women’s sexual wellbeing audio as a category, investor Samuel Gil, partner at JME Ventures, told us the space is interesting because it’s been so overlooked.

“It has been ignored or forgotten for a very long time but that’s now changing with women being more empowered than ever,” he said, adding: “Women with sexual wellbeing issues might be reluctant to search for help in a more traditional way due to shame or friction. A digital product is ideal to broaden access to sexual wellbeing solutions.”

He also lauded the “really immersive experiences” possible with audio content which he said “facilitates content production”. (Or, well, it’s a lot easier to get erotic sounds past ‘family-friendly’ App Store review rules than hardcore visuals.)

On investing in Emjoy specifically, Gil added: “It is a nascent category with no clear leaders yet. Emjoy’s vision, ambition, and above all, execution, so far makes us believe that they are really well-positioned to take the leading position very soon.”

Asked what she believes this new rush of female-pleasure-focused audio startups are tapping into, Olivier says: “It is very much an underserved need. We go hand-in-hand with our users to help them discover their bodies, gain confidence, and explore what turns them on, among many other things. We and our users see Emjoy as a journey, with our audio content helping users explore what they like and who they are.

“We are not telling users what they should do, or how they should feel because there is no normal, there’s no ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’. Each personal experience and body is unique and Emjoy adapts to each user’s unique journey.”

“Our users are also generating new habits with Emjoy and we are becoming an everyday tool for women who want to feel more confident or want a safe, female pleasure-centric and trusted place to get in the mood, as opposed to mainstream porn,” she adds.

LocalGlobe partner Julia Hawkins discusses femtech’s risks and rewards

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vivo releases full V20 specs as lineup begins global rollout

The vivo V20 lineup was introduced last week in Thailand, but today the midrangers are finally going on sale, hitting Southeast Asia and becoming the first phones in the world to ship with Android 11, out of the box. The family includes three phones - vivo V20 SE, vivo V20 Pro, and vivo V20. The initial announcements brought us all the specs of the first two, but the middle option is only now getting detailed. The vanilla vivo V20 is powered by the Snapdragon 720G, coupled with an 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, the latter expandable via a dedicated micro SD slot. At the front, we...

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Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra battery detailed by 3C listing

Earlier this month, we saw a report about the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra’s battery and now we have more proof that it will indeed launch with a 4,855mAh cell. A recent certification from China’s 3C agency reveals the next Ultra flagship in Samsung’s lineup will carry a battery with the EB-BG998ABY model number which features a rated capacity of 4,855mAh. This will likely translate to a typical capacity of about 5,000 mAh. Galaxy S21 Ultra battery listing The G998 digits in the listing reveal we’re indeed talking about the S21 Ultra here. Like the recent S21+ battery listing, the S21...

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October closes $300 million in new funds for its SME lending marketplace

French fintech startup October has raised some fresh capital to invest in small and medium companies on its lending platform. Overall, the company has gathered $300 million (€258 million) from various partners that will be deployed over the next few years.

This is not a traditional startup funding round as today’s new investment is specifically designed to finance new loans on its platform. October isn’t selling equity in exchange for capital.

October works with small companies in France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Germany that need a credit line. For small and medium companies, you can apply for a loan and get an answer just a few days later. October evaluates risk before handing out loans thanks to industry-specific data analysis and human analysts.

Loans range from €30,000 to €5 million. There’s no personal guarantee and interest rate varies depending on the risk associated with your application.

On the other side of the marketplace, individuals can contribute to SME financing. But the startup has been relying more and more on institutional investors looking for different types of assets to diversify their investment portfolios.

Hence today’s new influx of cash. Here’s the full breakdown:

• $23 million (€20 million) will be used for traditional SME loans with monthly repayments.
• $44 million (€38 million) will be deployed in the tourism industry specifically — hotels, restaurants and more. Six insurance companies and French public sector financial institution CDC are contributing to this fund. Companies applying for loans in this category can delay repayment.
• $232 million (€200 million) will be injected in Italian SMEs in particular. Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo Group is investing exclusively in this fund. Those government-backed loans will go live quite rapidly as everything will be deployed by the end of 2020.

As you can see, October is becoming an important technological partner for European support plans during the economic crisis. The startup can issue government-backed loans and some public institutions are choosing October to finance SMEs.

Over the past five years, October has handed out around 1,000 loans. It represents $521 million (€448 million) in capital. That number will go up rapidly following today’s announcement.

Crowd-lending platform October hits pause on loan repayments

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Baidu’s smart voice unit to raise independent round on $2.9B valuation

Baidu, China’s dominant search service and a leader in artificial intelligence research, is further diversifying into the smart voice space as its smart living group is poised to raise an independent round on a 20 billion yuan ($2.94 billion) post-money valuation.

The fundraising move signals a potential spinoff of the smart living group down the road. The unit is best known for its voice assistant DuerOS, the search giant’s Alexa equivalent, which was active on 200 million devices including both Baidu’s own branded speaker and a variety of third-party gadgets as of early 2019.

Baidu shipped around 15 million units of its Xiaodu speakers in 2019, making it the second-largest player in China following Alibaba and ahead of Xiaomi, according to market research firm IDC.

Investors including Citic Private Equity Funds Management (CPE), state conglomerate Citic’s asset management firm, as well as Baidu’s venture arm Baidu Capital and IDG Capital, have entered definitive agreements to invest an undisclosed amount into the smart living group’s Series A round.

China has in recent years seen increasing cooperation between its internet firms and industrial incumbents from sectors spanning real estate, healthcare, education to finance, which are eager to embrace digital solutions.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Baidu. Upon completion of the deal, Baidu will be the majority shareholder with super-voting rights in the smart living group and continue to consolidate the unit’s financial results.

The competition in voice intelligence is a race to secure partnerships with hardware makers, which could in turn contribute consumer usage and data. Besides selling speakers, Baidu has a leg up in putting its voice assistant in connected cars, thanks to its ecosystem of automakers using its open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo. Alibaba, needless to say, can leverage its dominance in retail to market its smart voice system and speakers. Xiaomi, on the other hand, commands an portolio of Internet of Things allies that may benefit from gaining voice capabilities.

Baidu’s endeavor in AI is marked by the lineup of famed scientists it has attracted (and lost) in recent years, including Andrew Ng and Lu Qi. The company vowed to stake its future on AI early on, though its nascent AI-related businesses have yet to deliver significant revenue. The 20-year-old firm continues to rely on search to drive ad revenue as it faces growing competition from advertisers’ new darling, TikTok parent ByteDance.

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Papaya Global raises $40M for a payroll and HR platform aimed at global workforces

Workforces are getting more global, and people who work day in, day out for organizations don’t always sit day in, day out in a single office, in a single country, to get a job done. Today, one of the startups building HR to help companies provision services for and manage those global workers better is announcing a funding round to capitalise on a surge in business that it has seen in the last year — spurred in no small part by the global health pandemic, the impact it’s had on travel and the way it has focused the minds of companies to get their cloud services and workforce management in order.

Papaya Global, an Israeli startup that provides cloud-based payroll, as well as hiring, onboarding and compliance services for organizations that employ full-time, part-time, or contractors outside of their home country, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding led by Scale Venture Partners. Workday Ventures — the corporate investment arm of the HR company — Access Industries (via its Israeli vehicle Claltech), and previous investors Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, New Era Ventures, Group 11, and Dynamic Loop also participated

The money comes less than a year after its Series A of $45 million, following the company growing 300% year-over-year annually since 2016. It’s now raised $95 million and is not disclosing valuation. But Eynat Guez, the CEO who co-founded the company in that year with Ruben Drong and Ofer Herman, said in an interview that it’s 5x the valuation it had in its round last year.

Its customers include fast-growing startups (precisely the kind of customer that not only has global workforces, but is expanding its employee base quickly) like OneTrust, nCino and Hopin, as well as major corporates like Toyota, Microsoft, Wix, and General Dynamics.

Guez said Papaya Global was partly born out of the frustrations she herself had with HR solutions — she’s worked in the field for years. Different countries have different employment regulations, varied banking rules, completely different norms in terms of how people get paid, and so on. While there have been some really modern tools built for local workforces — Rippling, Gusto, Zenefits now going head to head with incumbents like ADP — they weren’t built to address these issues.

Other HR people who have dealt with international workers would understand her pain, those who control the purse strings might have been less aware of the fragmentation. All that changed in the last eight months (and for the foreseeable future), a period when companies have had to reassess everything about how they work to make sure that they can get through the current period without collapsing.

“The major impact of Covid-19 for us has been changing attitudes,” said Guez. “People usually think that payroll works by itself, but it’s one of the more complex parts of the organization, covering major areas like labor, accounting, tax. Eight months ago, a lot of clients thought, it just happens. But now they realize they didn’t have control of the data, some don’t even have a handle on who is being paid.”

As people moved into and out of jobs, and out of offices into working from home, as the pandemic kicked off, some operations fell apart as a result, she said. “Payroll continuity is like IT continuity, and so all of a sudden when Covid started its march, we had prospects calling us saying they didn’t have data on, for example, their Italian employees, and the office they were using wasn’t answering the phone.”

Guez herself is walking the walk on the remote working front. Papaya Global itself has offices around the world, and Guez herself is normally based in Tel Aviv. But our interview was conducted with her in the Maldives. She said she and her family decided to decamp elsewhere before Israel went into a second lockdown, which was very tough to handle in a small flat with small children. Working anywhere, as we have found out, can work.

The company is not the only one that has identified and is building to help organizations handle global workforces. In fact, just when you think the unemployment, furlough and layoff crunch is affecting an inordinate number of people and the job market is in a slump, a rush of them, along with other HR companies, have all been announcing significant funding rounds this year on the back of surges in business.

Others that have raised money during the pandemic include Deel, which like Papaya Global is also addressing the complexities of running global workforces; Turing, which helps with sourcing and then managing international teams; Factorial with its platform targeting specifically SMBs; Lattice focused on the bigger challenges of people management; and Rippling, the second act from Zenefits’ Parker Conrad.

“Papaya Global’s accelerating growth is a testament to their top-notch executive leadership as well as their ability to streamline international payroll management, a first for many enterprises that have learned to live with highly manual payroll processes,” said Rory O’Driscoll, a partner at Scale Venture Partners, in a statement. “The complexity and cost of managing multi-region workforces cannot be understated. Eynat and her team are uniquely serving their customers’ needs, bringing an advanced SaaS platform into a market long-starved for more effective software solutions.”

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Salesforce creates for profit platform to help governments distribute COVID vaccine when it’s ready

For more than 20 years, Salesforce has been selling cloud business software, but it has also used the same platform to build ways to track other elements besides sales, marketing and service information including Work.com, the platform it created earlier this year to help companies develop and organize a safe way to begin returning to work during the pandemic.

Today, the company announced it was putting that same platform to work to help distribute and track a vaccine whenever it becomes available along with related materials like syringes that will be needed to administer it. The plan is to use Salesforce tools to solve logistical problems around distributing the vaccine, as well as data to understand where it could be needed most and the efficacy of the drug, according to Bill Patterson, EVP and general manager for CRM applications at Salesforce.

“The next wave of the virus phasing, if you will, will be [when] a vaccine is on the horizon, and we begin planning the logistics. Can we plan the orchestration? Can we measure the inventory? Can we track the outcomes of the vaccine once it reaches the public’s hands,” Patterson asked.

Salesforce has put together a new product called Work.com for Vaccines to put its platform to work to help answer these questions, which Patterson says ultimately involves logistics and data, two areas that are strengths for Salesforce.

Amid pandemic, returning to offices remains an open question for tech leaders

The platform includes the core Work.com command center along with additional components for inventory management, appointment management, clinical administration, outcome monitoring and public outreach.

While this all sounds good, what Salesforce lacks of course is expertise in drug distribution or public health administration, but the company believes that by creating a flexible platform with open data that government entities can share that data with other software products outside of the Salesforce family.

“That’s why it’s important to use an open data platform that allows for aggregate data to be quickly summarized and abstracted for public use,” he said. He points to the fact that some states are using Tableau, the company that Salesforce bought last year for a tidy $15.7 billion, to track other types of COVID data.

“Many states today are running all their COVID testing and positive case reporting through the Tableau platform. We want to do the same kind of exchange of data with things like inventory management [for a vaccine],” he said.

Salesforce closes $15.7B Tableau deal

While this sounds like a public service kind of activity, Salesforce intends to sell this product to governments to manage vaccines. Patterson says that to run a system like this at what they envision will be enormous scale, it will be a service that governments have to pay for to access.

This isn’t the first time that Salesforce has created a product that falls somewhat outside of the standard kind of business realm, but which takes advantage of the Salesforce platform. Last year it developed a tool to help companies measure how sustainable they are being. While the end goal is positive, just like Work.com for Vaccines and the broader Work.com platform, it is a tool that they charge for to help companies implement and measure these kinds of initiatives.

The tool set is available starting today. Pricing will vary depending on the requirements and components of each government entity.

The real question here is should this kind of distribution platform be created by a private company like Salesforce for profit, or perhaps would be better suited to an open source project, where a community of developers could create the software and distribute it for free.

Salesforce is building an app to gauge a company’s sustainability progress

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TravelPerk launches an open API platform to extend its work trip SaaS

Business travel SaaS startup, TravelPerk, has launched an open API-based platform — letting its customers and partners build custom integration and apps.

The initial APIs covers HR and expense management use-cases but more are set to be added as usage and demand grows.

“Applications we’ve seen being built on the platform already include HR functionality (think BambooHR), expense management systems, company payment cards, financial reporting, and ERP,” says co-founder and CEO Avi Meir, discussing the launch.

Longer term he says the hope is the platform generates “a huge range” of additional functionality for customers to draw on.

“Many of our customers are tech companies full of developers, so we’re confident that if we give them the tools it will be boundless what they can create,” he adds. “In fact, we’re working with one customer already who is using our API to build a custom approvals process because they need a more complex system than the standard offering.”

TravelPerk has been running a private beta over the last few months with 20+ partners and customers but is now flipping the switch to open it to all users.

“We are providing a fully fledged toolkit for developers, from the most curated developer hub and API documentation, to a sandbox environment to test their solutions for quality assurance,” adds Ross McNairn, TravelPerk’s chief product officer, in a statement.

“We do not see TravelPerk as a silo tool, but rather one that needs to coexist with hundreds of other SaaS tools. Our ultimate goal is for partners and developers to consider TravelPerk as the platform to build and grow with us. Easy to understand, easy to build, and easy to grow.”

Business downtime resulting from the coronavirus pandemic slashing global travel has given TravelPerk a window of opportunity to focus on product dev.

“It’s no surprise that the [business travel]  market isn’t yet back to normal but we know that if we keep investing in creating the products businesses need to travel confidently we’ll emerge from this stronger,” says Meir, who notes that it’s been seeing signs of a recovery in some of its markets — with domestic segment usage in Germany and the US having returned to “pre-pandemic levels”.

Returning to the API, Meir says customer demand was a factor in the decision to augment its business travel SaaS with a free and fully open API platform: “Part of the reason we’ve brought this in was the huge demand for this kind of product from many of our customers, particularly SMEs. On the back of that demand, we’re expecting to see tens or hundreds of applications and customer integrations built in the coming months.”

The other driver is cultural, per Meir — who says the startup has a “philosophy of being open, collaborative and innovative” which he claims sets it apart from the “current, closed systems” offered by legacy travel industry players.

“Creating this marketplace means we can provide customers with a wide choice of expert-created functionality, rather than forcing a single proprietary solution on them,” he adds.

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vivo announces X50e 5G with 48MP camera, Snapdragon 765G

vivo just delivered a new midrange smartphone for the Taiwanese market dubbed vivo X50e 5G. With quad cameras, 33W charging, and a Snapdragon 765G chipset, the vivo X50e is the cheapest 5G-enabled member of the X50 lineup. There’s a 6.44-inch AMOLED screen complete with an in-display fingerprint scanner. The panel covers 103% of the NTSC color space, while its waterdrop notch houses a 32MP selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture. Around back is the diamond shaped quad camera setup, consisting of a 48MP main camera with f/1.79 aperture, a 13MP telephoto camera, an 8MP ultrawide shooter,...

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The joke is on consumers as Liquid Death raises $23 million more

In what began as a kind of funny, savvy marketing stunt that has since gained traction, a nearly three-year-old, Santa Monica-based startup that sells water from the Austrian Alps under the brand Liquid Death, has raised $23 million in Series B funding. Backers in the round include an unnamed family office; Convivialité Ventures, which is Pernod Ricard Group’s venture arm; the musician known as Fat Mike; and earlier backer Velvet Sea Ventures.

The company, originally incubated with the help of the L.A.-based startup studio Science, has now raised a little more than $34 million altogether.

We talked with Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario, who was formerly a West Coast agency exec, not long after he launched the company to the public, and he argued at the time that canned water could give sugary energy drinks like Rockstar, Monster and Red Bull a run for their money if it was also named like a heavy metal act.

Indeed, our favorite part of the product has long been its promise to “murder your thirst.” (It’s water in an aluminum can, after all, so other differentiators are hard to come by.)

Clearly, plenty of other people are amused enough by the company’s inventive marketing that its products are selling, including at Whole Foods. It put the cans on its shelves back in February, around the same time that Velvet Sea led the company’s $9 million Series A round.

Liquid Death also sells at more than 1,000 7-Eleven stores in California, and it sells, as it always has, directly to customers, who can select either mountain water or sparkling water, and buy a T-shirt or hoodie from a growing merchandise store on their way out of its online store.

A 12-pack of tallboys costs $16. A “Hydrate or Die” T-shirt can be had for $26.

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Realme Q2 appears on AnTuTu with impressive results

Realme’s China is going to introduce a new phone from its Q family, speculated to be called Realme Q2. While the original Realme Q was merely a rebranded Realme 5 Pro, this one is likely to be an entirely new handset with an OLED screen and 65W fast charging. The phone with model number RMX2173 has appeared on AnTuTu, scoring nearly 520,000 points, equaling flagship-tier phones' results like the Galaxy S20 or Honor 30 Pro+. A previously published TENAA listing of the phone said it comes with 2.4GHz CPU, which matches the Snapdragon 765, but the score doesn't align. Either the...

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Dark mode for Google Maps begins rolling out for some Android users

A dark theme is making its way to Google Maps as some users are reporting. Google is rolling out an app-wide dark mode to Google Maps as of version 10.51.1 running on Android 11. It seems the change is gradually rolling out on the server side as updating to the latest version of Google Maps is not enough to see the option appear in the app’s settings menu. The appearance setting in the app will let you force the dark theme indefinitely or match the Android phone’s universal system theme setting. Source: Reddit u/BrokenF*ckenArm There has always been an automatic night-mode that...

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EU will reportedly approve Google’s acquisition of Fitbit

In November of last year, Google announced its plans to acquire the fitness smartwatch maker Fitbit. At this point, the acquisition is still pending regulatory approvals, and according to a report from Reuters the $2.1 billion purchase will be receiving the EU’s antitrust approval. This, as per “people familiar with the matter said.” Privacy of user data remains a great concern, and the report mentions that Google offered to limit the use of Fitbit data for Google ads while more diligently monitoring the process of doing so. “We’re also formalizing out longstanding commitment to supporting...

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E-scooter startup Neuron Mobility adds $12M to its Series A for expansion in Australia and New Zealand

Neuron Mobility, a Singapore-based e-scooter rental startup, announced today that it has added $12 million to its Series A. Led by Square Peg, an Australian venture capital firm and GSR Ventures, this increases the round’s new total to $30.5 million. The company, which operates in Australia and New Zealand in addition to Southeast Asian markets, first announced its Series A in December 2019.

Singapore’s Neuron Mobility raises $18.5M to bring its electric scooters to more international markets

Part of Neuron Mobility’s growth plans hinges on the increased adoption of electric scooters and bikes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people are using their cars less frequently because they are working remotely or there are movement restrictions where they live. When they do go out, electric bikes and scooters offer an alternative to public transportation and ride-hailing services for short trips.

Neuron Mobility’s chief executive Zachary Wang said the company raised a Series A+ instead of moving onto a Series B because more cities are “opening up to the possibility of micromobility, particularly rental e-scooters as they present an individual transport option that takes pressure off public transport and allows people to continue social distancing.”

“We’ve been experiencing tremendous growth in ANZ and the pandemic has made us fast track our plans,” he added.

Though Neuron Mobility currently does not operate in other Southeast Asian countries besides Singapore, Wang said it is “constantly evaluating opportunities across APAC.”

The new funding will be used to speed up Neuron Mobility’s expansion plans in Australia and New Zealand, where it claims to be the leading electric scooter rental operator. The company is currently present in nine locations, including Auckland, New Zealand, and Australian cities Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Canberra and Townsville. Neuron Mobility plans to expand into five new cities over the next two months and part of that involves hiring 400 more people in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. In addition to the Asia-Pacific, Neuron Mobility will also launch in Slough, it’s first location in the United Kingdom, by the end of this year.

Neuron Mobility’s research found that before the COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia, one in five of its users had never used an e-scooter before. But now Australian and New Zealand users have increased their average e-scooter trip distances by 23% to 2.6 kilometers, with the average duration of rides rising by 10% to more than 14 minutes. Neuron Mobility’s pricing is meant to be affordable depending on different markets. For example, in Brisbane, users pay one Australian dollar (about 68 U.S. cents) to begin a trip and then 38 Australian cents for each minute of the ride. Its e-scooters can go up to speeds of about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) per hour.

Other “micromobility” companies, including Ofo, Reddy Go, Obike and Lime, have also offered rental services in Australia and New Zealand, but ran into trouble. Bike-sharing startups Ofo, Reddy Go and Obike withdrew from Australia in part because city councils were frustrated by bikes were being abandoned on sidewalks and in parks. Lime still operates in Australian cities, but in June, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that the company failed to disclose safety issues with its Generation 2 scooters (in response, Lime said it would implement new compliance procedures and upgrade to its new Generation 3 scooter).

Wang said Neuron Mobility avoids those issues by strategically planning which cities it will launch in, instead of focusing on rapid expansion, partnering with city councils and “continually shifting and adapting to meet their needs.” Several of Neuron Mobility’s features, including geofencing to control where and how fast e-scooters can be ridden, and a “Helmet Lock” to make helmets available for all scooters, were developed after discussions with city councils. Neuron Mobility’s scooters, designed by the company specifically for renting, also use swappable batteries to decrease pollution.

After launching in Singapore, Neuron Mobility decided to focus on Australia and New Zealand because “both countries have cities that are highly suitable for micromobility in terms of infrastructure and regulations,” Wang said. City councils have also “been keen to push the boundaries of what can be done with technology to make programs better and safer and that really suits our way of thinking.”

The scooters arrive in Australia

 

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T-Mobile will offer the Motorola Razr 5G for half off

Motorola made the new Razr 5G official earlier this month, and now it's almost ready to hit T-Mobile. That's actually one of its main differentiating points from its predecessor (aside from the improved internals) - the original foldable Razr was Verizon exclusive, the Razr 5G isn't. Anyway, back to T-Mobile. You'll find the device in stores at the magenta carrier, in Polished Graphite and Blush Gold, starting on October 2. The Razr 5G is priced at $1,399.99 full retail, and you can get it with 24 monthly installments of $58.34. However, if you activate a new line and trade-in an...

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LG Wing pre-orders start at Verizon on October 1 for $999.99

LG officially took the wraps off its Wing smartphone about two weeks ago, and we already have one at the office and are working hard on our review. In the meantime, Verizon has gone ahead and announced its pricing and availability details for the device. The Wing will be up for pre-order at Big Red from October 1, for $999.99 full retail. Of course you can also get it with 24 monthly installments, in which case you pay $41.66 per month. You can get up to $750 off when you add a line on select Unlimited plans and trade-in an eligible device. You can also get up to a $250 Verizon...

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