Monday, May 31, 2021

Malt raises $97M at a $489M valuation for its freelance marketplace for developers

The world of professional services has long relied on contractors to fill in for assignments and projects that might not be a part of the course of daily work, but are essential work nonetheless. Today, a startup that’s built a marketplace to make it easier for freelance developers, designers and others with technical skills with those job opportunities is announcing a significant round of funding to expand its business.

Malt, which provides a way for developers, data scientists, designers, project managers and others working in related fields to connect with fixed-term job opportunities in their fields, has picked up €80 million ($97 million at today’s rates), money that the company plans to use to expand its business to more markets.

We understand from sources that the investment — led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity and Eurazeo — values Malt at €400 million ($489 million).

Vincent Huguet, Malt’s CEO who co-founded the company with Hugo Lassiège and Jean-Baptiste Lemée, said in an interview that the funding in part will be used towards continuing to expand the company across Europe with a view to, longer term, also breaking into the U.S. In Europe, the company was founded in Paris, and it currently has operations in France (Paris, Lyon), Germany (Munich), and Spain (Madrid). The plan is to extend that to Benelux next, with the UK and Italy company after that.

The company has to date amassed 250,000 freelancers in its community, with 30,000 businesses tapping this pool to fill jobs. End customers include the likes of Unilever, Lufthansa, Bosch, BlaBla Car, L’Oreal and Allianz, and it also partners with traditional consultancies like McKinsey to help them source people for projects. Altogether the company has handled some €300 million in business since being founded in 2013.

These numbers, it seems, are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s estimated that there are some 6 million people in Europe working as freelancers today, and Malt estimates that the freelance consulting market is worth some €350 billion annually in the region.

Although recruitment for many parts of the economy has largely gone digital in the last two decades, Malt is tackling a part of the temp economy that has ironically held a strong offline presence.

“The most important thing is that we are a very open marketplace, an Airbnb-style search marketplace,” he said. “It’s all really based on our search engine. In a market that is very opaque, where offline and online players [those connecting technical workers with jobs] are protecting their bases, we have opened the information.” It also provides payment services and advanced solutions for some of its customers once people are engaged, he added.

“Freelancer” is a pretty loaded term in the tech world today — it could mean anything from a gig worker delivering food, driving you around or cleaning a house, from the plethora of people who work on fixed-term contracts, and soemtimes the implications are not great. Critics will say companies lean on the freelancer model in order to skirt around having to provide extensive benefits to those doing the jobs.

Malt is working in a somewhat different area, focusing on a gap in the market that has been around for a long while, finding people with specific, valued technical skills to fill in for project-based work, but has often been a tough one to crack for employers, Huguet said.

“We are going after those who charge a few hundred dollars per day and connecting them with mid- and large-sized companies,” said Huguet, who described Malt as very different from the likes of Fiverr, which also lets people find skilled workers but focuses on finding the lowest bidder for a job. “You search for a specific freelancer as the employer. You don’t post a specific task for freelancers to respond.” The average time of engagement is around three weeks but might be as long as three months, he said.

What has been interesting — and has definitely had an impact on how Malt has grown, and the investment it’s announcing today — is how much the working world has shifted in the last year and a half. Not only has Covid-19 changed how people work in offices — if they are working in offices at all anymore — but the rapidly changing circumstances have somewhat played into the idea of building out work strategy on more concrete short- and medium-term goals, with longer-term remaining a conditional. This fits the kind of jobs that Malt typically helps fill requirements for, and the changes also has meant more workers coming into Malt’s universe looking for work.

“What we can see already and predict in the next quarters is that we will be a post covid winner,” Huguet said. “People are now considering different options. The idea of a full-time employee was that when everyone was in office people knew how to work 9-6, and that’s what was expected. Now that people are working on projects, employers are more open to consultants. This plus the bigger hiring freezes helped us grow much faster. The market and the mindset have changed.”

Similarly, people who might have previously looked first for full-time employment are now feeling more secure putting their eggs into the freelance basket. “More than 90% of freelancers are joining us by choice,” he added.

What will be interesting is to see how and if companies like LinkedIn, which has been a strong player in professional recruitment, make more headway in this space, on the back of a launch of a freelancer marketplace earlier this year.

“We are watching what it’s doing, but we think it will be hard for them to do,” Huguet said. He pointed out that LinkedIn’s profiles today are dedicated to classic recruitment, so doing the matching for freelance is very different.

Regardless of how LinkedIn’s interest plays out, its activity there also points to a big opportunity, one big reason for why investors are backing Malt right now.

“Malt is at a pivotal time in its development. This new round of funding will allow the company to scale rapidly and drive even greater impact,” said Yann du Rusquec, a partner at Eurazeo. “We are excited to partner with Vincent and Alexandre—and offer the expertise of our Growth and Venture teams along with the depth of Eurazeo’s network in Europe—to drive Malt’s future success.”

“We are delighted to support Malt to build the leading freelance marketplace in Europe,” added Alexandre Flavier, executive director at Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. “Malt is at the forefront of the future of work, promoting agility, innovation, impact, freedom of choice, making freelancing simpler and more reliable. We are excited to partner with Malt’s founders, empower their community of highly skilled freelancers, and give companies access to the world’s best freelance talents.”



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Honor Band 6 launching soon in India

The Honor Band 6 that was announced in China last November and went on sale globally in March will debut in India soon. This confirmation comes from Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, which set up a page for the smart band on its website. The Honor Band 6 packs a 1.47" AMOLED color touchscreen, which is 148% larger than its predecessor's display. It's covered with 2.5D curved glass and supports personalized watch faces. The Band 6 is water-resistant up to 50 meters and comes with the usual slew of health and fitness features, including heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen level...



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Honor 50 series will be unveiled on June 16

Honor has announced that the Honor 50 series we've been hearing about since April will be officially unveiled on June 16 at an event in Shanghai, China. The company also posted a video on Weibo teasing the Honor 50 series. It doesn't divulge any specs of the lineup but gives us a glimpse of the dual-ring camera design. Honor is yet to reveal the entire specs sheet of the Honor 50 lineup, but the phone maker previously confirmed that the vanilla 50 will be powered by the Snapdragon 778G SoC. The Pro model could also be powered by the same chip, while the Pro+ variant -...



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European insurtech startup Wefox grabs $650 million at $3 billion valuation

German startup Wefox has raised a $650 million Series C funding round led by Target Global. Following this funding round, the company has reached a post-money valuation of $3 billion. Wefox is a digital insurer focused on personal insurance products, such as household insurance, motor insurance and personal liability insurance.

“It’s much more than we wanted to raise initially. It was a very fast process and essentially we were oversubscribed by 4x or so,” co-founder and CEO Julian Teicke (pictured left) told me.

In December 2019, the company reported a $1.65 billion valuation. And the company says today’s funding round is one of the largest Series C rounds of all time — and likely the largest Series C round for an insurtech company more specifically.

“Almost all of the big existing investors are participating,” Teicke said. OMERS Ventures, G Squared, Mountain Partners, Merian, Horizons Ventures, Eurazeo, Mubadala Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Speedinvest, CE Innovation Capital, GR Capital and Seedcamp are all participating once again in this Wefox founding round. New investors include FinTLV, Ace & Co, LGT and its affiliated impact investing platform Lightrock, Partners Group, EDBI, Jupiter and Decisive.

“Not only have we raised a super large amount but also in a very fast time. It took us a total of four weeks to get all commitments in,” co-founder an CFO Fabian Wesemann (pictured right) told me.

Wefox believes it can now iterate and generate more and more revenue as it scales — it just needs capital to reach the next level. “We’re tackling that $5.2 trillion industry that has been stuck in the pre-internet era. We nailed how to disrupt it in our core market,” Teicke said.

But what makes Wefox different from legacy insurance companies? Wefox isn’t a direct-to-consumer insurance company. Most insurance products are still sold by agents and the startup believes this isn’t going to change anytime soon.

That’s why Wefox has 700 agents selling Wefox products exclusively. It also partners with associate brokers — around 5,000 can distribute Wefox products.

“While the rest of the industry seems to say that human agents are dead, we think they’re more relevant than ever,” Teicke said.

In 2020 alone, the company generated $140 million in revenue. If you look at Wefox Insurance, the company’s insurance carrier, the company reported a profit for 2020. As for the group, “we’re going to show overall profitability by 2023,” Wesemann said.

That fast growth rate combined with a clear path to profitability means that Wefox has an ambitious roadmap. As a full-stack insurance company licensed in Lichtenstein, Wefox can passport its license to other European countries. The company is currently live in five markets right now and is working on expanding to Italy soon.

In addition to new markets, Wefox plans to sell new insurance products — property and casualty insurance, pet insurance, health insurance, life insurance… If you’re thinking about an insurance product, chances are Wefox is already working on it. “This year we’re launching around 20 new insurance products,” Teicke said.

While distribution is managed decentrally with local agents talking with local customers, insurance products are managed centrally. The startup prioritizes products by revenue potential and goes down the list one product at a time.

Finally, Wefox has ambitious plans when it comes to reducing administrative costs. The company has been investing in automation so that common processes are handled by an algorithm. Currently, 80% of its processes are handled automatically. It’s a never-ending process as you have to adapt your processes when you launch new products.

Wefox is also working on prevention. The company has put together an AI team in Paris to prevent bad things from happening in the first place. As always with insurance companies, it’s all about optimizing every layer and every step of the customer journey to build a product that stands out from what’s already out there.



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Incoming Huawei MatePad Pro 10.8 specs leak reavealing with Snapdragon 870

As Huawei prepares to hold its announcement event on Wednesday, one of the devices set to be announced at the event has allegedly leaked, revealing all the devices specs thanks to an alleged image of its packaging. Huawei will announce a refresh of the Huawei MatePad Pro lineup and there will be at least two versions. One of the MatePad Pro variants will have a 10.-inch display according to the leaked image. This will also be an IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1260 x 1600px, 540 nits of brightness, and support for DCI-PC. We assume 12.6-inch version will come with a higher-end...



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Singapore-based D2C dental brand Zenyum raises $40M Series B from L Catterton, Sequoia India and other investors

Zenyum, a startup that wants to make cosmetic dentistry more affordable, announced today it has raised a $40 million Series B. This includes $25 million from L Catterton, a private equity firm focused on consumer brands. The round’s other participants were Sequoia Capital India (Zenyum is an alum of its Surge accelerator program), RTP Global, Partech, TNB Aura, Seeds Capital and FEBE Ventures. L Catteron Asia’s head of growth investments, Anjana Sasidharan, will join Zenyum’s board.

This brings Zenyum’s total raised so far to $56 million, including a $13.6 million Series A announced in November 2019. In a press statement, Sasidharan said, “Zenyum’s differentiated business model gives it a strong competitive advantage, and we are excited to partner with the founder management team to help them realize their growth ambitions.” Other dental-related investments in L Catteron’s portfolio include Ideal Image, ClearChoice, dentalcorp, OdontoCompany, Espaçolaser and 98point6.

Founded in 2018, the company’s products now include ZenyumSonic electric toothbrushes; Zenyum Clear, or transparent 3D-printed aligners; and ZenyumClear Plus for more complex teeth realignment cases.

Founder and chief executive officer Julian Artopé told TechCrunch that ZenyumClear aligners can be up to 70% cheaper than other braces, including traditional metal braces, lingual braces and other clear aligners like Invisalign, depending on the condition of a patients’ teeth and what they want to achieve. Zenyum Clear costs $2,400 SGD (about $1,816 USD), while ZenyumClear Plus ranges from $3,300 to $3,900 SGD (about $2,497 to $2,951 USD).

The company is able to reduce the cost of its invisible braces by combining a network of dental partners with a technology stack that allows providers to monitor patients’ progress while reducing the number of clinic visits they need to make.

First, potential customers send a photo of their teeth to Zenyum to determine if ZenyumClear or ZenyumClear Plus will work for them. If so, they have an in-person consultation with a dentists, including an X-ray and 3D scan. This costs between $120 to $170 SGD, which is paid to the clinic. After their invisible braces are ready, the patient returns to the dentist for a fitting. Then dentists can monitor the progress of their patient’s teeth through Zenyum’s app, only asking them to make another in-person visit if necessary.

ZenyumClear is currently available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan, with more markets planned.

Sequoia India principal Pieter Kemps told TechCrunch, “There are 300M customers in Zenyum’s core markets—Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan—who have increased disposable income for beauty. We believe spend on invisible braces will grow significantly from the current penetration, but what it requires is strong execution on a complex product to become the preferred choice for consumers. That is where Zenyum shines: excellent execution, leading to new products, best-in-class NPS, fast growth, and strong economics. This Series B is a testament to that, and of the belief in the large opportunity down the road.”



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The Station: Rivian rolls towards an IPO and Quantumscape makes a big battery hire

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox.

Hello and welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from Point A to Point B.

For my American readers, you might be traveling — perhaps for the first time in more than a year — because of the Memorial Day holiday. While Memorial Day is meant to honor members of the U.S. military who died while serving, the three-day weekend has become the unofficial kick off to summer. This year, those traveling by car, truck or SUV will be met by the most expensive Memorial Day weekend gas prices since 2014, according to AAA. The organization also estimates that 37 million Americans will travel by plane and automobile over the holiday — a 60% increase over the same period last year.

Be safe out on these busy roads, frens.

One story to highlight: Mark Harris dug into the contracts for the Las Vegas Loop System. He found that restrictions put in place by Nevada regulators are making it difficult for The Boring Company to meet contractual targets for its LVCC Loop, Elon Musk’s first underground transportation system. Shortly after publication, Steve Hill, president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), tweeted that a Loop test this week, with a few hundred participants, had demonstrated its planned 4,400 passenger per hour capacity, which could release $13 million in construction funds currently being held back. While this bodes well for TBC, the story lays out a number of other issues that could pose a challenge for the company. We will continue to dig into this story of tunnels and transport.


Now a request, dear reader. We’re a bit more than a week away from TC Sessions: Mobility 2021, a one-day virtual event scheduled for June 9 that is bringing together some of the best and brightest minds in transportation, including Mate Rimac of Rimac Automobili, Pam Fletcher of vp of global innovation at GM, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt, investor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, whose special purpose acquisition company just merged with Joby, and investors Clara Brenner of Urban Innovation Fund, Quin Garcia of Autotech Ventures and Rachel Holt of Construct Capital.

I’d love for you to join, and you can do that by clicking here and buying a ticket, which will also give you a months-free subscription to Extra Crunch and access to all the videos of the conference. But, if you can’t come, please reach out anyway and let me know if you have any questions or topics that you want addressed. I will be interviewing many of the folks coming to our virtual stage.

We just announced three more participants from automakers Hyundai, Ford and Toyota who will talk about their respective companies’ increasing interest and investment in robotics. Our three guests are: Max Bajracharya, formerly from Alphabet’s X and now vp of robotics at Toyota Research Institute, Ernestine Fu, director at Hyundai Motor Group who heads development at the new  New Horizons Studio and Mario Santillo, a technical expert at Ford who has been charged with helping lead the company’s efforts at a recently announced $75 million research facility at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin’

Micromobility rivals Bird and Lime have come out with news this week that they’re both marketing as sustainability initiatives. Let’s start with Bird.

Bird has unveiled its next-generation scooter, the Bird Three, that it will unveil in New York and Berlin this summer. It’s got a longer-range battery with 1kWh capacity and an improved diagnostic monitoring system to keep the battery lasting as long as possible. Bird says its better, smarter battery means it’s ultimately a more sustainable scooter because it has a longer life and needs to be charged a lot less.

Ideally, a better battery and better software will also help produce a longer-lasting vehicle so that Bird can cut down on depreciation and maintenance costs, which have really not helped the company in its push for profitability. Last week, Bird announced a SPAC merger with Switchback II. The regulatory filings that accompanied the announcement demonstrate just how difficult it is to turn a profit given the unit economics of shared scooters.

Lime is similarly positioning its updated subscription service, Lime Prime, as a sustainable initiative. With each new Prime member sign up, Lime promises to plant a tree through One Tree Planted. But more importantly, the subscription service helps the regular Lime rider perhaps save a bit of money. Members have access to waived unlock fees on any vehicle, and in markets with no start fees, the benefit will be 25% off the ride price. Additionally, riders can get free 30 minute reservations on any vehicle.

Two-wheel swag news

Zaiser Motors announced the launch of its Wefunder campaign to raise funds for development and production of its Electrocycle. It’s a good-lookin’ vehicle, charcoal-black with a design that breaks away from a super traditional gasoline-era style and looks more like something a small Batman might ride. All of the components are designed to be recyclable within the first 10 years of production, the company says. The Electrocycle has 300 miles of range, swappable batteries and is less than $25,000.

Meanwhile in scooter world, the Scotsman, a Silicon Valley-based electric scooter brand, has unveiled a scooter that’s 3D printed entirely in carbon fiber composite. And I don’t just mean some parts are composite. The whole frame, the handlebars, the stem and the baseboard are all made of this strong, sustainable, lightweight material. It also means the scooters are highly customizable, each frame printed depending on the owner’s height, weight, arm and leg lengths and riding position. At a starting price of $2,999, it’s not cheap, but that might be a signal from the industry that scooters are increasingly become viable transport options and not just toys. You can pre-order here.

— Rebecca Bellan

Deal of the week

money the station

The march of IPOs appears to picking up pace. For instance, Full Truck Alliance, the Chinese digital freight platform known as Manbang Group, filed for an IPO. The filing didn’t specify the exact amount it was aiming to raise. Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that the company wants to raise up to $1.5 billion, which would give it a valuation of $20 billion.

Full Truck Alliance’s S-1 provides a number of interesting details, including the how much money can be captured by effectively connecting truckers with shippers. The company reported that about 20% of all China’s heavy-duty and medium-duty truckers fulfilled shipping orders on our platform in 2020. (More than 2.8 million truckers fulfilled shipping orders on its platform last year.) Full Truck Alliance said last year it facilitated 71.7 million fulfilled orders with a gross transaction value of RMB173.8 billion (US$26.6 billion).  The first quarter number show it is growing. In the first quarter, the company had  22.1 million fulfilled orders, a 170.2% increase from the same period.

Full Truck Alliance raised $3.6 billion in private funding, most recently last fall at an $11.7 billion valuation, from firms like SoftBank Vision Fund (22.2% pre-IPO stake), Sequoia Capital China (7.2%), Permira, Tencent, Hillhouse Capital, GGV Capital, Lightspeed China Partners and Baillie Gifford.

The IPO about six months since the company raised $1.7 billion in a funding round that included backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital China, Permira, Fidelity, Hillhouse Capital, GGV Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, Tencent and Jack Ma’s YF Capital. A look at the S-1 shows that the principal shareholders are Softbank with a 22.2% stake, followed by 8.9% held by Full Load Logistics, a limited liability company owned by Full Truck Alliance CEO Hui Zhang. Sequoia has a 7.2% stake and Master Quality Group Limited, another organization controlled by Zhang, hold 6.6% of shares.

Other deals that got my attention this week …

E2open Parent Holdings Inc. said it will acquire logistics execution platform BluJay Solution, Freightwaves reported. The deal could be valued at $1.7 billion, consisting of $760 million in cash and 72.4 million shares.

First Move Capital, the Boulder-based venture firm that has invested in used car marketplaces Frontier Auto Group and Vroom as well as mobility-as-a-service startup Via, has closed a new $150 million fund that will focus on the automotive and transportation sectors. Proceeds from the round will be exclusively allocated to new investments; seven have already been made, including into autonomous vehicle startup Gatik, cloud-based automotive retail platform Tekion and e-commerce startup Revolution Parts.

Hydra Energy received CAD$15 million ($12 million) from Just Business to expand beyond pilots and deliver hydrogen-powered trucking, the company announced. This funding is to support the further development of Hydra’s initial waste hydrogen capture plant in British Columbia, its fueling infrastructure and conversion kits. The Canadian company has raised CAD $22 million (USD $17.2 million) to date. One other update worth sharing, Hydra’s flagship hydrogen-as-a-service project, is scheduled to break ground later this year.

Miles, the German car-sharing service has received investment from Delivery Hero CFO Emmanuel Thomassin, HelloFresh CFO Christian Gärtner, Chargepoint CFO Rex Jackson as well as Norwegian top manager Stine Rolstad Brenna. Thomassin has joined the company’s advisory board. The company disclosed to TechCrunch that it generated 20 million euros ($24.39 million) of revenue in 2020, quadruple the amount from the previous year. The results helped the company achieve profitability in October 2020. Miles is now focused on expansion. In the first four months in 2021, the company launched electric vehicles and expanded its car fleet to Munich. Miles intends to grow beyond Germany and is currently examining the best markets to launch in.

MotoRefi raised another $45 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs just five months after investors poured $10 million into the fintech startup to help turbocharge its auto refinancing business. While the company didn’t give me specifics on its revenue — CEO Kevin Bennett cited a 7x growth year-over-year but didn’t provide the baseline — it did disclose it’s on track to issue $1 billion in loans by the end of the year. That’s a fivefold increase from the same period last year.

Smart Eye, the publicly traded Swedish company that supplies driver monitoring systems for a dozen automakers, acquired emotion-detection software startup Affectiva for $73.5 million in a cash-and-stock deal. The startup, which says it developed software that can detect and understand human emotion, spun out of MIT Media Lab in 2009. Since then, it has landed a number of development and proof of concept deals as well as raised capital, but it never quite reached the mass-scale production contracts.

That’s where Smart Eye comes in. Smart Eye, which has won 84 production contracts with 13 OEMs, including BMW and GM, is keen to combine with its own AI-based eye-tracking technology. The companies’ founders see an opportunity to expand beyond driver monitoring systems — tech that is often used in conjunction with advanced driver assistance systems to track and measure awareness — and into the rest of the vehicle. Together, the technology could help them break into the emerging “interior sensing” market, which can be used to monitor the entire cabin of a vehicle and deliver services in response to the occupant’s emotional state.

Tritium, a Brisbane-based developer and producer of direct current fast EV chargers, announced a merger agreement with a special purpose acquisition company Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp. II. The deal is expected to value the company at $1.2 billion. The transaction is expected to generate gross proceeds of up to $403 million. Tritium will be listed under the ticker “DCFC.”

This particular SPAC deal is unusual in that it does not include private investment in public equity, or PIPE — a fundraising round that typically occurs at the time of the merger and injects more capital into the company. Tritium CEO Jane Hunter told us that the company didn’t need a PIPE because DCRN is a more than $400 million SPAC and its shareholder group agreed to a minimum cash closing of just $200 million, which significantly reduces redemption risk. “Also, our revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56% since 2016 as we expand our presence in major markets where we have a significant market share, such as the U.S. and Europe,” Hunter said. “This revenue growth helps to reduce our reliance upon new funds to implement our growth strategy.”

Wejo, the connected vehicle data startup backed by GM and Palantir, plans to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Virtuoso Acquisition Corp. The agreement, announced in a regulator filing, will give the combined company an enterprise valuation of $800 million, which includes debt. There were earlier reports that the SPAC deal was imminent. The filing confirms the news and provides more detail.

The deal raises $330 million in proceeds for Wejo, including a $230 million cash contribution from Virtuoso and a $100 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE. Previous strategic investors Palantir and GM anchored the transaction, according to Wejo. The company did not disclose the amounts of those investments. Current shareholders will retain 64% ownership of the company, according to its investor deck.

Policy corner

the-station-delivery

Senate Republicans released their response to Joe Biden’s sweeping $2 trillion investment plan, which would earmark $174 billion for electric vehicle investments. Their proposal would shrink it down to $928 billion. And that $174B for EVs? That would be reduced to just $4 billion, under the GOP plan.

It seems that the main point of contention between the President and his GOP colleagues is the definition of the word ‘infrastructure.’ Republicans are sticking to a more traditional definition, so their counterproposal still contains plenty of money for things like roads, the water system, bridges and broadband.

Biden’s plan aimed to provide consumer tax incentives and incentives for EV chargers, incentives to boost domestic manufacturing and enough funds to install at least 500,000 public charging stations across the country by 2030. A memo obtained by The Hill suggests Biden intends to hold firm to his proposal, so expect further negotiations in the coming weeks.

The Senate Finance Committee on May 26 marked up the Clean Energy for America Act, an important step before it hits the Senate floor for a vote. Among other things, the bill would remove 200,000 unit cap on tax credits for consumers buying EVs — that means the tax credit could be used toward buying a Tesla, a manufacturer that hasn’t been eligible for the credit because they’ve sold over 200,000 cars in the United States.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) added an amendment to the bill that would create an additional $2,500 consumer credit for vehicles assembled in the U.S. and another $2,500 for vehicles assembled in a unionized facility. If it passes, the additions would bring the maximum consumer tax credit for EVs to $12,500 — no small sum! The credits would expire in 2025. “Electric vehicles are part of our transportation future,” Sen. Stabenow said. “The question is not when they will be built, it’s where they will be built: in Asia or America?”

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sold her holdings in electric bus manufacturer Proterra after Republicans criticized her for a potential conflict of interest. The GOP’s complaint arose after Biden made a virtual visit to a Proterra factory in April. The sale provided Granholm with a net gain of $1.6 million, DOE told reporters.

— Aria Alamalhodaei

A little bird

blinky cat bird green

I hear and see things, but we’re not selfish. Let me share.

This week, “a little bird” is all about big employment moves and departures and how one hire is connected to a potentially massive IPO.

Let’s kick things off with Celina Mikolajczak, the now former vice president of battery technology at Panasonic Energy of North America. You might recall that Mikolajczak recently took a board seat at solid state battery company QuantumScape. Welp, she is now taking a job at the company as vice president of manufacturing engineering, beginning in July. She has resigned from the board in connection with accepting the offer. In her new role, Ms. Mikolajczak will lead the transition of the Company’s tools and manufacturing processes from research and development to production, QuantumScape said in a regularly filing.

Mikolajczak has a long history researching and developing better lithium-ion batteries. Her technical consulting practice at Exponent focused on lithium-ion cell and battery safety and quality. She then took a senior management position at Tesla that was focused on cell quality and materials engineering. During her time at Tesla, Mikolajczak developed the battery cells and packs for Tesla’s Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Roadster Refresh.

After leaving Tesla, Mikolajczak went on to serve as director of engineering focused on battery development for rideshare vehicles at Uber Technologies. And in 2019, she joined Panasonic Energy of North America, where she is vice president of battery technology. While at Panasonic, Mikolajczak led a team of more than 200 engineers and other technical staff to improve lithium-ion cell manufacturing and to bring the latest cell technologies to mass production for Tesla at the Gigafactory facility in Sparks, Nevada.

Speaking of Tesla … it looks like Scott Sims, director of engineering, left the company this month. His title doesn’t quite capture his role. Sims was the person leading the design and engineering for vehicle user interfaces, streaming, video games and mobile applications. Importantly, he was responsible for cloud computing as it related to the Tesla mobile app, a critical tool for any owner.

Finally, the big news on Friday (via Bloomberg) is that Rivian has selected underwriters for an initial public offering. The company could seek an eye-popping value of $70 billion. I have confirmed some (but not all) of Bloomberg’s reporting. Obviously big news that I’ll be watching and digging into. I had heard rumbling about a potential Rivian IPO, but Bloomberg put together the critical deets.

To me, the biggest indication that Rivian was getting ready to make a move was Ger Dwyer taking the vp of business finance position at the company, which he posted about on LinkedIn. You might recall, that I scooped the news a couple of weeks ago that Dwyer was leaving his post as CFO at Waymo. I noted at the time that Dwyer’s departure comes at a time when the demand for CFOs has rocketed alongside the continuous string of public offerings, including those done via mergers with special purpose acquisition companies.

Got tips? Send them my way by email or DM me over at Twitter.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Loads and loads of news. Let’s get to it.

Autonomous vehicles

Aurora published a blog post that gives a few new details on its testing and self-driving trucks strategy in Texas. The autonomous vehicle company said its first commercial pilots will move goods on several “middle-mile” routes in Texas. A safety driver will be behind the wheel of these self-driving trucks, which will drive autonomously between hubs. The terminal or hub system is one that other AV companies have adopted — at least for now. The idea is that loads can be consolidated, which would theoretically make operations more efficient. Aurora did add, that “for shippers and carriers with existing hubs and large volumes of freight, we expect to ultimately drive the complete route with no need for an intermediate consolidation point.”

One other item that jumped out to me: the company is expanding into a second office in Texas, suggesting that they’re scaling up, at least in terms of people.

Germany’s lower house of parliament adopted legislation that will allow driverless vehicles on public roads by 2022, laying out a path for companies to deploy robotaxis and delivery services in the country at scale. While autonomous testing is currently permitted in Germany, this would allow operations of driverless vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel. The bill still needs to pass through the upper chamber of parliament, or the Bundesrat. Included in the bill are possible initial applications for self-driving cars on German roads, such as public passenger transport, business and supply trips, logistics, company shuttles that handle employee traffic and trips between medical centers and retirement homes.

PAVE, which stands for Partners for Autonomous Vehicle Education, piloted a workshop with local governments earlier this month throughout Ohio. The educational workshop, which was done in partnership with Drive Ohio, wasn’t open to the public. But my Autonocast podcast co-host Ed Niedermeyer, who also happens to be director of communications for PAVE, gave me the inside scoop on what went down.

PAVE says it doesn’t do any kind of policy advocacy; instead the aim is to arm public policymakers with the facts they need to make good policy. This pilot helped PAVE lay a foundation for a curriculum that can be used elsewhere; that might seem trivial, but the complexity of issues around AVs makes these workshops with elected officials potentially powerful tool.

Ed told me that one of the main challenges was educating on potentially controversial topics, like policy and regulation, “where we have to get facts across without imparting biases.” He noted that the organization’s public sector and academic advisory councils were both helpful as neutral authorities. Finally, he said that one of the most practical education PAVE did was around the best practices that its members and advisors have developed in early AV deployments.

Kodiak Robotics, the U.S.-based self-driving truck startup, is partnering with South Korean conglomerate SK Inc. to explore the possibility of deploying its autonomous vehicle technology in Asia. While Kodiak co-founder and CEO Don Burnette couched the initial agreement as a first step toward a commercial enterprise in Asia, the reach of SK shouldn’t be discounted. SK Inc., a holding company of SK Group, has more than 120 operating companies, including ones connected to the logistics industry.

The ultimate aim of the partnership is to sell and distribute Kodiak’s self-driving technology in the region. Kodiak will examine how it can use SK’s products, components and technology for its autonomous system, including artificial intelligence microprocessors and advanced emergency braking systems. Both companies have also agreed to work together to provide fleet management services for customers in Asia.

Electric vehicles

Ford Motor, fresh off its splashy F-150 Lightning electric truck reveal, announced it is pushing its investment in EVs up to $30 billion by 2025, up from a previous spend of $22 billion by 2023. The company announced the fresh cashflow into its EV and battery development strategy, dubbed Ford+, during its investor day.

The company said it expects 40% of its global vehicle volume to be fully electric by 2030. Ford sold 6,614 Mustang Mach-Es in the U.S. in Q1, and since it unveiled its F-150 Lightning last week, the company says it has already amassed 70,000 customer reservations.

Hyundai held the North American reveal of the upcoming all-electric Ioniq 5 crossover. One new detail that I found interesting: Hyundai developed an in-car payment system that will debut in the Ioniq 5. The feature will offer drivers the ability to find and pay for EV charging, food and parking. When the vehicle comes to North America in fall 2021, the payments system will launch with Dominoes, ParkWhiz and Chargehub.

Lordstown Motors’ cash-rich SPAC dreams have turned out to be nothin’ more than wishes, as Alex Wilhelm and Aria Alamalhodaei reported. The upshot: a disappointing first-quarter earnings that was a pile-up of red-ink-stained negativity. The lowlights include higher-than-expected forecasted expenses, a need to raise more capital and lower-than-anticipated production of its Endurance vehicle this year — from around 2,200 vehicles to just 1,000. In short, the company is set to consume more cash than the street expected and is further from mass production of its first vehicle than promised.

Lucid Motors revealed the in-cabin tech of its upcoming electric luxury Air sedan. I spoke to Derek Jenkins, who heads up design at Lucid, and he provided a detailed tour of all the tech in the vehicle. It goes far beyond the curved 34-inch display and second touchscreen, which received much of the attention. The user experience, particularly the underlying software, matters in all cars. But it can be the death of an electric vehicle model if not done properly.

It appears Lucid is on the right track. I won’t really know until I’m able to test the Air. Let’s hope that is soon.

Rivian has delayed deliveries of the R1T Launch Edition, the limited edition release of its first series of “electric adventure vehicles,” by a month. Customers who preordered can now expect to start receiving their pickup trucks in July instead of June, with Launch Edition deliveries to be completed by spring 2022. The one-month delay was due to a combination of small issues, including delays on shipping containers, the ongoing chip shortage as well as ensuring the servicing piece is properly set up. It’s worth noting that Rivian told me that it has been largely unaffected by the chip shortage compared to the rest of the industry because its products don’t require as many as other vehicles on the market today.

Tesla had a number of news items this week, so I’ll just point to the most notable ones. Tesla has established a data center in China to carry out the “localization of data storage,” with plans to add more data facilities in the future, the company announced through its account on microblogging platform Weibo. All data generated by Tesla vehicles sold in mainland China will be kept domestically. The move was in response to new requirements drafted by the Chinese government to regulate how cameras- and sensors-enabled carmakers collect and utilize data. One of the requirements states that “personal or important data should be stored within the [Chinese] territory.”

Finally, two safety-related pieces of Tesla news that seem in opposition to each other.

First, Tesla started delivering Model 3 and Model Y vehicles without radar, fulfilling a vision of CEO Elon Musk to only use cameras combined with machine learning to support its advanced driver assistance system and other active safety features. The decision has prompted blowback though from the National Traffic Highway and Safety Administration, Consumer Reports and IIHS over safety concerns.

Meanwhile, Tesla finally — and after loud and frequent urging from industry and safety advocates, activated the in-cabin camera in new Model Y and Model 3 vehicles. The camera will be used as a driver monitoring system. Tesla has been criticized for not activating the driver monitoring system within its vehicles even as evidence mounted that owners were misusing the system. Owners have posted dozens of videos on YouTube and TikTok abusing its advanced driver assistance system known as Autopilot — some of whom have filmed themselves sitting in the backseat as the vehicle drives along the highway.

Other nugs (no not that kind)

Apex.AI hired Paul Balciunas as its CFO. Balciunas was the former CFO of Canoo. He also was an executive at Deutsche Bank, where he acted as a lead underwriter of the initial public offering for Tesla in 2010, and has since focused on auto tech and new mobility players.

Blyncsy, a Utah-based startup movement and data intelligence company launched an AI-powered technology called Payver, that will use crowdsourced video data to give transport agencies up-to-date information on which roads require maintenance and improvements. Blyncsy is offering this service to governments at a reduced cost and with no long-term commitment. Utah’s DOT will be the first to pilot the program beginning June 1, deploying Payver in the Salt Lake County region, which covers more than 350 road miles. Blyncsy will be announcing other pilots in different states over the next few weeks.

Scale AI hired Mark Valentine to head up its federal-focused division. Valentine comes with experience and connections. He was  a commander in the U.S. Air Force, senior military advisor to FEMA and most recently, GM of national security for Microsoft. He will lead Scale’s government partnership efforts.

Scale has also hired Michael Kratsios, the former CTO of the White House, as managing director and head of strategy. The company said he is focused on accelerating the development of AI across industries. Michael joined at the end of Q1.



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Redmi AirDots 3 Pro to be rebranded as Poco Pop Buds

Last week, Redmi announced its AirDots 3 Pro with ANC, Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity and 28-hour battery life. New evidence from a Bluetooth SIG listing suggests the earbuds will be reintroduced under the Poco brand soon. We’ve already heard about Poco’s Pop Buds last year but the brand only confirmed the earphones’ name without any release plans. Poco Pop Buds and Redmi Buds 3 Pro listing The newly approved listing for the Poco Pop Buds bears the very same TWSEJ01ZM model number which matches the Redmi AirDots 3 Pro. In addition, we can see a third pair of earbuds in the listing...



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June makes product analytics more accessible

Meet June, a new startup that wants to make it easier to create analytics dashboards and generate reports even if you’re not a product analytics expert. June is built on top of your Segment data. Like many no-code startups, it uses templates and a graphical interface so that non-technical profiles can start using it.

“What we do today is instant analytics and that’s why we’re building it on top of Segment,” co-founder and CEO Enzo Avigo told me. “It lets you access data much more quickly.”

Segment acts as the data collection and data repository for your analytics. After that, you can start playing with your data in June. Eventually, June plans to diversify its data sources.

“Our long-term vision is to become the Airtable of analytics,” Avigo said.

If you’re familiar with Airtable, June may look familiar. The company has built a template library to help you get started. For instance, June helps you track user retention, active users, your acquisition funnel, engagement, feature usage, etc.

Image Credits: June

Once you pick a template, you can start building a report by matching data sources with templates. June automatically generates charts, sorts your user base into cohorts and shows you important metrics. You can create goals so that you receive alerts in Slack whenever something good or bad is happening.

Advanced users can also use June so that everyone in the team is using the same tool. They can create custom SQL queries and build a template based on those queries.

The company raised a seed round of $1.85 million led by Point Nine. Y Combinator, Speedinvest, Kima Ventures, eFounders and Base Case also participated, as well as several business angels.

Prior to June, the startup’s two co-founders worked for Intercom. They noticed that the analytics tool was too hard to use for many people. They didn’t rely on analytics to make educated decisions.

There are hundreds of companies using June every week and that number is growing by 10% per week. Right now, the product is free but the company plans to charge based on usage.

Image Credits: June



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SpaceX’s first ocean spaceport is being built and will host launches next year

SpaceX is already underway on building its first floating spaceport platform, and the plan is for it to start hosting launches as early as next year. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared those details on the progress of its build for Deimos, one of two converted oil rigs that SpaceX purchased earlier this year in order to transform them into floating launch and landing sites for its forthcoming Starship reusable rocket.

SpaceX’s purchase of the two rigs at the beginning of this year was for the creation of Deimos and Phobos, two floating spaceports named after the moons of Mars. They’ll act as offshore staging grounds for Starship launch activities, and the name is appropriate because the eventual plan is to have Starship provide transport for both people and goods to and from the red planet.

Musk and SpaceX have previously shared their vision for a future in which spaceports like Deimos are positioned within convenient reach of major hubs around the world, making it possible for SpaceX to operate a globe-spanning network of hypersonic point-to-point travel using Starships ferrying people from destinations as far flung as Beijing to New York in around 30 minutes. Before that, however, SpaceX will be looking to conduct orbital flight testing of the still in-development Starship, and its accompany booster, the Super Heavy.

Musk said earlier this year that it could begin flying rockets from its offshore platforms as early as the end of 2021. This new timeline indicates that rosy estimate has been pushed, which is pretty standard for the multi-CEO. The company has recently made good progress in its Starship program, however, with a successful high-altitude launch and landing test at its Texas ‘Starbase’ development site.

SpaceX is now in the process of getting ready for its first orbital flight test, which will include flying Starship atop Super Heavy for the first time, and a recovery of the Starship following the test after it splashes down off the coast of Hawaii. It’s now doing longer fire Raptor engine ground tests to get ready for that next big milestone.



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Apple Podcasts Subscriptions service delayed until June

Apple has sent out an official email to podcast creators informing them that the recently announced Podcasts Subscriptions service will be delayed until June. There’s no specific launch date mentioned in the new email and the service was previously supposed to launch in May. Several issues forced the delayed launch including some podcast creators being locked out of Apple’s Podcasts Connect portal. Some authors also saw delays in the launch of their new podcast episodes. Apple Podcasts Subscriptions allows users from over 170 countries to subscribe to select podcasts with ad-free...



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Realme GT 5G to launch in Thailand soon

The Realme GT 5G will soon be available in Thailand, as evidenced by its certification with the local NBTC authority. The certification of the RXM2202 is among the final steps towards making the phone available for local networks. The Realme GT 5G is coming soon to India as well, where Realme just unveiled the X7 Max 5G. The Realme GT is its namesake's flagship phone with a Snapdragon 888 chipset, up to 12GB of RAM, a 120Hz-capable 6.43-inch 1080p Super AMOLED, 64MP main camera and a 4,500mAh battery with 65W charging.



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Samsung's 120Hz LTPO OLED panels for iPhone 13 Pro series are in production

Samsung has been the main supplier for Apple's iPhone displays for quite some time and thanks to the technological advancements of the Korean tech giant in the field, it was able to secure an order for about 80 million units once more. Or in other words, the expected 120Hz LTPO OLED panels for the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max will likely all be delivered by Samsung. It looks like the fast and energy-efficient LPTO OLEDs will make it to the high-end iPhone 13 models only. LG and BOE will fill up the rest of the orders for iPhone 13 and 13 mini OLED displays. LG Display is estimated to...



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Tencent helps Chinese students skip prohibitively low speeds for school websites overseas

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students enrolled in overseas schools are stranded as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt life and airlines worldwide. Learning at home in China, they all face one challenge: Their school websites and other academic resources load excruciatingly slowly because all web traffic has to pass through the country’s censorship apparatus known as the “great firewall.”

Spotting a business opportunity, Alibaba’s cloud unit worked on connecting students in China to their university portals abroad through a virtual private network arrangement with American cybersecurity solutions provider Fortinet to provide, Reuters reported last July, saying Tencent had a similar product.

Details of Tencent’s offering have come to light. An app called “Chang’e Education Acceleration” debuted on Apple’s App Store in March, helping to speed up loading time for a selection of overseas educational services. It describes itself in a mouthful: “An online learning free accelerator from Tencent, with a mission to provide internet acceleration and search services in educational resources to students and researchers at home and abroad.”

Unlike Alibaba’s VPN for academic use, Chang’e is not a VPN; nor is it backed by Tencent’s cloud business, the firm told TechCrunch. The firm didn’t say how it defines VPN or explain how Chang’e works technically. Tencent said Chang’e rolled out on the app’s official website in October.

The word “VPN” is a loaded term in China as it often implies illegally bypassing the “great firewall.” People refer to their euphemisms “accelerators” or “scientific internet surfing” otherwise. When Chang’e is switched on, iPhone’s VPN status is shown as “on”, according to a test by TechCrunch.

Tencent’s Chang’e website ‘accelerator’ helps Chinese students stuck home get on their school websites faster. Screenshot: TechCrunch

On the welcome page, Chang’e asks users to pick from eight countries, including the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., for “acceleration”. It also shows the latency time and expected speed increased for each region.

Once a country is picked, Chang’e shows a list of educational resources that users can visit on the app’s built-in browser. They include the websites of 79 top universities, mostly U.S. and the U.K. ones; team collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Trello and Slack; remote-learning platforms UDemy, Coursera, Lynda and Khan Academy; research networks such as SSRN and JSTOR; programming and engineering communities like Stack Overflow, Codeacademy and IEEE; economics databases from the World Bank and OECD; as well as resources for medical students like PubMed and Lancet.

Many of these services are not blocked in China but load slowly on mainland China behind the “great firewall.” Users can request sites not already on the list to be included.

Accessing Stanford’s website through Chang’e. Screenshot: TechCrunch

Chang’e appears to have whitelisted only its chosen sites rather than all traffic on a user’s smartphone. Google, Facebook, YouTube and other websites banned in China are still unavailable when the Chang’e is at work. The app, available on both Android and iOS for free, doesn’t currently require users to sign up, a rare gesture in a country where online activities are strictly regulated and most websites ask for users’ real-name registrations.

Services accessible through Chang’e. Screenshot: TechCrunch

The offerings from Alibaba and Tencent are indicative of the inadvertent consequences caused by Beijing’s censorship system designed to block information deemed illegal or harmful to China’s national interest. Universities, research institutes, multinational corporations and exporters are often forced to seek censorship circumvention apps for what the authorities would consider innocuous purposes.

VPN providers have to obtain the government’s green light to legally operate in China and users of licensed VPN services are prohibited from browsing websites thought of us endangering China’s national security. In 2017, Apple removed hundreds of unlicensed VPN apps from its China App Store at Beijing’s behest.

In October, TechCrunch reported that the VPN app and browser Tuber gave Chinese users a rare glimpse into the global internet ecosystem of Facebook, YouTube, Google and other mainstream apps, but the app was removed shortly after the article was published.



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Dizo Star 500 and 300 feature phones certified by the FCC, TWS buds and a smartwatch coming too

Realme’s new Dizo sub-brand was described as having a focus on AIoT products, but apparently that includes featurephones too. And TWS earbuds and a smartwatch (though those are slightly redesigned Realme devices). FCC documents have photos of two feature phones. The Dizo Star 500 has a fairly large screen for what it is with a traditional keypad below. It is a dual-SIM phone with 2G connectivity (dual-band only), a single camera with flash, a microSD slot and a 1,830 mAh battery. Dizo Star 500 feature phone (photos by FCC) The Dizo Star 300 is a more basic device that...



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OnePlus 9, 9 Pro 9R update improves the camera and battery life

OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro's cameras are good but still up there with the best and maybe even a bit underwhelming given the whole Hasselblad marketing campaign. The latest software update, however, aims to address some of the issues reviewers had with the camera performance. The changelog says that the noise reduction algorithm and the sharpening effect have been improved along with the focusing and brightness for indoor scenes. The accuracy of the white balance has also been adjusted. In addition to the camera fixes, the software boosts network performance and battery endurance. The...



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Samsung Galaxy A03s stars in a big leak

One of Samsung's most affordable smartphones, the Galaxy A02s, is reportedly getting a successor with a number of upgrades. It's predictably going to be called Galaxy A03s and the leak includes detailed images and key specs. Samsung Galaxy A03s For starters, the handset will include a side-mounted fingerprint reader and a USB-C port at the bottom, which is a big deal since the predecessor didn't have a fingerprint reader at all and shipped with a dated microUSB. A 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel will cover the front with a small teardrop notch, where a 5MP camera will reside. The back...



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Xiaomi demos 200W charger, tops up custom Mi 11 Pro in just 8 minutes

The Charging wars are escalating yet again and Xiaomi is firing with 200W this time around. The brand took to Twitter to show off its latest fast wired and wireless charging developments. The test used a custom-built Mi 11 Pro with a 4,000 mAh battery instead of the 5,000 mAh cell on the regular model charging at 200W with wires and 120W without. Charge up to 100% in just 8 minutes using wired charging and 15 minutes wirelessly! #XiaomiHyperChargeToo good to be true? Check out the timer yourself! #InnovationForEveryone pic.twitter.com/muBTPkRchl— Xiaomi (@Xiaomi) May 31, 2021 The...



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LG stops manufacturing phones today, plant is transitioning to making home appliances

LG officially confirmed its exit from the mobile business in early April, but it needed some time to wind down operations. According to reports coming out of Korea today is the last day of production for LG phones and tablets. The company will continue to support existing devices for some time to come. Premium models will get three years of software support, you can check out the Android 11 update timeline for more details. Some models (including Q-series phones) will get Android 12, the latest premium models are expected to go up to Android 13. Users will be able to receive after-sale...



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Realme GT 5G is coming to Europe, certification proves

Even smartphones need their documents before they can travel abroad and the Realme GT 5G has them – the phone was certified for use within the EU by Dutch testing company Telefication. It is exactly RMX2202, the same model that launched in China. Previously, we reported that the Realme GT 5G is coming to Europe in June, but there was no way to tell if it was the same hardware as the Chinese model or a variant of it that bears the same name. Well, now we know that it’s the exact same hardware. The Realme GT 5G (RMX2202) is certified for use in the EU Highlights include the 6.43”...



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Realme X7 Max 5G announced, Smart TV 4K tags along

Realme has officially unveiled the X7 Max 5G after several weeks of teasers and a delayed launch. The phone is identical to the recently launched GT Neo which is exclusive to the Chinese market. You get a Dimensity 1200 chipset (first in India), AMOLED screen and triple camera setup with a 64MP primary camera. In addition, Realme also announced a pair of new 4K Smart TVs. Realme X7 Max 5G The screen on the X7 Max 5G measures 6.43 inches and brings a 120Hz refresh rate and a 16MP selfie cam tucked in the left corner. The panel is protected by Dragontrail Glass and also packs an...



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Video e-learning platform for MENA, Almentor, closes $6.5M Series B led by Partech

There are more than 400 million Arabic speakers globally and that number isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Arabic, to most people, is a tough language even to those who speak it. According to Duolingo, someone fluent in Egyptian Arabic might not fully understand Yemeni Arabic speakers because of the vast difference in dialect.

While individuals can easily navigate dialects, it can be relatively hard for them to find tailored Arabic content essential for everyday life.

Dr Ihab Fikry and Ibrahim Kamel founded Almentor.net in 2016 as an online video learning platform to compensate for this lack of online learning content for Arabic speakers. In collaboration with hundreds of leaders, educators, and experts, the platform offers courses and talks in various fields like health, humanities, technology, entrepreneurship, business management, lifestyle, drama, sports, corporate communication, and digital media.

In 2016, Almentor closed a $3.5 million seed round and two years ago raised $4.5 million Series A led by Egypt’s Sawari Ventures. With this Series B investment, the Dubai-based edtech company has raised $14.5 million in total. San Francisco and Paris-based VC firm Partech led the financing round with participation from Sawari Ventures, fellow Series A investor Egypt Ventures, and Sango Capital.

Almentor provides Arab learners with the necessary skills crucially needed to advance their professional careers and personal lives. The platform claims to have the biggest continuous learning library in the region and one of the biggest worldwide. With offices in Dubai, Cairo, and Saudi Arabia, its video content is developed in-house and made in Arabic and English.

“The vision and reason behind starting Almentor is we understand that in our region of more than 100 million people, of which 90% cannot properly learn with any other language other than Arabic,” Fikry said to TechCrunch. “So we wanted to have a cutting-edge state of the art platform that will change people’s ideology and help them be objective, and focus based on topics that can be taught as prodigious learning.”

For first-time products like Almentor, it can be hard to get both investors and customers on board. According to CEO Fikry, the first challenge was to convince the investment community in the MENA region that Almentor was creating a new industry in video e-learning that “had lots of potential to power tools in the region.”

Almentor’s business is an intersection of education, media, and technology. Its offerings are dissected into three: the flagship B2C product, a white-label B2B model for blue-chip companies, and the last, which Fikry calls the ‘special project’ for governmental bodies.

For its B2C product, Almentor sells courses to users for $20-$30 of which they get to keep for a lifetime. Fikry says that in June, the company is planning to introduce a subscription-based model where users can have unlimited access to all of its 12,000 video content for a fee to its more than 1 million registered users.

Almentor

The B2B model is where Almentor opens its library to companies to customize their content for employees. These videos are mainly tutorials or training needed to thrive at work, and since 2016, Almentor has executed 78 deals with partner companies

The special project’s model highlights Almentor’s work with the government. One time, the company had a partnership with the Egyptian government to upskill the country’s movie industry. It has completed 11 more similar special projects since launching five years ago. 

Across all three models, Fikry says Almentor has successfully delivered more than 2 million learning experiences. With this investment, the company wants to improve content production and quality and educate people in the MENA region on why they need the product.

“We are now leading the continuous video learning industry in the Arab region, and we have a responsibility that goes beyond our ambitions for Almentor. Our responsibility now is to work unceasingly to improve the industry as a whole in the Arab region, and this can only be achieved through gaining the confidence of the Arab learners in the value, professionalism and impartiality of the content provided by the platform and working in line with the global learning trends.”

Speaking on the investment for Partech, general partner Cyril Collon said: “Since our first interaction, we have been very impressed by Ihab and Ibrahim, two fantastic mission-driven entrepreneurs who have been executing on a bold vision since 2016, and who built the leading Arabic self-learning go-to content provider in the Middle East and Africa.  We are looking forward to supporting the company in its next phase of growth to serve the 430 million Arabic-speaking population and expand access to on-demand cutting-edge personal learning & developments options.”



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Sunday, May 30, 2021

By working with home entrepreneurs, Jakarta-based DishServe is creating an even more asset-light version of cloud kitchens

Cloud kitchens are already meant to reduce the burden of infrastructure on food and beverage brands by providing them with centralized facilities to prepare meals for delivery. This means the responsibility falls on cloud kitchen operators to make sure they have enough locations to meet demand from F&B clients, while ensuring fast deliveries to end customers.

Indonesian network DishServe has figured out a way to make running cloud kitchen networks even more asset-light. Launched by budget hotel startup RedDoorz’s former chief operating officer, DishServe partners with home kitchens instead of renting or buying its own facilities. It currently works with almost 100 home kitchens in Jakarta, and focuses on small- to medium-sized F&B brands, serving as their last-mile delivery network. Launched in fall 2020, DishServe has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Insignia Ventures Partners.

DishServe was founded in September 2020 by Rishabh Singhi. After leaving RedDoorz at the end of 2019, Singhi moved to New York, with plans to launch a new hospitality startup that could quickly convert any commercial space into members’ clubs like Soho House. The nascent company had already created sample pre-fabricated rooms and was about to start leasing property when the COVID-19 lockdown hit New York City in March 2020. Singhi said he went on a “soul searching spree” for a couple of months, deciding what to do and if he should return to Southeast Asia.

He realized that since many restaurants had to switch to online orders and delivery to survive the pandemic, this could potentially be an equalizer for small F&B brands that compete with larger players, like McDonald’s. But lockdowns meant that a lot of people had to pick from a limited range of restaurants close to where they lived. At the same time, Singhi saw that there were a lot of people who wanted to make more money, but couldn’t work outside of their homes, like stay-at-home moms.

DishServe was created to connect all three sides: F&B brands that want to expand without spending a lot of money, home entrepreneurs and diners hungry for more food options. Its other founders include Stefanie Irma, an early RedDoorz employee who served as its country head for the Philippines; serial entrepreneur Vinav Bhanawat; and Fathhi Mohamed, who also co-founded Sri Lankan on-demand taxi service PickMe.

The company works with F&B brands that typically have between just one to 15 retail locations, and want to increase their deliveries without opening new outlets. DishServe’s clients also include cloud kitchen companies who use its home kitchen network for last-mile distribution to expand their delivery coverage and catering services.

“The brands don’t to have to incur any upfront costs, and it’s a cheaper way to distribute as well because they don’t have to pay for electricity, plumbing and other things like that,” said Singhi. “And for agents, it gives them a chance to earn money from their homes.”

How it works

Before adding a home kitchen to its network, DishServe screens applicants by asking them to send in a series of photos, then doing an in-person check. If a kitchen is accepted, DishServe upgrades it so it has the same equipment and functionality as the other home kitchens in its network. The company covers the cost of the conversion process, which usually takes about three hours and costs $500 USD, and maintains ownership of the equipment, taking it back if a kitchen decided to stop working with DishServe. Singhi said DishServe is usually able to recover the cost of a conversion four months after a kitchen begins operating.

Home kitchens start out by serving DishServe’s own white-label brand as a trial run before it opens to other brands. Each can serve up to three additional brands at a time.

One important thing to note is that DishServe’s home kitchens, which are usually run by one person, don’t actually cook any food. Ingredients are provided by F&B brands, and home kitchen operators follow a standard set of procedures to heat, assemble and package meals for pick-up and delivery.

Screenshots of DishServe's apps for home kitchen operators and customers

Screenshots of DishServe’s apps for home kitchen operators and customers

DishServe makes sure standard operating procedures and hygiene standards are being maintained through frequent online audits. Agents, or kitchen operators, regularly submit photos and videos of kitchens based on a checklist (i.e. food preparation area, floors, walls, hand-washing area and the inside of their freezers). Singhi said about 90% of its agents are women between the ages of 30 to 55, with an average household income of $1,000. By working with DishServe, they typically make an additional $600 a month once their kitchen is operating at full capacity with four brands. DishServe monetizes through a revenue-sharing model, charging F&B brands and splitting that with its agents.

After joining DishServe, F&B brands pick what home kitchens they want to work with, and then distribute ingredients to kitchens, using DishServe’s real-time dashboard to monitor stock. Some ingredients have a shelf life of up to six months, while perishables, like produce, dairy and eggs, are delivered daily. DishServe’s “starter pack” for onboarding new brands lets them pick pick five kitchens, but Singhi said most brands usually begin with between 10 to 20 kitchens so they can deliver to more spots in Jakarta and save money by preparing meals in bulk.

DishServe plans to focus on growing its network in Jakarta until at least the end of this year, before expanding into other cities. “One thing we are trying to change about the F&B industry is that instead of highly-concentrated, centralized food business, like what exists today, we are decentralizing it by enabling micro-entrepreneurs to act as a distribution network,” Singhi said.



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