Xiaomi 13 Pro camera detailed with a 1-inch main sensor, floating telephoto lens

The Xiaomi 13 series is arriving tomorrow, and today the company revealed some key features of the camera on the Pro member. According to the released teasers, the main shooter will have a 50 MP 1” Sony IMX989 sensor, while the telephoto camera will have 75mm equivalent, which is 3x magnification. Xiaomi revealed how the new “floating” telephoto lens would work in a 20-second video - it is moving the elements closer to achieve infinite focus and take pictures of far objects; when it needs to take close-ups (up to 10 cm), the elements are moving away. The camera is developed with know-how...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/lNFkUL2

OnePlus announces two new PC monitors for India, launching December 12

OnePlus has announced that it will be launching two new gaming monitors on December 12 in India. One of the two models is the X 27, a 27-inch gaming monitor. OnePlus claims this model "caters to the premium segment offering superior display and performance, making it the ideal choice for gaming sessions, work projects, or online study." The other model is the 24-inch E 24. The E 24 is the more affordable productivity monitor, which "serves as a mid-range product offering a series of great features at a highly accessible price point, making it an incredibly convenient choice of...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/jsYRM1V

South Korean prosecutors seek arrest warrants for Terraform Labs co-founder, investors and engineers

South Korean prosecutors said Wednesday they have requested arrest warrants for eight people related to Terraform Labs for the alleged fraud as the local authorities widen their investigation into the collapse of the TerraUSD and Luna tokens that wiped tens of billions of dollars from the crypto market earlier this year.

The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office confirmed to TechCrunch that it is seeking arrest warrants for eight people including Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin, three Terraform investors, and four engineers of the cryptocurrencies TerraUSD (UST) and Luna, but did not disclose the identities of most individuals.

The move comes two months after South Korea issued an arrest warrant for another co-founder, Do Kwon, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, and requested Interpol, the international law enforcement agency, to issue a red notice for Kwon.

The prosecutors suspect Shin of taking illegal profits worth approximately $105 million (140 billion won) by selling Luna at the peak without disclosing properly to investors ahead of the Terra-Luna collapse, according to a local media report Yonhap. Shin is also being charged with using customers’ data from his separate fintech startup Chai to promote Luna, violating the Electric Financial Transaction Act. Local authorities reportedly raided the Chai office in mid-November as part of UST-Luna’s fraud probe.

Shin has refuted the claims of trading Luna at a market high and violating the customers’ data. Shin’s lawyer said today Shin left Terraform two years ago before the Terra-Luna collapse, and that he has no ties with the failure, according to local media.

Terraform was founded in Singapore in 2018 by Do Kwon and Shin. Shin left Terraform in March 2020 to found Chai and stepped down as CEO of Chai earlier this year.

The Seoul Southern District Prosecution confirmed a court is set to hold a hearing to determine the validity of the warrants this Friday, December 2.

Terraform’s UST and Luna fell from grace in early May after the so-called stablecoin depegged from its $1 value, wiping out investors’ $40 billion and prompting an uproar. South Korean prosecutors began the investigation after the crash of the UST-Luna token.

Terra’s UST crash will make life harder for crypto as regulation looms

South Korean prosecutors seek arrest warrants for Terraform Labs co-founder, investors and engineers by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/0XsupiE

Netflix mobile app gets seven new games

Netflix is steadily expanding the games portfolio on its mobile app for Android and iOS and there are seven new additions to the catalog. All games on the Netflix app are free to play and don’t have ads or in-app purchases. Skies of Chaos is a new take on the classic airplane shooter genre with colorful visuals and characters. Flutter Butterflies is a game for showcasing your creativity by raising and collecting butterflies in your custom rainforest. Skies of Chaos and Flutter Butterflies Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales is the latest installment in the popular Netflix original...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/xgFw7Np

Pinterest shuts down its ‘Creator Rewards’ program

Pinterest has shut down its Creator Rewards program that allowed creators to earn money by creating content around monthly prompts and achieving certain engagement goals.

“The Creator Rewards program will end on November 30, 2022. To all the creators who participated, thank you for your partnership. We’re committed to exploring more ways to help you find success on Pinterest and we’re looking forward to finding more opportunities to work together in 2023,” Pinterest said in a note on its creator rewards help page.

The rewards program asked participants to create Idea Pins — a video format introduced by the company last year — based on a monthly theme to earn cash.

The announcement, first reported by The Information, also said that Pinterest will pay a one-time bonus to creators who participated in at least one reward goal for August, September, or October 2022. The company didn’t specify the bonus amount on the Creator Rewards page.

Pinterest said that it is closing this program “in order to focus on other creator programs and features.” Last year, when the company debuted Creator Rewards, it said it planned to invest $20 million in the program. Separately, the company launched a $500,000 Creator Fund last year and injected an additional $1.2 million this year into the project. The social network created this project to help creators from underrepresented communities through cash and ad rewards.

Pinterest is still continuing with programs like the Creator Fund, “shoppable” Idea Pins, and paid partnerships by converting Idea Pins into ads.

Social media companies have been constantly tweaking their creator payment programs in recent times. Last month, Snapchat reduced its payouts to creators from millions of dollars per week to millions of dollars per year. In September, Meta announced that it is closing its Live Shopping program to focus on reels. At the same time, the social media giant also closed its Instagram affiliate program, which allowed creators to get a commission if users purchased tagged products from their posts.

Pinterest shuts down its ‘Creator Rewards’ program by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Ajr6BfN

India pips North America to become the biggest smartwatch market

India surpassed North America to take the top global spot in the smartwatch market in the quarter that ended in September, according to a report from market research player Counterpoint. The festival sales and proliferation of affordable smartwatches helped grew the local market by 171% year-on-year.

The affordable smartwatch models getting bigger displays and adding features such as Bluetooth calling were key selling factors in India during the festival sales, Hong Kong-headquartered Counterpoint said.

“Indian brands expanding their product portfolios at affordable price points and emphasis on local manufacturing also contributed to the growth,” Counterpoint analyst Anshika Jain said in a statement.

“Bluetooth-calling emerged as an important feature, contributing a 58% share in total shipments, the highest ever share to date. Consumers are also preferring bigger display sizes, which is evident from the fact that over half of the total shipments in Q3 came from the 1.5”-1.69” display size.”

North America, which was the top market from Q4 2020 to Q2 2022, grew 21% year-on-year while China and Europe had a negative growth.

India’s growth meant that the country’s top brand Noise captured third place on overall shipment charts — thanks to a 218% year-on-year growth— only lagging Apple and Samsung.

The smartwatchmaker told TechCrunch that it aims to scale its local production from 50% to 80% by the end of the year. Local rival Fire-Boltt, which was only a percentage behind Noise in the market share, grabbed the fourth place in global rankings.

Apple grew 48% due to stellar sales of the new Apple Watch 8 series, which accounted for 56% of overall sales. Samsung grew 6% year-on-year despite registering a 62% shipping increase from the previous quarter.

Counterpoint report segregates smartwatches into two categories: High-level operating system smartwatches (HLOS), which include devices from companies like Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Garmin, and Amazfit; and what it calls “basic” smartwatches that feature a lighter operating system and are more affordable. Noise, Fire-Bollt, and BoAT operate in the latter category.

The research shop said that the HLOS segment grew 23%, whereas basic smartwatches grew by more than a double — resulting in commanding a 35% of the market share. Apple currently dominates the HLOS market with about 50% market share whereas Samsung sits second in the chart.

Image Credits: Counterpoint

“This remarkable increase in basic smartwatch shipments shows us that the market base is rapidly expanding toward more accessible segments amid aggressive drives by the supply side. But still, in terms of revenue, the HLOS smartwatch overwhelms the basic smartwatch with a market size of almost 10 times due to its high average selling price (ASP),” Research Analyst Woojin Son said in a statement.

Earlier this month, analyst firm IDC published a report on India’s wearable market, noting that the smartwatch segment grew by 178% with more than 12 million units shipped in the quarter ending September. The report said that this growth could also be attributed to falling smartwatch prices in the region as the average selling price (ASP) dropped from $60 to $41.9 in a year. IDC says that the ASP of basic smartwatches is $27.5 as compared to the $330 ASP of advanced smartwatches. This is an indicator that Indian consumers are likely to go for cheaper alternatives than the Apple Watch or the Samsung Galaxy Watch.

All the India-based smartwatch manufacturers have committed to rapidly increasing their local manufacturing output in the coming months to increase the production rate. This could help them bring down the device prices further and increase shipments to catch up with Samsung and Apple in unit shipments.

India pips North America to become the biggest smartwatch market by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/1iEaQKJ

Apple Watch Ultra gains ski and snowboard workout detection

Apple's sporty Watch Ultra just gained more workout options thanks to the third-party app Slopes. Once installed, the watch will be able to track your ski or snowboard workout and it can even identify the resort you are in. All those features, however, are limited to paying subscribers. Slopes even works with the Action button on the Watch Ultra. The key is exclusive to the Watch Ultra and Slopes is one of the few apps to take advantage of it so far. You can assign the button to start a workout through Slopes with a single press. Pausing it requires you to press the Action button and...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/z7jIwAG

India to pilot retail digital currency on December 1

India will undertake the first pilot for retail digital currency on December 1, the central bank said Tuesday, extending the test to evaluate the creation and distribution of the digital currency in the South Asian market with a closed group of customers and merchants a month after it began evaluating the CBDC for the wholesale segment.

Four local banks — State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and IDFC — will participate in the initial phase of the pilot in four cities (Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Bhubaneswar). Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank will join the pilot “subsequently,” the Reserve Bank of India said. The pilot will eventually be expanded to cover the cities of Ahmedabad, Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Lucknow, Patna and Shimla.

“The scope of pilot may be expanded gradually to include more banks, users and locations as needed,” it said.

The central bank hopes to lower the economy’s reliance on cash, enable cheaper and smoother international settlements, and protect people from the volatility of private cryptocurrencies, RBI officials have said in recent quarters. Based on the test results, the central bank will experiment with additional features and applications of the digital rupee in future pilots, it said.

India’s central bank has spent the last few years largely pushing to make its citizens avoid crypto trading. Despite a ruling from the country’s apex court, the central bank continues to force the hand of banks from engaging with crypto platforms in India, a move that has made on-ramp a nightmare for the firms involved, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

In the wake of the uncertainty, the local ecosystem has seen some talent move outside of the country and a growing number of local entrepreneurs build for the foreign markets and avoid serving customers in India, the world’s second-largest internet market.

Top crypto firms including Coinbase and Polygon as well as local exchanges CoinDCX, CoinSwitch Kuber and WazirX set up a new industry body to promote dialogue between key stakeholders and drive awareness about web3, months after the largest local crypto advocacy group was disbanded.

The limited roll-out of e-rupee comes at a time when several governments across the globe are trialing digital versions of their currencies. Singapore’s monetary authority said in late October that it will test a digital version of the local dollar. The central banks of China and the Bahamas have also experimented in this field. The National Bank of Kazakhstan plans to integrate its CBDC on the BNB Chain, crypto giant Binance said earlier.

But some have expressed concerns about the unchecked proliferation of digital currencies.

Jeremy Fleming, the director of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, recently warned that Beijing was aiming to use a range of technologies, including the digital currency, to control markets and people. Beijing’s efforts to build a central-bank digital currency could allow it to monitor transactions for oppressive means and in the future enable it to evade international sanctions, he added.

“Users will be able to transact with e₹-R through a digital wallet offered by the participating banks and stored on mobile phones / devices. Transactions can be both Person to Person (P2P) and Person to Merchant (P2M). Payments to merchants can be made using QR codes displayed at merchant locations. The e₹-R would offer features of physical cash like trust, safety and settlement finality. As in the case of cash, it will not earn any interest and can be converted to other forms of money, like deposits with banks,” the Reserve Bank of India said in a press announcement.

India to pilot retail digital currency on December 1 by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TmhU90L

It’s maybe a little late to be talking about red flags in venture investing?

Earlier today, renowned VC Bill Gurley put together a list of the many “red flags” that VCs should have paid closer attention to when funding FTX, suggesting in a tweet that this summary of warning signs might help keep VCs “out of the investor hurt locker” going forward. Gurley includes such no-nos as “unique financial data presentations,” “aversion to audits,” “large secondary transactions,” and “lack of a legitimate board.”

Yet publishing them now is a little like shouting “fire!” after everyone is already outside the theater, watching its smoldering remains dissolve into the parking lot. Most of the behaviors that Gurley identified today came to a grounding halt when the market abruptly shifted in spring, and by then, the damage was already done. More, if history has shown us anything, it will happen again and not because VCs miss red flags but because they sometimes throw these investing rules out the window.

Gurley asserts, for example, that one reason the startup market cratered was that investors “let the good times roll” (red flag #1). It’s pretty hard to argue with this one. Consider how little VCs really knew about Samuel Bankman-Fried, all while he burnished his image as the crypto industry’s wunderkind. (Weirdly, Sam Bankman-Fried’s smiling visage is still plastered around parts of San Francisco.) 

Gurley also cites the “lack of a legitimate board” as a red flag (#2). This was another nod to FTX, which had no board of directors, but barely-there boards have become pervasive. In a story just tonight about Pipe, TechCrunch’s Mary Ann Azevedo writes that the three-year-old marketplace has only one outside board member who is not a cofounder of the company, and that individual has been a VC for three years. (Pipe raised more than $300 million from more than a dozen firms.)

Another issue is dual-class shares (red flag #3), which in many cases give entrepreneurs the power to ignore the wishes of investors. VCs once argued against them but long ago gave into founder demands for them, no matter how ridiculous the ask. Don’t believe us? Lyft’s founders and Snap’s founders have shares designed to keep them in control until they kick the bucket. Adam Neumann had so much control over WeWork that had he not been elbowed out, his children and grandchildren might have been in charge of the company ultimately. 

And, Gurley pegs secondary sale transactions (red flag #8) as an obvious danger. Hopin, the virtual events platform, is a prime example. The three-year-old company has been dealing with shrinking market share and layoffs, yet according to a Financial Times piece from earlier this year, its founder was able to take $195 million worth of shares off the table while also retaining nearly 40% of the company and voting control. Bankman-Fried similarly took $300 million off the table last fall in a $420 million round when FTX was barely two years old.

One problem with Gurley’s indictment of his peers is that Gurley himself was complicit in some of these offenses. Remember WeWork, which promised that Adam Neumann’s progeny would rule the company for eternity? Gurley’s firm – Benchmark – had a seat on the company’s board.

The bigger issue ties to how venture firms are structured and paid. VCs can afford to push it to the limit because they know someone else — their own investors — will be around to pick up the pieces.

Unfortunately, the picture isn’t nearly so rosy for everyone else. On the contrary, the consequences of every “red flag” that was waved away is becoming more apparent with every layoff, down round, and executive change-up.

VCs had a good run, and they will again. But right now, if you don’t believe that tens — if not hundreds — of billions of dollars from pension funds, school endowments, hospital systems, and others that provide capital to VCs is about to go up in smoke, you haven’t been paying attention.

It’s not just FTX that’s going down, not by a long shot.

It’s maybe a little late to be talking about red flags in venture investing? by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3YhitJm

Samsung Galaxy A14 5G design revealed in leaked images, key specs confirmed

The Samsung Galaxy A14 5G appeared in CAD-based renders back in October, and today the first leaked press image revealed they were close - the new phone will look a lot like its predecessor with the triple camera and the waterdrop notch. According to the source, the screen is a 6.8” LCD with HD+ resolution, and we can see the fingerprint scanner on the side, embedded in the power key. The notch on the top has a 13MP sensor for selfies, while the main shooter on the back will have a 50MP sensor. The Galaxy A14 5G is said to run on a Samsung Exynos chipset that is still unannounced....

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/sBaLPtu

Locus raises another $117M for its warehouse robots

The last few years have been a major accelerator for the robotics industry at large, but warehouse robotics may be the biggest winner of all. Stay at home orders fueled adoption in the early days of the pandemic, as some retailers stayed open after being labeled “essential businesses.” Even after things began reopening, those roles have remained difficult to fill, leading many firms to look toward robotic help.

All the while, Amazon has had a jump on most of the industry, dating back to the company’s acquisition of Kiva Systems a decade ago. The competition continues looking for angles to compete with the 800-pound e-commerce gorilla, and robotics startups have flooded the field, promising an edge.

Massachussets-based Locus Robotics has risen in the ranks, becoming one of the most prominent names in what is now a fairly crowded category. “We look at Amazon probably as the best marketing arm in the robotics business today,” Locus Robotics CEO Rick Faulk said at our robotics event in July. “They have set SLAs that everyone has to match. And we look at them as being a great part of our marketing team.”

Locus this week announced a $117 million Series F, led by Goldman Sachs, G2 Venture Partners and Stack, with existing investor Scale Venture Partners also participating. The company has been on a fundraising tear, with a $50 million raise last September that followed a $150 million Series E in February. Locus’s total funding is now north of $400 million. This latest round values Locus at “close to” $2 billion.

The firm’s promise is a brownfield solution, with systems that can be easily integrated into existing warehouses without much fuss. The company marked its one-billionth pick in September of this year and says it’s currently averaging around three million picks a day throughout its global operations.

“Locus is clearly the winner in the flexible warehouse robotics space, and the consistency with which the Locus team executes has been extraordinary,” G2’s Zach Barasz says in a release. “We are thrilled to be investors in Locus Robotics and to partner with the leading warehouse execution company in making global supply chains faster, more cost-effective, and more resilient and sustainable.”

He, along with Goldman Sach’s Mark Midle, will be joining the Locus board.

Asked about the challenges of raising in the current climate, CEO Rick Faulk tells TechCrunch:

In today’s environment, investors are focused on high-quality companies that have both strong growth/market leadership and business unit economics. Therefore, it is important to have a track record and forecast that supports both. Late-stage private companies are competing with beaten down public companies for investment dollars.

Companies are focused on improving operational efficiency and Locus assists with exactly that….therefore, there is strong excitement around being a differentiated solution in a very large end market. The raise will enable Locus to continue to extend its leadership in the market.

Locus raises another $117M for its warehouse robots by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/RHoGwC1

Orda raises millions to digitize African restaurants with its cloud-based operating system

Most large restaurant chains across Africa have grown accustomed to using legacy systems and point-of-sale providers to manage operations. However, for smaller restaurants — which represent the biggest segment of this $50 billion industry — these systems can be rather expensive and do not adequately cater to their needs; thus, they stick with running operations manually. 

Orda, a Nigerian food tech platform that provides a cloud-based restaurant operating system to solve these issues for small, independent restaurants, is announcing that it has secured a $3.4 million seed investment. The two-year-old startup raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding this January, bringing its total funding raised this year to $4.5 million. 

Its clients are mostly small and medium-sized restaurants. With limited access to technology, these restaurants typically resort to using offline methods, including pen and paper, for things like manual reconciliation and inventory management. Orda’s operating system allows these businesses to handle these parts of their business online, as well as get access to other features, including kitchen display systems, accounting software and integrations with food aggregators such as YC-backed Chowdeck, Bolt Food and Glovo.

“We take an interesting approach to software and helping restaurant owners set up,” chief executive officer Guy Futi told TechCrunch in an interview. “Our software digitizes the process of those who write things in hand and helps them figure out their inventory management and recipe yields.”

Futi said Orda has witnessed tremendous adoption among small restaurants in its two markets, Nigeria and Kenya, and claims the startup might have reached product-market fit already. His conviction lies in the number of vendors it has pulled in, about 600, and the pace at which the food tech onboarded them, in less than a year. 

The chief executive said there are “hundreds more” in the pipeline waiting to be onboarded, as Orda plans to serve more than 1,000 restaurants by the end of Q1 2022. Orda’s transactions have also increased too. It now processes over 50,000 orders weekly for its vendors, 5x what it recorded as of this January, with its gross merchandise value (GMV) increasing 30% month-on-month. “We’re seeing fast-paced growth in Nigeria and Kenya with a retention rate of above 95%,” Futi added. 

Orda’s pricing model allows restaurants to choose between three payment plans: N1,000 (~$1.54), N5,000 (~$7.69) and N20,000 (~$30.76) to access different parts of the software, ranging from order management and an omnichannel to integrations with food aggregators and delivery platforms and setup personnel. Revenue has increased as a result, growing 30% month-on-month, according to Futi.

Nigerian restaurant management platform Orda gets $1.1M, wants to be the Toast of Africa

Despite this growth, building solutions for these African restaurants, especially without a playbook, has come with its fair share of constraints. For instance, Orda has had to configure its cloud-based solution to work offline and let restaurants continue to log data in times when internet access is poor. 

Meanwhile, Orda intends to add more functionalities to the platform, particularly around financial products as it looks to power lending and payments for its customers. The platform already processes payments for 10% of its vendors, according to Futi, and might begin a major rollout by Q2 next year. 

Building and scaling out its payments feature is one of the food tech’s objectives with this new investment. Others include expanding its network of restaurants and continuing its pan-African expansion drive (into South Africa and much later, Ivory Coast). It has beefed up its leadership team to that effect, bringing personnel: Afua Ahwoi, head of operations and strategy (ex-Goldman Sachs) and Modesola Osasomi, head of growth (ex-Barclays Bank) for its next growth phase. 

Africa’s food tech platforms, despite playing in a nascent ecosystem, are catching the eye of investors these days. In addition to the aforementioned Glovo and Jumia Food, newer upstarts such as Chowdeck and Foodcourt, which help restaurants make online deliveries, have received backing from global investors like Y Combinator, while others like Vendease, OneOrder and TopUp Mama that provide food supplies to restaurants and handle their supply chains have raised significant capital themselves.

Asked whether Orda intends to venture into these other categories, Futi said that such a business decision wouldn’t be ideal as it will veer the startup off its course of building software. “Globally, you see that Sysco isn’t in the same vertical as Toast,” said the founder who launched the startup with Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila and Namir El-Khouri. “If there’s some sort of collaboration with other players, we’ll be open to that. But from our position, building the right software takes you deep down the rabbit hole and that requires focus.”

Vendease, a food procurement platform for African restaurants, nabs $30M led by Partech Africa and TLcom

Emerging market investor Quona Capital co-led the round with New York-based FinTech Collective. Other investors include existing ones such as LoftyInc Capital, Enza Capital and Norrsken Foundation, as well as new venture capital firms like Outside VC and Far Out Ventures.

Here’s what Kofoworola Agbaje, senior investment associate at Quona Capital, said on why her firm is backing the food tech: “When a restaurant owner moves from pen and paper to a fully automated digital platform, it’s incredibly empowering. Suddenly they have insights available to them that can improve their productivity and margins, enabling them to grow their businesses. A solution like Orda can have an outsized impact on small and medium-sized restaurants and the livelihoods of those who operate them.”

Orda raises millions to digitize African restaurants with its cloud-based operating system by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/MNl1ua9

Xiaomi 13 series and MIUI 14 launching on December 1

Xiaomi finally confirmed the launch date for its upcoming Xiaomi 13 series phones. The launch event is scheduled for Thursday, December 1 at 7 PM Beijing time. We also got confirmation that MIUI 14 will be announced at the event alongside the Xiaomi 13 and 13 Pro phones. Xiaomi 13 series launch poster Xiaomi boss Lei Jun shared an official render of the Xiaomi 13 which will bring a flat OLED screen with 1.61mm thick bezels on the top and sides while the bottom one will measure 1.81mm. In addition, the phone will be 71.5mm wide – making it quite easy to handle with one...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/TNwb6VI

Amazon shutting down wholesale distribution in third business exit in India

Amazon is shutting down its wholesale distribution business in India, the latest in a series of retreats for the retailer in the key overseas market where it has deployed over $7 billion in the past decade.

The American e-commerce giant said Monday that it is discontinuing Amazon Distribution, its wholesale e-commerce website available in small neighborhood stores in Bengaluru, Mysore and Hubli.

“We don’t take these decisions lightly. We are discontinuing this programme in a phased manner to take care of current customers and partners,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Amazon Distribution was designed to help kiranas, the neighborhood stores in India, pharmacies and department stores secure inventory from the e-commerce giant.

“We offer a wide range of products at competitive prices and the convenience of next day delivery at your door-step. As a member, you can purchase thousands of items for resale at any time of the day at competitive prices and in bulk quantities, pay via the various payment options available, get GST bill for your order, and convenient and reliable door-step deliveries the next day,” the company describes on Amazon Distribution website.

Amazon did not say why it was shutting down the wholesale distribution offering, but the move follows company shutting two other businesses — food delivery and online learning platform Academy — in the country amid a global restructuring of its business.

The series of announcements have nonetheless prompted many to speculate that Amazon, which has deployed over $6.5 billion in its local business in the country, is slowly scaling down its operations in the South Asian market. The firm has seen several of its senior executives depart in recent months.

Forget winning, can Amazon survive in India?

India is a key overseas market for Amazon. But the company is lagging Walmart’s Flipkart and struggling to make inroads in smaller Indian cities and towns, according to a recent report by Sanford C. Bernstein. Amazon’s 2021 gross merchandise value in the country stood between $18 billion to $20 billion, lagging Flipkart’s $23 billion, the analysts said in a report to clients.

Amazon also faces competition from billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, which launched grocery shopping on WhatsApp, and social commerce startups SoftBank-backed Meesho and Tiger Global-backed DealShare. It has so far offered “a weaker proposition in ‘new’ commerce” in the country, the report added.

At stake is one of the world’s last great growth markets. The e-commerce spending in India, the world’s second largest internet market, is expected to double in size to over $130 billion by 2025. Amazon has been attempting to increase its presence in India through stakes in local firms and has also aggressively explored partnerships with neighborhood stores.

The company attempted to acquire Future Retail, India’s second largest retail chain, but was outwitted by Ambani’s firm. (Amazon accused the estranged Indian partner and Reliance of fraud in newspaper ads.)

Amazon did not immediately say if it plans to close any other business line in the country.

Amazon shutting down wholesale distribution in third business exit in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9o4bItk

TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy to help Southeast Asian creators monetize

There are a lot of talented people, like chefs and musicians, in Southeast Asia who can earn money through their work online, says TipTip founder Albert Lucius. But many of them don’t have the social media clout to attract advertisers. TipTip wants to help them build up followers in their communities using an offline/online strategy, and monetize by selling content instead of relying on advertising algorithms. The Indonesian-based startup announced today it has raised $13 million in Series A funding, just eight months after its $10 million Series A in March.

The latest round was led by East Ventures, with participation from returning investors Vertex, SMDV and B.I.G. Ventures.

TipTip founded in October 2021 by Albert Lucius, whose previous startup Kudo was acquired by Grab in 2017. It serves as a marketplace for creators to connect with fans, and monetize content like videos and documents by selling them to their followers, or hosting live video sessions.

The platform launched in July, and says its revenue has grown 20x since October, with creators earn more than $200 on average within 30 days of being active on TipTip.

TipTip currently has 2,500 content creators and over 30,000 users. Its goal is to recruit more than 30,000 creators and 300,000 users by early next year. It is currently focused on Indonesia, with a presence in 40 cities.

The people TipTip was created for, like local chefs, musicians and painters, still have few followers and need to build their audiences. To enable them to scale and monetize, TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy in Indonesian cities and towns, helping them host events and activities tailored to their communities.

Lucius says TipTip’s team saw that many people became accustomed to the idea of making money virtually after COVID hit, as interest in consuming digital content also rose. Based on research they sourced from Research and Markets, Digital Journal and Statista, they found that the creator economy in Southeast Asia has a projected CAGR of about 10% to 30%.

But Lucius said many Southeast Asian creators cannot monetize with tools on social media platforms, like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Patreon, which are better suited for top creators who already have a lot of followers and views, and can draw advertisers.

Lucius says TipTip differentiate from social media platforms with an end-to-end solution for creators that includes digital content management and distribution, live streaming services, one-on-one interactions and direct tipping. Its platform also helps creators with administrative issues, like audience management, know your customer (KYC), payment systems and scheduling.

“There are many players who are already established as industry leaders in these respective areas. We view them as necessary and complementary to our services. In fact, we rely on our creators/promoters to continue using external platforms to engage their audiences, post updates, advertise their free offerings there and provide links back to TipTip to monetize their premium contents,” Lucius said.

Instead of ads, TipTip provides direct monetization channels through tipping and direct purchases, and takes a cut from every sale on its platform.

An example of the content being shared on TipTip include edutainment in categories such as music. Musicians use the platform to share tips on how to compose better songs, and sometimes accompany that with a live performance. Another example are creators who make multi-segment courses on how to be better public speakers, with a live workshop included.

TipTip also has a network of promoters to help creators sell their content. Lucius says promoters serve as affiliates or resellers, often to their own small communities, and take a commission form each sell. “The analogy is like how Uber Eats helps a restaurant sell more food,” Lucius said. “In our case, promoters help creators sell their digital content.”

To create a pipeline of creators, TipTip uses awareness programs by partnering with its top creators, using above-the-line marketing campaigns and doing a hyperlocal strategy to find key opinion leaders (KOL), or top influencers, in each community.

Part of TipTip’s funding round will be used to recruit more creators, promoters and supporters. It will also create more product offerings, like podcasts, branding deals and personalized requests, so creators have more potential revenue channels, and expand its offline/online presence into 250 cities and towns across Indonesia by the middle of next year.

In a statement about the funding, East Ventures co-founder and managing partner Willson Cuaca said, “We strongly believe in Albert’s leadership at TipTip. His past experience in building and running Kudo before being acquired by Grab in 2017 continues to be pivotal in navigating the turbulent economy as we head into 2023. We expect TipTip to continue its exponential growth trajectory on the back of its hyperlocal strategy which adapts really well to the changing creator and customer behavior in the post-COVID era.”

Edtech leans into the creator economy with cohort-based classes

TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy to help Southeast Asian creators monetize by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/6wUmiRr

Top 10 trending phones of week 47

After four weeks at the top the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ is now replaced by another Pro+ model, only this time it's from the Oppo Reno9 series. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra retains its second spot and the Galaxy A53 once again rounds up the podium positions. That leaves the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ down in fourth, ahead of the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max, which has also lost a position. Realme 10 Pro+ has risen a couple of spots to place sixth in week 47, while the iPhone XR is down to seventh. Yet another new arrival - the vivo X90 Pro+ monster of a cameraphone - is in eight, while the Redmi...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/nR8ucYK

Lawyers see crypto regulation coming in 2023 because industry needs to rebuild trust

Despite an uneven year in the crypto markets, many market participants are unperturbed about the long-term health of the sector and say that legal frameworks in 2023 could restore trust in the industry. 

“Crypto will recover,” Katherine Dowling, general counsel member at Bitwise Asset Management, said to TechCrunch. “This is not the death of crypto.”

Given the belief by many that crypto remains here to stay, it’s worth looking ahead. Crypto denizens certainly are — after the FTX collapse, questions circulated concerning crypto’s future and what regulators would do next.

“There’s no impetus for regulators to reduce their level of enforcement activity and recent events are likely to embolden them.” Mayer Brown's Joe Castelluccio

But disappointment in what FTX’s implosion represents is very hard to overstate, Yesha Yadav, professor of law and director of diversity, equity and community at Vanderbilt University, told TechCrunch. “The level of disillusionment and disappointment and sense of feeling deceived by FTX is so deep because it was seen as one of the most compliance-friendly institutions in the crypto economy and one that would be leading the regulatory efforts.”

Now, obviously, FTX is the “poster child for everything that could go wrong,” Yadav said. Its downfall has regulators going back to the drawing board. “They might have to do something different, more far-reaching and strict in response to what happened.”

But, what can we expect from regulators in 2023?

Regulators will finalize some of the proposals they introduced, Alma Angotti, partner and global legislative and regulatory risk leader at Guidehouse, said to TechCrunch. “I think there is a realization that the industry is too big to continue to ‘wait and see.’”

Lawyers see crypto regulation coming in 2023 because industry needs to rebuild trust by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/n8ETYGX

Week 47 in review: Vivo's X90 series, Honor's 80 and Oppo's Reno9 series debut

Another week down, this one culminating in some Black Friday madness, so let's recap. Vivo unveiled the X90 series, starting with China. The vivo X90 Pro+, X90 Pro, and X90 share a lot of similarities but also some differences - the flagship X90 Pro+ has a 50.3MP 1.0-inch type main camera, a 64MP 90mm 3.5x zoom, a 50mm 2x zoom, and a 48MP ultrawide, as well as a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. The X90 Pro shares the 1.0-inch type main camera and 2x tele but lacks the 90mm zoom, and has a 12MP ultrawide. Both the X90 Pro and X90 use the Dimensity 9200. Both also pack a 120W wired charging. We're...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/nzeDpxB

Motorola Moto G82 in for review

The Moto G82 debuted earlier this year with a 6.6” OLED display and a 50MP camera with OIS as its highlights. The phone is a key mid-range device for its maker across the globe and now that we finally got a unit we can see if it should make your shopping shortlist. The Moto G82 shares a lot of design cues Moto G52 and Moto G62. These three phones have very similar camera setups too, but the Moto G82 is the only one to offer OIS. Under the hood we have a Snapdragon 695 platform, which is 5G-enabled. Our unit has 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, although some markets also get an 8GB RAM...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/q4CrVIy

Realme 10 Pro+ teased to launch in India for under INR 25,000

The Realme 10 Pro and 10 Pro+ unveiled in China last week will debut globally on December 8. The smartphones will also launch in India on the same day, and while their exact prices in India haven't been revealed yet, Realme VP Madhav Sheth took to Twitter to tease the Realme 10 Pro Plus' India price. Sheth posted a short clip on Twitter with the caption, "Kudos to our product team for figuring this one out," which confirms the Realme 10 Pro+ will be priced under INR25,000 ($305/€295/CNY2,195) in India. The Realme 10 Pro+ comes in three memory configurations in China -...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/0SCMlhz

Efficient growth? No problem, bootstrapped startups say

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.

Investors these days want to see not only growth, but also a path to profitability — and it isn’t always easy for venture-backed startups to suddenly correct course. But their bootstrapped peers have a leg up, a recent report shows. Let’s explore. — Anna

Cheaper growth

In 2021, Alex and I wondered out loud if startups eschewing venture capital could have it all. The answer this year seems to be yes.

Indeed, Capchase’s recent Pulse of SaaS report contains an interesting finding: In 2022, bootstrapped SaaS companies are doing better than VC-backed startups in many respects.

“Despite the war chest of funding that VC-backed firms raised last year, bootstrapped companies are doing better than VC-backed companies across nearly every metric we analyzed,” the SaaS-focused fintech wrote.

Efficient growth? No problem, bootstrapped startups say by Anna Heim originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/xgNMh4V

Twitter will manually authenticate verified accounts starting December 2

Twitter relaunched its verification program last May after a hiatus of more than three years, but it was paused again after Elon Musk took over Twitter. However, Musk has announced that Twitter will "tentatively" launch Verified on December 2 and manually authenticate all verified accounts before the check activates. Manually authenticating verified accounts is definitely a good idea because after Musk's takeover of Twitter, the company started offering the blue check marks to eligible Twitter Blue subscribers as well without actually verifying identities, which led to verified accounts...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/6eg9wdz

OnePlus 11's color options tipped

Renders of the OnePlus 11 (formerly known as 11 Pro) that leaked a couple of months ago revealed the smartphone's design. The renders showed the smartphone in black color, which we now know will be called Matte Black. This revelation comes from tipster Max Jambor, who said the OnePlus 11 will come in Matte Black and Glossy Green colors. However, it's unclear if these will be the only colors or if there will be more options. OnePlus 11's leaked renders The OnePlus 11 is rumored to come with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, up to 16GB RAM and 256GB storage, and a 6.7" QHD+ 120Hz...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/8jIqNeJ

Honor Magic Vs in for review

The Honor Magic Vs just made its premiere and we are lucky enough to get one in our office for testing. This being the Chinese unit with non-finalized software we'll only focus on the hardware, but first, let's do an unboxing. The phone comes with a 66W charger, USB cable, and a case for the rear panel. The Honor Magic Vs is thinner and lighter than its predecessor thanks to a radically improved hinge design. The phone feels similar to the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 in the hand. Inside, the Magic Vs has a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 with up to 12GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is just around...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/Sjd3bx4

iQOO Neo7 SE launching on December 2 with Dimensity 8200

The iQOO Neo7 SE is launching on December 2 alongside the iQOO 11 and it will be the first phone to launch with the MediaTek Dimensity 8200 chipset. Dimensity 8200 is expected to be an incremental upgrade over the outgoing 8100 chip with a different core configuration and clock speed - 1x Cortex-A78 clocked at 3.1 GHz and 3x Cortex-A78 running at 3.0 GHz while the Cortex-A55 cores remain at 2.0 GHz. iQOO Neo7 SE posters Elsewhere, the iQOO Neo7 SE is rumored to feature a 6.78” AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The phone will also likely bring a 5,000...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/jibM7tW

UK to criminalize deepfake porn sharing without consent

Brace for yet another expansion to the UK’s Online Safety Bill: The Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law which are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent — in a crackdown on a type of abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls.

The government says the latest amendment to the Bill will broaden the scope of current intimate image offences — “so that more perpetrators will face prosecution and potentially time in jail”.

Other abusive behaviors that will become explicitly illegal include “downblousing” (where photographs are taken down a women’s top without consent); and the installation of equipment, such as hidden cameras, to take or record images of someone without their consent.

The government describes the planned changes as a comprehensive package of measure to modernize laws in this area.

It’s also notable as it’s the first time it has criminalized the sharing of deepfakes.

Increasingly accessible and powerful image- and video-generating AIs have led to a rise in deepfake porn generation and abuse, driving concern about harms linked to this type of AI-enabled technology.

Just this week, the Verge reported that the maker of the open source AI text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tweaked the software to make it harder for users to generate nude and pornographic imagery — apparently responding to the risk of the generative AI tech being used to create pornographic images of child abuse material.

But that’s just one example. Many more tools for generating pornographic deepfakes remain available.

AI is getting better at generating porn. We might not be prepared for the consequences.

From revenge porn to deepfakes

While the UK passed a law against revenue porn back in 2015 victims and campaigners have been warning for years that the regime isn’t working and applying pressure for a rethink.

This has led to some targeted changes over the years. For example, the government made ‘upskirting’ illegal via a change to the law that came into force back in 2019. While, in March, it said ‘cyberflashing’ would be added as an offence to the incoming online safety legislation.

However it has now decided further amendments are needed to expand and clarify offences related to intimate images in order to make it easier for police and prosecutors to pursue cases and to ensure legislation keeps pace with technology.

It’s acting on several Law Commission recommendations in its 2021 review of intimate image abuse.

This includes repealing and replacing current legislation with new offences the government believes will low the bar for successful prosecutions, including a new base offence of sharing an intimate image without consent (so in this case there won’t be a requirement to prove intent to cause distress); along with two more serious offences based on intent to cause humiliation, alarm, or distress and for obtaining sexual gratification.

The planned changes will also create two specific offences for threatening to share and installing equipment to enable images to be taken; and criminalize the non-consensual sharing of manufactured intimate images (aka deepfakes).

The government says around 1 in 14 adults in England and Wales have experienced a threat to share intimate images, with more than 28,000 reports of disclosing private sexual images without consent recorded by police between April 2015 and December 2021.

It also points to the rise in abusive deepfake porn — noting one example of a website that virtually strips women naked receiving 38 million hits in the first eight months of 2021.

A growing number of UK lawmakers and campaign groups have been calling for a ban on the use of AI to nudify women since abusive use of the tech emerged — as this BBC report into one such site, called DeepSukebe, reported last year.

Commenting on the planned changes in a statement, deputy prime minister and justice secretary, Dominic Raab, said:

We must do more to protect women and girls, from people who take or manipulate intimate photos in order to hound or humiliate them.

Our changes will give police and prosecutors the powers they need to bring these cowards to justice and safeguard women and girls from such vile abuse.

Under the government’s plan, the new deepfake porn offences will put a legal duty on platforms and services that fall under incoming online safety legislation to remove this type of material if it’s been shared on their platforms without consent — with the risk of serious penalties, under the Online Safety Bill, if they fail to remove illegal content.

Victims of revenge porn and other intimate imagery abuse have complained for years over the difficulty and disproportionate effort required on their part to track down and report images that have been shared online without their consent.

Ministers argue the proposed changes to UK law will improve protections for victims in this area.

Commenting in another supporting statement, DCMS secretary of state, Michelle Donelan, said:

Through the Online Safety Bill, I am ensuring that tech firms will have to stop illegal content and protect children on their platforms but we will also upgrade criminal law to prevent appalling offences like cyberflashing.

With these latest additions to the Bill, our laws will go even further to shield women and children, who are disproportionately affected, from this horrendous abuse once and for all.

One point to note is that the Online Safety Bill remains on pause while the government works on drafting amendments related to another aspect of the legislation.

The government has denied this delay will derail the bill’s passage through parliament —  but there’s no doubt parliamentary time is tight. So it’s unclear when (or even whether) the bill will actually become UK law, given there’s only around two years left before a General Election must be called.

Additionally, parliamentary time must also be found to make the necessary changes to UK law on intimate imagery abuse.

The government has offered no timetable for that component as yet — saying only that it will bring forward this package of changes “as soon as parliamentary time allows”, and adding that it will announce further details “in due course”.

UK expands Online Safety Bill to cover scam ads and eyes wider reforms

Surveillance powers in UK’s Online Safety Bill are risk to E2EE, warns legal expert

UK to criminalize deepfake porn sharing without consent by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/0RBH1zc

Samsung Galaxy Watch5, Watch5 Pro get a new Ball watch face with latest update

Samsung has released a new software update for the Galaxy Watch5 and Galaxy Watch5 Pro with a new Ball watch face to celebrate the ongoing FIFA World Cup 2022. The update weighs a little over 500MB and has a firmware version ending with AVK7. Once you've installed it, you can find the new Ball watch face in the Galaxy Wearable app with flags of countries participating in the FIFA World Cup 2022. The new update also comes with the November 2022 security patch, and the changelog says it includes stability codes to improve the notifications and behavior of the watches. If you...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/Jk0D7Zt

Over 70% of Apple iPhone 14 devices use Samsung OLED

Samsung Display is the dominant player in the OLED market, and one of the main reasons is Apple’s decision to use panels from the Korean maker for its iPhones. According to a new report, Samsung is going to supply over 70% of the OLEDs for the iPhone 14 devices - this includes both the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus with their regular panels and the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max with their LTPO displays. iPhone 14 Pro Max (left) and iPhone 14 Pro The Korean news outlet TheElec revealed Apple is planning to manufacture 120 million units of its latest main series. Of them, at least...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/QisjzKw

Xiaomi's Q3 financial report reveals 10% drop in revenue

Xiaomi posted its quarterly financial analysis, and the numbers show significant decline. Revenue for the July-September 2022 period was CNY70.5 billion, just south of $10 billion. Of them, 50.5% came from overseas markets. The revenue is 10% lower compared to last year. Net profit dropped even more - 59% year-on-year to RMB 2.1 billion. However that was partially doan to the RMB 829 million investment in the newly setup EV business and other projects that should bear fruit in the future. The company also revealed investments in R&D increased by 25%, compared with one year ago, and 48%...

from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/IVE0WSf

US authorities seize iSpoof, a call spoofing site that stole millions

An international police operation has dismantled an online spoofing service that allowed cybercriminals to impersonate trusted corporations to steal more than $120 million from victims.

iSpoof, which now displays a message stating that it has been seized by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, offered “spoofing” services that enabled paying users to mask their phone numbers with one belonging to a trusted organization, such as banks and tax offices, to carry out social engineering attacks.

“The services of the website allowed those who sign up and pay for the service to anonymously make spoofed calls, send recorded messages, and intercept one-time passwords,” Europol said in a statement on Thursday. “The users were able to impersonate an infinite number of entities for financial gain and substantial losses to victims.”

London’s Metropolitan Police, which began investigating iSpoof in June 2021 along with international law enforcement agencies, in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Ukraine, said it had arrested the website’s suspected administrator, named as Teejai Fletcher, 34, charged with fraud and offenses related to organized crime. Fletcher was remanded to custody and will appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on December 6.

iSpoof had around 59,000 users, which caused £48 million of losses to 200,000 identified victims in the U.K., according to the Met Police. One victim was scammed out of £3 million, while the average amount stolen was £10,000.

Europol says the service’s operators raked in estimated profits of $3.8 million in the last 16 months alone.

The Metropolitan Police said it also used bitcoin payment records found on the site’s server to identify and arrest a further 100 U.K.-based users of the iSpoof service. The site’s infrastructure, which was hosted in the Netherlands but moved to Kyiv earlier in 2022, was seized and taken offline in a joint Ukrainian-U.S. operation earlier this month.

Police have a list of phone numbers targeted by iSpoof fraudsters and will contact potential victims via text on Thursday and Friday. The text message will ask victims to visit the Met’s website to help it build more cases.

Helen Rance of the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit said: “Instead of just taking down the website and arresting the administrator, we have gone after the users of iSpoof. Our message to criminals who have used this website is: we have your details and are working hard to locate you, regardless of where you are.”

FBI seizes notorious marketplace for selling millions of stolen SSNs

US authorities seize iSpoof, a call spoofing site that stole millions by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/xDdEXGb

LinkedIn’s new feature lets you schedule posts for later

LinkedIn is rolling out a new feature that allows users to schedule posts to send at a later time.

The Microsoft-owned social network has seemingly been testing the new feature for several months already, according to at least one online report dating back to August, but it seems that it’s now ramping up the rollout, according to a growing number of reports across social media.

Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and renowned tipster, confirmed yesterday that he was now seeing the post-scheduling feature inside the Android app and on the LinkedIn website itself. Internally at TechCrunch, it’s a bit of a mixed bag with some of us seeing the feature and others not, however it does seem to be limited to the web and Android for now.

Those that do have the feature will see a little clock icon beside the “post” button within the message compose box.

LinkedIn’s new message-scheduling feature Image Credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch

When the user clicks on the clock icon, they’re presented with an option to choose a specific date and half-hourly slot that they want to schedule their post for.

LinkedIn’s new message-scheduling feature: Choose your time Image Credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch

Marketers rejoice

While millions of marketers, influencers, and “thought leaders” the world over will no doubt rejoice at this new feature, it is worth noting that similar functionality has been available for a while already through third-party platforms such as Hootsuite and Buffer. However, not everyone is happy giving third-party platforms access to their LinkedIn accounts for data-privacy reasons — plus, native functionality is nearly always more convenient, particularly for those who only want to share a specific piece of content to their LinkedIn followers.

In truth, native post-scheduling has always been a fairly notable absence from such a widely-used social network as LinkedIn which claims some 875 million members globally. The likes of Twitter (via TweetDeck) and Facebook have offered scheduling for a while already, not to mention email clients such as Gmail which allow you to send messages while you’re fast asleep.

TechCrunch has reached out to LinkedIn for more information on the new post-scheduling feature, including when everyone can expect to have access. We’ll update here when, or if, we hear back.

LinkedIn’s new feature lets you schedule posts for later by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/jy4SDfT

Pivo powers up Nigerian freight carriers with a bespoke digital bank, gets $2M seed funding

Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in supply chains across different sectors in Africa execute orders in days but receive invoices after several weeks and sometimes months. It’s such an inefficient way of doing business that ultimately leads to cash-flow problems — and on top of that are fragmented payment collection and tracking processes.

Recently, startups have taken a top-down approach by singling out a particular sector and delivering solutions to SMEs within it. One such startup is Pivo, which helps freight carriers get paid faster by providing a bank account, a debit card and digital invoicing tools that track payments.

The startup, founded by Nkiru Amadi-Emina and Ijeoma Akwiwu in July 2021, is announcing today that it has closed a $2 million seed round. Pivo, in a statement, said it intends to use the financing to upgrade existing products, build new ones, hire talent and expand outside of Lagos, its first market and other African countries, particularly in East Africa.

Pivo provides financial services — credit, payments and expense management — to SME vendors within large manufacturing supply chains, an industry Amadi-Emina, the chief executive officer, plied her trade before starting the one-year-old startup, which has raised $2.55 million since launch.

In 2017, Amadi-Emina launched an on-demand delivery platform targeted at e-commerce brands in North and Central Africa, which subsequently got acquired by Kobo360, one of Africa’s most prominent e-logistics players. It was during her time at Kobo360 — first as an enterprise account manager and up until she left as head of port operations — that she witnessed the glaring liquidity problems that existed at both ends of the logistics supply chain. Truckers need cash advances from logistics companies such as Kobo360, Lori Systems and MVX to move cargo; meanwhile, these companies also require manufacturers to pay on time for distributing cargo to truckers.

“In most cases, we found out that managing cash flow was the primary issue for these businesses — it was either nonexistent or just paper-based,” Amadi-Emina told TechCrunch in an interview. “A lot of the payments made were made with cash and we thought to build a digital bank that provides financial services geared towards solving these various problems for SME vendors that operate within large manufacturing supply chains, starting first and foremost with the logistics providers, and then gradually moving to the supplier pockets and at the tail end of things.”

YC’s latest batch cuts African startup presence by more than half

Pivo leverages manufacturing supply chain relationships and deploys financial services to the SMEs within them, mostly truckers in this instance. The credit play of its platform, Pivo Capital, serves as an early payment alternative for truckers and allows logistics companies to deal with any upfront costs — such as diesel and driver’s allowance — typically incurred during operations. Pivo Business, its payments reconciliation arm, helps these small businesses to facilitate payments via peer-to-peer transfers and track payments with debit cards with spend controls. Amadi-Emina explained that all these features will drive Pivo to capture a sizable portion of a $4 billion addressable market opportunity.

It’s a huge market where Pivo has the first-mover advantage. And though it doesn’t seem to have any noteworthy challengers in the freight sector, startups such as Duplo, another YC alum, whose customers are SMEs in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space, pose serious competition in the long run when the platforms seek out other sectors to replicate growth. That said, within its sector, there’s also some concern that e-logistics companies can construct a similar platform in-house (case in point, Kobo360’s Payfasta).

“As a plug-and-play and embedded solution, we’ve always been more complimentary than competitive,” the chief executive told TechCrunch when questioned about Pivo’s chances if e-logistics firms launch a competing product. “If you look at e-logistics firms, the goal for them is to move towards a platform approach and if at any point in time they want to unlock financial services, we tell them to come to PIVO for that instead of going to the traditional banks.”

The Pivo team

The freight carrier–focused digital bank currently serves about 500 SMEs as direct customers and makes revenue by charging interest on capital and fees on payments processed. Amadi-Emina said Pivo Capital has disbursed over $3 million to SMEs and currently records a 98% repayment rate while transaction volume on Pivo Business grew over 400% between April and September this year. The startup has registered a total volume of $4.7 million from July to date.

What’s next for the female-led startup? More growth, according to its CEO. The company is working on Pivo+, a package of value-added services that will turn Pivo into a full-fledged financial services platform. Daniel Block, an investment principal at Mercy Corps, one of the investors in this round, thinks Pivo is designed to become such a platform because the startup’s “commitment to unattended supply chain SMEs would enable it to rapidly carve out a deep moat in the competitive fintech lending space.”

Other investors in the seed round include Precursor Ventures, Vested World, FoundersX, and Y Combinator, where Amadi-Emina and Ijeoma Akwiwu have accomplished an impressive feat of being the first all-female founded team the famed accelerator has backed in Nigeria — and the second in Africa after the defunct Ghanaian startup Tress.

“It is a great thing that we were able to break that barrier as a female-led start-up. Getting into YC gave us validation as founders and cemented the fact that women can be at the helm of affairs in the tech space,” said Amadi-Emina of the achievement. “Tech is a male-dominated space and all these man-made barriers exist that serve to keep women out. Getting into YC, with the news amplified not just locally but internationally means more people get to see strong female representation coming from Nigeria. We’re glad that a female founder somewhere looks at us and gains an awareness that it is possible that if you keep putting in the hard work, applying yourself and have the numbers to back it all up, you can achieve what you set out to.”

What has KOBO360 been up to in the last 2 years?

Pivo powers up Nigerian freight carriers with a bespoke digital bank, gets $2M seed funding by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/mJRn69Z