Year: 2018

Amazon is the latest tech giant to be targeted by a legal challenge in the UK related to gig economy working practices.

The UK’s GMB Union is filing suit on behalf of couriers for three delivery companies used by Amazon — accusing the suppliers of making bogus claims that the delivery drivers were self employed, and thus denying them employment rights such as the national minimum wage and holiday pay.

The three Amazon suppliers in question are: Prospect Commercials Limited, Box Group Limited and Lloyd Link Logistics Limited.

The GMB Union says one of the drivers involved in the case recounted his experience of leaving the house at 6am, not returning from work until 11pm — and still having £1 per undelivered parcel deducted from his wages.

On more than one occasion the driver was also told he would not be paid if he did not complete a route — and it said he had sometimes driven when “half asleep at the wheel” in order to ensure he got paid.

Two of the three claimants in the lawsuit are also claiming whistleblower status, saying they were dismissed after they raised concerns about working practices. Among their claims are that —

• the number of parcels allocated to drivers resulted in excessive hours and/or driving unsafely to meet targets;
• drivers were expected to wait a significant time to load their vans, extending their working hours;
• drivers were driving whilst tired, which posed a threat to their safety and other road users; and
• drivers were being underpaid and not being paid amounts that they were contractually entitled to

The GMB Union says these whistleblowing claims are also being brought directly against Amazon on the basis that it was the company who determined the way the drivers should work.

In a statement, Tim Roache, GMB general secretary, told us: “Amazon is a global company that makes billions. It’s absolutely galling that they refuse to afford the people who make that money for them even the most basic rights, pay and respect. The day to day reality for many of our members who deliver packages for Amazon, is unrealistic targets, slogging their guts out only to have deductions made from their pay when those targets aren’t met and being told they’re self-employed without the freedom that affords.

“Companies like Amazon and their delivery companies can’t have it both ways — they can’t decide they want all of the benefits of having an employee, but refuse to give those employees the pay and rights they’re entitled to. Guaranteed hours, holiday pay, sick pay, pension contributions are not privileges companies can dish out when they fancy. They are the legal right of all UK workers, and that’s what we’re asking the courts to rule on.”

Amazon UK declined to answer any specific questions but a spokesperson sent us this statement:

Our delivery providers are contractually obligated to ensure drivers they engage receive the National Living Wage and are expected to pay a minimum of £12 per hour, follow all applicable laws and driving regulations and drive safely. Allegations to the contrary do not represent the great work done by around 100 small businesses generating thousands of work opportunities for delivery drivers across the UK.

Amazon is proud to offer a wide variety of work opportunities across Britain—full-time or part-time employment, or be your own boss. Last year we created 5,000 new permanent jobs on top of thousands of opportunities for people to work independently with the choice and flexibility of being their own boss—either through Amazon Logistics, Amazon Flex, or Amazon Marketplace.

The legal challenge is just the latest in the UK related to gig economy employment classifications. The most high profile to date involves Uber — which in October 2016 lost an employment tribunal which had challenged the self-employed status of a group of Uber drivers, with judges deeming them to be workers.

Uber has also since lost an appeal against the ruling but is continuing to appeal. Yet at the same time the company has announced personal injury and illness insurance products for drivers and riders in region — in what looks very much like an effort to shrink its legal liabilities as gig economy conditions come under increased legal and political scrutiny in Europe.

Complaints related to gig economy working conditions — and including delivery companies specifically — have been facing parliamentary scrutiny in the UK for many months now.

In parallel, the UK government has been reviewing employment law, including to take account of technology-driven changes to work and working patterns. And in February it announced a package of labor market reforms intended to “build an economy that works for everyone” — with the government making itself accountable for what it dubbed “good quality work” not just the quantity of jobs that are available.

The reforms were billed as expanding workers rights — with the government claiming that “millions” of workers would get new day-one rights, as well as having their rights bolstered by tougher enforcement for sick and holiday pay.

Although it also announced four consultations to help feed the reforms. So their full and final shape isn’t clear yet. And court decisions flowing from gig economy legal challenges are likely to be influential in shaping the future employment law.

Amazon has faced other concerns related to its working practices in the UK. Earlier this month the FT reported on a separate GMB Union investigation related to working practices inside Amazon’s UK warehouses — which have been the focus of long-standing concerns over pay and working conditions.

The union filed Freedom of Information requests with ambulance services near the warehouses and said it found that ambulances had been called to the centers 600 times in the last three years. According to its investigation there were 115 call-outs to just one Amazon center, in Rugeley, near Birmingham, which employs more than 1,800 people. Whereas it said it found just eight ambulance calls over the same period from a nearby Tesco warehouse — where 1,300 people work.

However Amazon told the newspaper that most of the call-outs were associated with “personal health events”, rather than being work related, adding: “It is simply not correct to suggest that we have unsafe working conditions based on this data or on unsubstantiated anecdotes.”

FinCompare, the German fintech startup that offers a comparison platform for SME financing, has closed €10 million in Series A funding. The round is led by ING Ventures, the venture capital arm of dutch bank ING. The company’s previous backers Speedinvest, and UNIQA Ventures also followed on.

The comparison site currently only operates in Germany and since entering the market in February 2017 says it has attracted more than 2,500 customers and has processed more than one billion Euros. The new capital will be used by FinCompare to invest in its IT platform, including expanding the team, and for further European expansion.

The FinCompare platform itself follows a pretty traditional price comparison model, letting small to medium-sized businesses find, compare and even close a variety of financing options such as credit, leasing, factoring and finetrading. The products on offer are from more than 200 banks, alternative financial service providers, and development banks online.

The comparison platform claims to be independent, even if — like most comparison sites — FinCompare receives a kick back for any brokered loan or other financing solution in the form of commission from its financing partners. The fintech is also keen to talk up its independence in light of backing from ING Ventures, noting that remaining neutral in terms of the products it pushes is essential for any comparison platform.

ING’s investment in FinCompare is being positioned as part of the bank’s wider digitalization strategy: “ING Ventures was founded with the aim to invest in fintechs who establish a unique customer experience. Further, the investment in FinCompare enables us to expand our presence in the SME-segment in Germany,” says Benoit Legrand, CEO of ING Ventures.

Legrand also says the German SME industry is among the most attractive in Europe. “Here we can set incentives together with FinCompare and make life easier for businesses. This investment helps ING in the implementation of the bank’s strategy to become the market-leading platform for financing needs,” he adds.

Meanwhile, I understand FinCompare’s planned European expansion will see it eye up the german speaking markets of Austria and Switzerland during the next few months. Netherlands and Poland are also on the list, along with the U.K. “We are planning to launch in the U.K. in 2019, perhaps even through an acquisition,” FinCompare founder and CEO Stephan Heller tells me. Competitors in the U.K. include Fundingoptions, and Capitalise.

You don’t sign up to a bank account every day. And yet, German startup N26 has managed to attract 1 million clients across Europe. They generate €1 billion in transaction volume every month ($1.17 billion).

It took N26 only nine months to grow from 500,000 to 1 million. And the company now plans to have 5 million users by 2020.

It’s an aggressive goal, but N26 plans to expand beyond the Eurozone. The company confirms that customers based in the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to create an N26 account in the coming months.

While N26 announced a new metal card at TechCrunch Disrupt in December 2017, the card has only been available to some customers. Everybody will be able to sign up for a metal card within the next few weeks.

Revolut is still slightly ahead of N26, but both companies are growing quite rapidly. N26 currently gets 2,500 new users every day. Back in February, Revolut said it was attracting between 6,000 and 8,000 new users per day. The company now has nearly 2 million users.

Of course, you can’t really compare Revolut with N26 as Revolut isn’t technically a bank account. It’s much easier to sign up to Revolut as you don’t need to initiate a video call to verify your identity.

But it’s clear that both companies are doing incredibly well right now when it comes to growth.

Several years ago Google X engineer Max Braun published a medium post on a smart mirror he made and now he’s back with a new version that’s smaller and smarter. This is a smart mirror I can get behind though I still find smart mirrors completely frivolous.

He published his project on Medium where he explains the process and the parts a person would need to build their own. This isn’t a project for everyone, but Max gives enough instructions that most enterprising builders should be able to hack something similar together.

I recently reviewed a smart mirror and found it a bit silly but still useful. Ideally, like in Max’s smart mirrors, the software is passive and always available. Users shouldn’t have to think about interacting with the devices; the right information should be displayed automatically. It’s a balancing act.

At this point, smart mirrors are little more than Android tablets placed behind a two-way mirror. Retail models are expensive to be buy and hardly worth it since a person’s phone or voice assistant can probably provide the same information. After all, how many devices does a person really need to tell them the weather forecast?

Three short days — that’s all that stands between you and attending TC Tel Aviv 2018 — our inaugural day-long mobility intensive taking place on June 7. Well, three days and a ticket. You will need one of those. We’ve created a stellar, info-packed agenda that you won’t want to miss, so go and buy your general admission ticket right now.

Why mobility? It’s one of the fastest growing, most disruptive technologies on the planet. Why Tel Aviv? Because Israel’s leading the charge on boundary-pushing mobility and everything that hot topic entails. You’ll hear from some of the people designing and building Israel’s latest mobility technologies — autonomous vehicles, sensors, drones, security and maybe even a flying car or two.

You’ll hear from government officials pushing the edge of alternative transportation and smart mobility, and you’ll hear venture capitalists discussing how mobility startups can scale and navigate international expansion. An entire day focused on mobility tech’s opportunities, challenges and possibilities.

Noted speakers include Uri Levine of Waze, Raj Kapoor of Lyft and Chemi Peres, co-founder and managing general partner of Pitango. You’ll also hear from Anat Lea Bonshtien, chairman and director of Israel’s Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative, Fiona Darmon, COO JVP venture funds, and Natalie Refuah, a partner with the growth capital investment firm Viola Growth.

Don’t miss our exhibit hall — more commonly known as Startup Alley. That’s where you’ll find 100 early-stage startups showcasing their products, platforms and services across the tech spectrum, including cybersecurity, AR/VR, mobility, robotics, fintech, biotech, artificial intelligence, blockchain and more.

There’s still time to join your peers in Startup Alley. A Startup Demo Table Ticket costs 1,700 ILS, and it buys you two attendee tickets, one demo table at the event, a tablecloth, a tabletop sign and the best networking opportunity in Tel Aviv. We only have a few tables available, so click on the ticket link and take your place in Startup Alley.

TechCrunch Tel Aviv takes place on June 7, 2018 at the Tel Aviv Convention Center, Pavilion 10. You have only three days left to score general admission tickets. We’ll see you in Tel Aviv!

TransferWise might be best known for its international money transfer app, but the European fintech unicorn has always had ambitions of being a broader platform play entirely agnostic of how you access the service. This includes providing banks with access to the TransferWise API to power their own international money transfer features. However, perhaps understandably — given that the company also competes with banks — these partnerships have been small in number.

With that said, today TransferWise is adding what looks like its most significant banking partner to date: BPCE Groupe, France’s second largest bank. The partnership will see TransferWise provide international money transfer services for BPCE Groupe’s 15 million or so customers, which, the company notes, is the first time a major bank in Europe will directly integrate TransferWise’s API into its mobile banking apps.

TransferWise’s existing bank partnerships are with Estonia’s LHV, and German challenger bank N26. It was due to add U.K. challenger bank Starling to the list, but the integration with the bank’s app never materialised and TechCrunch learned last week that the partnership has now dissolved entirely.

Meanwhile, the partnership between Groupe BPCE/Natixis Payments and TransferWise isn’t set to be launched until the beginning of 2019. Once it does launch, the bank’s customers be able to send money outside of the eurozone at TransferWise’s standard fees via the banks’ app.

“Both TransferWise and BPCE are committed to offering the best possible service and the fairest deal to their customers and this collaboration is an important step in making that a reality for everyone,” says TransferWise. “The service will enable BPCE customers to send money to over 60 countries at TransferWise’s usual low fee of 0.5 per cent on most currency routes and at the mid-market exchange rate”.

Adds Kristo Käärmann, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise: “TransferWise has a mission to make money move around the world as fast and as cheaply as email. This partnership is a momentous step on that journey – for the first time a major mainstream bank is offering its customers the chance to benefit from TransferWise’s lightning fast, low cost service. It’s proof that we can scale our technology, which will allow other big institutions to seamlessly integrate with the service”.

On that note, it will be interesting to see how TransferWise continues to walk the tight rope of partnering whilst, in some ways and with increasing feature parity, competing with the same potential partners.

The original target for the company’s consumer and business money transfer app was incumbent banks who typically charge high fees for international money transfers and aren’t always transparent about the way they mark up the underlying exchange rate. And more recently it has launched its “Borderless” account, a multi-currency banking product that includes a debit card and lets you deposit, send and spend money. However, TransferWise co-founder and Chairman Taavet Hinrikus has always insisted that the Borderless account is designed to work as a companion product to your main current account and not a fully fledged bank replacement.

Today at Computex in Taipei, Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang announced the availability of a drastically upgraded version of Issac. Nvidia calls the next-gen robotics system the next step in autonomous machines as it reportedly brings AI capabilities to a new set of industries.

The company has been talking about this platform some time, touting its capabilities and use cases. A Jetson Xavier SoC provides the processing with more than 9 billion transistors, it delivers over 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second). Inside the Xavier is a Volta Tensor Core GPU, an eight-core ARM64 CPU, dual NVDLA deep learning accelerators, an image processor, a vision processor and a video processor.

The platform developer kit will be available in August for $1,299 and includes the Isaac robotics software.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time,” said Huang in a released statement. “Its first phase will enable new levels of software automation that boost productivity in many industries. Next, AI, in combination with sensors and actuators, will be the brain of a new generation of autonomous machines. Someday, there will be billions of intelligent machines in manufacturing, home delivery, warehouse logistics and much more.”

The Isaac Robotics Software includes the Isaac SDK, a collection of APIs and tools to develop robotic algorithm software, the Isaac IMX, Nvidia-developed robotics software, and the Isaac Sim, a virtual simulation software to train autonomous machines.

The availability of the developer kit should mark a turning point of robotics development. It provides serious processing power and capabilities in a ready-made package.

Facebook has responded to a New York Times story that raises privacy concerns about the company’s device-integrated APIs, saying that it “disagree[s] with the issues they’ve raised about these APIs.”

Headined “Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends,” the New York Times article criticizes the privacy protections of device-integrated APIs, which were launched by Facebook a decade ago. Before app stores became common, the APIs enabled Facebook to strike data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers, including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung, that allowed them to offer Facebook features, such as messaging, address books and the like button, to their users.

But they may have given access to more data than assumed, says the article. New York Times reporters Gabriel J.X. Dance, Nicholas Confessore and Michael LaForgia write that “the partnerships, whose scope has not been previously reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections,” as well as its compliance with a consent decree it struck with the Federal Trade Commission in 2011. The FTC is currently investigating Facebook’s privacy practices in light of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

“Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders,” the New York Times story says. “Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.”

Facebook said in April it would begin winding down access to its device-integrated APIs, but the New York Times says that many of those partnerships are still in effect.

Facebook is already under intense scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators, including the FTC, because of the Cambridge Analytica revelation, which raised serious concerns about the public APIs used by third-party developers and the company’s data-sharing policies.

“In the furor that followed, Facebook’s leaders said that the kind of access exploited by Cambridge in 2014 was cut off by the next year, when Facebook prohibited developers from collecting information from users’ friends,” the New York Times says. “But the company officials did not disclose that Facebook had exempted the makers of cellphones, tablets and other hardware from such restrictions.”

Facebook told the New York Times that data sharing through device-integrated APIs adhered to its privacy policies and the 2011 FTC agreement. The company also told the newspapers that it knew of no cases where a partner had misused data. Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data, including data from their Facebook friends, on their own servers, but said that those practices abided by strict agreements.

In a post on Facebook’s blog, vice president of product partnerships Ime Archibong reiterates the company’s stance that the device-integrated APIs were controlled tightly.

“Partners could not integrate the user’s Facebook features with their devices without the user’s permission. And our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built,” he continued. “Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends. We are not aware of any abuse by these companies.”

But the New York Times report claims that Facebook’s partners were able to retrieve user data on relationship status, religion, political leanings and upcoming events, and were also able to get data about their users’ Facebook friends, even if they did not have permission.

“Tests by The Times showed that the partners requested and received data in the same way other third parties did,” it says. “Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties.”

There are already many, many reasons to attend TechCrunch’s first blockchain event this coming July 6 in Zug, Switzerland. You’ll hear from industry leaders including Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, but here’s a further sweetener: we will have a follow-on event the very next day.

We’re excited to announce that we’ll hold an Ethereum Meetup on July 7, the day after the ‘TC Sessions: Blockchain’ event. TechCrunch is producing this event with support from the Ethereum Foundation and other members of the Ethereum community.

To recap: the TC Sessions: Blockchain event takes place July 6 in Zug, the Swiss Canton know as ‘Crypto Valley,’ and it’ll be followed by the Ethereum Meetup produced by TechCrunch on July 7th from 1-6pm at the Casino, the same venue as the blockchain event the day before.

A follow-on meetup is a first for our single-day ‘TC Sessions’ events, which TechCrunch produces to cover important emerging topics like robotics, AR/VR and tech diversity. The second-day event in Zug reflects the strong demand we’ve seen from readers who are keen to further explore and understand the blockchain space.

This meetup will feature core developers and leaders from the Ethereum ecosystem, including Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Foundation developer Karl Floersch, and others. It will cover a range of topics on the technical side, including presentations and discussions around issues of scaling, protocol improvements, and improvements to consensus among other topics.

We’ll have full details on the agenda very soon so stay patient.

Attendees of the TC Sessions: Blockchain event who wish to attend the Ethereum Meetup will need to purchase a separate pass. Tickets are available now for the meetup and can be purchased here — they are priced at 50 CHF plus VAT, that’s around $53 at current rates. We can’t wait to see you there.

There are a limited number of sponsorship opportunities open for the Ethereum Meetup produced by TechCrunch. If you are interested in sponsoring the event, please fill out this form.

Locus, a three-year-old startup that helps companies map out their logistics, has pulled in $4 million in funding to grow its global footprint outside of its native India.

The round is described as pre-Series B and it was provided by Rocketship.vc, Recruit Strategic Partners, pi Ventures and DSP Group’s Hemendra Kothari. Existing backers Blume Ventures, Exfinity Venture Partners, BeeNext and growX ventures also took part. Bengaluru-based Locus previously raised a $2.75 million Series A in 2016.

The company was founded in 2015 by Nishith Rastogi and Geet Garg, two ex Amazon engineers who met when working on machine learning for AWS. Initially the duo developed a safety app that mapped out optimal routes to let a ride-hailing customer sense if their driver was going rogue and not sticking to the designated trip, but it later pivoted into logistics tracking after feedback from enterprise users.

Today, Locus is focused on helping customers optimize the operational side of their logistics, whether that is moving people, goods or more at scale. It doesn’t cover ride-hailing and it isn’t necessarily focused on ensuring the faster route. Instead, it tackles complex challenges such as helping FCMGs optimize travel for their management — the key focus being on spending as much time in stores for meetings — or helping organizations move large orders by figuring out how many trucks are needed, which routes are optimal, etc.

Co-founder and CEO Rastogi described the role as that of “chief supply chain officer.”

“We want to automate all human decisions around logistics,” he explained to TechCrunch in an interview, adding that the business makes use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to suss out routes and operational approaches.

He added that the machine-based approach can trump human logic in some cases, thanks to the sheer amounts of data it is based on. In one example, he explained how the Locus system had advised trucks taking a long haul trip to return to the client HQ using a different route. Initially the team figured there was a problem, but on closer inspection they found that the return route cut out a steep hill which, while fine to travel down on the outbound led, was best avoided on the return trip.

That decision, Rastogi said, was based on travel data that the system had observed and might not ordinarily have been made by human-based analysts. To help with the system, the company also provides a $500-priced scanner — “SizeUp,” pictured below — for measuring packages. The idea is to not only make the tech portable but affordable enough that it can be used companies of all sizes.

The company began to expand to overseas markets this year with moves into North America — both Canada and the U.S. — and Southeast Asia. Rastogi said the new capital will go towards expanding its presence in those markets. Later this year, he said, Locus plans to raise a “significant” Series B round, among the objectives for that is a dedicated technical team in Tel Aviv to complement the work happening in India.