Month: June 2019

File ice cream vans under ‘things I never thought posed a significant risk to the environment but might actually.’ Nissan has developed a new concept vehicle that addresses the problem of all the emissions generated by conventional ice cream vans, and older models in particular, which pump out a lot of greenhouse gases while idling in order to just make sure the ice cream on board stays iced.

For the project, Nissan’s working with ice cream company Mackie’s of Scotland, a purveyor of fine frozen treats that has already taken steps to reduce its footprint using dairy from its own, family-run farm that’s powered by energy from renewable sources including wind and solar. From the sustainably-made product, to the new zero-emission delivery van conceived and built by Nissan, the companies are calling the approach a ‘sky to scoop’ way to reduce their carbon footprint.

To start, Nissan took their e-NV200 light duty commercial van, which itself is fully electric and provides up to 124 miles of range on a charge. For this ice cream concept, the van was modified with Nissan’s new ‘Energy Roam,’ a lithium-ion power pack that uses battery cells recovered from older Nissan EVs built from 2010 on. These repurposed power packs can each store about 0.7kWh with out put of 1kW, and two are used on board to run a built-in soft-serve machine, fridges and freezers. The power packs can be recharged either from a 230v mains power outlet (this is designed for UK use), or from solar tiles installed on the van’s roof, which can fill up the batteries in between two to four hours on their own.

Besides its all-electric power sources, the Nissan concept van includes a number of revisions of the traditional model of mobile ice cram selling, including situating the vendor outside of the van with a hatch that opens to expose the ice cream dispensing goodness. It’s also equipped with contactless payment support so you can just pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay on the go, and through an integration with What3Words, the van broadcasts its location via Twitter instead of with a jaunty jingle.

Bonus for ice cream sellers: Nissan notes that van owners could collect and store power using the on-board batteries and sell it back to the grid even when it’s not ideal weather for selling cold confections – though it’s definitely still a concept, so this is all theoretical.

It started with a hashtag. Amande de Cadenet, photographer, author, and TV host, was spending time with her sister, a director and photographer in her own right, when an ACLU study on the lack of diversity among directors was published in the NYT Magazine, with de Cadenet’s sister an interviewee in the cover story.

“It’s about damn time,” she said to her sister, launching a conversation that would re-route de Cadenet’s path forward. Her experience as a photographer herself, able to book editorial jobs but rarely getting paid gigs, cemented what she had just read in the magazine article.

“The glass ceiling was so low that I couldn’t get off my knees,” she explained of that time.

Over the next 48 hours she would design a logo and a font and contact everyone in her creative network, brands and artists alike, to answer the call when she tweeted a call to action. She simply asked for female photographers and videographers to share their photos alongside the hashtag #girlgaze.

“The majority of pictures taken of females are taken by men,” said De Cadenet. “If the goal is for us to be accepted and embrace who we are, our flaws and all, we’re never going to see those pieces of ourselves depicted in media when taken from the perspective that doesn’t have an experience of those things.”

Thousands of photos flooded in in the fist 72 hours and were re-shared on the GirlGaze Instagram. It was de Cadenet’s way of highlighting the amazing work being done by creative women, and showing the different story that is told in content created from the perspective of a female. But more importantly, it’s how she built an army of 200,000+ female-identifying photographers and directors to eventually launch the GirlGaze Network.

Today, at Cannes Lion festival, nearly three years later, de Cadenet did just that.

The GirlGaze Network allows brands to sign up and find diverse, female-identifying and non-binary creatives to generate amazing content. The network has been in beta for the past few months, and was integral in a global campaign from Dove, which employed 400 photographers and directors across 62 countries.

In essence, the GirlGaze Network acts as representation for a group of people who have not gotten equal pay or equal respect within their field. It also gives brands the opportunity to right the ship and hire diverse creative talent to generate their troves of content, whether it’s for social media, a campaign, or otherwise.

Here’s how it works:

Creatives pay nothing to be on the platform and share their portfolio.

Brands join the platform through a paid subscription, where they can see the portfolios of thousands of photographers, directors and creatives. These brands have access to an à la carte menu to establish what kind of jobs they’d like to post, putting the compensation quote up at the very beginning so that whomever receives the job is paid a fair amount for the gig.

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Big brands looking to hire a large amount of people, as Dove did with the #showus campaign, join the Enterprise tier to customize their exact offer, including per-project talent as well as full-time positions.

Brands can search for talent by title, skills, location, and availability. But perhaps even more interesting, the GirlGaze Network has an ‘Unbiased Browsing’ feature, allowing brands who genuinely want to rid themselves of unconscious bias to browse portfolios only, without access to any details about the creative herself.

GirlGaze also handles all of the back-end nitty gritty, including casting and NDAs and all the other paperwork involved.

“The biggest challenge for GirlGaze is to let brands and companies know that they’re not doing this underserved community a favor by hiring them,” said De Cadenet. “This community creates work that is incredibly impactful, really powerful, smart, beautiful. Ultimately, it’s going to add to the bottom line of their business because we’re in a time where the world is very attuned to what is BS and what isn’t. This community tells stories. They have a perspective.”

Thus far, GirlGaze has worked with brands such as Levi’s, Nike, Google, and Warby Parker, and has brought in more than $1 million in pay to their network of female-identifying and non-binary creatives.

One such creative is photographer Nolwen Cifuentes, who has been following GirlGaze from the start and also worked on the Dove campaign.

“This is for really cool brands that want female photographers so they can focus on a story they didn’t have before,” said Cifuentes. “I’ve heard criticism against brands from people who believe they might be queer baiting or using inclusion as a trend. But the thing about GirlGaze is that they are genuinely passionate about female photographers and the stories being told by female photographers, so the brands that come to them are going to be genuine, as well.”

The UK government has delayed the introduction of mandatory age verification for accessing online pornography — blaming an administrative cock-up.

The controversial scheme had been due to launch on July 15, after an earlier implementation date also came and went. Although in this instance it does not appear the policy has been derailed by the technical challenges around online age verification.

Giving a statement in the House of Commons this morning, digital minister Jeremy Wright said the government failed to notify the European Commission of age verification standards it expects companies to meet — in line with EU law.

Not having done so means it can’t legally introduce the policy at this stage.

“It has come to my attention in recent days that an implementation process was not undertaken for an element of this policy and I regret to say this will delay the commencement date,” he told parliament — adding that the error is expected to result in a delay “in region of six months”.

Apologising for the delay, Wright emphasized that government remains committed to the policy.

“This is not a change of policy or a lessening of this government’s determination for these changes to come about,” he said.

“Many [people] have campaigned passionately for age verification to come into force as soon as possible to ensure children are protected from seeing pornography they shouldn’t — I apologise to them all that these measures will not be brought in as soon as they and I will like.”

“In the mean time there is nothing to stop responsible providers of online pornography from implementing age verification mechanisms on a voluntary basis,” he added. “I hope and expect that many will do so.”

In the statement on age verification, Wright also referenced other policy measures the government has in train which he said will help protect children from seeing inappropriate content online — such as the Online Harms white paper, published in April.

He said a draft code of practice on child online safety will be published ahead of the new regulatory framework coming in — “to set clear standards” for online child safety.

He also noted that the technical challenge of accurate online age verification had been raised during the consultation on the white paper — and said he has commissioned new guidance that will be published in the fall “about the use of technology to ensure children are protected from inappropriate content online”.

As we reported in March, tech companies including Snap have been participating under NDA in a government working group on age verification.

Wright said the government would publish a response to the consultation by the end of the year. And that legislation would be introduced as soon as parliament time allowed after that.

“The new regulatory framework for online harms announced in the white paper will be introduced as soon as possible because it will make a significant difference to action taken by companies to keep children safe online,” he said.

“Age verification for online pornography needs to happen, and I believe it is the clear will of the house and those we represent that it should, and in the clear interests of our children that it must.”

As businesses continue to move more of their computing and data to the cloud, one of the startups that has made a name for itself as a provider of cloud-based solutions to protect and manage those IT assets has raised a big round of funding to build its business.

Druva, which provides software-as-a-service-based data protection, backup and management solutions, has raised $130 million in a round of funding that CEO and founder Jaspreet Singh says takes the company “well past the $1 billion mark” in terms of its valuation.

Alongside this news, it’s also announcing an acquisition to continue building out the storage part of its business (one of several product areas that it’s developing): it’s acquiring CloudLanes, a startup that was backed by Microsoft and others, for an undisclosed sum.

The funding is being led by Viking Global Investors, the hedge fund and investment firm, with participation from two other new investors, Neuberger Berman and Atreides Capital; and existing investors including Riverwood Capital, Tenaya Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners (who were part of Druva’s last round of $80 million in 2017). The company, Singh said, is now at a $100 million annual run rate. Although he would not disclose revenues, he said it’s now in a strong position to consider going public as its next step (or finally entertaining one of the many acquisition offers Singh admitted Druva gets).

“As we look at growth and the potential of what we are doing, the next obvious step is to look at public markets in the next 12 to 18 months,” he said in an interview.

The strong numbers (in terms of funding raised, valuation and performance) are a sign not just of Druva’s own business health, but of the opportunity it is tackling.

Spurred by a number of factors — the unfortunate rise of malicious hacking and data breaches, a massive wave of computing services that are creating mountains of data that can now be parsed for insights, and a big move to cloud computing — the data protection industry is booming, with IDC predicting that it will collectively be worth $55 billion by 2020. Druva itself works with some 4,000 organizations today, with many in the mid-market in terms of size, with customers ranging across a number of verticals and including the likes of the Build Group, the American Cancer Society and the Port of New Orleans.

With a huge opportunity like this, it’s also an unsurprisingly crowded area in terms of competition. Singh points out that others looking to provide services in the same area include huge incumbents like CommVault and IBM, as well as newer entrants like Rubrik (itself on something of a fundraising tear in the last few years to capitalise on the same opportunity).

Singh notes that Druva stands out from these because it is the only one in the pack that started remains an exclusively cloud-based, SaaS offering, meaning a company requires no hardware changes or appliance purchases in order to use it. While that’s an area that everyone is now moving into, his argument is that having started out here gives Druva a level of expertise and experience that cannot be matched by others — an important point when data protection is at stake.

The reality of today’s enterprise world is that there are a number of companies that are very far from being “in the cloud”. Despite the song and dance that we hear all the time about how cloud is the future, they are more often than not either relying entirely still on on-premises computing, or a hybrid solution. As Singh talks about it, this is almost irrelevant to what Druva is offering, and is in fact a segue to helping those companies come to trust and move more off premises, by giving them a strong example of how a cloud-based solution not only works, but can be less expensive and better than on-premise alternatives.

This is also the belief that is propelling Druva to expanding into newer areas of business. Singh noted that business intelligence is going to be a big focus for the company, which makes sense: now that there is a lot of data being stored and managed by Druva, the next obvious move is to help parse it for insights. Security and making a wider move to secure endpoints are also areas that the company is considering, he said.

“We invest in companies based on a thorough assessment of their business models and fundamentals, the quality of their management teams, and cyclical and secular industry trends,” said Harish Belur, Managing Director, Riverwood Capital, in a statement. “Druva is doing something unique and special and, as a result, has grown at a phenomenal rate over recent years, all while keeping the trust and loyalty of its enterprise customers around the globe. We know this market is taking off and we continue to invest in Druva because we are sure it has the right product, executive team, and market execution to maintain leadership in the industry.”

I asked if companies like Amazon or Microsoft are friends, or frenemies, considering that they have a big part to play in cloud services. Singh said that so far, so good, since they are all more focused on infrastructure — or at least that’s where most of their strength has been up to now. Amazon, in particular, is a strong partner to the company he said, where Druva is often an early adopter of new tools of Amazon’s, and the AWS sales team regularly suggests Druva to customers for data protection and management services. Druva even happened to include a quote from the company in its news release:

“Druva is a leading Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network,” said Mike Clayville, Vice President Worldwide Commercial Sales and Business Development, Amazon Web Services, Inc, in a statement. “Druva’s solutions powered by AWS are changing the way data is managed and protected at thousands of companies globally. We’d like to congratulate Druva on its latest fund raise, and look forward to innovating with Druva to create new solutions that benefit our customers.”

Seems like that could be one to watch as well as both companies continue their cloud expansion, both independently and in competition with others.

 

In a bid to expand its educational offerings, iRobot has acquired local Massachusetts-based startup, Root Robotics. The company is the creator of the eponymous coding robot, a two-wheeled device designed to draw on whiteboards and other surfaces, scanning colors, playing music and otherwise playing out coding instructions.

We had the company at our CES stage last year, and it managed to stand out among a sea of educational ‘bots at the event. iRobot clearly sees a lot of value in the Wyss Institute at Harvard University spin-off, and will integrate the startup’s offering into its portfolio immediately.

“The acquisition of Root Robotics allows iRobot to broaden the impact of its STEM efforts with a commercially available, educational robotic platform already being used by educators, students and parents,” iRobot CEO Colin Angle said in a press release. “Root also helps increase the reach of iRobot’s educational robot line by offering a proven system for people of all ages, including students in elementary school.”

iRobot’s no stranger to STEM education. The company has long offered the Create robot — a hackable version of its popular Roomba platform — for schools. The addition of Root creates a far more accessible place for students to start, along with a clever recruiting method for future iRobot roboticists and engineers.

Root is currently available for $199. Details of the deal were not disclosed.

Dawn Capital has made a name for itself over the last several years for having a sharp eye when it comes to spotting interesting B2B startups in Europe before they become big, with companies like iZettle (acquired by PayPal last year for $2.2 billion), Mimecast (IPO’d and now worth $2.8 billion), Collibra and Showpad among its stable. Today, it’s announcing the close of a new fund that will help it capitalise on those growing bets more directly itself.

The $125 million Opportunities Fund, as it is called, will be used by London-based Dawn to make larger investments in a smaller, cherry-picked selection of startups that it has already backed in earlier stages. It comes on the heels of Dawn also closing a bigger fund of $235 million, Dawn III, for those Series A and B rounds, and brings the total raised by the firm to $360 million for the year.

Dawn will continue to partner up with larger VCs that have led many of the later-stage rounds in its portfolio companies — follow-on investor names that have been involved in multiple Dawn companies have included Insight, Index Ventures, KPCB, Battery Ventures and Iconiq — but now it will also occasionally be taking a leading role in the rounds, or at least making investments on par with those of the partners.

The move to making bets of tens of millions on a smaller group of companies at Series C stage and beyond is part of Dawn’s ethos to provide not just money, but advice and assistance to founders to help them realise opportunities and grow into them.

“We exist to serve our founders,” said Haakon Overli, the General Partner who co-founded Dawn Capital with Norman Fiore. “They are much better at doing their jobs than the founders of 25 years ago, and we don’t want them running around fundraising all the time. Getting bigger checks means they don’t have to.”

Indeed, the closing of the Opportunities Fund highlights how the European tech ecosystem — and specifically the startup ecosystem — has evolved over the last several years. As Fiore describes it, raising smaller amounts on a rolling or more frequent basis was the norm for many founders before the rise of larger two- and three-figure million rounds came onto the scene.

Case in point: you can see the jump effect on overall funding in this report on Tech.eu. Last year saw €24.7 billion in funding for European startups. Although that was slightly down on €25 billion the year before, the number of deals dropped from 3,400 to 3,000 — meaning the average size of the deal has grown.

It was also par-for-the-course to see startups out of the region move to the US, and take on US investors, as they started to gain traction.

The reasons for decamping to the US to scale up were twofold: it is a large and cohesive market both for customers and talent, with strong channels for subsequent global expansion; but it was also a major market for funding, with a distinct lack of VCs in Europe willing or interested or able to make the larger, late-stage investments that more mature startups need to get to the next level of their growth, and later on to give the companies the push they might take either to exit to even larger companies or go public.

Fast forward to today, and that has changed, for the better. There are still a lot of startups making the move to the US, but they are often doing so in tandem with continuing to grow on this side of the pond as well. On the investment side, meanwhile, Valley investors are increasingly making the trip to this region to source and back interesting companies, and VCs here are also getting more interest from their own LPs to continue on with the good work they’ve done in sourcing interesting companies, by continuing to invest.

Dawn is riding this later wave.

“The scale and regulatory boundaries of today mean you can build huge opportunities out of Europe without going to the US,” said General Partner Josh Bell. “Software-as-a-service is a global play.”

Dawn’s track record so far with investing has put it into the top 5 percent of all firms in Europe in terms of returns. Looking ahead, it’s hoping that it can keep this place as it puts down bigger bets. The latest of these — a big investment into a B2B startup — will be coming up next week.

Nigerian motorcycle transit startup MAX.ng has raised a $7 million funding round led by Novastar Ventures, with participation of Japanese manufacturer Yamaha.

Based in Lagos, the company’s app-based platform coordinates motorcycle taxi and delivery services for individuals and businesses. Six-million of the investment is in Series A capital followed by $1 million in grants.

MAX has an extended menu for the round. “We intend to invest massively in our technology capabilities,” including the company’s payment infrastructure, CFO Guy-Bertrand Njoya told TechCrunch.

The startup will also expand to 10 cities in West Africa (starting in Ghana and Ivory Coast) and add new vehicle classes—including watercraft and three-wheeled tuk tuk taxis.

And in what could be a first in Africa’s growing motorcycle ride-hail market, MAX will use its new funding for EV development. “We’re piloting electric motorcycles in partnership with EV manufacturers and working with grid operators across Nigeria to deploy charging stations,” Njoja said.

He would not name EV partners, except to clarify Yamaha is not currently part of the e-pilot. The the research also includes renewable energy as an e-moto power source, according to Njoja. MAX’s current fleet consists primarily of Yamaha Crux Rev and Indian manufacturer Bajaj’s Pulsar motorcycles.

Co-founded in 2015 by MIT Sloan alumns Adetayo Bamiduro and Chinedu Azodah, MAX has completed over 1 million trips and is one of the largest delivery partners in West Africa for Jumia—the e-commerce unicorn that recently listed on the NYSE.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Zrosk Investment Management, and Alitheia Capital joined Novastar Ventures and Yamaha in the $7 million round—which takes MAX’s total funding to $9 million.

Yamaha confirmed its investment in MAX to TechCrunch. Part of the company’s interest in the startup connects to market research and Yamaha’s existing Nigeria operations. “We want to work with good entrepreneurs in Africa to develop new business in Africa,” Shoji Shiraishi of Yamaha Motor Company’s New Venture Business Development Section told TechCrunch.

He added that Yamaha sells and manufactures motorcycles in Nigeria. “We really want to understand local needs for motorcycles and…to support [MAX] expanding their business,” he said.

This is Yamaha’s second move in less than a year in an emerging market ride-hail company. In December it invested $150 million in Grab, a Southeast Asian two and four-wheel on demand transit company.

Yamaha’s investment in MAX suggests global interest in Africa’s two-wheel ride-hail space. Overall, the motorcycle taxi market is becoming a significant sub-sector in the continent’s mobility startup landscape.

Motorcycle transit ventures are vying to digitize a share of Africa’s boda boda and okada markets (the name for motorcycle taxis in East and West Africa)—representing a collective revenue pool of $4 billion (now) that’s expected to double by 2021, per a TechSci study.

Uber  began offering a two-wheel transit option in East Africa in 2018, around the same time Bolt (previously Taxify) started motorcycle taxi service in Kenya.

Last month MAX competitor Gokada (also based in Lagos) raised a $5.3 round and announced it would expand in East Africa. Rwanda has motorbike taxi startups SafeMotos and Yegomoto. Uganda-based motorcycle ride-hail company SafeBoda expanded into Kenya in 2018 and recently raised a Series B round, co-led by the venture arms of Germany’s Allianz and Indonesia’s Go-Jek.

On the question of how MAX (a 2018 TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa participant) will compete in a market with more players, co-founder Chinedu Azodoh named diversification and satisfying drivers. “We’re a very driver-centric business and at the end of the day the driver is where the business is at,” he said, highlighting the ability of MAX’s platform to deliver market-share to those drivers.

Azodoh also believes MAX’s mix of business delivery and personal transit offers an advantage over competitors. He noted that MAX.ng has local developer team and is always looking at new revenue opportunities. “Strategic for us is making sure we’re doing the right thing at the right time,” he said, indicating the company has already scaled up and scaled down certain service offerings in response to market needs.

“If we find that maybe there’s something else we’re missing out on, we’re happy to jump into that,” Azohdo said.

One of those areas could be development of EV mobility services for Nigeria and Africa. “The economics are promising and could offer significant value to the drivers and end-users,” MAX CFO Guy-Bertrand Njoya told TechCrunch.

So electric motorcycle taxis in African cities powered by renewable energy could become a reality. That would definitely place the continent in a unique position in the transformation of global mobility.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waymo has locked in an exclusive partnership with Renault and Nissan to research how commercial autonomous vehicles might work for passengers and packages in France and Japan.

This exclusive partnership has a deadline — the public announcement says it will last for “an initial period.” Waymo nor the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance provided details on when it might end.

For now, research is the basis of the partnership. The companies plan to research commercial, legal and regulatory issues. However, Waymo CEO John Krafcik, and by extension the company, sees this as an opening to deploy commercial services in these two countries, and possibly China and other countries.

“This is an ideal opportunity for Waymo to bring our autonomous technology to a global stage, with an innovative partner,” Krafcik said in a statement. “With the Alliance’s international reach and scale, our Waymo Driver can deliver transformational mobility solutions to safely serve riders and commercial deliveries in France, Japan, and other countries.”

Renault and Nissan plan to create joint venture Alliance-focused companies in France and Japan dedicated to autonomous vehicle mobility services.

The announcement follows a recent spate of alliances, failed deals and partnerships between a number of autonomous vehicle companies, suppliers and automakers.

In May, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles withdrew its proposal to merge with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, a 50-50 tie-up that was touted as a way to reduce costs and put more capital towards bringing next-generation technologies like self-driving cars to market.

While that merger fizzled, a deal that had been in the works between Fiat Chrysler and self-driving car startup Aurora became public. That announcement was quickly followed by a Financial Times article that reported VW had ended its partnership with Aurora.

All the while, negotiations between VW and Ford-backed Argo AI continue.

China’s driverless cars are coming for passengers in the United States. AutoX and Pony.ai just became the first Chinese companies allowed to offer fully self-driving cars in the state of California, according to notices posted on the website of the California Public Utilities Commission this week.

Started in 2016 by Princeton University professor Jianxiong Xiao, called “Professor X” by his students, AutoX is now one of China’s most well-funded autonomous driving startups alongside Pony.ai, which was co-founded in 2016 by two former executives at Baidu’s self-driving department.

AutoX said in January that it was in talks with investors to raise a lofty $100 million. Pony.ai had banked at least $214 million in funding as of April.

While more than 62 companies hold the permits to test autonomous vehicles in California, very few are actually allowed to transport people in those cars. Zoox passed a new milestone when it received the first green light to provide robotaxi services in the state six months ago. Now AutoX and Pony.ai have joined the exclusive club, bringing the number of participants in the pilot program to three.

There are a few catches though. The type of permission granted to the three companies is for the “Drivered AV Passenger Service,” which forbids companies to charge passengers for test rides and requires a safety driver behind the wheel. No entity has so far been permitted to run real driverless passenger service in California, a sign that regulators aren’t quite ready to let tech companies transport the public without human oversight.

AutoX, which is already using self-driving vehicles to deliver groceries in San Jose, is getting a headstart by introducing California’s first robotaxi service. People living in north San Jose or Santa Clara can now apply to join its early rider program and give feedback, says an instruction on its website. A spokesperson for Pony.ai told TechCrunch that the company also began offering driverless passenger services as soon as it received the permit.

Alphabet’s Waymo launched a passenger service in Phoenix last December. Like California, Arizona demands a trained test driver to assist with operations if needed. While Waymo is allowed to charge passengers, it can only ferry a vetted group of people, so the program isn’t available to everyone.

These confinements seem sensible given legal and ethical concerns raised by critics. Last year, Uber’s self-driving test vehicle struck and killed a woman in Temple, prompting the transportation giant to suspend its test drives. The incident has become a cautionary tale for startups in the field. Take Momenta, the first Chinese autonomous driving startup to pass $1 billion in valuation. The CEO requires all executives to ride a minimum number of autonomous miles themselves, so the management would put passenger safety first.

Chinese startups covet the California license for a number of reasons. First, self-driving cars are by nature data-hungry. There are only a small handful of cities worldwide which allow robotaxis on public roads, so it always helps to collect more mileages whenever permissible.

Many of these Chinese companies have also set up research and development centers in California to tap the region’s tech talent. Pony.ai, for example, deploys R&D staff and offices across Silicon Valley, Beijing and Guangzhou. AutoX opened an R&D center in Shenzhen earlier this year but still keeps development teams in San Jose.

After London and Johannesburg, startup accelerator and incubator Founders Factory is launching a third city — Paris. Once again, the company is partnering with a corporate backer. And this time, insurance company Aviva France is backing Founders Factory Paris.

Albin Serviant is heading the team in Paris and the plan is to hire 50 people. There will be more corporate backers coming soon, which should give enough runway for the next five years.

For now, given Aviva’s industry, Founders Factory Paris is going to focus on fintech startups. The company plans to develop a hybrid model between a traditional startup accelerator and a startup studio. Founders Factory has already applied this model in London and Johannesburg to launch and accelerate 100 startups.

For existing startups, you can take part in a six-month program that often leads to implementing pilots with corporate partners. In other words, if your startup targets big companies, Founders Factory wants to help you talk with corporate clients and sign deals.

Founders Factory also promises to support startups in multiple ways thanks to the accelerator’s network. It could be helpful when it comes to launching in new countries, attracting foreign talent and raising money.

But a good chunk of the team is going to work on the startup studio. Founders Factory plans to recruit a traditional startup-like team with engineers, designers, sales people and more. They’ll start new projects from scratch.

This isn’t the first time Aviva and Founders Factory work together. In the U.K., Aviva has already worked with 20 startups as part of the startup studio or accelerator. The company has conducted 16 pilot programs with them and signed 7 enterprise contracts. And Aviva has also invested in two startups directly, Acre and Shepper.

Other Founders Factory backers include L'Oréal, easyJet, Guardian Media Group, CSC, Holtzbrinck, Marks & Spencer and Standard Bank.