Year: 2020

Facebook is temporarily downgrading the quality of video streaming in Europe on its social platforms Facebook and Instagram in response to a call for action from the European Commission, per Reuters.

Disney has also said it will work to shrink bandwidth used by its streaming service, Disney+, which is due to begin launching in Europe from tomorrow.

Last week Netflix, YouTube and Amazon said they would switch to SD streaming by default in the region.

The EU’s executive has expressed concerned about the load on Internet infrastructure during the coronavirus crisis as scores of citizens log on from home to work or try to keep themselves entertained during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Telcos in the region have reported significant increases in traffic as EU Member States have called for or instructed citizens to stay at home during the public health emergency.

Collectively, streaming platforms account for a major chunk of global Internet traffic. Online video accounted for more than 60% of the total downstream volume of traffic per a 2019 Sandvine report — while in another report last month it said YouTube alone accounted for a quarter of all mobile traffic.

“To help alleviate any potential network congestion, we will temporarily reduce bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram in Europe,” a Facebook spokesman also told Reuters yesterday.

We’ve reached out to Facebook with questions.

Per Reuters the measure will remain in place for as long as there are concerns about the region’s Internet infrastructure.

In related news Disney is pressing ahead with a planned launch of its new video streaming service, Disney+, in Europe starting from tomorrow but Bloomberg reports it will also take measures to reduce bandwidth utilization by at least 25% in European markets.

“We will be monitoring Internet congestion and working closely with Internet service providers to further reduce bitrates as necessary to ensure they are not overwhelmed by consumer demand,” said Kevin Mayer, chairman of Disney’s direct-to-consumer division, in a statement.

Last week the company said it would postpone the launch of Disney+ in India after the biggest local attraction — the Indian Premier League cricket tournament — was rescheduled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced a bot over the weekend to help people make decisions about what to do if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19. Called Clara, the “coronavirus self-checker” was created in partnership with CDC Foundation and Microsoft Azure’s Healthcare Bot service.

While COVID-19 has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, Clara is intended for use by people currently in the United States. According to the CDC, as of March 22, there were more than 15,200 cases in the United States, and 200 deaths.

In a statement, Microsoft said screening patients who have cold or flu-like symptoms to determine who needs “access to limited medical resources” creates a “bottleneck that threatens to overwhelm health systems coping with the crisis.” Its Healthcare Bot uses AI and is intended to help the CDC answer more queries, enabling medical professionals to look after patients who need critical care, the company said.

 

Clara, however, is not intended to be used for diagnosis or treatment purposes. The questions walk users through symptoms and then gives recommendations if they need medical care.

In its statement, Microsoft said that customized versions of its Healthcare Bot, across all providers who use it, are now “{fielding more than 1 million messages per day from members of the public who are concerned about COVID-19 infections-a number we expect to escalate quickly to meet growing needs.”

Uber and Ola have suspended all ride options in New Delhi till March 31, days after temporarily discontinuing shared ride options across the country in a bid to slow the coronavirus pandemic.

The firms said the suspension of their services in India’s capital was in compliance with the local state government’s lockdown order that went into effect earlier Monday.

“In compliance with the government guidelines, we are temporarily suspending all Uber services in your city. This means that Uber rides services will not be available until further notice,” Uber told customers in New Delhi. A spokesperson confirmed the move.

Ola, which rivals Uber in India, said it was also restricting ride options in New Delhi, but would offer a “minimal network of vehicles to support essential services.”

“Ola will continue to encourage citizens to limit travel only for essential emergency needs as per the Government’s directive. We will enable a minimal network of vehicles to support essential services in cities, wherever applicable, as part of this national effort to reduce the contagion of COVID-19,” an Ola spokesperson said.

TechCrunch understands that Ola is offering very few cabs only to support healthcare workers.

At the time of writing, no cabs or two-wheeler options were available on Ola in New Delhi. According to estimates, more than 150,000 Uber and Ola cabs roam around the National Capital Region (which includes adjacent cities Gurgaon and Noida).

New Delhi has ordered a city-wide lockdown till the end of the month. “No public transportation, including operation of private buses, taxis, autorickshaws, and e-rickshaws shall be permitted,” it said.

Several other states have also announced similar curbs that went into effect earlier Monday, hours after the nation exercised a voluntary lockdown at the request of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The curbs will prohibit all but essential services from operating. Inter-city and long-distance trains and other public networks have also been halted.

The restrictions come as the number of coronavirus-affected patients surged to 350 over the weekend, with seven deaths. Until last week, health authorities maintained that India, a nation of 1.3 billion people, was still at stage two of the outbreak, but a handful of cases in small towns across the country have emerged since.

Governments across the world have moved to enforce restrictions on travel and public gatherings to prevent the spread of the infectious disease. Earlier this month, Uber and Lyft suspended some of their rides in the U.S.

Enable, a U.K. startup that has developed a cloud-based “rebate management solution” to help distributors, manufacturers and retailers manage rebates, is announcing $13 million in Series A funding.

The round is led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Sierra Ventures. As part of the investment, Menlo Ventures’ Steve Sloane has joined the Enable board.

Founded by long term business partners Andrew Butt and Denys Shortt in 2015 but launched fully in 2017, Enable makes it easy for distributors to track, manage, and optimise rebates. Rebate incentives offered by suppliers are a common industry practice, while the rebates offered are increasingly relied on by distributors to turn a profit.

However, the agreements put in place and the tracking and validating of qualifying terms has created a back office headache and many wasted hours on behalf of parties involved. Enable has set out to digitise the whole process and in turn bring suppliers and distributors more closely aligned.

“We take the pain away with our fully automated platform which becomes the system of record for all B2B deals, and the calculator of granular deal earnings,” explains Enable’s Andrew Butt. This includes a breakdown by product, location, day, supplier, and customer and the reconciliation of sales and purchase transactions pertaining to those deals.

“The complexity of these deals has also massively increased,” says Butt. “For distributors to survive, they must take full control of these deals and ensure that money is not being left on the table, yet until now there has been a lack of software that is designed around the distributor”.

In addition, he says that Enable is also allowing customers to create more targeted and better deals that “increase sales and profit, improve cash flow, and strengthen relationships” with suppliers. “We do this by identifying opportunities in the exiting deals and spotting where new deals can be created,” he adds.

Butt says the opportunity is huge, too, with Manufacturers issuing more than $1 trillion in rebates each year. Noteworthy, until now the company has been largely and in the last two years has on-boarded more than 2,000 trading partners processed rebates on more than $30 billion in sales. Customers include Rexel, Travis Perkins, and Wolseley, as well as other distributors, buying groups, and retailers from across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Adds Butt: “Our competitors focus on manufacturers and rebates payable – we’ve flipped the model on its head and deal with distributors and rebates receivable, which is more tricky to manage because distributors deal with a higher number and diversity of products compared to manufacturers. Also, it’s more important as rebates are now more than 100% of the profit for distributors across many verticals”.

More broadly, Butt frames Enable as a “collaborative platform” where manufacturers and distributors come together in a shared ecosystem to do better deals. “It’s like a ‘Dropbox for deals’,” he says. “[In contrast,] our competitors provide a traditional ‘private’ installation of their solution, totally segregated for each customer”.

Germany’s Global Savings Group (GSG), the e-commerce content company, has acquired French cashback company iGraal for €123.5 million in a mixture of cash and stock.

Specifically, the deal was reached with iGraal’s majority owner M6 Group, and consists of €35 million in cash and the remaining made up of an exchange of shares. The acquisition is said to be one of the largest in the cashback and loyalty space in recent years, with iGraal considered the leading digital cashback player in France.

“In 2019, GSG and iGraal jointly saw more than six million members using its loyalty tools and connected advertisers to around 400 million consumers,” says GSG. “The deal makes GSG the largest rewards, savings and shopping content platform in Europe”.

As a result of the acquisition, Munich-based GSG says it expects to have more than half a billion shopping-related touchpoints and to facilitate over 40 million transactions to its merchant partners in 2020. (Coronavirus world recession permitting.)

It is also talking up the data is has access too, saying that the additional user interactions provide GSG with valuable new insights into the shopping behaviour of millions of consumers worldwide and will enable it to build an “even smarter” advertising platform for its partners.

In combination, iGraal and GSG say the two companies intend to expand their cashback and loyalty solutions into new European markets and significantly increase its member base and reach. Despite strong investments and market expansion, GSG expects to stay profitable also in 2020,” adds the company.

Meanwhile, the acquisition of iGraal follows GSG buying Pouch, the U.K.-based money-saving browser extension, in January 2019. This saw the Pouch team join GSG, and Pouch founders Ben Corrigan, Jonny Plein, and Vikram Simha becoming Pouch “Global Product Leads” at GSG.

Launched publicly in September 2016, Pouch is best known for its shopping tool that automatically alerts buyers to working voucher codes as they visit over 3,000 U.K. e-commerce sites. The Pouch browser extension is available for Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia is adapting its digital retail network to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The Nigeria headquartered operation — with online goods and services verticals in 11 African countries — announced a series of measures on Friday. Jumia will donate certified face masks to health ministries in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria and Uganda, drawing on its supply networks outside Africa.

The company has offered African governments use of of its last mile delivery network for distribution of supplies to healthcare faculties and workers. Jumia will also reduce fees on its JumiaPay finance product to encourage digital payments over cash, which can be a conduit for the spread of coronavirus.

Governments in Jumia’s operating countries have started to engage the private sector on a possible COVID-19 outbreak on the continent, according to Jumia CEO Sacha Poignonnec .

“I don’t have a crystal ball and no one knows what’s gonna happen,” he told TechCrunch on a call. But in the event the virus spreads rapidly on the continent, Jumia is reviewing additional assets it can offer the public sector. “If governments find it helpful we’re willing to do it,” Poignonnec said.

Africa’s COVID-19 cases by country were in the single digits until recently, but those numbers spiked last week leading the World Health Organization to sound an alarm. “About 10 days ago we had 5 countries affected, now we’ve got 30,” WHO Regional Director Dr Matshidiso Moeti said at a press conference Thursday. “It’s has been an extremely rapid…evolution.” 

By the World Health Organization’s latest stats Monday there were 1321 COVID-19 cases in Africa and 34 confirmed deaths related to the virus — up from 463 cases and 10 deaths last Wednesday.

Dr. Moeti noted that many socioeconomic factors in Africa — from housing to access to running water — make common measures to curb COVID-19, such as social-distancing or frequent hand washing, challenging. She went on to explain that the World Health Organization is looking for solutions that are adoptable to the Africa’s circumstances, including working with partners and governments to get sanitizing materials to hospitals and families.

As coronavirus cases and related deaths grow, governments in Africa are responding. South Africa, which has the second-largest number of COVID-19 cases on the continent, declared a national disaster last week, banned public gatherings and announced travel restrictions on the U.S.

Kenya has imposed its own travel and crowd restrictions and the country’s President Uhuru Kenyatta urged citizens and businesses to opt for digital-payments as a safer means for transactions.

Across Africa’s tech ecosystem — which has seen significant growth in startups and now receives $2 billion in VC annually — a number of actors are stepping up.

In addition to offering its logistics and supply network, Jumia is collaborating with health ministries in several countries to use its website and mobile platforms to share COVID-19 related public service messages.

Heeding President Kenyatta’s call, last week Kenya’s largest telecom Safaricom waived fess on its M-Pesa mobile-money product (with over 20 million users) to increase digital payments use and lower the risk of spreading the COVID-19 through handling of cash.

Africa’s largest innovation incubator CcHub announced funding and a call for tech projects aimed at reducing COVID-19 and its social and economic impact.

A looming question for Africa’s tech scene is how startups in major markets such as Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa will weather major drops in revenue that could occur from a wider coronavirus outbreak.

Jumia is well capitalized, after going public in a 2019 IPO on the New York stock exchange, but still has losses exceeding its 2019 revenue of €160 million.

On managing business through a possible COVID-19 Africa downturn, “We’re very long-term oriented so it’s about doing what’s right with the governments and thinking about how we can help,” said Jumia’s CEO Sacha Poignonnec.

“Revenue wise, it’s really to early to tell. We do believe that e-commerce in Africa is a trend that goes beyond this particular situation.”

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia is adapting its digital retail network to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The Nigeria headquartered operation — with online goods and services verticals in 11 African countries — announced a series of measures on Friday. Jumia will donate certified face masks to health ministries in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria and Uganda, drawing on its supply networks outside Africa.

The company has offered African governments use of of its last mile delivery network for distribution of supplies to healthcare faculties and workers. Jumia will also reduce fees on its JumiaPay finance product to encourage digital payments over cash, which can be a conduit for the spread of coronavirus.

Governments in Jumia’s operating countries have started to engage the private sector on a possible COVID-19 outbreak on the continent, according to Jumia CEO Sacha Poignonnec .

“I don’t have a crystal ball and no one knows what’s gonna happen,” he told TechCrunch on a call. But in the event the virus spreads rapidly on the continent, Jumia is reviewing additional assets it can offer the public sector. “If governments find it helpful we’re willing to do it,” Poignonnec said.

Africa’s COVID-19 cases by country were in the single digits until recently, but those numbers spiked last week leading the World Health Organization to sound an alarm. “About 10 days ago we had 5 countries affected, now we’ve got 30,” WHO Regional Director Dr Matshidiso Moeti said at a press conference Thursday. “It’s has been an extremely rapid…evolution.” 

By the World Health Organization’s latest stats Monday there were 1321 COVID-19 cases in Africa and 34 confirmed deaths related to the virus — up from 463 cases and 10 deaths last Wednesday.

Dr. Moeti noted that many socioeconomic factors in Africa — from housing to access to running water — make common measures to curb COVID-19, such as social-distancing or frequent hand washing, challenging. She went on to explain that the World Health Organization is looking for solutions that are adoptable to the Africa’s circumstances, including working with partners and governments to get sanitizing materials to hospitals and families.

As coronavirus cases and related deaths grow, governments in Africa are responding. South Africa, which has the second-largest number of COVID-19 cases on the continent, declared a national disaster last week, banned public gatherings and announced travel restrictions on the U.S.

Kenya has imposed its own travel and crowd restrictions and the country’s President Uhuru Kenyatta urged citizens and businesses to opt for digital-payments as a safer means for transactions.

Across Africa’s tech ecosystem — which has seen significant growth in startups and now receives $2 billion in VC annually — a number of actors are stepping up.

In addition to offering its logistics and supply network, Jumia is collaborating with health ministries in several countries to use its website and mobile platforms to share COVID-19 related public service messages.

Heeding President Kenyatta’s call, last week Kenya’s largest telecom Safaricom waived fess on its M-Pesa mobile-money product (with over 20 million users) to increase digital payments use and lower the risk of spreading the COVID-19 through handling of cash.

Africa’s largest innovation incubator CcHub announced funding and a call for tech projects aimed at reducing COVID-19 and its social and economic impact.

A looming question for Africa’s tech scene is how startups in major markets such as Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa will weather major drops in revenue that could occur from a wider coronavirus outbreak.

Jumia is well capitalized, after going public in a 2019 IPO on the New York stock exchange, but still has losses exceeding its 2019 revenue of €160 million.

On managing business through a possible COVID-19 Africa downturn, “We’re very long-term oriented so it’s about doing what’s right with the governments and thinking about how we can help,” said Jumia’s CEO Sacha Poignonnec.

“Revenue wise, it’s really to early to tell. We do believe that e-commerce in Africa is a trend that goes beyond this particular situation.”

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia is adapting its digital retail network to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The Nigeria headquartered operation — with online goods and services verticals in 11 African countries — announced a series of measures on Friday. Jumia will donate certified face masks to health ministries in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria and Uganda, drawing on its supply networks outside Africa.

The company has offered African governments use of of its last mile delivery network for distribution of supplies to healthcare faculties and workers. Jumia will also reduce fees on its JumiaPay finance product to encourage digital payments over cash, which can be a conduit for the spread of coronavirus.

Governments in Jumia’s operating countries have started to engage the private sector on a possible COVID-19 outbreak on the continent, according to Jumia CEO Sacha Poignonnec .

“I don’t have a crystal ball and no one knows what’s gonna happen,” he told TechCrunch on a call. But in the event the virus spreads rapidly on the continent, Jumia is reviewing additional assets it can offer the public sector. “If governments find it helpful we’re willing to do it,” Poignonnec said.

Africa’s COVID-19 cases by country were in the single digits until recently, but those numbers spiked last week leading the World Health Organization to sound an alarm. “About 10 days ago we had 5 countries affected, now we’ve got 30,” WHO Regional Director Dr Matshidiso Moeti said at a press conference Thursday. “It’s has been an extremely rapid…evolution.” 

By the World Health Organization’s latest stats Monday there were 1321 COVID-19 cases in Africa and 34 confirmed deaths related to the virus — up from 463 cases and 10 deaths last Wednesday.

Dr. Moeti noted that many socioeconomic factors in Africa — from housing to access to running water — make common measures to curb COVID-19, such as social-distancing or frequent hand washing, challenging. She went on to explain that the World Health Organization is looking for solutions that are adoptable to the Africa’s circumstances, including working with partners and governments to get sanitizing materials to hospitals and families.

As coronavirus cases and related deaths grow, governments in Africa are responding. South Africa, which has the second-largest number of COVID-19 cases on the continent, declared a national disaster last week, banned public gatherings and announced travel restrictions on the U.S.

Kenya has imposed its own travel and crowd restrictions and the country’s President Uhuru Kenyatta urged citizens and businesses to opt for digital-payments as a safer means for transactions.

Across Africa’s tech ecosystem — which has seen significant growth in startups and now receives $2 billion in VC annually — a number of actors are stepping up.

In addition to offering its logistics and supply network, Jumia is collaborating with health ministries in several countries to use its website and mobile platforms to share COVID-19 related public service messages.

Heeding President Kenyatta’s call, last week Kenya’s largest telecom Safaricom waived fess on its M-Pesa mobile-money product (with over 20 million users) to increase digital payments use and lower the risk of spreading the COVID-19 through handling of cash.

Africa’s largest innovation incubator CcHub announced funding and a call for tech projects aimed at reducing COVID-19 and its social and economic impact.

A looming question for Africa’s tech scene is how startups in major markets such as Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa will weather major drops in revenue that could occur from a wider coronavirus outbreak.

Jumia is well capitalized, after going public in a 2019 IPO on the New York stock exchange, but still has losses exceeding its 2019 revenue of €160 million.

On managing business through a possible COVID-19 Africa downturn, “We’re very long-term oriented so it’s about doing what’s right with the governments and thinking about how we can help,” said Jumia’s CEO Sacha Poignonnec.

“Revenue wise, it’s really to early to tell. We do believe that e-commerce in Africa is a trend that goes beyond this particular situation.”

The Canadian Olympic Committee announced that it will not send athletes to the Tokyo Olympic Games, as the International Olympic Committee weighs a decision on whether or not to postpone the event during the COVID-19 pandemic is currently. Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee told athletes to prepare for the Games being delayed by year.

The Canadian and Australian announcements were made after the International Olympic Committee said on Sunday that it will make a decision on whether or not to postpone the games within the next four weeks.

In a letter to athletes, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach wrote, “together with all the stakeholders, we have started detailed discussions today to complete our assessment of the rapid development of the worldwide health situation and its impact on the Olympic Games, including a scenario of postponement.”

But the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees called on the IOC to postpone the games for one year.

“With COVID-19 and the associated risks, it is not safe for our athletes, and the health and safety of their families and broader Canadian community for athletes to continue training towards these games,” they wrote. “In fact, it runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow.”

In its statement, the Australian Olympics Committee said it “believes our athletes now need to prioritise their own health and of those around them, and to be able to return to their families, in discussion with their National Federations,” especially as travel restrictions are implemented by countries around the world.

The Summer Olympics, which take place every four years, have become an opportunity to gauge the adoption and impact of streaming technology. In 2016, the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil set new viewership records for a live-streamed event.

According to a report by Akamai Technologies (whose streaming technology was used by NBC), the 2016 Games were streamed for a total of 3.3 billion minutes, including 2.71 billion live-streaming minutes, with 100 million unique users watching the Games on a NBC Digital platform.

In addition to being a major sporting event, the Olympics are also a proving ground for new technologies, with robotics being a highlight of the 2020 Games. The Tokyo Olympics was supposed to give companies, including Toyota and Panasonic, a chance to show off new assistive and delivery robots, and demonstrate how they can fit into major events as well as daily routines.

MasterClass is known for selling access to pre-recorded online classes by a long list of people who are among the best at what they do, from tennis great Serena Williams to writer David Sedaris to chef Thomas Keller.

More recently, however, the company added live Q&A sessions with these same stars as a member benefit, and now, for the foreseeable future, it’s opening these sessions to non-members, too  It’s the San Francisco startup’s way of making itself more accessible to a broader audience that perhaps can’t rationalize paying $90 per class or $180 for a yearly all-access pass, especially in this market.

The first free session streams live on Wednesday at noon PT from MasterClass’s site and will feature Chris Voss, who was once the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI. Voss had earlier created a module for MasterClass on the art of negotiation, and he’ll be talking to whomever wants to tune in with the help of a moderator who will be asking questions that have been submitted in advance by students.

It’s just “one of a bunch” of such live Q&A sessions that will be made available, according to MasterClass CEO David Rogier, who we chatted with Friday afternoon and who describes Voss’s mission  partly is to help families that are stuck at home better negotiate who is going to use the big-screen TV or the laptops at any one time (though more broadly the idea is to teach empathy).

It’s a small step from MasterClass, which separately gives away 130,000 all-access passes each year to organizations in need and has committed to giving away an addition 200,000 of these passes this year. (It’s opening this up soon to in-need organizations that will be able to apply on its website, says a spokeswoman.) Seemingly, MasterClass could lean in even further while much of America, and the rest of the globe, is trapped at home and looking for both entertainment and high-quality educational content.

In the meantime, Rogier is quick to note that MasterClass has a variety of kid-friendly content that’s instructive — if best consumed with parental supervision.

Among the now 80 classes available through the site — including new classes by interior designer Kelly Wearstler, a class on self expression and identity by RuPaul, and Gabriela Cámara teaching Mexican cooking — are classes, for example, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who walks viewers through his take on scientific thinking and communication. Another segment stars Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose class centers on U.S. presidential history.

Other courses recommended by Rogier himself include Penn and Teller’s class on the art of magic; a class on space exploration by retired astronaut and former Commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield; and, for older kids who might be trying to make sense of the world right now, a class by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on the economy.

As for how five-year-old MasterClass was doing before the world changed, Rogier declines to share specific growth stats, merely describing its numbers as “great.” He also notes that MasterClass is now available not only via its website and app but on the big screen through Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

It’s also rolling out Android TV and Roku soon.

Pictured above: Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss.