Author: azeeadmin

Small- to medium-sized businesses are one of the most important parts of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many have trouble securing growth capital from traditional financial institutions. Validus wants to fix the financing gap with its peer-to-peer lending platform, which connects accredited lenders with SMEs. The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised $20 million for its ongoing Series B+ round.

The funding was co-led by Vertex Growth fund and Kuok Group’s Orion Fund, which is managed by K3 Venture Partners. Returning investors in the round include FMO, the international development bank of the Netherlands; Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India; Openspace Ventures; AddVentures; and VinaCapital Ventures.

This brings Validus’ total raised to about $40 million since it was founded in 2015, including a $15.2 million Series B round announced last year.

After getting its capital markets services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in December 2017, Validus launched services in Indonesia and Vietnam and says it has lent over $315 million to businesses so far. Its plans for its Series B+ round include expanding into Thailand during the last quarter of this year. Validus’ credit risk model analyzes information from invoices, contracts and cash flow.

Co-founder and COO Nikhilesh Goel says that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has seen more demand for short-term financing, with a 50% year-over-year increase for credit-approved unsecured loans over the past few months.

Despite the impact of the pandemic on small businesses, loan performance has held steady, he added, because Validus focuses on corporate vendor financing for SMEs whose end-buyers are large corporations or government-linked entities.

Validus also plans to provide financing to SMEs that are on the frontlines in the battle against COVID-19, including working capital for SMEs in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, and logistics and cleaning services.

“Through working closely with corporate partners and investors on the platform, we also aim to support SMEs who are pivoting their businesses to adapt to services and products that are required in this time,” Goel said. “In the last month, we have disbursed multiple such loans averaging $250,000 to $500,000, to support SMEs’ efforts in meeting the demand for face masks and other protective gear in short supply.”

In a press statement, MX Kuok of K3 Ventures said, “We are highly impressed by the leadership and depth of credit management experience at Validus. The team has demonstrated the unique ability to capture critical data points, combined with comprehensive machine learning capabilities, to identify high-potential SMEs that may have fallen through the gaps of the traditional banking model.”

On the same day that Elon Musk defied local regulations and reopened Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, the CEO put a new person in charge of production.

Musk named Richard Miller, who was director of paint operations at Tesla, to head of production at the factory, according to an internal email sent to employees Monday and viewed by TechCrunch. It appears that Miller replaces Jatinder Dhillon, who was the company’s manufacturing director. CNBC reported in March that Dhillon had left the company, although his LinkedIn profile still shows he is at the company and in the same role.

An email has been sent to Musk and Tesla for comment.

“Due to excellent performance as head of paint operations in Fremont, Richard Miller is hereby promoted to overall head of Fremont Production. Congratulations!,” the email reads.

The promotion comes at a chaotic moment for Musk and Tesla. Production at the company’s Fremont factory — where its electric vehicles are assembled — has been suspended since March 23 due to stay-at-home orders issued by Alameda County and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Musk restarted production Monday in direct conflict with county orders.

Tesla had planned to bring back about 30% of its factory workers May 8 as part of its reopening plan, after Newsom issued new guidance that would allow manufacturers to resume operations. However, the governor’s guidance included a warning that local governments could keep more restrictive rules in place. Alameda County, along with several other Bay Area counties and cities, have extended the stay-at-home orders through the end of May. The orders were revised and did ease some of the restrictions. However, it did not lift the order for manufacturing.

Musk has been at war with Alameda County, specifically aiming his ire at health officials, ever since the order was extended. Over the weekend, he threatened to sue and pull operations out of California. Tesla filed a lawsuit later that day against Alameda County seeking injunctive relief.

On Monday, Musk escalated matters further and announced on Twitter that he had restarted production.

Musk wrote he would  “be on the line,” a reference to the assembly line at the factory where Tesla makes the Model X, Model S, Model 3 and Model Y. He added “if anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

Alameda County issued a statement Monday noting

Soft robots have been a booming category for research and manufacturing in recent years, due to a number of beneficial characteristics. The field has become increasingly important to things like robotic graspers, which rely on their compliance to pick up fragile objects like fruit.

Speed, on the other hand, doesn’t tend to be a word that comes up often when discussing the category. But a team a North Caroline State is demonstrating that quick movements and soft materials need not be mutually exclusive.

The researchers have designed a quadrupedal robot that utilizes a compliant center to gallop forward, two legs at a time. It’s a fascinating bit of locomotion, as evidenced by the below video.

According to the team, LEAP can ran at speeds of 2.7 body lengths per second — that makes it around three times faster than speeds hit by the fastest soft robots. What’s more, by attaching a fin, it’s capable of swimming 0.78 body lengths a second, versus the 0.7 achieved by the last soft robot to claim top speed.

The team took inspiration from cheetahs — because what else are you going to take inspiration from when attempting to build a fast robot?

“We were inspired by the cheetah to create a type of soft robot that has a spring-powered, ‘bistable’ spine, meaning that the robot has two stable states,” assistant professor Jie Yin says in a release tied to the news. “We can switch between these stable states rapidly by pumping air into channels that line the soft, silicone robot. Switching between the two states releases a significant amount of energy, allowing the robot to quickly exert force against the ground. This enables the robot to gallop across the surface, meaning that its feet leave the ground.”

As for the part of the conversation where the researchers state real-world possibilities for the technology, that bit is still a little hazy. It’s not entirely sure how such a strange little robot could find a place for itself in the real world; the team has suggested search and rescue, along with manufacturing.

Yin adds, “We’re open to collaborating with the private sector to fine-tune ways they can incorporate this technology into their operations.”

Haje Jan Kamps is an author, freelance writer, journalist, photographer and editor who lives in the East Bay in Northern California and, beginning in 2016, spent more than a year as a TechCrunch writer. In a recent catch-up with him about work and life during COVID-19, we wound up talking at some length about Facebook, which is seeing record use across its social networking, messaging, and live-streaming platforms right now and will likely continue to do so throughout this pandemic.

We asked Jan Kamps, who joined Facebook around 2006 — when it first expanded beyond its roots on college campuses to enable anyone over age 13 with a valid email address to join — if we could share some of his thoughts as a kind of snapshot. They represent only his views and opinions but highlight a broader struggle that many Facebook users around the world — currently isolated from friends and family — are experiencing as their relationship with the tech giant evolves, and its power accordingly grows at an accelerated pace.

Jan Kamps’s comments have been edited lightly for length and clarity.

I take breaks from Facebook from time to time, because it’s a little bit much and occasionally, I think, they change your algorithm, so sometimes it just gets real depressing, and I’m just going to vote with my mouse cursor and get the hell out of there for a bit. And then I come back. And then it’s like more more friends doing updates and stuff.

I want my friends’ life updates. I don’t necessarily want the weight of the world on my shoulders. I made a conscious choice a while ago to stop reading the news just for my well-being. And if it gets in through the back door through Facebook, I’m like, Look, I don’t want that.

Just a little vignette from this morning: I woke up, I overslept slightly, and I got on Facebook, and there was a friend who was doing a live stream because she decided to try and cheer people up a little bit. She was playing her ukulele and just singing for 15 minutes. She had, like, 20 of her friends watching and was like, “Hope everyone has a great day.” That didn’t happen before everybody had to go into isolation.

There’ve been a whole bunch of groups that have popped up, as well as some older groups that became reactivated. I actually started one for the Human Awareness Institute, which has this concept of a large group share, where basically people stand up in front of a room of people and share something that is real and heartfelt and pertinent.  They’ve had to cancel their workshops, because it’s just not safe to do it right now. But it turns out the digital version of that is juicy and beautiful and connected. And the outpouring of comments you get on those shares — people leap in with words of support, words of encouragement, and that’s just not something I’ve seen on Facebook in such a long time.

My big realization, which I guess is kind of an obvious realization, is that it’s just a tool, and we get to choose what we use that tool for. And if we choose it to be a place to, to spread joy and share creative projects rather than just, ‘Look at this cool sandwich I made,’ I feel like it’s actually possible. And if I feel really good about seeing other people that do that, I might do that, too. 

I have a love-hate relationship with with Facebook. I have signed off before for weeks, even months. I am grateful for the internet and the information that is available, but I feel like basic source criticism isn’t something that isn’t taught at all in the U.S., meaning that when you read something on the internet, do you know whether or not it is real? In Norway, where I grew up, you get taught as part of history class to criticize the source itself, to ask: Is this a reliable source? Was this kind of the ‘victor writes the history’? How do you piece together sources to get a good feeling for what really happened?’ 

The fact that fake news has even slightly been able to take hold is terrifying to me. I was in a yoga class the other day, and the yoga teacher had this little spray bottle [to clean her mat] and she said, ‘There are essential oils in here. You can use it on your hands on your mat, on your face — you can even drink it because it’s edible.’ It’s like, ‘Look, if it’s fucking edible, it’s not gonna do anything to a virus,’ I mean, maybe some essential oils might help get some viruses. I have no idea. But Lysol was invented for a reason.

People allow themselves to get so bubbled and so echo chambered into believing what they want to believe. I mean, the anti-vaxxer movement is one example. There’s a lot of other dumb news out there, to the point that now that if I really want to know what’s happening, I go to the BBC or maybe the New York Times or The Washington Post or any of the other big stalwarts of journalism, because I know they have some sort of process in place to make sure that what is published is actually relatively sensible, and even then, I make certain I’m not on the opinion pages. I don’t want an opinion about COVID. I want ice-cold facts that are verified.

That’s the big challenge with the internet. There’s more information available right now than there ever has been. You can find the best possible information if you want to. You can go to a medical journal and read about coronaviruses. But there is a lot of news absolutely 100% made up and people still believe it. And I’m like, Look, either everybody collectively is really fucking stupid, or we just want to believe.

I don’t really have an opinion on whether Facebook has a role to play there, whether it’s meant to police what is real and isn’t real. But the fact that it is so easy to share and spread misinformation is not helping us when there’s a massive pandemic going on. 

Enterprise search has always been a tough nut to crack. The holy grail has always been to operate like Google, but in-house. You enter a few keywords and you get back that nearly perfect response at the top of the list of the results. The irony of trying to do search locally has been a lack of content.

While Google has the universe of the World Wide Web to work with, enterprises have a much narrower set of responses. It would be easy to think that should make it easier to find the ideal response, but the fact is that it’s the opposite. The more data you have, the more likely you’ll find the correct document.

Amazon is trying to change the enterprise search game by putting it into a more modern machine-learning driven context to use today’s technology to help you find that perfect response just as you typically do on the web.

Today the company announced the general availability of Amazon Kendra, its cloud enterprise search product that the company announced last year at AWS re:Invent. It uses natural language processing to allow the user to simply ask a question, then searches across the repositories connected to the search engine to find a precise answer.

“Amazon Kendra reinvents enterprise search by allowing end-users to search across multiple silos of data using real questions (not just keywords) and leverages machine learning models under the hood to understand the content of documents and the relationships between them to deliver the precise answers they seek (instead of a random list of links),” the company described the new service in a statement.

AWS has tuned the search engine for specific industries including IT, healthcare, and insurance. It promises energy, industrial, financial services, legal, media and entertainment, travel and hospitality, human resources, news, telecommunications, mining, food and beverage and automotive will be coming later this year.

This means any company in one of those industries should have a head start when it comes to searching because the system will understand the language specific to those verticals. You can drop your Kendra search box into an application or a website, and it has features like type ahead you would expect in a tool like this.

Enterprise search has been around for a long time, but perhaps by bringing AI and machine learning to bear on it, we can finally solve it once and for all.

When Zach Sims first started pitching his coding startup, Codecademy, he framed it to investors as a corporate tutoring company. That was intentional, despite the fact that edtech is a $5 trillion business.

“It was much easier for investors to understand instead of an education company,” he said, noting that the industry has long been defined by tight budgets and slow sales cycles.

But, as millions adopt remote learning overnight, edtech’s reputation is changing — and investors are scrambling accordingly. The revitalization means that a new wave of edtech startups is upon us. We asked four entrepreneurs who have been working in this space to share what they think the next billion-dollar business will look like. While we’ve covered the investor side of edtech quite a bit, it was refreshing to hear from founders and executives who are on the ground making decisions:

• Matthew Glotzbach, CEO, Quizlet
• Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO and president, DreamBox Learning
• Darren Shimkus, general manager, Udemy for Business
• Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO, Codecademy 

How to sell: Classroom and outside the box

According to Matthew Glotzbach, CEO of Quizlet, “any edtech solution tailored toward schools and classrooms may find a significant headwind,” such as games or VR/AR headsets that need to be used within classroom settings. “Not because physical spaces are going away, but in this limited time, limited budget environment, teachers and administrators are going to spend their money on solutions that are more tailored toward distance.”

Startups should plan to be useful in both a pre-coronavirus and post-coronavirus world, likely hybridizing tech solutions that are useful for day-to-day classroom operations as well as remote learning.

How to reach scale: B2C or B2B? 

Instagram Lite, the two-year old version of the Instagram app aimed at emerging markets, has quietly disappeared. The previously highly-ranked app vanished from the Google Play charts on April 13 in the countries where it was active, including Kenya, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. Existing Instagram Lite users have been directed to the main Instagram app via a message that claimed “Instagram Lite is No Longer Supported.”

Android Police first reported the news of Instagram Lite’s shutdown on Monday. TechCrunch has since confirmed details of the app’s removal with Instagram parent, Facebook.

“We are rolling back the test of the Instagram Lite app, a Facebook spokesperson said. “You can start using the latest version of Instagram instead to connect with the people and things you love,” they noted.

Instagram Lite launched on Google Play in June 2018 without fanfare. Like other “Lite”-branded apps on the market, Instagram Lite’s goal was to offer a smaller download that takes up less space on a mobile device — a feature that specifically caters to users in emerging markets, where storage space is a concern. At launch, the “Lite” version of Instagram was 573 kilobytes, or roughly 1/55th the size of Instagram’s then 32 megabyte application.

Like Instagram, the slimmed-down Instagram Lite app allowed users to filter and post photos to a feed or to Stories and browse the Explore page for more content. However, it lacked the option to post videos or direct message friends upon arrival.

On June 28, 2018, Mexico was the first market to receive Instagram Lite. It also accounted for the majority — 62% — of its total installs. To date, Instagram Lite was downloaded approximately 4.4 million in Mexico, according to data from Sensor Tower, shared with TechCrunch. The second largest market was the Philippines, with 14% of installs. Kenya and Peru trailed, with 12.5% and 12% of installs, respectively.

Due to demand for “Lite” applications in these regions, Instagram Lite was able to climb to the top of Google Play’s charts. The app was ranked No. 8 in Kenya in the “Social” category on Google Play, as well as No. 12 in Peru, No. 15 in Mexico, and No. 22 in the Philippines.

On April 15, it vanished from the charts, indicating a removal in those regions, which the company has now confirmed.

While it’s unusual to pull an app entirely when an update is planned, we understand that’s what Facebook has in store for Instagram Lite.

The company — which has always characterized the app as a “test” —  is planning to take what it’s learned over these past years to develop a new version of Instagram Lite. It’s unclear how far out that launch may be, but the new version is currently being built.

Instagram Lite was one of a few “Lite” apps that Facebook offers, led by the early launch of Facebook Lite in 2015, followed by Messenger Lite in April 2018. A number of major tech companies also offer apps aimed at emerging markets, often dubbed their “Lite” version, including Uber, Tinder, Spotify, Twitter and others. Google does the same under the “Go” brand.

But unlike many of these efforts, Instagram Lite had not yet reached some of the larger emerging markets these apps tend to target, like India, Indonesia, Brazil and others. That could change in the future, however.

In the meantime, Lite users are being directed to the main Instagram app. Alternately, they can use Instagram via the web from their phone.

Self-driving vehicle startup Voyage said Monday that it has inked a deal with Fiat Chrysler to supply purpose-built vehicles, a partnership that will help accelerate its plan to launch a fully driverless ride-hailing service.

Voyage, a three-year-old startup that tests and operates a self-driving vehicle service (with human safety operators) in retirement communities in California and Florida, started by modifying Ford Fusion vehicles. The company then began modifying FCA’s Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans with its autonomous vehicle technology.

This new deal, which was nearly two years in the making, marks a critical step in Voyage’s plan to deploy fully driverless vehicles as a ride-hailing service. It also illustrates FCA’s increasingly large role as a supplier to AV developers. The automaker already has a deal with autonomous vehicle company Waymo to provide thousands of purpose-built Chrysler Pacifica minivans. FCA also has a partnership with Aurora to develop self-driving commercial vehicles.

FCA’s approach to rapid advancement of autonomous vehicle technology is to focus on vehicle-side needs while establishing smart and strategic collaborations that promote a culture of innovation, safety and know-how, a company spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch .

Under this deal with Voyage, Fiat Chrysler is supplying Voyage with purpose-built Pacific Hybrids that have been developed for integration of automated technology. These vehicles come with customizations such as redundant braking and steering that are necessary to safely deploy driverless vehicles, Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron told TechCrunch.

FCA characterized the deal as more than just a supply contract, noting that it will provide support to Voyage to understand the features, operation and technology of the vehicle.

“This opportunity gives engineering and product development teams at Voyage and FCA a greater understanding of the impact of AV technology use on the underlying vehicle, reducing the learning curve for all and guiding future vehicle development,” an FCA spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch.

Last year, TechCrunch first reported that Voyage had partnered with an automaker to provide this next-generation vehicle designed specifically for autonomous driving. FCA ended up being that unknown partner. FCA and Voyage signed the deal in August 2019.

“As part of this collaboration, Voyage and FCA will jointly adapt and validate the connections between the self-driving software, sensors, and embedded systems,” according to the announcement posted on Medium.

Cameron wouldn’t say how many vehicles FCA will supply. It’s likely dozens not thousands of vehicles. Voyage, which has raised a total of $52 million, is still a small operation compared to AV giants like Waymo and Cruise.

Voyage is still ways off from reaching its driverless ride-hailing service goal. Although, its deal with FCA along with clearing an important regulatory hurdle with California officials are two moments of progress on its long road to a profitable, commercial-scale robotaxi service.

Cameron has previously described the company’s progress as “inching” towards driverless. The company’s self-driving software has reached maturation in the communities it is testing in, and Voyage is now focusing on validation, Cameron told TechCrunch last year.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Monday that the company’s factory in Fremont, California is open and has restarted production despite a stay-at-home order issued by Alameda County.

Musk said in tweet Monday afternoon that he will “be on the line,” a reference to the assembly line at the factory where Tesla makes the Model X, Model S, Model 3 and Model Y. He added “if anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Alameda County officials, Tesla and Elon Musk for comment. We will update once they respond.

Musk’s reopening follows days of public venting on Twitter as well as a lawsuit all aimed at pressuring Alameda County officials to allow the company to reopen its factory.

Tesla filed a lawsuit Saturday against Alameda County seeking injunctive relief, an effort to invalidate orders that have prevented the automaker from reopening.

Tesla had planned to bring back about 30% of its factory workers Friday as part of its reopening plan, after California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued new guidance that would allow manufacturers to resume operations. However, the governor’s guidance included a warning that local governments could keep more restrictive rules in place. Alameda County, along with several other Bay Area counties and cities, last week extended the stay-at-home orders through the end of May. The orders were revised and did ease some of the restrictions. However, it did not lift the order for manufacturing.

Developing …

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a lot of otherwise traditional industries to become creative and flexible in ways that might have seemed entirely out of the realm of possibility only a few months ago. With most of the county at home, social distancing, a number of networks have turned to consumer technologies in order to keep creating content.

Apple’s among those tech companies working with production houses, getting some iPhone-powered rigs into the hands of producers and hosts. The list includes a Parks and Recreation reunion, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon’s late night shows and now longstanding prime time talent contest, American Idol.

The ABC show’s producers are sending home studio rigs to each of the contestants and judges to shoot the final few episodes of the season. It’s a three-camera setup, including three iPhone 11 Pros, a tripod and a ring light. The  production team is helping out with camera setup and editing at a safe distance, from home.

Here’s Apple, which is naturally more than happy for the opportunity to showcase how the smartphone can work in a pinch,

We know that people are relying on their favorite shows while staying at home, and we are happy to be a part of that process with the team at American Idol. iPhone offers a unique solution to deliver broadcast quality video, in the palm of your hand, while keeping production staff and on-air talent safe and in their homes.

A number of television and movie studios have been exploring the use of smartphones in content creation. It seems unlikely that they’ll be replacing studio equipment on a majority of shoots any time soon, but the on-going pandemic could represent a kind of sea change toward a more mainstream use among studios.