Author: azeeadmin

In May of this year, Snap banned two Snapchat platform apps that allowed users to send anonymous messages, Yolo and LMK, following a lawsuit filed on behalf of a mother whose son died by suicide after being bullied through messages on the apps for many months. In the wake of Snap’s ban, another anonymous messaging app called Sendit has been rising in the app stores’ charts, as Snapchat’s younger users sought a replacement for the apps the company blocked.

Since the news of the ban was first reported over 80 days ago, Sendit’s app has seen more than 3.5 million installs across iOS and Android, according to app intelligence firm Apptopia.

This is a rapid pace of installs compared with how quickly it grew while Yolo and LMK were active on the market. In the same period before the news was announced, Sendit had only seen seen 180,000 installs across iOS and Android, Apptopia says.

Image Credits: Apptopia

Sendit also received few user reviews before May 11, 2021. But in the days that followed the ban, “yolo” has become the second-most-used keyword in Sendit’s user reviews, Apptopia told TechCrunch. Most of these reviews are positive, saying the app is like “Yolo but better,” for instance. In other words, Snap’s ban hasn’t stamped out demand for anonymous Snapchat Q&A apps, it only crowned a new app as the market leader.

Sendit today is currently ranking No. 3 among Lifestyle apps on Apple’s U.S. App Store and has climbed to No. 57 on the App Store’s list of top free apps. It jumped three ranks overnight from Monday to Tuesday, in fact.

Like Yolo and LMK, Sendit also features a popular teen activity on Snapchat, anonymous Q&As. The app also includes other Lens games, like “Never Have I Ever,” “This or That,” “Kiss, Marry, Block” and others.

To be clear, none of these are official Snapchat applications. Instead, they integrate with a toolkit for third-party developers called Snap Kit, which allows them to create new product experiences that work with Snapchat’s best features, like Stories, Bitmoji, the Snapchat Camera and more.

Snap says its Snap Kit developers have to agree to its Terms of Service, which requires apps to prioritize user safety and take action on any reports of abuse. Those guidelines are meant to encompass any reports of bullying, harassment, hate speech or threats taking place on the third-party services. In addition, apps that offer friend finding, user-generated content and anonymous features are supposed to inform Snap of their moderation practices and customer support response times.

Image Credits: Screenshot of public App Store review of sendit; username redacted

In practice, however — as the lawsuit highlighted — there appears to be an issue with how well those terms are enforced on Snap’s end. The company tells us that it’s continuing to review developers to ensure their compliance. It has yet to announce any policy changes as result of that investigation, but some child advocates would argue that anonymous apps should have no place in a teenager’s life at all.

Even before the Snap lawsuit, apps like Yolo and LMK had raised concerns among child advocates and parents alike. For example, nonprofit Common Sense Media, an independent source for media recommendations and advice for families, pointed out that “anonymity on social media can easily lead teens down a slippery slope of poor choices.” The organization said that while teens will be drawn to the excitement of responding anonymously — perhaps learning that someone might have a crush on them — “hiding behind anonymity can also bring out hatefulness and sexually explicit risk taking.”

Sendit’s App Store reviews (see photos) indicate that is, indeed, taking place. (Sendit didn’t respond to a request for more information about its app’s operations.)

Image Credits: Screenshot of public App Store review of sendit; username redacted

The tech industry is littered with anonymous social apps that failed due to issues with cyberbullying. After numerous teen suicides related to Ask.fm’s anonymous platform, its owner IAC sold off the toxic property to an asset management firm. Other high-profile anonymous app failures include Secret, which became a home to cyberbullying; Sarahah, which was banned by the app stores and later pivoted; Yik Yak, whose founders left for Square after the app became plagued by cyberbullying; and After School, which also got kicked out of the App Store. To date, only anonymous platforms like Glassdoor and Blind, which focus on workplace chatter and career advice, have seemed to thrive.

The question for Snap to decide now is not just how it will enforce its terms on anonymous apps, but whether it’s worth allowing anonymous apps to operate given their documented dangers — and their potential tragic, as well as legal, consequences.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or has had thoughts of harming themselves or taking their own life, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations.

In May of this year, Snap banned two Snapchat platform apps that allowed users to send anonymous messages, Yolo and LMK, following a lawsuit filed on behalf of a mother whose son died by suicide after being bullied through messages on the apps for many months. In the wake of Snap’s ban, another anonymous messaging app called Sendit has been rising in the app stores’ charts, as Snapchat’s younger users sought a replacement for the apps the company blocked.

Since the news of the ban was first reported over 80 days ago, Sendit’s app has seen more than 3.5 million installs across iOS and Android, according to app intelligence firm Apptopia.

This is a rapid pace of installs compared with how quickly it grew while Yolo and LMK were active on the market. In the same period before the news was announced, Sendit had only seen seen 180,000 installs across iOS and Android, Apptopia says.

Image Credits: Apptopia

Sendit also received few user reviews before May 11, 2021. But in the days that followed the ban, “yolo” has become the second-most-used keyword in Sendit’s user reviews, Apptopia told TechCrunch. Most of these reviews are positive, saying the app is like “Yolo but better,” for instance. In other words, Snap’s ban hasn’t stamped out demand for anonymous Snapchat Q&A apps, it only crowned a new app as the market leader.

Sendit today is currently ranking No. 3 among Lifestyle apps on Apple’s U.S. App Store and has climbed to No. 57 on the App Store’s list of top free apps. It jumped three ranks overnight from Monday to Tuesday, in fact.

Like Yolo and LMK, Sendit also features a popular teen activity on Snapchat, anonymous Q&As. The app also includes other Lens games, like “Never Have I Ever,” “This or That,” “Kiss, Marry, Block” and others.

To be clear, none of these are official Snapchat applications. Instead, they integrate with a toolkit for third-party developers called Snap Kit, which allows them to create new product experiences that work with Snapchat’s best features, like Stories, Bitmoji, the Snapchat Camera and more.

Snap says its Snap Kit developers have to agree to its Terms of Service, which requires apps to prioritize user safety and take action on any reports of abuse. Those guidelines are meant to encompass any reports of bullying, harassment, hate speech or threats taking place on the third-party services. In addition, apps that offer friend finding, user-generated content and anonymous features are supposed to inform Snap of their moderation practices and customer support response times.

Image Credits: Screenshot of public App Store review of sendit; username redacted

In practice, however — as the lawsuit highlighted — there appears to be an issue with how well those terms are enforced on Snap’s end. The company tells us that it’s continuing to review developers to ensure their compliance. It has yet to announce any policy changes as result of that investigation, but some child advocates would argue that anonymous apps should have no place in a teenager’s life at all.

Even before the Snap lawsuit, apps like Yolo and LMK had raised concerns among child advocates and parents alike. For example, nonprofit Common Sense Media, an independent source for media recommendations and advice for families, pointed out that “anonymity on social media can easily lead teens down a slippery slope of poor choices.” The organization said that while teens will be drawn to the excitement of responding anonymously — perhaps learning that someone might have a crush on them — “hiding behind anonymity can also bring out hatefulness and sexually explicit risk taking.”

Sendit’s App Store reviews (see photos) indicate that is, indeed, taking place. (Sendit didn’t respond to a request for more information about its app’s operations.)

Image Credits: Screenshot of public App Store review of sendit; username redacted

The tech industry is littered with anonymous social apps that failed due to issues with cyberbullying. After numerous teen suicides related to Ask.fm’s anonymous platform, its owner IAC sold off the toxic property to an asset management firm. Other high-profile anonymous app failures include Secret, which became a home to cyberbullying; Sarahah, which was banned by the app stores and later pivoted; Yik Yak, whose founders left for Square after the app became plagued by cyberbullying; and After School, which also got kicked out of the App Store. To date, only anonymous platforms like Glassdoor and Blind, which focus on workplace chatter and career advice, have seemed to thrive.

The question for Snap to decide now is not just how it will enforce its terms on anonymous apps, but whether it’s worth allowing anonymous apps to operate given their documented dangers — and their potential tragic, as well as legal, consequences.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or has had thoughts of harming themselves or taking their own life, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations.

Google Maps announced today three feature updates to its iOS app. With live location sharing in the iMessage app, a traffic widget for the home screen, and dark mode, Google Maps is poising itself as a stronger competitor against iOS’ native Apple Maps.

Live location sharing was already possible in Google Maps — by tapping on the blue dot that shows where you are, you can share with select friends your ETA to your destination, and even how much battery life your phone has. But the Google Maps iMessage widget makes it easier to share your location without navigating away from your conversation. By default, Google Maps will share your location for one hour, but it’s possible to extend to up to three days — if you want to stop sharing, tap the “stop” button on the thumbnail.

Image Credits: Google Maps

Google Maps’ existing iMessage widget allows users to send GPS coordinates of their location in iMessage — but if you’re trying to meet up with friends, this wouldn’t be as useful as sharing a live location. Apple Maps already has a similar feature built into iMessage, so Google is taking a leaf out of Apple’s book to try to beat them on their own app. For a long time, Google Maps was widely considered to be the superior navigation app, but in 2018, Apple completely rebuilt Maps from the ground up, making it more competitive. Plus, as iOS 15 rolls out, Apple Maps will add AR functionality, better public transit features, more detailed maps, and other improvements.

Google Maps added Waze-like traffic and incident report features to its app in 2019, which made it more appealing for driving commuters — the app says that one of its “most powerful features is the ability to see live traffic conditions in an area.” Now, users with the latest Google Maps app will be able to add a traffic widget to their home screen, which can quickly share what traffic is like in their area. The widget also allows users to set frequent destinations, like home, work, or the gas station, and navigate to those places with just a tap. Though the app already has dark mode on Android, this feature will also roll out to iOS users in the coming weeks.

As Google Maps and Apple Maps compete to become the best navigation app, an unlikely competitor comes in Snapchat, which has created a more social experience on its Snap Map. Last week, Snapchat added the My Places feature to the Snap Map, which helps users find new spots to visit based on the activity of other users in their area. The ephemeral messaging app also announced at the end of July that during Q2 of 2021, the platform grew both revenue and daily active users at the highest rates it has achieved in the last four years. Still, as of last year, Google Maps had over 1 billion worldwide users.

Last year, movie ticketing and discovery business Fandango, a division of NBCUniversal, bought the on-demand video streaming service Vudu from Walmart, after the retailer had failed to capitalize on the service it had first acquired in 2010 for $100 million. Today, Fandango is taking the next steps with Vudu by merging the service with its existing streaming platform, FandangoNOW. The newly combined service will continue to use the name Vudu and will feature over 200,000 new release and catalog movies and TV shows to rent or buy without a subscription, as well as “thousands” of free-to-stream titles.

The company tells us it chose to stick with “Vudu” as its name because it’s already a popular brand with a loyal following and is significantly larger than the FandangoNOW service.

Despite the changes coming to the service, existing FandangoNOW customers won’t lose access to any of the content they already purchased. Both their movies and TV series will be automatically transferred over to the new Vudu service starting today.

Currently, Vudu’s on-demand library competes with Apple iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play/YouTube, as well as similar services from various telecos. In particular, these types of services appeal to those who want to watch new releases and have the option to own favorite movies and shows — rather than subscribe to services where such content comes and goes as licensing deals expire.

At launch, the newly merged Vudu will include new releases like “F9: The Fast Saga,” Pixar’s “Luca,” “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” “Peter Rabbit 2,” “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard,” “A Quiet Place Part II,” Disney’s “Cruella,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “In the Heights” and others. Next Tuesday, it will also gain access to Marvel Studios’ “Black Widow” — the title that’s now the subject of a breach of contract lawsuit filed on behalf of actress Scarlett Johansson, who’s suing Disney for sending what was supposed to be a theatrical release directly to its streaming service Disney+ on opening day.

Image Credits: Fandango

Many titles are available in 4K Ultra HD, and support formats such as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, the company notes.

Vudu already has a large, built-in audience for its movie and TV marketplace. Fandango claims the service has over 60 million registered users and reaches “millions” on a daily basis.

By way of its expansive platform support, it’s capable of reaching over 75 million U.S. TV-connected device households, per NPD Group data. This includes Vudu’s support for Samsung, LG and Vizio Smart TVs; the Roku platform, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Xfinity X1 and Xfinity Flex, PlayStation, Xbox, Tivo, and others.

Following the merger and rebranding, the new Vudu service will also take FandangoNOW’s place as the official movie store on the Roku platform, where consumers can rent or purchase using Roku Pay.

Vudu joins Fandango’s existing digital network, which will continue to include Fandango’s movie ticketing business, MovieTickets.com, Flixster, Movieclips, and Rotten Tomatoes. While the merger of the two services at least clears up some overlap within the Fandango division, NBCU parent company Comcast continues to have its own overlap issues when it comes to streaming. Comcast acquired ad-supported streaming service Xumo in February 2020 and, via NBCU, runs the year-old streaming service Peacock. As of yet, it hasn’t made any moves to centralize those efforts.

With the pandemic wreaking havoc amongst early years education amid school lockdowns, it’s no wonder EdTech startups have piled into the space. But it’s also served to highlight the abysmal nature of earl years teaching: Some 40 million teachers across the globe are leaving the sector, according to to the World Bank. Of the 1.5 billion primary-age children, only a few can access high-quality education, and approximately 58 million primary-age children are out of education, most of whom are girls. 

So the opportunity to make a difference, using online teaching, in these very young years is great, because classes sizes can be reduced online, and the quality of teaching improved.

This is the idea behind bina, which bills itself as a “digital primary education ecosystem”. It’s now raised $1.4M to aim at the education of 4 to 12-year-olds.

The funding round was led by Taizo Son, one of Japan’s billionaires. Other investors and advisors include Jutta Steiner, Founder at Parity Technologies, the company behind Polkadot decentralized protocol, and Lord Jim Knight, Ex-Minister of Education (UK).

Bina’s ‘schtick’ is that is has very small online class sizes of 6 students (3x smaller than the OECD average).

It also boasts of “adaptive learning paths” that cover international standards; teachers with a minimum of 8 years of digital teaching experience; and data-driven decision making for its pedagogical approach. 


Noam Gerstein, bina’s CEO and founder said: “I’ve interviewed students, teachers, and parents globally for years, and it is clear a new systemic design is needed. With our founding families, we are building a world in which every child has access to quality education, educators’ skills are valued and continuously developed, and parents don’t need to choose between their work and family life.”
 
He says it also grants pupils company shares (RSUs) as they grow with the school. Currently available to English-speaking students in the CET timezone, the bina School is planning a SaaS product for governments, NGOs and school systems.

“We right now compete against companies like Outschool, Pearson’s online Academy, primer and Prisma,” he told me over a call. “So these are the big names of the last year for the first phase. But the strategy is that we’re building it in two phases. The first phase is actually building a school that we operate as a ‘lab’ school. And the second phase is what we call ‘bina as a service’. So it’s a SaaS ‘school as a service’. The idea is that we offer collaboration with NGOs and governments, doing accreditation and training and licencing of the product. So for that second part we’re actually competing against the big accreditation system.”

Startup Alley is the place to be at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23. The sold-out expo area is the virtual home to hundreds of innovative startups ready to demo their tech and talent. While exhibiting offers plenty of opportunity for all, a VIP experience kicked off in July for 50 startup exhibitors the TechCrunch staff chose to form the first Startup Alley+ cohort.

Part of that experience includes a series of masterclasses in the run-up to Disrupt. Case in point, on August 24, Dan Olsen will lead a masterclass called “How to Create Product-Market Fit.” Now, we’re ready to share the next presentation, and it’s another great one, folks.

On August 17th, John Lynn, co-founder of CELA Innovation and Jade Kearney, Lean Startup expert and Co-Founder and CEO of She Matters, will present a masterclass called, “The Key Principles of the Lean Startup Methodology.”

A quick tangent: If you’re not already familiar with CELA or what it does, the NYC-based company matches early-stage startups to world-class accelerators and incubators that align with a startup’s vertical and business goals. Last year, at Disrupt 2020, CELA connected the winners of our Pitchers and Pitches mini pitch-off competitions with an accelerator to boost their business.

Meanwhile, back at the masterclass: Change — positive or negative — is inevitable, and this masterclass will focus on what founders can do when change arrives on their doorstep. Examples of change can include receiving funding, running out of funding, losing a co-founder or a key customer or anything else that’s shaking up their situation.

John and Jade will help each cohort founder produce a Lean Startup transformation for one current business situation. Founders can then use it as a template for optimizing anything in their business the next time change comes calling.

The session begins by examining why you should use the Lean Startup methodology at inflection points — when there is a sudden change to your company, good or bad.

You’ll learn how you can use the Lean Startup methodology to create resources when you are overwhelmed by opportunity or just feel like you have gone as far as you can go with what you have.

Next, John and Jade will show how this methodology makes the difference between knowing what you want to build and learning what you need know about your customers, industry or product.

Lastly, Team CELA will isolate some of your key business activities as they exist right now. Then they will walk you through a process to turn that activity into a Lean Startup experiment that produces insights, new value and new opportunities.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place September 21-23. Don’t miss your opportunity to meet the Startup Alley+ cohort and hundreds of other innovative startups in our expo area. Opportunity is knocking — buy your TC Disrupt 2021 pass and go kick down the door.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Nikola, the electric truck startup that went public via a SPAC merger, warned Tuesday that supply chain constraints are causing numerous delays forcing it to slash its vehicle delivery projections in half.

The company, which is still in pre-production, said in its second-quarter earnings call that its plans to produce 50 to 100 electric semi trucks in this year have been lowered to 25 to 50 units. The less than rosy projections continued on the revenue front.

The company cut its revenue forecast for the year to $0 to $7.5 million. It was previously $15 million to $30 million.

Nikola reported a net loss of $143 million in the second quarter, up from a $115.7 million loss in the same period last year. Its adjusted loss was 20 cents per share, which is actually better than analysts expected. The company’s cash balance at the end of the quarter was $632.6 million.

While the company focused its earnings call on its progress toward producing electric trucks — which included testing pre-production vehicles and completing 0.5 Phase of its factory in Arizona — the market was more interested in its lowered outlook and the lingering effects from its founder Trevor Milton being charged with securities fraud. Among the company’s updates is that it has built 14 pre-production vehicles, five alpha and nine beta prototypes.

Shares of Nikola were down 7.47% in midday trading.

Milton, who resigned last year as Nikola’s CEO and executive chairman, was charged July 29 with two counts of securities fraud and wire fraud by a federal grand jury. Prosecutors detailed in the complaint how Milton used social media and frequent appearances on television in a PR blitz that flooded “the market with false and misleading information about Nikola” before the company even produced a product.

In March 2020, the company announced it would go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company VectoIQ Acquisition Corp. Milton frequently posted on Twitter, directing his messages to retail investors after the company went public that summer. Then, in September, just days after GM had announced a $2 billion investment in the company, noted short-seller Hindenburg Research accused Nikola of fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an inquiry in the matter and within two weeks Milton had stepped down as executive chairman.

Inspiration4 is getting its own documentary. Netflix said Tuesday it would be releasing a five-part series on the mission, its first documentary to cover an event “in near real-time,” in five parts in September.

Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space will follow the first all-civilian Inspiration4 crew as they prepare for and undergo a three-day flight to low Earth orbit. The private flight is being funded by – surprise! – a billionaire: Jared Isaacman, the CEO and founder of payment processor Shift4 Payments. He will be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and a pediatric bone cancer survivor; Christopher Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin engineer and Air Force veteran; and professor of geoscience Sian Proctor.

Isaacman has committed to donating $100 million to St. Jude’s out of his own funds, in addition to the public donation drive that was used to select Sian Proctor’s seat. As of March, the donation drive raised an addition $13 million for the children’s hospital.

The crew will travel to orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and a Falcon 9 rocket. The launch giant is customizing the Dragon especially for the mission, replacing a docking mechanism with a transparent glass dome out of which crewmembers will be able to take in what will likely be some pretty spectacular views. The dome will only be large enough to fit one passenger at a time, and ti’ll only open once the spacecraft has safely exited Earth’s atmosphere. (Stellar views are a relatively recent concern for launch developers and space passengers, mostly an effect of the burgeoning space tourism industry.)

The Netflix series will likely be the cherry on top of the massive media event that will be Inspiration4. The Netflix series will be directed by Jason Hehir, who previously headed The Last Dance, an ESPN documentary miniseries about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

This September, four civilians will launch into space for a three-day trip orbiting Earth.

Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space — the first Netflix documentary series to cover an event in near real-time — will premiere in five parts leading up to and following the mission. pic.twitter.com/8fLnxHCQNN

— Netflix (@netflix) August 3, 2021

British venture capital firm Draper Esprit recently moved its listing from the AIM to the main board in London, the LSE. The investing group also moved its secondary listing from Dublin’s Euronext Growth Market to its larger sister exchange, Euronext Dublin, which makes sense given its long connection to Irish capital.

Draper has always felt like something of an anomaly from our perspective, a generalist venture capital firm that was itself public. But this July, Forward Partners listed its shares on the AIM, and there are other venture firms in Europe that are also listed.

At first blush, the setup may seem odd; venture capital firms invest in companies that they hope to see go public one day — why would they float themselves? But Draper Esprit co-founder Stuart Chapman told TechCrunch in an interview that he finds it shocking “that venture capital backs some of the most mind-blowing tech advances in our history over the last 70 years, using the same legal structure as a 1958 property vehicle in New York.” It’s a reasonable point.

Perhaps fundraising success is part of why the venture model has not seen much disruption in recent decades, apart from rising fund sizes. But the model is not perfect. It can foist artificial time constraints on investors and force them to focus their deal flow into particular stages for fund-construction reasons. As we found out researching this piece, the public venture model highlights some of these limitations — and may be able to alleviate them in part.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

And yet we can’t come up with a single U.S. venture capital firm, for example, that has publicly listed in the same manner as Draper Esprit or Forward Partners.

To better understand why we’re seeing European VCs float, and not their peers in other markets, The Exchange reached out to Draper Esprit, Forward Partners, and fellow listed venture investors Mercia and Augmentum Fintech. From the group, we’ve learned that there are plenty of reasons why the model may be popular in the U.K. and not in the U.S.

But there are also reasons why being a public venture capitalist can make the VC game a rather different, longer-term effort. The firms in question did not go public on a whim.

So let’s talk about the good, the bad, and the regulatory concerning publicly listed venture capital firms. The future? Or just a regional quirk?

From exception to trend?

Following its move, Draper Esprit is now the largest “purely tech VC” listed on London’s Main Market. Its initial listing had also been a market milestone: “Listing Draper Esprit five years ago was a radical and unusual step for a venture capital business,” Chapman said of Draper’s 2016 dual-listing on London’s AIM and Dublin’s Enterprise Securities Market (ESM) – now Euronext Growth.

Just last month, two tech-related investment funds IPO’d on the London Stock Exchange: space-focused Seraphim Capital and Nic Brisbourne’s Forward Partners. In both cases, Draper Esprit was happy to assist with information, Chapman told us, adding that the firm also invested in Forward via its fund-of-funds effort.

The news adds up to a roster of listed investors that also includes fintech fund Augmentum Fintech, asset manager Mercia Asset Management PLC and intellectual property commercialization company IP Group. “We’re supportive of others following in our footsteps and we will be big fans of having much wider diversity,” Chapman told TechCrunch in an interview, which you can read in full here.

Having recently joined the club, Forward Partners’ founder and CEO Nic Brisbourne gave us a good overview of the three high-level reasons that could lead a fund to list: open opportunities to create more value from new initiatives that sit outside traditional investment capital; breaking the cycle of fundraising; and opening access to the early-stage venture capital asset class. Let’s take a closer look.

Rani Therapeutics, a San Jose-based company developing a pill to replace medical injections, went public on Friday. 

According to S-1 filings, shares were estimated to price between $14 and $16 last week. On Friday, shares debuted slightly lower, around $11. Rani raised about $73 million in its debut.

Rani’s debut comes amidst a flurry of IPO activity in therapeutics. In 2020, 71 biotech companies went public. Already in 2021, 59 companies have IPO’ed and even more are on the way. On July 30 alone, eight different biotech companies are expected to begin trading, including Rani Therapeutics. 

Rani Therapeutics, is, as Imran puts it “laser focused” on itself, rather than the IPO activity around it. The decision to go public was partially bolstered by the results of a phase I study– early evidence that the RaniPill, the company’s flagship product could be brought into the clinic. 

“We are already in humans, and clearly on a strong path to make oral biologics [a] reality. This is a hot and unique market for life science direction and we’re excited to be driving innovation in this area,” Imran tells TechCrunch. 

Rani Therapeutics flagship product is RaniPill, essentially, a capsule designed to deliver medicines that would usually be delivered via injections. TechCrunch covered the pill in more detail here, but it works according to a few basic steps. 

The pill is covered by a coating resistant to stomach acid. Once the pill enters the small intestine, the coating dissolves, allowing for a small balloon to inflate. Once that small balloon inflates, medication is delivered by a microneedle (which dissolves after the drug is administered). Then, the rest of the balloon is “excreted through normal digestive processes,” per the company’s S-1 filing. 

This whole process occurs in a pill that, on the outside, looks like a gel capsule. 

There is evidence for some conditions suggesting patients prefer oral drugs to injections: for example, studies on cancer patients have illuminated patient preference for oral therapies rather than regular injections. That’s not the case for every condition. Some patients show preference long-acting medicines delivered via injection rather than having to take lots of pills (this is the case in for some HIV patients). 

However, it’s fair to say that needles aren’t exactly pleasant. A 2019 review and meta analysis of 35 studies found that between 20 and 30 percent of young adults are afraid of needles, a fear which can lead some people to avoid medical treatments or vaccines. 

Rani Therapeutics has been developing capsules for drugs that have already been approved by the FDA, but are often administered via regular injections. They include: 

• Octreotide for acromegaly or neuroendocrine tumors in the GI tract (NETs) 
• TNF-alpha inhibitors for psoriatic arthritis 
• Parathyroid hormone (PTH) for osteoporosis 
• Human growth hormone (HGH) for HGH deficiency 
• Parathyroid hormone for hypothyroidism 

The product furthest along in the research cycle is the pill developed to administer octreotide (called RT-101), which was tested in a phase I clinical trial on 62 participants. The trial results, partially reported in the S-1 filing, showed 65 percent bioavailability of the octreotide drug, compared to an injection. That suggests that the pills can get the drugs into the body efficiently, though these results are early. 

Next year, the company plans to initiate two additional Phase I studies on PTH for osteoporosis, and human growth hormone. Studies on the rest of the drugs in the pipeline are scheduled for 2023. 

Ultimately, the company’s goal is to validate the RaniPill independently of specific drugs. The company is pursuing an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE), which would allow the company to test RaniPill in a clinical study without a drug involved. This study aims to establish how safe the product is for repeated dosing, and is slated to begin next year. 

“I think we want to continue to generate data with drugs, because we will be making drugs. But nonetheless, it’s important to establish what the platform’s safety and tolerability is,” said Imran.  So that’s quite important as well.” 

The company’s leadership does have a track record of successful exits in the biotech space. 

Rani Therapeutics was founded in 2012 by Mir Imran, a founder who has already overseen several exits and acquisitions of medical device companies. In 1985, Imran developed an implantable cardiac defibrillator as part of his first company, Intec Systems, which was later acquired by Eli Lilly. Since, he has started 20 different medical device companies, of which 15 have either IPOed or been acquired. 

However, for now, Rani Therapeutics financials report significant losses. Net losses for 2019 and 2020 totaled $26.6 million and $16.7 million, respectively. As of March 2021, the company was running a deficit of $119.6 million. 

In total, the company has raised about $211.5  million in funding since inception, without counting cash generated from today’s IPO. RaniTherapeutics  has plans to use the $73 million raised during the IPO to fund the IDE study and pursue additional clinical trials.