Author: azeeadmin

As a former Arby’s sandwich artist I understand the value of a background check. Had I not been investigated back at age 16 no one at the restaurant would have known I was a lapsed Boy Scout and read Stephen King novels. But what would have happened had I taken up a life of petty crime after being hired? No one except Intelligo would know.

Run by former lawyer, Shlomo Mirvis, Intelligo began as a manual background check service that pivoted to use AI and machine learning to speed up the process. Now Mirvis and his team have added a further twist, allowing for constant background checks over time, ensuring nothing untoward comes up after five months behind the keyboard or meat slicer.

Both Mirvis and Chief Research Officer Dana Rakovsky have connections to public and private intelligence. The company raised a $5.7 million series A and they declined to mention growth numbers although they did mention a number of high-ticket clients.

“Unlike most other players in the market, we’ve created a way to give customers continuous exposure to the people that matter to their investments,” said Mirvis. “Standard background checks are outdated the minute they’re published so we built a method to give businesses live alerts to the individuals they invest in, called Ongoing Monitoring. Unlike other products that exist, Ongoing Monitoring is built on an AI algorithm to provide a thorough scope of review, yet remove noise.”

Mirvis said that other services depend on humans poring over arrest records and other important documents to find mention of key employees. Their system looks at multiple databases and data sources and never gets tired.

“Any suspicious information found is highlighted with a red or yellow flag on our interactive report,” he said. “Copies of the original sources that our report is based on can easily be accessed.”

“Everyday people must make critical, and often difficult, decisions,” said Mirvis. “Whether the decision is to invest money or move ahead with a hire, the implications could affect a person’s financial standing or a company’s survival. At Intelligo, our mission is to create a way for people to leverage technology so they can rely on, and value, trust.”

Given background checks have become a given in many industries it’s no wonder Intelligo is running constant monitoring. After all, what would have happened if I had been found, months later, to be an undesirable sort while making my fiftieth beef and cheddar of the day?

When it comes to how humans communicate with each other or with machines, voice is a major interface, with growth in the latter fuelled by the rise of artificial intelligence, faster computing technology and an explosion of new devices — some of which only, or primarily, work with voice commands. But the supreme reign of voice has also opened a window of opportunity for malicious hackers — specifically, in the area of voice fraud.

Now, a security startup called Pindrop is announcing that it has raised $90 million to tackle this with a platform that it says can identify even the most sophisticated impersonations and hacking attempts, by analysing nearly 1,400 acoustic attributes to verify if a caller or a voice command is legit.

“We live in a brave new world where everything you thought you knew about security needs to be challenged,” said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, co-founder, CEO and CTO of Pindrop, who built the company (with co-founders Ahamad Mustaque and Paul Judge) originally out of his PhD thesis.

The funding is a growth round aimed specifically at two areas. First, taking US-based Pindrop into more international markets, starting with Europe — Vijay spoke to me in London — and coming soon to Asia. And second, to expand from customer service scenarios — the vast majority of its business today — into any applications that use voice interfaces, such as connected car platforms, home security devices, smart offices and smart home speakers.

To that end, this Series D includes a mix of strategic and financial investors: led by London’s Vitruvian Partners, it also includes Allegion Ventures (the corporate venture arm of the security giant), Cross Creek, systems integrator Dimension Data (“As you grow you want to be able to sell through partners,” Balasubramaniyan says), Singapore-based EDBI (to help with its push into Asia), and Goldman Sachs. Google’s CapitalG, IVP, Andreessen Horowitz, GV and Citi Ventures — all previous investors — were also in this round.

(The latter group of investors also has at least one strategic name in it: Pindrop is already working with Google, the CEO said.)

Valuation is not being disclosed, but in Pindrop’s Series C round in 2017, the company was valued at $600 million post-mioney, according to PitchBook, and the valuation now is “much higher,” Balasubramaniyan said with a laugh. The company’s raised $212 million to date.

The crux of what Pindrop has built is a platform that makes a voice “fingerprint” that identifies not just the specific tone you emit, but how you speak, where you are typically calling from and the sounds of that space, and even your regular device — something we can do now with the rise of smartphones that we typically don’t share with others — with each handset having a unique acoustic profile. Matching all these against what is determined to be your “normal” circumstances helps to start to build verification, Balasubramaniyan explained.

Founded in 2011 in Atlanta, GA, most of Pindrop’s business today has been built around helping to prevent voice fraud in customer service engagements. That business, Balasubramaniyan said, is on the path to profitability by the first quarter of 2019 and continues to grow well, with a voice fraud problem in the space that costs the industry $22 billion ($14 billion in fraud, $8 billion in time and systems wasted on security questions). (Pindrop claims it has stopped over $350 million in voice-based fraud and attacks so far  in 2018.)

Current customers include eight of the 10 largest banks and five largest insurance companies in the U.S., with more than 200 million consumer accounts protected at the moment. 

“There are 3.6 million agents in customer service jobs in the UK, with one in every 89 people in the US in this role,” he noted. “But last year, there there were 4.4 million new assistants added to the market,” referring to all the devices, apps and services that have hit us, “and that’s where we realised that it’s about expansion for us.”

In cases like connected home or office scenarios, some of the ways that these might get hacked are only starting to become apparent,  but we are unlikely to turn away from voice interfaces, and that is where a company like Pindrop (as well as competitors like Verint) come in.

“Voice-enabled interfaces are expanding how consumers interact with IoT devices in their everyday lives – as well as IoT manufacturers’ ability to offer smarter and stronger solutions,” said Allegion Ventures President Rob Martens, in a statement. “We’re excited about the future of voice technology and see Pindrop as a pioneer in the space. We look forward to working with Vijay and his team to accelerate the adoption of voice technology into new markets.”

Salesforce has been talking about the Internet of Things for some time as a way to empower field service workers. Today, the company announced Field Service Lightning, a new component designed to deliver automated IoT data to service technicians in the field on their mobile devices.

Once you connect sensors in the field to Service Cloud, you can make this information available in an automated fashion to human customer service agents and pull in other data about the customer from Salesforce’s CRM system to give the CSR a more complete picture of the customer.

“Drawing on IoT signals surfaced in the Service Cloud console, agents can gauge whether device failure is imminent, quickly determine the source of the problem (often before the customer is even aware a problem exists) and dispatch the right mobile worker with the right skill set,” Salesforce’s SVP and GM for Salesforce Field Service Lightning Paolo Bergamo wrote in a blog post introducing the new feature.

The field service industry has been talking for years about using IoT data from the field to deliver more proactive service and automate the customer service and repair process. That’s precisely what this new feature is designed to do. Let’s say you have a “smart home” with a heating and cooling system that can transmit data to the company that installed your equipment. With a system like this in place, the sensors could tell your HVAC dealer that a part is ready to break down and automatically start a repair process (that would presumably include calling the customer to tell them about it). When a CSR determines a repair visit is required, the repair technician would receive all the details on their smart phone.

Customer Service Console view. Gif: Salesforce

It also could provide a smoother experience because the repair technician can prepare before he or she leaves for the visit with the right equipment and parts for the job and a better understanding of what needs to be done before arriving at the customer location. This should theoretically lead to more efficient service calls.

All of this is in line with a vision the field service industry has been talking about for some time that you could sell a subscription to a device like an air conditioning system instead of the device itself. This would mean that the dealer would be responsible for keeping it up and running and having access to data like this could help that vision to become closer to reality.

In reality, most companies are probably not ready to implement a system like this and most equipment in the field has not been fitted with sensors to deliver this information to the Service Cloud. Still, companies like Salesforce, ServiceNow and ServiceMax (owned by GE) want to release products like this for early adopters and to have something in place as more companies look to put smarter systems in place in the field.

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project owned by parent company Alphabet, is launching a commercial robotaxi service in the Phoenix area dubbed Waymo One.

This milestone, for the company and nascent self-driving technology industry, comes with caveats.

The Waymo One self-driving car service, and accompanying app, won’t be available to just anyone. And for now, the company says it will have Waymo-trained test drivers behind the wheel (even though the company already has driverless vehicles on public roads in Phoenix).

Waymo will first invite Phoenix residents who are part of its early rider program, which was designed to give a vetted group of people the ability to use an app to hail a self-driving vehicle. The early rider program, which launched in April 2017, had more than 400 participants the last time Waymo shared figures on the program.

Waymo will invite some of the early riders to move over to the Waymo One service. The company will continue to operate the early rider program as a way for a select group to give Waymo ongoing insights, according to CEO John Krafcik.

“They’ll help test early features before graduating to Waymo One where new capabilities can be accessed at scale by the public over time,” he wrote in blog post on Medium.

Despite these confinements, Waymo One is progress and signals the company’s ramp up to a broader service open to the public.

Unlike, the early rider program, Waymo One users will be able to publicly share their impressions on the service. It also cracks the door to the public because Waymo One users will be able to bring along a friend or family member who weren’t part of the early rider program.

The service will be available in a defined area in Phoenix 24 hours a day, 7 days a week beginning inn Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert, the company said. The service will slowly expand into new neighborhoods and suburbs in the greater Phoenix area over time.

Riders will see price estimates before they accept the trip based on factors like the time and distance to their destination.

Riders will be able to ask questions through the app or an in-car console that gives them instant access to a Waymo employee.

Here’s a video that markets the service.

Waymo has been inching toward a commercial service in Phoenix since it began testing in self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans in suburbs like Chandler in 2016 and the expanded the following year with its early rider program. Waymo removed employees and passengers from its test fleet in 2017, sending empty self-driving minivans onto the streets of greater Phoenix.

By May of this year, Waymo began allowing some early riders to hail a self-driving minivan without a human test driver behind the wheel. More recently, the company launched a public transit program in Phoenix focused on delivering people to bus stops and train and light-rail stations.

In October, Waymo has granted the first permit in California to begin driverless testing on public roads.

Australia’s controversial anti-encryption bill is one step closer to becoming law, after the two leading but sparring party political giants struck a deal to pass the legislation.

The bill, in short, grants Australian police greater powers to issue “technical notices” — a nice way of forcing companies — even websites — operating in Australia to help the government hack, implant malware, undermine encryption or insert backdoors at the behest of the government.

If companies refuse, they could face financial penalties.

Lawmakers say that the law is only meant to target serious criminals — sex offenders, terrorists, homicide and drug offenses. Critics have pointed out that the law could allow mission creep into less serious offenses, such as copyright infringement, despite promises that compelled assistance requests are signed off by two senior government officials.

In all, the proposed provisions have been widely panned by experts, who argue that the bill is vague and contradictory, but powerful, and still contains “dangerous loopholes.” And, critics warn (as they have for years) that any technical backdoors that allow the government to access end-to-end encrypted messages could be exploited by hackers.

But that’s unlikely to get in the way of the bill’s near-inevitable passing.

Australia’s ruling coalition government and its opposition Labor party agreed to have the bill put before parliament this week before its summer break.

Several lawmakers look set to reject the bill, criticizing the government’s efforts to rush through the bill before the holiday.

“Far from being a ‘national security measure’ this bill will have the unintended consequence of diminishing the online safety, security and privacy of every single Australian,” said Jordon Steele-John, a Greens’ senator, in a tweet.

Tim Watts, a Labor member of Parliament for Gellibrand, tweeted a long thread slamming the government’s push to get the legislation passed before Christmas, despite more than 15,000 submissions to a public consultation, largely decrying the bill’s content.

The tech community — arguably the most affected by the bill’s passing — has also slammed the bill. Apple called it “dangerously ambiguous”, while Cisco and Mozilla joined a chorus of other tech firms calling for the government to dial back the provisions.

But the rhetoric isn’t likely to dampen the rush by the global surveillance pact — the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, known as the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations — to push for greater access to encrypted data. Only earlier this year, the governmental coalition said in no uncertain terms that it would force backdoors if companies weren’t willing to help their governments spy.

Australia’s likely to pass the bill — but when exactly remains a mystery. The coalition government has to call an election in less than six months, putting the anti-encryption law on a timer.

A UK union that has been fighting to win collective bargaining rights for gig economy riders who provide delivery services via Deliveroo’s platform has had its claim for a judicial review of an earlier blocking decision dismissed by the High Court today.

Six months ago the IWGB Union was granted permission to challenge Deliveroo’s opposition to collective bargaining for couriers on human rights grounds.

The union had already lost a challenge to Deliveroo’s employment classification for couriers last year. Then the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) ruled that Deliveroo riders could not be considered workers because they had a genuine right to find a substitute to do their job for them.

The union disputes that finding but so far the courts have accepted Deliveroo’s assertion that riders are independent contractors — an employment classification that does not support forming a collective bargaining unit.

Even so, the union sought to pursue a case for collective bargaining on one ground related to Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of assembly and association.

But the High Court has now dismissed its argument, blocking its claim for a judicial review.

Writing in today’s judgement, Mr Justice Supperstone concludes: “I do not consider that, on the findings made by the CAC, the Riders have the right for which the Union contends under Article 11(1). Neither domestic nor Strasbourg case law supports this contention. Article 11(1) is not engaged in this case.”

Commenting in a statement, IWGB general secretary Dr Jason Moyer-Lee said: “Today’s judgement is a terrible one, not just in terms of what it means for low paid Deliveroo riders, but also in terms of understanding the European Convention on Human Rights,” he said. “Deliveroo riders should be entitled to basic worker rights as well as to the ability to be represented by trade unions to negotiate pay and terms and conditions.”

The union has vowed to appeal the decision.

Deliveroo, meanwhile, described the ruling as a “victory for riders”. It also argues that the judgement is consistent with previous decisions reached across Europe — including in France and the Netherlands.

“We are pleased that today’s judgment upholds the earlier decisions of the High Court and the CAC that Deliveroo riders are self-employed, providing them the flexibility they want,” said Dan Warne, UK MD, in a statement. “In addition to emphatically confirming this under UK national law, the Court also carefully examined the question under European law and concluded riders are self-employed.

“This a victory for riders who have consistently told us the flexibility to choose when and where they work, which comes with self-employment, is their number one reason for riding with Deliveroo. We will continue to seek to offer riders more security and make the case that Government should end the trade off in Britain between flexibility and security.”

Despite not having collective bargaining rights, in recent years UK gig economy workers have carried out a number of wildcat strikes — often related to changes to pricing policies.

Two years ago Deliveroo couriers in the UK staged a number of protests after the company trialed a new pricing structure.

While, in recent months, UberEats couriers in a number of UK cities have protested over pay.

UK Uber drivers have also organized to protest pay and conditions this year.

The UK government revealed a package of labor market reforms early this year that it said were intended to bolster workers rights, including for those in the gig economy.

Although it also announced it would be carrying out a number of consultations — leaving the full details of the reform tbc.

Google has made a rare investment in Japan after the company led a follow-on round for AI and machine learning startup ABEJA.

The deal amount is undisclosed but a little digging suggests that it is likely a single-digit million US dollar figure. That’s because six-year-old ABEJA did confirm that it has now raised JPY 6 billion ($53 million) from investors to date. The company has raised $45 million in disclosed capital, according to Crunchbase, which leaves around $8 million unaccounted for — although that covers both the Google investment and a previous Series A deal in 2014, which was also undisclosed.

Numbers aside, the deal is notable not only because it represents a Google deal in Japan, but because it is strategic in nature.

“Going forward, ABEJA and Google will collaborate on AI and ML solutions across various sectors, including retail and manufacturing, driving the application of AI solutions, along with further growth in the Japanese AI sector,” ABEJA said in a statement.

The startup’s core offering is a ‘platform as a service’ that uses machine learning to help over 150 companies develop business analysis and insight from their data piles. There is a specialist product for retail stores which hones in on customer and retail data — that’s used by some 100 corporate customers, according to ABEJA.

“ABEJA has strong technical capabilities and ML expertise, and is respected across the industry for its track record of collaboration and the effective deployment of its tech solutions,” said Shinichi Abe, Managing Director of Google Cloud Japan, in a pre-prepared statement. “This investment paves the way for collaboration with ABEJA in innovative solutions in the retail and manufacturing sector, as well as other verticals.”

Google has placed significant emphasis on AI and machine learning in China — where it opened a lab in Beijing one year ago — but that aside the majority of its research and focus has come from the U.S. and also Europe, where its Deep Mind unit is headquartered. Google did acquire startups in India and Singapore that include AI and ML capabilities, but those deals were aimed at growing its in-house product teams which are customizing and creating services for those growing local markets.

China’s largest ride-hailing operator Didi Chuxing announced on Wednesday a major restructuring, which trails a series of tweaks to its core businesses following two separate passenger murders that happened in May and September.

The reshuffle will see Didi — which owns Uber’s China business — knit three key platforms into a new overarching Ride-hailing Business Group (RBG). The merger of Express, Premier, and Luxe, its car-hailing offerings in ascending order of quality and rates, comes just a few months after Didi rebranded and upgraded Premium, one of its fastest-growing segments.

Meanwhile, Didi is facing regulatory pressure to enhance safety measures and striving to regain trust from consumers.

“With safety as its top priority, RBG will invest resources to meet compliance standards, continuously create user value and strengthen our ride-hailing ecosystem,” Didi says in a statement.

The plan includes an upgrade in customer services, driver safety, and emergency responses. Defects in the last area have led to one of the passenger incidents, in which a female passenger failed to contact Didi for help.

As part of the change, Didi is appointing a new chief safety executive and chief security executive (in the sense of information security) who will directly report to the company’s chief executive officer Cheng Wei and chief technology officer Zhang Bo, respectively.

Chinese authorities have stepped up scrutiny on the country’s fledgling car-hailing industry following Didi’s passenger murders, including stricter verification processes for drivers and their vehicles. The controls have prompted a sharp decline in the number of rides available, urging Didi to help drivers attain new licenses.

Aside from addressing safety concerns, Didi is adding fresh growth engines through the reshuffle. The Automobile Solutions Platform will launch consisting of Didi’s Asset Management Center and Xiaoju Automobile Solutions. The newly minted group is set to explore retail opportunities and sells a flurry of existing services, including car sales, loans, car maintenance, and refueling, to Didi’s 31 million drivers.

“Didi automobile solutions will continue to develop customized for-share vehicles and incubate new auto-related businesses to become the new engine for Didi’s long-term growth,” the company says of its driver-centric platform.

Didi declined to comment when asked by TechCrunch about the potential impact its restructuring brings to revenues.

Lastly, Didi is upping the ante in cabs and bringing shared bicycles, electric bikes, and other public transportation solutions under one umbrella in a bid to serve China’s mass. The car-hailing titan will also smoothen internal coordination by forming two new units – the Finance and Operations department, and the Legal department.

Google contract workers, internally referred to as Temporary, Vendor and Contractors (TVCs, are seeking better, equal treatment. That entails better pay and access to benefits, as well as better access to company-wide information. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, they allege Google “routinely denies TVCs access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives.”

For example, when there was a shooting at YouTube this past April, TVCs say Google only sent out updates to full-time employees. They say they were also left out of the town hall discussion the following the day.

“The exclusion of TVCs from important communications and fair treatment is part of a system of institutional racism, sexism, and discrimination,” they wrote in the letter. “TVCs are disproportionately people from marginalized groups who are treated as less deserving of compensation, opportunities, workplace protections, and respect. We wear different badges from full-time employees, which reinforces this arbitrary and discriminatory separation. Even when we’re doing the same work as full-time employees, these jobs routinely fail to provide living wages and often offer minimal benefits.”

As Bloomberg reported in July, Google’s TVCs make up more than half of the company’s total staff. They handle a variety of jobs, including serving meals, testing self-driving cars and managing teams.

This comes after Google conceded to some of the employee’s demands in the aftermath of sexual harassment and assault allegations. While Google did make some changes, the company did not address all of the organizers’ demands. For example, Google failed to elevate its chief diversity officer to report directly to Pichai and also ignored the organizers’ request to add an employee representative to the board of directors.

I’ve reached out to Google and will update this story if I hear back.

India finally has its answer to Spotify after Reliance Jio merged its music service with Saavn, the startup it acquired earlier this year.

The deal itself isn’t new — it was announced back in March — but it has reached its logical conclusion after two apps were merged to create a single entity, JioSaavn, which is valued at $1 billion. For the first time, India has a credible rival to global names like Spotify and Apple Music through the combination of a venture capital-funded business — Saavn — and good old-fashioned telecom, JioMusic from Reliance’s disruptive Jio operator brand.

This merger deal comes days after reports suggested that Spotify is preparing to (finally) enter the Indian market, a move that has been in the planning for over a year as we have reported.

That would set up an interesting battle between global names Spotify and Apple and local players JioSaavn and Gaana, a project from media firm Times Internet which is also backed by China’s Tencent.

It isn’t uncommon to see international firms compete in Asia — Walmart and Amazon are the two major e-commerce players while Chinese firms Alibaba and Tencent have busily snapped up stakes in promising internet companies for the past couple of years — but that competition has finally come to the streaming space.

There have certainly been misses over the years.

Early India-based pioneer Dhingana was scooped by Rdio back in 2014 having initial shut down its service due to financial issues. Ultimately, though, Rdio itself went bankrupt and was sold to Pandora, leaving both Rdio and Dhingana in the startup graveyard.

Saavn, the early competitor too Dhingana, seemed destined to a similar fate, at least from the outside. But it hit the big time in 2015 when it raised $100 million from Tiger Global, the New York hedge fund that made ambitious bets on a number of India’s most promising internet firms. That gave it the fuel to reach this merger deal with JioMusic.

Unlike Dhingana’s fire sale, Saavn’s executive team continues on under the JioSaavn banner.

The coming-together is certainly a far more solid outcome than the Rdio deal. JioSaavn has some 45 million songs — including a slate of originals started by Saav — and access to the Jio network, which claims over 250 million subscribers.

JioSaavn is available across iOS, Android, web and Reliance Jio’s own app store

The JioMusic service will be freemium but Jio subscribers will get a 90-day trial of the ad-free ‘Pro’ service. The company maintains five offices — including outposts in Mountain View and New York — with over 200 employees while Reliance has committed to pumping $100 million into the business for “growth and expansion of the platform.”

While it is linked to Reliance and Jio, JioMusic is a private business that counts Reliance as a stakeholder. You’d imagine that remaining private is a major carrot that has kept Saavn founders — Rishi Malhotra, Paramdeep Singh and Vinodh Bhat — part of the business post-merger.

The window certainly seems open for streaming IPOs — Spotify went public this past April through an unconventional listing that valued its business around $30 billion while China’s Tencent Music is in the process of a listing that could raise $1.2 billion and value it around that $30 billion mark, too. JioSaavn might be the next streamer to test the public markets.