Author: azeeadmin

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.

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.

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.

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.

Facilio, an IoT startup that focuses on facility management software, announced today that it has raised a $6.4 million Series A led by Tiger Global and returning investor Accel. The funding will be used to expand further in India, where Facilio has an office in Chennai, the United States, and the Middle East, as well as enter new markets. Facilio is also one of the first new Indian companies Tiger Global has added to its portfolio since hitting pause on new investments there in 2015.

Led by Lee Fixel, Tiger Global was among the many venture capital firms that poured money into early-stage Indian startups in 2014-2015 before uncertainty about growth and valuations dampened the funding frenzy. Funding began picking up again this year, but this time the focus is on more mature companies like Swiggy and Zomato.

Tiger Global hit a home run when one of its Indian investments, FlipKart, was acquired by Walmart earlier this year and recently reportedly closed a new $3.75 billion fund to focus on India, U.S., and China.

Founded in 2017 by Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian, Yogendra Babu, and Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, Facilio’s software helps commercial real estate property owners keep on top of regular maintenance, make sure things like air conditioning systems and elevators are functioning properly, and lower their energy consumption.

In a press statement, Fixel said “On a global basis, facilities management services and energy spend by buildings each account for more than a trillion dollars. I am optimistic that Facilio can be a true disruptor in this industry.”

Facilio, an IoT startup that focuses on facility management software, announced today that it has raised a $6.4 million Series A led by Tiger Global and returning investor Accel. The funding will be used to expand further in India, where Facilio has an office in Chennai, the United States, and the Middle East, as well as enter new markets. Facilio is also one of the first new Indian companies Tiger Global has added to its portfolio since hitting pause on new investments there in 2015.

Led by Lee Fixel, Tiger Global was among the many venture capital firms that poured money into early-stage Indian startups in 2014-2015 before uncertainty about growth and valuations dampened the funding frenzy. Funding began picking up again this year, but this time the focus is on more mature companies like Swiggy and Zomato.

Tiger Global hit a home run when one of its Indian investments, FlipKart, was acquired by Walmart earlier this year and recently reportedly closed a new $3.75 billion fund to focus on India, U.S., and China.

Founded in 2017 by Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian, Yogendra Babu, and Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, Facilio’s software helps commercial real estate property owners keep on top of regular maintenance, make sure things like air conditioning systems and elevators are functioning properly, and lower their energy consumption.

In a press statement, Fixel said “On a global basis, facilities management services and energy spend by buildings each account for more than a trillion dollars. I am optimistic that Facilio can be a true disruptor in this industry.”

Facilio, an IoT startup that focuses on facility management software, announced today that it has raised a $6.4 million Series A led by Tiger Global and returning investor Accel. The funding will be used to expand further in India, where Facilio has an office in Chennai, the United States, and the Middle East, as well as enter new markets. Facilio is also one of the first new Indian companies Tiger Global has added to its portfolio since hitting pause on new investments there in 2015.

Led by Lee Fixel, Tiger Global was among the many venture capital firms that poured money into early-stage Indian startups in 2014-2015 before uncertainty about growth and valuations dampened the funding frenzy. Funding began picking up again this year, but this time the focus is on more mature companies like Swiggy and Zomato.

Tiger Global hit a home run when one of its Indian investments, FlipKart, was acquired by Walmart earlier this year and recently reportedly closed a new $3.75 billion fund to focus on India, U.S., and China.

Founded in 2017 by Prabhu Ramachandran, Rajavel Subramanian, Yogendra Babu, and Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, Facilio’s software helps commercial real estate property owners keep on top of regular maintenance, make sure things like air conditioning systems and elevators are functioning properly, and lower their energy consumption.

In a press statement, Fixel said “On a global basis, facilities management services and energy spend by buildings each account for more than a trillion dollars. I am optimistic that Facilio can be a true disruptor in this industry.”

Welcome back to the latest edition of politicians don’t get technology! Our latest guest is Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and current cybersecurity adviser to President Trump.

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t understand Twitter or the internet.

It’s embarrassing enough that Giuliani inadvertently tweeted a link to a website criticizing Trump, but now he is doubling down on cyberstupidity by claiming that “someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-President message.”

Ignorant as to what had happened, he latched on to apparent anti-Republican bias within Twitter, a theme that Trump and other Republicans have pushed despite no evidence.

“Don’t tell me they are not committed cardcarrying anti-Trumpers,” added Giuliani, who — we repeat — is a cybersecurity adviser to the White House .

The explanation is quite simple.

Giuliani’s original tweet on November 30 (above) didn’t contain a period between sentences, which created a hyperlink to G-20.in. An eagle-eyed member of the public — named by the BBC as Atlanta-based marketing director Jason Velazquez — clicked through the link and, finding that it was blank, quickly registered the domain and created a website carrying the “a disgusting anti-President message” that Giuliani referred to.

“When I realised that the URL was available, my heart began to race a bit. I remember thinking: ‘This guy — Giuliani — has no idea,'” Velazquez told the BBC. “I quickly upload my files, tweeted about what I had done, and left my apartment.”

The tweet itself was well-covered by media, but Giuliani absurd return to the topic has given the site even more coverage.

Both of Giuliani’s tweets remain online and undeleted — as of 22:40 PST — but, in the positive count, it does appear that he has figured out how to create Twitter threads by replying to previous tweets.

This incident follows another moment of Twitter-based comedy from Giuliani when he sent a curious message following news that Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen had made a plea agreement.

That tweet recalled Trump’s own ‘covfefe’ typo last year.

Despite a year-end goal of 30 percent broadband internet penetration in Nigeria, the country is unlikely to hit that target. As of 2017, internet penetration in Nigeria was at 22 percent — among the lowest in the world, according to the ICT Development Index, which is published by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union.

MainOne, a broadband infrastructure provider, is one of the operators looking to increase connectivity and access to broadband in Nigeria and beyond. In 2010, MainOne became the first private subsea cable to bring open-access broadband capacities to West Africa. Founded and led by Funke Opeke, MainOne aims to close the digital divide between West Africa and the rest of the world.

Just this month, MainOne partnered with Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology to offer high-speed internet access to the MEST incubator in Ikoyi, Lagos. To date, MainOne has deployed cable landings in Lagos, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; and Seixal, Portugal. In the near term, MainOne has its eyes on Casablanca, Morocco; Bonny, Nigeria and other African countries.

At TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa, we’ll hear from Opeke about what it will take to reach the goal of 30 percent internet penetration and beyond.

We’ll also hear from Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s former Minister of Communication, who was one of the people responsible for developing the broadband plan in 2013. Since developing that five-year strategy to increase internet and broadband penetration in Nigeria, Johnson has gone on to work with entrepreneurs.

Currently, Johnson is a senior partner at TLcom Capital, which invests in telecom, media and technology companies. The firm has backed startups like Andela, mSurvey, Upstream and others.

The event is now sold out, but keep your eyes on TechCrunch for video of all the panels and the Battlefield competition.

Podcasting has grown tremendously in recent years, and a Stockholm-based company called Acast is looking to help all those podcasters make money.

Acast is announcing today that it has raised $35 million in Series C funding, bringing its total funding to more than $67 million. Investors in the round include AP1 (which manages some of the capital in Sweden’s national income pension system), as well as Swedbank Robur funds Ny Teknik and Microcap.

Ross Adams, who became Acast’s CEO last fall, told me that the money will allow Acast to expand, both in terms of its product offerings and the geographies where it operates.

The company has focused on bringing technology to the surprisingly old-fashioned world of podcast advertising. In fact, it pioneered the practice of dynamically inserting ads into podcasts — as opposed to the model where (as Adams put it), “When you listen to a five-year-old podcast, you’ll hear the host read a five-year-old ad.”

Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with the BBC, allowing the BBC’s podcasts to remain ad-free in the United Kingdom while inserting ads everywhere else.

“We don’t mind if your show is absolutely huge or absolutely tiny,” Adams said. “The model we have allows a serious mainstream publisher like the BBC to monetize — or a bedroom podcast hobbyist.”

At the same time, Adams wants Acast to support other business models. It’s already experimenting with paid, premium content through its Acast+ app, but it sounds like there are more paid podcast products in the works: “We want to be that central point of monetization, [whether] they make money through advertising or they’re looking at premium offerings.”

As for geographic expansion, Acast says it launched in Ireland, New Zealand and Denmark this year. It also plans to grow in the United States, which currently represents 25 percent of all listens on the platform.

Acast is also looking to bring podcast monetization into new hardware — Adams said the company has spent much of the past year focused on the smart speaker market. Those speakers present new opportunities for content (Adams said it’s less about “longer-form storytelling” and more “short-form shows for your daily consumption in the morning”), and new challenges for advertising.

Adams is hoping that if Acast can solve those challenges, it won’t just be monetizing the smart home market, but also moving into cars and anywhere else you might find “voice-enabled technology.”

It’s been quite the tumultuous year in the tech industry, most notably for companies like Facebook. Google, Tesla and Salesforce. And, based on Glassdoor’s latest ranking of the best companies to work for — in addition to employee protests and walkouts — it’s clear that employees are paying attention.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook is no longer ranked as the top large company to work for in the United States. Following scandal after Scandal, employee sentiment at Facebook decreased from an average 4.6 rating in Q1 2018 to 4.3 in Q4. Though, it still ranks seventh among companies that employ 1,000 people or more in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Salesforce’s rating has dropped from 4.5 to 4.4, but it’s ranking has increased from 15th best overall last year to 11th best this year. It’s worth noting that no tech company achieved greater than a 4.5 overall rating. Last year, however, the top tech companies (Facebook, Google and HubSpot) came in at 4.6. TL;DR Employees are generally less satisfied with tech companies this year than they were last year.

Quick fun sad fact: None of these companies are led by female-identifying, trans or non-binary people.

But without further ado, here are 15 best tech companies to work for in 2019.

15. Microsoft (#34 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Satya Nadella

Positive employee reviews: “Clarity of work, growth, smart coworkers, benefits”

Negative employee reviews: “Salary, hierarchical, deep rooted long term relationships/loyalties in teams made it hard for new team members.”

14. Compass (#32 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Robert Reffkin

Positive employee reviews: “Great management and leadership, amazing community of staff and agents, huge emphasis on being your most authentic self and maximizing your strengths. Great benefits.”

Negative employee reviews: “would be great to have a 401K one day!”

13. Adobe (#30 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Shantanu Narayen

Positive employee reviews: “Great culture, fun people, world class products! people were eager to help out and improve the customers experience”

Negative employee reviews: “Leadership teams were distant from product capability and misunderstood how to influence product development teams”

12. SAP (#27 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Bill McDermott

Positive employee reviews: “Flexible, inclusive, innovative culture, generous benefits and pay packages, tons of really smart people here.”

Negative employee reviews: “Long hours, changes often and quickly and projects sometimes are done without good change management”

11. Fast Enterprises (#26 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Martin Rankin

Positive employee reviews: “Great pay and benefits. Strong culture of being supportive, collaborating, and giving back to the community. Interesting work and opportunities to try different types of projects at different locations”

Negative employee reviews: “Mid to high amount of mandatory or non-mandatory-yet-expected overtime. Fine for young, single professionals, but demanding for those with families.

10. Paylocity (#20 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Steve Beauchamp

Positive employee reviews: “The product is great, and I love the service/development teams.”

Negative employee reviews: “With the recent change in management over the sales team, culture is out the window. This company feels like Paychex from a management standpoint. Every call is recorded, every hour is tracked, and you will be told if they decide they want your opinion. Otherwise, I’ve been told in no short terms on a team call to “keep our mouths shut” unless asked. This is not the company that I was hired by 5+ years ago.”

9. Ultimate Software (#18 overall. 4.4 rating)

CEO: Scott Scherr

Positive employee reviews: “Great Company and Benefits, emphasis on keeping employees happy.”

Negative employee reviews: “Changes happen slowly, and with an emphasis on keeping employees happy, leadership is sometimes afraid to make necessary changes if it leads to making employees unhappy.”

8. DocuSign (#17 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Daniel Springer

Positive employee reviews: “Overall great work life balance and supportive management.”

Negative employee reviews: “There is no path to promotion . No HSA or gym reimbursement. No incentive for parents or daycare discounts.”

7. HubSpot (#16 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Brian Halligan

Positive employee reviews: “I’ve been at HubSpot now for almost 4 years and there’s nowhere else I’ve even thought about working in that time. Why? HubSpot is a great place to work. I feel like I’m valued. I have a lot of autonomy in how and when and where I work. I feel strongly about the mission of the company. All in all, I’m extremely happy here.”

Negative employee reviews: “As the company grows, scaling communication and decision making becomes more difficult. Luckily, it’s something that’s top of mind for many people who are working to make communication easier and better.”

6. Salesforce (#11 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Marc Benioff

Positive employee reviews: “Very supportive environment. Unlimited learning potential. Positive company outlook and morals.”

Negative employee reviews: “Big company issues like politics are present and although much is said about “equality” and “transparency”, some divisions still have the usual corporate bullshitters. Many internal projects fail due to lack of leadership or management ability and much is swept under the rug.”

5. Google (#8 overall, 4.4 rating)

CEO: Sundar Pichai

Positive employee reviews: “Free food, subsidised massage, good benefits are all true benefits. They also do a lot of interesting work in tech. The claimed corporate culture of openness, a flat organisational structure and acceptance of employees’ true selves is a good ideology, though clearly sometimes a failed practice.”

Negative employee reviews: “Google management are surprisingly penny pinching in allocating sufficient resource to projects by way of staff, office space, and budget. Success here depends on how good your boss is at politicking and how good you are at politicking with your boss, rather than actually being focused on the merits of specific investments – the scale is too large to be accurate when it comes to brass tacks.”

4. Facebook (#7 overall, 4.5 rating)

CEO: Mark Zuckerberg

Positive employee reviews: “The challenges we face in the wake of press mentions and bad actors abusing our platform causes us to band together and focus in on fixing problems.”

Negative employee reviews: “Work life balance is terrible. Everyone in my team works outside regular hours, night and weekends. No one will explicitly say that you have to do this but given the competitive culture, you pretty much put in extra hours.”

3. LinkedIn (#6 overall, 4.5 rating)

CEO: Jeff Weiner

Positive employee reviews: “Many of the smartest and most talented leaders in Silicon Valley are here.”

Negative employee reviews: “Competition among incredibly bright employees is fierce.”

2. Procore Technologies (#4 overall, 4.5 rating)

CEO: Craig “Tooey” Courtemanche

Positive employee reviews: “Excellent culture, world class people and benefits.”

Negative employee reviews: “Extreme growth has it’s challenges, intention is there to get things right.”

1. Zoom Video Communications (#2 overall, 4.5 rating)

CEO: Eric S. Yuan

Positive employee reviews: “Great product, in fact, best on the market. Zoom has amazing benefits and tons of perks in the office. There are some great, integral people here at Zoom to work with. I consider many people on my team friends. CEO genuinely cares and listens to his employees.”

Negative employee reviews: “I’m afraid this culture has shifted in a negative way over the past year and a half. There are way too many salespeople – upper management is starting to notice, and doing drastic things to get people out. There aren’t real territories carved out, unless you’re in a higher segment. It seems that the lower segments are at the bottom of the totem pole in the organization.”

Consumer credit giant Experian is continuing to back Asian fintech startups after it led a $10 million investment in Southeast Asia’s Jirnexu .

Jirnexu, which is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, operates financial comparison services in Malaysia and Indonesia. Those services aggregate offerings and deals from banks and financial services companies, effectively acting as a user acquisition channel for reaching new audiences and customers. This round is a follow-on to Jirnexu’s $11 million Series B which closed in May and was led by SBI, which was the other investor in this extension. This new money takes the startup to $28 million from investors to date.

The deal marks the third investment in Asian fintech for Experian, which is based in London and valued at £17.8 billion, or $22.6 billion. The firm previously backed India’s Bankbazaar and Singapore-based C88.

As you’d expect, those deals include strategic relationships. In the case of Jirnexu, Experian said it would help with “improved performance in demand generation, better eligibility matching through analytics and more seamless consumer experiences.”

There may yet be more deals involving Experian based on comments from the firm’s Asia Pacific CEO, Ben Elliott, made earlier this year.

“Five or six years ago, we started to think about how we solve some bigger problems rather than just being a stoic software company. We’re looking at organizations that we think are either disruptive in the market where we have a role to play, or those that are building into something we think we can grow with,” Elliot told TechCrunch in an interview in July.

A recent Google report forecast that Southeast Asia’s digital economy will triple in size to reach $240 billion by 2025 and Experian is far from the only one keen to get into the future of finance in the region. Ride-hailing giants Grab and Go-Jek are building their own payment and financial services, while China’s Tencent and Alibaba are actively investing in the region, too. Just last week, for example, Tencent finalized a deal that sees it lead a $215 million investment in Voyager in the Philippines.