Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Osome’s founding team, Anton Roslov, Victor Lysenko and Konstantin Lange

Osome, a Singapore-headquartered business assistant app that digitizes accounting and compliance tasks, has raised $3 million. An extension of Osome’s seed round, the new funding was led by XA Network and AltaIR Capital.

The startup currently has about 4,500 SME clients across Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, founder and chief executive officer Victor Lysenko told TechCrunch. The new funding brings Osome’s total raised to $8 million from investors including Target Global. “We are in a good place in terms of cash reserves and operational performance so we used this opportunity to raise funding before a much larger Series A planned for 2021,” Lysenko said.

When the startup launched in 2018, he said it reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the end of the year, then increased that amount to $4 million in December 2019. Osome expects to hit $8 million ARR by the end of this year.

Osome’s platform uses machine learning-based tech to automate administrative, accounting, payroll and tax-related work. Depending on subscription tier, it also gives businesses access to chartered accountant services.

Osome’s digital business assistant

The startup started two years ago in Singapore, where it also offers incorporation services, before expanding to the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

Lysenko told TechCrunch that Osome launched in Singapore because the country’s “simple business rules and a simple tax system allowed us to offer clients a ready-made solution quickly.” The city-state’s small size also made it easier to get quick client feedback and arrange partnerships.

Osome is now looking at Australia as a potential new market, because of its proximity to its Singapore headquarters and its similar accounting and corporate service rules.

Thanks to the country’s relatively digital and streamlined process for incorporating businesses, several other tech-based business service platforms are also based in Singapore. These include Sleek, Lanturn and Bluemeg. Despite competing with each other, Lysenko said the number of companies “is an excellent support for our thesis that this market is ripe for disruption.”

“Having said that, we believe that while all our competitors are looking at this space from a digital perspective, our special sauce is that we digitize the process to a much deeper extent and do not rely on third-party solutions as much as others do,” he added.

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns prompted some companies to start using Osome, particularly in the e-commerce segment. About one in 10 of Osome’s clients earn most of their revenue online, and that share is growing, Lysenko said.

“We found ourselves in a very stable industry,” he added. “We saw a slight 10% drop in revenue in April and May, but in June, growth resumed, and we returned to our previous trajectory. We have tripled our revenue in the last 12 months.”

Citysocializer, previously a platform for promoting real-world socializing in cities, has relaunched, becoming something akin to a ‘Get Your Guide for virtual events’. Just as other startups have pivoted to ‘lean in’ to current circumstances, this startup has turned its attention to how people can monetize their skills and passions from home doing the COVID-19 era.

As many of us have seen, personal trainers, yoga teachers and similar types of freelance professionals have all had to shift to offering virtual sessions over Zoom and similar platforms. But until recently, these sessions were hard to monetize.

Since the pandemic arrived, Citysocializer recognized this phenomenon and quickly pivoted to a hybrid model, which they describe as being somewhere between Airbnb’s Online experiences and Meetup.com.

It’s now become a platform for virtual fitness classes, learning workshops, and the like, with users in the UK, Europe, US and Canada participating in hundreds of live, virtual group events, classes, and workshops. The company has previously raised a £1.5m VC funding from PROfounders Capital and EC1 Capital.

CEO and founder Sanchita Saha says she has seen per person event bookings increase 300% from an average of two to six events per person per month. She said: “Because the world is set to be in various stages of lockdown over the next six months or more, now more than ever people need and want to feel connected, be entertained, creatively inspired, stay fit and on top of their mental health – and the easiest and safest way to do that is virtually… Enabling workers from these industries to monetize their skills and talents by hosting their own virtual events for a captive audience who are stuck at home is a win-win situation.”

She said former workers in the hospitality and entertainment industries – hit hard by the pandemic – are switching to offering things like cocktail classes; chefs are hosting cooking classes; and singers, musicians and entertainers are using the platform to host live virtual gigs. Other activities include Games nights (Pictionary, Articulate, Bingo..); Theatre, Performance & Storytelling Workshops; Wine Workshops; Beauty & skincare classes and Guided Meditations.

But why would someone not just throw up an Eventribe page or similar to achieve this? Speaking to TechCrunch, Saha said: “We have a social networking and community piece that sits around the events, who are already actively attending virtual events, classes and workshops and inviting their friend networks on Citysocializer to join them as well. There are also higher repeat bookings because of this. If someone joins an event once and enjoys it, we make it easy (and they are more likely) to join future events. Hosts can build a following for their events amongst the community.”

Most events and experiences are priced £4 – £15 per household, or discounted with Citysocializer membership that starts from £9.99/month. Commercial event hosts earn 100% of the net revenue from their event bookings and can host multiple events for international users across multiple time zones.

Another startup that has appeared during the pandemic to take advantage of this switch to virtual events has been Livelink, which offers ‘tailored recommendations for live content and events’ via email. Curators, who don’t even have to be running the actual virtual events, find the live content available and send their selection to subscribers via the platform.

The Public Investment Fund, which has this year invested $1.5 billion in Mukesh Ambani’s telecom venture Jio Platforms and more than half a billion dollars in his fiber-optic business, has returned to back yet another empire built by India’s richest man.

The sovereign wealth fund is investing $1.3 billion in Reliance Retail for a 2.04% equity stake in the largest retail chain in India. The investment values Reliance Retail, which was founded in 2006, at $62.4 billion (up from about $58 billion last month), the Indian firm said.

Reliance Retail, which serves more than 3.5 million customers each week (as of early this year) through its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 cities and towns in the country, has now raised over 6.4 billion since September this year.

“We at Reliance have a long-standing relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. PIF is at the forefront of the economic transformation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I welcome PIF as a valued partner in Reliance Retail and look forward to their sustained support and guidance as we continue our ambitious journey to transform India’s retail sector for enriching the lives of 1.3 billion Indians and millions of small merchants,” said Ambani, who runs Reliance Retail’s parent firm, Reliance Industries, in a statement. 

More to follow…

Facebook recently announced that WhatsApp passed the whopping milestone of 100 billion messages sent per day, but not everyone wants those chats to stick around forever. Now, Facebook’s wildly popular messaging app with 2 billion users is adding a feature to give people more control on how their words and pictures live within the app. From today, messages — including photos and videos — can now be marked to disappear after 7 days.

The feature is being rolled out globally across Android and iOS starting today, WhatsApp said. While it’s starting with a 7 day lifespan, it is already looking at playing around with the time limits.

“We will keep an eye on feedback about how people are using it and liking it and see if it needs adjusting in the future,” a spokesperson said. “For now we are starting with seven days, because it feels like a nice balance between the utility you need for global text based conversations and the feeling of things not sticking around forever.”

And just to be clear, the 7-day limit will exist regardless of whether the message gets read or not. (The clock starts counting when the message is sent, as it does on other apps like Telegram.)

“The way it’s currently designed is to give the sender confidence that after 7 days their message is gone. The messages have no concept of being seen, for them to disappear, so they will disappear regardless of read status,” said the spokesperson.

Users can turn on the feature for direct messages, but in groups it’s the admin that has to enable disappearing messages for it to work.

Although today is the “official” announcement, eagle eyed WhatsApp watchers had spotted the company posting FAQs on the feature some days ago. And tests of the feature actually first started to appear — and,  fittingly, disappear — as early as March of this year.

This isn’t WhatsApp’s first rodeo with disappearing content. In 2017, the company first dabbled in the idea with the launch of Status — an encrypted clone of Snapchat’s Stories feature, which let people set up short updates on themselves — in the form of some text and/or a GIF — as essentially a “profile” for all of their contacts to see for a set period of 24 hours, with the Statuses existing in their own tab in the app separate from your chats.

It’s not clear how popular the Status feature is: we’ve reached out to ask. Anecdotally, I’ve seen younger people using it a lot, older people less so.

WhatsApp said that one of the reasons it’s taken its developers so long to bring that feature to the wider chat experience is in part because of the encrypted aspect of the app:

“[End-to-end encryption] was partly why it took us so long to implement this feature, because we wanted to retain the e2e capabilities that WhatsApp users expect and love,” the spokesperson said.

But in any case it’s a very long time in coming. Ephemerality has been one of the most radical and sticky features in messaging in years, and has arguably been the defining feature for one of the runaway, viral hits of the genre, Snapchat — so much so that it has spawned clones of the feature in a number of other apps, from those focused first and foremost on privacy like Signal and Telegram, through to those that are aimed at more casual consumer audiences, like WhatsApp.

The new disappearing messaging feature is coming amid some other notable additions in the app that appear to be in aid of the general purpose of giving more control to users.

Earlier this week, WhatsApp announced that it would enable a new storage feature in the app: specifically, an easier way to control how and where photos and other media that you are sent live. This is especially important for active (but perhaps not deep) users of the app, who find their storage is getting gobbled up by innocuous GIFs, photos and videos sent over the app by friends and acquaintances. At the same time, it has also been beefing up the services it offers to businesses, and testing out business models for charging them, one way to stick to their commitment not to put ads into the service.

As with the storage changes, the new disappearing feature will not be switched on for users by default: you have to proactively change the settings.

Facebook recently announced that WhatsApp passed the whopping milestone of 100 billion messages sent per day, but not everyone wants those chats to stick around forever. Now, Facebook’s wildly popular messaging app with 2 billion users is adding a feature to give people more control on how their words and pictures live within the app. From today, messages — including photos and videos — can now be marked to disappear after 7 days.

The feature is being rolled out globally across Android and iOS starting today, WhatsApp said. While it’s starting with a 7 day lifespan, it is already looking at playing around with the time limits.

“We will keep an eye on feedback about how people are using it and liking it and see if it needs adjusting in the future,” a spokesperson said. “For now we are starting with seven days, because it feels like a nice balance between the utility you need for global text based conversations and the feeling of things not sticking around forever.”

And just to be clear, the 7-day limit will exist regardless of whether the message gets read or not. (The clock starts counting when the message is sent, as it does on other apps like Telegram.)

“The way it’s currently designed is to give the sender confidence that after 7 days their message is gone. The messages have no concept of being seen, for them to disappear, so they will disappear regardless of read status,” said the spokesperson.

Users can turn on the feature for direct messages, but in groups it’s the admin that has to enable disappearing messages for it to work.

Although today is the “official” announcement, eagle eyed WhatsApp watchers had spotted the company posting FAQs on the feature some days ago. And tests of the feature actually first started to appear — and,  fittingly, disappear — as early as March of this year.

This isn’t WhatsApp’s first rodeo with disappearing content. In 2017, the company first dabbled in the idea with the launch of Status — an encrypted clone of Snapchat’s Stories feature, which let people set up short updates on themselves — in the form of some text and/or a GIF — as essentially a “profile” for all of their contacts to see for a set period of 24 hours, with the Statuses existing in their own tab in the app separate from your chats.

It’s not clear how popular the Status feature is: we’ve reached out to ask. Anecdotally, I’ve seen younger people using it a lot, older people less so.

WhatsApp said that one of the reasons it’s taken its developers so long to bring that feature to the wider chat experience is in part because of the encrypted aspect of the app:

“[End-to-end encryption] was partly why it took us so long to implement this feature, because we wanted to retain the e2e capabilities that WhatsApp users expect and love,” the spokesperson said.

But in any case it’s a very long time in coming. Ephemerality has been one of the most radical and sticky features in messaging in years, and has arguably been the defining feature for one of the runaway, viral hits of the genre, Snapchat — so much so that it has spawned clones of the feature in a number of other apps, from those focused first and foremost on privacy like Signal and Telegram, through to those that are aimed at more casual consumer audiences, like WhatsApp.

The new disappearing messaging feature is coming amid some other notable additions in the app that appear to be in aid of the general purpose of giving more control to users.

Earlier this week, WhatsApp announced that it would enable a new storage feature in the app: specifically, an easier way to control how and where photos and other media that you are sent live. This is especially important for active (but perhaps not deep) users of the app, who find their storage is getting gobbled up by innocuous GIFs, photos and videos sent over the app by friends and acquaintances. At the same time, it has also been beefing up the services it offers to businesses, and testing out business models for charging them, one way to stick to their commitment not to put ads into the service.

As with the storage changes, the new disappearing feature will not be switched on for users by default: you have to proactively change the settings.

German fintech startup Vivid Money has raised a $17.6 million Series A funding round (€15 million). Ribbit Capital is leading the investment. Today’s funding round gives Vivid Money a valuation of $117 million (€100 million).

Vivid Money is quite a young startup as the company started accepting customers just a few months ago. Built on top of Solarisbank for the banking infrastructure, Vivid Money is a challenger bank with a few nifty features.

When you sign up, you get a current account and a metal debit card. You can control the card from the app — for instance, you can lock and unlock it. It also works in Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Users can also create sub-accounts called pockets. Each pocket has its own IBAN. You can invite other users to specific pockets and you can associate your card with one pocket or another. Alternatively, you can order additional physical card for €20 per card, or get a virtual card for €1.

The startup also analyzes your transactions to identify your recurring subscriptions. This way, you can block future charges. Vivid Money users can also send money to other users from the app. They can also generate a link so that the recipient can enter their banking details.

There are also some cashback features as well with partner brands. Soon, you’ll be able to invest from the same app. You’ll be able to buy shares and ETFs.

There are two plans — a free plan and a premium subscription for €9.90 per month. Prime users get higher limits on cashback, more ways to earn cashback, higher limits on cash withdrawals and a free virtual card.

Right now, Vivid Money is only available in Germany. But the company has plans to expand to other European countries.

German fintech startup Vivid Money has raised a $17.6 million Series A funding round (€15 million). Ribbit Capital is leading the investment. Today’s funding round gives Vivid Money a valuation of $117 million (€100 million).

Vivid Money is quite a young startup as the company started accepting customers just a few months ago. Built on top of Solarisbank for the banking infrastructure, Vivid Money is a challenger bank with a few nifty features.

When you sign up, you get a current account and a metal debit card. You can control the card from the app — for instance, you can lock and unlock it. It also works in Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Users can also create sub-accounts called pockets. Each pocket has its own IBAN. You can invite other users to specific pockets and you can associate your card with one pocket or another. Alternatively, you can order additional physical card for €20 per card, or get a virtual card for €1.

The startup also analyzes your transactions to identify your recurring subscriptions. This way, you can block future charges. Vivid Money users can also send money to other users from the app. They can also generate a link so that the recipient can enter their banking details.

There are also some cashback features as well with partner brands. Soon, you’ll be able to invest from the same app. You’ll be able to buy shares and ETFs.

There are two plans — a free plan and a premium subscription for €9.90 per month. Prime users get higher limits on cashback, more ways to earn cashback, higher limits on cash withdrawals and a free virtual card.

Right now, Vivid Money is only available in Germany. But the company has plans to expand to other European countries.

While short videos are what drive ByteDance’s revenues and give the Chinese startup international recognition, the firm is expanding into numerous new areas like other tech giants to fuel growth. It’s dabbled in enterprise software and online learning, and the news came this week that ByteDance will invest in one of China’s largest e-book readers and publishers, Zhangyue.

Zhangyue announced Wednesday evening that a ByteDance wholly-owned subsidiary plan to acquire about 11% of its shares for 1.1 billion yuan or $170 million. The China-listed online literature company, with a current market cap of 12 billion yuan, operates an app where 170 million users read novels, magazines, anime and listen to audiobooks every month during H1.

For comparison, its immediate rival China Literature, a Tencent spinoff, claimed 217 million monthly users in the same duration.

The partners are targeting a booming online reading market driven by China’s smartphone penetration. In 2019, users spent nearly an hour a day on their e-reading apps, according to market insight provider iResearch. The sector is projected to generate 20.6 billion yuan in revenue, which includes subscription and licensing fees, by 2020; that’s up from 6.6 billion yuan in 2015. Meanwhile, e-book users in the country will reach 510 million this year, the researcher said.  

The deal will form a close alliance between Zhangyue and China’s leading digital entertainment titan. Under the agreement, ByteDance gets to assign one board member to Zhangyue and will be able to license the publisher’s intellectual property.

In return, Zhangyue will get ByteDance support in areas like ad buying, monetization, and other technologies. The success of Douyin, TikTok and newsreader Toutiao, which collectively claim users in the hundreds of millions, have turned ByteDance into a new darling for brands and advertisers.

In all, the collaboration will incur 470 million yuan worth of transactions between the partners in the following year, up from 270 million yuan a year before the equity acquisition.

On the same day that the U.S. officially withdrew from the global pact to reduce emissions that cause climate change, presidential contender Joe Biden committed that he would rejoin the Paris Agreement if elected.

In a tweet late Wednesday, Biden wrote, “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.”

The Trump Administration announced that the U.S. would leave the agreement three years ago, in a move that was blasted by venture investors at the time.

“I have always believed that, while we can disagree on the scientific premise behind climate change, we should all agree that advanced energy technologies represent one of the biggest economic opportunities,” said General Catalyst managing director Hemant Taneja at the time. “To give that up is a threat to American prosperity … Our American companies will be at a huge competitive disadvantage globally if they don’t have a market to rely on in their backyard.”

Biden’s decision to rejoin the agreement should come as no surprise given the $2 trillion climate stimulus package that was a major plank of the former Vice President’s campaign.

For the Trump Administration, the official abandonment of the climate agreement was the fulfillment of a campaign promise made in what could be the waning days of its authority.

A permanent American exit from the climate accord would be a huge blow to the international community’s ability to stave off a climate disaster caused by rising temperatures related to greenhouse gas emissions. A year of wildfires, flooding and other climate-related catastrophes have shown how changing temperatures are already wreaking havoc on communities. As the second largest emitter of global carbon dioxide, the U.S. plays an outsized role in the success of any climate change mitigation plan.

The agreement, a centerpiece of the previous Obama Administration in which Biden served as vice president, was designed to limit the emissions that cause global warming so that temperatures would not rise beyond another 2 degrees celsius.

“If Biden wins, then the fact that the withdrawal became final on November 4 really won’t matter,” Todd Stern, who was the top U.S. climate negotiator during the Obama administration, told the Financial Times. “If Trump wins a second term, then it will have much more lasting impact.”

To date, the U.S. is the only country that has formally left the agreement.

Even if a Trump Administration were to eke out a slight electoral college victory and return for a second term, market dynamics could mute the effect of any fossil fuel industry advocacy or stimulus the government may try to initiate.

Simply put, renewable energy is making more economic sense within the U.S. than its fossil fuel competitors. Wind and solar are now basically cost competitive or cheaper than fossil fuels in many markets. The cost of battery storage is also falling dramatically.

A March report from Consumer Reports explained just how much better solar power can be for consumers. “Going solar is a money-saver in the long term, even though startup costs are higher for the consumer,” according to the publication. “Electricity from fossil fuels costs between 5 cents and 17 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar energy costs average between 3 cents and 6 cents per kilowatt-hour and are trending down, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.”

Beyond market forces, a recalcitrant Trump Administration could be pressured to adopt more aggressive policies to reduce its emissions by international tariffs and potential sanctions, Sarah Ladislaw, a director of the climate change program at the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Tufts University, told the Financial Times..

“It is quite likely that other countries with ambitious emissions reduction targets, like the EU and China, will try to influence US behavior through cross-border carbon tariffs and a push to influence the global financial system to incorporate climate considerations,” she said.

We dug DJI’s Mavic Mini when the drone arrived last year. As Matt noted in his review, “It packs everything critical to be a quality drone. It has a good camera, good range and a good controller. It holds up well in the wind and is quick enough to be fun.” Today, DJI improves two of those things with the arrival of the Mini 2.

The new version, which hits retail today, is more refinement than redefinition. This is one of those cases where that’s perfectly fine, as the first release was a solid one, owing to the learnings of several generations of DJI and Mavic drones. The size and weight are essentially the same here. The Mini 2 weighs 249 grams — which comes out to about 0.55 pounds. It folds up and can be stashed away in a bag.

Image Credits: Gregory Manalo

The camera is probably the biggest upgrade here. The system is now capable of shooting 4K videos at 30 FPS. Stills, meanwhile, are 12-megapixels, and there’s 4x digital zoom (which DJI says is capable of up to 2x and still offer lossless quality). I suspect zoom is going to be a continued spot for improvement on these systems, going forward.

The other big change is the arrival of DJI’s proprietary OcuSync wireless technology — specifically OccuSync 2.0 here. The technology is also available on the latest Mavic Air. Per DJI:

OcuSync 2.0 is DJI’s world-renowned transmission technology responsible for ensuring stable, long distance, and reliable connection between the remote controller and the drone. Dual-frequency technology automatically switches between channels to help against interference.

Image Credits: Gregory Manalo

Among other things, the upgrade means a transmission rate of 19 km — around 150% of the range its predecessor delivered. Though DJI has to remind you here that you really ought to keep the tiny drone in your line of sight while operating. The battery should give you a solid 31 minutes (a slight improvement over the original’s stated 30-minute flight time).

DJI’s preprogrammed image capture is always a highlight. There are five quick-shot modes (Dronie, Helix, Rocket, Circle, Boomerang), three panoramas (Sphere, 180 and Wide-Angle) and two image modes (Triple Shot and Timed Shots).

Image Credits: Gregory Manalo

There’s a bit of a notable price bump here. The system now starts at $449 (up from $399), which includes the drone, remote and a single battery; $599 will get you two additional batteries, a charging hub and a carrying case — a solid addition.