Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Currencloud, the provider of an API and service for cross-boarder payments that is used by a host of fintechs and larger companies, including most recently Visa, has closed the first part of closing in on Series E funding.

According to sources, the 7 year old London headquartered company announced internally that it was closing in on new funding round a few weeks ago, while a recent regulatory filing reveals that the Series E totals just shy of £32 million in Series E shares so far. However, I understand that this is just tranche one, and that additional Series E funding will follow within the next 2-3 months when the round will be officially announced. Tranche one also consists of two slightly different share prices as it sees earlier debt financing converted into equity.

With regards to who is backing Currencycloud’s Series E, one source tells me Goldman Sachs is in the running and is possibly leading the round. Existing investor GV (previously Google Ventures) is said to me following on. I’m also hearing that another new investor could be Spanish bank Santander, via its venture arm Santander Ventures, in what would signal a significant strategic investment and/or partnership. Currencycloud declined to comment.

Launched in 2012 — and long considered a mainstay of the London fintech ecosystem (the company was even used heavily by TransferWise in its early days)– Currencycloud has built out B2B cross-border payments infrastructure. It provides an API for businesses that need to offer their customers international transfers.

Now operating across Europe, along with the U.S. and Canada, the company has to date processed more than $50bn in transfers, sending money to over 180 countries. The banks and fintechs that Currencycloud works with globally include Starling Bank, Standard Bank South Africa, Visa, Travelex and Klarna. The company’s team now sits at over 200 employees (see photo above) across multiple international offices, including London, Amsterdam and New York.

Currencloud, the provider of an API and service for cross-boarder payments that is used by a host of fintechs and larger companies, including most recently Visa, has closed the first part of closing in on Series E funding.

According to sources, the 7 year old London headquartered company announced internally that it was closing in on new funding round a few weeks ago, while a recent regulatory filing reveals that the Series E totals just shy of £32 million in Series E shares so far. However, I understand that this is just tranche one, and that additional Series E funding will follow within the next 2-3 months when the round will be officially announced. Tranche one also consists of two slightly different share prices as it sees earlier debt financing converted into equity.

With regards to who is backing Currencycloud’s Series E, one source tells me Goldman Sachs is in the running and is possibly leading the round. Existing investor GV (previously Google Ventures) is said to me following on. I’m also hearing that another new investor could be Spanish bank Santander, via its venture arm Santander Ventures, in what would signal a significant strategic investment and/or partnership. Currencycloud declined to comment.

Launched in 2012 — and long considered a mainstay of the London fintech ecosystem (the company was even used heavily by TransferWise in its early days)– Currencycloud has built out B2B cross-border payments infrastructure. It provides an API for businesses that need to offer their customers international transfers.

Now operating across Europe, along with the U.S. and Canada, the company has to date processed more than $50bn in transfers, sending money to over 180 countries. The banks and fintechs that Currencycloud works with globally include Starling Bank, Standard Bank South Africa, Visa, Travelex and Klarna. The company’s team now sits at over 200 employees (see photo above) across multiple international offices, including London, Amsterdam and New York.

Sweet Escape, a startup founded in Indonesia that helps connect photographers with customers, is all smiles today after it announced a $6 million Series A round.

The company — which was profiled by TechCrunch last year — said that the investment was led by Singapore-based funds Openspace Ventures and Jungle Ventures with participation from Burda Principal
Investments. Existing investors, which include Beenext, SkyStar Capital, and GDP Venture, also took part. The startup previously raised $1 million in seed funding.

Founded in 2017 by David Soong and Emile Etienne — whose previous startup was recently acquired by Indonesian travel unicorn Traveloka — Sweet Escape was initially aimed at helping travelers to connect with photographers to take great holiday photos, and get them back quickly. Now, however, that mission has broadened and the company is billing itself as a platform to reach and book photographers.

“A photographer for every need, anywhere in the world,” said Soong, who is CEO, when I asked for an elevator pitch.

Rather than disruption, the company is formalizing the process of booking photo shoots. I can’t imagine that I’d ever feel the need to spend $300 to book a snapper while I’m at the beach, but I’m in the minority — to be fair, I don’t even use Instagram anymore — according to Soong and (COO) Etienne. Photos are high quality and help create memories, they argue, while they are also provided within just three working days — although that is headed towards just 24 hours.

When TechCrunch spoke to the company last year, it said it had served 10,000 customers and worked with over 2,000 photographers across over 400 cities in some 100 countries. While they declined to give figures, Soong said the customer numbers have doubled over the corresponding eight months with Indonesia and Philippines its largest markets. Beyond consumers, Sweet Escape has begun to tap the corporate market, giving companies a platform to secure photo shoots.

Indeed, calling Sweet Escape a photo site for travelers is underselling its direction. As well as catering to corporate customers, it works closely with photographers to help them increase their business.

Aside from driving customers, that also covers photo editing which Sweet Escape takes care of. In particular, it is working to automate much of the basic editorial process to enable its human editor to focus on tasks that require skill and expertise.

“Editing hundreds or thousands of images per day can be monotonous,” Etienne said.

The aim is for tech to automate 80-90 percent of editing, which is mostly touch-ups, with areas like color enhancement left to the human editing team.

The efficient approach is also designed to increase turnaround time, meaning customers get photos as quickly as possible, leaving photographers with satisfied reviews and more time to focus on actually taking photos. Beyond that, Sweet Escape also wants to provide the tools and expertise that will enable photographers to develop their ability and experience in new areas.

“We want to create a platform where people can say: ‘Hey, I want to service clients in this vertical or that vertical’ and ultimately make more money,” said Etienne.

This new round is announced right after France-based Meero, which runs a photographer marketplace and editing tools for pros, became a unicorn thanks to a $230 million Series C deal. Soong and Etienne say their round closed before that news and that it was oversubscribed — meaning they had to, presumably politely, decline some VC offers — but still they are taking Meero’s success as another validation of their vision.

The company has progressed to office in Jakarta (HQ), the Philippines, London and Singapore and a workforce of 109, with more plans for expansion. The company is eying offices in Thailand, Korea and Japan as part of an expansion to 200 staff, which will include a mixture of roles including hires to the tech team.

While there is early product-market fit, the founders are aware that China and the U.S. are larger markets that may require significant investment in resources to take the business to the next level. That isn’t happening yet, but Etienne said that a Series B planned for the end of this year or early next year is when a decision will be made on tackling one of those “giant” markets directly.

“We see huge potential globally, but exactly where we are in one to three years is still a question mark,” he added.

Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December, attracts an international community more than 3,000 people from over 50 countries. This two-day, program-packed event, focused on early-stage startups across Europe and beyond, represents an ocean of opportunity.

We want to make that ocean available and affordable to as many people as possible, so we are offering discounted Innovator passes specifically for students and nonprofit or government employees.

Here’s what you can access with your Disrupt Berlin Innovator pass.

• The full Disrupt agenda including all stages and the Startup Battlefield competition
• Interactive workshops
• Startup Alley with more than 400 exhibiting startups and sponsors
• Networking events
• The complete attendee list via the Disrupt Mobile App
• CrunchMatch, our attendee-networking platform that helps you connect with people and schedule meetings based on mutual business goals

Who qualifies for the discount? Let’s go over the details.

Students: you must be currently enrolled in a grade school, high school, college or university program or have graduated within the last six months. Sorry, coding schools don’t qualify.

Be prepared to provide a valid student ID, proof of current enrollment or transcripts at registration, or you’ll get stuck paying the full on-site price. And if you’re less than 21 years old, you may not have access to some venues. Your reduced Innovator pass costs €135 plus VAT. Tickets are non-refundable.

Non-profit and government employees: you must be current full-time employees of nonprofit organizations, federal, state or local government agencies, international government agencies or active military employees.

Nonprofit employees must provide their email address from their organization during the online registration process. Government employees must provide their valid .gov email address during the registration process.

At the Disrupt Berlin on-site registration check-in, you must show proof of current employment at your nonprofit (copy of 501c3 documentation) or government organization. Government contractors, including contractors working on government “Cost Reimbursable Contracts,” are not eligible for the government discount.

We accept the following forms of valid government ID:

• Government-issued Visa, MasterCard or American Express
• Government picture ID
• Military picture ID
• Federally Funded Research Development Corp (FFRDC) ID

If you don’t present valid nonprofit documentation or government ID at registration, you’ll have to pay the full on-site price. The discounted Innovator pass costs €295 + VAT, and tickets are non-refundable.

Students, nonprofits and government employees, don’t miss your opportunity to experience everything Disrupt Berlin 2019 has to offer at significant savings. Apply for a discounted Innovator pass today.

Competition in Africa’s two-wheel ride-hail market is accelerating. Nigerian motorcycle transit startup MAX.ng was the latest startup to add funding, raising a $7 million funding round in June with participation of Japanese manufacturer Yamaha.

Based in Lagos, the company’s app-based platform coordinates motorcycle taxi and delivery services for individuals and businesses.

With the Series A funding MAX intends to invest in its tech infrastructure, expand to 10 cities and add new vehicle classes — including watercraft and three-wheeled tuk tuk taxis. The company will also use its new funding to pilot e-motorcycles in Africa powered by renewable energy, CFO Guy-Bertrand Njoya told TechCrunch.

MAX.ng’s moves come after competitor Gokada (also based in Lagos) raised a $5.3 million round in May and announced it would expand in East Africa. Uganda-based motorcycle ride-hail company SafeBoda expanded into Kenya in 2018 and recently raised a Series B round. 

Uber’s also gotten into the motorcycle taxi market. It started offering a two-wheel transit option in East Africa in 2018, around the same time Bolt (previously Taxify) launched motorcycle taxi service in Kenya.

The on-demand motorcycle race could make Africa a reference point in the transformation of mobility. If successful, MAX.ng’s pilot to produce electric taxis powered by renewable energy could also become a global use-case.

June also brought announcements of new resources and funding for Africa’s startups. Sweden’s Norrsken Foundation — a co-working space and investment fund based in Stockholm — opened its tech fund and entrepreneurship hub in Rwanda to support ventures across the region.

Operating from a new Kigali campus, Norrsken will offer seed investments of $25,000 to $100,000 for early-stage startups in all sectors starting this year, CEO Erik Engellau-Nilsson told TechCrunch.

The fund size is still being determined, and Norrsken Kigali will extend the fund to larger series-stage investments from $100,000 to $1 million in the future.

Founders Factory Africa and South African healthcare company Netcare launched a new initiative to select 35 African health-tech startups for an acceleration and incubation program.

The partnership includes an investment (of an undisclosed amount) by Netcare in Founder’s Factory Africa, or FFA. The Johannesburg located organization was formed in 2018 as an extension of Founders Factory in London—an accelerator that has graduated 122 startups.

The application process is now open for FFA’s new Africa health-tech program, which will accelerate 5 startups a year and incubate 2, FFA CEO Roo Rogers told TechCrunch.

Criteria for the accelerator startups include that they have a healthcare focus, be post-revenue, and have a Pan-African scope.

Accelerated startups will receive a £30,000 cash investment (≈$38,000) and £220,000 in support services from Founders Factory Africa. Incubator health-tech ventures will receive £60K cash and £100K toward support.

Founders Factory Africa and Netcare will share a 5 to 10 percent equity stake in each startup accepted into the program.

Africa focused fintech startups made up the 75 percent of JP Morgan Backed Catalyst Fund’s 2019 cohort, announced in June.  The organization plans to extend 30 additional slots (open to African startup applicants) for its accelerator program that provides up to $60,000 in non-equity venture support.

IBM launched its Quantum computer program in Africa in June in a partnership with South Africa’s Wits University that will extend to 15 universities across nine countries.

Quantum — or IBM Q, as the U.S.-based company calls it — is a computer that uses quantum bits (or qubits) to top the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputers and “tackle problems…seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classical systems to handle,” according to an IBM release.

IBM Africa will roll-out Q to Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

IBM Q, which operates out of IBM’s Yorktown Heights research center in New York, will be accessed from African universities via the cloud. Researchers in Africa interested in working with IBM Q  can apply online.

TechCrunch was on location in Addis Ababa to attend Startup Ethiopia and meet with entrepreneurs and hubs in the East African nation. The country of 105 million with the continent’s seventh largest economy has the workings of a budding tech scene. The biggest hurdle for Ethiopia’s startup community is the local internet situation, with mobile and IP connectivity managed by a state-owned telecom — which occasionally shuts down the net for the entire country, including last month. The government is taking steps to break up the state mobile and IP monopoly and issue teleco licenses by the end of 2019.

The digital ventures, techies, and angel investors I talked to at Startup Ethiopia were in unison on the need for better internet options. Most agreed this was step one for the country to have any chance of joining the continent’s tech standouts — such as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa — who lead on startup formation, VC, and exits in Africa.

More Africa-related stories @TechCrunch

• South African SME finance startup Lulalend raises $6.5M Series A
• Google is building a new private subsea cable between Portugal and South Africa

African tech around the ‘net

• Egypt bus-app Swvl raises $42 million for African expansion

• SA’s SweepSouth becomes first Naspers Foundry investment, banks $2.1m

 

 

 

India’s Ola is further widening its lead over Uber in the nation — and getting the help it needs from their mutual investor. Ola Electric has raised $250 million from SoftBank as India’s largest ride hailing firm pushes to scale its electric vehicles business in the country.

The Series B financing round, details of which emerged in a filing to the local regulator on Tuesday, valued Ola Electric at $1 billion, a source familiar with the matter said.

The infusion comes as New Delhi looks to take a serious step in electrifying the existing fleet of cabs and scooters in the country as it attempts to curtail air pollution and carbon emissions. The country has set an ambitious goal to convert 40% of the fleet to electric by 2026.

Just so it happens, Ola has been working on electric vehicles for several years. The company is currently running several two-wheeler and three-wheeler electric vehicles pilot programs across the nation. It is also building charging infrastructure and swappable battery systems for these vehicles.

Ola Electric, which raised $56 million earlier this year, plans to bring 10,000 e-vehicles to road by end of this year and deploy a million similar vehicles over the coming years. The parent group, which raised $300 million from Hyundai and Kia to expand its mobility solutions and electric vehicles programs as part of an ongoing Series J round earlier this year, is also partnering with original equipment manufacturers to scale the EV business.

The active participation of SoftBank in Ola comes months after reports claimed that the Indian firm was trying to distance itself from the conglomerate fund as its founder pushed to keep the controlling stake. An Ola spokesperson declined to comment on the new round.

The firm, which already has presence in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, last month announced that it will set shop in Uber’s backyard. Ola said it will build a new advanced technology center in San Francisco and employ more than 150 engineers there.

“As we think of the next decade, we want to invest in and we want to be very relevant on the global scale business front as well as building new-age, cutting edge technology which impact the new age business model of the future, there is no better place in the world to do it than here in the Bay area, we have made a small start, we will be hiring close to around 100-150 people here this year and from there we will take it beyond,” Ola cofounder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said at a recent conference.

Uber, meanwhile, currently has little to no electric vehicles play in the nation. Just two months ago, it partnered with electric bicycle sharing platform Yulu to conduct a trial in Bangalore.

Elon Musk’s tunneling and transportation startup The Boring Company is ramping up hiring about six weeks after landing a $48.7 million commercial contract to build and operate an underground “people mover” in Las Vegas.

The company’s website has posted more than a dozen new job openings in Las Vegas as well another 15 at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. That’s a tiny number of jobs when compared to openings at Musk’s two other companies SpaceX and Tesla. Still, it shows the company is attempting to scale up and move beyond the status of Musk pet project. (TBC hasn’t publicized how many people it employs; estimates from various sources put it at more than 80 people, although there’s evidence of overlap between SpaceX and TBC)

The Boring Company, or TBC, secured the contract in May to build an underground loop system that shuttles people after receiving approval from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

The initial design for the project, dubbed Campus Wide People Mover, or CWPM, will focus on the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is currently in the midst of an expansion that is expected to be completed in time for CES 2021. The newly expanded Las Vegas Convention Center will span about 200 acres once completed. The people mover is supposed to be complete and ready for customers by December 2020.

This underground people mover will involve the construction of twin tunnels for vehicles and one pedestrian tunnel, according to contract documents. The twin tunnels are expected to be less than a mile. There will be three underground stations for passenger loading and unloading and an elevator or escalator system for passenger access to each station.

TBC is looking to fill the kind of jobs one might expect for such an engineering heavy endeavor, including civil and tunnel engineers, construction manager and lead architect.

Once completed, the people mover is supposed to whisk people between stops at high speeds in modified electric Tesla vehicles. The contract describes these as autonomous electric vehicles, or AEVs. The standard AEVs will be Tesla Model X and Model 3 vehicles, the company said. It plans to use modified Tesla Model X chassis for a “high-occupancy” AEV that will transport up to 16 passengers with both sitting and standing room.

(It should be noted that Tesla vehicles on roads today are not self driving, and instead have an advanced driver assistance system that handles certain tasks on highways such as lane steering and adaptive cruise control.)

Before it opens to the public, the contract dictates that TBC test the system for three months.

While the project is limited for now, TBC has said in the past that the project could someday connect downtown, the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Boulevard Resort Corridor and McCarran International Airport.

Equinix, one of the world’s largest data center companies, announced that it will form a $1 billion joint venture with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. The partnership will focus on building xScale data centers in Europe. Instead of targeting the wholesale market, Equinix is developing xScale data centers to handle the demands of of the biggest cloud service providers in the world. Equinix’s clients have already included Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Google Cloud and other hyperscale cloud providers.

Under the agreement, expected to be finalized in the third quarter, GIC will own an 80 percent stake in the joint venture, with Equinix owning the remaining 20 percent. Equinix will also sell its London LD10 and Paris PA8 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers to the joint venture for new xScale centers. xScale centers will also be built in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London, bringing the total to six centers that will provide a combined capacity of 155 megawatts once completed.

Equinix says global deployments from hyperscale cloud providers currently exceed about $500 million in annual revenue. The new xScale data centers will be located on or near Equinix’s IBX campuses, to enable providers to handle more customer access points and rapidly-scaling workloads. Equinix currently has more than 200 IBX campuses, covering more than 50 metro areas around the world. xScale data centers will also offer interconnection and edge services to increase connection speeds for cloud service customers and be engineered specifically to meet the needs of hyperscale companies.

In a press statement, Charles Meyers, president and CEO of Equinix, said, “The JV structure will enable us to extend our cloud leadership while providing significant value to a critical set of hyperscale customers. We look forward to launching similar JVs in other operating regions and believe that these efforts will continue to further differentiate Equinix as the trusted center of a cloud-first world.”

It’s official. Samsung just sent out invites for the next Unpacked event. The big show kicks off at 4PM ET August 7, right here in New York. The timing lines up with rumors that have been floating around for few weeks — not to mention last year’s big event.

And in case there was any mystery around what precisely the company is going to unveil, Samsung has happily spoiled the surprise with the inclusion of a prominent S Pen on the invite. The August event will almost certainly see the debut of the Galaxy Note 10.

The art appears to hint at an updated camera, as well. Based on recent leaks, the invite looks to be a closeup of the nearly all-screen front of the new phablet, with the single hole punch front facing camera up top. 

The new handset is said to include a vertical three array camera with depth sensing and a 5G option. Samsung is also reportedly dropping the headphone jack this time out, after years pointing to it as a standout feature from the rest of the industry.

Last year’s event also saw a number of additional devices, including the (still unreleased) Galaxy Home smart speaker. And very least maybe we’ll finally be getting a date on that product, along with more information about the long delayed Galaxy Fold.

Even as much of the world is digitizing its governance, in small towns and villages of India, data about its citizens is still being largely logged on long and thick notebooks. Have they received the subsidized cooking gas cylinders? How frequent are the power cuts in the village? If these data points exist at all, they are probably stored in big paperbacks stacked in a corner of some agency’s office.

Five years ago, two young entrepreneurs — Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka — set out to modernize this system. They founded SocialCops, a startup that builds tools that make it easier for government officials — and anyone else — to quickly conduct surveys and maintain digital records that could be accessed from anywhere.

The Indian government was so impressed with SocialCops’ offering that it partnered with the startup on National Data Platform, a project to connect and bring more transparency within many of the state-run initiatives; and Ujjwala Yojana, a project to deliver subsidized cooking gas cylinders to poor women across the nation.

“This is a crucial step towards good governance through which we will be able to monitor everything centrally,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said of National Data Platform. “It will enable us to effectively monitor every village of the country.”

Two years ago, the duo wondered if their products could find any usage in the enterprise world? The early results are in: Atlan, a sister startup of SocialCops they founded has secured more than 200 customers from over 50 nations and has raised $2.5 million in pre-Series A funding led by Waterbridge Ventures, an early stage venture fund.

The startup, which employs about 80 people, has also received backing from Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of conglomerate Tata Sons, Rajan Anandan, the former head of Google Southeast Asia, and 500 Startups. On Tuesday, Singapore-headquartered Atlan moved out of stealth mode.

The premise of Atlan’s products is simple. It’s built on the assumption that the way most people in enterprises deal with data is inefficient and broken, Sankar and Banka told TechCrunch in an interview. Typically, there is no central system to keep track of all these data points that often live in their own silos. This often results in people spending days to figure out what their compliance policy is, for instance.

“Atlan wants to democratize data inside organizations,” said Sankar.

Teams within a typical company currently use a number of different tools to gather and manage data. Atlan has built products — dubbed Discovery, Grid, and Workflows — that work with several popular services to fetch data points from internal and external sources to one interface. This interface can be viewed by anyone with prerequisite permission to access and edit data on a web browser. The interface also allows users to quickly sort the data points by the year of their creation and look for patterns.

Atlan’s Grid allows an organization to see all the data they have licensed or purchased from external sources. So, for instance, an organization may have teams that subscribe to data from consulting and analytics firm. Currently, they are required to visit the websites or apps of all these third-party firms to view the data. Grid brings them to the same aforementioned interface.

The startup has also built a product called Collect that allows an organization to quickly deploy apps to conduct surveys and collect granular data. These apps can collect data even when there is no internet connection and again, all of these data points then can be viewed on one interface.

Atlan intends to use the capital it has raised on product development and sign more customers. It has already won some big names including Unilever, Milkbasket, Barbeque Nation, WPP and GroupM, Mahindra Group and InMobi in India, Chuan Lim Construction in Singapore, ServeHaiti in Haiti, Swansea University in the UK, the Ministry of Environment in Costa Rica, and Varun Beverages in Zambia.

In a prepared statement, Manish Kheterpal, Managing Partner at WaterBridge Ventures, said, “companies are struggling to overcome the friction that arises when diverse individuals need to collaborate, leading to project failure. The IPOs of companies like Slack and Zoom are proof that we live in the era of consumerization of the enterprise. With its sharp focus on data democratization, Atlan is well-positioned to reimagine the future of how data teams work.”

As for SocialCops, Sankar said many companies and government agencies are using the startup’s products and it will continue to live on and pursue its signature “social good” mission.