Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s affiliate Alipay have long dominated digital payments in China, but they have always faced new challengers. The latest entrant in online payments is Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version. The short video app recently added “Douyin Pay” to its list of existing payment options, which have included Alipay and WeChat Pay. “The […]
Skyqraft, the Swedish startup using AI and drones for electricity powerline inspection, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding, capital it will use to further develop its technology and expand its operations in Europe and in the U.S. Leading the seed round is Subvenio Invest, with participation from pre-seed backer Antler, Next Human Ventures, and […]
French startup LeoCare has raised a €15 million funding round. Felix Capital, Ventech and Daphni are participating in today’s funding round. The company is selling a portfolio of insurance products with a focus on the signup process and user experience. You can control your insurance products from a mobile app. Chances are you already pay […]
Once overlooked, agritech startups are beginning to have a moment in India. On Tuesday, DeHaat, an online platform that offers full-stack agricultural services to farmers, said it has raised $30 million in a new financing round as the Indian firm looks to maintain its accelerated growth despite the pandemic. Prosus Ventures, formerly known as Naspers […]
Darwinbox, which operates a cloud-based human resource management platform, has raised $15 million in a new financing round as the Indian startup looks to further expand in the country and Southeast Asian markets. The new round — a Series C — for the Hyderabad-headquartered startup was led by Salesforce Ventures, the venture arm of the […]
Volopay, a Singapore-based startup building a “financial control center” for businesses, announced today it has raised $2.1 million in seed funding. The round was led by Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, and included participation from Soma Capital, CP Ventures, Y Combinator, VentureSouq, the founders of Razorpay, Antler and other angel investors. The funding will be used […]
The best thing about 2020 is we survived it. No need to say what the worst thing is, it’s hands down our collective stupidity in the choices we’ve made. That reality has forced us to refactor what we do moving forward. If we had correctly understood the massive changes ahead, we would not be wondering […]
The idea for Capsule started with a tweet about reinventing social media. A day later cryptography researcher, Nadim Kobeissi — best known for authoring the open-source E2E-encrypted desktop chat app Cryptocat (now discontinued) — had pulled in a pre-seed investment of $100,000 for his lightweight mesh-networked microservices concept, with support coming from angel investor and former […]
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hi friends and new readers, welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to […]
TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Bucharest and Romania will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know how Romania’s startup scene is evolving, […]
"Now, you know, we did six acquisitions in 2019. I don't know if we'll do six acquisitions in 2021. But I want to do a lot more than one acquisition in 2021."
Virgin Orbit scored a major success on Sunday, with a test flight that not only achieved its goals of reaching space and orbit, but also of delivering payloads on board for NASA, marking its first commercial mission, too. The launch was a success in every possible regard, which puts Virgin Orbit on track to become […]
A long-running investigation in the European Union focused on the transparency of data-sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp has taken the first major step toward a resolution. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) confirmed Saturday it sent a draft decision to fellow EU DPAs toward the back end of last year. This will trigger a review process […]
India’s answer to WhatsApp has completely moved on from messaging. Hike Messenger, backed by Tencent, Tiger Global and SoftBank and valued at $1.4 billion in 2016, earlier this month announced that it was shutting down StickerChat, its messaging app. (StickerChat users saw notifications about it late last week.) The startup, founded by Kavin Bharti Mittal, […]
For several years there has been talk about how to leverage “experts” online. How do you “suck their brains” for information in an efficient manner, whether it be for research into companies or sectors, often for investment purposes. Major players in this arena include GLG, Third Bridge, Guidepoint and Alphasights. With the pandemic destroying many […]
Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee is back in prison following a retrial of his 2017 conviction in a bribery case that helped lead to the downfall of former South Korean president Park Geun-hye. The Seoul High Court sentenced Lee to 30 months on Monday. Lee was originally convicted of bribery in 2017 and […]
Goama (also known as Go Games) lets developers quickly integrate social games into their apps. Some of Goama’s clients have used it for promotional campaigns, while others rely on the platform, which introduces new games every week, to add a full-fledged gaming function to their app. The startup, which recently took part in SOSV’s accelerator […]
Five years after its launch, Twitter Moments is growing beyond the American social networking platform. On Monday, Twitter said it had partnered with Dailyhunt to bring Moments to the Indian social app. Dailyhunt app now has a dedicated tab called “Twitter Moments India” to showcase curated tweets pertaining to news and other events in the […]
Flipkart on Monday launched SuperCoin Pay that its customers will be able to use across thousands of retail stores across the country as Walmart-owned e-commerce giant bets on its loyalty program to win and sustain its user base in the world’s second-largest internet market. The Bangalore-headquartered e-commerce giant said it had partnered with over 5,000 […]
