Azzker sleep eye mask with ultra-thin HD stereo speakers.
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Saturday 11 May 2019
Google Assistant, Nest Hub Max and all the rest of the smart home news from Google I/O 2019 - CNET
The Nest Hub Max smart display, a new brand, a faster Google Assistant and more highlight the smart home announcements from the Google I/O developer conference.
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These Geek-Approved Notebooks Can Help You Organize Your Life
Get your day started off on the right foot and keep organized with one — or more — of these unique notebooks and journals. Save up to 25 percent off the MSRP today […]
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Watch: Massive Bears Have Intense Brawl in New Jersey Yard
Spring is in full swing, and one New Jersey resident recently came across a hair-raising situation when he discovered two massive bears fighting in his yard. Corey Bale, who posted a video of […]
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What to Stream on Amazon Prime This Weekend
The weekend is the best for relaxing activities, including binge-watching some Amazon Prime flicks. We’ve rounded up the best movies, TV shows, and documentaries that you can stream on Amazon Prime from May 10 to May […]
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Top Movie and TV Trailers of the Week: ‘It: Chapter Two,’ ‘Legion,’ and More
TGIF. While you’re planning for the weekend ahead, we’ve rounded up the top movie and TV trailers that you might have missed during the week. There are only two more episodes of Game […]
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Endangered Baby Kakapo Parrot Gets World-First Brain Surgery
Veterinarians in New Zealand have performed a pioneering brain surgery on a critically endangered kakapo chick to treat a developmental problem of the skull. The life-saving procedure performed Monday was a world-first and vets adapted […]
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‘Mortal Kombat 11’ Kharacter Guide: Skarlet
There have been eleven main Mortal Kombat games. Can you believe it? The 90s were that long ago. Since then the fighting game has become a gory institution as colorful ninjas and sorcerers […]
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What to Stream on Hulu This Weekend
Hulu has a lot to offer, however, deciding what to watch on the platform isn’t always easy. If you need help choosing a flick for your next movie night, you’ve come to the […]
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Japan Unveils New World’s Fastest Bullet Train That Travels Up to 249 MPH
Japan has started testing the world’s fastest bullet train, capable of reaching speeds as much as 400 kilometers per hour (249 miles per hour). Called the ALFA-X, the train is scheduled to go […]
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Survival Instincts: Interview With Developers of ‘Ghost Recon Breakpoint’
On Thursday, Ubisoft unveiled Ghost Recon Breakpoint. A follow up to the highly successful Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the game centers around a group of Spec Op agents who must liberate the fictional island […]
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Emilia Clarke Responds to ‘Game of Thrones’ Rogue Coffee Cup Dilemma
Emilia Clarke has responded to the Game of Thrones rogue coffee cup controversy, and the Mother of Dragons is not a big fan of double-shot espresso after major battles. Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen […]
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Snake Found in Washing Machine ‘Smelled Like Downy’
This is not something you want to see in your laundry. An Evanston, Illinois homeowner got the shock of her life on Wednesday when she opened up her washing machine after a wash cycle […]
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Elon Musk Pokes Fun at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon Lander With ‘Ballsy’ Tweet
On May 9, Jeff Bezos unveiled Blue Origin’s new high-tech lunar lander, Blue Moon, after keeping the project under wraps for quite some time. Apparently Elon Musk wants in on the major space […]
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What to Stream on Netflix This Weekend
It’s finally the weekend, which means it’s time to binge-watch some documentaries, TV shows, and films on Netflix. With so many good options available, deciding what to stream can be tough. To help you […]
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Watch: ‘Russian Spy’ Whale Saves Woman’s Phone After She Drops It in Ocean
Last month, a mysterious whale with a harness appeared in the waters around Hammerfest, Norway. The adorable whale, which is believed to be trained by the Russian navy, is going viral on the […]
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11 Ways the Wu-Tang Clan Shaped Geek Culture
Friday sees the release of Of Mics and Men, a documentary on Staten Island hip-hop crew the Wu-Tang Clan. No, we don’t normally cover hip-hop here at Geek.com, but we make a special […]
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Enter BBC’s ‘Doctor Who’ Fan Art Competition
Calling all Whovians: BBC Studios this week announced the 2019 Doctor Who fan art competition. Artists of all abilities are invited to submit their work for the opportunity to see it featured on […]
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Delta Tests Free In-Flight Wi-Fi on Select Flights
For two weeks starting Monday, passengers on about 55 domestic flights can tap into Delta’s cyberspace at no charge. The pilot program—available across all cabins on select short-, medium-, and long-haul routes—is the […]
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Netflix Enters First-Look Deal With ‘Umbrella Academy’ Creator Dark Horse
Netflix has inked a first-look deal with Dark Horse Entertainment. As its name suggests, the new agreement gives Netflix a first look at TV and film rights for the production company’s intellectual property. […]
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Facebook Co-Founder Wants to Break Up Facebook
Fifteen years ago, Chris Hughes helped co-found globally popular social networking service Facebook. Now he wants to dismantle it. In a scathing—and lengthy—op-ed published by The New York Times, Hughes call for the […]
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India’s most popular services are becoming super apps
Truecaller, an app that helps users screen strangers and robocallers, will soon allow users in India, its largest market, to borrow up to a few hundred dollars.
The crediting option will be the fourth feature the nine-year-old app adds to its service in the last two years. So far it has added to the service the ability to text, record phone calls and mobile payment features, some of which are only available to users in India. Of the 140 million daily active users of Truecaller, 100 million live in India.
The story of the ever-growing ambition of Truecaller illustrates an interesting phase in India’s internet market that is seeing a number of companies mold their single-functioning app into multi-functioning so-called super apps.
Inspired by China
This may sound familiar. Truecaller and others are trying to replicate Tencent’s playbook. The Chinese tech giant’s WeChat, an app that began life as a messaging service, has become a one-stop solution for a range of features — gaming, payments, social commerce and publishing platform — in recent years.
WeChat has become such a dominant player in the Chinese internet ecosystem that it is effectively serving as an operating system and getting away with it. The service maintains its own app store that hosts mini apps and lets users tip authors. This has put it at odds with Apple, though the iPhone-maker has little choice but to make peace with it.
For all its dominance in China, WeChat has struggled to gain traction in India and elsewhere. But its model today is prominently on display in other markets. Grab and Go-Jek in Southeast Asian markets are best known for their ride-hailing services, but have begun to offer a range of other features, including food delivery, entertainment, digital payments, financial services and healthcare.
The proliferation of low-cost smartphones and mobile data in India, thanks in part to Google and Facebook, has helped tens of millions of Indians come online in recent years, with mobile the dominant platform. The number of internet users has already exceeded 500 million in India, up from some 350 million in mid-2015. According to some estimates, India may have north of 625 million users by year-end.
This has fueled the global image of India, which is both the fastest growing internet and smartphone market. Naturally, local apps in India, and those from international firms that operate here, are beginning to replicate WeChat’s model.
Founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma speaks during the launch of Paytm payments Bank at a function in New Delhi on November 28, 2017 (AFP PHOTO / SAJJAD HUSSAIN)
Leading that pack is Paytm, the popular homegrown mobile wallet service that’s valued at $18 billion and has been heavily backed by Alibaba, the e-commerce giant that rivals Tencent and crucially missed the mobile messaging wave in China.
Commanding attention
In recent years, the Paytm app has taken a leaf from China with additions that include the ability to text merchants; book movie, flight and train tickets; and buy shoes, books and just about anything from its e-commerce arm Paytm Mall. It also has added a number of mini games to the app. The company said earlier this month that more than 30 million users are engaging with its games.
Why bother with diversifying your app’s offering? Well, for Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, the question is why shouldn’t you? If your app serves a certain number of transactions (or engagements) in a day, you have a good shot at disrupting many businesses that generate fewer transactions, he told TechCrunch in an interview.
At the end of the day, companies want to garner as much attention of a user as they can, said Jayanth Kolla, founder and partner of research and advisory firm Convergence Catalyst.
“This is similar to how cable networks such as Fox and Star have built various channels with a wide range of programming to create enough hooks for users to stick around,” Kolla said.
“The agenda for these apps is to hold people’s attention and monopolize a user’s activities on their mobile devices,” he added, explaining that higher engagement in an app translates to higher revenue from advertising.
Paytm’s Sharma agrees. “Payment is the moat. You can offer a range of things including content, entertainment, lifestyle, commerce and financial services around it,” he told TechCrunch. “Now that’s a business model… payment itself can’t make you money.”
Big companies follow suit
Other businesses have taken note. Flipkart-owned payment app PhonePe, which claims to have 150 million active users, today hosts a number of mini apps. Some of those include services for ride-hailing service Ola, hotel booking service Oyo and travel booking service MakeMyTrip.
Paytm (the first two images from left) and PhonePe offer a range of services that are integrated into their payments apps
What works for PhonePe is that its core business — payments — has amassed enough users, Himanshu Gupta, former associate director of marketing and growth for WeChat in India, told TechCrunch. He added that unlike e-commerce giant Snapdeal, which attempted to offer similar offerings back in the day, PhonePe has tighter integration with other services, and is built using modern architecture that gives users almost native app experiences inside mini apps.
When you talk about strategy for Flipkart, the homegrown e-commerce giant acquired by Walmart last year for a cool $16 billion, chances are arch rival Amazon is also hatching similar plans, and that’s indeed the case for super apps.
In India, Amazon offers its customers a range of payment features such as the ability to pay phone bills and cable subscription through its Amazon Pay service. The company last year acquired Indian startup Tapzo, an app that offers integration with popular services such as Uber, Ola, Swiggy and Zomato, to boost Pay’s business in the nation.
Another U.S. giant, Microsoft, is also aboard the super train. The Redmond-based company has added a slew of new features to SMS Organizer, an app born out of its Microsoft Garage initiative in India. What began as a texting app that can screen spam messages and help users keep track of important SMSs recently partnered with education board CBSE in India to deliver exam results of 10th and 12th grade students.
This year, the SMS Organizer app added an option to track live train schedules through a partnership with Indian Railways, and there’s support for speech-to-text. It also offers personalized discount coupons from a range of companies, giving users an incentive to check the app more often.
Like in other markets, Google and Facebook hold a dominant position in India. More than 95% of smartphones sold in India run the Android operating system. There is no viable local — or otherwise — alternative to Search, Gmail and YouTube, which counts India as its fastest growing market. But Google hasn’t necessarily made any push to significantly expand the scope of any of its offerings in India.
India is the biggest market for WhatsApp, and Facebook’s marquee app too has more than 250 million users in the nation. WhatsApp launched a pilot payments program in India in early 2018, but is yet to get clearance from the government for a nationwide rollout. (It isn’t happening for at least another two months, a person familiar with the matter said.) In the meanwhile, Facebook appears to be hatching a WeChatization of Messenger, albeit that app is not so big in India.
Ride-hailing service Ola too, like Grab and Go-Jek, plans to add financial services such as credit to the platform this year, a source familiar with the company’s plans told TechCrunch.
“We have an abundance of data about our users. We know how much money they spend on rides, how often they frequent the city and how often they order from restaurants. It makes perfect sense to give them these valued-added features,” the person said. Ola has already branched out of transport after it acquired food delivery startup Foodpanda in late 2017, but it hasn’t yet made major waves in financial services despite giving its Ola Money service its own dedicated app.
The company positioned Ola Money as a super app, expanded its features through acquisition and tie ups with other players and offered discounts and cashbacks. But it remains behind Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay, all of which are also offering discounts to customers.
Integrated entertainment
Super apps indeed come in all shapes and sizes, beyond core services like payment and transportation — the strategy is showing up in apps and services that entertain India’s internet population.
MX Player, a video playback app with more than 175 million users in India that was acquired by Times Internet for some $140 million last year, has big ambitions. Last year, it introduced a video streaming service to bolster its app to grow beyond merely being a repository. It has already commissioned the production of several original shows.
In recent months, it has also integrated Gaana, the largest local music streaming app that is also owned by Times Internet. Now its parent company, which rivals Google and Facebook on some fronts, is planning to add mini games to MX Player, a person familiar with the matter said, to give it additional reach and appeal.
Some of these apps, especially those that have amassed tens of millions of users, have a real shot at diversifying their offerings, analyst Kolla said. There is a bar of entry, though. A huge user base that engages with a product on a daily basis is a must for any company if it is to explore chasing the super app status, he added.
Indeed, there are examples of companies that had the vision to see the benefits of super apps but simply couldn’t muster the requisite user base. As mentioned, Snapdeal tried and failed at expanding its app’s offerings. Messaging service Hike, which was valued at more than $1 billion two years ago and includes WeChat parent Tencent among its investors, added games and other features to its app, but ultimately saw poor engagement. Its new strategy is the reverse: to break its app into multiple pieces.
“In 2019, we continue to double down on both social and content but we’re going to do it with an evolved approach. We’re going to do it across multiple apps. That means, in 2019 we’re going to go from building a super app that encompasses everything, to Multiple Apps solving one thing really well. Yes, we’re unbundling Hike,” Kavin Mittal, founder and CEO of Hike, wrote in an update published earlier this year.
And Reliance Jio, of course
For the rest, the race is still on, but there are big horses waiting to enter to add further competition.
Reliance Jio, a subsidiary of conglomerate Reliance Industry that is owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is planning to introduce a super app that will host more than 100 features, according to a person familiar with the matter. Local media first reported the development.
It will be fascinating to see how that works out. Reliance Jio, which almost single-handedly disrupted the telecom industry in India with its low-cost data plans and free voice calls, has amassed tens of millions of users on the bouquet of apps that it offers at no additional cost to Jio subscribers.
Beyond that diverse selection of homespun apps, Reliance has also taken an M&A-based approach to assemble the pieces of its super app strategy.
It bought music streaming service Saavn last year and quickly integrated it with its own music app JioMusic. Last month, it acquired Haptik, a startup that develops “conversational” platforms and virtual assistants, in a deal worth more than $100 million. It already has the user bases required. JioTV, an app that offers access to over 500 TV channels; and JioNews, an app that additionally offers hundreds of magazines and newspapers, routinely appear among the top apps in Google Play Store.
India’s super app revolution is in its early days, but the trend is surely one to keep an eye on as the country moves into its next chapter of internet usage.
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Equity Shot: Judging Uber’s less-than-grand opening day
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We are back, as promised. Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm re-convened today to discuss the latest from the Uber IPO. Namely that it opened down, and then kept falling.
A few questions spring to mind. Why did Uber lose ground? Was it the company’s fault? Was it simply the macro market? Was it something else altogether? What we do know is that Uber’s pricing wasn’t what we were expecting and its first day was not smooth.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why Uber went out the way it did. Firstly, the stock market has had a rough week. That, coupled with rising U.S.-China tensions made this week one of the worst of the year for Uber’s monstrous IPO.
But, to make all that clear, we ran back through some history, recalled some key Lyft stats, and more.
We don’t know what’s next but we will be keeping a close watch, specifically on the next cohort of unicorn companies ready to IPO (Postmates, hi!).
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
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Uber’s trading debut: who was (and wasn’t) at the opening bell
Uber finally made its debut Friday on the New York Stock Exchange, ending its decade-long journey from startup to publicly traded company.
So far, it’s been a ho-hum beginning, with shares opening at $42, down from the IPO price. The share price is hovering just under $44.
Thirteen people, including executives, early employees, drivers and customers, were on the balcony for the historic bell ringing that opened the markets Friday. Noticeable absentees were co-founder Garrett Camp and former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was ousted from the company in June 2017 after a string of scandals around Uber’s business practices.
Kalanick, who still sits on the board and has an 8.6% stake in Uber, wasn’t part of the opening bell ceremony. However, Kalanick and Camp were both at the NYSE for the event.
Here is who participated in the opening bell ceremony.
The bell ringer
Austin Geidt, who rang the bell, was employee No. 4 when she started as an intern in 2010, and is one of Uber’s earliest employees.
Geidt joined Uber in 2010 and has since worked in numerous positions at the company. She led Uber’s expansion in hundreds of new cities and dozens of new countries. Geidt now heads up strategy for Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, the unit working on autonomous vehicles.
Executives
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stood next to Geidt at the opening of the market Friday. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 after Kalanick resigned and the board launched an extensive search for an executive who could change the culture at the company and prepare it for an eventual IPO.
Khosrowshahi was the CEO of Expedia before joining Uber. Khosrowshahi gave a one-year update on his time at Uber during TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2018.
Uber CTO Thuan Pham has been with the company since 2013. Prior to coming to Uber, Pham was vice president of engineering at VMware.
Rachel Holt, vice president and head of New Mobility, was also on hand. Holt has worked at Uber since October 2011, when the company was live in just three cities. In May 2016, she became VP and regional general manager of Uber’s operations in the U.S. and Canada.
She was promoted to head up new mobility in June 2018. She’s responsible for the ramp-up and onboarding of additional mobility services, including public transit integration, scooters, car rentals and bikes.
Rachel Holt (Getty Images)
Other executives included Pierre-Dimitry Gore-Coty and Andrew MacDonald, both vice presidents and regional general managers at Uber, as well as Jason Droege, a vice president who heads up Uber Eats.
Droege, who joined Uber in 2014, has the official title of head of UberEverything. This is the team that created the food delivery service Uber Eats, which now operates in 35 countries.
Drivers
Uber had five drivers on hand for the opening bell, who represented different services and geographies.
Among the drivers were:
- Jerry Bruner, a Los Angeles-based driver who is a military veteran and former professional golfer. Bruner has completed more than 30,000 Uber trips.
- Tiffany Hanna, a military veteran, is based out of Springfield, Missouri. Hanna is a truck driver who uses the Uber Freight carrier app.
- Jonelle Bain, a New York-based driver. Uber, which shared the bios of the drivers, said Bain is taking coding classes and plans to become a software engineer.
- Onur Kerey is a driver based out of London. Kerey is deaf. According to his bio, “He doesn’t let his disability get in the way of his passion for driving or connecting with others.”
- J. Alexander Palacio Sanchez is based in Australia and has been driving with Uber since 2015. His true passion is acting, according to Uber, and at the urging of his riders, he auditioned for the role of Kevin in “The Heights” — and landed it.
Customers
One customer, Elise Wu, also participated in the opening bell. Wu owns Kampai, a family of restaurants in France that serves affordable cuisine made available for delivery through Uber Eats.
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Meet Bobbie, a baby formula delivery startup promising healthier ingredients
Don’t like the idea of your baby guzzling down liquid candy all day? It may surprise you to find corn syrup is the main ingredient in most infant formulas in the U.S. That’s where Bobbie, a Bay Area-based baby formula delivery startup promising only wholesome ingredients, hopes to fill in.
Just go down the baby food aisle of any supermarket in America and start reading the ingredients and you’ll likely find corn syrup, soy bean oil, glucose syrup, maltodextrin and palm oil at the top. Even “organic” options often add these ingredients.
While it’s high-fructose corn syrup we should be most concerned with when it comes to diabetes (and some doctors might even recommend adding some sort of syrup to your baby’s diet to combat constipation), corn syrup is not something some parents may want their baby drinking all day.
Touting itself as “European” style, Bobbie’s first product features fresh, grass-fed cows’ milk as the main ingredient. What it does not include, however, is key for the concerned parent. There’s zero corn syrup, maltodextrin or other artificial sugars or unhealthy oils.
Of course, some babies might not be able to stomach the lactose from bovine sources, but grass-fed and corn syrup-free is music to the ears of many parents (me included) who’ve resorted to ordering bulk from Germany just to avoid feeding our kids Snickers in a bottle.
Yes, it seems crazy to order all the way from Europe when there are so many choices here in the U.S. — and there are some formula manufacturers here making an effort to offer better options — but finding something that meets the simple standard of no sugar, corn syrup or processed oils in the baby food is weirdly difficult.
The other nugget Bobbie provides is delivery. Heaven knows every second is precious when you are a new parent. Delivery can be an especially big help in maintaining some semblance of order in those early days. Sure, Amazon delivers many baby things — it even ships the popular, German-based Hipp brand of formula — but it comes at a premium price and will only ship in bulk.
You can also get the European brands delivered straight from sites like Organic Start, Huggable and a number of others easily Googled. But for those wanting something local, slightly less expensive and with presumably less of a carbon footprint than shipping from another continent, Bobbie is here for you (and we’re told will be delivered with a soft knock on the door, in case baby is sleeping).
The company was founded by two San Francisco moms and former Airbnb operation leaders Laura Modi and Sarah Hardy. Both found out how hard it was, after returning from maternity leave, to pump each day while keeping up with the demands of the job. However, neither of them liked the formula options they found at the grocery store for their own little broods.
Modi and Hardy thought it was time to give parents a more local choice in healthy formula. The two founded the company in 2018 and pulled in $2.5 million in funding last year from Bolt Capital, Nextview Ventures, Lakehouse and Precursor while Modi was pregnant, closing the round a week before giving birth to her baby boy.
Bobbie will (appropriately) begin taking orders this Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, Bobbie only delivers to the Bay Area for now. However, those interested can order one 400 g trial box for $27, which should make about 22 bottles at 6 ounces per bottle, according to a company spokesperson. You can also sign up for the subscription package for $23 per box.
Bobbie Baby – Evolving the conversation of parenthood from Laura Modi on Vimeo.
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Jdn2Cv
How the trade war with China hit Uber’s public offering
Uber’s much heralded public offering has arrived not so much with a bang as with a whimper, thanks largely to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.
Overnight, the U.S. government made good on the threat from President Donald Trump to hike tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25% up from 10%.
As a result, stock markets slid further on Friday, and their decline hit Uber’s initial public offering. The company’s shares began trading at $42.54, below its initial pricing of $45 per share.
At its initial pricing, Uber was valued at $75.5 billion, below the $120 billion price that Wall Street thought the company would fetch late last year, but still among the biggest public offerings in history. Only Facebook’s $81 billion public offering and the whopping $169 billion debut of Alibaba were bigger, according to a Dealogic analysis cited by Business Insider.
Uber’s historic public offering — which was designed to raise at least $90 billion for the ride-hailing giant — was no match for the equally historic struggle between the U.S. and China’s emerging economic superpower.
The rising tariffs were designed to hit business equipment, but will also affect prices on some $40 billion in consumer goods — ranging from clothes to furniture, refrigerators, washers and dryers.
Trump boosted tariffs after China reneged on certain concessions it had made during the trade negotiations. Chiefly, the U.S. was looking for written commitments from the Chinese government that it would provide less direct support to its state-owned enterprises and loosen restrictions on U.S. companies operating in the country.
Uber’s disappointing debut can’t be chalked up to trade woes alone. Its immediate American rival, Lyft, has seen its stock decline precipitously since its opening at nearly $79 per share. Lyft is now trading at around $55 per share.
Yesterday, Lyft reported its first earnings as a public company, losing $1.14 billion on $776 million in revenue.
While Lyft is focused on consumer transportation, Uber has expanded to include freight shipping and meal delivery as part of its attempts to become an all-in-one hub for consumer and business logistics.
That expansion has come at a cost. The company may have generated revenues of $11.3 billion in 2018, but it operated at a $3 billion loss for the year. And Uber is deeply in the red. With deficits reaching nearly $8 billion by the end of 2018, as MarketWatch points out.
Trade wars, it seems, trump transportation disruption.
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Jd9NBI
Uber opens at a disappointing $42 per share
At long last, it’s lift-off for Uber. After pricing its initial public offering at $45 per share, at the bottom end of the range it set previously, to raise $8.1 billion, the transportation startup began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange, and the shares opened at $42, down from the IPO price.
Ahead of Uber finally making its debut, the company had an indication price that went as low as $42 ahead of live trading. With the overall market in a slump this week over trade woes with China, it’s a challenging time to list, to say the least.
Uber had raised $28.5 billion as a private company from no less than 166 different backers, with its last valuation in the region of $75 billion. The $82.4 billion valuation that it finally settled on for the IPO (selling 180 million shares at $45/share) is definitely up from that, but far from the lofty projections of $120 billion that banks and analysts that floated in the months leading up to today.
The figures nevertheless cement Uber, alongside Alibaba and Facebook, as one of the most valuable tech IPOs in history, and a major beacon for breaking ground in a new area of tech, transportation.
But if it is the sheer scale and potential of Uber that catapulted it to such financial heights (real and imaginary), it’s the bare financials that have tempered some of those notions.
On one side, Uber essentially created and currently dominates the market for on-demand transportation, which started with the premise of connecting drivers with passengers by way of an app that tracked the location of both, but eventually evolved into a wider two-sided marketplace ambition that brings together different modes of transportation — including bikes, public buses and more — with human passengers, as well as the movement of other goods like food, all on a global scale.
That model has propelled Uber to 93 million active platform consumers (from 70 million a year ago) and 17 million trips per day across 700 cities on six continents, along with a lot of high hopes from others like PayPal — which are making very late-stage, strategic investments to bank on what it believes could shape up to be a lucrative e-commerce empire in the years to come.
But Uber’s prospects are not without competition — which includes a host of more regional players like Lyft, Gett, Heetch, MyTaxi, Bolt and more — and not without controversy. Even as it goes public, the company is dealing with high-profile driver protests, lawsuits and ongoing regulatory pressures, not to mention a bigger cloud over its business practices that has hovered for years that the company has worked to dispel.
Even today, during the iconic bell ringing, there was a notable absence: former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was ousted over the controversies around business practices but still sits on the board, was not up there — although he did show up at the NYSE for the event.
Outside, meanwhile, protesters against the company were also making their voices heard.
Two drivers hold up a protest sign as the Uber banner hangs on the front of the New York Stock Exchange May 10, 2019 in New York. – Uber is set for its Wall Street debut Friday with a massive share offering that is a milestone for the ride-hailing industry, but which comes with simmering concerns about its business model. Shares will be priced at $45 for the initial public offering (IPO). (Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)
On the pure metric of profit and loss, Uber’s been firmly in the latter column, most recently posting a loss of some $1 billion in the last quarter on revenues of $3 billion-$3.1 billion, versus $2.6 billion a year ago.
Today’s listing is a small pause on the bigger question of how and if Uber will ever turn that boat around. It has made some significant shifts, such as divesting certain regional assets and reducing some of the incentive payments and discounts it made to drivers around the world to lure them to its platform; and under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, it has made a concerted effort to play nice on a number of fronts. Khosrowshahi acknowledged the new set of challenges that staff would be facing as of today in a memo he sent out this morning:
As we move from a private to a public company, our jobs will no doubt become harder and all eyes will be on us. We’ll have an even deeper responsibility to our customers, to our shareholders, to our cities, and to each other. With every share purchased, someone else will join us as a co-owner of Uber — and we’ll gain another person to whom we owe a duty to always ‘do the right thing, period.’
Remember: while the public markets will keep their version of the ‘score’ and the value of what we build, our true north will be determined over the long term. We will go through periods when we will be misunderstood, as well as periods when we will be hailed as heroes. It’s during those days, regardless of the ups and downs, that we should focus on our work: on creating opportunity, on moving the world, and relentlessly innovating and executing.
But the big question will still remain of whether all these changes and the recast approach will be enough, and whether — now that it’s listed — public investors will be patient enough. At least in the short term, the performance of its smaller rival, Lyft, which largely operates on similar metrics and business model to Uber, might give some pause: it is currently trading at around $55, well below its debut of $78.29 on March 29.
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2JfaESO
Why Om Malik thinks ‘the VC subsidized life is over’
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had the full Equity staff on hand to dig through the week’s news, helmed by Kate Clark and Connie Loizos, with Alex Wilhelm in the studio too. Plus, Om Malik, a former scribbler and current venture capitalist, joined us to riff on the latest.
Before we dig into what we covered, a small note from the team: As this episode is going out before Uber will trade, we’ll have another episode coming to you tomorrow after the madness. Stay tuned.
Uber priced its IPO at $45 per share right before we hit record, so we first touched on the final pricing of what should be the year’s largest tech IPO. Pricing toward the lower-end of its range, Uber could be setting itself up for a strong first day. Or, demand was lower than expected following Lyft’s slide. Either way, Uber will trade tomorrow as a public company at last. Om predicts Uber and Lyft rides will get a whole lot more expensive in the next eighteen months, so hold onto your hats, the future for riders and drivers alike is… unclear.
Next, we debated Harry’s exit to Edgewell Personal Care. The direct-to-consumer razor supplier sold this week for more than $1 billion in a deal reminiscent of the Dollar Shave Club’s sale to Unilever. From there, we spoke about the latest from the Luckin Coffee IPO. The news, in brief, is that its IPO is moving forward. Next up is pricing; we’ll be sure to discuss any updates on the podcast.
In big deal news, Carta closed a $300 million round. Connie has learned a lot about the business in recent weeks and it turns out, Om wishes he was an investor!
Finally, Cruise’s latest new round, and the capital needs of autonomous driving. As we all quickly agree, it’s an expensive business and not one that will get cheaper. But, given that so many companies are working on the tech, we hope it works out. Especially Om, who doesn’t have a driver’s license, it turns out.
All that and we had fun! Chat tomorrow!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2HbJVE6
Daye, a startup developing a ‘cramp-fighting’ tampon, raises $5.5M from Khosla, Index and Kindred
Daye, a “femcare” startup developing a new type of tampon that uses CBD to help tackle dysmenorrhea, has quietly raised $5.5 million in funding from high-profile investors in the U.S. and Europe, TechCrunch has learned.
Backing the seed round is Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures, along with London’s Index Ventures and Kindred Capital. The investment sees Khosla’s chief of staff Kristina Simmons, Khosla venture partner Tim Westergren (who also founded Pandora), and Hannah Seal, principle at Index, join Daye’s board.
Other investors in the London-based company include Sophia Bendz (former global director of Marketing at Spotify and now a partner at VC firm Atomico), Irina Havas (a principle of Atomico), David Schiff (founding partner at United Talent Agency) and Kristin Cardwell (VP of International Business Development at Refinery29).
Founded by 24-year-old Valentina Milanova and launching later this year, Daye has set out to build a new brand for female health products “designed with women in mind.” The startup’s first product is a newly developed tampon that uses CBD to help tackle period cramps (or dysmenorrhea) as an alternative to traditional painkillers (CBD is the extract derived from the flower of the industrial hemp plant, a legal relative to marijuana). Daye also claims its product will be more hygienic and sustainable than legacy tampons, and if successful could be a wake-up call to the incumbent and stagnant tampon industry, which has seen little innovation in decades.
“Our goal is to raise the standards of women’s hygiene products by tackling three primary issues: dysmenorrhea, manufacturing standards and sustainability,” Milanova tells TechCrunch. “Women have largely been left out of medical innovation. In fact, until 1993, researchers banned women from participating in [early] clinical trials, as it was believed female hormone fluctuations polluted medical data. To this day, most medications, including those for pain relief, depression and sleeping aids, have not been tested on women. We’re redefining localised cramp-relief, relying on an ingredient that we’ve tested on women first.”
Milanova says she first had the idea for a cramp-fighting tampon in November 2017 and initially used her salary from a day job and credit cards to fund product development. In September 2018, she quit her job to work on the business full-time and build a team, and to finalise clinical trials for the product.
Describing CBD as “having its 15 minutes of fame,” Milanova says the company doesn’t believe cannabidiol should be added to everything, from dry shampoo to cocktails. However, she says CBD is much safer than over-the-counter painkillers, and that the vaginal canal has the highest concentration of cannabinoid receptors and is also the fastest route of absorption into the bloodstream when it comes to pain relief.
“Unlike most CBD products on the market today, our product does not contain any tetrahydrocannabinol (THC),” she explains. “This is why we believe we’re going to be attractive to every consumer who experiences menstrual discomfort.”
Beyond the novel idea of a cramp-fighting CBD tampon, Milanova says Daye wants to raise the bar for tampon production standards and sustainability.
“In Europe, tampons are not classified as medical devices, which means there are no manufacturing guidelines — for context, plasters are more regulated and better sanitised than tampons,” she tells me, to my astonishment. To address this, Daye is introducing pharmaceutical-grade standards and will keep manufacturing in-house.
Period care is also “wreaking havoc” on the environment. “Over the course of her lifetime, the average woman uses enough tampons to fill two double-decker buses. That waste either ends up in our oceans or landfills. We want to relieve the burden period care has on the environment, and offer a product that is equal parts body-safe, effective and as sustainable as possible.”
To begin to answer the question of why something like this hasn’t been done before, Milanova says that menstrual discomfort in general is a massively overlooked problem and that “even the mention of the word tampon makes most people feel uncomfortable.”
The existing market is also monopolised “to the point where innovation suffers.” All tampons on the market today perform and look the same, using the same materials and the same manufacturing processes. Yet, because there’s barely any product differentiation, the Daye founder says most women remain loyal to the first tampon brand they ever tried.
“What we’re bringing to market is a completely novel product, and we’re operating in a very sensitive, intimate area of consumer goods. As a newcomer, we have to gain consumer trust by ensuring we’re in constant contact with our users, taking note of their feedback and iterating on our proposition fast.”
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2LAWduf
Singapore’s Grain, a profitable food delivery startup, pulls in $10M for expansion
Cloud kitchens are the big thing in food delivery, with ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s new business one contender in that space, with Asia, and particularly Southeast Asia, a major focus. Despite the newcomers, a more established startup from Singapore has raised a large bowl of cash to go after regional expansion.
Founded in 2014, Grain specializes in clean food while it takes a different approach to Kalanick’s CloudKitchens or food delivery services like Deliveroo, FoodPanda or GrabFood.
It adopted a cloud kitchen model — utilizing unwanted real estate as kitchens, with delivery services for output — but used it for its own operations. So while CloudKitchens and others rent their space to F&B companies as a cheaper way to make food for their on-demand delivery customers, Grain works with its own chefs, menu and delivery team. A so-called “full stack” model, if you can stand the cliched tech phrase.
Finally, Grain is also profitable. The new round has it shooting for growth — more on that below — but the startup was profitable last year, CEO and co-founder Yi Sung Yong told TechCrunch.
Now it is reaping the rewards of a model that keeps it in control of its product, unlike others that are complicated by a chain that includes the restaurant and a delivery person.
We previously wrote about Grain when it raised a $1.7 million Series A back in 2016, and today it announced a $10 million Series B, which is led by Thailand’s Singha Ventures, the VC arm of the beer brand. A bevy of other investors took part, including Genesis Alternative Ventures, Sass Corp, K2 Global — run by serial investor Ozi Amanat who has backed Impossible Foods, Spotify and Uber among others — FoodXervices and Majuven. Existing investors Openspace Ventures, Raging Bull — from Thai Express founder Ivan Lee — and Cento Ventures participated.
The round includes venture debt, as well as equity, and it is worth noting that the family office of the owners of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf — Sassoon Investment Corporation — was involved.
Grain covers individual food as well as buffets in Singapore
Three years is a long gap between the two deals — Openspace and Cento have even rebranded during the intervening period — and the ride has been an eventful one. During those years, Sung said the business had come close to running out of capital before it doubled down on the fundamentals before the precarious runway capital ran out.
In fact, he said, the company — which now has more than 100 staff — was fully prepared to self-sustain.
“We didn’t think of raising a Series B,” he explained in an interview. “Instead, we focused on the business and getting profitable… we thought that we can’t depend entirely on investors.”
And, ladies and gentleman, the irony of that is that VCs very much like a business that can self-sustain — it shows a model is proven — and investing in a startup that doesn’t need capital can be attractive.
Ultimately, though, profitability is seen as sexy today — particularly in the meal space, where countless U.S. startups have shuttered, including Munchery and Sprig — but the focus meant that Grain had to shelve its expansion plans. It then went through soul-searching times in 2017 when a spoilt curry saw 20 customers get food poisoning.
Sung declined to comment directly on that incident, but he said that company today has developed the “infrastructure” to scale its business across the board, and that very much includes quality control.
Grain co-founder and CEO Yi Sung Yong [Image via LinkedIn]
Thailand — which Malaysia-based rival Dahamakan picked for its first expansion — is the only new launch on the table, but Sung said that could change.
“If things move faster, we’ll expand to more cities, maybe one per year,” he said. “But we need to get our brand, our food and our service right first.”
One part of that may be securing better deals for raw ingredients and food from suppliers. Grain is expanding its “hub” kitchens — outposts placed strategically around town to serve customers faster — and growing its fleet of trucks, which are retrofitted with warmers and chillers for deliveries to customers.
Grain’s journey is proof that startups in the region will go through trials and tribulations, but being able to bolt down the fundamentals and reduce burn rate is crucial in the event that things go awry. Just look to grocery startup Honestbee, also based in Singapore, for evidence of what happens when costs are allowed to pile up.
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2PZnGnY
Hong Kong insurance tech startup OneDegree extends its Series A to a total of $30 million
OneDegree, an insurance technology startup based in Hong Kong, announced today it has extended its Series A round to $30 million, up from the $25.5 million it announced in September. Its extension, which the company is calling its “A2” round, was led by BitRock Capital, an investment firm that focuses on financial tech. Cyberport Macro Fund, Cathay Venture and investors from its initial Series A also participated.
The company is preparing to launch its online insurance platform, designed to make buying insurance plans easier for both consumers and providers by using data analytics to automate the most tedious parts of the process. The company will start with medical insurance for pets after its license is approved by the Hong Kong Insurance Authority before expanding into other products, including travel, cyber and human medical insurance.
In a press statement, OneDegree co-founder Alvin Kwock said its strategy is “not to compete head-on with traditional insurers, but rather to work together, steering the whole industry towards a fully digital ecosystem.”
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2VcKh16
Printify raises $3M to expand its marketplace for custom printing
In Riga, Latvia, an 80-person startup called Printify is reimagining the on-demand printing business.
Gone are the days where small merchants have to sell their customized products on platforms like Zazzle, Society6, CafePress or Teespring. Using Printify, e-commerce business owners can create clothes, accessories and more fixed with their designs, logos, art or photos, then sell them directly on their very own online stores.
The “first wave” of on-demand printing companies, Printify founder and chief executive officer James Berdigans explained to TechCrunch, typically require that merchants sell their items on the provider’s platforms.
“The problem is that these merchants don’t have the capability to build their own brand,” Berdigans said. “At the end of the day, you end up building the Teespring brand, not your own brand.”
Printify, a graduate of the 500 Startups accelerator, has attracted a $3 million investment from Bling Capital, a venture capital fund launched five months ago by Ben Ling, a former general partner at Khosla Ventures.
“Printify is perfectly positioned to enable the new trend of micro and boutique brands,” Ling said in a statement. “Consumers and SMBs alike can benefit from Printify’s high-quality, low-cost and fast printing platform — and create their own micro-brands.”
Founded in 2015 by Berdigans, Artis Kehris and Gatis Dukurs, Printify had previously raised a $1 million round following a big pivot. Initially, the business “pretended to be the manufacturer,” opting to be less transparent as a means to entice customers.
“That was a terrible idea,” Berdigans said. “Even though you aren’t lying, you end up not being a very honest company and that’s not the business model we wanted.”
Now, Printify operates as a B2B marketplace that connects manufacturers with e-commerce stores. Plus, the startup handles the mundane tasks of fulfilling orders, including billing, manufacturing requests and shipping so store owners can focus on brand building. The switch allowed the startup to begin growing 30% month-over-month, as well as add hundreds of unique products to its catalog.
The founders say Printify most often caters to political campaign employees, designers & artists, and influencers & “hustlers,” or people who are self-taught experts on managing digital sales. With a fixed pricing scheme, merchants know exactly what they are paying Printify, but have the flexibility of pricing their own product. Other print-on-demand marketplaces, like the aforementioned “first wave” businesses, don’t give merchants the ability to determine their own margins.
“If you use Zazzle, for example, you only get a small portion of revenue share but on Printify, you pay us a small fee,” Berdigans said. “If you were selling t-shirts for $25 and the average production cost is $10, our sellers will see a 50 to 60% margin.”
Dozens of angel investors, including YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, ClassPass co-founder Fritz Lanman, DoorDash co-founder Evan Moore, Nurx CEO Varsha Rao, Google AdSense pioneer Gokul Rajaram, #ANGELS founding partner Katie Jacobs Stanton and Facebook’s vice president of product Kevin Weil, also participated in the company’s latest round.
“What Airbnb did for the hospitality industry, that’s basically what we can do for the print-on-demand industry,” said Kehris, Printify’s chief operating officer.
via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DXHtze
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