After spending years in London, matching Kenyans in the diaspora with investment opportunities back home, and later on as a credit portfolio manager at Barclays bank, Njeri Muhia sought a greater challenge within Africa. Already aware of the growing startup ecosystem in the continent and the funding gaps that local founders face, she teamed up
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Karti Chidambaram, an Indian lawmaker, has called for an investigation into the finances of Byju’s, the country’s most valuable startup, for not submitting its statements for the financial year that ended in March 2021, which he alleged violates a local law, and other “loopholes.” Chidambaram, a Member of Parliament for Sivaganga in the Lok Sabha,
Urban, a popular UK-based startup that allows customers to find self-employed massage therapists who can be booked to attend customers’ homes, has been named in an investigation into alleged abuse by unlicensed freelance therapists. The startup has raised $35.7M from investors that include the likes of Felix Capital, Passion Capital, the London Co-Investment Fund, angels from
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Oh hey, and welcome to the Daily Crunch for Wednesday! Today, the whole office is proverbially abuzz with robotics. Proverbially, because we’re not sure we actually have an office at this point,
While the pandemic prompted companies to digitize much of the way they do business, not every brand made the pivot successfully. In some cases, it cost them dearly. According to Couchbase, enterprises wasted on average $4.12 million on failed, delayed or scaled-back projects in 2020. The same survey found that over four-fifths of companies —
Tesla plans to increase the price of its branded “full self-driving” beta software, the advanced driver assistance system that CEO Elon Musk has said will mean the difference between the company “being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.” Tesla vehicles today come standard with its driver assistance system called Autopilot. For an
Tesla’s mythical solar roofs may be on ice right now, but its conventional solar business is a whole ‘nother story. This afternoon, the automaker said the division notched its “strongest” quarter in more than four years, with a total of 106 megawatts deployed in Q2 2022. “Although we continue to experience import delays beyond our
Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant that has plowed money into AI and autonomous vehicle technology, unveiled Wednesday a new all-electric robotaxi that it plans to deploy at scale across China. Baidu will add the Apollo RT6 EV – a cross between an SUV and a minivan that comes with a detachable steering wheel –
Apparently not, if venture capital activity on the continent is any indication Alex Wilhelm Anna Heim 14 hours Did no one tell European venture capitalists and startup founders that we’re supposed to be on the cusp of a global recession? With startups and VCs all heralding the doom of investment activity across the world, you’d think a
Yamin Durrani Contributor The past couple of years were all about huge valuations and less about needing to prove peak operational efficiency across the entire business. Even if you didn’t experience this first-hand as a startup founder or employee, the sheer amount of funding dispersed just last year proves my point. This year’s a bit
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: How do founders hold two ideas in their heads:
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Questions about green cards
Fresh off a $17.4 million fundraise in May, GetHenry announced it is changing its name to Cycle, reflecting both the fact that the company makes bicycles and tricycles, and highlighting the company’s green sustainability ambitions. “The new name and strong brand identity fit with our mission to decarbonise the commercial transportation sector. We are focusing
Meatable, a Dutch biotech company developing cultivated “lab-grown” meat products, has revealed images of its inaugural pork sausage for the first time. Founded in 2018, Meatable is one of several companies developing cell-cultured meat products, one of several solutions touted to help combat climate change. Countless cultivated meat companies have entered the fray and attracted venture
Today during an event focused on Alexa developer and partner news, Amazon announced new features and integrations, including a collection of APIs and software development kits (SDKs) aimed at making Alexa more versatile. They come a month after the company demoed forthcoming and experimental Alexa features at its annual re:Mars conference in Las Vegas, including
Ford Motor Co. will not be selling its $8 billion stake in electric truck maker Rivian right now, CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang in an exclusive interview. The Ford chief did leave the option open for the near future, however, saying everything is “on the table.” ——– Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg
Everyone loves an underdog, which is why investors and tech journalists are so fond of discussing startups that launched during the Great Recession of 2008, like Airbnb, Uber, WhatsApp, Mailchimp, Square and Venmo. It’s possible that your pre-seed, pre-revenue startup could similarly defy gravity, but in July 2022, it’s going to be difficult to find
Increasingly, absent a federal framework, U.S. states are passing privacy and security laws aimed at protecting people’s data. The California Consumer Privacy Act is perhaps the best known, followed by the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the New York Privacy Act and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act. While the laws are a step in
Google is expanding its photo and canvas prints service to Europe and Canada. Google has offered printed photo books in the U.S. since 2017, a service that started rolling out in Europe the following year. And then in 2019, Google started offering photo prints and canvas prints in the U.S. Starting today, these two additional
Xiaomi said on Wednesday it has shipped over 200 million smartphones in India to date, demonstrating just how large of a presence it has marked in the world’s second largest phone market in just eight years. The Chinese giant, which began selling smartphones in India in 2014, revealed the figure at a media conference on
Conversational commerce isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, with countless companies using live chats, messaging apps, chatbots, voice assistants and more to encourage consumers to part with their cash. As part of that broader movement, the mighty WhatsApp, a dominant force in the messaging world, has been pushing deeper into the business arena with myriad tools
Platforms, not point solutions, might lead the way Kyle Wiggers 14 hours The market for HR tech, which runs the gamut from workforce management to applicant recruitment and tracking systems, has proven remarkably resilient in the face of both pandemic and economic headwinds. In fact, some would argue that it’s precisely because of these headwinds
The process for retailers and brands to liquidate excess inventory hasn’t changed very much, if at all, and while some retailers were able to build operational infrastructure to service the off-price channels, it continues to be a constant pain point. Brands overproduce more than $500 billion of goods annually, and all of that excess inventory
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. It’s hot all over the world, and even hotter in today’s newsletter. We’ve procured a steaming pile of TechCrunch deliciousness for you to devour. If you can believe it, it is only
Crop One Holdings and Emirates Flight Catering announced this week they opened Emirates Crop One, what they say is “the world’s largest vertical farm.” The over 330,000-square-foot facility is located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates near Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central. It has the capacity to produce over 2 million pounds of
In today’s earnings call, Netflix confirmed the reports that have been circulating since last week that it is renegotiating deals to allow the streamer to put content on its cheaper advertising-supported plan, the arrival of which on the platform has been moved to early 2023. “The vast majority of what people watch on Netflix we
Opendoor opened the door, so to speak, to the idea of applying technology to the concept of house flipping to both scale the opportunity and make it considerably more efficient. While its share price is being hammered at the moment in a wider downturn for tech stocks overall, it’s a strong enough concept that it’s
From Project Ara to Wave, Google has a rich history of bailing on neat ideas when the going gets tough. Yet unlike those forgone experiments, augmented-reality glasses apparently aren’t doomed to rest in Google’s metaphorical graveyard. Instead, the advertising company is tip-toeing its spiritual successor to Glass back into the wild. After teasing the smart
The days of the Galaxy Note Unpacked events are sadly gone, but Samsung’s foldables are more than happy to fill a phablet-sized hole in the company’s annual release schedule. Over the last couple of years, the company has made good on its promise to fully commit to the form factor, and we expect to see
Lori Cashman Contributor Lori Cashman is a managing partner of Victress Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in high-growth companies meeting the needs of the evolving consumer market. In the world of venture capital, we’re always talking about cash. You hear phrases like “cash burn,” “cash runway” and “cash on hand” every day