Rhinoceros beetles are one of the greatest threats to oil palm crops, attacking plants while they are young and potentially lowering a farm’s yield for years. They also affect workers’ health, since pesticides need to be sprayed frequently. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Poladrone wants to change the way farms use pesticides with a combination of
Chalo, a startup that is digitizing bus commutes in India and which recently raised $40 million in a financing round, has acquired Amazon-backed app-based office commute bus aggregator Shuttl in an all-cash deal, the two said on Tuesday. Chalo founder and chief executive Mohit Dubey said the acquisition of Shuttl, which operates thousands of buses
YouTube is rolling out a designated “New to you” tab on its platform after testing the feature earlier this year. The new tab is now available on the YouTube homepage across mobile, desktop and TV devices. YouTube says the feature will help users discover new creators and content beyond the recommended videos they usually see.
When Pradyut Paul was a hardware engineering program manager at Apple, he saw firsthand the challenges of building and sharing hardware products using antiquated tools like email and spreadsheets. It was after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on expedited shipping after some designs were delayed that Paul realized there had to be a better
You might have previously thought that Ecosia was a nice-to-have search engine that planted trees when you punched-in a search term. Lovely. How nice. But no. Ecosia’s founders and the network around it are far more serious about climate change than that superficial assessment might suggest. Last year in March 2020, just before the world
Radio has long been described as the most intimate of media. Quips about putting radio on the internet aside, the persistent popularity of podcasting and the cockamamie climb of Clubhouse shows that audio-based platforms will continue to echo around the upper echelons of the ecosystem for a while yet. Joining the fray is Heart to
Seems like the goal of every startup is to exit via IPO, and if you can’t do that, by way of acquisition. In many cases, a sale gives a founder the opportunity to pay back investors and reward long-time employees, but what happens after the ink dries on the contract, and the reality of being
U.S. social networking giant Facebook reported its Q3 financial results today after the bell. It reported $29.0 billion in total revenue and earnings per share of $3.22, calculated on a diluted basis. Investors had expected the company to report revenues of $29.58 billion, per data collected by Yahoo Finance, and earnings per share of $3.19.
Digital lenders that share personal data of loan defaulters, with third parties, risk license withdrawal in Kenya after lawmakers added a clause – granting the banking regulator the mandate to revoke permits of operators who breach customer confidentiality – to the new law passed by the country’s National Assembly. Typically, loan apps collect borrowers phone
Frances Haugen, one of (now) multiple Facebook whistleblowers who have come forward in recent years with damning testimony related to product safety, gave testimony in front of the UK parliament today — where, in one key moment, she was invited to clarify her views on end-to-end encryption following a report in the British newspaper the
Hark, all ye who pay attention to the stock market, for Elon Musk’s wheels-focused company broached the $1 trillion market cap threshold today. Yeah, it finally happened, so the Equity team quickly scrambled for the microphones. Chris put together the show, allowing Alex and Kirsten to dive into the matter. Kirsten, in case you aren’t
Selfbook, a hotel payment software startup, announced today that it has raised $25 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. Valia Ventures, Fin Venture Capital, early Stripe employee turned investor Lachy Groom and “strategic” angel investors also participated in the financing, which values the company at $125 million and
Welcome to the week! Sure, the technology and business worlds are busy digging through a deluge of Facebook-focused reporting ahead of the social media company’s earnings report, but we have other work to do. Namely, the Braze IPO filing. The New York City-based company focuses on customer engagement software. We’ll get into what that means
Celeb video site Cameo is making its first acquisition. The company will buy Represent, a marketing and merch company that helps celebrities and brands set up individualized online storefronts. It’s a natural fit for Cameo, which invites fans to pay celebrities of all stripes for short customized videos. Represent counts Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo
It seems like every website has a chatbot of some kind to help answer simple questions without having to wait for a customer service representative. However, sometimes in the course of connecting it may take awhile, and as your attention shifts to something else, your time expires and you have to start all over again.
Make way for yet another ‘quick-commerce’ player in Europe’s heavily heating on-demand grocery space: Pop Market is a Greek startup which launched last week in Athens — taking orders via and app and touting 15min delivery times and a curated selection of “thousands” of items (including fresh fruit and vegetables). The seed round, which Pop
Berlin-based e-scooter rentals company Tier Mobility has announced what it’s billing as the “first close” of a $200 million Series D, as investors continue to plough money into urban micromobility. Today’s announcement follows a $60M debt raise this summer, and a $250M Series C last November (led by SoftBank). It’s not clear from its PR
Justos, a startup that says it will be the first insurance company in Brazil to use data when determining rates, has raised a $35.8 million Series A round of funding led by Ribbit Capital. SoftBank’s Latin American Fund and GGV participated as new investors, in addition to existing backers Kaszek, BigBets, Nubank CEO David Velez
Meet Wefight, a French startup that has developed more than a dozen apps to help people suffering from chronic illness. Using a basic chatbot interface, people can ask questions and get answers about their illness. The startup recently raised a $11.6 million (€10 million) funding round from Digital Health Ventures, Impact Partners, as well as
Meet Hera, a new calendar app that wants to turn the calendar into the main work interface. Hera helps you schedule meetings more easily with natural language processing and lets you share availabilities in an email or any messaging app. The startup is also going to build integrations with your other work tools so that
Tony Fadell, Future Shape principal, iPod inventor and iPhone co-inventor, sits down with Emily Chang to talk about how far Apple has come over the past two decades, where it’s headed next and why tech and sustainability are the next big challenges. (Source: Bloomberg)
Adonica Shaw Contributor Adonica Shaw is founder of Wingwomen, a health-and-wellness-focused social media platform for professional women. More posts by this contributor 10 ways founders can manage their mental health while fundraising As social-audio apps like Clubhouse, Beams, Pludo, Racket and Quest have gained popularity in the last year, more marketers, product teams and up-and-coming
With the pandemic turning us into delivery experts, consumers have also switched on to meal-kits on droves, given that it combines both delivery and home cooking. But many meal kits can be inflexible. The Kitchenful startup in Germany realized this and so it allows users to browse recipes from food bloggers and have personalized meal
FlixMobility, the $3 billion-German transportation startup that has doubled down on long distance buses and slowly and quietly gobbled up transit lines and operations across Europe, today announced a big move to raise its game in the U.S. The company announced that it is acquiring Greyhound Lines, the iconic U.S. bus network, from UK-based owner
Ark Invest���s Tasha Keeney talks with Emily Chang about Tesla���s earnings and its global shift to lithium iron-phosphate batteries, why Tesla is better set up to adapt to the current chip shortage than other automakers and how Tesla is leading the EV market. (Source: Bloomberg)
In less than seven days, Lunchclub co-founder Vlad Novakovski had a sizable term sheet in hand from Lightspeed Ventures, despite his startup not looking to raise at the time. How did that happen? A sticky product experience with the customer feedback and growth to back it up made the startup an investment opportunity Lightspeed’s Nicole
Hello, and welcome to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. And have a good time. This week Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex (along with our amazing production team Grace, Chris, and Kell) took on a bevy of topics from around the world of startups and technology more
Station F, the big startup campus located in Paris, is launching an online component called Launch by Station F. With this new program, entrepreneurs from anywhere can get started and learn all the basics to start a company. Launched in 2017, Station F is a massive building that used to be a rail freight depot.
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone.
Co-founded in 2007 by Yasser Bashir, Arbisoft falls on the larger end of the spectrum of software development partners that our readers have recommended in our ongoing survey. Today, the company has a few hundred employees distributed across Pakistan, Australia, Texas and Malaysia, but it continues to service startups of all sizes, says Bashir. Omri