Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal’s next act is aimed at helping the next generation of startup founders in India.
Bansal has already etched his name into India’s startup history after U.S. retail giant Walmart paid $16 billion to take a majority stake in its e-commerce business to expand its rivalry with Amazon. Things turned sour, however, when he resigned months after the deal’s completion due to an investigation into “serious personal misconduct.”
In 2019, 37-year-old Bansal is focused on his newest endeavor, xto10x Technologies, a startup consultancy that he founded with former colleague Saikiran Krishnamurthy. The goal is to help startup founders on a larger scale than the executive could ever do on his own.
“Person to person, I can help 10 startups but the ambition is to help 10,000 early and mid-stage entrepreneurs, not 10,” Bansal told Bloomberg in an interview.
Bansal, who started Flipkart in 2007 with Sachin Bansal (no relation) and still retains a four percent share, told Bloomberg that India-based founders are bereft of quality consultancy and software services to handle growth and company building.
“Today, software is built for large enterprises and not small startups,” he told the publication. “Think of it as solving for startups what Amazon Web Services has done for computing, helping enterprises go from zero to a thousand servers overnight with no hassle.”
“Instead of making a thousand mistakes, if we can help other startups make a hundred or even few hundred, that would be worth it,” Bansal added.
Bansal served as Flipkart’s CEO from 2007 to 2016 before becoming CEO of the Flipkart Group. He declined to go into specifics of the complaint against him at Flipkart — which reports suggest came about from a consensual relationship with a female employee — and, of the breakdown of his relationship with Sachin Bansal, he said he’s moved on to new things.
It isn’t just xto10x Technologies that is keeping him busy. Bansal is involved in investment firm 021 Capital where he is the lead backer following a $50 million injection. Neither role at the two companies involves day-to-day operations, Bloomberg reported, but, still, Bansal is seeding his money and experience to shape the Indian startup ecosystem.
Source: TechCrunch
Databricks, the company behind the Apache Spark big data analytics engine, today announced that it has raised a $250 million Series E round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Coatue Management, Microsoft and NEA, also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $498.5 million. Microsoft’s involvement here is probably a bit of a surprise, but it’s worth noting that it also worked with Databricks on the launch of Azure Databricks as a first-party service on the platform, something that’s still a rarity in the Azure cloud.
As Databricks also today announced, its annual recurring revenue now exceeds $100 million. The company didn’t share whether it’s cash flow-positive at this point, but Databricks CEO and co-founder Ali Ghodsi shared that the company’s valuation is now $2.75 billion.
Current customers, which the company says number around 2,000, include the likes of Nielsen, Hotels.com, Overstock, Bechtel, Shell and HP.
While Databricks is obviously known for its contributions to Apache Spark, the company itself monetizes that work by offering its Unified Analytics platform on top of it. This platform allows enterprises to build their data pipelines across data storage systems and prepare data sets for data scientists and engineers. To do this, Databricks offers shared notebooks and tools for building, managing and monitoring data pipelines, and then uses that data to build machine learning models, for example. Indeed, training and deploying these models is one of the company’s focus areas these days, which makes sense, given that this is one of the main use cases for big data, after all.
On top of that, Databricks also offers a fully managed service for hosting all of these tools.
“Databricks is the clear winner in the big data platform race,” said Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in today’s announcement. “In addition, they have created a new category atop their world-beating Apache Spark platform called Unified Analytics that is growing even faster. As a result, we are thrilled to invest in this round.”
Ghodsi told me that Horowitz was also instrumental in getting the company to re-focus on growth. The company was already growing fast, of course, but Horowitz asked him why Databricks wasn’t growing faster. Unsurprisingly, given that it’s an enterprise company, that means aggressively hiring a larger sales force — and that’s costly. Hence the company’s need to raise at this point.
As Ghodsi told me, one of the areas the company wants to focus on is the Asia Pacific region, where overall cloud usage is growing fast. The other area the company is focusing on is support for more verticals like mass media and entertainment, federal agencies and fintech firms, which also comes with its own cost, given that the experts there don’t come cheap.
Ghodsi likes to call this “boring AI,” since it’s not as exciting as self-driving cars. In his view, though, the enterprise companies that don’t start using machine learning now will inevitably be left behind in the long run. “If you don’t get there, there’ll be no place for you in the next 20 years,” he said.
Engineering, of course, will also get a chunk of this new funding, with an emphasis on relatively new products like MLFlow and Delta, two tools Databricks recently developed and that make it easier to manage the life cycle of machine learning models and build the necessary data pipelines to feed them.
Source: TechCrunch
It’s ready to venture a little further off the beaten path.
Source: CNET
Apeel Sciences, the developer of a new technology that makes fruits and vegetables more resistant to spoilage, and Nature’s Pride, one of the largest vendors of avocados and mangos in Europe, are partnering to bring longer-lived avocados to market.
Subject to regulatory approval in the EU, Nature’s Pride said it will integrate Apeel’s plant-based preservation technology into its avocado supply chain — bringing avocados with double the edible shelf life to European homes.
Apeel’s technology takes the naturally occurring chemicals found in the skins and peels of plants and applies it to fresh produce, providing what the company calls “a little extra peel” that slows the rate of water loss and oxidation — which cause vegetables and fruits to spil.
The company says that its produce will stay fresh two to three times longer than untreated produce. Apeel touts that its technology can lead to more sustainable growing practices and less food waste.
Across Europe, 88 million tons of food is thrown out every year, at a cost of 143 billion euros (or roughly $163 billion dollars).
As part of the agreement with Nature’s Pride, Apeel Sciences is introducing a co-branded label with the European fruit supplier.
Founded in 2012 with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help reduce post-harvest food loss in developing countries that lack access to refrigeration, Apeel Sciences is backed by a slew of marquee investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Viking Global Investors, Upfront Ventures, S2G Ventures, Powerplant Ventures, DBL Partners, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UK Department for International Development, and The Rockefeller Foundation .
Source: TechCrunch
Toyota has officially launched Kinto, a company first revealed late last year that will manage a car subscription program and other mobility services in Japan, including the sale and purchase of used vehicles as well as automotive repair and inspection.
Kinto is jointly funded by Toyota Financial Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota, and Sumitomo Mitsui Auto Service Company, a member of the Sumitomo Corporation Group. Initial funding for Kinto is 1.8 billion yen, or about $16 million, according to Toyota.
The creation of Kinto marks a shift that began a couple of years ago within the automotive industry to look beyond the traditional business of producing, financing and selling cars and trucks. Other automakers have experimented with car subscription services with mixed success. Volvo’s Care by Volvo has been a standout success. While Cadillac shut its service “Book by Cadillac” down, although it has plans for a reboot.
Unlike other subscription programs, Kinto has gamified the service. The company is planning to introduce a service this fall that will award points to customers based on how they drive. Toyota doesn’t explain how safe or “ecological” driving would be tracked, but the assumption is that the vehicles would be equipped with connected-car technology that can monitor driving. Points can be applied toward payments, the company said.
“As society shifts from conventional car ownership to car usage that can be enjoyed wherever and as much as users would like, there is a growing need for a service that allows customers to freely select the car that they like or want to drive and enjoy it as they like, instead of using a car simply as a means of transportation,” Toyota said in its announcement.
Toyota’s Kinto will offer two subscription services in Japan. (The service isn’t headed for Europe or the U.S.) Kinto One will allow customers to drive one Toyota-brand vehicle over a three-year period. The service will offer access to the Prius, Corolla Sport, Alphard, Vellfire, and Crown models. The line-up will expand by fall 2019. Customers who go for Kinto One will pay between 46,100 yen ($419) and 99,000 yen ($901) a month before taxes, depending on the vehicle brand.
“Kinto Select” will give customers access to six models of Lexus -brand vehicles over a three-year period. The Kinto Select service costs 180,000 yen, or $1,638, a month.
Both services will be offered as a monthly fixed-sum service that packages voluntary insurance payments, vehicle tax, registration charges, and regularly scheduled maintenance of the vehicle.
Kinto will launch with the higher-end plan, beginning Wednesday. The Kinto One plan will be added as an option on March 1. Both services will be deployed on a trial basis through select Toyota dealers and Lexus dealers in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Kinto plans to rollout the services to the rest of Japan this summer.
Source: TechCrunch
French startup Lunchr is raising a $34 million funding round (€30 million) from Index Ventures, with existing investors Daphni, Idinvest and Kima Ventures also participating. The company had already raised $13 million 7 months ago (€11 million).
In France, companies of a certain size have to support employees in one way or another when it comes to their lunch break. Big companies usually build out a cafeteria while small companies hand out meal vouchers.
Lunchr focuses on meal vouchers. Originally, employees received paper vouchers at the beginning of each month. But meal voucher companies, such as Edenred or Sodexo, now also provide an alternative to paper vouchers. You can get a payment card to pay some or all of your food using a card reader.
While this is a a good idea on paper, many restaurants and supermarkets still don’t accept meal voucher cards as you have to update your card terminals. Apps also don’t work that well so it’s hard to know if you have money left on your account.
Lunchr wants to provide a better experience. And it starts with a card that works in more places. Restaurants don’t need to do anything as long as they already accept paper meal vouchers. Lunchr currently supports 200,000 places in France.
The company also takes advantage of the fact that a company is going to switch everyone to Lunchr, not just some employees. It means that everyone has a Lunchr account, the Lunchr app and a Lunchr card.
That’s why you can also use the Lunchr app to order food around your office. Other employees can add stuff to your order and one employee can pick up the order for everyone. Lunchr has negotiated discounts with restaurants — you unlock discount on big orders. On average, people who order food via the app get an 18 percent discount.
With today’s funding round, the company wants to attract 200,000 by the end of 2019. Redbull in France, LeLynx.fr, Spotify in France, Qonto and Payfit use Lunchr already.
While Lunchr is competing with bigger companies, 85 percent of meal vouchers in France are still paper vouchers. Companies will consider switching to payment cards in the coming years and it presents a big opportunity for Lunchr.
Source: TechCrunch
Chinese researchers have linked a human brain to a rat’s brain, allowing “mind control” of the rat’s movements.
Source: CNET
At the very start of the Super Bowl TV Spot, we see several quick shots of most of the dead heroes. Here’s who you missed.
Source: CNET
The eSPEAR creates an electromagnetic field that can ward off a shark by targeting unique prey-sensing receptors in its nose.
Source: CNET
A Star Wars star goes to the dogs for Amazon, Tony Romo wears Skechers, and Chance the Rapper and a boy band do Doritos.
Source: CNET