The FAA’s first sanctioned, revenue-generating drone delivery service involves speeding up the movement of blood and tissue samples.
Source: Wired
Airbnb is continuing to widen its focus beyond ‘unconventional’ hotels as it gets ready for a much-anticipated IPO. Following its acquisition of HotelTonight last month, the company has picked today (April Fool’s Day) to confirm that it invested in India’s OYO — a startup that manages budget hotels and other stays.
The deal has been rumored for a couple of months and it is additional to OYO’s (then) $1 billion Series E round which was led by SoftBank’s Vision and included participation from ride-hailing duo Grab of Southeast Asia and China’s Didi Chuxing. The deal, announced last September, also included Lightspeed, Sequoia and Greenoaks Capital and it valued OYO at around $5 billion.
Neither party confirmed the size of the deal announced today, but an industry source told TechCrunch that it is between $150 million and $200 million. OYO and Airbnb both declined to comment in response.
The company has now raised over $1.5 billion from investors to date including this new capital.
More than money, though, the deal is highly strategic for both sides.
OYO and Airbnb had previously been rivals of sorts, but OYO has pivoted towards hospitality services — including logistics and management — rather than simply aggregating budget hotels. Airbnb, with its HotelTonight acquisition, has shown it wants to be a booking destination across different types of verticals.
Geographically, the deal makes even more sense. Airbnb has been keen to take a larger bite out of India for some time. It has begun to see progress, with co-founder and CSO Nathan Blecharczyk recently revealing that the country is one of its five fastest growing markets worldwide. In that light, the companies are exploring opportunities to collaborate which could see OYO properties — in this case more likely villas and Airbnb-like properties — listed on Airbnb’s service.
That exposure could help OYO — which stands for ‘On Your Own’ — as it looks to break into the overseas traveler market, having previously been more popular with local or regional travelers. It may also look to break the U.S. market having entered the U.K. at the end of last year.
Finally, OYO is all the more appealing to Airbnb because it has seen signs of promise in China, which represented a key part of its focus following the Series E round. Overall, OYO claims to cover close to 500,000 rooms across 13,000 hotels and 6,000 homes in eight countries: India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, the U.K, UAE, Indonesia and the Philippines.
OYO is also gunning for Southeast Asia, where it hopes an alliance with Grab can help it break into the region.
“Emerging markets like India and China are some of Airbnb’s fastest-growing, with our growth increasingly powered by tourism to and from these markets. In many of these markets, OYO is empowering local hospitality entrepreneurs to provide more options to more travelers. We share a dedication to offering people more choices when traveling and we’re excited to partner with OYO as we work to make Airbnb for everyone,” said Airbnb’s president of homes, Greg Greeley, in a statement.
“Airbnb’s strong global footprints and access to local communities will open up new opportunities for OYO Hotels & Homes to strengthen and grow while staying true to our core value proposition. We’re excited by the possibilities and committed to bringing benefits to the millions of travelers who can now rely on Airbnb and OYO Hotels & Homes to find a home away from home,” added Maninder Gulati, global chief strategy officer for OYO.
Airbnb recently checked in its 500 millionth guest and the company claims it has been profitable for the last two years. While it doesn’t give out precise financial details — that’ll change with an IPO — Airbnb claimed that Q3 2018 was its strongest quarter of business ever with “substantially more” than $1 billion in revenue during the three-month period.
It’s been a long journey for OYO, which TechCrunch first covered in 2015 when it raised $25 million. CEO and founder Ritesh Agarwal is Thiel fellow who started the company in 2011 when aged just 18. His original business, called Oravel, was an Airbnb clone that later pivoted to become OYO — it’s funny what can happen over time.
Source: TechCrunch
Despite not being Brazilian and having their first exposure to the country only a few years ago, the two co-founders of Escale have managed to raise $22.6 million for their company, which provides customer acquisition services to companies in telecommunications and healthcare across Brazil.
Their secret? A knowledge of search engine optimization technologies honed through side businesses the two ran back in the United States.
The state of online marketing and digital sales was so woefully bad in Brazil that co-founders Matthew Kligerman and Ken Diamond had a green field in front of them on which to build Brazil’s first true online customer acquisition service, according to Diamond.
“We fell in love with Brazil for its warm culture and natural beauty, but as consumers, we had terrible experiences acquiring the most fundamental products and services for our new lives: internet, cell phone plans, health insurance and basic banking needs,” Kligerman said in a statement.
The company’s largest customer, according to Diamond, is NET, the Brazilian cable and telecom operator. NET was the first company to sign on for Escale’s customer acquisition services, but the company’s roster of clients now includes some of Brazil’s largest companies including Bradesco, Sul America, Claro, GNDI, and Amil.
It’s that marquee client list that attracted QED Investors and Invus Opportunities to co-lead the $22.6 million round that Escale just closed. The company’s previous investors Kaszek Ventures, Rocket Internet’s GFC and Redpoint e.Ventures also participated in the funding.
Latin America is in the throes of a startup renaissance at the moment with Brazilian companies like Nubank and iFood and the Colombian company Rappi reaching billion dollar valuations. Meanwhile investors are committing more capital to the region. Softbank, for instance is Softbank committing $5 billion to a new Latin American-focused fund.
With the new funding, Escale intends to move deeper into the development of customer acquisition platforms across verticals like consumer finance, insurance, and education with comparison shopping sites and informational services (a la CreditKarma in the U.S.).
“With millions of web and cloud voice interactions every month, Escale can transform each of those interactions into data points, and continually improve its proprietary acquisition platform, ‘EscaleOS’, to create highly-intelligent, customized marketing and sales funnels, helping consumers at the right moment connect with the products and services they need,” says Nicolas Berman, a partner at Kaszek Ventures. “The more consumer interactions they have, the faster Escale’s data flywheel spins.”
Source: TechCrunch
Exactly fifteen years ago, Google decided to confuse everybody by launching its long-awaited web-based email client on April 1. This definitely wasn’t a joke, though, and Gmail went on to become one of Google’s most successful products. Today, to celebrate its fifteenth birthday (and maybe make you forget about today’s final demise of Inbox and tomorrow’s shutdown of Google+), the Gmail team announced a couple of a new and useful Gmail features, including improvements to Smart Compose and the ability to schedule emails to be sent in the future.
Smart Compose, which tries to autocomplete your emails as you type them, will now be able to adapt to the way you write the greetings in your emails. If you prefer ‘Hey’ over ‘Hi,’ then Smart Compose will learn that. If you often fret over which subject to use for your emails, then there’s some relief here for you, too, because Smart Compose can now suggest a subject line based on the content of your email.
With this update, Smart Compose is now also available on all Android devices. Google says that it was previously only available on Pixel 3 devices, though I’ve been using it on my Pixel 2 for a while already, too. Support for iOS is coming soon.
In addition to this, Smart Compose is also coming to four new languages: Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.
That’s all very useful, but the feature that will likely get the most attention today is email scheduling. The idea here is as simple as the execution. The ‘send’ button now includes a drop-down menu that lets you schedule an email to be sent at a later time. Until now, you needed third-party services to do this, but now it’s directly integrated into Gmail.
Google is positioning the new feature as a digital wellness tool. “We understand that work can often carry over to non-business hours, but it’s important to be considerate of everyone’s downtime,” Jacob Bank, Director of Product Management, G Suite, writes in today’s announcement. “We want to make it easier to respect everyone’s digital well-being, so we’re adding a new feature to Gmail that allows you to choose when an email should be sent.”
Source: TechCrunch
The internet is often lauded for the potential to increase the impact of a range of primary services in emerging markets, including education, commerce, banking and healthcare. While many of those platforms are now being built, a few are finding that a hybrid approach combining online and offline is advantageous.
That’s exactly what Jio Health, a ‘full stack’ (forgive the phrase) healthcare startup is bringing to consumers in Southeast Asia, starting in Vietnam.
The company started out as a U.S-based venture that worked with healthcare providers around the ‘Obamacare’ initiative, before sensing the opportunity overseas and relocating to Vietnam, the Southeast Asian market of 95 million people and a fast-growing young population.
Today, it operates an online healthcare app and a physical facility in Saigon, it also has licenses for prescriptions and over the counter drug sales. The serviced launched nearly a year ago, already the company has some 130 staff, including 70 caregivers — including doctors — and a tech team of 30.
The idea is to offer services digitally, but also provide a physical location for when it is needed. Therein, the company ensures that “every element of that journey” is controlled and of the required standard, that’s in contrast to services that partner with hospitals or other care centers.
The scope of Jio Health’s services range from pediatrics to primary care, chronic disease management and ancillary services, which will soon cover areas like eye care, dermatology and cancer.
“Our initial research [before moving] found that healthcare in Vietnam was unlike the U.S,” Raghu Rai, founder and CEO of Jio Health, told TechCrunch in an interview. “Spending is primarily driven by the consumer (out of pocket) and there’s no real digital infrastructure to speak of.”
Rai — a U.S. citizen — said doctors typically “have minutes per patient” and get through “hundreds” of consultations in every morning shift. That gave him an idea to make things more efficient.
“We can probably address north of 80 percent of consumers health needs,” he said of Jio Health,” but we also have referral partnerships with certain hospitals.”
Raghu Rai is CEO and founder of Jio Health
The process begins when a consumer downloads the Jio Health app and inputs primary information. A representative is then dispatched to visit the consumer in person, potentially within “hours” of the submission of information, according to Rai.
He believes that Jio Health can save its users money and time by using remote consultancy for many diagnoses. The company also works with health insurance companies, for areas like annual checkups, and Rai said that McDonald’s and 7-Eleven are among the corporations that offer Jio Health among the providers for their staff, they’re not exclusive.
This week, Jio Health announced that it has closed a $5 million Series A funding from Southeast Asia’s Monk’s Hill Ventures . Rai said the company plans to use the capital for expansion. In particular, he said, the company is adding new care categories this month — including eye care and dermatology — and it is working towards expanding its brand through marketing.
Further down the line, Rai said the company hopes to expand to Hanoi before the end of this year. While there is interest in moving into other markets within Southeast Asia, that isn’t about to happen soon.
“We have begun to investigate other markets but at this point feel the market in Vietnam is substantial in itself,” he told TechCrunch. “It’s very plausible that we’d be looking at international expansion plans in 2020… we’re going to be focused on Southeast Asia.”
Source: TechCrunch
News just in: We’re getting reports the board of Krablr has voted overwhelmingly to jettison the sole remaining founder, Wilson Poney, and install an interim CFO to take the company in a new old direction.
“We’re going to make Krablr great again,” said chairman of the board, Goldie Seamann. “We’re not 100% sure what’s been going on around here but the board is unanimous in agreement that Krablr should return to its roots in the fishing industry to provide strong value to stakeholders and its ecosystem.”
“No more ICOs, no more microdosing podcast retreats flirting with white supremacy. Just good, old clean business,” he added.
Seamann, a former consultant with McKinsey, KPMG and OMFG, said the board believes the shell of the Krablr brand can still be salvaged — in spite of its disastrous ICO last year which saw an estimated $260M worth of ‘Krabcoin’ vanish without trace.
The company is said to be in negotiations to offload its Krab.coin arm, developed specifically for the ICO, for a bargain price of around a dozen Dentacoins. It is also working to offload the assets of a previously developed messaging app to a “major social network” in order to extend its cash runway.
No one has seen Poney for months either.
“We believe there are exciting opportunities for Krablr to develop financial services for emerging markets — like offering loans to SMEs, as well as micro-insurance, cross-border remittance payments and other financial services to support those who are actually doing the fishing,” added Seamann.
Developing…
Source: TechCrunch
Payment card data belonging to more than 2 million restaurant diners has likely been stolen in a malware attack involving point-of-sales systems. Targeted outlets include Buca di Beppo, Planet Hollywood, and Earl of Sandwich.
The post Two million diners hit by malware attack at restaurants across U.S. appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Calling all hackathon fans across Europe and beyond. It’s time once again to put your creative coding skills to the test at the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019, which returns to Paris on May 17-18. Brush up on your parlez-vous français, stock up on RedBull and get ready to compete against some of the best hackers, coders and programmers in the world.
The TechCrunch Hackathon takes place over the course of two days, May 17-18. Competitors will form ad hoc teams and spend a little over 24 grueling, caffeine-, sugar-, beer- and pizza-fueled hours building well, who knows? Something great, life-changing or just plain fun. It’s your chance to show the world your skills, network with other like-minded techies and maybe even win the €5,000 grand prize. Want to throw your hat in the ring? Sign up to participate here.
Last year, 64 teams competed. The winning team, CommerceDNA built software that accurately autofills product information when a seller uploads the product image — making it easier for buyers to find it during a web search.
This year, the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech is open to everyone and once again, BeMyApp will serve as the official Hackathon platform. Here’s how the judging works. A panel of esteemed TechCrunch hackathon judges will give each competing team a numerical score between 1 and 5, and the team with the highest score walks away with major bragging rights along with a cool €5,000. But all teams that earn a combined score 3 or higher will receive two tickets to VivaTech 2020 and two tickets to TC Disrupt Berlin 2019 in December. Not too shabby.
And don’t you worry — we’ll also have plenty of cool sponsored contests, prizes and other fun stuff for you (swag, anyone?). In fact, we are happy to announce our first sponsored challenge with EDHEC — Making an impact can have different meanings, and we believe that one of them is about improving how we support student’s careers. Have you ever asked yourself “have I chosen the right studies and the right career for me?” According to the French Ministry of Higher Education, 150,000 french students decide to change their degree course. Participating in the TC Hackathon at VivaTech is a great way to solve this issue through innovation. So let’s help them find the path that suits them best for their future career! The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize. More details on additional sponsor challenges in the coming weeks, so check back for updates.
Tickets to participate in the hackathon are free, but we have a limited number of spots available and they’ll disappear quickly. Don’t wait and risk getting shut out of the competition and sign up today.
The TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech in Paris takes place on May 17-18, 2019 at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Don’t miss your opportunity to show the tech world what you can do. Sign up to compete right now. We can’t wait to see what all you mad hackers create!
Source: TechCrunch
This Limited Edition batch of matching kitchen goodies includes a stand mixer, food chopper, electric kettle and more!
Source: CNET
Commentary: In a world filled with #fakenews, bots and brands trying to humanise themselves, April Fools’ Day is a bad idea gone rogue.
Source: CNET