Author : zebethcontrol

Shares of Korean internet giant Kakao slide after fire disrupts service • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Apps, Asia, Government & Policy, Kakao, Naver, south koreaNo Comments

The stock price of South Korea’s internet giant Kakao tumbled on Monday after a fire at a data center that cut off power on Saturday, causing several service malfunctions. The blaze at the SK C&C data center, which houses the servers of Korea’s two largest internet companies — Kakao and Naver — disrupted Kakao’s messaging, ride-hailing, payment and game apps, and Naver’s internet search and news services, over the weekend. Some disruption is ongoing — mainly affecting Kakao’s services. On Monday morning, Kakao’s share price dropped more than 9%. Its peer Naver also slid 2% at the opening of trading before recovering. At the time of writing, Kakao said it had restored KakaoTalk, the country’s dominant messaging app — with more than 46 million monthly active users in South Korea as of September 2022 and 53 million globally. On Monday afternoon it also said it had completed recovering its financial services. But some other services are still down. Meanwhile, Naver, which faced partial disruptions as a result of the fire on Saturday, quickly restored most of its operations on Sunday. According to a report by Bernstein, Kakao’s slow recovery process was caused by the company’s lack of owned server infrastructure and “high dependence” on the SK C&C data center. It also highlights Kakao’s lack of a well distributed backup system. The report pointed out that Naver was able to resume its primary services promptly because it has owned server infrastructure and a well-designed backup process. KakaoTalk remains the dominant messaging service in South Korea and the Bernstein report predicts it will maintain its position despite the outage, given how far behind its rivals are in marketshare terms. Additionally, it points out that Kakao’s messaging app is linked to other services such as Kakao bank, payment and ride-hailing services, so users are unlikely to replace the app with less fully featured alternatives like WhatsApp or Telegram, per the report. The second largest messaging app after Kakao in South Korea is FaceBook Messenger but it has only 3.9 million MAU as of September 2022. While Naver’s messenger app, Line, has about 1.6 million monthly active users. In its statement on Saturday night, Kakao said the fire broke out at around 3:30 PM (local time). It added that it is investigating the matter. A statement by Naver on Saturday afternoon said it is aware of issues impacting its services as a result of the fire. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol also made public comments on Monday following the incident — remarking that a private company operates KakaoTalk but describing it as practically a national communications infrastructure. Yoon called on the government to investigate the exact causes of the fire. “I respect corporate autonomy and creativity, but that is based on the premise that the market reasonably allocates resources and income in a system of fair competition,” Yoon said. “If a monopoly situation causes market manipulation, the government should take systemic action.”

Nigerian banking-as-a-service platform Maplerad raises $6M, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in africa, Fintech, Maplerad, Venture, WirepayNo Comments

Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms have taken off rapidly across the fintech world over the last 18 months. By partnering with banks, these platforms allow entities from startups and fintechs to big corporations and banks to provide tailored banking services and experiences to their customers. Fintechs offering BaaS services in U.S. and Europe, such as Unit, Rapyd and Treasury Prime, have achieved significant scale due to the developed banking systems they enjoy in their markets. However, their counterparts are trying to replicate this growth in less advanced banking systems like Africa, where the demand and scalability of such products are unproven. In the latest development, Maplerad, a fintech described by its founders Miracle Anyanwu and Obinna Chukwujioke as a global BaaS player targeting Africa, has raised $6 million in seed funding. According to sources, the U.S.-based Maplerad, which is coming out of stealth, raised the round at a $30 million valuation. The founders declined to comment. Maplerad’s journey as a company can be traced back to 2020, when the founders launched its first product, Wirepay. The app started with helping users make international payments by offering cross-border payment solutions in fiat and cryptocurrency. However, it has since shifted into a self-described all-in-one finance product that enables users to receive, hold, and make payments in multiple currencies, create virtual and physical cards, and pay bills. Last year, Wirepay raised an undisclosed pre-seed, including a $125,000 check from OnDeck. Golden Palm Investments Corporation, Greenhouse Capital, some Stash executives, and Berrywood Capital were other investors in the round. As Wirepay grew to over 50,000 users, mainly in Nigeria, Anyanwu, on a call with ZebethMedia, said businesses began to inquire about the in-house infrastructure powering the features on its consumer app. “People wanted to use the infrastructure powering Wirepay, our license coverages, and banking relationships,” the CEO and CTO stated. Anywanwu also mentioned that Maplerad (the parent company) had always wanted to spin off this infra for other businesses. However, when outside requests flocked in en masse, they finally arranged to beta-launch Maplerad, the infra product that allows companies to embed powerful financial features like accounts, payments, FX, and cards into their products, this August. “From day one, when we built Wirepay for our consumers, we knew the end move would be infrastructural even though we didn’t start the business infrastructure first. For anyone to build anything finance-related, they have a whole lot of banking stack that they have to start with and even before integrating features, they have to go past many hurdles,” said the chief executive. “One of them is banking relationships and compliance. The other is licencing. So Maplerad is solving financial infrastructure problems for these businesses in Africa. We handle that whole stack and provide the best-in-class APIs to use that can make you launch a financial product within five minutes. So instead of a company spending 8 months and a couple of million dollars to start building a fintech product, you can integrate with our APIs and go live.” Banking-as-a-service platforms have become popular with companies trying to embed financial services into their offerings because large, incumbent banks have been relatively slow to bring their services up to speed with the pace of change in the world of tech and banking. As such, banking-as-a-service platforms see an opportunity to provide more personalized services and flexibility at less cost. The space is heating up—some of Maplerad’s competitors in Nigeria include YC-backed Anchor, Bloc, OnePipe and larger fintechs such as Flutterwave. In an interview with ZebethMedia this August, Anchor CEO referenced his founding team’s technical experience, attention to security and scalability and the speed at which businesses can go live on its platform when asked about the startup’s edge over others. Posed with a similar question, Maplerad founders referenced the platform’s “wider range of banking relationships,” “a tech second to none,” and having the “best institutional investors/partners.” In tandem, James Fitzgerald, a partner at Valar Ventures, speaking on the investment, said as large parts of Africa’s population remain financially excluded despite the continent’s maturing economies, “there’s a huge opportunity for Maplerad which is the best-in-class banking as a service solution to provide businesses with the financial infrastructure to scale across Africa and globally quickly and seamlessly.” The Peter Thiel-founded VC firm led Maplerad’s seed round, its third African investment after Kuda and Yellow Card. Other investors in the round include Golden Palm Investments Corporation, Michael Vaughn (ex-COO, Venmo), Fintech Fund, Babs Ogundeyi (CEO, Kuda) Armyn Capital, Dunbar Capital, Strawhat Investment, Polymath Capital, Unpopular Ventures, Sean Mahsoul and MyAsiaVC. The founders said they also invested their money into the company. While in stealth, Maplerad processed millions of dollars monthly for over 100 businesses acquired onto its platform, including startups such as Pastel, Spleet, Bridgecard, Onboardly, Vella, Crowdforce, Dojah, GetEquity, and a few banks. It plans to use the investment to acquire more customers now it’s out of stealth, get additional licences, build its team and solidify its presence across Africa.

Indian edtech giant Byju’s raises $250 million in fresh funding • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Startups, VentureNo Comments

Byju’s said it has raised $250 million in new funding from existing backers as the Indian edtech giant looks to navigate the market downturn that has forced the firm to postpone the initial public offering. The new funding valued the Bengaluru-headquartered startup at $22 billion, the same figure at which it raised a financing round in March this year, a person familiar with the matter said. The company declined to comment on the valuation and did not disclose the names of the investors. Byju Raveendran, founder and chief executive of Byju’s, told ZebethMedia in an earlier interview that the startup was engaging with existing sovereign funds to put together a new round. “Byju’s is now at that sweet spot of its growth story where the unit economics and the economies of scale both are in its favour,” he said in a statement today. “This means the capital that we now invest in our business will result in profitable growth and create sustainable social impact. Regardless of the adverse macroeconomic conditions, 2022-23 is set to be our best year in terms of revenue, growth and profitability. Continued support from our esteemed investors re-affirms the impact created by us so far, and validates our path to profitability.” (More to follow)

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart launches metaverse shopping experience • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Amazon, Commerce, Crypto, Flipkart, indiaNo Comments

Flipkart has launched a metaverse offering for consumers to discover and shop new products, the latest bet from the Indian e-commerce giant as it experiments with web3 offerings to supercharge its customer experience. The Walmart-backed Bengaluru-headquartered firm has partnered with eDAO, a Polygon-incubated firm, to launch the metaverse offering, which it is calling Flipverse. The offering is in the pilot stage and aimed to garner interest during the festive season this month. On Flipverse, which goes live on Flipkart’s Android app Monday, the company is offering “gamified, interactive and immersive” experiences for consumers where they will be able to collect the company’s loyalty points — Supercoins — as well as digital collectibles from partner brands. At a briefing Monday, Flipkart said “a wide range of brands” including Puma, Noise, Nivea, Lavie, Tokyo Talkies, Campus, VIP, Ajmal Perfumes and Himalaya are partnering to set up experience theaters on Flipverse. “The idea is to have millions of users experience Flipverse and open the doors to the future of shopping,” the company said. The company’s executives acknowledged that its web3 offerings are at an experimental stage, but they said they are confident that it has legs to eventually become a critical part of Flipkart’s future. Flipkart and its chief rival in India, Amazon, are increasingly broadening their offerings to reach new customers in the South Asian market and retain loyal base. Amazon launched a QVC-style livestream shopping in India late last month, bringing an army of more than 150 creators to host livestreams and plug products in the videos. “While we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible in the metaverse, we see e-commerce as one of the killer use cases. Combining top brands with Flipkart’s e-commerce expertise in a virtual environment stands to revolutionize online retail as we know it. Flipverse will be a vibrant, visible expression of the metaverse, and I’m proud that this activation is taking place on Polygon,” said Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, in a statement. The broader partnership with Flipkart is Polygon’s latest win to attract large brands. The Ethereum scaling platform has partnered with a number of firms including Stripe, Meta and Starbucks in recent months. Flipverse isn’t Flipkart’s first foray into web3. The company partnered with Carl Pei’s Nothing earlier this year to give exclusive NFTs to those purchasing the smartphone from the platform. “The future growth of e-commerce will be influenced by the immersive technologies of today, and Metaverse is one of the significant revolutions in this arena with immense potential,” said Naren Ravula, VP and Head of Product Strategy and Deployment at Flipkart Labs, said in a statement. “The launch of Flipverse will continue to have an impact on innovative industries like e-commerce and enhance the customer experience while delivering a gamified and an immersive shopping experience, especially in light of the adoption of the metaverse and web3 platforms by multiple brands in India. By providing customers with access to their preferred brands, offers, SuperCoins, and digital collectibles, we are aiming to improve their shopping experiences in a virtual and immersive setting.” (More to follow)

Why Cruise is making its own chips, and a lot more besides • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in TransportationNo Comments

Cruise never planned to make its own silicon. But in the quest to commercialize robotaxis — and make money doing it — those never planned pursuits can suddenly seem a lot more appealing. Cruise realized that the price of chips from suppliers was too high, the parts were too big and the reliability of the third-party technology just wasn’t there, Carl Jenkins, Cruise’s vice president of hardware, told ZebethMedia during a tour of the company’s hardware lab last month. Amid a hiring spree that began in 2019 and continued into 2020, Cruise doubled down on its own hardware, including its own board and sensors. The investment has helped the company develop smaller, lower cost hardware for its vehicles. It has also resulted in its first production board the C5, which is powering the current generation of autonomous Chevy Bolts. When the company’s purpose-built Origin robotaxi starts hitting the streets in 2023, it will be outfitted with the C6 board. That board will eventually be replaced with the C7 which will have Cruise’s Dune chip. Dune will process all of the sensor data for the system, according to Cruise. Typically, automakers use parts and sensors from Tier 1 suppliers in order to reduce R&D and manufacturing costs. Cruise couldn’t see a way to launch its autonomous ride-hailing without doing more of the work itself. The result is that the C7 board is 90% cheaper, has a 70% reduction in mass, and uses 60% less power than chips provided by a supplier. It’s not just chips that are being taken care of by the company. While long-range lidars and ultrasonic sensors are still sourced from third parties, nearly everything else, including cameras, short-range lidar, and radar, are also being developed in-house. Cruise found that off-the-shelf radar just didn’t have the resolution they needed for their vehicles to operate. Like the board, there’s a long-term cost reduction of about 90%, according to Jenkins. “I was told the price point I have to meet this hardware for 2025,” Jenkins said. “So I went to all the CTOs of Bosch, Continental and ZF over in Germany. ‘What do you have in your research tanks that you’re doing that meets this?’ Nothing, not even started. ‘Okay, if you start today, how long should I take?’ Seven years.” At that point, Jenkins was able to increase his 20-person team to 550. When asked about the costs of building the Origin with in-house developed hardware versus pieces sourced from suppliers, CEO Kyle Vogt told ZebethMedia, “we couldn’t do it. It doesn’t exist.” That’s not to say that Cruise doesn’t want to be able to buy the hardware it needs, however. “What we found in the AV industry is a lot of the components that have the robustness needed to operate in a harsh automotive environment, didn’t have the capabilities needed for an AV. The components that did have the (AV) capabilities needed weren’t capable of operating in those harsh environments,” Vogt said. Made at Cruise, used at GM? Automakers (not counting Tesla) have taken a more cautious approach to autonomous vehicles that would be sold to consumers. The technology built and proven out by Cruise could eventually make its way into a GM product sold to a customer. And there is reason to believe it will. GM CEO and Chairman Mary Barra has repeatedly said that the automaker will make and sell personal autonomous vehicles by mid-decade. “We use Cruise as a bellwether for us for autonomous vehicle technology and the stack and how it operates,” GM president Mark Reuss told ZebethMedia editor Kirsten Korosec in a recent interview. As Cruise develops its AV tech, its parent company has focused its efforts on advanced driver assistance systems Super Cruise and now Ultra Cruise. “When we start researching and looking at personal autonomous vehicles there are choices like does the car have pedals or does it have pedals that are deployable or does it not have pedals at all,” Reuss said. “And so we’re looking at what people want and those aren’t easy questions to answer.” Just a few years shy of its mid-decade goal, GM still has to considerable work to do, including its go-to-market strategy for these personal autonomous vehicles (or as Reuss calls them, PAVs). The feedback from its recent InnerSpace autonomous concept for Cadillac GM hasn’t decided whether these PAVs will launch as an up-market product or whether it will be attached to an existing vehicle model or a dedicated vehicle, Ruess added. Bumps in the road Image Credits: Roberto Baldwin Cruise currently runs an autonomous ride-hailing business in San Francisco but only during the middle of the night (10 p.m. until 5:30 a.m.) and only within 30% of the city. The company notes that this decision was based more on making sure its vehicles work during less hectic traffic times. It’s currently working to expand those area and time constraints. It’s not just San Francisco that will see more driverless Chevy Bolts ferrying passengers around. Cruise plans to expand to Phoenix, Arizona and Austin, Texas in the next 90 days. Scaling is Cruise’s next chapter. However, the hiccups keep coming. There have been multiple reports of Cruise robotaxis blocking intersections and other issues. One vehicle was involved in a collision at an intersection which prompted the company to update the software on 80 of its vehicles. In April of this year, a Bolt was pulled over for not having its headlights on and at one point pulled away from the police officer. And of course, there is the infamous group of over a half dozen Cruise Bolts that were assembled at an intersection and unable to determine where to go next causing traffic issues. When asked about the bunching up of the vehicles, Vogt noted, “This is part of operating, parting of scaling. It’s a normal bump in the road.” The CEO noted that it was an inconvenience and not a safety issue. Vogt said that AVs have a lot of back-end services

Top climate tech deals net nearly $4B in Q3, outpacing other industries • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 16, 2022Posted in cb insights, Climate, climate tech, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, fundraisingNo Comments

Climate tech wrapped a strong Q3, landing three of the top four equity deals, including the whopping $1 billion Series A raised by fleet charging startup TeraWatt. While the broader market might be cooling, climate tech continues to be a hot ticket, with investment figures for top deals in Q3 outpacing the two previous quarters this year. In total, five climate tech startups made CB Insights’ top 10 equity deals list in Q3, pulling in a combined $3.7 billion. That far exceeds last quarter’s $2.5 billion across eight top startups and Q1’s $1.4 billion across five top startups. Top climate tech investments continued to diversify, too, showing just how deeply it’s becoming embedded into the economy.

With a $13B valuation, Celonis defies current startup economics • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 16, 2022Posted in Automation, Celonis, EC Cloud and Enterprise Infrastructure, Enterprise, process mapping, workflowNo Comments

When Celonis, an 11-year-old German process mining company, announced a $1 billion raise in August on a $13.2 billion post-money valuation, it was a bit of a shock. After all, VC firms were pulling back from the huge raises and gaudy valuations of yesteryear. But Celonis — which has raised $2.4 billion, per Crunchbase, with $2 billion coming in the last year alone — has been able to defy the current thinking in startup circles by taking on huge chunks of capital. Consider that its valuation has grown an eye-popping 420% since 2019, when it raised $290 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. That was followed last year with $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation, culminating in August’s $13 billion valuation. Part of the reason it’s such a valuable company is that along the way, it’s forged partnerships with corporate giants like IBM and ServiceNow to sell its software, helping push Celonis into markets where even well-funded startups might be limited by the resource requirements. It’s also been able to fill in the platform with several strategic acquisitions (more on that later). Why are customers, investors, and partners so interested in Celonis? Because Celonis, using software, can dig into the way processes move through a company, looking at complex areas like procurement, bill paying, and inventory and searching for inefficiencies and duplications that can ultimately add up to huge savings. This is the kind of work that high-priced consultants have tended to do, camping inside companies for months or years and figuring out how work flows through the organization while collecting fat checks to do it. Having software that can replace those human efficiency experts, and in fairly short order, is a tremendous advantage.

Even decacorns have their challenges • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 16, 2022Posted in financial technology, Fintech, Startups, The InterchangeNo Comments

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. — Mary Ann Hello, hello. By the time you’re reading this, we’ll be two days away from ZebethMedia Disrupt! Soooo exciting! But first, let’s talk about fintech. Last week’s big news was corporate spend management startup Brex’s announcement that it was laying off 11% of its staff, or 136 people. It was also revealed that the startup’s CFO, Adam Swiecicki, is departing to join Rippling as its CFO. Notably, workforce platform unicorn Rippling recently entered the corporate management space, making it a direct competitor with Brex. First off, it’s rare — and refreshing — for a company to actually proactively share news of a layoff, so it’s interesting that Brex got ahead of any gossip and let me know firsthand of its plans. And as Alex Wilhelm pointed out on Friday’s Equity podcast, the layoffs appear to mostly be related to Brex’s move earlier this year to no longer work with SMBs and nonprofessionally funded startups. In other words, the company said it primarily let go of people who were focused on serving that group. Still, it must suck for those employees — especially considering those groups that it no longer works with were initially Brex’s bread and butter. Bigger-picture-wise, the news of Brex’s layoffs show that even decacorns have not been immune to this downturn. The company earlier this year confirmed a $300 million Series D extension at a staggering $12.3 billion valuation. And while the company claims to be “in a strong financial position with many years of runway,” it adds that its shift away from SMBs to focus more on enterprise customers — and, by default, any related layoffs — will put the company “on a path to sustainable profitability over the next few years.” Side note: Brex aside, it still blows my journalist mind that companies in general can raise hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and yet not be profitable. I am doubtful that I could ever be a venture-backed startup founder. The pressure of having to provide returns to investors who poured that kind of money into my company and the pressure of not wanting to ever have to lay off staff would likely make me lose sleep at night! Guess that’s why I’m a journalist and not a startup founder! Anyway…speaking of Disrupt and Brex, I will be interviewing co-founder and co-CEO Henrique Dubugras and Anu Hariharan, managing director of YC’s growth fund, YC Continuity, live in a Fireside Chat on October 19! I’ll also be talking to Ramp CEO and co-founder Eric Glyman, Airbase CEO and founder Thejo Kote and Anthemis partner Ruth Foxe Blader in a session called “How to Compete without Losing Your Mind and Runway When Cash Is Expensive” that same day. And lastly, I’ll be chatting with Rippling CEO and co-founder Parker Conrad about his company’s plans to “go global.” Come see us! (Get 15% off here). Oh, and if you want to hear me talk about everything from “The Good and Ugly Sides of Fintech, What Great Journalism Really Means, & Why Startups Represent Hope,” check out this episode of the Fintech Leaders podcast I recently recorded with VC Miguel Armaza. VCs clamor to fund real estate investing startups Image Credits: Edwin Remsberg (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Hello! It’s Anita Ramaswamy reporting from the fintech desk here at ZebethMedia alongside Mary Ann. We’ve been seeing a lot of interest — and funding news — in the real estate and proptech spaces lately. Specifically, there have been a number of startups raising rounds for real estate investing apps that aim to help broaden access to the asset class to retail investors by giving them tools to bypass hurdles like large up-front capital requirements that are typically necessary to invest in property. Fintor is one such example. The startup recently closed on a $6.2 million funding round at an $80 million valuation for its platform that offers fractionalized shares in residential properties to investors for as little as $5. We’ve also covered similar platforms such as Landa, Nada and Arrived Homes, all of which have raised new funding in 2022. The surge in interest among retail investors for access to real estate might seem counterintuitive given that rising interest rates make real estate seem less attractive than it has been for the past few years. But these startups are likely more focused on long-term, secular demand growth for real estate as a part of a diversified portfolio rather than getting caught up in concerns around short-term volatility. Here’s what Fintor founder and CEO Farshad Yousefi had to say about the current market environment in an email to ZebethMedia: While recent media headlines have mainly focused on the volatility of the market, there are still present opportunities for investors to take part in investing in real estate with the right type of strategic approach. For example, Atlanta has seen an incredible near 12% year-over-year growth in rental rates, directly boosting investors’ cash flows. Additionally, when looking across the board at the top MSAs, major institutional investors have seen a near 50% jump in renewal rent growth. This drastic upward trend in tenant retention clearly demonstrates where rental demand is going. For a deeper dive into real estate tech and how it’s changing the investing landscape, check out my article in TC+ this week: Weekly

India launches 75 digital banking units across rural areas in financial inclusion push • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 16, 2022Posted in digital banking, Fintech, Government & Policy, india, narendra modiNo Comments

India on Sunday launched 75 digital banking units in villages and small towns across the country in a move that it said will help bring financial services and literacy to more citizens. The digital banking units, set up in collaboration with over 20 public and private banks, are brick-and-mortar outlets that are equipped with tablets and internet services to help individuals and small businesses open their savings accounts, access government identified schemes, perform verifications, make transactions and avail loans and insurance. The physical outlets, span across all Indian states and union territories, will provide services in two modes. “Self-service mode will be available 24x7x365 days,” said Shaktikanta Das, Governor of Reserve Bank of India, in a virtual conference. “The banks are also free to engage the services of digital business facilities and correspondence to expand the footprint of DBUs,” he said. Das said the units will also offer a digital assistance zone to answer queries from individuals and small businesses and hear their grievances. Availing banking services has traditionally been a struggle for people living in villages and small towns, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Even as more than a billion bank accounts exist in India, people living in remote areas have had to typically take a day off from the work to visit a nearby city for their banking related work. “We have given top priority to ensure that banking services reach the last mile,” he said. “We not only removed the physical distance but, most importantly, we removed the psychological distance.” The digital banking units are part of the Modi government’s years-long efforts to serve people in the far flung areas of the country. The government launched Jan Dhan Yojana, a scheme to get all citizens access to banking and financial services in 2014. More than 470 million bank accounts have been opened as part of the scheme, “Today the entire country is experiencing the power of Jan Dhan Bank accounts,” said Modi. “This opened the way for loans for the poor without collateral and provided Direct Benefit Transfer to the accounts of the target beneficiaries. These accounts were the key modality for providing homes, toilets, gas subsidy, and benefits of schemes for farmers could be ensured seamlessly. The IMF has praised India’s digital banking infrastructure. The credit for this goes to the poor, farmers and labourers of India, who have adopted new technologies, made it a part of their lives,” he said.

Meta announces legs, Hulu raises prices, and Microsoft embraces DALL-E 2 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 15, 2022Posted in Media & Entertainment, media and entertainment, Venture, Week in ReviewNo Comments

Hi, friends! It’s time for another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read ZebethMedia stories from the past seven days. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. most read LEGS: The company formerly known as Facebook held its Meta Connect conference this week, where it announced everything from a $1,500 VR headset to a work-focused partnership with Microsoft. Here’s the full roundup of all the news. The thing Zuckerberg seemed most excited about? His metaverse is getting legs. Hulu’s price bump: Another year, another Hulu price hike. This week the ad-supported plan got bumped from $7 to $8 per month, while the ad-free plan went from $13 to $15 per month. Microsoft x DALL-E: AI tools that can generate new images from text prompts are starting to go mainstream, with Microsoft announcing this week that it will integrate DALL-E 2 into at least two of its apps. OG App gets KO’d: The “OG App” promised to provide an ad-free/suggestion-free Instagram experience more like that of yesteryear. Unfortunately, it didn’t have Instagram’s permission to do so. Instagram owner Meta quickly announced plans to take “all appropriate enforcement actions” against the app, which has now been pulled from both Google Play and the iOS App Store. Google’s video calling booths get real: Last year, Google announced Project Starline, a wild, experimental “video-calling booth” that uses 3D imagery, depth sensors, and light field displays to make a video chat feel more like an in-person conversation. Until now, Starline booth prototypes were hidden away exclusively in Google’s offices; they’re now expanding that to include “the offices of various enterprise partners, including Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health.” audio roundup Been busy, and not the commuting/working out/doing housework kind of busy that lets you listen to podcasts while you get stuff done? Here’s what you missed in TC podcasts this week: On Equity, Natasha and Alex caught up with the incredibly insightful Sarah Guo, who recently launched a $100 million early-stage VC firm after being an investor/partner at Greylock for nearly a decade. Darrell and Jordan were joined on Found by Attabotics founder Scott Gravelle, who detailed how ant colonies inspired his approach to robotics. The Chain Reaction crew talked about why the SEC is investigating the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection and what it could mean for the crypto ecosystem. techcrunch+ Here’s what subscribers were reading most behind the TC+ member paywall this week: Supliful’s seed deck: “This is one of the best decks I’ve ever seen, despite being butt-ugly and riddled with mistakes,” writes Haje in the latest installment of his popular Pitch Deck Teardown series. Growth hacking is really just growth testing: 10+ years after the term “growth hacking” was coined, what does it really mean today? Growth marketing expert Jonathan Martinez shares his insights.