Author : zebethcontrol

Lisbon’s Indico VC launches €25M Opportunity Fund for its scale-ups, taking it to a €141M total • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Indico Capital Partners, the Lisbon, Portugal based VC, has launched a €25 million ‘Opportunity Fund’, with the help of previous LPs, to invest up to an additional €5 million in the most promising four or five companies from its first fund. Indico says this would double the maximum investment per startup from €5-10 million. Indico launched its first €54M fund at the beginning of 2019 (covered on ZebethMedia here). In 2020 it launched a Partnership with Google for Startups and a related €12 million pre-seed fund for its early stage programme. This year it also launched a 50 million euro ‘Blue Fund‘ around ocean innovation and sustainability (€100,000 to €5 million euros per company for expansion capital). This takes its total raised to €141 million since early 2019 (€91 million for tech and €50 million for the blue economy). So far it’s put €36 million euros into 29 companies, including Anchorage Digital, Remote and Tier.

How to Design the Ideal Hero Image for Your Online Portfolio

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Articles, inspiration, websiteTagged create hero imageNo Comments

It doesn’t take long for visitors to form their initial (and occasionally lasting) opinion of a website. When you stop to consider that the hero image on a website’s home page is they first thing they’ll encounter, it should be rather obvious that if the image isn’t particularly interesting, their expectations may not be high. The message is this: You need to take time to ensure your hero image is well planned and properly implemented. It’s mandatory to give visitors the impression that you are creative, talented, and have made it worthwhile for them to have a further look. How do you go about making the ideal image for your online portfolio? We will show you how by focusing on 6 elements accompanied by some of the 100+ prebuilt portfolio websites that come with BeTheme, and other brands that illustrate various paths of bringing everything together. Designing an excellent hero image for your portfolio These 6 elements involve – Picking a hero image that directly connects with the nature of your workUsing a supportive image backgroundChoosing an appropriate font schemeSelecting an appropriate color schemeUsing interactions to liven up the hero imageSpecifying or implying a call-to-action to the next step There are various ways to artfully bring these 6 elements together. In this post, we’ll look more deeply into each element and provide example of each that will help you incorporate all of them into a hero image designed to engage even the most skeptical visitor. Let’s get started. 1. Select imagery that directly connects with the nature of your work Your choice of imagery for your hero image must clearly relate to the material in your portfolio. Interior design boutique Lauren Waldorf Interiors’ hero image features a sliding gallery of finished projects: Photographers, videographers, web designers, and visual artists could well find this approach attractive. You may need to adopt a different strategy if your work involves visual representations of media that are potentially challenging, such as having your face the main image in your hero section, as shown in the BeDJ 2 hero image: If you’re a DJ for example, the image of your face connects you, a real person, to the work you do. It is also a more powerful approach than a colorful bunch of graphics relating to music. Whatever approach you take, you need to carefully consider: Who or what will the main subject of the hero section be?Should a picture be in the background or the foreground?Should an image be untouched or altered to make it appear more artistic? A fourth possibility is that you might not need imagery at all, and simply let the text do the talking! 2. Use the background to add more information about your work. There are several different approaches you can take when selecting the background for your hero section. For example: The background could be devoted to the work you are doing.It could provide a small “tease” as to what a visitor will experience.It could identify your work using a graphical or abstract approach. A video or slideshow could be used to give a brief preview of your work, an approach that would also serve to give your website a lively feel. This example from the BeInterior 6 pre built website demonstrates how your hero section could be used to give visitors a small tease of what your work is all about. While the photo gallery takes up less than a quarter of the hero image, it gets the job done, plus it offers a creative way to provide additional context as to what the visitor can expect. With respect to the backdrop, a textured photo like the above or a comforting color scheme could be used advantageously. Using solid colors or gradients the way that Mindgrub has done is yet another effective approach: This could be a great option for digital creatives, instead of using screenshots of products, why not build a digital gem of your own to engage your audience? If you’re building a website for a client, this approach gives you an opportunity to put your design creativity on full display. 3. Style your fonts with clarity in mind. You are not going to attract a lot of people to view your state-of-the-art product line if you elect to go with a gothic font. That’s a ludicrous example of course, but your choice of a font or fonts can have an impact. Aesthetics matter; sometimes as much as the words themselves. The font type you use is one way to add a voice to your hero messaging. BeDetailing 4 pre-built website, for example, uses a Google font called Italiana: This auto detailing company expresses its fondness for classic and vintage cars up front. While the wording and imaging says as much, the elegant, calligraphy-inspired font caps it off. The styling of your sentences can also have a bearing on the way your messaging comes across. The Get Em Tiger site does several things to change the way their hero image text is interpreted inside the heads of those reading it. The headline in all caps is usually interpreted as sounding loud or bold inside the head. STAND OUT, in orange, does precisely that. It creates emphasis the same way that bolding or italics normally does, but even more so here. The sentence making up the sub-headline brings the temperature back down a bit inside the head by creating a friendlier, more conversational tone. 4. Work out the job the colors scheme will perform. When the time comes to settle on a color palette for your hero section, you will probably already know what your brand colors are and have worked out a color scheme to use for styling buttons and accents throughout your website. You could also use your brand colors when creating your hero section as G Sharp Design has done in the following example: The color palette in this hero section is simple and straightforward, yet it is particularly eye-catching and engaging.

BasiGo to kick-off EV assembly in Kenya after $6.6M funding • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in BasiGo, Climate, electric vehicles, kenya, TransportationNo Comments

BasiGo will begin assembling electric buses in Kenya from next month, ramping up its production of public transport vehicles (PSVs) as it targets to deliver 100 units by end of next year. The startup plans to deliver 15 of the 100 buses, manufactured using parts from China’s EV maker BYD Automotive, in January next year, having completed its six months pilot programme in the country’s capital, Nairobi. It also plans to expand its charging infrastructure network, with an initial focus on Nairobi, where its clients are mainly operational. The plans come against the backdrop of the new $6.6 million equity funding co-led by Novastar; an Africa-focused VC firm, Mobility54; the corporate venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho, and Trucks.vc, a Silicon-Valley based vc firm that backs startups in the transport sector. This brings the total amount raised by BasiGo since its launch last year to $10.9 million. “As we prepare to deliver the next batch of e-buses to new, we are deploying the necessary charging infrastructure to support that expanded fleet. Currently, all of our customers are Nairobi public service vehicle operators and we are deploying charging infrastructure within the Nairobi area to support their operations. In the future, when we begin delivering to customers operating routes outside of Nairobi, we will expand the reach of our charging network beyond the city,” BasiGo CEO Jit Bhattacharya, who co-founded the startup with Jonathan Green (CFO), told ZebethMedia. To ensure adoption BasiGo’s Pay-As-You-Drive model makes it possible for bus owners to acquire the electric buses for a similar upfront cost of a diesel one”. The operators then pay a $0.17 subscription fee for every kilometer; a fee that covers the leasing of the e-bus battery, charging services and general vehicle maintenance; “In this respect, a BasiGo electric bus is always a higher return-on-investment for a bus owner compared to diesel buses. BasiGo’s K6 electric bus comes with an eight-year or 600,000-kilometer battery warranty direct from the manufacturer, BYD Automotive,” said Bhattacharya. The buses will come in 25 and 36-seater capacities, with a range of about 250 kilometers, which is enough to cover daily round trips. The buses are also a cheaper and cleaner alternative in Kenya’s public transport industry, currently dominated by fossil-fuel buses. There are about 20,000 diesel and petrol vehicles ferrying commuters across Nairobi, which are great contributors to the air-pollution that kills over 18,000 people every year in Kenya. BasiGo plans to supply over 1,000 mass transit electric buses to transport operators in Kenya over the next five years. “Over 90% of Kenya’s electricity already comes from renewables. Yet Kenya’s transport sector relies entirely on imported petroleum fuels. By electrifying Kenya’s public transport, we can make an immediate dent in climate emissions, clean up the air in our cities, and give bus owners relief from the rising cost of diesel. With this new funding, BasiGo is ready to bring the benefits of state-of-the-art electric transport to all people in Africa,” said Bhattacharya. BasiGo and its main competitor Opibus are the two EV startups in Kenya eyeing the mass transit sector. The launch of their buses follows plans by the government to roll-out Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, to be operated by green (electric, hybrid and biodiesel) vehicles, presenting a great business opportunity for EV players in the market.

From the founders of Acast, Sesamy is setting out to ‘de-wall’ digital content • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Acast, Media & Entertainment, Sesamy, VentureNo Comments

A new startup from the founders of Acast today announced a $3.4 million seed round of funding to “de-wall” digital content including ebooks, audiobooks, and news articles. After recently severing ties with Acast, a popular podcasting platform they founded some eight years ago, Karl Rosander, Måns Ulvestam, and Markus Ahlstrand have turned their attentions to Sesamy, a company that wants to make waves in the digital content space via two core products. Founded out of Sweden in 2021, Sesamy in its original guise was purely an online store where publishers of ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts could sell their wares as one-off purchases that can be consumed inside any app on any device. So if someone wants to read an ebook on a Pocketbook ereader, for example, rather than being locked into Amazon’s walled Kindle ecosystem, then that’s where Sesamy enters the fray. But it also allows people to easily export and read on Kindle or Kobo if they wish — it’s about giving the user flexibility. Similarly, if a consumer want to buy an audiobook and listen to it through their favorite podcast app, then this is what Sesamy promises. Under the hood, Sesamy uses the same kind of DRM protection that other platforms use, ensuring that only the buyer is able to consume the content on a device or app linked to their Sesamy account. Sesamy said that it already has partnerships in place with “every major publisher” in Sweden and Denmark. Sesamy’s online store Fast-forward to last month, and Sesamy unveiled the next step in its digital content roadmap: allowing news publishers to sell access to paywalled articles via one-off purchases. Pay-per-article In truth, this is a problem that numerous companies have attempted to solve: how to let people pay to read a paywalled article without committing to an entire subscription. There are long-established platforms such as Blendle, and newcomers such as Zette which offer pay-per-article integrations for digital publishers, but one of the core arguments against such services is that they effectively cannibalise a publisher’s potential subscription revenue. And so Sesamy has built what it calls a “SmartID” system that allows paywalled publishers to optimize single-purchase prices, and even prompt readers to sign up for a subscription to save money if it detects that they are already reading three or four articles a month from a publication. The idea here is to closely align a publication’s subscription and pay-per-article offerings, aggregating large amounts of data to help the publication figure out the best price to charge based on the length of the article and what readers elsewhere have been paying, as well as other attributes such as whether an article is a major exclusive and how old it is — so the price can maybe be reduced after a few days or weeks. “At Sesamy, our goal is a simple yet comprehensive one: to bring back open to the internet,” said Sesamy CEO Måns Ulvestam, who was also Acast’s CEO until 2017, in a statement. “This is why our paywall technology is transparent and flexible for both digital content creators and consumers alike; giving consumers the option to make single purchases of articles whilst ensuring subscription revenues are not cannibalised.” For now, Sesamy has just a couple of SmartID partnerships in place with Swedish publications Breakit and Kvartal, who are now working to integrate Sesamy’s technology into their respective platforms. But with another $3.4 million in the bank, taking its total funding to $7.5 million since its inception, the company has aspirations to grow in international markets, with plans to extend to its paywall technology deeper into Europe, and eventually the U.S., though it hasn’t given any indication on its planned timescale. Additionally, there could be scope to extend its current online store product to other markets, though it was non-committal on the specifics. “We certainly remain keen to expand our B2C offering into suitable markets across Europe as and when the right opportunities present themselves,” a spokesperson said. Sesamy’s seed investment was led by GP Bullhound, with participation from Co_Made, Tham Invest, Brofunds, Hållbar and the Sesamy founding team themselves.

Vimcal wants be the most nifty calendar app on the block • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Apps, calendar, calendar app, Vimcal, Y CombinatorNo Comments

Y Combinator-backed company Vimcal thinks creating an event takes too many steps in the current crop of calendar apps. So the company has made a calendar app that lets you create and edit events in just a few steps. Today, the startup is releasing its iOS app along with integration for Outlook accounts. The company already has web and desktop clients for Windows and Macs (both Intel and M1), and a Chrome extension for folks who like to look at their calendars and schedule their events on a big screen. But until now, Vimcal only supported Google (Google Workspace) accounts. The team has made it easier to use the calendar by assigning a keyboard shortcut to almost every action: from creating an event to jumping quickly between meetings to see what’s coming up in the week. It roughly takes three to five steps to create an event. The calendar also has a command center, which lets you type sentences like “Lunch meeting with Lisa at 1 pm tomorrow” to quickly create an event. Image Credits: Vimcal Vimcal also makes it easier to provide timeslots for meetings. It offers a more customizable solution to scheduling software like Calendly: you can simply drag available slots across the calendar, copy them, and paste it into an email. You can also define fixed timeslots for every week with a feature called Personal Links, which is more like Calendly. Slots — the fastest way to send availabilities — is now just as easy on the go. Swiftly navigate to any date. Hold and swipe down to multi-select times. pic.twitter.com/6rnJtnLoA5 — Vimcal (@vimcal) April 4, 2022 One of the handiest features of Vimcal is time travel, which easily lets you compare time zones so you can find a suitable slot for all. And it lets you add multiple time zones for comparison. 📱 New in Vimcal: Time Travel for iOS! ✈️ One of our most popular features is now available on mobile! Schedule with anyone, anywhere in the world. No mental math required. pic.twitter.com/EupAeufcZ0 — Vimcal (@vimcal) October 20, 2022 All of these features are available in the new iOS app, which has been in beta since April. But instead of keyboard shortcuts, they are optimized for touch interface. The company made this app with the help of its acquisition of Weve Calendar earlier this summer. The new app also lets you send a quick email from the notification screen to send an email to others if you’re running a few minutes late for a meeting. Image Credits: Vimcal Vimcal for iOS is a free app, but if you want to use the product on the desktop you will have to pay $15 per month or $150 per year. For teams with more than five members, the product costs $120 per year. The company is already working on making Vimcal adaptable to enterprise usage with customizable features. Both mobile and desktop versions allow you to look at your teammates’ calendars, making it easier to pick a time for a meeting across time zones. The company’s founder and CEO John Li first launched the product in January 2020 — right before the pandemic and the rise of remote work. Initially, the company onboarded users with a 30-minute call to give an overview of the product — similar to email client Superhuman — and answer any questions they might have. Li said that for the first year and a half the team onboarded 10,000 users through calls — some of them doubled as investor calls. The company still has an option for new customers to schedule a call with the team while trying out the product or purchasing the subscription. Vimcal has raised $1.9 million to date from investors like Y Combinator, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal, and Hustle Fund. “For the next half year, we are concentrating on building features for teams. Until now, we were focused on making the external scheduling and self-scheduling experience smooth. Now, we want to focus on internal scheduling for teams and enterprises. We are also building apps for iPad and Apple Watch, and later Android,” Li said on a call with ZebethMedia. The startup, which has a team of nine people, also launched a product called Vimcal Maestro for executive assistants earlier this month. There is plenty of competition in the calendar space. There are legacy players like Google and Outlook with new players like Calendly, Aerotime, Amie, and Magical competing for a slot on your calendar. Li claims that speed and ease of use is Vimcal’s USP. “We always tell our users that whatever you can do in another calendar app, you can do in Vimcal in half the number of steps or less. We have designed our product to be intuitive and fast,” Li said. “When we were making our app, we listed out every keystroke and mouse movement you needed to make to do the top 10 things like creating an event in a calendar. And then we looked at that list and reduced the number of steps.”

Modus expands to sub-Saharan Africa with the launch of its AI and blockchain-focused $75M fund • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in africa, AI, blockchain, modus, Startups, VentureNo Comments

New York-based venture platform Modus has launched Modus Africa, a venture capital fund for AI and blockchain startups across sub-Saharan Africa, ZebethMedia has learned. The fund is expected to reach a final close in the first quarter of next year. The spinoff continues Modus’s string of moves over the past 18 months, which has seen it add branches in Abu Dhabi, Cairo, and, most recently, Riyadh, supported by institutions like Mubadala’s Hub71. Modus says that its entry into Africa creates an “additional conduit of market access for Modus portfolio companies while also enabling African startups to scale into the MENA region.” As a “holistic venture platform,” Modus runs three business units focusing on entrepreneurs and startups in the MENA and GCC regions. They include the Venture Builder, which works with idea and early-stage MVP stage companies. Then there’s Corporate Innovation, a service platform that leverages the firm’s internal know-how to support corporations and government entities. And its Venture Capital arm provides investment to early and midstage-sized startups, such as staffing platform Ogram. On its website, Modus says its fund is backed by several investors ranging from UHNWI, family offices, private investors, and government-backed entities from the U.S., the EU, and MENA. Although Modus primarily invests in foreign-based companies that are “portable to the Middle East,” as well as startups in Egypt and the GCC, its expansion into sub-Saharan Africa isn’t surprising. Last year, African startups raised over $5 billion and minted five unicorns (per this report, the continent observed a 250% year-over-year growth in funding and surpassed capital deployed in MENA). And despite the current macroeconomic trends and conditions that have resulted in layoffs, down rounds and shutdowns, startups on the continent are set to top last year’s fundraising record numbers. Unlike other firms with marked funds interested in Africa, Modus’s interest in AI and blockchain technologies is intriguing. Though it has household names such as Tunisia’s InstaDeep, Kenya’s Sama, and South Africa’s DataProphet — and several web3 startups claiming to build on the blockchain — Africa’s AI and blockchain sectors are still relatively nascent. The thinking behind adopting this strategy can be traced to Vianney Mathonnet and Andre Jr. Ayotte, the general partners of Modus’s Africa-focused fund. Both partners, in an interview with ZebethMedia, described how several stints working in banking, finance and Dubai-based family offices pointed them to the emergence of blockchain technology and its outsized opportunity and application in Africa. “Not long after we launched this project after noticing how massive blockchain and AI could be in Africa, we were approached by Modus Capital because they wanted a Pan-African strategy themselves,” said Ayotte. “They were looking for people with the know-how, the network, experience to do that, so we started discussing how the partnership would work. Ultimately, what happened is that our project became the Modus Africa fund.” L-R: Andre Jr. Ayotte and Vianney Mathonnet (General Partners, Modus Africa) According to a statement, Modus says Africa has the potential of reaching 200 million+ new blockchain users in the next four years, fueled by necessity and a fast-growing tech-savvy population. Nevertheless, the six-year-old VC firm isn’t only taking a chance on purely AI and blockchain startups; instead, it is cutting checks in startups across broader sectors that are implementing those technologies into their products. The firm is currently closing three investments in startups using AI and blockchain across insurtech, fintech and health tech, said the general partners who control the fund’s thesis, direction and investment strategy while leveraging Modus’s 50+ team to carry out due diligence and portfolio management. Mathonnet said the “jurisdiction-agnostic” Modus Africa will invest in about 45 seed-stage startups and allocate 50% of the $75 million SDG-focused fund for follow-on investments, especially in Series A rounds. These checks will range from $350,000 to $1.2 million across both stages. “We as a fund will reinvest in our winners and our LPs are also looking to reinvest in them outside the fund, catalyzing even more money in the ecosystem in Africa,” said the partners. “In terms of countries, we know that tech talent and incubators are really strong in tech ecosystems like Kenya and Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa, and it’s inevitable that a good deal flow within all these regions. With that said, though, we are exploring new regions and searching for key partnerships to enter those markets and add some support and sustainability for deal flow.” Some of these markets include the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Niger and others in Francophone Africa. Speaking on the formation of Modus Africa, Kareem Elsirafy, the managing partner of Modus, said in a statement: “Modus is proud to be launching an Africa-MENA investment corridor to continue supporting and investing in emerging innovation ecosystems. The Modus platform is uniquely positioned to deliver impact and value to African communities through operational, institutional, and financial capital. We’re excited to have Vianney and Andre leading the way on this journey.”

Alibaba eyes logistics growth in LatAm as China commerce slows • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in alibaba, brazil, China, Commerce, eCommerce, latin americaNo Comments

Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba, is traveling far from home to seek expansion for its business. The company recently launched its first parcel distribution center in Brazil, adding to its regional network of sorting centers in Mexico and Chile, it said Monday. Alibaba’s e-commerce business in China has been hurt by a combination of a cooling economy and aggressive rivals like Pinduoduo. For the first time, the firm didn’t disclose the sales tally for its annual “Singles Day” shopping festival, which fell on November 11 and used to come with a Super Bowl-like gala featuring pop idols and Jack Ma himself. Cainiao has been following AliExpress abroad, helping the Alibaba-owned cross-border marketplace deliver Chinese goods to consumers around the world. But it’s now ramping up domestic services in some countries, hoping to turn local retailers into its clients. Earlier this year, the logistics giant began providing express courier service in Brazil, which now spans over 1,000 cities. The new facility in Brazil is slated to further boost Cainiao’s presence in the country. The plan is to open nine more distribution centers in seven states and set up 1,000 “smart lockers” across ten cities over the next three years. Smart lockers, which let customers pick up their e-commerce packages, have become a common sight in China. It saves couriers from running up and down buildings to deliver to people’s doorstep and helps reduce human contact during COVID-19 times. In Brazil, Cainiao aims to use the infrastructure for intra-city and cross-border logistics services as well as food delivery in the future. One of Cainiao’s smart locker clients is Piticas, a retail franchise focused on geek and pop culture products. “Our consumers can shop online and receive their parcels in a few days. In the future, we look forward to cooperating with Cainiao to utilize its smart lockers, which gives our customers more options for pick-up, as well as imports from China to Brazil, further increasing the efficiency of our supply chain,” said Vinicius Rossetti, CEO of Piticas, in a statement. Cainiao also wants to help Brazilian merchants export goods like coffee, nuts, and propolis to China, reversing the traditional trade route. The company currently operates eight weekly chartered flights between China and Brazil and plans to add more air and sea routes between the countries. In July, Cainiao opened its sorting center in Israel, bringing the number of its overseas sorting centers in use to ten at the time. As of June, Cainiao had more than 7,700 smart lockers in operation in Europe. The logistics unit accounted for roughly 5.6% of Alibaba’s revenues in the three months ended June.

Helbiz sees losses in mobility revenue, slight gains in streaming • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Helbiz, TransportationNo Comments

Helbiz’s third quarter earnings show a company that’s burning cash, not making revenue gains and losing riders year over year. However, Helbiz’s burgeoning sports streaming service did realize some small gains. The micromobility SPAC reported its Q3 earnings Monday, the same day as its only public market competitor, Bird. Neither company is performing well operationally or on the stock market. Bird issued a growing concern warning and admitted to overstating its revenue for two years. Both companies are trading below $1.00 and risk stock market delisting. Helbiz closed out the quarter with $3.7 million in revenue, which is down from last year’s $4.7 million, and only $3.3 million in cash. Meanwhile, the company is also spending more and losing more on operations. Helbiz’s operating expenses hit $26.5 million, which is up from the $24.4 million Helbiz spent in Q3 last year. Loss from operations are $22.8 million, up from last year’s $19.7 million. The biggest chunk in loss of revenue came from Helbiz’s mobility segment. Shared scooter and bike rides only brought in $2.5 million in revenue this quarter, compared to $3.9 million in Q3 2021. Helbiz’s media division, a sports streaming platform, brought in more revenue this year than last at $1.1 million, up from $760,000 last year. Helbiz reported $129,000 in “other revenues,” which likely refers to the company’s ghost kitchen service, pointing to some growth in that questionable business foray. The company recently partnered with Glovo and Deliveroo in Italy to feature its Helbiz Kitchen restaurants on both food delivery apps. In a regulatory filing, Helbiz says it believes “increasing the markets for expansion is fundamental to the success of our core business for the foreseeable future.” Yet compared to last year, the number of trips Helbiz riders performed decreased 30.7%. Strangely, between Q2 and Q3, Helbiz’s number of quarterly unique users increased slightly by around 4,820 additional unique users. However, in the same period, the number of trips completed decreased by around 78,000 trips, which suggests that perhaps more users decided to ride a Helbiz and then thought once was maybe enough. In October, Helbiz completed its acquisition of Wheels, promising to deliver “over $25 million in revenue for the full year of 2022,” by tapping into Wheels’ user base of 5 million riders and expanding into new markets like Los Angeles. For the first nine months of 2022, Helbiz brought in $11.9 million in revenue. The company would need to earn another $13 million in the fourth quarter, which is typically the slowest in the micromobility industry due to colder weather, in order to meet that goalpost. Helbiz is relying on a lifeline in the form of a Standby Equity Purchase Agreement (SEPA) with YA II PN, a hedge fund operated by Yorkville Advisors Global. Helbiz will try to sell Yorkville up to $13.9 million of its shares at any time in the next 24 months. The company said it may have to seek additional equity or debt financing, as well, but that there’s no guarantee it will be able to raise funds on acceptable terms or at all. Perhaps investors were encouraged by Helbiz’s SEPA or by the gains in streaming, because Helbiz’s stock is up 3.09% today. Shares are trading at $0.22.

Silkhaus gets $7.75M to digitize short-term rentals across emerging markets • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Silkhaus, StartupsNo Comments

Silkhaus, a Dubai-based platform for short-term rentals coming out of stealth, has raised $7.75 million in seed funding, money it plans to use for expansion across South Asia, Southeast Asia and the MENA region. Venture capital firms that participated in the round include Nuwa Capital, Nordstar, Global Founders Capital, Yuj Ventures, Whiteboard Capital and VentureSouq. A few international family offices and proptech founders also joined this round. CEO Aahan Bhojani and Ashmin Varma founded Silkhaus last year after identifying a $13 billion market opportunity for asset owners across emerging markets, particularly MENA, South Asia and Southeast Asia. In an interview with ZebethMedia, Bhojani, an HBS and Yale College graduate who had previously worked across roles that required extensive travel, such as management consulting and investment banking, said what spurred him to launch Silkhaus was the change in the travel behavior of small-business owners post-pandemic. “At some point when I was building software for SMBs to book and manage travel globally, I saw businesses were beginning to do something different,” the chief executive said to ZebethMedia over a call. “Businesses had traditionally always stayed in hotels. But interestingly, they were now beginning to ask for short-term rentals as well, you know, basically the Airbnbs of the world. And that’s when I started scratching my head and thinking about this entire space from a demand and supply problem.” The pandemic had changed the nature of travel, he said. According to him, while the frequency of leisure and business travel trips declined, the average duration of these trips skyrocketed. His interpretation of this event was that these trips were becoming more nomadic and long-term thinking. But while platforms like Airbnb have fantastically aggregated demand to meet supply in the U.S. and Europe, it’s a different experience in emerging markets where supply isn’t sufficiently pooled together to meet Airbnb-pulled demand. That’s where Silkhaus comes in. It’s digitizing the process of operating short-term rentals for large and small property owners by providing an operating system that includes tools needed to monetize and manage their properties. The company claims that it allows property owners to list multiple or single units on the platform with an average revenue yield increase between 20-40%. “Frankly speaking, finding a good Airbnb in these markets is like pulling a needle out of a haystack. And that’s what we’re solving for,” Bhojani said. “We’re aggregating some of the most successful short-term rental operators and building the highest quality supplier of that inventory to our partners, of which Airbnb is one. Our big vision is to bring quality, control and technology into the space. We exist to ensure that more people can experience high-quality short-term rentals.” Image Credits: Essentially, Silkhaus takes rental units from asset owners (in Dubai, at the moment) and manages distribution, pricing, revenue management and full coverage from a digital perspective; Airbnb is one of approximately 60 different distribution channels Silkhaus uses. Meanwhile, the company has built tools on the back end, including a marketplace for third-party vendors to access these rentals and handle operations. According to the CEO, Dubai was the ideal market for launching Silkhaus because its infrastructure presents one of the most advanced setups for short-term rentals, embodies a progressive government regulation for proptech and welcomes varying demands from different consumer types. Silkhaus’s engineering team, split across the UAE city and Bangalore, is currently building out its technology stack, the company said in a statement. Chief operating officer Varma leads the team, which is part of a 20-man workforce with professionals from Microsoft, Airbnb, Careem and Deliveroo. Bhojani claims that Silkhaus is currently part of the top 3% of operators in the city in terms of units under management. He said the proptech startup, which has grown over 10x in revenue over the last 12 months, is planning to enter the top 1% in the next two months by growing the supply of properties on its platform. Silkhaus estimates its market opportunity might grow to $18 billion in the next four years. With operations planned for Asia’s leading economic hubs and the MENA region, providing guests with high-grade accommodation options and letting enterprises choose extended stays for their employees on Silkhaus will be pivotal to capturing a significant chunk of this market share. “We are excited to see Silkhaus emerge as the leading platform for short-term rentals across Asia, and in particular excited to partner with Aahan and his team, who in a short time have proven their ability to disrupt two large and fragmented industries: real estate and hospitality,” Ole Ruch, managing partner at Nordstar, said in a statement.

Max Q: Join us! • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in Max Q, SpaceNo Comments

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. Before we get to the news, I have a pretty exciting announcement myself: We’re offering to Max Q subscribers free tickets to ZebethMedia’s in-person space event. Find out more about the event and get your free ticket by clicking here. In this issue: Layoffs come to Astra News from NASA, Starlink and more Astra, a rocket startup that went public last year, told investors Tuesday it laid off 16% of its workforce as part of a wider strategy to increase shrinking financial runway and decrease expenses. The company also said it would reduce near-term investments in space services to grow its core businesses: namely, launch and spacecraft engines. This latter segment in particular has become a growing source of revenue for Astra, with the company reporting it had 237 committed orders for its spacecraft engines to entities including Maxar, OneWeb and Astroscale. That represents an increase of 130% from last quarter. The layoffs shine an unflattering light on Astra’s quick growth: CEO Chris Kemp told investors during a call Tuesday that the company tripled in size in the space of a year, swelling to more than 400 people. Given that number, Astra reduced its headcount by at least 64 people. Image Credits: Astra Major space companies, including SpaceX and Relativity, are urging the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to stick to its purview — spectrum usage — as it looks to potentially update its rules for in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM) missions. There is plenty that the FCC could — and should do — to support ISAM missions that sit squarely within its regulatory bounds, the companies said. SpaceX and others, as well as startups like Orbit Fab, which wants to build refueling depots in space, and Starfish Space, which is developing a satellite servicing vehicle, submitted recommendations related to spectrum and ISAM. The commission also heard from Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance and other space companies and industry groups. Here’s SpaceX: “The Commission must handle this potentially important but still nascent industry with care, exercising caution not to unintentionally stifle innovation by stepping outside the authority expressly delegated to it by Congress.” Image Credits: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images More news from TC and beyond Apple invested $450 million in upgrades to Globalstar’s ground infrastructure and satellite network to support the rollout of Emergency SOS via satellite for iPhone 14 users. (Apple) China is reportedly scrapping plans to make the booster of the Long March 9 heavy-lift rocket expendable in favor of a fully reusable booster. (SpaceNews) NASA did not move the Space Launch System rocket back to the safety of a hangar in advance of Hurricane Nicole’s approach, so the $4.1 billion rocket rode out the storm on the launch pad. As engineers continue inspecting the rocket for damage, the agency decided to move the next launch date to November 16. (NASA) Northrop Grumman‘s Antares rocket sent a Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station for cargo resupply, a successful mission despite one of the capsule’s solar arrays not deploying properly. (Northrop Grumman) Rocket Lab had tons of news this week — in addition to releasing its quarterly financial results, the company also announced it won a $14 million contract to supply separation systems for U.S. Space Force satellites. (Rocket Lab) Rocket Lab set a launch date for its first mission from U.S. soil: December 7. My personal suggestion: come to the TC Sessions: Space event on the 6th, then take a direct flight to Virginia. Just saying. (Rocket Lab) Seraphim announced the newest cohort of space startups that will participate in the Seraphim Space Accelerator and Generation Space Accelerator. (Seraphim) SpaceX will impose slower speeds on Starlink users that use large amounts of power during peak hours, in an effort to curb network congestion and increase performance. (CNBC) Starfish Space provided more details about its in-space satellite docking demonstration mission that will take place next year. (GeekWire) Virgin Orbit received a $25 million cash injection from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group as the launcher company’s cash on hand continues to decline. (Virgin Orbit) Voyager Space’s Nanoracks has a new CEO: NASA astronaut and former OneWeb Technologies president Tim Kopra. (Voyager) Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend.