Monthly Archives: May 2021

News: India offers $2.46B incentive to boost domestic production of batteries

• May 12, 2021
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India’s cabinet on Wednesday approved Department of Heavy Industry’s proposal to provide incentives to boost domestic production of batteries with advanced energy storage, the latest in a series of efforts by New Delhi to make the world’s second largest internet market less reliant on other nations for various electronics goods and shrink its trade deficit.

India’s cabinet on Wednesday approved Department of Heavy Industry’s proposal to provide incentives to boost domestic production of batteries with advanced energy storage, the latest in a series of efforts by New Delhi to make the world’s second largest internet market less reliant on other nations for various electronics goods and shrink its trade deficit.

The government’s new $2.46 billion plan, dubbed “National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Battery Storage,” is aimed at cutting the nation’s import volume, said Prakash Javadekar, India’s Minister of Heavy Industry and Public Enterprises, in a news conference.

“All the demand of the ACCs is currently being met through imports in India. The National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Battery Storage will reduce import dependence,” the ministry said in a statement.

The government, which said it will conduct a transparent competitive bidding process and disburse incentives over a course of five years, aims to achieve the manufacturing capacity of 50GWh of ACC and 5GWh of “Niche” ACC, it said.

The ministry said the firms that are granted the incentives will be expected to set up manufacturing facilities in India, conduct research and development to achieve high energy sensitive and cycles, invest around $6.1 billion in ACC battery storage manufacturing projects, and facilitate demand creation for battery storage in the country.

The initiative will also help bring down the “oil import bill and help in earning green energy credentials. Besides powering electric vehicles, it will also generate clean energy for domestic consumption,” said Manish Sharma, Chair FICCI Energy Storage Committee and CEO of Panasonic India, in a statement.

“The manufacturing of ACCs will facilitate demand for EVs [Electric Vehicles], which are proven to be significantly less polluting. As India pursues an ambitious renewable energy agenda, the ACC program will be a key contributing factor to reduce India’s GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions which will be in line with India’s commitment to combat climate change,” the ministry said.

Wednesday’s announcement follows similar incentives New Delhi has approved in recent quarters. In February, India approved $1 billion plan to boost local manufacturing and exports of laptops, tablets, and PCs. In October, India offered smartphone manufacturers incentives of 4% to 6% over five years on sales of some products made in India. Reuters reported earlier this year that India was also considering giving cash incentives of more than $1 billion to each firm that sets up chip fabrication unit in the country.

The nation, whose economy has been hit hard by the pandemic, has in recent years tried a combination of tariffs and perks to persuade companies to produce more in India, which also creates local jobs.

News: Ahead of Dell’s spin out, VMware appoints longtime exec Raghu Raghuram as its new CEO

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Five months after it was announced that Pal Gelsinger would be stepping down as CEO of VMware to take the top job at Intel, the virtualization giant has finally appointed a permanent successor. Raghu Raghuram — a longtime employee of the company — has been appointed the new CEO. He will be taking on the

Five months after it was announced that Pal Gelsinger would be stepping down as CEO of VMware to take the top job at Intel, the virtualization giant has finally appointed a permanent successor. Raghu Raghuram — a longtime employee of the company — has been appointed the new CEO. He will be taking on the new role on June 1. Until then, CFO Zane Rowe will continue in the role in the interim.

Raghuram has been with the company for 17 years in a variety of roles, most recently COO of products and cloud services. He’s also held positions at the company overseeing areas like datacenters and VMware’s server business. Putting a veteran in at the helm sends a clear message that VMware has picked someone clearly dedicated to the company and its culture. No drama here.

Indeed, the move is coming at a time when there is already a lot of other change underway and speaks to the company looking for stability and continuity to lead it through that. About a month ago, Dell confirmed long-anticipated news that it would be spinning out its stake in VMware in a deal that’s expected to bring Dell at least $9 billion — putting to an end a financial partnership that initially kicked off with an eye-watering acquisition of EMC in 2016. That partnership will not end the strategic relationship, however, which is set to continue and now Raghuram will be in charge of building and leading.

For that reason, you might look at this as a deal nodded through significantly by Dell.

“I am thrilled to have Raghu step into the role of CEO at VMware. Throughout his career, he has led with integrity and conviction, playing an instrumental role in the success of VMware,” said Michael Dell, chairman of the VMware Board of Directors, in a statement. “Raghu is now in position to architect VMware’s future, helping customers and partners accelerate their digital businesses in this multi-cloud world.”

Raghuram has not only been the person overseeing some of VMware’s biggest divisions and newer areas like software-defined networking and cloud computing, but he’s had a central role in building and driving strategy for the company’s core virtualization business, been involved with M&A and, as VMware points out, “key in driving partnerships with Dell Technologies,” among other partners.

“VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era with an end-to-end software platform spanning clouds, the data center and the edge, helping to accelerate our customers’ digital transformations,” said Raghuram in a statement. “I am honored, humbled and excited to have been chosen to lead this company to a new phase of growth. We have enormous opportunity, we have the right solutions, the right team, and we will continue to execute with focus, passion, and agility.”

The company also took the moment to update on guidance for its Q1 results, which will be coming out on May 27. Revenues are expected to come in at $2.994 billion, up 9.5% versus the same quarter a year ago. Subscription and SaaS and license revenue, meanwhile, is expected to be $1.387 billion, up 12.5%. GAAP net income per diluted share is expected to be $1.01 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income per diluted share is expected to be $1.76 per diluted share, it said.

News: Cisco to acquire Indy startup Socio to bring hybrid events to Webex

• May 12, 2021
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Cisco announced this morning that it intends to acquire Indianapolis-based startup Socio, which helps plan hybrid in-person and virtual events. The two companies did not share the purchase price. Socio provides a missing hybrid event management component for the company to add to its Webex platform. The goal appears to be to combine this with

Cisco announced this morning that it intends to acquire Indianapolis-based startup Socio, which helps plan hybrid in-person and virtual events. The two companies did not share the purchase price.

Socio provides a missing hybrid event management component for the company to add to its Webex platform. The goal appears to be to combine this with the recent purchase of Slido and transform Webex from an application mostly for video meetings into a more comprehensive event platform.

“As part of Cisco Webex’s vision to deliver inclusive, engaging and intelligent meeting and event experiences, the acquisition of Socio Labs complements Cisco’s recent acquisition of Slido, an industry-leading audience engagement tool, which together will create a comprehensive, cost-effective and easy-to-use event management solution […],” the company explained in a statement.

The impact of the pandemic was not lost on Cisco, and it’s clear that as we can foresee going back to go back to live events, having the ability to combine it with a virtual experience means that you can open up your event to a much wider audience beyond those who can attend in person. That’s likely not something that’s going away, even after we get past COVID.

Jeetu Patel, SVP and GM for security and collaboration at Cisco says that the future of work is going to be hybrid, whether it’s for work meetings or larger events and Cisco is making this acquisition to expand the use cases for the Webex platform.

“Whether it’s a 1:1 call, a small team huddle, a group meeting or a large external event, we want to remove friction and help people engage with each other in an inclusive manner. Slido allows for every voice to be heard — even when you’re not talking. Socio allows for getting your voice heard by a large number of people,” Patel said.

And the company believes that Webex provides the platform to make it all happen. “It’s a really potent combination of technology to make human interactions more engaging, no matter the type of conversation,” he added.

Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials, says that it’s a smart move to take advantage of the changing events landscape and that this acquisition helps make Cisco a serious player in this space.

“As we get closer to a post-pandemic world, the need to create hybrid event experiences is going to quickly accelerate as people start venturing out to attend physical events. So having an event stack that combines local event support/participation with tools to integrate a broader virtual audience will be the future of event management,” Leary told me.

Socio was founded in 2016 and raised around $7 million in investment capital, according to Crunchbase data. It has a prestigious list of enterprise customers that includes Microsoft, Google, Jet Blue, Greenpeace, PepsiCo and Hyundai

The deal is expected to close in Q4 of FY2021. When it does close, Socio’s 135 employees will be joining Cisco. The plan is to incorporate Socio’s tooling into the Webex platform while allowing it to continue as a stand-alone product, according to a Cisco spokesperson.

News: Fiveable makes first acquisition: a virtual study tool built by a 16-year old

• May 12, 2021
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Fiveable, an online learning community for high school students, made its first-ever acquisition earlier this week: Hours, a virtual study platform built by a 16-year old. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fiveable is a free, online learning community for high school students with the focus of helping them pass Advanced Placement (AP)

Fiveable, an online learning community for high school students, made its first-ever acquisition earlier this week: Hours, a virtual study platform built by a 16-year old. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Fiveable is a free, online learning community for high school students with the focus of helping them pass Advanced Placement (AP) exams. It livestreams 5-hour “cram shops” focused on a specific subject, creates study guides, and manages a Discord with thousands of students.

“Students have Discord servers, they have subreddits, they have group chats and it’s happening informally on some of these different platforms,” founder Amanda DoMaral said in March. “But we need a central place where social learning happens, where students get support, where they can find each other, where they can build towards their goals.”

She estimates that half a million students use Fiveable on a monthly basis – and it’s just so fitting that her company’s first acquisition came from paying attention to those same users.

She noticed students within the Fiveable community were using Hours a few months ago to host group study sessions. Hours allows students to create study sessions where each person has a task list and shared timer and playlist, which she describes as “a multiplayer experience “ that can increase motivation and accountability. There’s also a single-player experience version where students can pick “focus mode” and remove chat and highlight task lists.

Task display via Hours.

Put simply, Fiveable will be able to expand its community feel from an active Discord to a study-specific tool. In its 6 months as a product, Hours has been used by more than 17,000 students from schools including Stanford University, MIT, NYU, and over 120 countries.

“The experience of studying in Discord text or audio chats is similar to the Hours multi-player mode, but there isn’t a way in Discord to keep track of tasks or see everyone’s progress,” she said. “Hours is a better experience because it allows more flexibility within the group version of a study session and has the ability for students to study solo,” she said.

The startup decided to buy the platform rather than try to build the technology itself for two reasons: students already love the product, and it was built by a “very impressive 16-year old,” Calix Huang.

Huang, a high school junior in the Bay Area with previous tech acquisitions and startups under his belt, founded Hours in October 2020 in response to the siloed experience of studying during a pandemic. As part of Fiveable’s acquisition, Huang will join its team as a Lead Product Manager to work on Hours part-time.

“Calix will be a senior next year, so he will come on part-time until he graduates. Then he’ll have big decisions like the rest of his peers about what he will do next, which includes an offer to come on full-time,” DoMaral said. Employing young talent isn’t new for the startup: Over 118 paid students work on Fiveable staff right now across all teams, from social to product to content. Every student works 5-10 hours per week as a part-time job and Fiveable pays them $15-23 per hour.

Fiveable plans to keep Hours as a free service along with its guides, trivia, and Discord. The company makes money in two ways right now: $25 for a cram-pass or $5 for live events, such as a 5-hour review the night before an exam. The startup has raised more than $3.5 million in known venture capital to date, from investors including Matchstick Ventures, Cream City Venture Capital, Spero Ventures, and most recently, Tennis legend Serena Williams. 

News: Qualcomm won’t be exhibiting in-person at MWC

• May 12, 2021
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Another major name in mobile has confirmed that it won’t be exhibiting at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Chip giant Qualcomm is joining a list that already includes Google, IBM, Nokia, Sony, Oracle, Ericsson and, most recently, Samsung and Lenovo. In a statement offered to TechCrunch, a spokesperson for the company confirmed that it will

Another major name in mobile has confirmed that it won’t be exhibiting at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Chip giant Qualcomm is joining a list that already includes Google, IBM, Nokia, Sony, Oracle, Ericsson and, most recently, Samsung and Lenovo.

In a statement offered to TechCrunch, a spokesperson for the company confirmed that it will be a taking a similar approach as many of the others, opting to “attend” virtually.

“While we appreciate the health and safety measures being put into place by the GSMA for MWC Barcelona, we have decided that it is in the best interest of our employees and customers for Qualcomm’s participation to be virtual this year,” the company said. “We look forward to engaging with the ecosystem through Cristiano Amon’s virtual keynote on June 28th and through our latest announcements and 5G demonstrations.”

There are shades of the lead up to last year’s event, which similarly found companies opting out, one by one. Ultimately the show’s governing body, the GSMA, pulled the plug. Of course, things are different in 2021. After nearly a year and a half, there are fewer unknowns and a vaccination roll out has begun in much of the world.

But there are still plenty of reasons for people and companies to take a cautious approach when it comes to flying around the world and attending an event in a potentially packed room. Ultimately, it’s probably not worth the perceived risk or discomfort of staff.

For these reasons and more, it’s hard to blame companies like Qualcomm. Given what we know, it seems unlikely that the organization would pull the plug entirely at this late stage, but things look increasingly dependent on the virtual aspect of the show’s hybrid approach. It also seems possible that the in-person trade will be forever changed after the events of the past two years.

News: The truth about SDK integrations and their impact on developers

• May 12, 2021
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As the app ecosystem rapidly expands beyond the borders of mobile, app developers and publishers would benefit immensely from identifying economical and secure ways of adopting more SDKs.

The digital media industry often talks about how much influence, dominance and power entities like Google and Facebook have. Generally, the focus is on the vast troves of data and audience reach these companies tout. However, there’s more beneath the surface that strengthens the grip these companies have on both app developers and publishers alike.

In reality, software development kit (SDK) integrations are a critical component of why these monolith companies have such a prominent presence. For reference, an SDK is a set of software development tools, libraries, code samples, processes and guides that help developers create or enhance the apps they’re building.

Through a digital marketing lens, SDKs provide in-app analytics, insights on campaign testing, attribution information, location details, monetization capabilities and more. In the case of companies like Google and Facebook, their ability to provide these insights dovetails with their data and reach.

While that does deliver useful capabilities to developers and publishers alike, it also perpetuates the factors contributing to their perceived monopolistic status — and the detriments a lack of competition fosters.

Almost all (90%) ad-monetized Android apps have Google’s Admob SDK integrated, data from Statista showed. Additionally, the Facebook Audience Network SDK is present in 19% of all global Android apps utilizing mobile ads. It’s worth noting that the large majority of alternative “leading” advertising SDKs outside these two players are used less than 13% of the time in Android apps.

As the app ecosystem rapidly expands beyond the borders of mobile, app developers and publishers would benefit immensely from identifying economical and secure ways of adopting more SDKs.

The state of SDK adoption

While there are many SDKs available in the market today, a few key factors contribute to Google and Facebook’s overall dominance. The most basic is around the respective organizations’ reach and industry notoriety. However, a larger component here is the lack of resources and time app developers have.

News: Atomized lands $500K pre-seed to help developers deploy infrastructure faster

• May 12, 2021
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Atomized, an early-stage startup that wants to create a modern tool to help developers deploy infrastructure faster, announced the first step of its funding journey today, a $500,000 pre-seed round from Zing Capital, Y Combinator and several unnamed angels. Company co-founder and CEO Nik Kotov says developers are spending over 20% of their time on

Atomized, an early-stage startup that wants to create a modern tool to help developers deploy infrastructure faster, announced the first step of its funding journey today, a $500,000 pre-seed round from Zing Capital, Y Combinator and several unnamed angels.

Company co-founder and CEO Nik Kotov says developers are spending over 20% of their time on setting up the necessary infrastructure just to run their applications, and he and his co-founder and CTO Eddie Herbert believed there had to be a better way, so like all good entrepreneurs, they built one.

“With Atomized our goal is to provide a platform that allows developers to deploy their applications really quickly. And the way it literally works is that we plug into where your code lives in GitHub, and also plug into your cloud provider, so currently it’s AWS, and we automatically spin up all the necessary infrastructure for you,” Kotov told me.

For now, that means spinning up containers, databases and static sites on AWS, but there are plans to expand that to work across multiple clouds over time as the company develops. “Our [goal] is actually to abstract away all those choices, all those nitty gritty details of Amazon, Azure and GCP and essentially provide you the easiest most straightforward solution,” he said.

Kotov actually went through Y Combinator last summer as a solo founder, but he was trying to build a different product at that time dealing with compliance infrastructure. He ended up pivoting to this solution and joining forces with Herbert after Demo Day, but says the experience was well worth his time, even if he ended up with a different approach after all was said and done.

“YC opened up a huge door for me as someone who does not have any connections to Silicon Valley whatsoever. […] Being an immigrant and not coming from a rich family […] all of a sudden I got access to a bunch of people that I previously had no access to,” he said.

Both founders are immigrants, with Kotov hailing from Russia and Herbert from Estonia. They are both based in Charlotte, North Carolina, which Kotov says is a hidden gem for diverse technical talent.

“I think Charlotte is kind of the best place to [build a startup] because in general Charlotte is very diverse, which a lot of people don’t know. It’s 50% white and the rest are Black or Latino. It’s kind of awesome because we can hire the best people and then have diversity also built into into the company as well,” he said.

The product is in beta right now with 60 customers running on the platform. The plan is to use the money judiciously to begin to hire some more people. Right now in addition to the two founders, they have two full-time engineers.

News: Artist Drue Kataoka will auction her first NFT, with all proceeds going to Asian American causes

• May 12, 2021
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Drue Kataoka’s art has made it to collections in 30 countries — and even the International Space Station. Now the artist, activist and current face of Clubhouse’s app icon is releasing her first NFT to support Asian American causes. The auction will begin on digital art marketplace Nifty Gateway at 1:30 p.m. EST, May 13,

Drue Kataoka’s art has made it to collections in 30 countries — and even the International Space Station. Now the artist, activist and current face of Clubhouse’s app icon is releasing her first NFT to support Asian American causes. The auction will begin on digital art marketplace Nifty Gateway at 1:30 p.m. EST, May 13, along with a launch party on Clubhouse, and run for 24 hours. Nifty Gateway is waiving its auction fees, and all proceeds will go to the Catalyst Fund for Justice (CFJ), the grant-making arm of Stand with Asian Americans, a coalition of business leaders and activists partnered with the Asian Pacific Fund.

Kataoka is known for commissioned artworks like mirror-polished steel sculptures and art that uses virtual reality, EEG and mobile technology. One of her pieces, “Up!,” created with Sumi-e ink on mounted rice paper, was part of the first zero-gravity art exhibit at the International Space Station. She is also an activist and organizer, and has raised a total of almost $300,000 through Clubhouse for #StopAsianHate, #Clubhouse4India and #24HoursofLove for The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the nonprofit started in 1968 by Coretta Scott King.

Called “In the Club: #StopAsianHate,” Kataoka’s NFT was inspired by activist communities on Clubhouse, where Kataoka leads the Art Club, one of the app’s biggest art groups with 102,000 followers.

“I’ve been passionate about leveraging Clubhouse as a medium for social change,” Kataoka said. For this project, “we want to fire on all cylinders, not just only philanthropy or not just only art, but both of those at the highest level to really serve a goal and create the most impact that we possibly can for the Asian American community.”

Kataoka is the founder and chief executive officer of Drue Kataoka Studios, which creates pieces that bring together influences from Zen Buddhism, her training in Sumi-e ink painting and Silicon Valley. Instead of art school, Kataoka went to Stanford University because she wanted to learn about tech, like virtual and augmented reality, how to code and business fundamentals.

“My mantra for the past 20 years has been that art is technology and technology is art,” she told TechCrunch.

For her “genesis drop,” or first NFT release, Kataoka wanted “to be very thoughtful about the first project I did, and I’m excited that it will be this one. I’ve been watching the space very carefully and I am very bullish on crypto and NFTs. I know there’s a lot of volatility and many things that will fall away and not stand the test of time, but ultimately as a mechanism for creativity and so many important things, this will be the way of the future.”

In the Club: #StopAsianHate
100% of Historic NFT Art Drop
to benefit The Catalyst Fund for Justice @asiapacificfund

Dropping on @niftygateway
this Thu May 13th @ 10:30am PT / 1:30pm ET / 5:30pm GMT@Clubhouse launch party
@ 10:15am PT / 1:15pm EThttps://t.co/LXpbClY0Sn pic.twitter.com/KZSd08cEXI

— Drue Kataoka (@DrueKataoka) May 12, 2021

Eric Kim, co-chair of Stand with Asian Americans’ Catalyst Fund for Justice, said “the fact that Drue is willing to donate 100% of the proceeds to go towards the AAPI community is really, really meaningful. I think it’s also a beautiful expression of blockchain technology.”

Kim, who is also co-founder and managing partner of venture firm Goodwater Capital, added, “I’ve been searching for the best product market fit of the blockchain and through this project — digital art being captured, codified, securitized in non-fungible tokens, and then being utilized for the community, launched on Clubhouse even, and auctioned through a platform like Nifty Gateway — it is one of the best applications of blockchain I’ve ever seen and an amazing coordination of multiple consumer tech platforms.”

About one-minute long, “In the Club: #StopAsianHate” features an image of a Clubhouse room superimposed over a gold-colored background. User photos have been removed and a series of shifting shapes, sculpted by Kataoka in virtual reality, can be seen through the remaining spaces. At the same time, chanting from a recent street protest is played, overlaid on a recording of Kataoka’s own heartbeat. At the end, the sounds fade into wind, symbolizing air, or qi, chi, ki or prana, a vital force in many Asian cultures.

“It’s a tribute to all of the activists and community members who have really put a lot of belief and faith into this movement and who were speaking out about these issues very early on. One of the things that I feel is disturbing is that mainstream media has either turned a blind eye or sugarcoated a lot of the hate crimes going on in our community and a lot of big issues for the Asian American community,” said Kataoka. “With Clubhouse, it’s completely unfiltered and uncensored, and very early on, last year in 2020, I was hosting and listening to those conversations. We were having serious conversations that really started to take off and gather momentum synergistically with Twitter, that some of the mainstream news outlets were not interested in at the time.”

Kim said the Catalyst Fund for Justice will use a data-driven approach to finding grant recipients. Initially, it will focus on reducing hate crimes and supporting victims; workplace discrimination; the lack of Asian American representation in politics; and supporting underfunded nonprofits. Some goals include introducing more Asian American history into educational curriculums, understanding how workplace bias prevents more Asian Americans from being promoted into leadership roles and increasing the number of Asian Americans in civic organizations.

After the Atlanta shootings, Kim began working with venture capitalists, including his co-founder at Goodwater Chi-Hua Chien, GGV managing partner Hans Tung and Lightspeed Venture partner Jeremy Liew, raising $5 million from a collective of leading VCs to donate to AAPI organizations.

“Coming out of that heightened awareness and activation, business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors started thinking, how can we do this more systematically and apply our professional skill sets to this movement,” Kim said.

Stand with Asian Americans was the result of these types of discussions, and at the end of March, the coalition outlined its mission in a full-page Wall Street Journal ad co-signed by business and political leaders including Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Wang, Stitch Fix co-founder and CEO Katrina Lake and former governor of Washington and United States Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. Stand with Asian Americans is partnered with the Asian Pacific Fund, one of the Bay Area’s most tenured AAPI nonprofits, and launched the Catalyst Fund for Justice as its grant-making arm to harness the power of what is now nearly 8,000 signatories and over 100 dedicated volunteers.

In a statement, Asian Pacific Fund president and executive director Audrey Yamamoto said, “Drue Kataoka’s generous donation of her Genesis NFT drop means the world to the AAPI community as we continue to live in fear of violence and hate every time we leave our homes. The Catalyst Fund for Justice will tap into new sources of funding and use a data-driven approach to make grants that truly move the needle on addressing the greatest injustices faced by our AAPI community.”

News: Pomelo raises $9M to build a payments infrastructure for LatAm fintechs

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Pomelo, a startup building a fintech-as-a-service platform for Latin America, has raised $9 million in a seed round of funding. The Buenos Aires-based startup’s new infrastructure aims to allow fintechs and embedded finance players to launch virtual accounts and issue prepaid and credit cards via “compliant” onboarding processes. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption

Pomelo, a startup building a fintech-as-a-service platform for Latin America, has raised $9 million in a seed round of funding.

The Buenos Aires-based startup’s new infrastructure aims to allow fintechs and embedded finance players to launch virtual accounts and issue prepaid and credit cards via “compliant” onboarding processes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital payments all over the world, and Latin America is no exception. While the majority of transactions are still done in cash, there are still over a billion cards in the region.

Cards have an estimated payments volume of $900 billion per year, and yet 95% of these transactions are being processed by local incumbents, asserts Pomelo. This is a problem the company’s founders experienced firsthand in previous roles, and are eager to solve by creating a new payments infrastructure.

“We know from previous experiences…that building a fintech, and particularly issuing cards, in Latin America is a real nightmare,” said Pomelo co-founder and CEO Gaston Irigoyen. “It takes anywhere from 12 to 18 months to launch a simple prepaid card, and unfortunately companies have to go through the painful experience of repeating the process in every market where they operate.”

Pomelo’s goal is to solve the problem by creating a new generation of financial services infrastructure that allows companies to build a fintech business and launch cards “much faster” throughout Latin America. For now, the three-month-old company is in its infancy — the pre-product phase, which makes it even more notable that the company managed to raise such a large seed round.

This round caught our eye for a few other reasons. For one, the three co-founders of the Buenos Aires-based startup were former executives at Mastercard, Google LatAm, Mercado Pago and Naranja X. CEO Irigoyen was an early employee at Google LatAm. He is also a third-time founder with two exits (one to TripAdvisor) and former CEO of Naranja X, Argentina’s largest neobank, with millions of customers. Juan Fantoni was the former director of fintech at Mastercard, where he signed issuing deals with a number of large companies. And Hernan Corral was the CPO of Naranja X and previously head of digital accounts & cards at Mercado Pago.

Next, the caliber of Pomelo’s investors. U.S.-based Index Ventures and Brazil’s monashees co-led the funding round, which also included participation from QED’s Fontes, Max Levchin’s SciFi, Latitud, Biz Stone’s Future Positive, 20VC, Addition, FJ Labs and a16z’s Angela Strange, as well as the founders of Marqeta, Rappi, Auth0, Kavak, Loft and RecargaPay.

If you’re looking for comparisons to U.S.-based fintechs, Irigoyen said it’s got a little bit of Galileo, Marqeta and Stripe in what it’s building out.

Caio Bolognesi, partner at monashees, said his firm has been very bullish on the financial infrastructure space as a whole. They were drawn to Pomelo in part because its founders had been senior tech executives at leading fintech companies in the region and because many of its portfolio companies had already manifested the need for a better solution in this space.

Index Ventures’ Mark Fiorentino agrees that the company’s founder-market fit was crucial in his firm’s decision to invest.

“They have the DNA of the most well-known payments companies within the LATAM fintech ecosystem… and have lived through the pain points and keyed in on this opportunity through firsthand experience,” he said.

In general, Fiorentino believes that while the need for embedded financial products is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the Latin American market, it’s important to note that the region “is far from a carbon copy” of the U.S. market with different dynamics.

For one, he said, existing solutions in the Latin American market are either “outdated” offerings from legacy financial institutions or “subpar” iterations from U.S. incumbents.

“It takes over 12 months for a business to spin up a plastic or digital card for itself. And because most legacy processors are owned by banks or large financial institutions that have been around for decades, pricing is inflexible and expensive,” Fiorentino told TechCrunch. “And if that wasn’t enough of a headache, stable reliability has been a huge pain point with these issuer processors. Pomelo is building the dev-first, self-serve API solution to address this clear market need.”

Looking ahead, Pomelo plans to use its new capital in part to open offices in São Paulo, Brazil and Mexico City, and hire dozens of people in those cities as well as in its home base of Argentina. The company currently has about 15 employees, 11 of which are engineers. It of course plans to continue building out its offering.

News: If you don’t want robotic dogs patrolling the streets, consider CCOPS legislation

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Community control over police surveillance laws promote transparency and protect civil rights and liberties with respect to surveillance technology. To date, just 19 U.S. cities have passed such laws.

Boston Dynamics’ robot “dogs,” or similar versions thereof, are already being employed by police departments in Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York. Partly through the veil of experimentation, few answers are being given by these police forces about the benefits and costs of using these powerful surveillance devices.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a position paper on CCOPS (community control over police surveillance), proposes an act to promote transparency and protect civil rights and liberties with respect to surveillance technology. To date, 19 U.S. cities in have passed CCOPS laws, which means, in practical terms, that virtually all other communities don’t have a requirement that police are transparent about their use of surveillance technologies.

For many, this ability to use new, unproven technologies in a broad range of ways presents a real danger. Stuart Watt, a world-renowned expert in artificial intelligence and the CTO of Turalt, is not amused.

“I am appalled both by the principle and the dogbots and of them in practice. It’s a big waste of money and a distraction from actual police work,” he said. “Definitely communities need to be engaged with. I am honestly not even sure what the police forces think the whole point is. Is it to discourage through a physical surveillance system, or is it to actually prepare people for some kind of enforcement down the line?

“Chunks of law enforcement have forgotten the whole ‘protect and serve’ thing, and do neither,” Watts added. “If they could use artificial intelligence to actually protect and actually serve vulnerable people, the homeless, folks addicted to drugs, sex workers, those in poverty and maligned minorities, it’d be tons better. If they have to spend the money on AI, spend it to help people.”

The ACLU is advocating exactly what Watt suggests. In proposed language to city councils across the nation, the ACLU makes it clear that:

The City Council shall only approve a request to fund, acquire, or use a surveillance technology if it determines the benefits of the surveillance technology outweigh its costs, that the proposal will safeguard civil liberties and civil rights, and that the uses and deployment of the surveillance technology will not be based upon discriminatory or viewpoint-based factors or have a disparate impact on any community or group.

From a legal perspective, Anthony Gualano, a lawyer and special counsel at Team Law, believes that CCOPS legislation makes sense on many levels.

“As police increase their use of surveillance technologies in communities around the nation, and the technologies they use become more powerful and effective to protect people, legislation requiring transparency becomes necessary to check what technologies are being used and how they are being used.”

For those not only worried about this Boston Dynamics dog, but all future incarnations of this supertech canine, the current legal climate is problematic because it essentially allows our communities to be testing grounds for Big Tech and Big Government to find new ways to engage.

Just last month, public pressure forced the New York Police Department to suspend use of a robotic dog, quite unassumingly named Digidog. After the tech hound was placed on temporary leave due to public pushback, the NYPD used it at a public housing building in March. This went over about as well as you could expect, leading to discussions as to the immediate fate of this technology in New York.

The New York Times phrased it perfectly, observing that “the NYPD will return the device earlier than planned after critics seized on it as a dystopian example of overly aggressive policing.”

While these bionic dogs are powerful enough to take a bite out of crime, the police forces seeking to use them have a lot of public relations work to do first. A great place to begin would be for the police to actively and positively participate in CCOPS discussions, explaining what the technology involves, and how it (and these robots) will be used tomorrow, next month and potentially years from now.