Monthly Archives: May 2021

News: Figure raises $7.5M to help startup employees better understand their compensation

• May 6, 2021
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The topic of compensation has historically been a delicate one that has left many people — especially startup employees — wondering just what drives what can feel like random decisions around pay and equity. Last June, software engineers (and housemates) Miles Hobby and Geoffrey Tisserand set about trying to solve the problem for companies by

The topic of compensation has historically been a delicate one that has left many people — especially startup employees — wondering just what drives what can feel like random decisions around pay and equity.

Last June, software engineers (and housemates) Miles Hobby and Geoffrey Tisserand set about trying to solve the problem for companies by developing a data-driven platform that aims to help companies structure their compensation plans and transparently communicate them to candidates.

Now today, the startup behind that platform, Figure, announced it has raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by CRV. Bling Capital, Better Tomorrow Ventures and Garage Capital also participated in the financing, along with angel investors such as AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, Jason Calacanis, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and other executives based in Silicon Valley.

The startup has amassed a client list that includes other startups such as fintechs Brex and NerdWallet and AI-powered fitness company Tempo. 

Put simply, Hobby and Tisserand’s mission is to improve workflows and transparency around pay, particularly equity. The pair had both worked at startups themselves (Uber and Instacart, respectively) and ended up leaving money on the table when they left those companies because no one had properly explained to them what their equity, which changed at every valuation, meant.  

So, one of their goals was to create a solution that would provide a user-friendly explanation of what a person’s equity stake really means, from tax implications to whether or not they have to buy the stock and/or hold onto it.

“I’ve gone through the job search process many times before and there’s all these complex legal documents to understand why you’re getting 10,000 stock options, but obviously we knew the vast majority of people have no idea how that works,” Tisserand told TechCrunch. “We saw an opportunity there to help companies actually convey the value to their candidates while also making them aware of the potential risks of owning something that’s so illiquid.”

Another goal of Figure’s is to help create a more fair and balanced process about decisions around pay and equity so that there’s less inequality out there. Pointedly, it aims to remove some of the biases that exist around those decisions by systematizing the process.

“We saw a void in this kind of context around equity…and knew that there had to be a better way for companies to structure, manage and explain their compensation plans,” Hobby said.

To Hobby and Tisserand, Figure is designed to help stop instances of implicit bias.

“Compensation should be based on the work that you’re doing, and not gender or ethnic background,” Tisserand told TechCrunch. “We’re trying to give that context and remove biases. So, we’re trying to help at two different stages –– to surface inequities that already exist and make sure there are no anomalies, and then to help stop them before they can exist.”

Figure also aims to give companies the tools to educate candidates and employees on their total compensation — including equity, salary, benefits and bonuses — in a “straightforward and user-friendly” way. For example, it can create custom offer letters that interactively detail a candidate’s compensation.

“Our goal is for Figure to become an operating system for compensation, where a company can encode their compensation philosophy into our system, and we help them determine their job architecture, compensation bands and offer numbers while monitoring their compensation health to provide adjustment suggestions when needed,” Hobby said.

Post-hire, Figure’s compensation management system “helps keep everything running smoothly.”

Anna Khan, general partner of enterprise software at CRV, is joining Figure’s board as part of the funding. The decision to back the startup was in part personal, she said.

“I’d been investing in software for eight years and was alarmed that no one was building anything around pay equity when it comes to how we’re paid, why we’re paid what we’re paid and on how to build equity long term,” Khan told TechCrunch. “Unfortunately, discussions around compensation and equity still happen behind closed doors and this extends into workflow around compensation — equally broken — with manual leveling, old data and large pay inequities.”

The company plans to use its new capital to expand its product offerings and scale its organization.

News: Diginex launches ESG reporting platform aimed at small businesses

• May 6, 2021
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As ESG reporting goes up the agenda for large companies, it’s also increasingly doing so for smaller companies as well. But right now, tracking things like your company’s CO2 emissions is mainly the preserve of large corporations. Now a startup hopes to address this. Diginex Solutions has a self-guided tool which claims to generate ESG

As ESG reporting goes up the agenda for large companies, it’s also increasingly doing so for smaller companies as well. But right now, tracking things like your company’s CO2 emissions is mainly the preserve of large corporations. Now a startup hopes to address this.

Diginex Solutions has a self-guided tool which claims to generate ESG reports six times faster than competitors and comes in at a relatively affordable $99 per month.

The blockchain-enabled reporting tool also generates reports, giving companies the ability to demonstrate their ESG creds.

DiginexESG is certified by the GRI, an international independent standards organization and now operates in the US, UK, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chile. It is currently raising venture backing largely from strategic corporate investors.

Competitors include Turnkey Group, NASDAQ Onereport, Enablon (raised $15M) and World-favour.

Mark Blick, CEO at Diginex Solutions said, “The current landscape of ESG reporting is challenging for many organizations – particularly SMEs – requiring huge consultancy fees, time and resources that distracts from day-to-day activity. The DiginexESG platform quite simply takes away those challenges and does all the heavy lifting for them. It’s like Docusign, Dropbox, TurboTax or Slack hardcoded for ESG reporting.”

News: Oculii looks to supercharge radar for autonomy with $55M round B

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Autonomous vehicles rely on many sensors to perceive the world around them, and while cameras and lidar get a lot of the attention, good old radar is an important piece of the puzzle — though it has some fundamental limitations. Oculii, which just raised a $55M round, aims to minimize those limitations and make radar

Autonomous vehicles rely on many sensors to perceive the world around them, and while cameras and lidar get a lot of the attention, good old radar is an important piece of the puzzle — though it has some fundamental limitations. Oculii, which just raised a $55M round, aims to minimize those limitations and make radar more capable with a smart software layer for existing devices — and sell its own as well.

Radar’s advantages lie in its superior range, and in the fact that its radio frequency beams can pass through things like raindrops, snow, and fog — making it crucial for perceiving the environment during inclement weather. Lidar and ordinary visible light cameras can be totally flummoxed by these common events, so it’s necessary to have a backup.

But radar’s major disadvantage is that, due to the wavelengths and how the antennas work, it can’t image things in detail the way lidar can. You tend to get very precisely located blobs rather than detailed shapes. It still provides invaluable capabilities in a suite of sensors, but if anyone could add a bit of extra fidelity to its scans, it would be that much better.

That’s exactly what Oculii does — take an ordinary radar and supercharge it. The company claims a 100x improvement to spatial resolution accomplished by handing over control of the system to its software. Co-founder and CEO Steven Hong explained in an email that a standard radar might have, for a 120 degree field of view, a 10 degree spatial resolution, so it can tell where something is with a precision of a few degrees on either side, and little or no ability to tell the object’s elevation.

Some are better, some worse, but for the purposes of this example that amounts to an effectively 12×1 resolution. Not great!

Handing over control to the Oculii system, however, which intelligently adjusts the transmissions based on what it’s already perceiving, could raise that to a 0.5° horizonal x 1° vertical resolution, giving it an effective resolution of perhaps 120×10. (Again, these numbers are purely for explanatory purposes and aren’t inherent to the system.)

That’s a huge improvement and results in the ability to see that something is, for example, two objects near each other and not one large one, or that an object is smaller than another near it, or — with additional computation — that it is moving one way or the other at such and such a speed relative to the radar unit.

Here’s a video demonstration of one of their own devices, showing considerably more detail than one would expect:

Exactly how this is done is part of Oculii’s proprietary magic, and Hong did not elaborate much on how exactly the system works. “Oculii’s sensor uses AI to adaptively generate an ‘intelligent’ waveform that adapts to the environment and embed information across time that can be leveraged to improve the resolution significantly,” he said. (Integrating information over time is what gives it the “4D” moniker, by the way.)

Here’s a little sizzle reel that gives a very general idea:

Autonomous vehicle manufacturers have not yet hit on any canonical set of sensors that AVs should have, but something like Oculii could give radar a more prominent place — its limitations sometimes mean it is relegated to emergency braking detection at the front or some such situation. With more detail and more data, radar could play a larger role in AV decisionmaking systems.

The company is definitely making deals — it’s working with Tier-1s and OEMs, one of which (Hella) is an investor, which gives a sense of confidence in Oculii’s approach. It’s also working with radar makers and has some commercial contracts looking at a 2024-2025 timeline.

It’s also getting into making its own all-in-one radar units, doing the hardware-software synergy thing. It claims these are the world’s highest resolution radars, and I don’t see any competitors out there contradicting this — the simple fact is radars don’t compete much on “resolution,” but more on the precision of their rangefinding and speed detection.

One exception might be Echodyne, which uses a metamaterial radar surface to direct a customizable radar beam anywhere in its field of view, examining objects in detail or scanning the whole area quickly. But even then its “resolution” isn’t so easy to estimate.

At any rate the company’s new Eagle and Falcon radars might be tempting to manufacturers working on putting together cutting-edge sensing suites for their autonomous experiments or production driver-assist systems.

It’s clear that with radar tipped as a major component of autonomous vehicles, robots, aircraft and other devices, it’s worth investing seriously in the space. The $55M B round certainly demonstrates that well enough. It was, as Oculii’s press release lists it, “co-led by Catapult Ventures and Conductive Ventures, with participation from Taiwania Capital, Susquehanna Investment Group (SIG), HELLA Ventures, PHI-Zoyi Capital, R7 Partners, VectoIQ, ACVC Partners, Mesh Ventures, Schox Ventures, and Signature Bank.”

The money will allow for the expected scaling and hiring, and as Hong added, “continued investment of the technology to deliver higher resolution, longer range, more compact and cheaper sensors that will accelerate an autonomous future.”

News: From bootstrapped to a $2.1B valuation, ReCharge raises $227M for subscription management platform

• May 6, 2021
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ReCharge, a provider of subscription management software for e-commerce, announced today that it has raised $227 million in a Series B growth round at a $2.1 billion valuation.  Summit Partners, ICONIQ Growth and Bain Capital Ventures provided the capital. Notably, Santa Monica, California-based ReCharge was bootstrapped for several years before raising $50 million in a

ReCharge, a provider of subscription management software for e-commerce, announced today that it has raised $227 million in a Series B growth round at a $2.1 billion valuation. 

Summit Partners, ICONIQ Growth and Bain Capital Ventures provided the capital.

Notably, Santa Monica, California-based ReCharge was bootstrapped for several years before raising $50 million in a previously undisclosed Series A from Summit Partners in January of 2020. And, it’s currently cash flow positive, according to company execs. With this round, ReCharge has raised a total of $277 million in funding.

Over the years, the company’s SaaS platform has evolved from a subscription billing/payments platform to include a broader set of offerings aimed at helping e-commerce businesses boost revenues and cut operating costs.

Specifically, ReCharge’s cloud-based software is designed to give e-commerce merchants a way to offer and manage subscriptions for physical products. It also aims to help these brands, primarily direct to consumer companies, grow by providing them with ways to “easily” add subscription offerings to their business with the goal of turning one-time purchasers “into loyal, repeat customers.”

The company has some impressive growth metrics, no doubt in part driven by the COVID-19 pandemic’s push to all things digital. ReCharge’s ARR grew 146% in 2020, while revenue grew over 136% over the same period, according to co-founder and CEO Oisin O’Connor, although he declined to reveal hard numbers. The startup has 15,000 customers and 20 million subscribers across 180 countries on its platform. Customers include Harry’s, Oatly, Fiji Water, Billie and Native. But even prior to the pandemic, it had doubled its processing volume each year for the past five years and has processed over $5.3 billion in transactions since its 2014 inception.

ReCharge also has 328 employees, up from 140 in January of 2020.

“We saw many brick and mortar stores, such as Oatly, offer their products through subscriptions as a result of the pandemic in 2020,” O’Connor told TechCrunch. “Certain categories such as food & beverage and pet foods were some of the fastest growing segments in total subscriber count, with 100% and 147% increases, respectively, as non-discretionary spending shifted online.”

He was surprised to see that growth also extend beyond the most obvious categories. For example, ReCharge saw beauty care products subscribers grow by 120% last year.

“Overall, we saw a 91% subscriber growth in 2020 across the board in all categories of subscriptions,” O’Connor told TechCrunch. “We believe there is a combination of factors at play: the pandemic, the rise of physical subscriptions and the rise of direct-to-consumer buying.”

ReCharge plans to use its fresh capital to accelerate hiring in both R&D (engineering and product) and go-to-market functions such as sales, marketing and customer success. It plans to continue its expansion into other e-commerce platforms such as BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento, and outside of North America into other geographic markets, starting with Europe. ReCharge also plans to “broaden” its acquisition scope so that it can “accelerate” its time-to-market in certain domains, according to O’Connor, and of course build upon its products and services.

Yoonkee Sull, partner at ICONIQ Growth, said his firm has been watching the rapid rise of subscription commerce for several years “as more merchants have looked for ways to deepen relationships with loyal customers and consumers increasingly have sought out more convenient and flexible ways to buy from their favorite brands.”

Ultimately, ICONIQ is betting on its belief that ReCharge “will continue to take significant share in a fast-growing market,” he told TechCrunch.

Sull believes the ReCharge team identified the subscription e-commerce opportunity early on and addresses the numerous nuanced needs of the market with “a fully-featured product that uniquely enables both the smallest merchants and largest brands to easily adopt and scale with their platform.”

Andrew Collins, managing director at Summit Partners, was impressed that the company saw so much growth without external capital for years, due to its “efficiency and discipline.”

“The ReCharge team identified a true product-market fit and built a product that customers love — which has fueled strong organic growth as the business has scaled,” Collins added.

News: Desktop Metal adds wood printing to its portfolio

• May 6, 2021
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Desktop Metal today announced the launch of wood 3D printing tool, Forust. Founded in 2019, the company specializes in 3D printing for interior design. The company’s “non-destructive” printing methods have managed to largely fly under the radar, with minimal press coverage until now — making them a pretty ideal acquisition candidate. In fact, the gross

Desktop Metal today announced the launch of wood 3D printing tool, Forust. Founded in 2019, the company specializes in 3D printing for interior design. The company’s “non-destructive” printing methods have managed to largely fly under the radar, with minimal press coverage until now — making them a pretty ideal acquisition candidate.

In fact, the gross assets acquisition actually occurred back in October 2020, according to a filing, which pegs it at a price at $2.5 million, including $2 million in cash considerations. Since then, it seems, the two have been working together ahead of an official launch.

In a press release issued today, Desktop Metal is positioning Forust as the name of the new manufacturing process now in the company’s portfolio. The technology utilizes cellulose dust and lignin, byproducts from the wood and paper industries, respectively.

 

“As part of Desktop Metal, Forust is empowering architects, designers, and manufacturers to leverage design-forward technology to rethink how wood waste streams are used — whether you’re looking to manufacture one, one thousand or one million pieces,” Forust co-founder and CEO Andrew Jeffery tells TechCrunch. “Forust has the ability to bring 3D-printed, sustainable wood designs to life for businesses and consumers to create beautiful, sturdy wood products to support various industries, such as interior design, furniture and consumer home goods.”

Starting today, the companies will offer samples and designs online. The list of products includes architectural accents, pieces of furniture and home products like bowls and flower pots.

“Applications for Forust’s wood parts are really limitless,” said Desktop Metal CEO Ric Fulop, says in a press release. “There are many applications where polymers and plastics are used today where you can now cost-effectively replace with sustainably manufactured wood parts — luxurious high-end components in interiors, consumer electronics, instruments, aviation, boats, home goods and eventually in flooring and exterior roofing applications.”

In addition to Forust, the same filing reveals that the company also purchased the “single acquired technology asset” of Figur Machine Tools, a sheet metal printing company, for $3.5 million. In August, Desktop Metal announced it was going public via a SPAC that valued it at $2.5 billion.

 

News: Expressable launches with millions for scalable speech therapy

• May 6, 2021
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Speaking isn’t simple for at least 40 million Americans, so a new Austin-based startup is scaling a solution. Expressable is a digital speech therapy company that connects patients to speech language pathologists (SLP) via telehealth services and asynchronous support, and it has raised a new $4.5 million seed round. The early-stage startup is launching with

Speaking isn’t simple for at least 40 million Americans, so a new Austin-based startup is scaling a solution. Expressable is a digital speech therapy company that connects patients to speech language pathologists (SLP) via telehealth services and asynchronous support, and it has raised a new $4.5 million seed round.

The early-stage startup is launching with an explicit focus on serving the approximately five million children in the United States that have a communication disorder. What might start as an occasional stutter could turn into a communication disorder over time – so the startup is looking to intervene early to get kids on a clearer path.

Launched in 2019 by married co-founders Nicholas Barbara and Leanne Sherred, Expressable has served thousands of families to date. Today, the duo announced its seed funding, co-led by Lerer Hippeau and NextView Ventures, with participation from Amplifyher Ventures. The money will be used to expand its provider network, go in-network, and focus on its edtech service.

What it does

Put simply, Expressable connects children to speech-language pathologists on a recurring basis. The therapy is done live via Zoom for Healthcare with licensed professionals that Expresssable employs full-time. Clients are matched with a therapist in their area of need, from public speaking to vocal cord paralysis. Parents are able to reach their children’s SLP through secure SMS for coordination, questions, and rescheduling throughout the week.

On top of real-time support, the virtual speech therapy provider has a suite of asynchronous services. The company is building an e-learning platform with homework assignments and lessons, prescribed by the therapist and provided via SMS, for parents to do with their children to reinforce the speech care plans.

The activities are meant to be bite-sized – used when driving to the grocery store or cooking dinner or playing in the backyard – and tailored for interaction with children. The lessons can be as simple as creating opportunities for a kid to ask for juice, or to practice two-word utterances with an imitation game.

This unique edtech bit of Expressable leans heavily on parent involvement in the therapy process. Parental help has been shown to increase positive outcomes, but notably it could also leave low-income, working class families out of the mix. Its price, on average, is $59 per week, and that’s currently only out of pocket rather than subsidized by insurance.

“There’s a lot of content for speech language pathologists by speech language pathologists, but not a lot of content by [SLPs] for parents, written in a way that is consumable,” Barbara said. “It just felt like a huge opportunity and market gap.”

Part of Expressable’s value is that it’s better than the status quo, which surprisingly often actually amounts to nothing. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, about 8 to 9 percent of children have a speech sound disorder in the country — but only half actually get treatment. What might start as an occasional stutter could turn into a communication disorder over time – so Expressable wants to intervene early to get kids on the right path.

“Public schools are the number-one provider for pediatric speech but they are unfortunately notoriously underfunded,” said Sherred. Children who are lucky enough to be eligible for school services are often provided them in a group setting, she continued, which lengthens the amount of time it takes to make progress.

Sherred witnessed the “incredibly frustrating cycle” created by gaps in school intervention first-hand as a SLP. She has spent the majority of her career in in-home health, where she would work in homes and daycares directly with children.

The majority of Expressable’s user base are children, but about 35% are adults, signaling how speech issues can continue past childhood.

Meagen Lloyst, who sourced the Expressabble deal for Lerer Hippeau, is one example. Lloyst was diagnosed with a speech and voice condition in late 2020 and needed to find remote SLP therapy, which introduced her to the challenges of finding a high-quality specialized SLP.

“Before Expressable, there was no consumer-facing brand out there solving these pain points for individuals with communications disorders,” Lloyst said. “It’s evident that they’re already hiring the best SLPs out there, bringing parents and education into the process to focus on better outcomes for children, and doing so in a cost-effective and convenient way through virtual care.”

Telehealth with a twist

While telehealth usage remains above pre-pandemic levels, visits are on the decline. One challenge for any digital telehealth startup, Expressable included, is how to make a convincing pitch for moving caretaking fully-virtual in a post-pandemic context.

The Expressable co-founders pointed toward consistency, both internally and externally, as a competitive advantage.

First, speech therapy is a recurring service that many patients use once a week, every month, for years. “A lot of other telemedicine plays are these quick, convenient, and direct primary care,” Barbara said. “[We are] a longer tail of treatment plan that requires a close relationship between provider and patient.”

Second, unlike many telehealth startups, Expressable has hired its specialists full-time as W-2 employees. It’s a strategic choice to help ensure to its clients that their SLP of choice is a long-term relationship. The startup has 50 W-2 SLPs currently.

“We have built a career path for SLPs and a value proposition to speech language pathologists where they can work from home, set their own hours [get] paid above the national average, and then receive benefits that may not be obviously not common if you’re working in a contractor position.”

Not relying on the traditional contractor model might be a differentiation, but it’s also a challenge. The startup will have to rapidly (and efficiently) hire SLPs for the variety of speaking conditions out there – and in order to expand into new markets, it has to go through the arduous legal process of local licensing requirements, instead of just going to a white-label solution that helps staff similar companies while offloading individual practitioner certification.

While it has ambitions to become a national practice, Expressable currently operates in 15 states, and employs SLPs that are licensed in all the states that it operates in.

News: Look out PiedPiper – iSIZE reduces power for video streaming, raises $6.3M in round led by Octopus

• May 6, 2021
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It’s widely known that video streaming boomed during the pandemic, as millions of people were faced by boredom during lockdowns. But an unintended consequence of this was the growing environmental impact of millions of video streams which meant server farms needing to draw increasing amounts of power from the grid. Indeed, there were even calls

It’s widely known that video streaming boomed during the pandemic, as millions of people were faced by boredom during lockdowns. But an unintended consequence of this was the growing environmental impact of millions of video streams which meant server farms needing to draw increasing amounts of power from the grid. Indeed, there were even calls for people to cycle down to Standard Definition, as HD streaming has a greater impact. But it turns out that if you optimize the video, you can reduce the bitrate required, reducing the data and energy needed.

Oddly enough this is also the pitch of the famed satirical show, Silicon Valley, where fictional startup PiedPiper invents a new creates an app that contains a revolutionary data compression algorithm for video.

But this scenario may about to become fact.

iSIZE, UK startup which applies deep learning to optimize video streaming and delivery, has $6.3 million in a funding round led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from existing investors including TD Veen and Patrick Pichette, Chairman of Twitter and ex-CFO of Google. The company has now raised a total of $8.2 million.

iSIZE’s BitSave technology optimizes video streaming quality while reducing bitrate requirements, “allowing for a significant reduction in data and energy consumption”.

This is trained to ‘see with the human eye’ in order to n=make the video still look high quality, but reduce the bitrate needed. It integrates with all video encoding standards (including AVC, HEVC, and AV1) without needing changes to the streaming process. In other words, the links of Netflix, etc would, says the company, be able to install the iSize solution relatively easily.

Founded by Sergio Grce and Dr. Yiannis Andreopoulos, the team combines R&D in machine learning, neural networks, and video signal processing, and is a graduate of the Creative Destruction Lab Oxford 2019-2020 program.

Sergio Grce, Founder and CEO of iSIZE, commented: “Today there are more people streaming more video than ever before. Our customers recognize both the commercial opportunity and their social responsibility to optimize their video delivery pipelines with our pioneering technology.”

On a call to me, he added: “The processing optimizes for human perception and tries to reverse engineer human perception of the receiver in a manner similar to psycho visual perception. So that saves bitrate and the content looks the same or better on the client device. We are doing something similar for video as what the MP3 did for music.”

Simon King, Partner and deep tech investor at Octopus Ventures, said: “The technology iSIZE has created is pioneering and is already being used by some of the world’s largest companies to reduce the costs and energy used in streaming. Consumer demand for high-quality video is only going to increase as our devices are upgraded, so it’s vital that we find new ways to reduce the environmental impact.”

iSIZE’s competitors include Wave 1 and Deep Render.

Meanwhile, let’s remind ourselves of how good PiedPiper was at video compression.

News: Payments, lending and neobanks rule fintechs in emerging markets, report says

• May 6, 2021
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Tech investments in emerging markets have been in full swing over the past couple of years and their ecosystems have thrived as a result. Some of these markets like Africa, Latin America, and India, have comprehensive reports by publications and firms on trends and investments in their individual regions. But there’s hardly a report to

Tech investments in emerging markets have been in full swing over the past couple of years and their ecosystems have thrived as a result.

Some of these markets like Africa, Latin America, and India, have comprehensive reports by publications and firms on trends and investments in their individual regions. But there’s hardly a report to compare and contrast trends and investments between these regions and rightfully so. Such a task is Herculean.

Well, a report released today by data research organization Briter Bridges and global inclusive tech accelerator Catalyst Fund is punching above its weight to offer a holistic representation to the darling sector of these three markets: fintech.

The report “State of Fintech in Emerging Markets Report” has three objectives — to evaluate the investment, product, and inclusivity trends across emerging markets.

The team surveyed over 177 startups and 33 investors across Africa, Latin America, and India. Though this sample size used is minuscule, the key findings are quite impressive.

Let’s dive in.

Fintechs have raised $23B across the regions since 2017

There’s no stopping emerging markets’ favorite. The sector has continued to receive the largest share of investments year-on-year for the past five years.

More than 300 million unbanked African adults account for 17% of the world’s unbanked population. So it’s not difficult to see why in 2019, the continent witnessed five mega deals in Branch, Tala, World Remit, Interswitch, and OPay that amounted to a total of over $775 million. While this dropped last year to $362 million, companies like Flutterwave, TymeBank, Kuda have raised sizeable rounds during this period.

Latin America is home to a growing base of digital users, enabling regulation and reforms, and vibrant small businesses. And just like Africa, the percentage of unbanked people is high at 70%. Fintechs in the region have seized the opportunity and have been rewarded with mega-rounds that companies like NuBank, Neon, Konfio, and Clip have enjoyed. Collectively, fintech startups have raised $10 billion in the past five years.

In 2019 alone, Indian fintech startups raised a record of $4.8 billion, per the report. Then last year, the sector brought in $3 billion. Over the past five years, they have totaled $11.6 billion with notable big names like CRED, Razorpay, Groww, BharatPe, among others.

Africa’s average seed rounds stand at $1M, India and Latin America average $4M

Per the report, early-stage deals in Africa have been increasing over the past five years totaling over $1.6 billion. Their average size, especially for seed rounds, has grown from $750,000 in 2017 to $1 million in 2020.

For  Latin America, the average seed deal in the last five years was around $5.7 million while India did approximately $4.6 million. The report says the data for the latter was skewed because of CRED’s $30 million seed round.

Latin America is IPO-hungry, India breeds unicorns while Africa is just getting started with M&A

Last year, Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack was the highlight of Africa’s M&As because of its size and the homegrown status of the Nigerian fintech startup. Other larger rounds that made the headlines include the $500 million acquisition of Wave by WorldRemit (which happens to be the largest from the continent) and the DPO Group buyout by Network International for $288 million.

Unlike the African fintech market that has noticed mega acquisition deals and many undisclosed seven-figure deals, the Latin American fintech market is a sucker for IPOs. Per the report, fintechs in the region have several $100 million rounds (Nubank, PagSeguro,  Creditas, BancoInter and Neon) and M&A activity is sparse. But a number of them have gone public recently including Arco Educacao, Stone Pagamentos, and Pagseguro. 

On the other hand, India has more than 25 billion-dollar companies and keeps adding yearly. Just last month, the country recorded more than eight. These unicorns range from established companies like Paytm and new ones like CRED.

Payments, credit, and neobanks lead fintech activity

The report shows that payments companies are the crème de la crème for fintech investment across the three regions. Within that subset, B2B payments reign supreme. The next two funded fintech categories are credit and digital banking.

In Africa, payments startups have seen more investments than credit and neobanks. Flutterwave, Chipper Cash, Wave, Paystack, DPO come to mind.

Latin America most funded fintechs are neobanks. And it is the only region with all three product categories closely funded at $2-3 billion each. Some of these companies include NuBank, Creditas, and dLocal.

India’s top-funded fintech startups are in payments. But it has notable representation in credit and neobanks, some of which have raised nine-figure rounds like Niyo, Lendingkart, and InCred.

Investors are enthused about the future of insurance, payments, and digital banks

From the handful of investors surveyed in the report on their view on future trends in fintech products 5 years from now, most of them chose insurance, payments, and digital banking models.

Investment platforms and embedded models are also areas of interest. They were less keen on agriculture and remittances while wealth tech platforms and neobanks were also ranked lower in priority. How is it that digital banking and neo-banking are at two ends of the spectrum of investor choice? I can’t say for sure.

Parts of the report talk about underserved consumers in these regions and how fintech startups are serving them. It also discusses whether these fintech startups promote financial inclusion and what features and products would get them to that point.

In all of this, the glaring fact, which is no news, is that Africa is lagging years behind Latin America and India. Talking with Briter Bridges director Dario Giuliani, he pointed out that he’d lean on five years for the continent to get to where Latin America and India are at the moment. He added that what makes India a better market at this stage is because it isn’t a continent like the other markets and operations are uniform across board.

“It is easier to manage one country than 54 countries in Africa and 20 in Latin America,” he said to TechCrunch. “In Africa, we use the label ‘Africa,’ but we’re very much talking about 4-6 countries. Latin America is basically Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia who are seeing massive companies rise. India is one.”

One key detail the report mentions is that most fintechs across emerging markets are crossing over to different sectors like crop insurance, credit lines for distributors and vendors, KYC, e-commerce payment gateways, medical finance, and insurance. Guiliani says he expects this to continue.

News: ifeel, another well-being platform that blends self-care tools with 1-2-1 therapy, scores $6.6M

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If the pandemic has been good for anything it’s been good for the therapy business and for startups targeting mental health, with VCs kept very busy signing checks. To wit, here’s another one: Madrid-based ifeel has bagged €5.5 million (~$6.6M) in Series A funding, led by Nauta Capital. The startup was founded back in 2017

If the pandemic has been good for anything it’s been good for the therapy business and for startups targeting mental health, with VCs kept very busy signing checks. To wit, here’s another one: Madrid-based ifeel has bagged €5.5 million (~$6.6M) in Series A funding, led by Nauta Capital.

The startup was founded back in 2017 — initially as a consumer-focused therapy platform — but last year it pivoted to a hybrid business model, tapping into demand from businesses to offer staff emotional support during the public health crisis. So it’s available both to individuals via monthly subscription or as part of employer’s or insurance provider’s cover

It says that pandemic pivot has resulted in 1,000% growth in its b2b business.

Companies it’s signed up to offer its platform to their staff include AXA Partners, Glovo and Gympass.

“We have a total of 400K users on the platform (b2c and b2b),” says co-founder Amir Kaplan. “We have 100,000 eligible covered who have access to ifeel as a benefit (through our insurance and wellness partners or direct with ifeel).

“The 100K grew 10x from September 2020 and is the largest trend we are experiencing these days. Employees of 100 companies use ifeel on a weekly basis.”

ifeel’s platform delivers both live therapy sessions with licensed psychologists but also provides users with self-care tool such as daily mood trackers, recommended exercises and activities to expand the support available.

“By combining self-care and guided therapies, ifeel maximises engagement and retention of its users — with 90% reporting improved emotional and mental well-being after using ifeel,” it claims.

The startup is using AI technology in the self-care portion of its platform — to recommend “the most relevant” content or exercise to its users, per Kaplan. But he also says it’s looking at using the tech to assist the therapist practice by developing dedicated tools inside the platform.

ifeel has an international founding team, hailing from three countries (Israel, Italy and Mexico), and says its main markets so far are Spain, France, Brazil and Mexico. While its b2b and insurance network coverage extends to 20 countries and four languages (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese).

With so much competition in the mental health tools space — from mindfulness apps, to internet-delivered CBT programs, to therapy platforms — how does ifeel see itself standing out?

Kaplan suggests it has an advantage of being “global from day one”, and also flags a “strong technology integration focus” which he says has allowed it to plug into insurance companies and wellness players — to become a “main service provider”.

“Very early we partnered with global leading companies and we support them in many countries (compared to specific country players like in Germany and UK,” he tells TechCrunch. “The platform approach is different from ‘online therapy’ companies or ‘mindfulness apps’.

“We want our users to manage their emotional well being on our platform no matter the need. In this way we create millions of engagement events that are customized to the user’s needs and allow users over time to use different parts of our platform in different life situations.”

News: TechCrunch Survey of Scottish Tech Hubs: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen

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TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals. Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words. This is your chance to put Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen on the Techcrunch

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals.

Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words.

This is your chance to put Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen on the Techcrunch Map!.

If you are a tech startup founder or investor in one of these cities please fill out the survey form here.

We are particularly interested in hearing from women founders and investors.

This is the follow-up to the huge survey of investors (see also below) we’ve done over the last six or more months, largely in Europe’s biggest capital cities.

These formed part of a broader series of surveys we’re doing regularly for ExtraCrunch, our subscription service that unpacks key issues for startups and investors.

In the first wave of surveys, the cities we wrote about were largely capitals. You can see them listed here.

This time, we will be surveying founders and investors in Europe’s other cities to capture how European hubs are growing, from the perspective of the people on the ground.

We’d like to know how your city’s startup scene is evolving, how the tech sector is being impacted by COVID-19, and generally how your city will evolve.

We leave submissions mostly unedited and are generally looking for at least one or two paragraphs in answers to the questions.

So if you are a tech startup founder or investor in one of these cities please fill out our survey form here.

Thank you for participating. If you have questions you can email mike@techcrunch.com and/or DM on Twitter to @mikebutcher.