Daily Archives: August 13, 2021

News: Orchata raises $4M, aims to build a ‘Gopuff for Latin America’

• August 13, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Orchata’s mobile app enables consumers in Mexico to get groceries delivered in 15 minutes with no substitutes and at supermarket prices.

Luis Mario Garcia grew up in Mexico making deliveries for the grocery stores in his neighborhood. After honing his startup skills in San Francisco, he returned to Mexico with the idea of building a software company.

That’s when he met his co-founder Javier Gonzalez and the pair started Orchata in 2020, a mobile app enabling consumers to get groceries delivered in 15 minutes, with no substitutes and at supermarket prices. Products delivered include fresh fruit, beverages, bread, medicine and household essentials, Garcia told TechCrunch.

Orchata does this by operating a network of micro fulfillment centers — it is already operating in two cities — with technology for efficient picking and hyperfast delivery.

Online food delivery sales in Latin America are projected to reach $9.8 billion by 2024, with the global pandemic driving demand for faster delivery, according to Statista. Garcia sees three different waves in this market: the first one being traditional supermarkets, where you can spend hours, which led to the second wave of food delivery companies, including some big players in the region — for example Rappi in Colombia, which in July raised $500 million in Series F funding at a $5.25 billion valuation in a round led by T. Rowe Price, and Cornershop in Chile, which was acquired by Uber in 2019.

However, Garcia said many of these services still take more than an hour from order to doorstep and may require phone calls if an item is not available. He wants to be part of a third wave — software that is integrated with inventory and delivery that is super fast, and no substitutions.

“This is similar to what is going on around the world, but there is a huge opportunity to bring convenience, to be the Gopuff for Latin America, and we want to build it first in the region,” Garcia said.

The Monterrey-based company was part of Y Combinator’s summer 2020 cohort and on Friday announced a $4 million seed round from a group of investors, including Y Combinator, JAM Fund, FJ Labs, Venture Friends, Investo and Foundation Capital, and angel investors Ross Lipson, Mike Hennessey, Brian Requarth and Javier Mata.

Jonathan Lewy, co-founder of Grin Scooters and founder of Investo, is also an investor in Rappi. He said Garcia was building a product for the end user, with the key being the building of the infrastructure and inventory. Lewy believes Garcia understands how quick delivery should be done and that it is not just about offering a mobile app, but building the technology behind it.

Meanwhile, Justin Mateen, general partner at JAM Fund, and co-founder of Tinder and an early-stage investor, met Garcia over a year ago and was one of the company’s first investors. He said Garcia’s and Gonzalez’s initial idea for the model of grocery stores was still not solving the problem, but then they pivoted to doing fulfillment and inventory themselves.

“He fits the mold of what I look for in a founder, and he is the type of founder that doesn’t give up,” Mateen said. “Luis finally agreed to let me double down on my investment. The model makes sense now, he is on to something and it is now going to be about execution of capital as he scales.”

Both Mateen and Lewy agree that there will be similar apps coming because food delivery is such a large market, but that Orchata has a clear advantage of owning the customer experience from beginning to end.

Having only launched four months ago, Orchata is already processing thousands of orders and is seeing 100% monthly growth. The new funding will enable Orchata to expand into three new cities in Mexico. Garcia is also eyeing Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Chile for future expansion.

The company is also targeting multiple use cases, including someone noticing a forgotten item while cooking to consumers shopping for the week or teenagers needing food for a party.

“We are going to be super convenient to customers, and we think every use case for food delivery will be this way in the future,” Garcia said. “We will eventually introduce our own brands and foods with the goal of being that app that is there anytime you need it.”

News: ThirdAI raises $6M to democratize AI to any hardware

• August 13, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

ThirdAI is building tools to speed up deep learning technology without the need for hardware like graphics processing units.

Houston-based ThirdAI, a company building tools to speed up deep learning technology without the need for specialized hardware like graphics processing units, brought in $6 million in seed funding.

Neotribe Ventures, Cervin Ventures and Firebolt Ventures co-led the investment, which will be used to hire additional employees and invest in computing resources, Anshumali Shrivastava, Third AI co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.

Shrivastava, who has a mathematics background, was always interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially rethinking how AI could be developed in a more efficient manner. It was when he was at Rice University that he looked into how to make that work for deep learning. He started ThirdAI in April with some Rice graduate students.

ThirdAI’s technology is designed to be “a smarter approach to deep learning,” using its algorithm and software innovations to make general-purpose central processing units (CPU) faster than graphics processing units for training large neural networks, Shrivastava said. Companies abandoned CPUs years ago in favor of graphics processing units that could more quickly render high-resolution images and video concurrently. The downside is that there is not much memory in graphics processing units, and users often hit a bottleneck while trying to develop AI, he added.

“When we looked at the landscape of deep learning, we saw that much of the technology was from the 1980s, and a majority of the market, some 80%, were using graphics processing units, but were investing in expensive hardware and expensive engineers and then waiting for the magic of AI to happen,” he said.

He and his team looked at how AI was likely to be developed in the future and wanted to create a cost-saving alternative to graphics processing units. Their algorithm, “sub-linear deep learning engine,” instead uses CPUs that don’t require specialized acceleration hardware.

Swaroop “Kittu” Kolluri, founder and managing partner at Neotribe, said this type of technology is still early. Current methods are laborious, expensive and slow, and for example, if a company is running language models that require more memory, it will run into problems, he added.

“That’s where ThirdAI comes in, where you can have your cake and eat it, too,” Kolluri said. “It is also why we wanted to invest. It is not just the computing, but the memory, and ThirdAI will enable anyone to do it, which is going to be a game changer. As technology around deep learning starts to get more sophisticated, there is no limit to what is possible.”

AI is already at a stage where it has the capability to solve some of the hardest problems, like those in healthcare and seismic processing, but he notes there is also a question about climate implications of running AI models.

“Training deep learning models can be more expensive than having five cars in a lifetime,” Shrivastava said. “As we move on to scale AI, we need to think about those.”

News: Twitter India head moves to a different role

• August 13, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Manish Maheshwari, the head of Twitter India, has taken a new role at the company and is relocating to the U.S., the latest in a series of developments for the American social giant after a tense stand off with New Delhi this year. Maheshwari is moving on from the high-profile position, a role he assumed

Manish Maheshwari, the head of Twitter India, has taken a new role at the company and is relocating to the U.S., the latest in a series of developments for the American social giant after a tense stand off with New Delhi this year.

Maheshwari is moving on from the high-profile position, a role he assumed in April 2019, at a time when he was personally named in police cases in at least two Indian states — Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh — over complaints that Twitter was allegedly hurting sentiments of people in the South Asian market.

The update was shared with Twitter employees on Friday. Maheshwari will be taking on a new role in San Francisco as Senior Director, Revenue Strategy and Operations with focus on New Market Entry and report to Senior Director Deitra Mara, according to an internal email. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the move to TechCrunch.

Twitter has faced heat in India from New Delhi for not blocking some Twitter accounts or deleting tweets that the Indian government deemed objectionable and labeling its officials’ tweets as misleading. The company also briefly lost the safe harbor protection in the country, New Delhi said, after it failed to comply with the nation’s new IT rules, which went into effect in May.

The social network has since complied with the new law that requires, among other things, appointing several executives in the country to address on-ground concerns, a lawyer for the Indian government said in a court earlier this week.

Also this week, the company has been facing criticism from some politicians for locking the account of India’s largest opposition party.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

News: Lawmakers ask Amazon what it plans to do with palm print biometric data

• August 13, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

A group of senators sent new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy a letter Friday pressing the company for more information about how it scans and stores customer palm prints for use in some of its retail stores. The company rolled out the palm print scanners through a program it calls Amazon One, encouraging people to make

A group of senators sent new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy a letter Friday pressing the company for more information about how it scans and stores customer palm prints for use in some of its retail stores.

The company rolled out the palm print scanners through a program it calls Amazon One, encouraging people to make contactless payments in its brick and mortar stores without the use of a card. Amazon introduced its Amazon One scanners late last year, and they can now be found in Amazon Go convenience and grocery stores, Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star stores across the U.S. The scanners are also installed in eight Washington state-based Whole Foods locations.

In the new letter, Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) press Jassy for details about how Amazon plans to expand its biometric payment system and if the data collected will help the company target ads.

“Amazon’s expansion of biometric data collection through Amazon One raises serious questions about Amazon’s plans for this data and its respect for user privacy, including about how Amazon may use the data for advertising and tracking purposes,” the senators wrote in the letter, embedded below.

The lawmakers also requested information on how many people have enrolled in Amazon One to date, how Amazon will secure the sensitive data and if the company has ever paired the palm prints with facial recognition data it collects elsewhere.

“In contrast with biometric systems like Apple’s Face ID and Touch ID or Samsung Pass, which store biometric information on a user’s device, Amazon One reportedly uploads biometric information to the cloud, raising unique security risks,” the senators wrote. “… Data security is particularly important when it comes to immutable customer data, like palm prints.”

The company controversially introduced a $10 credit for new users who enroll their palm prints in the program, prompting an outcry from privacy advocates who see it as a cheap tactic to coerce people to hand over sensitive personal data.

There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical. Amazon has faced fierce criticism for its other big biometric data project, the AI facial recognition software known as Rekognition, which the company provided to U.S. law enforcement agencies before eventually backtracking with a moratorium on policing applications for the software last year.

News: YC-backed Tablevibe’s customer surveys help restaurants reduce their reliance on delivery apps

• August 13, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Food delivery apps offer convenience for customers, but a host of headaches for restaurants, like commissions as high as 40% and very few tools to build customer loyalty. Based in Singapore, Tablevibe wants to help restaurants reduce their reliance on third-party delivery apps and help them get more direct orders and returning customers. The startup

Food delivery apps offer convenience for customers, but a host of headaches for restaurants, like commissions as high as 40% and very few tools to build customer loyalty. Based in Singapore, Tablevibe wants to help restaurants reduce their reliance on third-party delivery apps and help them get more direct orders and returning customers. The startup is part of Y Combinator’s current batch, which will hold its Demo Day at the end of this month.

Tablevibe’s founding team includes two former Googlers: Jeroen Rutten, formerly head of Google Search’s product strategy in APAC and Sneep, who was responsible for its app development go-to-market strategy and led large sales teams. They are joined by Guido Caldara, a lead teacher at coding bootcamp Le Wagon and Tablevibe’s chief technology officer.

The idea for Tablevibe came after Rutten, its chief executive officer, visited a restaurant in Singapore that used paper feedback forms.

“We thought, if they use a paper feedback form, it actually creates a lot of hassle, like entering all the data into an Excel spreadsheet,” he told TechCrunch. “How’s the restaurant owner going to get actionable feedback based on data in an Excel spreadsheet?”

The team began working on the first version of Tablevibe, with simple Google Forms for dine-in customers and Google Data Studio dashboards, and tested it with three restaurants a few months before COVID-19 emerged. They found that using Tablevibe instead of paper forms increased response rates by up to 26x and also had the benefit of creating more repeat customers, since they are given an incentive for filling out surveys.

Then the pandemic hit and restaurants had to suddenly pivot to deliveries. The team kept the same idea behind their feedback forms, but started using QR codes affixed to takeout packaging. The QR codes (usually in the form of stickers so food and beverage businesses don’t need to order new packaging) also offer an incentive if customers scan it and fill out a survey—but the discount or free item can’t be redeemed through third-party delivery apps, only through direct orders with the restaurant.

Restaurants can customize surveys, but about 80% use Tablevibe’s templates, which are quick to fill out, since most questions just ask for a rating from one to five stars (there’s also an optional form for customers to write their opinions). Customers fill out their name, email addresses, and then rank the food and atmosphere (for dine-in). For delivery, customers are also asked what app they used.

Tablevibe is integrated with Google Reviews, so if someone gives the restaurant a high rating, they are asked if they want to make it public. They also have the option to follow its Facebook or Instagram profile.

For dine-in customers, Tablevibe primarily works with F&B businesses that have multiple venues, including Merci Marcel and Lo and Behold Group. For its delivery survey, most users are smaller restaurants that have one location. It also serves cloud kitchens, like CloudEats in the Philippines.

“As a restaurant, you want to own and grow your customer relationships,” said Sneep, Tablevibe’s chief operating officer. “The first part is actually knowing who your customers are, what they experienced and how you can contact them, which is how we can help. The second piece is growing a customer relationship, which we do by giving a reward, but only if a customer reorders directly with a restaurant.”

Customers have generated over 25,000 reviews through Tablevibe so far, which gives the company data to help determine what kind of incentives will convince someone to scan a restaurant’s QR code and take a survey.

Tablevibe’s founders say it can deliver more than 100x return on investment to its clients. For example, Merci Marcel did an evaluation and determined that it got a 103x ROI, based on the number of customers who claimed incentives, average order value, how many people left a five-star Google Review and how much more business those reviews drove to their venues.

The startup plans to expand into other English-speaking markets, focusing first on Northern Europe and then North America later this year. Aside from Singapore, it’s already used by customers in the Philippines, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Portugal.

Rutten said that Tablevibe plans to build its development team, with the goal of becoming a “Salesforce for restaurants” that can help them build engagement through delivery or dine-ins, capture data and turn them into useful insights.

“Our roadmap has two levers—one is to get more data and the other is to provide more intelligence,” he said. “We’re working on API integrations so Tablevibe can integrate with point-of-sale systems. The second thing is to pull in more publicly available data from sources like Google Reviews. We will also build out more marketing features to leverage customer databases so businesses can send out emails about new restaurant launches, etc.” Eventually, Tablevibe also plans to use AI to help restaurants determine exactly what they need to do to improve customer experience, like change a menu item.