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News: Andreessen Horowitz just rolled out a $400 million fund that’s expressly for seed deals

• August 27, 2021
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Andreessen Horowitz is begun to announce new funds almost as routinely as some startups have begun announcing follow-on rounds. After announcing a third biotech fund in February 2020 that’s currently investing $750 million; a pair of new funds totaling $4.5 billion last November; and, most recently, a new $2.2 billion crypto-focused fund, the firm is

Andreessen Horowitz is begun to announce new funds almost as routinely as some startups have begun announcing follow-on rounds. After announcing a third biotech fund in February 2020 that’s currently investing $750 million; a pair of new funds totaling $4.5 billion last November; and, most recently, a new $2.2 billion crypto-focused fund, the firm is rolling out a brand new fund: a $400 million vehicle that is focused expressly on backing seed-stage companies.

In the broader historical context of the firm, it’s an interesting development. Many years ago, Andreessen Horowitz backed away from making seed stage deals to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest — even while the firm didn’t have a conflict policy around nascent deals. As Marc Andreessen explained it back in 2013, there is often too much uncertainty at the earliest stages of company formation, and though it conveyed this thinking to founders, they didn’t always listen, and bets that evolved to be similar made them feel bad and caused problems.

Of course, things changed over time, competition is competition, and before long, the firm was again writing checks to very young startups. In fact, today, not only have seed-stage investments again become very much part of the program, but that since the beginning of 2020, about half the firm’s investments have been in seed companies, according to a16z Indeed, General Partner Martin Casado said yesterday that the new fund is largely about optimizing its processes around seed deals, and ensuring investors are rewarded properly for the associated risk. Here’s some of that conversation, edited lightly for length:

TC: You say this seed fund doesn’t change anything about your investment strategy, that it’s more about putting a formal structure around these deals. So we won’t necessarily see even more seed-stage deals out of Andreessen Horowitz?

MC: Well what’s interesting is the entire industry has picked up the pace dramatically in the last three years. I think the industry has doubled the number of seed funds, and we’ve kept pace with the industry. The seed investments from Andreessen Horowitz have gone up dramatically in the last three years in response to the industry. That we have a separate seed fund doesn’t mean we’re going to pick up the pace [further still].

TC: How might formalizing this new fund impact your relationship with other seed stage firms?

MC: We work closely with seed funds and we plan to continue to do so. I do think the environment has become more and more competitive at the seed stage, and if you actually look at some seed [stage startups] that I have personally been involved, [they’ve received] term sheets from hedge funds, growth funds — all the way down to angel investors. Everybody is in the mix at the seed stage. I think this is an evolution of the industry rather than kind of a key shift.

TC: Who will be making these seed investments at a16z? Is there a team that will be primarily managing the fund?

MC: We do not have seed specific investors [investing this new capital]. If we do Series A and Series B deals, it’s the same set of investors.

TC: Andreessen Horowitz has used scouts in the past. Is that true currently and if, so, what percentage of your seed-stage deals come from them?

MC: Yes, we use scouts, but they are responsible for zero percent of our seed-stage deals. That’s an independent function where they can put small dollars in deals of their choosing, but those, to us, aren’t seed [deals]. Seeds to us are $1 million to $4 million led by an investor at the firm where we get real ownership and have real involvement.

TC: So these scouts are really just founders and operators who Andreessen Horowitz wants in its ecosystem?

MC: The scouts serves two functions. We get to develop a relationship with key people and key influencers, whether they’re entrepreneurs are they’re going to be entrepreneurs. It also gives us access to interesting deal flow to see what activity is happening now and kind of draft off that judgment.

TC: You mention $1 million to $4 million checks.  What constitutes a seed investment, in a16z’s view?

MC: Typically, for us, let’s say it’s $6 million — these aren’t hard and fast rules — and we typically don’t take board seats.

TC: And you look to own how much with that first check?

MC: We don’t have target ownership, really. It all depends  on the market dynamics; we tend to respond to the market.

TC: You mention that it’s gotten very competitive, seed-stage investing. Do you prefer to go it alone or work with a syndicate or investors?

MC: Personally, I love working with other seed funds. We absolutely do not have any sort of internal rules or biases one way or the other on this. I think independent GPs have independent views on this. For myself, I love it because there are great seed funds out there that I love splitting deals with or sharing deals with that we then work on together.

TC: And you want to see what, exactly? How early is too early for the firm to invest?

M: If we know the space very very well, meaning we’ve done the work in the space and we have a deal partner like myself [who is] particularly expert in a space, it can be just a person and an idea, because we believe that we understand the market. We’ve invested in solo  founders before their company existed.

If we don’t understand the space very well, we’d like to see kind of some maturity in the company, maybe some early customer traction, maybe some early product work, maybe an early demo, because that way we’ll have a better sense of the market. So I would say the maturity of the actual company we invest in is inversely correlated with our knowledge.

TC: What the decision-making process look like? I’m guessing it’s different when you’re writing a $6 million check versus a check that’s many times bigger than that.

MC: Yeah, the amount of work and scrutiny that we do for seed tends to be less than for a Series A. The number of people involved is less. And because we’re not taking a board seat, the firm’s [time] commitment is a bit less. So it just tends to be a lighter-weight process. Typically, we have at least two GPs take a look [whereas] if we’re doing an A and above, you want to kind of everybody in the vertical to be involved, and then, for the larger checks, everybody in the fund [is involved].

TC: What are some of the firm’s most successful seed investments?

MC: We’ve had some great ones. Slack was first money. Databricks was first money. I believe we had a seed check in Coinbase.

Pictured above: Casado at a TechCrunch Disrupt event in 2019.

News: Zeal banks $13M to offer employers a ‘build your own’ payroll product infrastructure

• August 27, 2021
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Enterprises use Zeal to pay large volumes of workers and keep payment data on their own native systems.

Embedded fintech company Zeal secured $13 million in Series A funding to continue developing its platform for building individualized payroll products.

Spark Capital led the Series A, with participation from Commerce Ventures and a group of individual investors, including Marqeta CEO Jason Gardner and CRO Omri Dahan, Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev, UltimateSoftware executives Mitch Dauerman and Bob Manne and Namely founder Matt Straz. The latest round now gives the company $14.6 million in total funding, which includes a $1.6 million seed round in 2020, CEO Kirti Shenoy told TechCrunch.

The Bay Area company’s origin was as Puzzl, a payment processing startup for the gig economy, founded in 2018 by Shenoy and CTO Pranab Krishnan. It was part of Y Combinator’s 2019 cohort. The pair had to pivot the company after needing to move some of its thousands of 1099 contractors to W2 employee status.

They went looking for payroll processors that could handle high volumes of payroll automatically, like ADP or Paycor, but found they didn’t match some of the capabilities Shenoy and Krishnan wanted, including to pay workers daily and customize earning components.

To ensure other companies didn’t run into the same problem, they decided to build a payroll API that enables their customers to build their own payroll products, even being able to pay their workers everyday. Traditionally, companies would layer together antiquated third-party payroll tools and spend millions of dollars on consulting fees. Zeal’s API tool modernizes the payroll process and takes on the payroll liability while managing the back-end payment logistics, Shenoy said.

Currently, enterprises use Zeal to pay large volumes of workers and keep payment data on their own native systems, while software platforms that sell business-to-business services use Zeal to build their own payroll product to sell to their customers.

“Our mission is to touch every American paycheck with our tax and payment technology, ensuring that American employees are paid correctly and efficiently,” Krishnan said.

And that is a complex goal: there are 200 million American employees, over $8.8 trillion of payroll is processed annually in the U.S. and the country’s 11,000 tax jurisdictions produce over 25,000 income tax code changes a year.

Meanwhile, Shenoy cited IRS data that showed more than 40% of small and medium businesses pay at least one payroll penalty per year. That was one of the drivers for Zeal’s latest product, the Abacus gross-to-net calculator, which payroll companies can use to ensure they are compliant in paying their income taxes.

The co-founders intend to use the new funding to build out their team and strengthen compliance measures to ensure its track record with enterprises.

“We are starting to win more enterprise deals and moving millions of dollars each day,” Shenoy said. “This has been a legacy space for so long, so companies want to work with a provider to move fast.”

Shenoy predicts that more companies will shift to hyper-customized experiences in the next five to 10 years. Whereas the default was a company like ADP, companies will want to control their own data and build products so their customers can do everything payroll-related from one platform.

As part of the investment, Spark Capital’s partner Natalie Sandman has joined Zeal’s board of directors. She previously invested in other embedded fintech companies like Affirm and Marqeta and thinks there are new experiences in the sector that APIs can unlock.

Sandman felt the payroll-building pain points herself when she worked at Zenefits. At the time, the company was trying to do the same thing, but there were no APIs to connect with. There were all of these spreadsheets to transfer data, but one wrong deduction would trickle down and cause a tax penalty.

Shenoy and Krishnan are both “customer-obsessed,” she said, and are balancing speed with thoughtfulness when it comes to understanding how their customers want to build payroll products.

She is seeing a macro shift to audience-driven human resources where bringing new employees online will mean embedding them into products that will be more valuable versus the traditional spreadsheet.

“To me, it is a no-brainer that APIs provide flexibility in the way wages and deductions need to be made,” Sandman said. “You can lose trust in your employer. Payroll is at the deepest trust point and where you want transparency and a robust solution to solve that need.”

News: New Zealand-based Imagr thinks camera-based AI is the future of shopping trolleys

• August 27, 2021
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When it comes to contactless, automated supermarket shopping, Imagr is backing a vision-based approach. But unlike Amazon Go stores, which use cameras and sensors to monitor the shopper as they walk in and out without scanning or paying at checkout, this New Zealand-based company thinks the only images that should be captured and analyzed are

When it comes to contactless, automated supermarket shopping, Imagr is backing a vision-based approach. But unlike Amazon Go stores, which use cameras and sensors to monitor the shopper as they walk in and out without scanning or paying at checkout, this New Zealand-based company thinks the only images that should be captured and analyzed are those of products going into a shopping cart.

The early-stage startup has invented tech that attaches to the trolley and uses cameras to detect and label products, adding them to a virtual cart where shoppers can checkout without ever interacting with a human or waiting in a line. 

The contactless shopping space has been growing slowly for years, but more recently it has seen a boost in the pandemic era, where the less we share air with another human, the better. The value of transactions processed by frictionless checkout technology is estimated to reach $387 billion by 2025, according to a 2020 study from Juniper Research.

“With Covid, I think what you probably saw was a huge rush on supermarkets that really exposed a number of things retailers weren’t prepared for,” Will Chomley, CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch. “It also really highlighted the fact that the end user wanted a solution that was completely frictionless, and it demonstrated that their infrastructure was not capable of handling that sort of thing. But it also showed that as staff started to refuse to turn up to work because they didn’t want to catch it, retailers needed solutions to be able to run these stores on less staff.”

Amazon Go’s automated convenience stores are expanding internationally, which Chomley says scares retailers who fear competition from the tech giant. At the same time, countries around the world are looking at going cashless, making this a ripe moment to focus on the frictionless checkout space. 

Imagr, which recently had a pop-up shop in London to demonstrate its tech, is currently raising its Series A after it raised $9.5 million in seed funding at the end of November 2019 in a round led by Toshiba Tec. Chomley says Imagr has raised a total of $12.5 million to date, and as it raises its next round, is in the market for strategic partners rather than just VC money. The company says the tech is there, it just needs to scale. 

The startup’s original smart shopping carts, complete with a halo on top that houses cameras and lights to detect products going in and out of the cart, can be seen in Japan’s 150 H2O Retailing stores, and the company says it has one contract due to go live this year in the U.K., as well as another two in the works and some other plans in Europe that can’t yet be confirmed publicly. 

The haloed version of the shopping cart is not, however, the end product for Imagr. The plan is to roll out a more modular version by Q4, where instead of an entire cart, you get three pieces of hardware that attach to a standard cart. Each module will have its own set of lights and cameras, as well as a microprocessor where data is analyzed then sent up into the cloud and back to the shopper’s app and virtual cart with less than one second latency. Chloe Lamb, brand and communications lead, says Imagr has built a prototype that’s currently for sale. 

Lamb also said the modular method just makes more sense when scaling. Smart carts can cost retailers between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit and require a lot of maintenance compared to simple shopping carts, which tend to cost retailers under $100 and will get beat up for years before being replaced. Amazon’s walk out tech is expected to cost retailers upwards of $1 million for installation and hardware, and that doesn’t include maintenance over time. Currently, the full system that it’s piloting is about $75,000 and includes 10 carts, an imaging station, a server station to run the system, full integration into a customer-facing store and Imagr support over the duration of the pilot. Imagr didn’t share how much its current model of trolleys cost versus its modular system, but says it’ll be a cheaper endeavor.

Shopic, an Israeli smart trolley company, also has a smaller piece of hardware that attaches to a cart, but the difference is it relies on a barcode scanner rather than computer vision.

“They have the hardware, but we have the software,” said Lamb. “Our vision/AI is better. Like, we’ve cracked the hardest part of it and it’s the AI, and for us it’s been figuring out how we put that in a smaller vessel.” 

Shopic and Amazon aren’t the only other hopefuls in this space. Standard Cognition has copied Amazon’s style of walkout tech to distribute to stores. Earlier this year, the San Francisco-based company, which is now valued at $1 billion, raised $150 million in a Series C and announced a partnership with Circle K, the convenience store chain owned by Alimentation Couch-Tard Inc.

Aside from being kind of creepy – the all-seeing cameras may be trained on what you are buying but also are scanning the store, and you, at large – Lamb says the walkout tech that Standard is offering is incredibly expensive and not at all scalable in the short term. 

“You couldn’t overhead that,” said Lamb. “The maintenance alone, having to have AI engineers on site, plus the storage capacity needed for all the data you collect. The server room you would need would be intense.” 

Running the Imagr system in one store uses the same amount of data as streaming HD Netflix for a day, the company said. 

“Shopping carts just made sense to me because everyone already used carts or baskets, they were what retailers were comfortable buying and what users were comfortable using,” said Chomley. “It didn’t require a huge overhaul of the systems. It’s the method of least disruption, faster payback period, better customer experience and no privacy concerns.”

And while it’s within the realm of possibility that the approach of above-head tech gets cheaper over time, it’s not as quick or clear of a path to market, claimed Chomley. 

“Amazon proved the market; it proved that the end user wants something frictionless, and I think that’s really healthy for our business,” said Chomley. “But what Amazon did is they built a supermarket for the technology, whereas we have built technology for a supermarket. And that’s where retailers will say we can’t process 1.6 terabytes of information every second. We need something that fits into our store and our operations.”

As items go into Imagr’s shopping cart, they appear in the app’s virtual cart.

Lamb says many retailers look at Imagr as an elevation from the scan-and-shop because it’s not too far off in terms of pricing, but the difference is retailers get to see what’s in the cart. It’s a lot harder to shoplift by pretending to scan an item when the cart is watching and making a record of what goes in and out.

Imagr offers a white label solution for retailers that they can own, operate and scale themselves. This means the retailer would own all the hardware, software and the white labeled app. Imagr has a shared licensing agreement for data with retailers because it needs to get smarter and keep training its models. Lamb said that Imagr hopes to offer inventory analytics in the future to help retailers avoid inventory distortion. 

“Our intention would be to essentially provide them the ability to track everything that comes in and out,” said Lamb. “In a perfect world, like, I don’t know all the coke sells out, and it pings one of the retail workers in the store and she’s got to restock, shelf 7A. That’s what we’re working towards. We don’t have a hard solution for it but there’s definitely demand for that.”

News: Atlassian is bringing new insights to its Jira Software Cloud

• August 27, 2021
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DevOps teams are generally trying to constantly improve themselves, so they can deliver software more quickly and reliably, but often they lack the insights needed to actually make that progress. Atlassian is now offering users of its Jira Software Cloud platform a series of new capabilities that provide data-driven insights into the development process. Jira

DevOps teams are generally trying to constantly improve themselves, so they can deliver software more quickly and reliably, but often they lack the insights needed to actually make that progress.

Atlassian is now offering users of its Jira Software Cloud platform a series of new capabilities that provide data-driven insights into the development process. Jira is a popular issue and project tracking technology and has included features that help developers and their teams to understand where they are in their workflow. 

The new insights go a step beyond what Jira has traditionally provided to its users, with specific insights into different aspects of an agile software development approach. The goal with the new insights is to help organizations better understand what they’re doing right and where development teams can improve, which ultimately results in improved overall efficiency.

“Data is everywhere, but at the same time the insights and the understanding of the actions that you can take are kind of nowhere,” Megan Cook, head of product for Jira Software told TechCrunch. “It’s hard to work smarter in that sense and that’s the big problem that we’re really looking at tackling.” 

Cook explained that development teams need access to metrics on their own progress, so they can make smarter data-driven decisions based on what’s happening in real time. She noted that one of the big shifts that Atlassian is now doing with Jira Cloud is bringing data from all the different development tracking tools together into one place where those teams can make decisions.

One example of the insights that Jira Cloud now provides to users is related to sprint commitments. In the agile software development approach, software is developed in what are known as “sprints” as developers race to complete a certain task. With the sprint commitment insight capability, the idea is to help teams understand what amount of work they can handle, based on past performance. The business goal is to help better understand if a team is over- or under-committing to a given sprint.

Another example is providing an issue type breakdown. Cook explained that the way each team can categorize issues can be very personalized. The categories can include different types of projects, such as whether a project is dealing with fixing bugs and technical debt, or if it’s an innovation or growth product, or just an incremental feature update. With the issue type breakdown insight there is a visualization to help teams better understand what types of issues and projects they are working on in a more intuitive approach than before. Cook explained that users could have identified the different issues before via a search functionality, but she emphasized the new insights approach is far easier.

Image Credits: Atlassian

In the coming weeks, Cook said that the company will be adding a few additional insights, including the sprint burndown insight. In the agile software development approach, the burndown is about figuring out what’s left to finish in a sprint. The sprint burndown insight will provide a visual indicator of how much work is left to be done as well as how likely it is that the work will be completed within an allocated amount of time.

Atlassian’s approach to enabling developer teams to work more efficiently is one of the primary values that the company has been building for years, and it has resulted in strong growth overall. Atlassian reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2021 revenue of $560 million, up 30% year-over-year gain on the strength of its developer collaboration and management tools.

News: Waymo will stop selling its self-driving LiDAR sensors to other companies

• August 27, 2021
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Just months after a CEO shakeup, Waymo is officially halting sales of its custom sensors to third parties. Waymo added that it’s now focusing on deploying its Waymo Driver tech.

News: China proposes strict control of algorithms

• August 27, 2021
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China is not done with curbing the influence local internet services have assumed in the world’s largest populous market. Following a widening series of regulatory crackdowns in recent months, the nation on Friday issued draft guidelines on regulating the algorithms firms run to make recommendations to users. In a 30-point draft guidelines published on Friday,

China is not done with curbing the influence local internet services have assumed in the world’s largest populous market. Following a widening series of regulatory crackdowns in recent months, the nation on Friday issued draft guidelines on regulating the algorithms firms run to make recommendations to users.

In a 30-point draft guidelines published on Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) proposed forbidding companies from deploying algorithms that “encourage addiction or high consumption” and endanger national security or disrupt the public order.

The services must abide by business ethics and principles of fairness and their algorithms must not be used to create fake user accounts or create other false impressions, said the guidelines from the internet watchdog, which reports to a central leadership group chaired by President Xi Jinping. The watchdog said it will be taking public feedback on the new guidelines for a month (until September 26).

The guidelines also propose that users should be provided with the ability to easily turn off algorithm recommendations. Algorithm providers who have the power to influence public opinion or mobilize the citizens need to get an approval from the CAC.

Friday’s proposal comes at a time when Beijing is increasingly targeting companies for the way they have handled consumer data and the monopolistic positions they have assumed in the nation.

Earlier this year, Beijing-backed China Consumers Association said local internet companies had been “bullying” users into purchases and promotions and undermining their privacy rights.

Beijing’s recent data-security crackdown and tightening regulations around tutor services have spooked investors and wiped hundreds of billions of dollars.

Friday’s guidelines appear to target ByteDance, Alibaba Group, Tencent, and Didi and other companies whose services are built on top of proprietary algorithms. Shares of Alibaba and Tencent fell slightly on the news.

In recent years, several governments including those in the U.S. and India have attempted — to little to no success — to get better clarity on how these big tech companies’ algorithms work and put checks in place to prevent misuse.

News: KKR to acquire New Zealand bus company Ritchies Transport at value of $347M

• August 27, 2021
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Global investment firm KKR has plans to acquire a New Zealand bus and coach company with an 86-year heritage, Ritchies Transport. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the circumstances say the deal values Ritchies at over $347 million ($500 million NZD). On Thursday, the two companies signed the definitive

Global investment firm KKR has plans to acquire a New Zealand bus and coach company with an 86-year heritage, Ritchies Transport. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the circumstances say the deal values Ritchies at over $347 million ($500 million NZD).

On Thursday, the two companies signed the definitive agreements under which KKR will acquire Ritchies, marking KKR’s first infrastructure investment in New Zealand. KKR said acquiring the bus company, which currently has a fleet of more than 1,600 vehicles and 42 depots that operate across the country, will help it advance its mission “to better connect local communities, support the country’s expanding public transport network and promote greener transportation solutions.”

New Zealand is still largely an ICE-fueled nation, but the country has plans to electrify. The government now requires all of its agencies and ministries to electrify fleets within the next five years, and aims to decarbonize public transport, which mainly relies on buses, entirely by 2035. Kiwi Bus Builders, a New Zealand manufacturer, recently assembled a range of ADL electric buses which have made it to Auckland’s city streets.

Director on KKR’s infrastructure team Andrew Jennings said in a statement that Ritchies buses will represent “a highly visible opportunity to encourage the adoption of zero-emissions technology” as New Zealand continues to see “demand for high quality, greener public transport solutions.”

KKR told TechCrunch that it does have a plan to help Ritchies electrify its fleet, and that the firm has made advancements globally across areas related to sustainable transportation, and it will be leveraging those experiences to advance the country as it moves towards zero emissions.

The investment comes from KKR’s Asia Pacific Infrastructure Fund. The transaction is still conditional on OIO approval, which KKR says is expected within four to five months. Once the deal is completed, the Ritchie family will continue to hold a stake in the company, and Andrew Ritchie, current director of operations, will be appointed as CEO of the company as Glenn Ritchie, the current CEO, retires.

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News: Indiagold raises $12 million for its gold-focused digital alternative credit platform

• August 27, 2021
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India has a fascination for gold. The households in the South Asian market are estimated to have a stash of over 25,000 tons of the precious metal, whose value today is about half of the country’s nominal GDP. But much of this gold has been sitting idly in lockers in big metal wardrobes for generations.

India has a fascination for gold. The households in the South Asian market are estimated to have a stash of over 25,000 tons of the precious metal, whose value today is about half of the country’s nominal GDP. But much of this gold has been sitting idly in lockers in big metal wardrobes for generations.

For generations, Indians across the socio-economic spectrum have preferred to stash their savings — or at least a part of it — in the form of gold. In fact, such is the demand for gold in India — Indians stockpile more gold than citizens in any other country — that the South Asian nation is also one of the world’s largest importers of this precious metal.

They use this gold not only as a savings instrument, which protects them from the ups-and-downs of the financial market, but also as an asset against which they could get credit. However, selling off your gold in the form of jewelry or otherwise has a stigma attached to it — one is so broke that they had to pawn off their last asset of financial security.

The other challenge with keeping gold in the house is that it’s not safe.

Indiagold, a young startup that is attempting to help people put this gold to use, said on Friday it has raised $12 million in its Series A funding. The new financing round was led by Prosus’ PayU — which typically only backs later stage deals — and Falcon’s Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) fund. Better Tomorrow Ventures, 3one4 Capital, Rainmatter Capital and existing investor Leo Capital also participated in the round.

Indiagold — founded by Nitin Misra and Deepak Abbot, two former executives of Paytm — is building a gold-focused digital alternative credit platform. The startup is using gold to determine the credit worthiness of its customers, and providing APIs to banks and other lenders who are trying to reach this untapped market.

The startup today has two major offerings: It has made it very easy and affordable for people to keep their gold in a safe locker; and it’s enabled them the option to take a loan against their gold reserves.

Once a user has signed about Indiagold, the startup’s agents come to their house, inspect and weigh the gold and put it in a tamper-proof bag, which also has a RFID sticker attached to it. Then they put the bag in a steel box, which the customer locks with their fingerprint, and the agent livestreams their journey as they leave the premises to the designated vault location.

The idea is to make it very simple for customers to put their gold in a locker. Traditionally, because of the emotional stigma attached to the yellow metal, most people have hesitated to do anything with the gold jewelry they own. When they engage with the agent who is locking the gold with their biometric in front of them and showing them the live feed of the journey to the safe locker, a trust is established.

“This whole business is built around trust,” said Gupta in an interview with TechCrunch. “Unlike a norm in some circles of the startup ecosystem where you are expected to break things and move fast, we have to spend as much time with customers to build that trust,” he said.

Indiagold also offers their locker at a much affordable price — just a few dollars a year, as opposed to hundreds taken by banks. And unlike banks, Indiagold backs the customers’ gold by insurance.

Customers have access to Indiagold app where they can see realtime value of the gold items they have put in the locker. This is when the startup’s second offering kicks in. In the event these customers need to take a loan, the startup facilitates a line of credit to them within 30 seconds.

Tapping on gold as a loan collateral is a very large market in India. “Despite the large gold reserves held by Indian household, the gold loan market has barely scratched the surface. The gold collateral (166 tons) held by Muthoot Finance is less than 1% of the estimated gold reserves in Indian households (~25k tons). This is because gold is seen as a family heirloom and passed along generations,” analysts at Bernstein wrote in a report to clients earlier this year.

If the changing consumer behavior wasn’t a big enough task already, Indiagold this year has grappled with several other challenges. The devastating second wave of the coronavirus wiped 70% of its business within days, said Misra and Abbot. “We have gone through a lot in this short journey,” Misra recalled.

But by first half of this month, business had climbed to an all-time peak, he said.

“Indiagold’s unique doorstep gold loan and gold locker products not only offer unparalleled customer experience but also enable it to offer credit at more affordable rates. The traction Indiagold has seen in a short time is a testament to its superior product capabilities and the deep experience of its pedigreed founders. We believe the gold loan market is ripe for disruption and are thrilled to back Indiagold’s founders,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder of Falcon Edge Capital, in a statement.

The startup, which is currently operational in the National Capital Region and Indore, plans to expand to 10 cities by the end of the financial year. The duo founders said they are also broadening their product offerings. In a statement, PayU said it will explore ways to collaborate with Indiagold on some product offerings.

A handful of startups are beginning to explore the gold opportunities in the country. Bangalore-based Jar is helping young users start their journey of savings by investing in digital gold.

News: Apple will now let App Store developers talk to their customers about buying direct

• August 27, 2021
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Apple announced today it has reached a proposed settlement (embedded below) in a lawsuit filed against it by developers in the United States. The agreement, which is still pending court approval, includes a few changes, the biggest one being that developers will be able to share information on how to pay for purchases outside of

Apple announced today it has reached a proposed settlement (embedded below) in a lawsuit filed against it by developers in the United States. The agreement, which is still pending court approval, includes a few changes, the biggest one being that developers will be able to share information on how to pay for purchases outside of their iOS app or the App Store—which means they can tell customers about payment options that aren’t subject to Apple commissions. The settlement also includes more pricing tiers and a new transparency report about the app review process.

The class-action lawsuit was filed against Apple in 2019 by app developers Donald Cameron and Illinois Pure Sweat Basketball, who said the company engaged in anticompetitive practices by only allowing the downloading of iPhone apps through its App Store.

In today’s announcement, Apple said it is “clarifying that developers can use communications, such as emails, to share information about payment methods outside of their iOS app. As always, developers will not pay Apple a commission on any purchases taking place outside of their app or the App Stores.”

This would allow developers to communicate with customers by email and “other communication services,” which was difficult to do under the App Store’s rules, which forbid developers from using contact information obtained within an app to contact users outside of the app. The settlement would lift this rule for all app categories, enabling developers to tell consenting users about payment methods that avoid Apple’s commissions.

In terms of pricing tiers, Apple said it will expand the number of price points available to developers from fewer than 100 to more than 500. It also agreed to publish a new annual transparency report that will share information about the app review process, including how many apps are rejected, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, “objective data regarding search queries and results,” and the number of apps removed from the App Store.

The company also said it will create a new fund for qualifying developers in America who earned $1 million or less through the U.S. App Store, which includes 99% of developers in America. Hagens Berman, one of the law firms representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the fund will be $100 million, with payments ranging from $250 to $30,000.

Cameron et al v. Apple Inc. proposed settlement by TechCrunch on Scribd

News: Cruise is buying solar energy from California farmers to power its electric, self-driving fleet

• August 26, 2021
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Cruise, the self-driving car company under General Motors, has launched a new initiative called Farm to Fleet that will allow the company to source solar power from farms in California’s Central Valley. The San Francisco Chronicle was the first to report the news that Cruise is directly purchasing renewable energy credits from Sundale Vineyards and

Cruise, the self-driving car company under General Motors, has launched a new initiative called Farm to Fleet that will allow the company to source solar power from farms in California’s Central Valley. The San Francisco Chronicle was the first to report the news that Cruise is directly purchasing renewable energy credits from Sundale Vineyards and Moonlight Companies to help power its fleet of all-electric autonomous vehicles in San Francisco.

Cruise recently secured a permit to shuttle passengers in its test vehicles in San Francisco without a human safety operator behind the wheel. The company is also ramping up its march to commercialization with a recent $5 billion line of credit from GM Financial to pay for hundreds of electric and autonomous Origin vehicles. While this partnership with California farmers is undoubtedly a boon to the state’s work in progressing renewable energies while also providing jobs and financial opportunities to local businesses, Cruise isn’t running a charity here.

The California Independent System Operator has been soliciting power producers across western United States to sell more megawatts to the state this summer in anticipation of heat waves that will boost electricity demand and potentially cause blackouts. Power supplies are lower than expected already due to droughts, outages and delays in bringing new energy generation sources to the grid, causing reduced hydroelectric generation. To ensure California’s grid can handle the massive increase in fleet size Cruise is planning, it seems that the company has no choice but to find creative ways to bolster the grid. Cruise, however, is holding firm that it’s got loftier goals than securing the energy from whatever sources available.

“This is entirely about us doing the right thing for our cities and communities and fundamentally transforming transportation for the better,” Ray Wert, a Cruise spokesperson, told TechCrunch.

With droughts continuing to plague California farmers, converting farmland to solar farms is a potential way to help the state meet its climate change targets, according to a report from environmental nonprofit Nature Conservancy. Which is why Cruise saw the logic in approaching Central Valley farmers now.

“Farm to Fleet is a vehicle to rapidly reduce urban transportation emissions while generating new revenue for California’s farmers leading in renewable energy,” said Rob Grant, Cruise’s vice president of social affairs and global impact, in a blog post.

Cruise is paying negotiated contract rates with the farms through its clean energy partner, BTR Energy. The company isn’t disclosing costs, but says it’s paying no more or less than what it would pay for using other forms of renewable energy credits (RECs). RECs are produced when a renewable energy source generates one megawatt-hour of electricity and passes it on to the grid. According to Cruise, Sundale has installed 2 megawatts of solar capacity to power their 200,000 square footage of cold storage, and Moonlight has installed a combined 3.9 MW of solar arrays and two battery storage system for its sorting and storage facilities. So when Cruise buys credits from these farms, it’s able to say that a specific amount of its electricity use came from a renewable source. RECs are unique and tracked, so it’s clear where they came from, what kind of energy they used and where they went. Cruise did not share how many RECs it plans to purchase from the farms, but says it will be enough to power its San Francisco fleet.

“While the solar power still flows through the same grid, Cruise purchases and then ultimately ‘retires’ the renewable energy credits generated by the solar panels at the farms,” said Wert. “Through data that we submit to the California Air Resources Board quarterly, we retire a number of RECs equivalent to the amount of electricity we used to charge our vehicles.”

Wert says using fully renewable power is actually profitable for Cruise in California due to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is designed to decrease the carbon intensity of transportation fuels in the state and provide more low-carbon alternatives. Cruise owns and operates all of its own EV charging ports, so it’s able to generate credits based on the carbon intensity score of the electricity and amount of energy delivered. Cruise can then sell its credits to other companies seeking to reduce their footprints and comply with regulations. 

Aside from practicalities, Cruise is aiming to set a standard for the industry and create demand for renewable energy, thus incentivizing more people and businesses to create it. 

“Transportation is responsible for over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, which is why we announced our Clean Mile Challenge in February, where we challenged the rest of the AV industry to report how many miles they’re driving on renewable energy every year,” said Wert. “We’re hoping that others follow our lead.”