Digital banking solutions provider Meniga closes additional €10M investment
By Steve O’Hear
Meniga, the London fintech that provides digital banking technology to leading banks, has closed €10 million in additional funding.
The round is led by Velocity Capital and Frumtak Ventures. Also participating are Industrifonden, the U.K. Government’s Future Fund and existing customers UniCredit, Swedbank, Groupe BPCE and Íslandsbanki.
Meniga says the funding will be used for continued investment in R&D, and in particular further development of green banking products — building on its carbon spending insights product. In addition, the fintech will bolster its sales and service teams.
Headquartered in London but with additional offices in Reykjavik, Stockholm, Warsaw, Singapore and Barcelona, Meniga’s digital banking solutions help banks (and other fintechs) use personal finance data to innovate in their online and mobile offerings.
Its various products include a software layer that bridges the gap between a bank’s legacy tech infrastructure and a modern API, making it easier to build consumer-friendly digital banking experiences. The product suite spans data aggregation technologies, personal and business finance management solutions, cash-back rewards and transaction-based carbon insights.
US regulators need to catch up with Europe on fintech innovation
<iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="“US regulators need to catch up with Europe on fintech innovation ” — TechCrunch" src="https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/us-regulators-need-to-catch-up-with-europe-on-fintech-innovation/embed/#?secret=uOHpzMz1mN" data-secret="uOHpzMz1mN" width="800" …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Indian social network Public App raises $41 million
By Manish Singh
Public App, a location-based social network that connects individuals to people in their vicinity, has raised $41 million in a new round, just six months after securing $35 million as the hyper-local Indian startup looks to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market.
A91 Partners led the new round in Public App, valuing the Indian startup at over $250 million (more than double since its last fundraise). The Indian startup, which also operates popular news aggregator app InShorts, said some of its existing investors also participated in the round but did not identify them. Public App counts Lee Fixel’s Addition, SIG, and Tanglin Venture Partners among its investors. (The startup didn’t specify the name of the new round.)
Azhar Iqubal, founder and chief executive of Public App, said the new social network has amassed over 50 million users already and he aims to expand it outside the country eventually. The app, launched in April 2019, has already attracted individuals such as politicians and several major firms such as Amazon, HDFC Bank, and GSK that are using Public App to reach their audience.
“Public has continued to maintain best in class retention and engagement metrics while scaling. We look …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Jumio raises $150M as its all-in-one ID authentication platform crosses 300M verified identities
Digital identity services — used as a key link between organizations to verify that you are who you say you are online and individuals logging into those services — have come into their own in this past year. The pandemic has precipitated a shift where many services we might have used in person are now accessible via the web and apps, but at the same time, the amount of cybercrime aimed at abusing that environment is on the rise, and both trends fuel a stronger demand for ID verification tools. Now, one of the companies that provides digital identity products is announcing a large round of funding, underscoring both the market size and its ambitions to be a central player in that space.
Jumio, which has built a platform that provides a variety of digital identity tools and technology — using biometrics, machine learning, computer vision, big data, and more to run checks on ID documents, log-ins, suspicious financial activity, prevent identity theft and more — has closed a $150 million round of funding, money that it will use to build more tools available on its platform, and to double down on customer growth after a big year …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Next Billion Users head Caesar Sengupta is leaving Google
By Manish Singh
Caesar Sengupta, the long-time head of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, is leaving the company next month, he said Monday. Sengupta, who additionally also led the company’s payments business in the past three years, is leaving the firm after nearly 15 years.
A regular fixture at Google’s events in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, Sengupta (pictured above) is best known outside the company for leading the company’s Next Billion Users unit, an initiative to make internet and services more accessible to users in developing markets.
As part of Next Billion Users initiative, Google brought internet connectivity to hundreds of railway stations and other public places in India and other markets (then shut down Station), launched Google Pay in India (which unlike Google Pay in the U.S., wasn’t developed atop credit cards) and built several products such as Android Go, Datally, Kormo Jobs and the Files apps.
Prior to Next Billion Users unit, Sengupta served as VP and Product Lead at ChromeOS, the company’s desktop operating system that powers Chromebooks.
“After 15 years with Google, Caesar Sengupta has made a personal decision to leave the company and start something entrepreneurial outside of Google. Through his time at Google, Caesar has …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Tech companies predict the (economic) future
By Alex Wilhelm
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here.
Earnings season is coming to a close, with public tech companies wrapping up their Q4 and 2020 disclosures. We don’t care too much about the bigger players’ results here at TechCrunch, but smaller tech companies we knew when they were wee startups can provide startup-related data points worth digesting. So, each quarter The Exchange spends time chatting with a host of CEOs and CFOs, trying to figure what’s going on so that we can relay the information to private companies.
Sometimes it’s useful, as our chat with recent fintech IPO Upstart proved after we got to noodle with the company about rising acceptance of AI in the conservative banking industry.
This week we caught up with Yext CEO Howard Lerman and Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader. Yext builds data products for small businesses, and is betting its future on search products. Smartsheet is a software company that works in the collaboration, no-code and future-of-work spaces.
They are …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Daily Crunch: Facebook shows off a wrist-based interface
By Anthony Ha
Facebook develops a new way to interact with AR, Uber’s facial recognition policy faces scrutiny and SpaceX’s Starship rocket booster hits a major milestone. This is your Daily Crunch for March 19, 2021.
The big story: Facebook shows off wrist-based interface
This project comes out of Facebook Reality Labs and is supposed to present an alternative computer interface on your wrist, with electromyography sensors to interpret motor nerve signals.
In a blog post, Facebook said a wrist-based device “could reasonably fit into everyday life and social contexts,” while allowing the company to “bring the rich control capabilities of your hands into AR, enabling intuitive, powerful and satisfying interaction.”
Facebook identifies this as a research prototype, so don’t expect it to turn into a commercial product anytime soon. But it’s still suggestive, particularly given the company’s sometimes-surprising hardware strategy and rumors that it might be working on an Apple Watch competitor.
The tech giants
India asks court to block WhatsApp’s policy update, says new change violates laws — The Indian government alleged on Friday that WhatsApp’s planned privacy update violates local laws on several counts.
Uber under pressure over facial recognition checks for drivers — Uber’s use of facial recognition technology for a driver identity …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Backed by YC, Vendease is building Amazon Prime for restaurants in Africa
For small and mid-sized restaurants in Nigeria and most of Africa, food procurement can be a complex process to manage. The system is such that a business can easily run out of money or have considerable savings. Most restaurants don’t have access to deal directly with farms to get better deals because they lack the staffing to chase them. Besides, they also don’t have the aggregation pull as single entities to directly get good value from the farms.
Nigerian startup Vendease solves this problem by building a marketplace that allows restaurants to buy directly from farms and food manufacturers.
The company was founded by Gatumi Aliyu, Olumide Fayankin, Tunde Kara and Wale Oyepeju. The idea for Vendease came when founders who have been friends for more than five years noticed their favorite restaurants in cities like Lagos and Accra shutting down. Inquisitive, they asked the owners who were acquaintances why, and the problems boiled down to the unreliable and expensive nature of food procurement in the cities.
Some months later they saw a hotel manager openly complain to a vendor about the unsteady supply of produce the hotel was getting. It sparked an idea in the founders’ minds.
The
…read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Fulfilment startup Cubyn raises €35M to expand across Europe
By Steve O’Hear
Cubyn, the Paris-based logistics startup that lets e-merchants outsource fulfilment and delivery logistics, has raised another €35 million in funding.
The round is led by Eurazeo and Bpifrance Large Venture, with participation from First Bridge Ventures and Fuse Venture Partners. Existing backers DN Capital, 360 Capital, Bpifrance Smart Cities fund and BNP Paribas Développement followed on.
Cubyn says it will use the new funding to double its team of 85 to more than 170 employees by the end of 2021, and deploy its service more internationally. First up is Spain and Portugal (launching next month), followed by Italy, the U.K. and Germany.
Impressively, the company will open a 25,000 square meter “automated” facility in the Paris area in the coming months as it looks to drive down costs and delivery times.
Originally offering pickup and delivery only, 18 months ago, shortly after Cubyn raised €12 million in Series B funding, the company launched “Cubyn Fulfilment,” seeing it enter fulfilment too.
Described at the time as a fully integrated solution that …read more
Source: Tech Crunch
Nigeria’s Plentywaka gets backing from Techstars, plans expansion to Canada
Plentywaka, a Nigerian bus-booking platform, today announced that it has been accepted into the Techstars Toronto accelerator program.
It will join nine other startups in the class of 2021 and secure funding from the accelerator as it sets its sights on global expansion.
The Lagos-based company, founded by Onyeka Akumah, Johnny Ena, John Shaibu and Afolabi Oluseyi, operates an ‘Uber-for-buses’ model connecting commuters with buses via an app.
Plentywaka launched in September 2019, and in the first two months, moved an average of six people daily, according to CEO Akumah. By its sixth month, this number increased to about 1,500 daily, and the company completed more than 100,000 rides within that timeframe.
Then in March 2020, the pandemic-induced lockdown hit businesses across Lagos and other states within Nigeria. Due to the nature of its business, Plentywaka had to make a slight pivot and began transporting essential services across Lagos, especially food items. It also opened a logistics service.
As the lockdown eased across the city and commuting resumed, the company moved 60% capacity while the operational cost remained the same. Although growth was steady and picking up, the company started seeking external investment. It
received $300,000 pre-seed
from its parent
…read more
Source: Tech Crunch
SumUp, which helps businesses take card payments, raises $895M to double down on growth
SumUp, a London-based startup that helps businesses power revenues through card payments — by way of physical readers, online payments and invoices — is itself powering up in a big way. Today it announced funding of €750 million (around $895 million at today’s rates), money that it will be using to continue expanding its business — specifically, for acquisitions; to launch in new markets in Europe, Latin America and Asia; and to build out the suite of services that it provides to businesses. The company is already active in 33 countries (most recently Chile, Colombia, and Romania) and has some 3 million businesses as customers.
The funding is coming from Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Bain Capital Credit, Crestline, and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management. SumUp confirmed that the financing is coming in the form of debt, not equity, so there is no formal valuation of the company to disclose. To date, it’s one of the biggest financings, debt or otherwise, for any startup (that is, any privately-backed tech company) in the region.
Notably, Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital led a $371 million round of debt for the company in 2019.
Marc-Alexander Christ, one of SumUp’s co-founders (the …read more
Source: Tech Crunch