India’s Zomato raises $62 million from Temasek

By Manish Singh

Indian food delivery startup Zomato has raised $62 million from Temasek, resuming a financing round that it originally expected to close in January this year.

Singapore’s state investment arm Temasek financed the capital through its unit MacRitchie Investments, a regulatory filing showed. Business intelligence firm Tofler shared the filing with TechCrunch.

A Zomato spokesperson in India did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Zomato kickstarted its new financing round about a year ago, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The company has met with several investors but most talks have not materialized.

The food delivery startup, which has improved its financial performance in recent quarters despite the coronavirus outbreak, announced in January that Ant Financial had committed to provide it with $150 million.

But Ant Financial has yet to deliver two-thirds of the committed capital, Zomato investor Info Edge said in late July. In its IPO prospectus late last month, Ant Financial cited a regulatory change in India as the reason for it not being able to invest in Zomato. (It’s very common for investors to finance their committed capital to a startup in several tranches.)

In April this year, India made a change to …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

Cosmose, a platform that analyzes foot traffic in physical stores, gets $15 million Series A

By Catherine Shu

Cosmose tracks foot traffic in brick-and-mortar stores to help predict customer behavior, providing data that is increasingly important as companies try to weather COVID-19′s economic impact. Today the startup announced it has raised a $15 million Series A. The round was by Tiga Investments, with participation from returning investors OTB Ventures and TDJ Pitango, who co-led Cosmose’s seed round last year.

The company said its valuation is now more than $100 million. Most of the stores it currently serves are in China and Japan, and its clients include companies like Walmart, Marriott, Samsung, and LVMH.

As companies try to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, founder and chief executive officer Miron Mironiuk said Cosmose’s platform has helped clients make decisions about when to reopen stores and what kind of inventory to stock, and how to increase revenue.

For example, ‘some shops wanted to connect with customers who used to shop in their physical locations and encourage them to buy online,” he said. “Hotels in Japan were focused on promoting their in-house restaurants to local residents to make up for the lost revenue.” The company is also working with Boston Consulting Group on a report called “COVID-19 …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

Presenting TechCrunch Disrupt’s Asia sessions

By Catherine Shu

As you know by now, Disrupt is going completely virtual for its 10th anniversary. TechCrunch’s Asia team (me, Rita Liao and Manish Singh) will miss seeing everyone in Moscone Center, but this will be the most accessible Disrupt ever, and we are excited to bring a full roster of Asia-focused sessions to its agenda for the first time. The sessions, with people from some of Asia’s most influential tech companies, startups and investment firms, will be broadcast during the day in this part of the world, followed by live Q&A sessions. And of course, all Disrupt attendees will get full access to everything TechCrunch’s team has spent months working to bring online: the Disrupt and Extra Crunch stages, virtual networking at CrunchMatch and Digital Startup Alley.

Many of the most important recent startup trends and tech stories have come from Asia, or were driven by Asian companies. The continent is home to several of the world’s most complex and dynamic markets: China, India and Indonesia, to name just some of the biggest ones.

Available at a time that works best for you, catch these sessions Sept 15-18th from 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM HKT. Immediately after each …read more

Source: Tech Crunch