Fresh from a $10M round, Plan A launches SaaS tool for ESG reporting aimed at startups/VCs

Fresh from a $10M round, Plan A launches SaaS tool for ESG reporting aimed at startups/VCs

NEWS

With key ESG reporting regulations such as the EU Taxonomy and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) covering more than 75 percent of European companies, across the EU and the UK, the regulatory environment is evolving fast.

Non-financial data, such as carbon emissions, is catching up with financial reporting burdens. And it’s not just the Environmental (“E”), it’s also social factors (“S”) and corporate governance (“G”).

Now, Berlin-based Greentech startup Plan A, which recently raised a $10M Series A round – has developed a new SaaS tool to cover this ESG reporting in an automated fashion.

It says its integrated module “automates measurement, analysis, and reporting of ESG performance, providing a central data management and reporting platform.”

This idea is that sustainability managers, also within VCs, can now peer into the ESG rating of their subsidiaries, portfolio companies, and suppliers through the Plan A Platform, reducing reduces data collection and analysis efforts to less onerous levels.

Plan A recently closed its Series A financing round at the beginning of November, six months after its Seed funding in March.

It plans to expand the decarbonization tooling and Scope 3 calculations for various industries.

The Berlin-based Greentech will also continue its international expansion, so that the current locations in Berlin, Paris, and Munich will be followed by others in the coming year, including London.

Lubomila Jordanova, cofounder and CEO of Plan A, said: “Regulatory pressure is increasing. Investors, employees, and consumers are placing ever-growing importance on companies reporting their ESG impact and developing sustainable business models in line with their values. Our goal is to support them in this transformation process with innovative, digital tools.”

Maple VC locks down $16.5 million for its second seed-stage fund by waving the Canadian flag

Maple VC locks down $16.5 million for its second seed-stage fund by waving the Canadian flag

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Maple VC is based in San Francisco, but don’t let that fool you, says its founder, Andre Charoo. The young fund, which launched in 2016 with $1.2 million in capital commitments, just closed on $16.5 million in capital commitments for a second fund that promises to almost exclusively back savvy Canadian founders, no matter where they live today and no matter what they are building, as long as tech is at the core of their startup.

Says Charoo — a Toronto native who worked briefly at at the early photo-sharing app Color, spent a year helping Uber expand into Canada in 2011, then logged more than seven years as a VP with the hiring platform Hired as he got Maple VC off the ground — “I’m a generalist who specializes in backing founders with Canadian roots.”

It’s a marketing approach that manages to be both specific and broad, and it snagged the interest of an enviable group of investment firms that are among the new fund’s limited partners, including Tiger Global, Foundry Group, Recast Capital, Insight Partners and Plexo Capital. Promising early investments from Maple’s debut fund also helped meaningfully, says Charoo. We talked with him earlier today about some of those deals, what raising capital from his backers was like, and how he’s putting Maple’s new fund to work.

TC: You describe Maple as the first and only fund whose sole goal is to fund the Canadian diaspora at the seed stage. Why do these founders need your capital?

AC: I was born and raised in a suburb of Toronto and attended the University of Toronto, and I tried and failed to get a job in finance in Canada, whereas when I got here to the US, I received multiple offers on Wall Street [and worked at Wachovia Securities]. It left me a little frustrated and asking this question of why I was good enough to get a job on Wall Street but not the equivalent in Canada.

What’s interesting about this is many of the founders I meet who leave Canada have a very similar story. They get rejected in Canada, they go to Silicon Valley, and they get backed by some of the best VCs in the world. For example, Marcelo Cortes, the cofounder and CTO at Faire and a fellow Canadian, tried to raise a seed round in Canada in 2017. No one would buy. So he went to Silicon Valley, got backing by a top tier fund and just last week, he announced that Faire just closed on $400 million in funding at a $12.4 billion valuation.

TC: Isn’t there a big difference between 2021 versus 2017, thanks to formerly employees of Shopify and other companies that have seen exits? Where are you seeing angels coming from, and do you work closely with networks there to source deals?

AC: Ironically, I’m outside of Canada, again because I believe some of the best founders have left Canada . . and arguably aren’t tied to those angel networks in Canada and will not be calling Canadian VCs.

TC: You wrote nine checks out of your first fund. What are some of the companies that stood out for prospective LPs?

ACL Yes. All Day Kitchens, centered on restaurant tech, was in that fund. There’s a biotech company called Vision that’s automatically tracking nutrition in that fund. RenoRun [a platform for general contractors to source materials] is another. Aalto, a home marketplace that Sequoia followed on, is in that fund, as is [digital home management platform] Setter, which was acquired by Thumbtack, which has led to Maple being a proud shareholder of Thumbtack at the moment.

Altogether, I’ve written 27 checks totaling $12 million to companies across both funds, and that includes SPVs.

All Day Kitchens wants to expand every independent restaurant’s delivery network

TC: What were some of those fundraising conversations like for this much bigger second fund? Were they quick, given everyone has so much money to deploy and you’re developing a track record that illustrates a strong network, or was it a drawn-out process?

AC:  Some of them were long, Connie [laughs]. Some of them were long, some were short. I’ve been fortunate to be part of some of the diversity initiatives for some of my LPs, including Insight Partners and Alpaca VC. It’s been great to see firms engaged this way.

Look, I think being a person of color has actually made me a better VC. Not only am I frequently the only Black professional in the room, which has given me this unique perspective and ability to go against the grain and look for outliers, but it has helped me build a really diverse portfolio. I’m proud to say that 70% of the founders I’ve backed are people of color and at least 30% are women.

But yeah, it’s a wide range. Some have [committed] to participate within the first call; some have taken a full year to get over the line.

Sivo, a young ‘Stripe for debt’ led by a veteran operator, seems to have investors clamoring

TC: I interviewed one of your founders back in May named Kate Hiscox, whose company, Sivo, a debt-as-a-service provider, was a very big bet for you.

AC: That is true. Sivo represents 20% of my funds, whereas average checks range from $500,000 to $1 million. I personally think Kate is a killer founder — from Canada — and there was just a lot of evidence from the team she put together before she had [raised] a penny [that this was a huge] opportunity that she was going after.

TC: Do you have enough flexibility in your investing mandate to back a team without Canadian founders?

AC: I have LPS who are like ‘Hey, Andre, you’re in some amazing networks in Silicon Valley. Are you going to say no to a founder who is sitting across the table from you who is not from Canada?’ The answer is that I’m open to backing [other founders]. My goal is to build a top-tier seed-seed stage fund. I just happen to believe that this cohort of founders with Canadian roots is the way I’m going to get there.

Sydney-based medtech startup Harrison.ai gets $129M AUD led by Horizons Ventures

Sydney-based medtech startup Harrison.ai gets $129M AUD led by Horizons Ventures

NEWS

Harrison.ai founders Harrison.ai founders Dimitry Tran, Dr. Colin Goldschmidt and Dr. Aengus Tran Photo by Stefanie Zingsheim/The Photo Pitch

Harrison.ai, a Sydney-based company that creates medical devices with AI technology, announced today it has raised $129 million AUD (about $92.3 million USD) in what it says is one of the largest Series B rounds ever for an Australian healthtech company.

The funding was led by returning investor Horizons Ventures, and included participation from new investors Sonic Healthcare and I-MED Radiology Network. Existing backers Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital also returned for the round, which brings Harrison.ai’s total raised over the past two years to $158 million AUD.

Harrison.ai announced it has also formed a joint venture with Sonic Healthcare, one of the world’s largest medical diagnostics providers, to develop and commercialize new clinical AI solutions in pathology. The partnership will focus first on histopathology, or the diagnosis of tissue diseases.

This follows another joint venture Harrison.ai formed with I-MED Radiology in early 2020, creating Annalise.ai to develop AI-based radiology diagnostic support tools.

Harrison.ai CEO Dr. Aengus Tran told TechCrunch he became a doctor to help as many people as he could. “As I looked more into artificial intelligence, I fell in love with the idea of using AI to help more people than I ever could my lifetime.”

Harrison.ai was started with his brother Dimitry to scale the global capacity of quality of healthcare by giving clinicians AI-based tools. Dr. Tran said that Annalise.ai was able to release its first regulatory-approved product within 18 months, an AI tool that detects clinical findings on chest X-rays.

The funding will also be used to hire more AI data scientists and engineers, and form clinical partnerships around the world to expand into new healthcare areas. Harrison.ai says its AI-based technology can help improve the diagnosis process in places where there is a healthcare shortage.

“COVID has intensified the inequities and struggles the global healthcare system was already under, especially in critical areas like radiology and pathology,” said Dr. Tran. “For the past decade and more we have seen a critical shortage of radiologists in both developed and developing markets, and that has only gotten worse as COVID led to further skills shortages and a backlog of elective procedures and requirements.”

He added that Harrison.ai’s AI-based technology is designed to help scale healthcare systems, and are not meant to replace clinicians. “We’re giving them the tools to make critical healthcare decisions quickly, and at scale, with the help of artificial intelligence.”

Harrison.ai currently has teams in Australia, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, and plans to expand into other countries soon. Its products are ready for market in Australia, the UK, Europe and some Asian countries, Dr. Tran said. The company’s goal is to expand into other markets, with the goal of helping one million patients a day.

The next healthcare revolution will have AI at its center

AI is ready to take on a massive healthcare challenge

 

Indonesia-focused AC Ventures closes oversubscribed $205M third fund

Indonesia-focused AC Ventures closes oversubscribed $205M third fund

NEWS

More investor money is flowing into Indonesia’s startup ecosystem. Today, AC Ventures, which focuses early-stage startups in the country, announced it has raise $205 million in committed capital for its oversubscribed Fund II, more than double its original target of $80 million. Investors include World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Disrupt AD, the venture development platform of Abu Dhabi Developmental Holdings. This brings the firm’s total assets under management to about $380 million.

AC Venture’s Fund III has been actively investing since its first close in March 2020, and has now completed 30 out of its 35 targeted investments, and says it is on track to deploy over $100 million by the end of 2021. All of its investments were in pre-Series A stage startups. The firm says many portfolio companies gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some, like Shipper, Stockbit, Ula, Aruna, Bukuwarung and Colearn, reaching “centaur” status, or a valuation of at least $100 million. AC Ventures also says Fund III is delivering strong early returns, with a MOIC (multiple on invested capital) of 1.94X less than two years after its first close.

Back in October 2020, when TechCrunch covered Fund III’s first close, its target was $80 million. That number increased, until finally reaching more than $200 million. Fund III’s typical check size varies widely. Founder and managing partner Adrian Li told TechCrunch that having a larger fund size gives AC Ventures the flexibility to deploy the right amount of capital based on the stage of a startup, so it doesn’t have to worry about finding co-investors or other srouces of capital. This means that depending traction and sector, Fund III’s first check sizes can range from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million.

AC Ventures’ founding team Adrian Li, Pandu Sjahrir and Michael Soerijadji

“I think with the increased traction of the portfolio during COVID and a step up in global interest in Asian companies, startups have raised faster than,” said Li. “The larger fund allows us to make sure we can keep our pro ratas and maintain ownership percentages in the best companies.”

He adds that at the beginning of 2021, it “became clear that technology companies were being relied on more than ever to help people continue their daily lives, whether shopping, paying or even entertainment, and that was quickly reflected in the public markets.” He added, “I think the turning point was probably August or September last year. From then, institutional investors and LPs began to realize that COVID was not going away in the short term. They therefore started looking for companies that were “having huge moments of adoption, new users and new user frequency by existing users, and Indonesia was a stand out.”

Indonesian venture capital firm Alpha JWC closes $433M third fund

AC Ventures two earlier funds returned 2.99X and 2.41X gross MOICs, and they include unicorns Xendit and Carsome. The firm’s portfolio companies have also raised a total of more than $500 million in follow-on funding from investors like Sequoia, Tiger Global and Prosus.

The firm started investing in 2014 as Convergence Ventures and in 2019, became AC Ventures through a merger with Agaeti Venture Capital. It now has a total of more than 100 portfolio companies, which AC Ventures says makes it one of the largest Indonesian-focused early-stage venture capital firms.

Many of AC Ventures’ partners, including Li, are former entrepreneurs who have worked in markets like the United States, China and Indonesia. As a result, he says they are uniquely positioned to work closely with startups from early stage to exits. For example, AC Ventures helps its portfolio companies hire key talent, introduces them to the right business partnerships to scale and helps with downstream financing. Having a larger fund gives AC Ventures more ability to invest in wha tthey call their value creation team, or a group of experts in areas like data operations and growth and scaling.

“Building a specific team whose sole objective is to increase the value of our portfolio companies through their advice and interactions is someting that’s really excites us. With a small fund, it’s hard to build an operational team to help portfolio companies, but now with the larger fund size, we’re able to invest into that,” said Li.

Since it works with very early-stage startups, AC Ventures has developed specific strategies for deciding on investments. For example, it makes decisions using a comparable market and business model analysis to understand new sectors.

Indonesia-focused Intudo Ventures closes $115M third fund

Li says AC Ventures invests in companies with great teams and strong ideas, or companies that have bootstrapped their way to having customers and revenue. “There isn’t a hard and fast rule, but what we want to do is come into companies as early as possible, where we have built a conviction around the team and market so we can be a longstanding partner in them as they grow.”

At early stages, “there’s not much data you can underwrite on,” he added. “Fortunately, investing in Indonesia, we have the benefit of hindsight for models that have worked around the world and the ability to analyze where certain markets are in Indonesia, relative to the total country and the economic development of the national. We can do a lot of market and business model research and so on, all up front. We can see if this model looks right, if it’s got big potential, if it’s a business model that’s worked well in markets like China or India.”

AC Ventures has also done quantitative and qualitative analysis of its most successful portfolio companies, and honed in on a set of signals that identify the founding teams with the most potential. Li said this gives the firm a more objective way of ranking early-stage startups.

For example, it’s important for at least one of the founders, usually the CEO, to have the strong capability to convey their vision to relevant stakeholders, constituents or first users and business partnerships. When AC Ventures asks founders about their business, they also need to be able to go into detail, including all their numbers, what works and what doesn’t. “Running a business, there are all these devils in the details that are very necessary, so you know what experiments to run, how to ititerate your product. There’s a lot to take in at the early stage of a business, but we find it critical that the founding team is really on top of that.”

In statement about IFC’s investment in AC Ventures’ Fund III, Azam Khan, IFC country manager for Indonesia, Malaysia and Timor-Leste said, “IFC’s partnership with AC Ventures underscores our long-term commitment to Indonesia’s economic development and digital transformation.”

AppWorks closes third fund with $150M for Taiwan and Southeast Asia startups

India’s Simpl raises $40 million for its buy now, pay later service

India’s Simpl raises $40 million for its buy now, pay later service

NEWS

Bangalore-based fintech startup Simpl has raised $40 million as it looks to expand its online buy now, pay later service’s offerings in the world’s second-largest market.

Valar Ventures and IA Ventures led the six-year-old startup’s Series B round. LFH Ventures and some existing investors also participated in the round, said the startup, which has raised $83 million to date.

Simpl partners with popular online brands and offers their customers the ability to make purchases without paying for them at that very moment.

Over the years, additionally, it has also developed a range of offerings including a one-time checkout feature; Bill Box, which allows customers to automate their recurring expense payouts, and splitting a bill in three parts, to build a “full-stack solution,” said Nitya Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of Simpl, in an interview with TechCrunch.

Some of Simpl’s partners include telecom network Jio Platforms, food delivery service Zomato, pharmacy 1MG, grocer BigBasket and ticketing platform MakeMyTrip.

Buy now, pay later services have existed in India for several years but have started to gain fast traction only in recent quarters as e-commerce and digital payments increase their reach in the country.

One of the factors that is making these services popular among consumers is the trust deficit that exists between them and the services with which they are engaging, said Sharma, pointing to continued popularity of cash as the payment method for e-commerce firms.

Fun fact: Uber introduced the ability to let users pay driver partners with cash for the first time in its existence months after launching in India.

With a service like Simpl, customers know that they don’t have to pay right away and have the ability to dispute transactions and quickly request a refund, he said. The startup uses its own underwriting technology to determine the customers to whom it can offer its services, he said. For brands, too, an easier checkout process means the conversion increases significantly, he added.

“We built a full-stack checkout platform that gives merchants ultimate control of the user experience and helps them build trust with consumers at checkout. Simpl is like a Khata or a Tab for online commerce. This intuitive user experience, built on the bedrock of trust, will enable a larger e-commerce market and will lead to greater adoption of mobile payments in India and the rest of the world,” he said.

The startup said it has grown its monthly active merchants and active user base by 10 times in the past 18 months. Over 7,000 brands now use Simpl, the startup said. It now plans to work on further improving the consumer and merchants experience on its platform and also expand to new areas including bringing Simpl to offline neighborhood stores and building a loyalty program, said Sharma.

“India’s e-commerce market is at an inflection point and we believe Simpl’s solution is a key enabler in accelerating adoption of digital payments in e-commerce” said James Fitzgerald, partner at Valar Ventures, in a statement. “It significantly improves consumer experience, which is why it is quickly becoming a preferred partner for merchants. The team has shown great execution and we are excited to join their mission of democratizing e-commerce for all merchants big and small.”

Pay later fintech players today finance loans worth $500 million each year, analysts at Bernstein wrote in a recent note to clients. They expect the figure to balloon to $26 billion by 2025.

India’s Slice becomes unicorn with $220M funding from Tiger Global, Insight Partners and Advent

AWS launches new services for the automotive industry

AWS launches new services for the automotive industry

NEWS

At its annual re:Invent conference, AWS today announced two new initiatives for the automotive industry. One is a new product, AWS FleetWise, a new service that makes it easier for automakers to collect and retrieve sensor and telemetry data from their vehicle fleets. The other is AWS Automotive, a broader, industry-specific initiative that brings together a range of the company’s products under a single umbrella, similar to AWS’s other industry solutions like AWS for Industrial.

Collecting sensor data isn’t necessarily a new thing for automakers. But FleetWise promises to provide an end-to-end solution that will give them a lot of flexibility. Maybe they want to smartly filter data right on the car to reduce the amount of data transferred to the cloud, or only pull in data from specific sensors like engine temperature, or maybe they do indeed want to get all of the data. It’s up to the individual auto manufacturer to decide what data they need.

Image Credits: AWS

Mike Tzamaloukas, AWS’ general manager for AWS Automotive, told me that no matter what data gets used, to get started with FleetWise, the manufacturer has to first describe and model the vehicle and its sensors, using the open source Vehicle Signal Specification that a number of automakers have already adopted.

AWS then provides the automakers with the source code to interact with FleetWise and collect data. The automaker’s developers can then take this code, modify it as needed and build it into the vehicle gateway, while its engineers can start building data collection campaigns to pull in data from the live vehicle fleet.

“The possibilities with data collection campaigns are endless and we are pushing the envelope in that data collection campaigns are not just time-based, are not just event-based, but it’s intelligent data filtering across your entire fleet,” Tzamaloukas explained. “That’s where we hope to give the automakers the ability to pull in the terabytes of data generated from all kinds of different cars out there, but at a much higher signal-to-noise ratio.”

Tzamaloukas expects that FleetWise will be generally available in 2022 and that we’ll see cars available for purchase with it built-in around 2024. A lot of this data may stay in the automakers’ back ends, but he noted that they could make some of it available to drivers as well, maybe in the form of more detailed monthly vehicle health reports.

As for AWS for Automotive, AWS’ Dean Phillips, who heads up this initiative, told me that he sees it as a way to clarify AWS’ capabilities for the industry. “We’re pretty excited about AWS for Automotive because it really helps clarify for our customers the different solutions that we have from AWS,” he said. These solutions include a number of different solutions areas that automakers can adopt as needed, ranging from cutting-edge autonomous mobility services to product engineering support, supply chain tracking and digital customer engagement solutions.

Elon Musk shills a $50 Tesla Cyberwhistle with a joke about whistleblowers

Elon Musk shills a $50 Tesla Cyberwhistle with a joke about whistleblowers

NEWS

Tesla has yet to produce its all-electric Cybertruck, but diehard fans who need to lay their hands on something new and associated with the highly anticipated and delayed vehicle can now buy a cyberwhistle for $50. Yes, a whistle.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday a link to the webpage for his 65.1 million followers to view along with a message “Blow the whistle on Tesla,” which may or may not be a nod, a dare or a threat to those former employees who have actually attempted to do just that. He later tweeted, “Don’t waste your money on that silly Apple Cloth, buy our whistle instead!”

Clicking on the link, customers will see this message:

Inspired by Cybertruck, the limited-edition Cyberwhistle is a premium collectible made from medical-grade stainless steel with a polished finish. The whistle includes an integrated attachment feature for added versatility.

Note: Cyberwhistles are final sale.

Image Credits: Tesla

No word on what that integrated attachment reference means, but TechCrunch suspects it might be a lanyard hole so customers can wear this around their neck.

As any Tesla aficionado might expect, the cyberwhistle is shaped like the Cybertruck, the all-electric truck that Musk revealed back in November 2019. The Cybertruck was supposed to go into production in late 2021. The company has pushed that date to sometime in 2022, per its website in which potential customers can put down a $100 refundable deposit.

The cyberwhistle can be found housed under Tesla’s lifestyle products, which include items such as the $150 Tesla decanter, the $45 desktop charger modeled after a Tesla Supercharger, the $35 S3XY mug and several diecast models of vehicles, including the Tesla Semi, which also has pushed the start of production to 2022.

Better.com gets $1B cash infusion in new agreement with its SPAC backers

Better.com gets $1B cash infusion in new agreement with its SPAC backers

NEWS

Digital mortgage lender Better.com, which announced in March that it was going public via a SPAC, is getting a cash infusion from its backers sooner than expected. Blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. and SoftBank have decided to amend the terms of their financing agreement to provide Better with half of the $1.5 billion they committed immediately instead of waiting till the deal closes.

Sources familiar with the deal who preferred to remain anonymous told TechCrunch that with the new arrangement, capital hits the company’s balance sheet now (faster than originally planned) and puts more money on the balance sheet overall to fuel further growth. Specifically, according to an email from Better CFO Kevin Ryan to the company and obtained by TechCrunch, Better.com will have $1 billion on its balance sheet by week’s end.

In the email, Ryan told employees:

We pulled forward the funding of our SPAC deal … With this new structure the company will fortify our balance sheet and position us as extremely well capitalized in a tough mortgage market. Surviving is winning and capital ensures survival … By the end of this week we expect to have $1 billion of cash on the company’s balance sheet. Quantum’s more than we have ever had. [sic] We will continue working through the process of public listing but the most important step has been taken (getting the money).

The new arrangement will replace the prior agreement wherein $950 million of the $1.78 billion in committed financing from Aurora and SoftBank would have been used to purchase existing shares from Better’s stockholders rather than the company receiving it directly to its balance sheet.

The amended terms will not change Better’s implied valuation of $6.9 billion, the company says.

As for what Better plans to do with the capital, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that the money will help the company double down on existing businesses, continue to build out “a custom-first home purchase experience” and launch new products and services “that make the post-close homeownership experience as Amazon as customers deserve it to be.”

Better, which recently added a number of new insurance products, plans to expand its offerings into other product categories, including personal loans, student loans and life insurance.

The company chose to go public via a SPAC rather than taking the traditional IPO route because it preferred the guarantee of execution that SoftBank offered it with the blank-check deal, CEO Vishal Garg said in September.

Anatomy of a SPAC: Inside Better.com’s ambitious plans

Korea’s P2P lending startup PeopleFund gets $63.4M Series C led by Bain Capital

Korea’s P2P lending startup PeopleFund gets $63.4M Series C led by Bain Capital

NEWS

South Korea-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform PeopleFund announced today it has closed a $63.4 million (75.9 billion won) Series C round led by Bain Capital with participation from Goldman Sachs. Returning investors in the round include CLSA Lending Ark Asia and 500 Global.

The latest funding brings the total raised by PeopleFund to about $83.6 million (100 billion won) since it was founded in 2015.

The Series C will support hiring AI engineers and secure alternative data to advance its credit-scoring algorithm further. PeopleFund also will beef up its machine learning-powered credit scoring system, which is one of its key differentiators, that provides a quantitative scoring model (for credit valuation), a qualitative scoring model and a demand forecasting model (for near-primer borrowers).

PeopleFund wants to address the structural problem involving the risk of high interest-rate loans in the near-prime loan sector and offer more personalized financial products to sub-prime and near-prime borrowers with its data-driven technology platform, said CEO and founder Joey Kim told TechCrunch.

“For the past six years, we have been focusing on proving the performance of our data-driven risk management technology, which is the essence of consumer lending,” Kim said. “Our mission is to grow into the #1 player in the Korean non-bank lending market to provide better loan options for average Koreans that the banks underserve.”

The financing event comes five months after PeopleFund received its regulatory approval from South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) to register with the government.

In early June, only three Korean P2P lenders out of 41 applicants were granted licenses from the FSC to operate the business legally: PeopleFund, Lendit and 8 Percent. The FSC said it will continue to review other applicants.

South Korea has passed the first law in the world dedicated to digital lending, ‘The Marketplace Lending Act’, in August 2020 to regulate marketplace lenders, protecting P2P consumers. The new law enables the licensed P2P lending startup to operate as an authorized financial institution to lend, raise capital from international and domestic institutions, and provide loan referral services to its customers.

The number of marketplace lenders in Korea has fallen from 237 to 102, between August 2020 and May 2021, as per its annual report in 2020.

PeopleFund

PeopleFund, which connects borrowers with lenders to enable lending, provides loans at an average interest rate of 11.25 percent per annum, about 3 percent to 4 percent lower than other non-bank lenders. Near-prime borrowers are not qualified for bank loans thus have no choice but to resort to non-bank lenders like credit card loans (or saving banks), Kim said.

What sets PeopleFund apart from other competitors is the lowest delinquency rate in the industry, being managed by its own alternative credit scoring system, and having strong risk management capabilities, Kim said. PeopleFund claims it has managed over $1 billion in loans as of October 2021, with a delinquency rate of 2.06%.

Another differentiator is its credit scoring system optimized for mid-interest loans based on about 480,000 loan customers registered on its platform. PeopleFund built a credit scoring system (CSS) 4.0 for near-prime borrowers to provide more affordable mid-rate loans to borrowers, who use the funds to refinance existing loans taken from other second-tier lenders. The refinancing loans account for 66 percent of its total loans, he added.

Korean lending startup PeopleFund raises $11M led by chat app Kakao’s payment unit

Kim said that its clients include near-prime borrowers and individuals and institutional investors who expect 7%-9% the ROI per annum (before tax). Its lenders are mostly retail customers the company has through its partnership with Kakao Pay.

“For individual and institutional lenders, we offer diversified lending opportunities at an average annual return rate of 6 percent to 9 percent. For the borrowers and the lenders, [our] AI-based data-driven underwriting process has been the core of its competitive advantage, which has been outperforming other non-bank players by a 3 percent to 5 percent gap in loss rate,” Kim said.

PeopleFund targets the traditional personal credit loans market in South Korea, which is estimated at around $67 billion, according to the company.

The company, which accounted for about 57% of market share in the personal loan of the P2P lending market as of October, expects to generate profit in 2022, Kim said.

“While leading online lenders in the U.S. have grown to worth billions out of lending platforms such as Upstart and SoFi, Korea’s online lending is only just beginning, said Tim Chae, managing partner of 500 Global that participated in all fundraising since the seed round. “We strongly believe that PeopleFund will grow to become a clear winner with its proven track record, accelerating tech-driven innovations in the non-bank lending sector in Korea.”

Funding Societies, a Southeast Asian lending platform, gets $25M Series B led by Softbank Ventures Korea

With $3B expected in 2021, Singapore is becoming a fintech capital

With $3B expected in 2021, Singapore is becoming a fintech capital

NEWS

Lee Li Contributor

Lee Li is a project manager and B2B copywriter with a decade of experience in the Chinese fintech startup space as a PM for TaoBao, MeitTuan and DouYin (now TikTok).

Investment in fintech is surging back following a brief but notable drop during the COVID pandemic. As a result, countries worldwide are seeing a large influx of capital for fintech ventures, and both investment totals and deal counts in the fintech space are increasing rapidly.

Although a large part of fintech funding focuses on countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, smaller countries, particularly in Asia, are making their presence known. This is hardly surprising given that Asia leads the world in fintech adoption rates.

Singapore is one country building a solid reputation as a hub of fintech activity, and this reputation is generating substantial investment.

Singapore’s fintech investment surges forward

According to KPMG, total fintech funding worldwide in the first half of 2021 reached $98 billion from 2,456 deals, rebounding strongly from the COVID-inspired investing dip of 2020.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. accounted for most of the total investment at $42 billion. However, fintech funding also recovered well in Asia and the EMEA region.

For the first half of 2021, Asian fintech funding activity amounted to $7.5 billion despite the lack of any notably large deals. CBInsights estimates that Asian fintech funding in Q3 is strong at nearly $6 billion, trailing only the U.S.

Despite its small size (less than 5 million total population), Singapore is quickly reaching investment levels of countries many times its size. Although the KPMG data shows only $614 million during the first half, the Singapore Monetary Authority’s chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty, suggests a strong surge in the second half, pushing Singapore’s total to $3 billion. Given the record number of deals in the first half of 2021, Mohanty’s optimism seems justified.

Compare Singapore’s total to countries like Canada and the major European countries. In the first half, Canada’s total investment was $4.8 billion, while France and Germany were each in the $2 billion-$2.5 billion range. But these countries are six to ten times the size of Singapore and have similarly larger GDPs.

Singapore’s investment level is also notable among countries in the Asia Pacific. The two most populated countries, China and India, generated only $1.3 billion and $2 billion, respectively. Australia had less than a billion. Singapore is swinging well above its weight when it comes to fintech investment.

Fintech adoption drives investment

Fintech adoption continues to grow rapidly, and the pandemic only provided additional fuel for the fire. Adoption rates in Europe, for example, accelerated by 72% in 2020 alone.

Daily Crunch: AWS unveils new open source autoscaling tool Karpenter at customer conference

Daily Crunch: AWS unveils new open source autoscaling tool Karpenter at customer conference

NEWS

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, November 30, 2021! This is the last newsletter of the month, which means that tomorrow is December. Get ready for the last few weeks of news before the Christmas/holiday news freeze sets into place. There are still a few IPOs to go, so don’t log off yet! —Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3 4

• Nubank cuts IPO price range target: Bellwether Brazilian tech company Nubank has reduced its price range ahead of its public offering. In short, the neobank will sell its shares for less than it expected, lowering the size of its impending capital raise and also cutting its public-market valuation. TechCrunch dug into whether the news matters for Latin American startups more broadly. (More on the company’s economics here.)
• Facebook told to sell Giphy: Remember when Facebook bought Giphy, the GIF search engine? Well, the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.’s competition watchdog, is telling the U.S. social networking giant to reverse that purchase. A rare moment in which a major tech company is told no.
• Also, Facebook’s crypto exec is leaving: Another Facebook exec is taking off, crypto leader David Marcus. The news comes after “Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer announced he was stepping down from his role after 13 years at the company” this September, TechCrunch notes.
• Digital sales disappoint during shoppy fauxliday: After disappointing online sales on Black Friday led TechCrunch to look into e-commerce sales growth more generally, “consumer awareness of supply chain shortages and even earlier deals may have contributed to a slight decline in U.S. e-commerce sales during Cyber Week,” Sarah Perez reports.

Startups/VC

Before we get into our daily digest of startup happenings, HashiCorp’s IPO is shaping up to be a right corker. The U.S. cloud infra management concern is targeting a pretty high price point for its shares, at least in revenue-multiples terms. Good news for open source startups more generally? We think so. (More on its economics here.)

• BeerOrCoffee raises $10M: Notably BeerOrCoffee is not an artisan, DTC, free-range consumer beverage outfit. Instead, the São Paulo-based startup offers flexible office space. TechCrunch dug into its operations and recent Series A raise.
• Money, attention or compute? Massive, a startup, wants to offer the world’s consumers a different way to pay for apps. Not with their currency (subscriptions) or attention (ads), but with their spare compute time. We had questions, but the model sounds pretty neat.
• Fundbox shows that SMBs can build unicorns: Forget the old VC rule that selling to SMBs is bad business. There are just too many successful startups out here looking to sell to small businesses for the old saw to be anything but toothless. Fundbox’s new $1.1 billion valuation is evidence of the fact, with the SMB-focused fintech adding nine figures to its accounts in a single gulp.
• The other way to make tech money from trucking: Sure, we read a lot about self-driving semis and how computers will soon drive our big trucks. But, in the meantime, CloudTrucks is raising a treasury to grow its software business aimed at trucking firms that still employ human drivers. The company just closed a massive $115 million Series B.

And for startups out there looking to raise, a little venture fund news for your diversion:

• Sapphire Ventures raises $2B: For its sixth main fund and third “opportunity “ fund, Sapphire Ventures has banked 10 figures worth of capital. That’s a Smaug-level haul, and indicative, I believe, that I will annoy the firm’s Jai Das at least four times per quarter in 2021 for notes on what he’s seeing in the market.
• Partech raises $750 million for second growth fund: Normally a venture capital concern raising hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t get my pulse up even a single BPM. However, as Partech is based in Paris, I have to admit that I found the news more than a little notable. Recall when Europe’s startup scene was considered an also-ran? That was a while ago now.

3 views on Jack Dorsey’s decision to step down as Twitter’s CEO

Image Credits: Joe+Raedle (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Jack Dorsey was Twitter’s first CEO — and also its fourth.

He led the platform from its launch in 2006 until he passed the torch to co-founder Ev Williams two years later. In 2015, Dorsey returned to the role, even though he was simultaneously serving as CEO of fintech platform Square.

“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,’” he wrote in a letter to employees.

“Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

The Equity podcast team discussed his departure in a TechCrunch+ post yesterday afternoon:

• Alex Wilhelm: A call to return to the old normal from the new normal
• Natasha Mascarenhas: A reset would rewrite how VCs and entrepreneurs do business
• Amanda Silberling: Founders aren’t rock stars

Big Tech Inc.

Today’s Big Tech news comes in two chunks. There’s the day’s news from huge tech concerns, and then there’s a whole mess of AWS-related news from our enterprise team.

• European AI regulation may lack teeth: Per our own Natasha Lomas, a collection of civil society organizations has come to the view that “draft legislation” in Europe “falls far short of protecting fundamental rights from AI-fueled harms like scaled discrimination and blackbox bias.”
• Mercedes invests in Factorial Energy: Sure, we could have put this entry in the startup section, but how frequently do we see the parent company of reigning F1 winning champions, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, in our pages? Infrequently. Regardless, Factorial is working on solid state batteries for cars, so you can see why the Silver Arrows corporate family was interested.
• Twitter cracks down on abusive image/video posting: In baby’s CEO’s first PR crisis, Twitter announced today that it is moving to “ban sharing images or videos of private individuals without their consent.” At issue is the fact that some video, well, will never get consent of say, the cops, despite being in the public interest. Twitter noted a public interest nuance, but some folks were still mad.

And then, the Amazon/AWS news deluge:

• Karpenter is a “new open source autoscaling tool for Kubernetes clusters.”
• SageMaker Canvas is a “no-code ML service.”
• AWS to highlight partners that “develop specialized solutions aimed at the energy industry.”
• AWS analytics are now serverless.
• There’s a new ML chip from Amazon, the Trn1.
• But that’s not all! Amazon’s cloud team also has a new ARM chip called the “Graviton 3.”
• And we have even more from AWS’ big shindig here, if that is your jam!

TechCrunch Experts

Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this article on TechCrunch+ from Kerry Cunningham, “Product-led growth and signal substitution syndrome: Bringing it all together.”

TechCrunch+ roundup: Jack leaves Twitter, Black Friday data, Nubank lowers IPO pricing

TechCrunch+ roundup: Jack leaves Twitter, Black Friday data, Nubank lowers IPO pricing

NEWS

Jack Dorsey was Twitter’s first CEO — and also its fourth.

He led the platform from its launch in 2006 until he passed the torch to co-founder Ev Williams two years later. In 2015, Dorsey returned to the role after Dick Costolo’s stint, even though he was simultaneously serving as CEO of fintech platform Square.

Like many, I wondered how one person could adequately handle that level of responsibility. And apparently, so did Dorsey.

“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,’” he wrote in a letter to employees.

“Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

---

Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members.
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.

---

The Equity podcast team discussed his departure in a TechCrunch+ post yesterday afternoon:

• Alex Wilhelm: A call to return to the old normal from the new normal
• Natasha Mascarenhas: A reset would rewrite how VCs and entrepreneurs do business
• Amanda Silberling: Founders aren’t rock stars

It’s too early to say whether the move will alter the founder-led ethic that permeates Silicon Valley.

Personally, I’m hoping it starts a trend where mature tech companies do a better job of recognizing and rewarding employees who innately understand their culture, products and services. Case in point: Former CTO Parag Agrawal was initially hired as a software engineer, but a decade later, he’s leading Twitter’s 5,500 employees.

Perhaps it should be pro forma for corporate boards in search of a new CEO to start by talking to the company’s longtime engineers, product managers and marketing leads.

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

3 views on Jack Dorsey’s decision to step down as Twitter’s CEO

Is Nubank’s lower IPO pricing bad news for Brazilian startups?

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

Brazil-based Nubank initially indicated that it planned to raise a maximum of $3.66 billion in its upcoming IPO, but this morning, the Latin American neobank’s holding company lowered that to $2.86 billion.

This public offering was coming in hot; why throttle back now? In this morning’s edition of The Exchange, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm unpack the numbers for the new proposed valuation and ask, “Does the revision matter?”

Is Nubank’s lower IPO pricing bad news for Brazilian startups?

Product-led growth and signal substitution syndrome: Bringing it all together

Image Credits: Halfdark (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Collecting data to optimize B2B marketing is notoriously difficult.

“Practitioners tend to see each new source of information about their potential buyers — each signal type — as a substitute for the last one that didn’t work,” according to Kerry Cunningham, senior principal at account engagement platform 6sense.

Embracing a product-led growth mindset allows organizations to look at users as signals, “just like form-fill leads, de-anonymized website traffic, visitors to your booth, and the rest,” says Cunningham.

Product-led growth and signal substitution syndrome: Bringing it all together

Black Friday data adds to evidence e-commerce growth is slowing

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

News of the omicron coronavirus variant may have suppressed retail activity over the Thanksgiving weekend, but what’s the explanation for flat online spending?

This year, Black Friday e-commerce totaled just $8.9 billion, compared to $9 billion in 2020.

“Perhaps we should not have been surprised,” writes Alex Wilhelm. “There were warning signs.”

Looking back at missed Q3 estimates from companies like Shopify, Amazon and Pinduoduo, “somewhat softer e-commerce numbers simply should not be a surprise,” he concludes.

Due to supply-chain concerns and ongoing pandemic restrictions, retailers say consumers started shopping earlier this year. Still, this is the first time we’ve seen a decrease in Black Friday spending.

“The pandemic gaveth, and now seems less inclined to continue to giveth, even if e-commerce itself is still growing,” writes Alex. “It’s just that it’s growing more slowly than investors expected.”

Black Friday data adds to evidence e-commerce growth is slowing

4 key strategies for succeeding at international expansion

Image Credits: twomeows (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

International expansion counts as one of every startup’s milestones, but the path to realizing your global ambitions “is riddled with obstacles,” writes angel investor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi.

Drawing from over 20 years of experience leading and expanding a food diagnostics company to more than 100 countries, Radlo-Zandi shares four core strategies for companies looking to enter foreign markets:

• Market research
• Prioritizing locations based on ROI
• Customizing deals and marketing
• Performance monitoring and contractual goals

4 key strategies for succeeding at international expansion

As human capital grows scarce, flexible compensation can help attract and retain talent

Image Credits: MirageC (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The pandemic-fueled labor shortage has many causes, but inflexible and inadequate compensation is one of the most discussed.

However, employees don’t always leave because of pay. “An opaque model for allocating compensation” is often to blame for employees feeling unheard and unseen, writes Compright CEO Boyd Davis.

Davis explains how startups can tackle this issue by analyzing employee and market data to come up with compensation strategies that are transparent, equitable and fair.

The pandemic taught us to be flexible and “embrace change and be open to adjusting processes, [which] holds true for compensation planning as well,” Davis writes.

As human capital grows scarce, flexible compensation can help attract and retain talent

Why SoundHound is valued at 5 Shazams

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

Music recognition service SoundHound more or less disappeared about five years ago, so it was a surprise when its SPAC backer announced the company’s IPO at a valuation of $2.1 billion.

That, Anna Heim notes, is five times as much as Apple paid for Shazam, its biggest competitor.

SoundHound turned down the volume as it quietly developed a conversational AI product it now sells to a number of leading brands. “If its SPAC deck is to be believed, it seems it is just doing magic in plain sight,” writes Anna.

Why SoundHound is valued at 5 Shazams

Dear Sophie: How long does International Entrepreneur Parole take?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

My co-founders and I think we might qualify for International Entrepreneur Parole.

How long does it take to get IEP approved? How does that compare to other options that are available to startup founders, and can my spouse work?

— Committed COO

Dear Sophie: How long does International Entrepreneur Parole take?

How Pilot convinced Index Ventures to think long-term about margins

Image Credits: twomeows (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Investors often get a bad rap for pushing companies to grow without burning too much cash, but according to Pilot CTO and founder Jessica McKellar, clear communication is key to soothing investor concerns.

In the latest episode of TechCrunch Live, McKellar and Index Ventures partner Mark Goldberg talked about their early tensions, and how communicating a clear road map helped the company deliver great customer experiences while giving a broad understanding of the long-term picture.

How Pilot convinced Index Ventures to think long-term about margins

Qualcomm’s new mobile flagship, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, arrives on devices this year

Qualcomm’s new mobile flagship, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, arrives on devices this year

NEWS

It’s that time of year again. Analysts and journalists from across the globe have convened in Hawaii to witness Qualcomm announce its big chip news for the year. Just a few days of sun, surf, Snapdragons and summits.

As promised, the latest version of the So Cal chip giant’s flagship SoC arrives with a rebrand – one that’s going to take some getting used to. Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like, say 888, but no one said chip nomenclatures were going to be easy. What’s more, the new silicon is arriving soon, with the first devices expected before the year’s up – giving handset makers more or less exactly four weeks to get them out the door.

The new chip is focused on six key competencies: 5G connectivity, camera sensors, AI, gaming, audio and security – pretty much what you’d hope for from a mobile chipmaker in 2021. On the connectivity front, the SoC sports a 5G modem-RF capable of hitting up 10 Gigabit download speeds, coupled with the FastConnect 6900 Mobile Connectivity System, which it claims can best WiFi 6 speeds.

The new imaging system sports an 18-bit ISP, with improved dynamic range, color and speeds. It supports 8K HDR video, coupled with a new Bokeh Engine that brings Portrait Mode-style shots to video, while an Always-On ISP delivers low power consumption to tasks like face unlock.

The new Adreno GPU, meanwhile, promises improved graphics performance with lower power consumption, while support for lossless audio arrives on the sound side. As for security, the new platform sports a new Trust Management Engine, as well as support for Android Ready SE for digital car keys.

Image Credits: Qualcomm

AI may be the biggest piece of the puzzle here. A new 7th Gen engine brings improved tensor acceleration. Per Qualcomm,

The latest AI-based natural language processing from Hugging Face can intelligently serve as your personal assistant by prioritizing and analyzing your notifications. Working with Sonde Health, we are using on-device AI to accelerate their models that can analyze a user’s vocal patterns to determine if a user is at risk for health conditions such as asthma, depression, and COVID-19. Also, a new always-on AI system is powered by the 3rd Gen Qualcomm® Sensing Hub with more data streams being processed using lowest power AI.

Imaging and AI, in particularly, are key for Qualcomm this year because, let’s face it, the company’s got a lot more competition than it did only a few years back. Note the brands that have currently signed up to release devices sporting the SoC: Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. It’s not a bad list, as far as these things go. I should add that I cribbed it directly from Qualcomm’s press material, so it’s alphabetical (likely for political reasons), which is how you get names like Black Shark ahead of, say, Sony.

But you’ve got a number of big Chinese manufacturers on there, too – vivo, OPPO and Xiaomi dominate the world’s largest smartphone market. And the list is as notable for its absences than the names it includes. Huawei, is, of course, not present (unlike spinoff, Honor), as the company looks to in-house chips amid concerns with the U.S. government.

Image Credits: Qualcomm

Beyond that, big names like Google, Apple and Samsung are notably missing. Qualcomm is no doubt feeling a pinch as more companies push to develop their own in-house silicon, many of which have sported some impressive numbers in testing. That’s not to say that Qualcomm’s dominance is over among premium handsets, but chips are an increasingly important battlefield for smartphone differentiation among hardware makers with the resources to go in-house.