India’s Decentro, the Y Combinator-backed startup that helps companies enter the fintech market by deploying its APIs, has raised $4.7 million in a Series A round.
The Bengaluru-based startup offers banking and payments APIs that allow development of fintech products such as banking, payment cards, neobanking and collections and payout services in a short period of time. Decentro has partnered with scores of industry players including Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Visa, RuPay, Quickwork, Equifax, Aadhaar and National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) to offer solutions for prepaid payment instruments, no-code workflows, conversational banking via WhatsApp and enable document verification and KYC process.
“Whenever a fintech startup or a company wants to launch a new product in the market, it takes them a minimum of a few months to launch. And it purely has to do with the bank processes, the way the bank runs the process, as well as the tech of the bank. It’s not so great. That’s essentially the problem we are solving,” said Rohit Taneja, co-founder and CEO, Decentro, in an interview with TechCrunch.
Taneja, who has previously co-founded social payments platform Mypoolin, which was acquired by Cupertino-based financial services company Wibmo, and spent eight years in the fintech market, co-founded Decentro with Pratik Daukhane in 2020 — after personally facing all the problems he wants to address. He considers Cashfree and PineLabs-owned Setu among the key competitors for the startup but believes that it’s differentiating with “solution-driven enterprise customer base” and “superior” product experience.
The startup has already amassed over 250 customers in commerce and fintech sectors. Some of these include Freo, Mobile Premier League, FamPay, CreditWise, Uni Cards and BharatX.
Decentro, which has a headcount of over 40 people, offers products to let companies create virtual, business and escrow accounts, enable payments and provide lending. The available products comply with all the latest regulations in the country, the startup said.
The Series A round of Decentro is led by Rapyd Ventures, the venture arm of the UK fintech-as-a-service giant, along with participation from Leonis VC and Uncorrelated Ventures. Indian angel investors including CRED founder Kunal Shah, Groww co-founder and CEO Lalit Keshre, Gupshup co-founder and CEO Beerud Sheth and former CBO of BharatPe Pratekk Agarwaal also participated in the funding round.
Taneja told TechCrunch that the startup aims to utilize the fresh funding to go deeper into its partnership with banks and enter categories including large enterprises. It also plans to acquire licenses and launch in Singapore to expand beyond India eventually.
“Building their innovation layer in India first gives Decentro a great base to build scalable innovations that can be expanded as other emerging markets modernize their own infrastructure. We’re excited to support Decentro as they scale and expand,” said Joel Yarbrough, MD of Rapyd Ventures and Rapyd’s VP of Asia Pacific, in a prepared statement.
Before the latest funding round, Decentro had raised a total of $1.7 million in seed and angel rounds. The seed round, which closed in October 2020, included investments from Y Combinator and FundersClub.
Since then, the startup claims its valuation has increased by 3.3X and revenues have grown by more than 35X. Taneja, however, did not reveal any specifics about the valuation.
Dcentro’s API transactional volumes have also been growing by 50 to 70% every quarter since early 2021, with an average of 70 million annualized API transactions recorded over the last 12 months, it said. The startup is also profitable, the co-founder said.
Indonesia wants to direct the blockchain craze toward greener use. The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Metaverse Green Exchange (MVGX), a Singaporean startup that specializes in digital exchange technology. The intended collaboration centers around IDX’s emission trading scheme that is slated to launch in 2025, and MVGX’s job is to help IDX build a carbon registry and exchange with blockchain as the infrastructure layer.
Using blockchain in carbon trading solves what’s called the double-counting problem where two entities or an entity and a country lay claim to the same climate action, Bo Bai, executive chairman and co-founder of MVGX, tells TechCrunch. Founded in 2018, MVGX is licensed by Singapore’s finance authority to provide securities and custodial services. Offering SaaS to commercialize carbon credits, the startup’s focus is on “emerging markets seeking to offer access to their emission reduction projects internationally.”
“The infrastructure also provides an immutable record of the creation and ownership of the credit, as well as a tamper-proof record of the performance of the green project with which the carbon credit is associated, to date,” explains Bai.
Indonesia has joined a raft of countries ramping up their environmental accountability with a financial mechanism. As of July, 46 countries are pricing emissions through carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes (ETS), according to the International Monetary Fund.
“The Indonesian government has recognized the vital role that the financial services industry can play in strengthening the country’s sustainability commitments. IDX is currently preparing for the possibility of becoming a carbon exchange in Indonesia and started discussions with several parties to deepen our knowledge,” says Jeffrey Hendrik, director of business development at IDX, in a statement.
Carbon trading isn’t a panacea for climate change. The mechanism incentivizes carbon emitters to be less polluting or they’d need to buy from those with excess carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint. The capital generated from the sales of carbon credits can then go towards financing conservation efforts, at least in theory. But one of the biggest criticisms of the mechanism is that offsetting allows entities to claim carbon neutrality without making a significant effort to reduce emissions in the first place.
While blockchain is believed to help create a streamlined public record for carbon trading, it doesn’t address the incentive issues around offsetting. Nor does it ensure the quality of emission reductions from credit issuers or whether these claims hold up in the long term.
Crypto’s reception in the carbon trading world isn’t particularly warm, either. Startups that work to tokenize carbon credits have soared in popularity in the past year as they promise to entice more investors into the world of carbon exchange. One of the buzziest projects is Toucan, which started out late last year by bridging credits issued by Verra, the carbon trading industry’s standard bearer, onto the blockchain and “retiring” the credits as tradable tokens. In May, Verra banned the conversion of retired credits into cryptocurrencies “on the basis that the act of retirement is widely understood to refer to the consumption of the credit’s environmental benefit.”
The backlash of Toucan hasn’t stopped countries from embracing blockchain carbon trading. Aside from the potential partnership with Indonesia, MVGX has also worked with carbon trading initiatives in China, including the Guizhou Green Finance and Emissions Exchange, and is in advanced conversations with relevant authorities in Malaysia and Taiwan to collaborate on infrastructure projects, according to Bai.
Google is indefinitely pausing the enforcement of its policy requiring developers to use Play Store’s billing system for user transactions in India following an order by the country’s antitrust body.
The Android maker on Tuesday updated a support page to disclose the move and said that the requirement to use Google Play’s billing system still applies for in-app purchases outside of India.
Last week, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) ordered Google not to restrict app developers from using third-party payment processing services for in-app purchases and purchasing apps through the Play Store. The antitrust watchdog also fined the company $113 million for abusing the dominant position of its Play Store in the country.
“Following the CCI’s recent ruling, we are pausing enforcement of the requirement for developers to use Google Play’s billing system for the purchase of digital goods and services for transactions by users in India,” the company said, adding that it is reviewing its legal options in the country, suggesting it may challenge the competition regulator’s decision.
Google had previously extended the deadline for following its Play Store billing requirement in the South Asian market until October 31.
The regulator announced its decision after interviewing a number of industry players and smartphone makers, including Samsung, Xiaomi and Microsoft. It had also slapped another $162 million fine on Google for anti-competitive practices related to Android.
Uber recently launched its new advertising division and in-app ads. Apparently, those ads aren’t staying within the app.
Instead, ads from other companies are being sent out as push notifications, much to the chagrin of some Uber users. Over the weekend, people turned to Twitter to complain about the notifications, sharing screenshots of ads, including one particularly popular one from Peloton that Uber had sent out. One of the primary complaints: notifications are being sent out when users aren’t engaging with the app.
When Uber first announced its in-app ad “experience,” the company didn’t mention the potentially intrusive implications.
Uber told TechCrunch this “was a limited test and users can always manage their mobile notification settings under Privacy and then Notifications in the app.”
The company did not respond in time to follow up questions from TechCrunch, including how many users are included in the test, whether it is tracking data on how many users turn off ad push notifications, how long the test is scheduled to last and whether Uber would fully implement push notification ads in the future.
Uber’s in-app ads feature a single brand for the entire trip. The so-called “journey ads” lets brands show a user different ads at three points of a trip: while waiting for a car, while riding and upon reaching the destination. Brands are able to “personalize” ads to each user based on their travel history and geographic destinations. It’s also not clear if Uber used the same type of data for its push notification ads.
Alex Fedorov is CEO and founder at OBRIO, an IT company with Ukrainian roots that develops products in mobile applications, web products and SaaS.
Business owners always say that each company has to live through a real crisis before it becomes a real business. All big companies we know have experienced a few big crises during their lifetimes, and they are still in the game. There are a lot of studies about crisis management on the web, but none of them tell us how to manage a company during times of war.
Our company had never seen a real crisis before February 2022. However, even before we did, I always told my team: “Every company has its time in the sun and a time of crisis.”
When the Russo-Ukrainian War began on February 24, all Ukrainian businesses faced a crisis. I’ll use our example to explain how we dealt with it.
Here are six tips for effectively managing a team during a war.
Establish an emergency communication channel
In such times of upheaval, people will require a lot of up-to-date information about what is happening. When people don’t know what’s happening, there arises a vacuum that can be filled with rumors or distorted news.
To avoid this, you must establish a special communication channel that’s active around the clock. Slack notifications, for example, can be automatically turned off outside of working hours, so make sure you utilize a channel that your team uses most often so they are less likely to miss important notifications.
This might seem like an easy and pretty obvious step, but it is the most efficient way to help your team when they’re feeling lost or disoriented, which is only natural when there’s a war raging around them.
Communicate with your team twice as often
Training to manage stress, anxiety and personal finance will help your employees build the needed knowledge and respond to tough situations.
Great leaders communicate with their people, and we must all remember that “overcommunication is good communication.”
For us, this saying has never been more correct. Communicate as frequently as there are updates on the issue but not less than twice a day. Additionally, follow your usual rules for team communication: Be honest, empathetic and humane.
Finally, when there’s a serious crisis, most people’s critical thinking faculties can be hindered. In such situations, you may have to over-explain things to your team more than usual. Do not shirk this responsibility. If your team needs its hand held, be there to hold it. It’ll pay off in the long term and help you stay in control from the early days of the crisis until things calm down.
Stop investing in R&D and get people back to work ASAP
As a leader, you must save your business, as it is something people rely on in times of uncertainty. The first thing to do here is to save as much cash as you can in order to stay in business as long as you can. That often means cutting back on non-essential spending. This can be a tough decision, but it is a sacrifice you may have to make.
After our team was in safe locations, the best way forward was to get them back to work and help them calm down. It sounds strange, but this is the best way to direct the anxieties and nervous energy of war. At work, where everything is known, prescribed and straightforward, people find calmness and a continued sense of purpose.
In my experience, the first wave of crisis is the most difficult because of the high levels of uncertainty. However, once you get over that phase, there will be fewer variables, which is when you return to investing activities if they are still feasible.
Use your standard remote-work policy
When the war broke out, it was very difficult to manage the team and reestablish our business processes. So we waited to do it after our team was evacuated and relocated safely.
Proven remote policies were a lifesaver when our employees were not in their usual environments. Nobody discounts the value of team spirit, so invest in it more since people will need each other’s support at a much greater degree during times of great strife. Among online team building activities, AR activities proved to be an amazing mood enhancer.
Conduct special training to support your team
Crises, thankfully, are rare, but that also means people often do not have enough knowledge to handle the loads of unusual information they’re bombarded with in such situations.
In such situations, you should:
Educate people by conducting special training with the help of experts. Training to manage stress, anxiety and personal finance will help your employees build the needed knowledge and respond to tough situations. The Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications has created a guide titled “Psychological support during the war,” explaining how to spot and assist with mental health problems.
Invite successful and respected people to share positive thoughts on the situation and perhaps explain how they’ve faced especially tough times. Authority bias is real and it works as a morale booster when a team needs direction and a sense that things will turn out to be fine.
Share relevant positive news to cheer up your team and create a vision of a better future.
Tie business goals to social initiatives
When war broke out, people wanted to help. This was good, but we realized it can affect focus on work and could eventually lead the business to an even more profound crisis. In such times, put your over-explanation tool from Step 1 to work and educate people on how your company’s success benefits society.
As a result of what your team accomplishes at work, your company can invest more resources in charity initiatives when growth or profitability is maintained or improved. As a consequence, your team can do more and have more resources to do something significant for society.
This should have no effect on your existing OKR system because your company’s goals will stay the same. However, the team perks have changed — instead of a nice barbecue, you will now invest saved money in something beneficial to the wider society. Statistics show that when a company leads with purpose, 76% of respondents are more likely to trust that company.
Volunteering has become an essential component of our team’s operations. For instance, we arranged contributions, looked for equipment, supplied soldiers and helped secure supplies for people in disaster zones.
Each company will face a crisis caused by a unique combination of factors. Still, the tips I have provided here are applicable to almost any problematic situation. Do not forget to maintain a strong leadership position and stay empathetic with your team.
Egyptian fintech Money Fellows has raised $31 million in what it describes as the first close of its Series B investment. The round, which the startup expects to top up in the coming months, was led by CommerzVentures, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) and Arzan Venture Capital.
Other participating investors include Partech, Sawari Ventures, Invenfin, National Investment Company (NIC), 4DX Ventures and P1Ventures. Money Fellows has raised $37 million in total funding since its inception.
Money Fellows’ premise is the digitization of money circles or what’s commonly known as the Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCAs), a system where a group of people agree to contribute money for a specific period, thereby saving and borrowing together.
ROSCAs, which Money Fellows CEO Ahmed Wadi says is a $700 billion opportunity globally, are quite popular in over 90 emerging and developing markets with several names: Esusu or ajo in Nigeria, Kameti or chit fund in India and Gameya in Egypt. But it wasn’t in either of these countries that Wadi first tested Money Fellows, it was in Germany, where he lived at the time. There, Wadi found it difficult to access financial services because he lacked a credit history. He thought by replicating the gameya system in the European nation, he could provide an alternative financing system for people like him. However, adoption wasn’t significant there nor in the U.K. which was his next stop.
“Germany didn’t have this culture and at some point, it felt like it made sense to go to the U.K. where they have Asians, Africans, and Arab communities that traditionally use this model,” said Wadi. “But we found out people didn’t need it because they had an advanced financial system.”
On the other hand, Egypt has a functioning ROSCA system, and Wadi, being from the country, chose it as his third try in 2017. He launched the platform a year later.
Here’s how ROSCAs work. Let’s say 10 people come together and agree to pay $1,000 monthly for ten months. At the end of each month, a member gets $10,000 and it keeps rotating until everyone receives their payout. This system works best with a tight-knit of friends or family because it can be risky when strangers are involved. However, this limits offline ROSCAs in that participants may find it difficult to access more capital. But with Money Fellows, people have a broader pool of participants — each passing through a credit assessment process — around Egypt so that they can form and join ROSCA groups through its app. Similar players globally include Pakistani fintech Oraan and U.K.-based StepLadder.
Money Fellows classifies its users as borrowers, savers, or planners depending on where their position is in a ROSCA cycle and when they receive a payout. It charges a one-time service fee of about 6% to users who choose its early spots; the percentage decreases down the line and turns to incentivized interest paid to users at the end of the cycle.
“People looking to borrow can find slots on our platform. People are looking to save too. So if you are a slot number one, you’re a pure borrower, so we charge a fee. If you’re a slot number two, we charge you slightly less. It decreases the more you’re willing to wait until the end of that ROSCA, where we incentivize the users with one of the most attractive saving incentives in the country.”
Any fintech business that involves lending in one form or another has to deal with defaults. Money Fellows doesn’t have it differently. Its conscious design also factors in such cases and has made provisioning and reserve requirements to ensure that customers keep getting paid even when other participants miss their targets. According to the chief executive, Money Fellows sets aside reserves for every new ROSCA launched and, complying with a provisioning schedule, covers any defaults from those funds.
“The good thing with ROSCAs versus consumer finance is that not everyone has equal credit exposure. So if your slot number five, for instance, when you get $10,000, you only need to repay $5000 because you historically paid $500 in the past five months,” he said. “That’s why we’re more conservative. We don’t limit people to only amounts. We also restrict them to specific slots because we know which slots carry more or less risk. That’s another beauty and how we control defaults using Rosco as the financial Engine versus the typical consumer and microfinance model.”
Image Credits: Money Fellows
The fintech also includes a B2B play where it partners with various merchants in Egypt to sell their products within the app so its customers can get discounts. The fintech generates a commission from markup on these products in addition to charging fees in its ROSCAs. It plans to offer more financial services such as buy now pay later, pension, and cards, where the four-year-old fintech plan to make interchange fees.
Money Fellows has over 4.5. million registered users on its platform; however, only 7% are monthly active users. The average payout ticket per user is around 23,000 EGPU ($1,100). The company, which regards itself as “one of the favorite financial apps for Egyptians,” claims to have experienced an 8x year-over-year growth.
Wadi said Money Fellows’ plan with the funding is to accelerate growth by diversifying its portfolio of services and expanding its product offerings across the B2C & B2B segments, as well as its geographical expansion across Africa and Asia. “To be honest, this model has yet to be cracked globally. It took so much time to develop our product and technology to ensure ROSCAs were fully completed while onboarding the right mix of borrowers, savers and planners, the CEO stated. “This was our key focus over the past couple of years, so now it’s the time to grow, and so a big chunk of what we’re raising is to aggressively grow or scale a lot faster than what we have done and then hopefully try to replicate this in other markets.”
Hangwi Muambadzi, a venture partner at CommerzVentures, speaking on the investment, said: “Rotating Savings and Credit Associations have been deeply embedded in emerging markets across the world for centuries. It is brilliant to see this new digital ROSCA-driven model [Money Fellows] emerge from Africa, creating a trusted model of delivering financial solutions and setting a new standard on using localized solutions to solve for global opportunities.”
In June, Chinese pop-punk singer Wowkie Zhang released a music video where he encounters a virtual character in a hyper-colored, animated world that is reminiscent of Pixar films. The avatar, sporting Gen-Z-styled silver hair, a yellow and black oversize sweat, and baggy pants, makes hip-hop moves to Zhang’s catchy, light-hearted tune.
The virtual character isn’t a one-off creation; instead, Zebra Labs, which produced the video, is turning him into a piece of reusable intellectual property that can be bought as NFTs on marketplaces and appear in other virtual occasions like video games. The startup is waiting for the bull market to return to launch the NFT project, Scarlett Li, founder and CEO of Zebra Labs, tells TechCrunch.
The aim of Zebra Labs is to “create intellectual property that’s deeply integrated with content” and “run virtual idols like celebrities,” says Li. Some of the avatars it creates are based on real-life stars, while others are original characters. To generate revenues, Zebra Labs cultivates an audience for its idols through short films, images, and social posts and in turn monetizes the fan base. It also licenses its virtual idols to partners for a fee.
Here’s Zebra Labs trying to build a fan base for Zookie, who makes a cameo in Wowkie Zhang’s music video, by churning out Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese version) clips of the character:
NFT, which is already being widely used in authenticating IP rights, can be used to better engage fans, reckons Li, who previously helped organize some of China’s largest music festivals. “When you reach 30 years old, you lose interest to explore music, so a virtual environment can jumpstart visualization [of music] again.”
NFTs also give emerging musicians a more direct avenue for income. In China, music distribution is in the grip of music streaming giants owned by Tencent and NetEase. These platforms tend to allocate user traffic to musicians already with a lot of fans, “so to live well as a musician, you need to have a million followers,” says Li. “NFTs can change that.”
As a veteran of music festivals, Li is excited about the prospect of online concerts. She’s benchmarking against Ariana Grande’s Fornite concert, in which the singer descends into a colorful island in her virtual manifestation with a shimmering silver dress and a glowing white ponytail. Zebra Labs is in talks with several gaming firms to launch virtual concerts for Chinese artists inside a Minecraft-like game and a metaverse platform by 2023, Li says.
Zebra Labs recently raised $5 million to advance its metaverse vision. The funding came from the Chinese gaming firm NetDragon and the Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo. Onboarding a Japanese investor, according to Li, can help the startup learn from the country’s long history of IP management, which is exemplified by the success of virtual idols like Hatsune Miku. The company is also backed by SOSV, the VC firm known for its network of accelerators.
Following its collaboration with Wowkie Zhang’s music video, which has garnered some 40 million clicks across an array of online channels, Zebra Labs has five other artists in the pipeline. It’s also planning to release a digital twin of Zhang by the first quarter of 2023.
Elon Musk, Chief Twit, has refuted claims from a New York Times report this weekend that states he plans to lay off employees before Tuesday, November 1, thus cutting staff off from receiving stock grants as part of their compensation.
In response to a tweet from Eric Umansky, deputy managing editor of ProPublica, that said Musk was “making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation kicks in on Tuesday,” Musk said: “This is false.” He didn’t provide any clarification about what, specifically, was false.
Umansky’s tweet included a screenshot of a highlighted portion of the NYT story that also noted stock grants make up a significant portion of an employee’s pay, and by laying off workers before that date, Musk may avoid paying the grants.
Musk did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification on whether the layoffs will affect stock compensation. He may very well have been refuting the entire NYT article, which stated Musk is said to have ordered job cuts across the company, citing “four people with knowledge of the matter.” But that seems unlikely, given the layoffs that are already underway.
Previous reports said Musk would layoff 75% of Twitter’s staff, but last week when the executive visited Twitter headquarters, he said those numbers weren’t correct. Still, reports have been surfacing about various layoffs at the social media company, including of top Twitter executives like CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde.
Musk’s $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter went through late on Thursday last week. The New York Stock Exchange stopped trading Twitter’s stock on Friday morning, where it had been listed since 2013. Twitter will officially be delisted from the stock exchange on November 8.
Current shareholders will be paid $54.20, Musks’s buying price, per share. It’s not clear how Twitter’s now-private status will affect current employees with stock grants.
Over the last two and a half years, remote and hybrid working has become the norm — a majority of employed Americans have the option of working from home for all or part of the week, and 87% of workers who were offered remote work embraced the opportunity heartily.
While some companies are pushing for a return to the office, today’s strapped labor market is giving employees more power to push back for remote, or at least flexible, jobs. This isn’t just a pandemic response anymore — it’s a way of life, and it has the potential to make some businesses better. People who work from home have been reporting an uptick in their productivity levels without the distractions that come with an office — Oh, it’s Beth’s birthday. Cupcakes in the kitchen!
But both employers and employees have reported some downsides to remote work. Isolation can make people feel lonely and disconnected, leading to mental health issues. Learning and collaboration have taken a hit without the human element of being in the same room. And it can be difficult to create and maintain a company culture remotely.
Luckily, some seriously smart people have thought hard about how to address these challenges and make it work. We put a few of them onstage last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, and while you can watch the whole video, here are some of their best insights.
Be hyper-intentional when coming together IRL
Two and a half years into the pandemic, people are “actually clamoring to spend more time together,” said Adriana Roche, chief people officer at Mural, during a panel discussion at Disrupt.
Ironically, one of the main solutions to the woes of remote work is finding ways to bring staff together IRL. That might mean a couple of times per week in the office if everyone lives in the same city, but if the team is fully remote, companies have to be more intentional with how they plan monthly or quarterly off-sites.
Fundraising isn’t a monolithic event but rather a series of meetings and pleasantries, each with their own vibe and nuance. Yet many pieces of fundraising advice to founders paint the process with a broad brush.
We heard from three founders at TechCrunch Disrupt last week: Amanda DoAmaral, co-founder and CEO of Fiveable; Arman Hezarkhani, founder of Parthean; and Sarah Du, co-founder of Alloy Automation, each of whom has raised in the extreme highs and lows of last 18 months. They spoke about navigating the process, what worked (and what didn’t) and how to customize your pitch to navigate the many subtleties of fundraising.
For DoAmaral, it was important to spend time researching which investors may actually back her company. She said she’s had investors take meetings with her due to a warm intro despite having no actual intention to invest.
“My co-founder and I got in a car and drove down to Tennessee thinking we’re gonna get this check. And this guy didn’t even trust me to like, be an attendee at this event. They’re not writing the check,” DoAmaral recalled. “People are not going to take me seriously if they’re not going to see me as someone that is their equal at all.”
Du added that performing due diligence on potential backers beforehand is helpful, not only to find out whether they might actually invest in the company, but also if they will be good to work with. This is especially true for founders raising at the early stages who are looking at a long relationship ahead.
Hey, folks, welcome back to another edition of TechCrunch Week in Review, the place where we point you to the hottest stories of the past sevenish days. I’m stepping in front of the laptop for Greg Kumparak this week, but don’t fret, he will be back soon.
If you want this goodness in your inbox every Saturday, head on over here to sign up. Now, let’s get to it.
most read (Elon edition, somewhat)
Elon did it: He bought Twitter. The $44 billion acquisition closed this week and on day 1, the platform’s new owner “cleaned house,” Taylor and Amanda write, firing CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde. The purchase capped off months of ups and downs, and this week was no different. Darrell rounded up some highlights.
Elon’s layoff about-face: While Elon Musk immediately fired some folks at the top, earlier this week in a reversal from his layoff declaration last week, he said he won’t actually lay off 75% of Twitter’s staff — or 5,600 people — writes Rebecca, citing a Bloomberg report.
Apple’s Elon problem: Darrell’s headline says it all, really: “Twitter’s Elon problem could soon become Apple’s Elon problem, too.” At issue is that Apple updated its developer guidelines this week, one of which “seeks rent on revenue made by social networks around promoted posts.”
Argo AI shutdown: Autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI, flush at launch in 2017 with $1 billion, has shut down. Its parts, writes Kirsten Korosec, are “being absorbed into its two main backers: Ford and VW.”
Speaking of autonomous vehicles: After the Argo AI news hit, Darrell took to the site to explore the fact that, no, autonomous vehicles just aren’t going to happen.
MrBeast’s worth: Amanda asks if MrBeast, or 24-year-old YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, is worth the $1.5 billion he’s valuing his business at.
Meta is in trouble: That’s the headline. Meta reported its third-quarter results this week and they weren’t great. As Taylor writes: “With the Instagram portion of the business not looking so hot lately, Meta has quintupled down on the metaverse without examining if it even knows what users want at all these days. And after changing the name of the company while ruining a perfectly fine word in the process, there are no easy take-backs.” Meta really was a perfectly fine word.
Google Pixel 7’s “dumb” flaw: Haje took a picture through an airplane window and noticed a reflection caused by the reflective chrome surrounding the phone’s camera lens. “It’s a pretty common use case for most photography applications, which makes it all the harder to grok why Google went out of its way to make that experience worse.”
audio roundup
On Equity this week, we share with you one of Natasha Mascarenhas’s Disrupt panels. She talked to Chief co-founders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers about the future of their private membership club for women in leadership positions.
This week on Found, Darrell and Jordan sat down with Shanthi Rajan from construction management software company Linarc to discuss breaking into a slow-changing industry, building a team with talent across the globe and working with customers to build the most useful product possible.
And on Chain Reaction, Anita and Jacquelyn chat about Apple’s new App Store guidelines, Reddit’s foray into the NFT space and whether the U.K.’s new prime minister will live up to the hype he’s received from the crypto community.
Pitch Deck Teardown: Palau Project. Haje usually passes on tearing down pre-seed rounds, but he went for it this week with the Palau Project, which was founded by professional kite-surfer Jerome Cloetens, who is taking on climate change.
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
It’s official, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. In typical Musk fashion, the transition has been nothing but chaotic, with the deal closing just ahead of the deadline set by the Delaware Chancery Court — the court where Musk was planning to try to exit the deal by claiming Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform. (He was really looking to get the price down, of course!) In any event, the Telsa and SpaceX exec now has a new toy and everyone is waiting to see what comes next. Earlier, Musk had hinted at layoffs, then later retracted his statements, saying he wouldn’t fire 75% after all. However, he did immediately clear out the C-suite, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde — a sign that he’s planning to fill out Twitter’s top ranks with execs who will do his own bidding and not fight for the Twitter of days past.
Still, Musk’s talk about a Twitter that’s more permissive of “free speech” doesn’t quite align with his message to advertisers posted shortly after the deal’s close: He promised marketers that Twitter can’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.” That’s clearly a tacit acknowledgment on Musk’s part that advertisers don’t want to post their content next to hate speech-filled tweets. And despite Musk’s plans to grow Twitter’s subscription business, around 90% of Twitter’s revenue today comes from advertising. Given what he had to pay to own Twitter, Musk probably doesn’t want to have to pay to keep it running, too.
App Store Review Guidelines now give Apple a cut of NFTs, in-app advertising
Image Credits: TechCrunch
Along with the launch of iOS 16.1, Apple also introduced new App Store Review Guidelines. Among the major changes were two new rules designed to give Apple a bigger slice of the NFT market and Meta’s core advertising business.
The company said apps will be allowed to list, mint, transfer and let users view their own NFTs, but clarified that owning an NFT could not be a shortcut to unlocking any more features in an app. In other words, the ownership of an NFT shouldn’t be a way to route around Apple’s in-app purchases. In addition, Apple said NFT apps can’t display external links or other calls-to-action to purchase NFTs — that can only take place through Apple’s own in-app purchases system, as well.
This change is not all that surprising. As the web3 market grows, Apple wanted to find a way to stake its claim on the revenue and transactions that are occuring inside these new apps. Plus, it’s a better consumer experience for NFT marketplace apps to not just function as a showcase for users’ purchases, but as a place where users can actually transact.
The other big rule adjustment, however, is a bit more startling. In a bold move, Apple essentially said it deserves a cut of Meta’s ads business as well as any other social app. The new rule around social media apps now states that purchases of “boosts” have to flow through Apple’s in-app purchase system.
This could impact any app that sells the ability to boost a post to a wider audience, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, Twitter, dating apps and others. Meta, of course, took significant issue with this change, saying that Apple’s policy undercuts others in the digital economy after Apple had previously said it wouldn’t take a share of developer ad revenue. While Meta isn’t exactly a sympathetic player here, it’s concerning that Apple has decided it can now tax advertising inside iOS apps at the same time it runs its own expanding ads business. That seems like a move regulators will need to look into asap.
App Store gambling ads backlash
Speaking of Apple’s ads business…The company’s App Store ads platform expanded this week to include new ad slots like the main Today tab and a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings. The slots are available in all countries as of October 25, except China. The ads have a blue background and an “Ad” label to differentiate them from other listings.
Developers, however, were immediately disturbed by the instant deluge of gambling ads that appeared marketed alongside their own, including against kids’ applications and, in at least one case, a gambling addiction recovery app. This was a poor look for Apple. After all, the gambling category itself is already controversial — many developers would rather not share an app marketplace with these often predatory apps in the first place, much less have them advertised alongside their own.
Apple at least moved quickly to respond to the backlash by “pausing” gambling ads and a few other categories on App Store product pages, but the company didn’t say how long this pause would last or what it planned to do about the situation in the long term.
Spotify accuses Apple of anti-competitive behavior, this time around audiobooks
Just ahead of its Q3 earnings, Spotify published a blog post that again accused Apple of anti-competitive behavior with regard to its launch of audiobooks in the U.S. On an accompanying website, Spotify noted that its app update to include the audiobook expansion was rejected three times without “clear direction” as to what needed to be changed to come into compliance. The site details Spotify’s criticisms of Apple’s platform, explaining how Apple requires audiobook purchases to use Apple’s own in-app purchases — or, if selling elsewhere, prevents Spotify from telling users why, where or how to make those purchases outside of iOS.
Because Spotify wants to avoid the 30% IAP commission, it doesn’t let users buy audiobooks in its app. Instead, users select the book they want to purchase and are emailed a link that points to a website where they can complete the transaction.
“The Audiobooks purchase flow that Apple’s rules force us to provide consumers today is far too complicated and confusing — confusing because they change the rules arbitrarily, making them impossible to interpret,” Spotify’s blog post stated.
The company has regularly battled with Apple over its App Store policies but is sometimes seen as an unsympathetic victim due to its size, revenues and its role in moving the music industry to streaming, which artists say doesn’t pay.
Weekly News
Platforms: Apple
Image Credits: TechCrunch
Apple released iOS 16.1, iPadOS 16.1, macOS Ventura and watchOS 9.1. The updated software delivers new features like iCloud Shared Photo Library, Continuity Camera, Stage Manager for the Mac and iPad, Live Activities, Apple Fitness+ for iPhone and more.
Apple expanded its App Store ads platform to include the main Today tab and a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings in all countries on October 25, except China. The ads have a blue background and an “Ad” label to differentiate them from other listings.
SKAdNetwork 4.0, which lets advertisers measure ads’ success, became available in iOS 16.1 and iPadOS 16.1 this week.
Apple also released the first betas of macOS Ventura 13.1, iOS 16.2, and iPadOS 16.2 which included the new Freeform app, announced at WWDC. The app is a whiteboard app that lets you create sketches notes, files, documents and more, which can be accessed across devices.
Apple reported its Q4 earnings with iPhone revenue up 9.67% YoY to $42.63 billion, Mac up 25.4% to $11.51 billion, but iPad revenue down 13.06% to $7.17 billion. Wall Street was expecting iPhone revenue of $43.21 billion, sending the stock down in late trading. Other products were $9.65 billion (up 9.95%) and the Services division, which includes the App Store, was up 4.98%.
Platforms: Google
Google filed a brief opposing Epic and Match’s recent motion to amend and expand their antitrust claims in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against the Android maker. In it, Google disputes that its incentive program for developers to publish to the Play Store would prohibit developers from creating competing app stores, as alleged. It also noted the motion from Epic and Match comes too late, after the December 3, 2021 amendment deadline.
The company also announced updates across three main areas of Jetpack: architecture libraries and guidance, application performance and user interface libraries and guidance. It noted that 90% of the top 1,000 apps use Android Jetpack.
Google introduced a Gradle Bill of Materials (BOM) specifying the stable version of each Compose library. The first BOM release, Compose October 22, contains Material Design 3 components, lazy staggered grids, variable fonts, pull to refresh, snapping in lazy lists, draw text in canvas, URL annotations in text, hyphenation and LookAheadLayout. And it launched the first alpha of Compose for Android TV.
Android Studio got updates, too, including updated templates for Wear OS. And Google launched a stable Android R emulator system image for Wear OS.
E-commerce & Food Delivery
The FTC sanctioned Uber-owned Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, and its CEO Jason Rellas for data security abuses that saw the personal information of the company’s 2.5 million customers exposed. Drizly will have to implement a security program, destroy unnecessary data, implement new security controls and train employees and cybersecurity.
Amazon began letting select U.S. customers pay with Venmo on its website and in its mobile app, with plans to roll out the support to all U.S. customers by Black Friday.
Blockchain
Twitter began testing a blockchain-agnostic tool that allows users to display their NFTs in tweets in partnership with Dapper Labs, Magic Eden, Rarible and Jump.trade. The feature is only available to select users at this time.
Fintech
PayPal added support for Apple Passkeys on iOS, iPadOS and macOS, with more platforms to come. Passkeys are a new industry standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium — in partnership with Apple, Google and Microsoft — that are designed to replace passwords.
Social
New analysis indicates India’s homegrown TikTok clones, like Moj and Josh, haven’t been able to replicate TikTok’s success in the country following its ban, leaving Instagram and YouTube to take over the short-form video market locally.
Meta added Reels to Facebook Groups, noting that most Facebook users are members of at least 15 active groups and that there are 100 million-plus group joins every day.
Snap reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth ever in the third quarter. The social app maker missed analyst expectations with $1.13 billion in revenue, versus $1.14 billion expected, leading the stock to drop from $11 to $8 in late trading on the day of the earnings announcement. DAUs, however, were up 19% YoY (up 53 million) to 363 million in Q3. The company said it also plans to close its San Francisco office, which was only lightly used due to remote work policies.
The Snapchat approlled out Director Mode, a feature offering TikTok-like tools including a green screen, quick edit and camera speed features, as well as a BeReal-like dual camera mode.
Pinterest reported its Q3 revenue was up 8% YoY to $684.6 million, above estimates of $666.7 million. However, global MAUs remained flat YoY at 445 million, above estimates of 437.4 million. The stock jumped 11% on the news.
Meta announced its Q3 earnings with revenue down 4% YoY to $27.7 billion, net income down 52% YoY to $4.4 billion, DAUs across its apps up 4% YoY to 2.93 billion. The stock dropped 25% on the revenue decline as investors voiced concerns about how much Meta is spending on its metaverse ambitions.
Bumble open sourced its AI, Private Detector, which the app uses to detect unsolicited nude images. (Get it?) The app gives the user the choice as to whether or not to open the image when a potentially lewd photo is detected. Now other apps can access the same technology.
Match-owned dating app Hinge will add a profile verification feature in November that will ask users to take a video selfie in the app as part of a crackdown on scammers.
Messaging
Telegram said it plans to auction usernames via the TON blockchain, a move inspired by an auction for wallet usernames that saw some selling for as high as $200,000. Founder Pavel Durov suggested other elements of the Telegram ecosystem could become a part of this marketplace in the future, including channels, stickers or emoji.
Apple raised prices for Apple Music, Apple TV+ and its Apple One bundle in the U.S. Apple TV+, which is getting its first price hike, will increase by $2 monthly and $10 annually. Subscribers will be charged $6.99 per month or $69 per year. Apple Music is getting a price increase of $1 for individual subscribers and $2 for families. The individual plan will now be $10.99 per month and the family plan will be $16.99 per month. And the Apple One bundle will cost $16.95/month, $22.95/month and $32.95/month, respectively, for the individual plan, family plan and Premier plan.
YouTube is raising the rates for its Premium Subscription for families across several countries, including the U.S., U.K., Canada and Argentina, effective November 21. In the U.S., the price is going up from $17.99 to $22.99. The plan allows up to five family members to watch ad-free videos, download videos for offline access and play videos in the background.
Deezer also bumped its monthly premium price to $10.99 in the U.S.
Given the competitors’ increases, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek noted on the earnings call that the company is considering a price hike as well. Spotify’s revenue in Q3 was up 21% YoY to €3.04 billion, MAUs were up 20% YoY to 456 million, and Premium subscriptions were up 13% YoY to 195 million. But Spotify’s stock dropped 6% after earnings due to a miss on advertising growth.
YouTube’s mobile app on iOS and Android got a makeover that includes a new look, precise seeking, new buttons, ambient mode, darker dark mode and a “pinch to zoom” feature to see more details in a video. Later, the company rolled out an update across platforms that separated long-form, Shorts and Live videos into their own tabs on channel pages.
Gaming
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that more than 20 million people have now streamed games through Xbox Cloud Gaming, up from 10 million in April 2022. The gaming subscription service allows consumers to stream games to their phone via a web browser. This year, Microsoft brought the popular game Fortnite to the platform.
TikTok is expanding further into games, according to the FT, which said the app would add a dedicated gaming tab by November 2, which would feature ad-supported mobile games and in-app purchases.
Government & Policy
The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority said it plans to investigate Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta’s moves into retail financial services over competition and consumer harm concerns, the FT reported.
Turkey’s competition authority fined Meta 346.72 million lira ($18.6 million) for combining user data across Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
India’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India, fined Google $113 million for abusing the dominant position of its Google Play Store. It ordered the company to let app developers use third-party payments for in-app purchases or for purchasing apps and to drop any anti-steering guidelines. Google has three months to comply.
Square parent company Block was reported to be selling access to customers’ email addresses used to receive receipts. While not illegal, privacy experts argue this means of selling marketing information is “walking a fine line,” per Protocol’s report.
Apple patched a bug in iOS 16.1 and macOS Ventura that could have allowed apps with Bluetooth access to record users’ conversations with Siri without requiring microphone access.
TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker offered an inside look into TheTruthSpy, the stalkerware operation that’s spying on thousands of people worldwide, including in the U.S., via Android apps planted by someone with physical access to a person’s device. Leaked data from the operation includes call logs, texts, location data and other personal info.
Free banking app Crowded raised $6 million in seed funding led by Garage, with participation from Deel co-founder Philippe Bouaziz, Innoventure Partners’ Michael Marks and a group of former bank executives. The app targets member-based nonprofits, like fraternities, sororities and booster clubs.
Onward, an app designed to help co-parents navigate and managed their shared expenses, raised $9.7 million in Series A funding led by Atlanta-based TTV Capital.
Joro, an app that helps people track and reduce their carbon footprints, raised a $10 million Series A led by existing investors Sequoia Capital and Amasia. Also participating were Norrsken, Nest co-founder Matt Rogers’ Incite, Jay-Z’s Arrive and Mike Einziger, the lead guitarist of Incubus.
Downloads
Duolingo Math
Image Credits: Duolingo
Language-learning company Duolingo officially launched its math app to the public this week, following beta trials. The app represents the first expansion beyond language learning and literacy for the company. The app allows users to choose between an elementary version that focuses on basic concepts like multiplication and division and an adult version that’s more optimized for “brain training” exercises that put skills into practice. A future version may even expand into higher-level math, like linear algebra or college-level math. The app is remaining free to use for the time being.
Pixel Pals
With my new Pixel Pals app, you can finally have adorable pets in the new Dynamic Island 24/7, *everywhere*, fully animated and cute as heck. they're freeeeeeeee! pic.twitter.com/3hPL8FaUiY
Apollo developer Christian Selig thought he’d have a little fun with the new iOS 16 feature, Dynamic Island, so he added a feature to his popular Reddit client called “Pixel Pals” that let users collect and care for small, animated pets that run atop the black bar at the top of the screen. The feature took off as people adopted their pixelated pets, fed them and played with them to earn their love.
Taking a cue from users’ interest, Selig launched a standalone app for Pixel Pals, which now allows pet owners to do more with their animated friends, including pinning them to the Home Screen as transparent widgets, adding them to the Lock Screen as animated widgets and enjoying them through iOS 16’s Live Activities, among other things. If anything, the app works to demonstrate iOS 16’s new features in a clever and entertaining way. Users seem to enjoy the new experience, too — as Selig noted this week, the app hit the top 3 in the Graphics & Design category on the App Store.
Natalie Gordon founded Babylist in 2011, and today it’s a leading marketplace for baby gift registries. But it didn’t take off at first. It took several years for Gordon to spin the startup into its current trajectory and several more for users to follow. This is normal! And we’re excited to have Jesse Draper join the conversation. She invested in Babylist as a General Partner at Halogen Ventures.
If you haven’t joined us before on Grip — our TCL online platform —click here to register for free and gain access to all TechCrunch Live events, including TechCrunch Live, City Spotlight, Startup Pitch Practice, Networking and other TechCrunch community events, with just one registration.
Over the past few years, community has been a buzzword for tech startups looking to sell a product or service based on their definition of a useful network. The pandemic stress-tested these business models, with some companies seeing that consumers weren’t willing to pay fees in exchange for advice they could find on Twitter, while others realized that focusing on a target user was more important than finding the biggest total addressable market possible.
It’s part of the reason I had so much fun interviewing founders from Clubhouse and Chief last week at TechCrunch Disrupt. I spoke to the founders of these companies to understand how they’ve evolved to deal with a bewildering new normal, and while a social audio app and a private membership community for women in leadership are quite different in strategy, they shared the same vibe: Less is more.
Clubhouse’s product-market fit
Paul Davison, Clubhouse co-founder and CEO, was fast to address what others described as Clubhouse’s fall from grace. He said that the app’s early hype saw it grow 10x in users month over month, a boom that broke a lot of the underlying infrastructure of the app. For months, he said, people had a bad experience on the app because of tech issues and the inability to find a room that matched their interests.
Free banking app Crowded 
