Earlier this month, Rocket Internet announced that it would be stepping up aggressive growth in Asia once more, with one new launch per quarter to expand in emerging markets. Today, the e-commerce giant is following through on that strategy: Daraz — an e-commerce portal modelled on Amazon and serving Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar — is today announcing a $56 million… Read More
from TechCrunch
French music streaming service Deezer has filed for IPO on the Paris-based stock exchange Euronext. Planned to take place at the end of the year, the company isn’t disclosing how much it hopes to raise or its expected valuation. Read More
from TechCrunch
Headspace, a guided meditation and mindfulness startup, recently raised $30 million from The Chernin Group, Advancit Capital, Allen & Company, Breyer Capital, The Honest Company CEO Jessica Alba, actor Jared Leto, TV personality Ryan Seacrest, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and others. The plan is to hire more engineers and content marketers and expand Headspace’s content. Read More
from TechCrunch
Portea Medical, a startup that provides in-home healthcare in India, has raised a $37.5 million Series B led by returning investor Accel. The round’s other participants include International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, Qualcomm Ventures, and Ventureast. Read More
from TechCrunch
More consolidation underway in the area of point of sale services. New York-based payment startup ShopKeep is buying Ambur, a payments service for restaurants, food trucks and other food and drink establishments. ShopKeep will keep the product alive as it integrates it, and will be taking on Ambur’s 1,500 customers in the process. The terms of the deal were not disclosed,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Another move by a large company to up its stakes in the world of open source technologies: Payments giant First Data Corporation has acquired Spree Commerce, an open source storefront platform originally based on Ruby on Rails. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed — we are trying to find out — but Spree’s CEO Sean Schofield says in a blog post confirming the deal that… Read More
from TechCrunch
A few months ago, I took a ride down the 101 in an Audi that had been modified to self-drive down Bay Area highways. The tech was developed by a company called Cruise, which was started by Socialcam founder Kyle Vogt; he did undergraduate research a decade ago in autonomous vehicles. After hitting one out of the park with consumer mobile apps when Socialcam sold to Autodesk for $60 million,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Is bitcoin a currency or a commodity? According to the United Stated Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), bitcoin is the former. Its recent decision mirrors former verbiage by the IRS declaring bitcoin to be, as TechCrunch reported at the time, “property, not currency.” What’s going on? Read More
from TechCrunch
While there’s no shortage of online website builders today, most are focused on providing professionals or small business owners with an easy-to-use set of tools to quickly create their own web page without having to hiring an outside development firm. A company called Padlet, however, has gone in a different direction. Its simple and collaborative website creation platform can be used for… Read More
from TechCrunch
Clover Health, an insurance startup based out of San Francisco, is hoping that with its data-driven approach it can rebuild healthcare for senior citizens from the ground up.
It wants that by tracking all the inputs of a person’s medical history from insurance claims and determining who the highest-risk patients are. Clover health then works with those patients to help them become… Read More
from TechCrunch