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India just started rolling out 5G networks after much anticipation and years-long delay. Service operators expect to bring next-generation cellular connectivity to every town in the world’s second-largest wireless market by as early as the end of 2023. But while the rollout is currently at its initial phase, New Delhi last week directed telecom operators to not set up 5G infrastructure around areas close to airports to avoid interference with flight operations.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the government body that handles telecom operations in the South Asian nation, in its recent order to telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, directed them to restrict their infrastructure enabling C-Band 5G networks (between 3.3-3.67GHz) from over 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) away from runway endpoints at all airports in the country. It also ordered all three operators to limit the power emission of their equipment installed after the given range.

The restrictions were enforced in response to concerns raised by the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). In September, the aviation department suspected that 5G networks operating on the C-Band spectrum would interfere with flight altimeters — the instrument that helps pilots maintain the required altitude during flight.

The airline industry in the U.S. raised similar concerns in January when AT&T and Verizon activated their C-Band 5G networks. In June, the Federal Aviation Administration said that stakeholders in aviation and wireless industries identified steps to protect commercial flights from disruption by 5G interference and permitted AT&T and Verizon to continue to enhance their service at certain airports with the least risk of disrupting flight schedules.

Shortly after the network disruption concerns arose in the U.S., the Indian telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in February assured the industry that the South Asian country would not face any such issues.

“In the U.S., especially in older airplanes, the altimeter frequency is close to the one being used to render 5G services,” he said in a press conference, adding that the frequency used by flight altimeters in India was far away from the frequencies designated for 5G services.

P D Vaghela, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, made a similar statement in an interview with the English daily Times of India in January.

“India will have no problems. Prima facie, there are no problems for the aviation industry within India over 5G spectrum rollout,” he had said.

C-Band frequencies — a part of the mid-band spectrum — range between 4-8GHz. Telecom operators in the U.S. have the C-Band comprising a 3.7-3.98GHz frequency range, which is possible to intercept the altimeter range between 4.2-4.4GHz in some cases. However, the Indian government auctioned the mid-band spectrum in the 3.3-3.6GHz range.

Peeyush Vaish, a partner and telecom sector leader at Deloitte, said that Indian operators have a distinct separation of 530MHz from the international altimeter band. There has been no reported interference between 5G and aircraft frequencies in Europe, South Korea and Japan — all of which have launched 5G services based on 5G bands similar to those assigned in India, he said.

Nonetheless, due to the direction from the telecom department, telcos in the country are evaluating a series of steps, multiple sources aware of the development told TechCrunch.

Airtel so far deployed its infrastructure to enable 5G connectivity at four airports in the country, while Jio also planned to make a similar move in the coming days.

Due to the restrictions, Airtel and Jio need to re-evaluate their plans. The former also needs to switch off its radios for the time being.

The DoT director general and the independent body for Indian telcos, the Cellular Operators Association of India, did not respond to requests for comment.

Experts believe that consumers in the proximity of airports are not likely to get 5G on their compatible devices.

The directive indicates that a user in Aerocity in New Delhi or one in Mumbai’s Santacruz may not get 5G for now, a source working at a telecom operator who requested not to be named told TechCrunch. The impact would, however, be less in cities including Bengaluru, where airports are miles away from local residencies, they said.

Vaish of Deloitte stated that while the current network infrastructure is not likely to be affected due to the restrictions, new tower construction near urban airports might be delayed for the time being.

Even though the directions are limited to the specific C-Band network frequencies, the impact seems significant as telcos consider the particular band for widespread 5G connectivity across various devices.

Amitoj Arya, a partner at EY, said that since the interference issue does not impact all airlines and is limited to a specific type of aircrafts, 5G can be rolled out in a phased manner while retrofitting affected aircrafts with interference-resistant altimeters. He also suggested that telcos could be directed to run 5G services around airports with reduced power levels and technology interventions on 5G antennas.

“5G has the potential to alleviate several of airports’ and airlines’ pain points, such as aircraft data analytics and predictive maintenance, autonomous apron operations, automated baggage handling, AI-based passenger monitoring and screening, etc. Hence, it is critical to identify ways to allow 5G technology near the airports while not compromising the safety and security of the passengers,” he said.

The DGCA is exploring the replacement of aircraft radio altimeter filters to overcome the roadblock for telcos. However, it would take months for all flights to get the upgraded systems.

India’s nationwide 5G rollout plan could hit turbulence due to aircraft interference concerns by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Shein, the world’s largest fashion ecommerce site, has taken significant steps to ramp up its environmental, social, and governance — or ESG — efforts. But responsible fast fashion sounds like an oxymoron. How can clothes be so cheap, if their designers don’t copy luxury brands and if the factories behind aren’t squeezed out of their margins?

Nonetheless, Shein is trying to elevate its business practice to global standards by hiring a clutch of industry veterans. One of the major allegations against the fashion giant is labor exploitation, according to numerous reports including one saying workers are made to toil 75 hours a week. Earlier this week, the fashion ecommerce site said it had committed $15 million to improve the standards of 300 of its partnered factories over the next four years. The fund will focus on making physical enhancements to its suppliers’ factories.

That amounts to $50,000 per factory, which doesn’t seem like a lot. But put to good use, the money is doing to China’s clothing industry what Apple has brought to the country’s hardware manufacturing — improving worker conditions over the years in response to ongoing pressure from watchdogs in the West.

Shein’s relationship with its suppliers is love-hate. Instead of running its own factories, it relies on a large network of contract manufacturers in southern China. Thanks to its sheer sales volume — the platform is expected to generate $30 billion in GMV this year — Shein’s procurement orders are large and stable, making it a coveted client for factories.

The company also has a reputation for paying suppliers on time, which is important to manufacturers that live on healthy cash flow. Despite its notoriously thin margins and demanding production timeline, factories scramble to secure Shein orders and keep their people sewing for long hours to meet deadlines.

Shein knows investors around the world are increasingly focusing on ESG, so to prepare for a public listing down the road, it needs an ethical makeover.

As part of its responsible sourcing initiative, Shein promised that “all contracted manufacturing suppliers agree to comply with the Shein Code of Conduct, which is aligned to International Labour Organization core conventions, and local laws and regulations.”

Furthermore, Shein said it has set up a feedback system through which workers can “anonymously submit complaints, feedback and suggestions via email, phone or WeChat, to support the company’s efforts in monitoring and managing compliance to its Code of Conduct and upholding the labour rights of workers.”

These are encouraging signs, of course, but the question is how will Shein balance incredible affordability and fast product cycle with responsible manufacturing, which will likely raise its costs. Its effort to reduce its impact on the planet through a new recycling platform is already raising skepticism — how can the consumerist nature of fast fashion ever be compatible with sustainability?

Consumers claim to care about the environmental impact and the workers who make their garments, but Shein’s breakout success shows that at the end of the day, speed and price are the utmost determinants for many people’s consumption.

As its fashion empire booms, Shein wants an ESG makeover by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Indian venture firm Blume has raised over $250 million for a new fund, its fourth and largest, as it looks to get more aggressive in courting early-stage startups and go deeper into supporting its portfolio firms at a time when the deal flow activity in the South Asian market has taken a hit from the broader global reversal in the public markets.

The 12-year-old firm, which employs about three dozen people, said it originally sought to raise $200 million but broadened its goals following in-bound requests. Some of India’s finest family offices, global family offices, sovereign wealth funds of India and overseas and emerging market funds of funds have backed the new fund, it said without disclosing any specific names. (VCs rarely disclose the names of their LPs.)

Blume Ventures – which manages over $600 million in assets under management– will deploy the larger fund to back about 35 startups, up from 25 in the previous fund.

The broader focus is to write larger checks and participate in multiple rounds of portfolio firms, Karthik Reddy, founder and general partner of Blume Ventures, told TechCrunch in an interview. It’s something that the firm couldn’t afford to do because of its size, he said. “The founders now know that we can support them for longer. We didn’t have the firepower before, but we do now.”

The fund will also look to back select pricier startups, usually those from second- or third-time founders, he said. “Now I have the money power to do such deals, go 50-50 with somebody. We could have never done it before. We neither had the courage nor the risk-modelling,” he said.

The Indian fund, whose partners are widely respected and considered among the most founder-friendly in the ecosystem, has grown in stature in the past half decade as many of its earlier picks gained broader adoption and raised larger follow on rounds. Its portfolio includes Unacademy, Slice, Spinny, Dunzo, Classplus, Servify, Exotel, Lambdatest, Smallcase, Euler and Pixxel.

As the global public markets jumped last year, thanks to low interest rates and infusion of stimulus checks into the system, Indian startups were beneficiary of the euphoria, raising a record $39 billion in the year. Tiger Global, SoftBank and Alpha Wave Global aggressively wrote checks and minted dozens of unicorns in the country.

But as the markets reverse much of the gains from the 13-year bull run, deal activity has just as dramatically slowed in the country. In a remarkable exchange, Flipkart chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy warned the ecosystem last month that the so-called funding winter is likely to continue for another 12 to 18 months and the industry may have to grapple with a “lot of turmoil and volatility.”

Reddy, slightly uncomfortable talking about larger funds, said many of the firms that aggressively deployed capital in the country are arguably not venture players.

“It’s not venture capital, it’s classic growth investing. They can wake up one day and move all the allocation to public markets, move into PE assets, move into commodities. They can do whatever they want. Some of them tried venture. Some will stick around, others might retreat,” he said.

Despite the market slump, Reddy said Blume has written several checks in recent months and continues to see the quality improve in the teams and the problems new age startups are attempting to tackle. But he agreed that many startups that raised capital at unrealistic valuations last or early this year will have to either prove their worth with fast and sustainable growth or take a haircut in pricing in the following rounds.

“We are grateful to our anchor supporters and new believers who have emphatically backed Blume IV,” said Sanjay Nath, co-founder and general partner of Blume Ventures, in a statement.

“Whether building domestically or for global markets, the best founders and LPs would like to work with a Fund that can be considered world-class, which has spurred us to keep institutionalizing and bolstering our platform, team and capabilities. Thanks to an increasing reality of IPO and M&A exits, there is a resurgence of 2x founders and operators, as well as higher quality first-time founders. We’re excited for Blume to become the preferred seed partner of choice for both categories.”

As the Indian startup ecosystem grows and shows signs of maturing, another trend at play in the country has been the rise of homegrown funds and just how fast their own fund sizes have scaled in recent years. Chiratae Ventures, Arkham Ventures and 3One4 Capital have raised larger funds, sometimes going above the $300 million mark. (Blume itself has grown from $20 million in 2011, to $60 million in 2015, and $102 million in 2018.)

Reddy said homegrown firms in India, many of which are focused on specific sectors, raising larger capital shows that they have gained the underlying believes that they can go deeper into their sectors and have the mark-ups from existing portfolio startups to show signs of path to prosperity for LPs. Many firms have returned funds, he said.

India’s Blume Ventures more than doubles in size, raises over $250 million for new fund by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

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Why, hello there, and welcome to your Tuesday Daily Crunch. I’ll be your host this week while Haje works from an undisclosed location where day is night and night is day. If you aren’t enjoying today’s Found podcast about tampons, we hope you at least saw stars at the TC Sessions: Space event. Let’s dig into some news! — Christine

The TechCrunch Top 3

First AI, now soft porn: We’ve written recently about artificial intelligence and porn, but as everyone has run to the App Store to try out Lensa AI’s avatars, Haje finds out that, as he put it, “it’s way too easy to trick Lensa AI into making NSFW images.” Can’t say we didn’t see that coming. In fact, Taylor is over here raising red flags.
Robinhood is getting into retirement: Mary Ann reports that Robinhood is moving into the individual retirement account game, offering a 1% match on every dollar contributed — the company says this is an industry first. And it’s not going after the typical saver. Instead, it is targeting gig workers and contractors who often don’t have that ability outside of traditional workplaces.
Email is life: To some people, no access to email might be relaxing, but for those whose email was affected by the recent Rackspace outage, we hope Carly’s story sheds some light on what has been happening. It was indeed a ransomware attack.

Startups and VC

The venture market has been a tough one for many startups trying to get a better hold on their runway. So when a scrappy young company is able to raise in this environment, Alex’s ears perk up. He spoke to Cacheflow, which builds tools for the software sales closing process, about the $10 million raise that doubled its valuation.

And speaking of industries hit hard by the market, Ingrid reports on some good news for the beleaguered quick commerce sector, where Norwegian grocery delivery company Oda grabbed $151 million, but at a lower valuation of $353 million.

And we have five more for you:

Thrift shop: If you’re gonna pop some tags, Archive is helping your favorite brands create a new revenue stream in the world of secondhand stores. Christine has more.
Protecting that identity: Rezonate comes out of stealth with $8.7 million in new capital to launch its approach to cloud identity protection, Frederic writes.
Move over Minecraft: There’s a new cube in town. Flush with $3 million, Cubzh is a new free video game that Romain writes “is all about user-generated content through a cube system.”
Get paid: Paul reports that Homebrew creator Max Howell and Timothy Lewis have teamed up to create Tea, an open source protocol that helps developers authenticate their software packages and get paid to do it. Oh, and they have $8.9 million in new capital.
Pay the tax man: Making sure your company is doing payroll and taxes right is important. It’s also quite cumbersome, which is why Singapore-based corporate services super app Osome wants to do it for you. Catherine has more on the company and its $25 million Series B.

How companies can slash ballooning SaaS costs

A study conducted recently by purchasing management platform Vertice found that one out of every eight dollars spent by enterprises goes to SaaS products.

“It’s not surprising when you consider the average organization now uses around 110 SaaS solutions,” reports Kyle Wiggers. As a result, customers are spending 53% more on software licensing today than in 2017.

“Most organizations have grown their portfolio of software vendors dramatically over the past 10 years,” said Stephen White, senior director analyst at Gartner. “It’s not uncommon to have more than doubled that vendor portfolio.”

Four more from the TC+ team:

What’s on Marc Benioff’s mind?: Ron has another look at what’s going on at Salesforce after a few of its executives walked away.
Will we miss SPACs?: Probably. For some sectors, it was good until it wasn’t. Anna and Alex discuss how Circle’s and Footprint’s aborted debuts just might be “the final nail in the SPAC coffin.”
I’m not panicking, you’re panicking: Becca has a look at January Ventures’ recent survey of early-stage startups, and the findings suggest that not having a runway will not keep companies from thriving in 2023.
Ding, ding: Ron and Alex team up to talk about possible sales to private equity firms and why anyone would want to sell when prices are low.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

We are now looking at an age where human journalists just might become obsolete (probably not, but yikes anyway). Natasha L had a conversation with OpenAI’s ChatGPT about its functions and limitations. We won’t spoil it for you.

And we have five more for you:

You’ve got a message: Six months after monetizing its instant messaging app, Telegram Premium tops 1 million subscribers, Manish writes.
Deep dive: Devin writes about SpaceX’s commitment to being a defense contractor as it takes on work for the national security–focused Starshield.
Searching for our inner Googliness…: Just got a little easier. Google introduced some new features for its Search. First, Ivan has your look at “Continuous Scrolling” on desktop, while Aisha reports on new topic filters for better results.
Bite into this: Sarah, Amanda and Paul tackled some Apple news today, including the company’s first car, App Store pricing, interference with union organizing in Atlanta, a new karaoke-like feature called Apple Sing and some additions to the Self Service Repair for users in Europe.
Who needs privacy anyway?: Amanda saw some abnormalities with privacy settings on Twitter and set off to find out what’s going on.

Daily Crunch: Lensa AI can transform Photoshopped fakes into nonconsensual pornography by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

American Battery Factory’s big plan to build a bunch of, erm, American battery factories got a jolt Tuesday when Tucson, Arizona gave the company the go-ahead to locate its first plant near the city’s airport.

Over the course of a decade, ABF says it will pump around $1.2 billion into the facility, claiming it will be the “country’s largest gigafactory” for lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells when it’s completed, with a footprint of about 2 million square feet. ABF estimates it’ll eventually bring 1,000 additional jobs to the city.

The company says its batteries will be used for both commercial and home energy storage, as well as to power electric vehicles. Its plans come amid a crunch for battery materials as electric vehicles gain ground in the U.S. (Cars and SUVs currently make up 57% of transportation-related emissions in the country, according to the EPA.)

ABF is a spinoff of Lion Energy, an eight-year-old energy storage company based in American Fork, Utah. The company’s effort to launch a “network” of LFP factories in the U.S. is one among many to seek government funding via the Inflation Reduction Act. The law provides billions in tax credits to boost domestic production of batteries and electric vehicles, incentivizing firms like Toyota, Honda and Chinese battery producer Gotion to build in the United States.

ABF chief executive Paul Charles called the Inflation Reduction Act “a true game changer,” in a statement to TechCrunch, saying the law would initially translate “into about $100,000,000 a year in such tax credits for our first module or pod of manufacturing output.”

The firm added that it has inked strategic supply deals with Japanese chemical giant Asahi Kasei and synthetic graphite company Anovion.

American Battery Factory’s first ‘gigafactory’ inches toward reality by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

In 2018, appliance conglomerate Bosch created a startup, Security and Safety Things (or “SAST” for short), whose stated mission was to develop a platform to help developers create software for AI-equipped cameras. SAST was to host a moderated, vetted “app store” for internet-connected cameras that would allow developers to build software on an open standard — software mainly focused on security and “business intelligence” use cases.

SAST successfully launched the app store in 2020, later rebranding it (and itself) to Azena and opening a headquarters in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. But after tens of millions of euros in investment from Bosch, SAST — now Azena — apparently never quite achieved the success that its parent company hoped it would.

TechCrunch has learned that Azena is shutting down its external operations and pivoting to internal projects at Bosch. In a statement, a Bosch spokesperson said that partners and customers have been informed and that Azena will “fully honor” its existing contractual obligations.

“Moving forward, Azena will focus on Bosch internal business and stop external business development. This includes a transition to maintenance and support only for [Azena’s software],” the spokesperson said via email. “All platform components of Azena stay operational for now … We are actively working on a transition plan.”

Azena’s marketplace was relatively robust by IP camera market standards, with around 100 apps at its peak. Like popular app stores for smartphones, it let developers sell their apps to customers and provide demos for pilot projects. The app store would handle backing up and restoring settings and ensuring configurations remained consistent across cameras.

Prior to its partial shutdown, Azena had also been developing an operating system for cameras that enabled supported models to run multiple AI-enabled apps simultaneously. Built on top of Android, manufacturers — including Qisda/Topview, AndroVideo, Vivotek and Bosch itself — sold cameras running the firmware, which powered apps for heat mapping and queue analysis in retail stores, automated payment processing, license plate recognition and more.

As of September 2021, Azena had over 120 employees spread throughout its offices in Munich, its facility in Pittsburgh and its R&D hub in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The startup counted NHL hockey team the Pittsburgh Penguins among its customers, who used the Azena platform to monitor crowding at stadium entrances, recognize license plates and identify overcrowding near fan merchandise retail locations.

Azena generated controversy earlier this year when it came to light that the startup was only carrying out basic auditing of the software hosted in its app store. According to the company’s terms of use, responsibility for the ethics and legality of the apps rested squarely on the shoulders of developers and users. Some apps claimed to accurately detect weapons and analyze human behavior, applications that many ethicists say are beyond the capabilities of even the most sophisticated AI systems.

In a public response at the time, Azena noted that it required developers working on its platform to commit to abiding by ethical business standards laid out by the United Nations. But the startup admitted that it didn’t have the ability to check how Azena-powered cameras were used and didn’t verify whether apps sold on its store were legal or in compliance with developer agreements.

An investigation by the Intercept also found evidence that Azena was years behind on patching security exploits that could allow hackers access to cameras running its operating system. Azena disputed the suggestion but acknowledged that Azena’s firmware permitted users to sideload apps outside of the app store onto supported cameras.

Bosch shuts down its app store for AI-powered, internet-connected cameras by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Nnamdi Okike and Aaron Holiday trust data over the kind of pattern matching that most VCs swear by. It’s not surprising, given their backgrounds. Before launching their venture firm, 645 Ventures, in 2014, Okike was a principal with the data-driven investment giant Insight Partners. Meanwhile, Holiday, who came directly from DFJ Gotham Ventures, was previously a software engineer at Goldman Sachs.

Of course, data is hard to come by when a startup is just getting off the ground. But last week, in an exchange with TechCrunch, Okike and Holiday said that their proprietary software and “resource-intensive model to early-stage investing” is working so well that 645 just secured $347 million in capital commitments from a range of traditional venture investors (foundations, family offices, endowments) across two new funds. One is a $195 million early-stage fund; the other is a $153 million fund to back its breakout winners as they mature.

These are notable amounts in a market where LPs are feeling a lot less flush than they did a year ago. The funds are a far cry, too, from the duo’s $7.6 million proof-of-concept fund. (They went on to raise $40 million from LPs in 2018 and $160.6 million in 2020, so they now manage around $555 million altogether.)

Some liquidity from FiscalNote, a maker of policy management software that began trading publicly in August after merging with a blank-check company, presumably helped. The team says seven other portfolio companies have meanwhile sold and that many others are far more valuable than when 645 Ventures backed them, including two outfits whose later rounds were led by Insight. These include the $60 million Series C of the national medical practice Eden Health and the $50 million Series B round of cybersecurity company Shift5.

Other milestones to crow about (for now) include the $1.4 billion valuation of the cloud security firm Panther Labs and Overtime, a sports league startup that recently raised a $100 million growth round.

Of course, there have been misses. Okike says that one big regret is the NFT marketplace OpenSea, which he and Holiday had an opportunity to invest in at the seed stage and “unfortunately passed.” At the time, he says, they “didn’t appreciate how fast the NFT market was growing.”

The good news, suggests Holiday, is that there are plenty of other great New York–based startups to fund. “As a member of the board at Cornell Tech, we’re seeing lots of young entrepreneurial energy flock to the city, and several tech founders have relocated their headquarters from other tech hubs to NYC.”

The team also sees it as positive that more “storied Silicon Valley VCs” who “once viewed San Francisco as the center of the universe” are opening offices in New York, including, earlier this year, both Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Are they worried at all about the competition? Not really, says Okike. “We have tailored our offering to provide a compelling value proposition as a lead investor.”

One of the firm’s newest bets is Efficient Capital Labs, which lends capital from U.S. firms to software companies in India; 645 Ventures led its $3.5 million seed round.

Okike says the firm also closed a not-yet-disclosed Series A investment in a real estate software startup and that it has been, and will remain, active in real estate software, with past bets that include RentSpree, a startup focused on online rental applications and tenant screening; Aryeo, a real estate content platform that helps its users manage, syndicate, and automate listing content; and Rifiniti, a business intelligence startup that was acquired in 2019 by FM:Systems, a maker of facilities management software, for undisclosed terms.

A data-driven duo just raised roughly $350M to fund seed-stage startups with metrics by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch