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Occasionally, in my role as a consultant, I am approached by companies that have a plan in place for their fundraising that doesn’t involve the CEO or a member of the founding team running point on the fundraising process. From one perspective, I can understand that: VC fundraising does, from the outside, look a lot like sales, and if you have a good salesperson, why not let them do what they do best?

The issue is that while salespeople are great at sales, the VC fundraising process is very different than landing a customer. You’re trying to find an alignment between the company and a long-term partner who will have a significant amount of input into the future of your startup. And if there are discrepancies between the sales process and the deeper due diligence into the company (and there will be, because the sales team has a different long-term perspective on what success looks like), that can make the whole deal fall apart.

There are several really good reasons why, at the earliest stages of fundraising, the founding team should be running the fundraising process. In this article, I break it down and explain why it’s an awful idea to let anyone but the CEO do the fundraising.

If your CEO isn’t pitching to VCs, you’ll never raise money by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

An increasing number of organizations are adopting microservices, the loosely-coupled, independently-deployable services that together make up an app. According to a 2020 O’Reilly survey, 77% of organizations had adopted microservices as of then, with 29% reporting that they were migrating or implementing a majority of their systems using microservices.

The widespread microservices adoption has spawned new problems in app development, however. According to the same O’Reilly survey, company culture and integrating with holdover systems have become major challenges in the microservices arena.

Startups have rushed in to fill the void of solutions. There’s Helios, a microservices management platform that helps developers understand how their code interacts with the rest of their apps. Vendors like OpsLevel and Temporal compete with Helios for business, offering platforms that organize microservices in a centralized portal. A newer entrant in the space is Nucleus, which aims to let devs spin up microservices architectures using a range of infrastructure, security and observability tools. Backed by Y Combinator, Nucleus has raised $2.1 million in VC money to date.

Nucleus was co-founded by Evis Drenova and Nick Zelei in 2021, after the two spent roughly seven years building infrastructure platforms both at large enterprise companies (e.g. IBM, Garmin) and startups (Skyflow, Newfront). The inspiration for Nucleus came after Drenova and Zelei realized they often had to rebuild the same platform to help developers create, test and deploy their microservices.

“We noticed that more companies were trying to move to [microservices] and break apart their monoliths but really struggled to do this well,” Drenova said via email. “Some companies that have tried to move to microservices have gotten their fingers burned because they didn’t have the right tooling, and, more importantly, the right people … We want to make it easy and reliable for companies to move to not just microservices but service-oriented architectures without having to be security, infrastructure and observability experts.”

With Nucleus, developers define microservices and deploy them on the Nucleus platform, which automatically configures aspects of their security, observability and more. Nucleus is delivered through a command-line interface designed to fit into existing developer workflows and comes with prebuilt integrations, including tools such as Hashicorp, Cloudflare and Okta.

“Nucleus is an infrastructure platform that allows you complete freedom over your code,” Drenova said. “As a developer, you can write your code in any language that you want and we support it out of the box. We don’t interfere with your business logic — one way to think about it is that we’ve built a cage you can put your code into and that cage is integrated with your infrastructure and your third-party tools and is extremely secure.”

Those are lofty promises. But to Drenova’s credit, Nucleus — whose platform is still in beta — already has “a few” early customers and eight design partners. Investors, too, were won over, with backers including Soma Capital, Y Combinator, LombardStreet Ventures and “dozens” of angels throwing capital in Nucleus’ direction.

“Nucleus is a critical piece of software. We run and manage all of your services,” Drenova added. “It’s bigger than any one developer, meaning that chief technology officers are always our buyers … Our target market is companies with 20-plus developers who are moving to a service-oriented architecture. But any company that uses services can use us.”

Nucleus is focused on organic growth at the moment, sticking with a small team of four employees including the co-founders. Drenova is considering hiring 1-2 engineers next year, but he’s leaning conservative, waiting for stronger signs of product-market fit.

“In a downturn, the playing field is more level towards early-stage companies, and while larger competitors are focused on reducing cash burn and staying alive, we’re putting the pedal to the metal and going after the opportunity,” Drenova said. “We have plenty of cash in the bank and have runway for the next few years.”

Nucleus aims to simplify the process of managing microservices by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Top of mind for me this week is Tesla. I know, weird.

But really, it seems that pressure is coming from all sides these days. The company’s decision to slash prices has angered recent buyers (one only need to turn to Twitter to view the ire), shareholders are becoming more vocal about the lagging stock price (it fell more than 64% in the past year) and its facing mounting regulatory pressure over Autopilot and its so-called FSD software beta product that promises full self-driving. To be clear, Tesla vehicles are not self driving. The system is an advanced driver assistance product.

At any rate, these problems keep piling up. How much can the company take?

In the past, Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk have managed to wriggle free of criticism or concerns it was stagnating, often by showcasing a potential future product or hitting ambitious production and delivery goals.

But Tesla narrowly missed its own production and delivery guidance for the year, and Wall Street’s Q4 expectations. And shareholders, consumers and regulators seem to be tiring of this cycle. To me, this is just another indication that Tesla is starting to be viewed (and treated) more as a legacy automaker and not a whiz-bang upstart that can do no wrong.

You can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

Micromobbin’

Rebecca Bellan was out this past week, but I still wanted to share a couple of interesting micromobbin’ stories reported by yours truly and Romain Dillet, who hails from France.

First up is Romain’s article that takes a look at Paris and its looming scooter decision that could upend the micromobility industry there. I recommend you read the entire article. Here’s a small taste.

On March 23rd, the fate of the 15,000 colorful electric scooters that currently spill across the streets of Paris could drastically change as the French capital weighs up whether or not to renew licenses for the three scooter companies currently operating in the city.

Romain gets right to the implications, which stretch far beyond Paris.

And this isn’t just going to impact Dott, Tier and Uber-affiliated Lime — the three companies that haveheld those licenses since 2020. The decision will set a precedent for the many cities around the world that have also let scooters onto their streets. If things don’t go their way, a negative decision in Paris could have a chilling effect on micromobility startups globally.

Next up is a more luxurious, high-performance scooter story. I’m talking about Bugatti, yes Bugatti, and its new electric scooter.

Bugatti, through a partnership with tech accessory company Bytech, launched a $1,200 electric scooter in 2022. The two companies paired up again for a second-generation scooter that is beefier, equipped with new features and colors, and has larger “self-repairing” tires.

The 2023 scooter is 10% larger than its predecessor and is equipped with a 36-volt/15.6Ah battery and an electric motor with a maximum output of 1,000 watts, according to the companies.

That battery and motor combo allows the scooter to handle up to an 18-degree incline, max speed of 22 miles per hour and can cover 35 miles on a single charge, according to the company. (That’s up from the 22-mile range in the previous model.)

No word yet on the pricing for this bigger second-generation model. Perhaps this is one of those “if you have to ask” moments. ;D

See ya next week!

Deal of the week

We’ve seen lots of SPACs the past two years. but what about a double SPAC? Yes, it has happened.

I’m talking about Wejo, the British automotive data exchange platform that went public in November 2021 after merging with special purpose acquisition company via Virtuoso Acquisition Corp at an implied $800 million valuation.

But what’s this? The company announced January 10 it has now agreed to merge with a SPAC created by private equity firm TKB Capital, in a deal that could raise up $100 million. And that’s money Wejo needs.

It seems that this latest SPAC is the buoy Wejo is using to keep it afloat. It’s not just that Wejo’s share price fell below $1 a share; the company is also burning through cash.

Wejo warned in November it had a $15 million cash balance, which would sustain the company for a “very short period of time.”

Wejo is about two years away from generating life-sustaining-nope-we’re-not-going-to-file-for-bankruptcy revenue. To add a little extra financial drama to the scenario, Wejo also owes Palantir millions of dollars, per an op-ed piece by Chris Bryant in Bloomberg.

This double SPAC is an odd one. I have this nagging feeling that some other failing SPACs will try this same tactic.

Other deals that got my attention this week …

Apollo Future Mobility Group agreed to buy Chinese electric vehicle maker WM Motor Holdings for $2.02 billion. The acquisition must still meet regulatory approvals.

Hystar, a green hydrogen startup based in Norway, raised $26 million in a Series B round co-led AP Ventures and Mitsubishi Corp. Other investors included Nippon Steel Trading, Belgium-based investment company Finindus, Hillhouse Investment, Trustbridge Partners, SINTEF Ventures and Firda.

Ottopia, an Israeli teleoperations company focused on the agriculture, construction, last-mile delivery, logistics and mobility industries, raised $14.5 million in its Series A funding round that attracted public transport giant ComfortDelGro as an investor. Other participants included AI Alliance Fund, MizMaa Ventures, IN Venture and Next Gear Ventures. T

Oxbotica, a startup out of England that develops software to power autonomous vehicles, raised $140 million in a Series C round that included investment from Japan’s Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Co. and corporate VC ENEOS Innovation Partners. Existing investors BGF, safety equipment group Halma, hospitality and recreation investor Hostplus, Kiko Ventures, the online shopping company Ocado Group, Tencent, Venture Science and automotive component maker ZF also participated.

Tianqi Lithium Corp. agreed to buy Australian lithium explorer Essential Metals Ltd in a A$136 million ($94 million) deal that is estimated to provide enough supply for around 10 million electric vehicles.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Autonomous vehicles

Aurora gives a progress report to FreightWaves.

What next for Pittsburgh’s autonomous vehicle scene?

ADAS

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is apparently “working really fast” on the Tesla Autopilot investigation it opened in August 2021. Speaking of pressure on Tesla, there may be even more coming after The Intercept published videos and photos of an eight-car pile-up on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge caused by a Tesla Model S. The driver claimed “Full Self-Driving” was active at the time of the crash.

Electric vehicles, batteries and charging

Lucid Group produced 7,180 of its luxury Air sedans in 2022, exceeding its previously lowered guidance for the year. Lucid adjusted its guidance last fall, stating it would produce 6,000 to 7,000 vehicles in 2022.

Nikola is officially moving its battery manufacturing from Cypress, California to its Coolidge, Arizona manufacturing facility. The move is expected to be completed early in the third quarter. Manufacturing will continue in Cypress through the second quarter.

Proterra produced its first commercial EV battery at its new factory in Greer, South Carolina. The company is calling the factory “Powered 1,” and believes it will be the largest battery manufacturing facility in the United States dedicated to electric commercial vehicles.

Tesla plans to invest about $770 million into an expansion of its factory near Austin that includes a die shop, a facility for battery cell testing and another to manufacture cathode and drive units. Tesla indicated it wants to build the new facilities this year.

Zeekr, the premium brand under Geely Holding Co., started serial production of its second model, an electric van called Zeekr 009.

People

Carvana, the online used car dealer, continues to struggle and it’s cutting workers as sales slow and it attempts to manage its $7 billion debt load.

Cruise has Nilka Thomas as its new chief human resources officer. Thomas, who most recently served in a similar position at Lyft, succeeds Arden Hoffman at Cruise. Thomas also spent 13 years at Google leading efforts focused on recruitment, D&I, employee engagement, HR governance and employee relations.

Hyzon Motors, the heavy-duty fuel cell electric vehicle supplier, appointed John Edgley as president of international operations.

Scale AI, the San Francisco–based company that uses software and people to label image, text, voice and video data for companies building machine learning algorithms, laid off 20% of its workforce. The company did not say how many people work at Scale AI. However, back in February 2022, the company told TechCrunch it employed about 450 people.

Tesla rolls into a pressure cooker, Paris mulls its scooter future, and the double SPAC arrives by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

Last Friday, a ton of popular Twitter clients including Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and Echofon were down. Users couldn’t log into their accounts or look at their timelines. At first, it looked like a bug in Twitter API, but radio silence from Twitter and new details indicated that the company deliberately limited access to third-party apps.

The issue

On Friday, late evening PST time, many users noticed that they could not access their third-party Twitter clients. The app makers quickly acknowledged the issue and said that they had been trying to contact the company.

A Japan-based developer noted at the time that many smaller Twitter clients were working without any glitches. Many folks in the community speculated that it could be an issue with the API or that the company is limiting access to larger clients.

The radio silence

While developers and users expected Twitter to communicate with them in some ways, the company and its new owner Elon Musk maintained radio silence about the problem. However, the Tesla CEO tweeted everything ranging from the latest Falcon Heavy launch to building transparency on Twitter by publishing the platform’s tweet recommendation code.

Internal messages on Twitter indicated that shutting down certain third-party clients was a company decision rather than a bug, The Information reported over the weekend. The report said that one project manager told the product team that the company had “started to work on comms,” but didn’t provide any timeline for official and approved communication.

Developer frustration

Since the beginning of the saga, many developers have expressed their frustrations on Twitter and Mastodon. Twitterrific-maker Craig Hockenberry posted a blog post called “The Shit Show,” in which he said “Personally, I’m done. And with a vengeance.”

Fenix developer Matteo Villa said on Twitter that he is considering pulling the client from the App Store— which is working at the time of writing — because he fears that the client might stop working at a point.

Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad even tried to make the app work by loading in old API keys. That trick worked for a while and some folks were able to access their accounts. However, users started to hit an API limit and the client was later suspended again.

iOS developer Mysk said on their account that Tweetbot ran into the limit of 300 posts per 15 minutes — which was applicable for old v1.1 API — for all users.

Earlier, they had built a demo client to show that Twitter’s API was working and the suspension of third-party apps was not because of a bug.

A bunch of these developers were concerned about handling refunds for folks who have subscribed to the pro or premium versions of their apps if Twitter banned third-party clients. That would also mean that their annual income would go down and they would have to build new products while making no money.

The way forward

Some developers have already shown intent of concentrating on other projects. Haddad told TechCrunch over an email that Tweetbot is concentrating on launching its Mastodon client Ivory — which is currently in a closed beta — at an accelerated pace.

He said that currently the team is focused on making the onboarding experience better, then fixing the bugs and working towards an App Store release.

Villa also released a beta version of his Mastodon client Wolly on Apple’s test platform Testflight.

For some other developers, the situation is bleak. As iOS developer Adam Demasi noted that some indie developers whose primary product was a Twitter client might face a difficult time.

Since Musk took over Twitter last year, the company has shuttered several developer-related projects including Twitter Toolbox for app discovery. Some other programs in the defunct state even if the company has not announced official shutdowns. Developers have been cautious about their Twitter development plan given that the company hasn’t explicitly communicated its plans about platform support.

These kinds of moves have undone the social network’s work over the last few years to earn back developers’ trust. Last month, Twitter’s former head of developer platforms, Amir Shevat, wrote on TechCrunch that the new management broke the trust of developers. This dubious suspension of third-party Twitter clients without any communication will not instill any confidence in the community.

Twitter’s third-party client issue is seemingly a deliberate suspension by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

This weekend, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo told Le Parisien that Parisians will get to vote whether they want to ban free-floating electric scooters or not. As I explained last week, Dott, Lime and Tier, the three scooter companies currently operating in the city, have operating licenses that are set to expire on March 23rd, 2023. And the fate of those services could have wide implications across the micromobility sector.

“If Parisians want to own their own scooter, there’s no issue. But we have a real issue with free-floating scooters. It’s not climate-friendly. Employees working for these companies are not properly treated,” Mayor of Paris told Le Parisien.

“That’s why I’m going to ask a question to Parisians in a vote that is going to take place on Sunday, April 2nd so that I can understand what they want,” she added.

Each operator currently has a fleet of 5,000 electric scooters. As the vote will occur a few days after the license expiration, it seems like scooter companies will have to remove 15,000 scooters from the streets of Paris before they know if they’re allowed to operate.

The city council is divided on electric scooters. Deputy Mayor David Belliard has been strongly against those services. He’s in charge of transportation and he’s also a green party member. He’s an important ally for Anne Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist Party.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone in the city council wants to ban electric scooters. The Mayor of Paris ultimately gets to decide whether shared scooters should be banned or not. And she has decided that… she’s not going to decide, even though she doesn’t like scooters.

“Should we move forward with free-floating scooters or not? During last year’s public hearing with Parisians, it was a polarizing topic — it’s a battle. My idea is that we should stop. But I will respect the vote of the Parisians even if they disagree with what I want,” Hidalgo told Le Parisien.

So the campaign is on. Dott, Lime and Tier are already lining up their talking points. For instance, according to them, electric scooters are a green transportation option. The reality is a bit more complex as an electric scooter is greener than an Uber ride. But Paris also has a dense metro network.

According to an Ipsos poll paid by Dott, Lime and Tier, 40% of people living in Paris are satisfied with free-floating scooters. 88% of them also think that they are here to stay. Let’s see if that opinion will be reflected in the vote results.

Here’s a joined statement from Dott, Lime and Tier:

“We welcome the decision to consult Parisians regarding the city’s shared e-scooter service, and hope to ensure its continuity over the coming months.

With more than 2 million unique riders having used the shared e-scooter service this year alone – and 700 tons of CO2 emissions avoided in 2021 by riding green in the capital – we are convinced that Parisians are aware of the role that zero emission micromobility options play in helping meet the ambitions set out in the Paris agreements at COP21.

All the employees of the three operators in the Paris area – 800 in total, all on fixed-term and permanent contracts – take note of this reprieve. Lime, Dott and Tier will remain attentive about the terms of this consultation, which seems to state that only inner city Parisian residents will be eligible to vote and those living in city’s suburbs, as well as expats and non-native residents who live in inner city Paris will not be eligible to vote.”

Paris to hold vote on shared scooters by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Kwara, a Kenyan fintech digitizing credit unions (saccos), more than doubled its client base last year, and its eyeing enormous growth in the coming years after raising a $3 million seed extension, and signing an exclusive digital solutions distribution agreement with the Kenya Union of Savings & Credit Cooperatives (Kuscco), the national umbrella body representing saccos.

Following the Kuscco partnership, Kwara gains connections to a pool of over 4,000 saccos for its banking-as-a-service product. As part of the exclusive deal, Kwara is also set to acquire Kuscco’s subsidiary IRNET, a software company and provider for saccos, for an undisclosed amount.

Kwara says the Kuscco deal comes at the right time in its plan to double down on Kenya.

“We think we’ve barely scratched the surface in the Kenyan market. And so, we are just going to be really investing in products and services that deepen our relationship here,” Kwara co-founder and CEO, Cynthia Wandia told TechCrunch.

“The rationale (of the deal) is clear, first it is an opportunity to generate leads and distribute our core product as fast, and to deepen our competitive moat. We’re entering an exclusive partnership, which also means no other tech company will be able to market with Kuscco. They are stacking their bets on us but we have been able to prove that we can do it as we continue to grow,” said Wandia, who co-founded the fintech with David Hwan in 2019.

The seed extension round had the participation of existing investors DOB Equity, Globivest and Willard Ahdritz, the founder of Kobalt Music. New backers One Day Yes, Base Capital as well as fintech executives including Mikko Salovaara, the CFO of Revolut, also joined the round. The new funding brings the total seed amount raised by the startup to $7 million. Initial round saw participation of several investors including Breega, SoftBank Vision Fund Emerge, Finca Ventures, New General Market Partners.

Kwara, which also has a presence in South Africa and the Philippines, has grown its clientele base to 120 from 50 at the end of 2021, maintaining a 100% customer retention — a proof of the value it delivers to its clients. The automated onboarding process, the startup says, has ensured customer success and growth.

Kwara’s product upgrades the back-office operations of credit unions helping them to shift away from tedious paper-based processes and physical branches, opening up new avenues for them to sign up new members and create novel products.

The company also has a next-generation neobank app that gives members of partner credit unions access to additional services such as instant loans and third-party services such as insurance. It said the user base of the neobank app, which also allows users to deposit money directly into their sacco accounts, and track their finances and payments, has grown 35-fold since launch last year.

The fintech is planning on adding more features to cater to the saccos, and additional products for the neobank app users too.

“We continue to ship more or less enterprise grade features for the large saccos that are well capitalized, the ones who are at the same size and level as some of the banks. There are specific features they need and specific ways they need to be taken care of so we will continue investing in that,” said Wandia adding that Kwara is also investing on improving the neo-banking experience. They are set to add more features that will help members build “a personalized view of their own goals and really start working towards achieving them.” They will also sign more third party partnerships to add more value to the app users.

“We believe that every time a sacco member leaves their sacco to get another service just because the sacco doesn’t provide it is a missed opportunity for that member to actually profit from the returns of that product. all income earned on those products actually flows back to the members as dividends,” she added.

Credit unions are formed by people with a common interest or members of an industry, like farmers or teachers, who buy shares in the institution, save money and take loans. They are popular especially in developing regions due to their low-interest-rate loans and ease in accessing credit when compared to conventional banks. In Kenya only 175 saccos are licensed, as a vast majority remain unregulated.

Kenyan fintech Kwara raises $3M seed extension, signs deal to reach over 4,000 credit unions by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Eighteen months after its app was suspended in China, ride hailing giant Didi made a comeback on Monday. The move came as China showed signs of easing up its sweeping regulatory clampdown on the internet sector over the past three years.

In July 2021, Chinese authorities ordered the country’s app stores to remove Didi, citing reasons that the platform was “illegally collecting user data.” Earlier that same month, Didi went public in New York. It was a short-lived celebration for the firm, which raised a hefty $4 billion from the first-time sale, as the event quickly turned out to be the root of its clash with Beijing.

Didi, according to multiple reports and an investor memo seen by TechCrunch at the time, failed to assure the government that its cross-border data practices were secure before going public in the U.S., where the data of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens could allegedly be subject to scrutiny. The misstep led to a year-and-a-half-long security investigation by China’s top cyberspace watchdog.

It seems like Didi’s period of repentance and rectification is over, as the company posted on Weibo Monday afternoon:

“Our company has taken serious steps to cooperate with the country’s cybersecurity review, deal with the security issues found in the probe, and implement comprehensive rectifications.”

With approval from the Cybersecurity Review Office, a relatively new organ designated to address data security concerns posed by internet firms, Didi was allowed to resume new user registration for Didi Chuxing, its main ride hailing platform, effective immediately.

Aside from a data revamp, Didi was also reportedly ordered to pay a $1 billion fine for breaching rules. It finished delisting from the U.S. in May last year and has been working to relist on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, an increasingly preferable choice for Chinese tech firms that are navigating rising U.S.-China tensions.

Prior to the relaunch of user registration, Didi users were still able to use the app if they already had it on their phones. But the app was besieged by hungry rivals. Alibaba-owned mapping service AutoNavi, for example, has been gaining ground as an aggregator of third-party ride hailing services, including Didi.

The era of unfettered growth in the ride hailing space is also long gone. China has been tightening regulatory oversight on the novel business in recent years, putting it more in line with the traditional state-owned taxi industry.

Following the regulatory overhaul, Didi will surely be much more cautious about the government’s red line.

“Going forward, the company will apply effective methods to ensure the security of the platform’s infrastructure and big data in order to safeguard national cybersecurity,” it said in the Weibo post.

Didi gets China approval to relaunch after 18-month security probe by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Byju’s has made a key change in its sales strategy, moving away from a business practice that attracted the edtech giant criticism over the years.

The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, India’s most valuable, said on Monday its sales people no longer visit students’ homes to pitch to their parents. Instead, the entire sales workforce now works from inside the office and reaches out to those parents whose children have shown a clear interest in subscribing to the platform.

The firm, which employed its early practice in 2017, made the change in October last year and said that the transition brings more accountability and transparency to its workforce and it’s better for both sides of the equation.

The new sales tactic is also allowing Byju’s to expand its reach in the country and is already returning a higher conversion rate, said Mrinal Mohit, the chief executive of Byju’s India business, in an interview with TechCrunch.

“The Covid helped increase the category awareness of online education learning and brand awareness of Byju’s. Plus we now have multiple products. That’s why we are moving to ‘inside sales,’” he said.

“The sales journey now begins only after you have downloaded my app and used it multiple times and for long periods of time. If you don’t download the app, or like our product, we are not going to reach out.”

The Indian edtech has been criticized over the years for its aggressive sales tactic with allegations that some of its personnels made misleading pitches to the parents. Byju’s offers a range of learning platforms to students from free content and classes to hybrid lessons at its centres across the South Asian market.

Mohit, who took over the India chief position last year, said the revamp is bringing more transparency with the parents and what its sales people are telling them.

“I had 120 offices, my download comes from everywhere but I was able to reach only 20% of these users. With inside sales, location is not a barrier. All these calls are recorded, so we know what is being pitched to the parents. We have more transparency with parents,” he said.

If an individual doesn’t know how to precisely answer a parent’s questions, the startup is able to pull more experience and relevant personnels in real-time, he said.

Sales is a key part of Byju’s success. The startup’s classes operate on a two-teacher model, where the lessons are taught through a pre-recorded video while an on-site or live teacher tackles students’ questions.

The startup’s philosophy from the beginning has been to bring the best education to students and this means relying on lessons from certain teachers as the base of its offerings. Sales people are tasked with explaining the benefits of this model.

Indian edtech giant Byju’s changes sales strategy in key revamp by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

ShareChat, the Indian social media startup backed by Twitter, Google, Tiger Global and Temasek, has laid off 20% of its workforce — or over 400 employees — just a month after eliminating more than 100 roles.

The startup informed its employees about the decision on Monday morning. It deactivated access to accounts and wiped out all data of impacted employees, a person familiar with the development told TechCrunch.

In December, ShareChat laid off nearly 5% of its workforce of 2300 employees as a result of shutting down its fantasy sports platform Jeet11.

Informing the new decision to its employees, ShareChat CEO Ankush Sachdeva said in an internal note that the move was to “ensure the financial health and longevity” of the startup. The executive also noted that the startup “overestimated the market growth in the highs of 2021 and underestimated the duration and intensity of the global liquidity squeeze.” The note and layoff was first reported by Indian newspaper Economic Times.

In a statement emailed to TechCrunch, a ShareChat spokesperson confirmed the layoff and said that the decision was taken “after much deliberation and in light of the growing market consensus that investment sentiments will remain very cautious throughout this year.”

“Since our launch eight years ago, ShareChat and our short video app Moj have seen incredible growth. However, even as we continue to keep growing, there have been several external macro factors that impact the cost and availability of capital,” the spokesperson said.

“Keeping these factors in mind, we need to prepare the company to sustain through these headwinds. Therefore, we’ve had to take some of the most difficult and painful decisions in our history as a company and had to let go of around 20% of our incredibly talented employees who have been with us in this start-up journey.”

The spokesperson also claimed that the startup had “aggressively optimised costs across the board, including in marketing and infrastructure, among other cost heads and ramped up our monetisation efforts.”

Exact details on what roles are impacted were not disclosed.

The affected employees will receive the total salary for their notice period and two weeks pay as ex gratia for every year they served the startup. The employees will also get 100% of the variable pay until December 2022 and their health insurance policy cover will remain until the end of June, the startup confirmed.

The startup will also let ESOPs of its affected employees continue to vest per their schedule up until April 30.

“We are doubling down on our efforts behind advertising and live-streaming revenues. With these changes, we aim to sail through the uncertain global economic conditions over 2023 and 2024 and come out stronger,” the spokesperson said.

Google-backed ShareChat cuts 20% workforce to ‘sustain through headwinds’ by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

When Constantin Robertz was working at Zalora, he was involved in moving warehouses six times as the e-commerce company outgrew its logistics infrastructure. This inspired him to co-found Locad, a logistics provider for omnichannel e-commerce companies that connects its network of third-party warehouses and shipping carriers with a cloud-based platform referred to its “logistics engine.”

Founded in Singapore and Manila by Robertz, fellow Zalora alumni Jannis Dargel and former Grab lead product manager of maps Shrey Jain, Locad announced today it has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Reefknot Investments, a joint venture between Temasek and logistics company Kuehne + Nagel. Returning investors Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Surge, Febe Ventures and Antler also participated, along with new backers Access Ventures, JG Summit and WTI.

TechCrunch last covered Locad when it raised its $4.5 million seed round in 2021.

Locad can handle almost every part of the delivery process, from inventory storage and packing to shipping and tracking. So far, Locad has provided order fulfillment for 200 brands, including Havaians, Levi’s Reckitt Benckisder and Emma Sleep. Its customers are spread across Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong and Australia, and typically ship about 25 to 5,000 orders a day. Last year, Locad was used to ship more than two million orders and it claims a 99% same-day order fulfillment rate.

Its new funding will be used to add more warehouses and transport operators to Locad’s network and on hiring in Southeast Asia and Australia, with the goal of building the region’s largest network of warehouses over the next five years.

Robertz said helping Zalora scale up its logistics infrastructure “planted the seed of how a cloud approach to supply chain, with a scalable logistics infrastructure as a service, would be a better way.” During their time at Zalora, Robertz and Dargel also worked with brands that had to set up their own e-commerce fulfillment capabilities and tech stack in order to support multiple sales channels.

Legacy logistics infrastructure, originally created for B2B wholesale distribution, couldn’t keep up with direct-to-consumer brands as their sales channels multiplied. It also meant they could no longer rely on “walled garden” fulfillment networks run by e-commerce platforms, like Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), as they scaled up.

At the same time, consumers want faster and cheaper delivery, and offering multiple options like same day, next day or economy shipment is important for conversions at checkout. Robertz said that to deliver more quickly without paying more, retailers need to store products closer to customers to enable shorter and faster last-mile deliveries. This requires a network of warehouses and integration between sales channels, warehouses and shipping carriers. That is what Locad’s tech enables.

Locad’s logistics engine syncs inventory from multiple sales channels, including Shopify, Lazada, Shopee and TikTok Shops, and manages storage and delivery through its network of warehouses and shipping carriers. Many of Locad’s customers first approach the startup while phasing out their inhouse logistics operations. Brands often start with one warehouse to consolidate their inventory and order fulfillment across sales channels, before putting inventory into additional warehouses based where its customers are located.

As it expands across Southeast Asia and Australia, Locad also plans to increase the number of warehouses in Tier 1 to Tier 3 cities in the region, with the goal of enabling same-day delivery in all of them.

In a statement about the funding, Reefknot Investments vice president Ervin Lim said, “Locad’s unique operating model of localizing warehouses into the cities ensures that inventory is kept close to the customers thereby enabling significant cost and time savings for both brand and consumer. We believe that Locad’s logistics engine will spur greater participation in the digital economy as consumers outside of Tier-1 cities can now receive their orders 2-3x faster at a fraction of the usual cost.”

Locad lands Series A to expand its “logistics engine” across Southeast Asia and Australia by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch