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Airbnb is rolling out a new toggle to show you the price inclusive of all fees (before taxes) for your stay instead of showing you a per-night price. This means you won’t have to go to the booking page to see other fees like service fees and cleaning fees.

The company first announced this update back in November, and now it is making the feature available through a toggle to users. If you turn on the toggle, the search algorithm will prioritize the total price of the stay (before taxes) in ranking for search results. So properties with a lower nightly rate but high cleaning fees won’t show up on the top.

The question is why not switch to showing all-inclusive prices by default? Last month, Airbnb told TechCrunch that the opt-in search method “allows us to educate guests as to this change, without causing additional confusion.” The company doesn’t want to make a sudden switch to the new search parameter as some users might be used to seeing the nightly price. While it is offering a toggle in early access, Airbnb said that it plans to make all-inclusive pricing a default parameter the next year.

Airbnb, which rolled out a bunch of host tools last month, said that next year it plans to introduce more pricing and discounting tools for hosts to help them see the price guests are paying. The company said this will help the listing owners set more competitive prices.

What’s more, the company is set to improve guest checkout experience by providing guidelines to hosts about being “reasonable” about tasks.

“Guests should not have to do unreasonable checkout tasks such as stripping the beds, doing the laundry, or vacuuming when leaving their Airbnb. But we think it’s reasonable to ask guests to turn off the lights, throw food in the trash, and lock the doors—just like they would when leaving their own home,” it said.

However, Airbnb didn’t detail how it plans to enforce these rules on hosts and guests. Airbnb users have long complained about ridiculous cleaning fees and a long list of checkout tasks listed by some hosts. The company is now finally paying attention to some of these problems.

Apart from this, CEO Brian Chesky is also focused on increasing hosts on the platform as he doesn’t want to “get to a supply-constrained era”. To onboard more hosts on the service, the company launched a new program last month to let renters find Airbnb-friendly apartments in select markets.

Airbnb is rolling out a toggle to show you price inclusive of all fees by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Lucid Motors, the publicly traded electric carmaker, is poised to enter China as it starts hiring in the world’s largest EV market.

The California-based auto company is recruiting a dozen positions in Shanghai, its LinkedIn posts show. The roles range from product management, marketing and sales, public policy, design, supply chain management, to software development. The type of team it’s putting together suggests that Lucid is more likely to import vehicles to China than manufacture locally as Tesla does, at least in the near future.

TechCrunch has reached out to Lucid for details on its China expansion.

The company seems to be in the early stage of its China expansion. It’s looking for a product manager to “capture customer needs in [the] greater China region, glean relevant insights, [and] prioritize features,” for instance. It needs someone to figure out the country’s charging infrastructure, “defining and executing a go-to-market strategy for residential charging in China.” It’s hiring talent to work on localization in marketing, UX, Android development, and branding.

Lucid is also recruiting staff to manage its supply chains from Shanghai. The firm has been tapping Chinese suppliers, including Shenzhen-based lidar maker Robosense, for its vehicles sold in the U.S., but having someone on the ground will likely make sourcing and communication with suppliers much easier.

The most vital — and difficult — hire is perhaps the public policy head. The person is expected to be the “main point of contact for Chinese government entities at both the national level and with provincial/city/district governments” who “work with Global Head of Public Policy and MD – China, sales, marketing, tax, supply chain and product teams to execute political and regulatory strategy benefitting Lucid’s business in China.”

Any foreign tech firm that has tried entering China knows navigating the country’s regulatory environment is no small feat. But in certain sectors, such as EV, the government has welcomed foreign contenders with open arms, in part to encourage competition.

The greatest success in recent history belongs to Tesla’s Giga Shanghai, which went from starting construction to production in a year. China has not only become a major revenue source for Tesla but a key manufacturing hub — Giga Shanghai is now the world’s largest EV plant. It’s no surprise that Tesla’s China captain Tom Zhu rose through the ranks and was recently given the torch to run the upcoming Gigafactory Austin.

Despite the excitement presented by China, Lucid faces an uphill battle there. Aside from Tesla’s stronghold, the country’s EV market is also crowded with domestic players, including established carmaker BYD and venture-backed upstarts like Xpeng and Nio, who themselves are expanding to Europe to diversify revenue streams.

Lucid’s premium to luxury pricing means it will have a limited reach in China. Tesla managed to carve out more affordable product lines for the market, including a cheaper, Shanghai-made version of Model Y that became a best seller. With government subsidies, the sport utility EV was previously sold for under 300,000 yuan ($43,000). Now with subsidies pared down, Tesla moved to cut its China prices by up to 9% to stay competitive against local rivals.

In comparison, Lucid’s most affordable model, the Lucid Air Pure, has an expected starting price of around €100,000 ($106,000) in Germany and the Netherlands. If Lucid is indeed shipping cars from the U.S. to China, customers also need to pay an import tax.

Lucid probably covets a China plant to bring its costs down. The question is whether the company has the financial prowess and government relations to operate a local plant halfway across the globe. The firm’s CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson did say in November last year that the carmaker planned to have plants in China and the Middle East by mid-decade. Perhaps China’s adroit manufacturing could indeed solve some of the issues troubling Lucid, which announced in August that it would again slash production targets as it faced “extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges.”

Lucid wants a slice of China’s crowded EV market by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Ventures Platform, a Pan-African early-stage venture capital firm, has closed its fund at $46 million as it looks to double down on “category-leading” companies across the continent.

The six-year-old firm, which employs 11 people, initially went to the market to raise $40 million for this fund and reached an undisclosed first close last December. Most of its limited partners in the first close were primarily African based, which was a deliberate effort, according to founder and general partner Kola Aina.

“For us, it was strategic, getting local capital for our first close. But the second close, as you will see, will be from global fund of funds and DFIs where we’ve got commitments,” he said in the December interview. “Still, ultimately, as much as foreign capital is critical, I think it’s in the interest of foreign capital to be in bed with local capital from a derisking standpoint.”

Not only did Ventures Platform surpass its initial target, but it also came up with the goods regarding its next set of limited partners. Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, is one of the fund’s newest LPs, and so are four development finance institutions (DFIs): the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the British International Investment (BII), Proparco with FISEA and AfricaGrow, a fund of funds managed by Allianz Global Investors. Other limited partners include social impact firm A to Z Impact, corporates, commercial banks, global institutional investors and high net-worth individuals (HNIs).

“No other fund in the region of our kind has four DFIs as LPs,” Aina briefed TechCrunch of the addition. “It’s great to have this diverse mix, which is important on several fronts as we’re able to sort of lean on their experience and offer our portfolio companies long-term capital.”

Ventures Platform has made over 60 investments since its launch in 2016 across sectors such as fintech, insurtech, health tech, edtech, agritech, enterprise SaaS, digital infra plays and digital talent accelerators. Some notable names from its portfolio include Marketforce, Mono, PiggyVest, and Nomba and Reliance HMO, two of YC’s most valued African startups.

The majority of these investments were made at the pre-seed and seed stages. However, since the first close of this fund, Ventures Platform, which made a complete exit during Paystack’s sale to Stripe, has upped its game and now cuts Series A checks for its portfolio companies, some of which can directly access follow-on capital (Series B up) from the firm’s limited partners. Aina noted that the Abuja- and Lagos-based early-stage firm intends to lead pre-seed and seed rounds, investing an average of $250,000 while participating and writing follow-in checks of more than $1 million at Series A rounds.

The close of this fund comes at a time when deal flow activity in Africa has declined as a result of the local and international venture capitalists retreating amid rising interest rates and reversal in public markets globally. This turn of events is evident in venture capital numbers recorded in both years. For instance, African startups raised slightly over $5 billion, a figure that many thought would be significantly surpassed at the start of 2022; however, counting down to the end of the year, it appears that figure will be maintained or just slightly topped.

Startups, this period, are making efforts to extend their runways as long as possible and optimize their burn. And while Ventures Platform has provisions to support and scale its portfolio companies in times like this via a value-add avenue dubbed “Platform and Networks” practice, Aina, like many investors, is content with the present reset in Africa’s fundraising environment.

“In the last couple of years, particularly in 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of pressure to rush processes. But now we’re very pleased to be where the market is as we see valuations normalizing and the velocity is more reasonable,” said the general partner. “So we’re able to carry out due diligence and governance properly. We’re being a lot more deliberate about the kind of founders we are backing because it’s a long-term partnership, being mindful of the business models and the economics and ensuring that we have enough capital reserves to support our companies.”

Last December, Aina mentioned that Ventures Platform was beefing up its activity in other markets outside Nigeria, actively seeking opportunities in regions such as Kenya, Egypt, and French-speaking West Africa. The update is that the firm has backed 20 startups in the past year, some of which are from Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa.

Ventures Platform has also made a series of strategic team additions at the partnership and senior management levels. First, Damilola Teidi, the former director of startup support at incubation hub CcHUB, heads the firm’s Platform and Networks team and Desigan Chinniah, an early engineer at eBay and well-known investor who has backed some African startups, joins the firm as a venture partner.

Then, Ventures Platform welcomes Dotun Olowoporoku as its managing partner. Olowoporoku is on a small list of tech professionals who have performed founder, investor and operator roles on the continent. He launched an on-demand food delivery platform in the U.K. a decade ago, ran Starta, an advisory firm for upstarts and scale-ups on the continent, worked as a principal at Pan-African fund Novastar Ventures, and most recently, was the chief commercial officer (CCO) at QED-backed TeamApt.

“Kola and I were intentional about complementing each other and taking roles that leverage our strengths, experience and expertise,” Olowoporoku said in a chat with TechCrunch. “I’m primarily responsible for leading on investment process and management, market analysis and research market analysis and research, portfolio support, communications and ecosystem engagement.” He will work closely with Aina as both partners, widely considered among the most founder-friendly in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, look to make lucrative bets to help return this oversubscribed fund.

Pan-African early-stage firm Ventures Platform closes fund, hits $46M by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

Kenya-based MyHealth Africa, an integrated healthcare platform changing how people access medical services, by connecting patients with local and international health specialists and hospitals, is growing its reach in Africa, and plans to further expand in Middle East and South Asia next year.

The growth plan comes against the backdrop of $1 million seed funding it has raised in round led by GIIG Africa Fund, with participation from Japanese-based Samurai VC, a family office, and existing investors. This brings total amount raised by the startup, which received its pre-seed funding last year, to $1.3 million.

The new funding also follows Top HealthTech Startup in Africa award, by the Global Startup Awards (GSA) Africa, an exclusive vehicle for the GIIG Africa Fund to find, fund and scale continent’s innovative startups, the startup clinched in June this year.

“MyHealth Africa plans to invest the funds to continue rapidly expanding across Africa. We also plan to launch two new regions in 2023, including the Middle East and South Asia, which are already our second and third-largest markets. We assist hundreds of patients each month from these two markets to access specialized healthcare services at our network of leading hospitals in the Middle East, Europe, South Asia and Asia, currently from our office in Kenya,” said MyHealth Africa founder and CEO Ryan Marincowitz.

Marincowitz founded MyHealth Africa in 2017 as a specialized healthcare booking platform and medical management system, to make it possible for patients to access healthcare services virtually or in-person from doctors and providers across the globe.

MyHealth Africa is among the list of startups in Africa solving inefficiencies in the health sector, by making healthcare easily accessible across a continent; where medical tourism to other regions is rife, disease burden is highest, and patient-to-doctor ratio is lowest in the world.

According to World Health Organization, countries across sub-Saharan Africa have 0.23 doctors for every 10,000 people, against the best ratio of 84.2 doctors in the most developed countries.

MyHealth Africa says it assists over 1,200 patients monthly, having grown month on month patient visits by an average of 11% in 2022. The startup has so far assisted over 27,000 patients to access specialized healthcare services from over 1,500 medical professionals, and health facilities.

“Across the continent, we have seen over the past few years how technology and innovation are having a real impact on the health and wellness of Africans,” said GIIG Africa co-founder, Philip Baldwin.

“When we first encountered MyHealth Africa during the last season of GSA Africa, we became engrossed in learning how this startup was revolutionizing the East African healthcare landscape. And today, we could not be more pleased to announce our formal partnership in helping take the MyHealth Africa solution to the world,” he said.

MyHealth Africa, a startup connecting patients with health specialists across the globe, lands $1M funding by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

India currently doesn’t plan to put restrictions on how much time individuals, including youngsters, spend playing games online, taking a different approach from the neighboring nation China that rocked the local gaming market after enforcing strict new measures last year.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s minister of state for electronics and information technology, told the lower house of the country’s parliament in a written response that no such proposal is currently under the consideration of the Indian government.

New Delhi is aware of the possible risks and challenges surrounding online games, including addiction, violence and financial loss, Chandrasekhar said, but asserted that country’s IT rules already impose obligation on intermediaries to perform due diligence such as ensuring they don’t “host, display, publish, transmit or share any information that is harmful to child.”

Many countries across the globe have enforced, or are considering, measures to control the amount of time children can spend on video games and pushing game developers to dial back their attempts to sell them in-app game items.

Last year, China introduced a new regulation that prevents children from playing video games during the school week.

A paper (PDF) co-sponsored by consumer associations in over a dozen and a half countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain found this year that game developers were targetting vulnerable audiences by showing them flashy advertisements and other misrepresentations to sell them in-game items, or loot boxes.

India banned PUBG Mobile in 2020, and its revamped avatar Battlegrounds Mobile India this year on the ground of national security concerns. The bans were part of a wider action on over 200 apps that have direct or indirect links to China.

India doesn’t plan to limit play time for online game usage by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

In countries where English is not a main language, listed companies not only have to deal with financial disclosure regulations, but make sure their investor materials are available in English for global backers. WritePath make the process faster and scalable by combining its AI tech with human translators. The Taipei-based startup’s clients include Foxconn, ASUS, China Airline, the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taiwan Mobile.

WritePath announced that it has raised $340,000 in pre-Series A funding, led by Quantum International Corp. CEO Alex Lee. The round also saw participation from angel investors like jobstreet.com founder Mark Chang. WritePath’s previous investors include byUDN.com, a subsidiary of United Daily, one of the largest media organization in Taiwan, and Singaporean translation firm Elite Asia.

TechCrunch first covered WritePath back in 2014 when it was an essay editing service for college applicants, technical writers and academic researchers. Founder and CEO Charles Chen said the company decided to switch focus because essay editing was labor intensive and hard to scale since it had to acquire new clients every year. WritePath originally offered B2C translation services, before its team saw that governments in Asia are implementing more English-language disclosure policies, including for listed companies.

The company’s platform combines tech like Warren, its in-house machine translation engine, with human translators. Warren was trained on a language corpus of several million Chinese-to-English sentences gathered from financial, annual and ESG reports.

One of the reason for new disclosure policies is investor activism and the passage of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) in the European Union. MiFID II is a legislative framework that calls for more transparency by companies, including regulatory reporting, to protect investors. Its trading rules included requiring brokers to charge funds for research separately from trading fees. Many funds started looking for information from listed companies’ IR and ESG departments, instead of relying on equity research reports.

“As a result, though, small and mid-cap companies may find themselves easily overlooked,” Chen said. “So having their information presented professionally in English helps give them a boost and ensure they don’t fall off the investment radar.” He added that more companies in Asia markets, including Taiwan, China, Korea and Southeast Asian countries, will start publishing disclosures in English as capital markets mature and grow.

Before turning to WritePath, many of its clients used traditional translation agencies or translation services offered by the Big 4 accounting firms to produce English-language reports. Chen said one of WritePath’s advantages is that its technology, including Warren and corpora management system T-Booster, maintains consistency in corporate language and terminology. This means its human translators can focus on the quality of content, reviewing sentences for accuracy.

WritePath also offers a “self-service” solution for material information that needs to be disclosed within 24 hours. This enables clients to order and manage translations through WritePath’s portal. Part of its new funding will be used to upgrade the portal so it can process multiple files and batches that come in at different times, but need to be delivered at once.

Chen said WritePath differentiates from financial printers like Toppan Merrill, R.R. Donnelly and Pronexus by combining human translators with AI tech in its workflow. EQS and MZ are online IR disclosure tools, but require translation help when they publish information in countries that don’t use English as a main language. Another company in the financial disclosure space is Fiscalnote, but it focuses on data, like ESG information, instead of translation.

The funding will used to expand WritePath’s translation services for listed companies and add more verticals, like design and layout for ESG reports.

Taiwanese startup WritePath’s AI tech speeds up financial disclosure translation by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Suplyd, a procurement platform for hotels, restaurants and catering (HoReCa) businesses in Egypt, has raised $1.6 million pre-seed funding from Endure Capital, Seedstars, Camel Ventures, Falak Startups, and a number of angel investors.

Founded in January this year, Suplyd’s B2B platform brings efficiency in the supply chain operations for businesses in the food service industry by allowing digital order procurement, payment, and fulfillment.

Through its platform, restaurants get access to a wide range of products on demand , saving them man hours wasted in sourcing for goods offline. It also ensures that the businesses acquire the goods at competitive prices.

Suplyd plans to use the new funding to scale its technology and expand within and beyond Cairo, and to explore other growth opportunities in Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) region in the near future.

“Restaurants’ supply chain is a global issue, where everyone right now is looking into how to cut costs and reduce waste. However, the Egyptian market is extremely big yet untapped, and that’s where we direct our efforts for the next phase before we expand to other global markets,” said Gohar Said, Suplyd CEO who co-founded the startup with Karim Selima, and Ahmed ElMahdy.

Said, a restaurateur for 12 years, Suplyd is bringing an e-commerce experience to the restaurant supply chain, by optimizing assets, reducing waste for the whole ecosystem, while saving the businesses time and effort used to communicate and follow up with suppliers.

The startup’s network of tech-enabled fulfillment centers, offers the Suplyd insights on demand patterns and trends that informs stocking, to ensure restaurants supplies needs are fulfilled on demand, and avoid waste on suppliers end too.

“In a normal scenario, restaurants have to go out to the market looking for suppliers for their SKUs, then they start validating their prices. If the right match happens, which is not always the case, the fulfillment risk takes place, whether because of tight delivery windows, order placement restrictions, or quantity issues,” said Said.

“What Suplyd is offering is a digital procurement engine, a platform where it makes it easy for restaurants to buy supplies at considerably cheaper rates than open market prices, exposes restaurants to a wide range of SKUs, guarantees fulfillment through a single platform, and simplifies the transaction and the delivery process. It also benefits suppliers with real-time analytics and actionable insights when it comes to demand patterns and trends,” he said.

Suplyd says it is currently serving 500 customers in greater Cairo, having grown by almost 50% month over month since launch. The startup, which is stepping up competition for players like OneOrder, expects greater growth over the next one year sustained by its expansion plans geared towards serving Egypt’s vast HoReCa industry, which is supported by over 400,000 restaurants.

Tarek Fahim, general partner at Endure Capital said: “Eating out is a major part of social life in the Middle East, but the supply chain that enables restaurants to serve customers is highly fragmented. We are thrilled to support the team and the platform Suplyd is building to digitize the supply chain for restaurants, improving efficiency and reducing food waste in our communities.”

Egypt’s Suplyd raises $1.6M to digitize restaurants supply chain by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold over 20 million shares of the company stock between Monday and Wednesday. The sale is worth about $3.5 billion, according to a regulatory filing. Musk’s latest stock dump follows the nearly $4 billion worth of shares he sold last month.

Musk hasn’t provided a reason publicly for the share sell this time around, nor if he is done for the day. In April, he sold off $8.5 billion worth of Tesla stock, and in August Musk offloaded another $7 billion’s worth.

After Wednesday’s share sell, Musk owns roughly $66 billion worth of Tesla stock.

The sell comes as Tesla investors raise concerns over Musk’s involvement with Twitter, which the executive recently took over after a controversial, and expensive, purchase. Investors say Musk’s involvement with the social media platform is detrimental to Tesla, arguments they back by pointing to the company’s stock price. Trading at $156.80 after hours on Wednesday, Tesla stock is down 60.8% from January, and is on track for their worst full-year performance.

Some analysts speculate that today’s stock sell is Musk’s answer to some of the high interest debt he’s paying on his $44 billion Twitter deal. Twitter took on $13 billion in debt as part of that deal, including about $3 billion of unsecured debt on which Twitter pays an interest rate of 11.75%.

Investors say it doesn’t seem like the sell was planned, and it’s unclear if Musk is done selling. That said, Musk only has until Friday to sell more stock before Tesla goes into a quiet period for the end of the quarter. Some investors expressed frustration that Musk has been unpredictable when it comes to selling stock. Years ago he said he wouldn’t sell shares. When he went back on that earlier this year, Musk said he was done selling. But then lo and behold, he goes ahead and dumps stock again on three separate occasions.

The stock sell also comes as some of Tesla’s most hardcore investors beg Musk and the board to consider buying back shares as the company’s stock price continues to slump. Musk said during Tesla’s Q3 earnings that the company is likely to do a buyback next year, possibly between $5 billion and $10 billion.

Musk’s latest stock dump comes the same day that the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate to a range between 4.25% and 4.5%. Often, stock prices take a hit when interest rates rise, so Musk could have been selling in anticipation of Tesla stock losing more value in coming weeks.

Musk sells $3.5B worth of Tesla stock as investors voice concern over Twitter involvement by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Singapore-headquartered startup Plugo has secured $9 million in a Series A funding round. The company offers a complete spectrum of e-commerce support services for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, from making a website, setting up a payment system, and managing marketing to handling shipping, warehousing, and logistics. In other words, Plugo enables D2C merchants to focus on their products and supports other processes.

The Series A round was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from BonAngels Ventures Partners, Access Ventures, Mahanusa Capital, Prodigy Investment, and Pearl Abyss Capital. The company did not disclose its valuation when asked.

The startup plans to use the proceeds to beef up its R&D team and hire more engineers, Plugo co-founder and chief executive officer KyungMin Bang said, adding that it currently employs about 30 people.

Bang founded Plugo two months ago with five founding members. Approximately 200 D2C brands have already started using Plugo’s beta service in Indonesia. The Singapore-based startup with offices in Indonesia and South Korea intends to launch its service officially in Indonesia in the first quarter of next year.

The company wants to focus on the Indonesian market, one of the largest markets in Southeast Asia, for the next 12 months, then expand to other Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, Bang told TechCrunch. It has partnered with an array of logistics companies, including Indonesia-based JNE Express, SiCepat and J&T, and a payment outlet such as Nicepay Indonesia, Bang noted.

Bang, a serial entrepreneur, was inspired to offer an end-to-end management system for D2C brands and merchants in Indonesia to set up online stores after realizing Indonesia’s D2C market, which accounts for less than 1% of the total e-commerce in the country, is nascent but growing fast.

Indonesia’s D2C market is expected to have a vast potential to grow, with the fourth-largest population size, including the rising young population in coming years and rapid penetration of smartphone users in the country, Bang pointed out.

“Local businesses [in Indonesia] have accelerated their adoption of digital technology due to innovation in the e-commerce ecosystem and dynamic changes in consumer behavior,” Bang said. In Indonesia, D2C platforms have become a new trend in the e-commerce industry from business-to-consumer (B2C) platform that has predominated the e-commerce market over the last decade, Bang explained.

The startup looks to challenge e-commerce players like Shopify in Southeast Asia. “I believe we have enormous potential because there is still much room for growth and huge gaps [in the D2C business] that big e-commerce behemoths like Shopify couldn’t address yet [in Southeast Asia]. For example, we can offer customized services, particularly for small merchants like MSMEs in the region, and empower them to sell online,” Bang said.

“We believe the timing is perfect for the birth of Plugo as the e-commerce landscape is experiencing turbulence that will nurture positive disruption, benefiting both aspirational sellers and consumers,” said Charles Rim, founding and general partner at Access Ventures, said in a statement.

Bang previously exited two startups: Indonesian e-commerce enabler TokoTalk operator CodeBrick which Singapore’s e-commerce Sea bought in 2021 per Pitchbook, and Korean PC online game J2MSoft (J2M), which Electronic Arts acquired in 2008. (According to a report by Tech in Aisa, Sea has shut down the TokoTalk service since October in an effort to reduce costs amid broader economic uncertainty.)

“Plugo’s mission aligns with our own mission of creating significant economic value while contributing positively to society,” Moon-Suk Oh, partner at Altos Ventures, said in a statement. “Plugo offers an unmatched suite of digital capabilities that will transform the future of e-commerce in Indonesia.”

Plugo, an e-commerce support platform for D2C brands in Southeast Asia, picks up $9M Series A by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

The Covid-19 pandemic grounded travel and tourism to a halt, but as those sectors pick up speed again, so too are the more promising startups in them raising money to keep up. Today, a startup called Mews — which provides a cloud-based hotel property management platform with tools covering reservations, payments, and more — announced that it has raised $185 million in a Series C round of funding giving the company a post-money valuation of $865 million.

Co-led by Kinnevik and the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the round also included new backers Revaia, Derive Ventures and Orbit Capital; as well as previous investors Battery Ventures, Notion Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Thayer Ventures, and henQ. The raise is mostly equity with a small amount of debt, founder and president Richard Valtr said in an interview. Columbia Lake Partners is providing the debt.

Mews are streets (for example, in London) full of usually-small houses or flats converted from horse stables for bigger houses nearby. Ironically, though, Mews the startup is not that small at all. In the year that travel “came back” post the peak of Covid and the various restrictions imposed on people moving around, Mews saw revenues grow 174%, with gross payment volume in the period up 227% and now standing at $2.3 billion. It has customers in 70 countries, 3,253 hotels in all.

Its customers include big chains spanning from five-star through to the most basic accommodation, including Accor and the Youth Hostel Association, as well as a number of smaller groups and independent hoteliers, all of which turn to Mews both for specific tools to manage reservations, payments, guest services, analytics, shifts for hotel workers, as well as a marketplace of 600 apps for users to build one-stop dashboards that integrate any number of other apps that a hotel might be using in its operations (for example accounting, sales or CRM software), a little like a Toast or a Shopify for the hospitality industry, Valtr said.

That is also, these days, leading the company to working with other kinds of property management groups looking to provide residents or visitors with hotel-like services — the Airbnb effect on how we live, or might want to live, these days.

“We think of ourselves as the platform on which businesses in our vertical are run,” he said. “We take a broad brush approach with our ambitions. Mews nominally looks after hotels and hospitality, but that could be hostels or Airbnb’s or services for people in mixed-use real estate. Longer term, we feel that what is considered commercial or residential is melding. This is the direction all real estate is going. What is happening post-pandemic is that more are realizing they want to live more of their travel life more of the time.”

The last time Mews raised money was 2019, a $33 million round that it raised in part to re-orient itself to working on product and building out its tech to differentiate itself from the other property management software players on the market. It turned out to be a fortuitous shift, Valtr said: as the pandemic hit, the company was head-down on its own internal transformation, emerging just as hotels were also looking to invest in better and newer systems during their own down time. That may well be a sugar-coated spin on a period that was virtually dead for the travel and tourism industry, but ultimately the growth Mews has had more recently speaks to its momentum right now.

This latest funding will be used for, essentially, more of the same: more tech investing and to expand globally, with some optional M&A too.

“Richard, [CEO] Matthijs Walle, and the broader Mews team have an intimate understanding of hoteliers’ needs and have taken a product-first approach to develop a modern solution in a sector ripe for disruption,” said Akhil Chainwala, investment director at Kinnevik, in a statement. As cloud adoption in hospitality accelerates driven by more complex guest needs and rising costs, Mews is best positioned to rebuild the sector’s digital plumbing. We are excited to welcome a fourth travel investment to our portfolio and look forward to supporting Mews in the next phase of its journey.”

What’s been surprising is not so much that Mews is seeing a surge in business, but that investors are backing it readily right now, given how tricky it’s been for other sectors, and given the current investment climate and the contraction specifically in the hospitality industry.

“Closing a large round in this environment speaks to the tremendous growth and future potential of Mews,” said Kirk Lepke, MD in the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, in a statement, “Hoteliers have experienced a lot of challenges over recent years, driving increased demand for cloud-native platforms, like Mews, to help them modernize, improve the guest experience, and create efficiencies through smart automation. With their open architecture and fully integrated payment capabilities, Mews is heavily relied upon as a mission critical solution.”

Mews books $185M for its SaaS-based hotel management platform by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch