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Saturday, 1 February 2020
India-based InterviewBit, which offers an online computer science program and lets its students pay part of the fee after getting a job, raises $20M Series A (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
India-based InterviewBit, which offers an online computer science program and lets its students pay part of the fee after getting a job, raises $20M Series A — InterviewBit, a Bangalore-based startup that runs an advanced online computer science program for college graduates …
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What Nutanix got right (and wrong) in its IPO roadshow
Back in 2016, Nutanix decided to take the big step of going public. Part of that process was creating a pitch deck and presenting it during its roadshow, a coming-out party when a company goes on tour prior to its IPO and pitches itself to investors of all stripes.
It’s a huge moment in the life of any company, and after talking to CEO Dheeraj Pandey and CFO Duston Williams, one we better understood. They spoke about how every detail helped define their company and demonstrate its long-term investment value to investors who might not have been entirely familiar with the startup or its technology.
Pandey and Williams reported going through more than 100 versions of the deck before they finished the one they took on the road. Pandey said they had a data room checking every fact, every number — which they then checked yet again.
In a separate Extra Crunch post, we looked at the process of building that deck. Today, we’re looking more closely at the content of the deck itself, especially the numbers Nutanix presented to the world. We want to see what investors did more than three years ago and what’s happened since — did the company live up to its promises?
Plan of attack
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This Week in Apps: Apple’s record quarter, dating apps under investigation, Byte launches to problems
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently released “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
This week, Apple released earnings and gave us hints about the power of its wearables market. Congress as begun investigating top dating apps. Google’s App Maker announced a shutdown is coming. The iPad turned 10 and people discussed where it’s going wrong.
We also take a look at Byte, the so-called Vine reboot. I’m not impressed. Not only did Byte launch with a comment spam problem, including pornbots, it’s also heavily filled with adult and sometimes dark humor. This includes videos featuring dick jokes, sex toys, drugs and jokes about child abuse, despite a 12+ age rating and many users who appear to be children.
Headlines
Apple reports blockbuster earnings, details the growth of wearables
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A look at a secretive team of quantum researchers at Alphabet's X, who are focused on creating new algorithms and applications to run on quantum computers (Tom Simonite/Wired)
A look at a secretive team of quantum researchers at Alphabet's X, who are focused on creating new algorithms and applications to run on quantum computers — Google's parent touted its quantum supremacy achievement last year. It doesn't talk about a group at X working on software.
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Dear Ashley Madison user. I know everything about you. Pay up or else.
Enlarge (credit: ashleymadison.com)
Four years after hackers dumped the intimate details of 32 million Ashley Maddison subscribers, criminals have revived an extortion scheme that targets people who used the dating website to cheat on their partners.
In the past two weeks, researchers have detected “several hundred” emails that threaten to air those intimate details to the world unless the former subscribers’ pay a hefty fee.
“I know everything about you,” one of the emails, dated January 15, says. “I even know that you ordered some … let’s call them ‘male assistance products’ online on 12/11/2018 using your account at Bank of America N,a routing# 121000358 account# [redacted] for $75 for mailing to [redacted] CA [redacted]!” The extortionist goes on to say: “If you do not act very fast your full AMadison profile and proof of it will be shared with friends, family, and online over social media—and of course your internet orders.”
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The fractured future of browser privacy
In the 1990s, web browsers like Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer competed bitterly to offer the snazziest new features and attract users. Today, the browser landscape looks totally different. For one thing, Chrome now dominates, controlling around two-thirds of the market on both desktop and mobile. Even more radical, though, is the recent competitive focus on privacy, a welcome change for anyone who's gotten sick of creepy ad tracking and data mismanagement. But as browsers increasingly diverge in their approaches, it's clear that not all privacy protections are created equal.
At the USENIX Enigma security conference in San Francisco this week, developers, security researchers, and privacy advocates presented differing views of how browsers should protect their users against data abuses. In a panel discussion that included representatives from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Brave, all participants agreed that collaboration across the industry has driven innovation and helped make privacy a priority. But some browsers are taking a hardline approach, while others prefer to increase protections within the status quo.
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Two-year-old Indian edtech startup Doubtnut raises $15M
Doubtnut, a Gurgaon-based startup that operates an app to help students learn and master concepts from math and science using short videos, has raised $15 million in a new financing round as it looks to serve more people in small cities and towns of the country.
The financing round, Series A, was led by Chinese giant Tencent. Existing investors Omidyar Network India, AET, Japan and Ankit Nagori (founder of fitness startup Cure.Fit), and Sequoia Capital India also participated in the round, the two-year-old startup said.
Doubtnut, part of Sequoia Capital India’s Surge accelerator, has raised $18.5 million to date, and its new financing round valued it at about $50 million, a person familiar with the matter said.
The app allows students from sixth grade to high-school solve and understand math and science problems in local languages. Doubtnut app allows them to take a picture of the problem, and uses machine learning and image recognition to deliver their answers through short-videos.
A student can take a picture of the problem, and share it with Doubtnut through its app, website, or WhatsApp and get a short video that shows the answer and walks them through the procedure to tackle it.
Doubtnut said it has amassed over 13 million monthly active users across its website, app, YouTube, and WhatsApp. More than 85% of Doubtnut users today come from outside of the top 10 cities in India, said Tanushree Nagori, co-founder of Doubtnut. She said that more than half of these students have come online in the last one year.
“Doubtnut is truly democratizing education across India. Our user base reflects the entire demography of India, something which no other education app in the country has come close to achieving,” she said.
The growth of Doubtnut represents the emergence of a wave of startups in India that are tackling local challenges. In the education space alone, a number of players including Byju’s, which is now valued at $8 billion, Unacademy, Vedanutu, and GradeUp have shown impressive growth.
Gaurav Munjal, founder and chief executive of Unacademy, said on Saturday that his startup’s one-year-old premium offering had clocked $30 million in revenue.
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Behind the revival of Dubsmash, an app that lets users post lip sync and dance videos that now has 27% of the US short-form video market share by installs (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
Behind the revival of Dubsmash, an app that lets users post lip sync and dance videos that now has 27% of the US short-form video market share by installs — The loud app that quietly hit 1 billion monthly views — Lip-syncing app Dubsmash was on the brink of death.
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Growing Your Digital Start-Up: What You Need To Know!
Thanks to technology and advanced digital capabilities, digital businesses have exploded in the last decade – to the point where having a solely digital presence is compulsory, and more startups are prioritizing a digital approach. According to IDG’s State of Digital Business Transformation report, 95 percent of startups now have digital business plans, while 55 percent of them have already adopted a digital business strategy. Yet while the methods and paths have changed, business growth continues to be a top priority for them. Scaling up a digital business may differ in some ways to traditional businesses, especially for those with tech-heavy operations. From prepping the operations and logistics behind the scenes to ensuring your online store is up and capable of handling increased traffic, there is a lot to get done if you want to make a successful transition.
Map Out Your Funding And Budget Dedicated To The Growth Period
If you’re going to expand your business operations, this will require some investment on your part. While there are traditional bank and credit union business loans, you also have increased digital lending options, including P2P platforms, venture capital trusts or fintech backed loans. However, each option comes with its own set of terms and costs, which need to be weighed against your business income, projections and ability to repay.
You will also need to decide whether you keep trading while you scale up your business. Most start-ups choose to trade and expand simultaneously to help fund their growth plans and keep momentum with customers. Choosing to close or suspend operations temporarily puts the business at risk of losing customers – and incurring a higher cost of acquiring new customers when you do resume business operations.
However, there are some cases where doing both would be more harmful and disruptive, and in this case, communicating clearly to consumers and employees is needed. In terms of finance, you will also be incurring expenses such as warehouse and office rent, alongside employee salaries, during the growth period. For this, a strict business budget is needed to ascertain how you intend to pay for these with a slow in trading income. Certain business accounting and budgeting software like CountAbout, Float or Adaptive Insights can help you monitor your budget during the scaling-up process as well.
Bring In The Additional Manpower At The Best Cost
To execute your growth plans successfully, you need to have the right team. This means bringing in additional employees as needed and possibly redeploying current ones. Management should be well versed in technology and the digital world, including digital marketing, financing and website design. This may mean you need to restructure your digital team or expand it to include newly needed roles.
There is also the logistics aspect of business growth, such as manufacturing, customer service and customer delivery. With increased sales and customer traffic, you need to consider the productivity of your current digital staff and whether you need to hire additional employees. If you choose you hire additional full-time employees, your budget and planning schedule should include the secondary aspects of this process, including the cost of recruiting and mandatory benefits needed like health and workers comp insurance, which is legally required to protect workers in most regions. To minimize costs, you can opt to bring in freelancers or contract employees for one-off projects such as designing your digital relaunch campaign or redesigning your social media.
Prepare Your Business Functions For Increased Traffic – Automate, Hire Or Outsource Where Necessary
Finally, you need to prepare all of your business functions to handle everything that comes with a growing business, including an increase in stock and employees (possibly needing a larger office space or warehouse), more website traffic and expansion in product range (redesigning website for optimality in load times and capacity), and a corresponding increase in sales and invoicing (adding additional payment methods and digital currency into your system and adding in the use of time and expense tracking software for real-time product pricing).
Growth is the number one priority for many businesses, whether they are new or seasoned. For a digital business, the aim may be the same, but the preparations take a different route. You must think more about preparing technologically to navigate the new risks of expanding into the digital world at present.
Author | Emily Forbes
An Entrepreneur, Mother & A passionate tech writer in the technology industry!
Email:- forbesemily@yandex.com
The post Growing Your Digital Start-Up: What You Need To Know! appeared first on TheTechNews.
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