The capital, which brings total funding raised by the startup to $6.2 million, will enable it to serve more brands.
For diverse brands in particular, there are a lot of economic hurdles that these groups face, which makes it even harder for them to access capital.
Its other offering is a labor marketplace for brands not in a position to hire full-time teams but require talent occasionally.
Its community of brands recommends the talent or manufacturer, who are listed on the marketplace after several stages of vetting.
Brands gain access to the labor marketplace, capital and other resources, upon signing up (at a cost) on the startup’s main product, the B2B marketplace and SaaS product.
Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto has surpassed the annualised sales milestone of $1 billion within just 29 months of its inception, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note Thursday, citing the Zepto management.
Zepto, which became a unicorn last year, counts YC Continuity, StepStone Group, Glade Brook Capital and Lachy Groom among its backers.
“Overall EBITDA margin for Zepto is at negative single-digit percentage and the company is on track to break even at the EBITDA level within the next quarter.
The company expects steady state contribution margin of 12%, with steady state EBITDA margin of 7%,” the report added.
Zepto believes it can expand into 40-50 cities over time,” the report added.
Some may help businesses build a website, whereas others may just be useful for getting listed on search engines.
The startup also uses AI to ease businesses’ journey to digitize thousands of stores in one go.
Tarun Sobhani, co-founder and CEO of SingleInterface, told TechCrunch that the startup helps businesses grow their revenues by 15–20% using its products.
Sobhani and Harish Bahl, the founder of consumer internet investor and venture-building firm Smile Group, co-founded the startup in 2015.
Sobhani said the startup plans to add many people in the Asia-Pacific region to grow its presence.
Amazon announced Thursday the launch of its new app for Amazon One, its contactless palm recognition service that allows customers to hover their palm over a device in order to purchase from select places, including over 500 Whole Foods Market stores, Amazon stores, and more than 150 third-party locations.
Instead of signing up for Amazon One at a physical retail location, users can now download the Amazon One app (available for iOS or Android devices) and take a photo of their palm right at home.
The company explains that all palm images taken via the new app are encrypted and sent to a secure Amazon One domain in the AWS cloud.
Amazon says that Amazon One has been used over 8 million times.
The app launch follows Amazon’s expansion of the technology for enterprise identity purposes, which gives companies the ability to authenticate employees when entering.
Even as quick commerce is slowly fading in many markets and several heavily-funded startups have folded in the past two years, India is emerging as a striking outlier where the model remains vibrant.
Zomato’s Blinkit leads the quick commerce market in India, having cornered as much as 46% of the market share by GMV in the quarter that ended in December, according to a new analysis.
Reliance Retail-backed Dunzo, which pioneered the quick commerce model in India, has virtually lost its entire market share.
However, the long-term sustainability of the quick commerce model remains to be seen.
Flipkart is weighing entering the quick commerce market by as early as May this year, TechCrunch reported last week.
Smart fitness ring maker Oura announced a partnership with Amazon today to sell its products through the e-commerce site.
The Heritage ring starts from $299 and the Horizon ring starts from $399.
The most distinctive difference between the two is that Heritage rings have a flat top and Horizon rings don’t have that.
Since Oura launched the Oura Ring 3, India-based startup Ultrahuman released two rings including Ultrahuman Air last year.
Last year, Oura launched the Circles feature to encourage users to share their stats with friends and family.
This new program allows Play Store developers to lead their users in the EEA outside their app, including to promote offers.
Google says this fee represents the value that Play provided in facilitating the initial user acquisition through the Play Store.
Google says this fee represents the value that Play provided in facilitating the initial user acquisition through the Play Store.
Developers, however, will still be responsible for reporting transactions involving those users who are continuing to receive Play Store services.
Separately from the External Offers program, Google also this week launched two other programs to allow alternative billing systems for in-app purchases.
Uber has quietly started testing a feature that lets gig workers pick up prepaid items from local stores and deliver them to customers in India.
It suggests that Uber sees a business opportunity in delivering items from local stores in India — just like in the U.S.
For instance, the item set for pickup at the local store needs to be five kilograms (11 lbs) or less.
In addition to Store Pickup, Uber offers its regular Connect feature to let customers deliver packages through its app.
However, the Store Pickup feature is specifically for arranging deliveries from local stores.
With the FTC’s increasing focus on the misuse of biometric surveillance, Rite Aid fell firmly in the government agency’s crosshairs.
And companies such as Clearview AI, meanwhile, have been hit with lawsuits and fines around the world for major data privacy breaches around facial recognition technology.
The FTC’s latest findings regarding Rite Aid also shines a light on inherent biases in AI systems.
Additionally, the FTC said that Rite Aid failed to test or measure the accuracy or their facial recognition system prior to, or after, deployment.
“The allegations relate to a facial recognition technology pilot program the Company deployed in a limited number of stores,” Rite Aid said in its statement.
Google announced today that it will pay $700 million as a part of a settlement with the U.S. Attorney General for a lawsuit over Google Play Store.
Third-party app stores and side-loadingFor at least seven years, Google will support app installs on Android outside of Google Play through different ways including third-party app stores.
Google won’t force developers to launch their apps at the same time or earlier on the Google Play for at least four years.
Plus, Google can’t stop them from displaying fees linked with Google Play or Google Play’s billing system.
OEM clausesGoogle can’t enter a deal with phone makers to have Google Play as the exclusive app store on devices to place Google Play on the home screen for at least five years.
