india
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In India, an Uber for farm machinery aims to make a difference in rural areas
Uber has inspired countless businesses to adopt its asset-light and on-demand approach to their industries. The examples are countless. Food delivery, dry cleaning, jet planes, home services rental bikes, or even phone chargers to name but a few — but how about farming equipment? That’s the case in India, where a startup called EM3 AgriServices is helping rural farmers literally… Read More
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Google’s voice typing tech adds support for 30 more languages, reaching further into Africa, India
Google today is expanding its speech recognition capabilities to support dozens of new languages, particularly those in emerging markets in India and Africa, the company announced this morning. That means more people around the world will gain the ability to search the web by voice as well as type via voice using Google’s keyboard app, Gboard. The company says with the update… Read More
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Indian startup Flux Auto wants to democratize self-driving tech for trucks
A young startup in India wants to makes autonomous driving technology more widely available for truck operators, especially those outside of the U.S., by lower the cost significantly. The concept of self-driving trucks sat in the background for some time as the vision of autonomous cars ferrying consumers from A to B hogged the limelight, but the potential for trucking is at least on par if… Read More
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Piggy looks to build a simple app for first-time investors in India
The name “Piggy” might seem weirdly uninviting for an investment app — which is serious business — but co-founder Nikhil Mantha says it holds a kind of comfort that should attract users in India to start building and tackling their own portfolio. You could probably draw some similarities to Robinhood in the United States, but Mantha says Piggy — an app coming… Read More
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Paytm, India’s top digital payment firm, plans to rival WhatsApp with messaging and games
WhatsApp is about to get an unlikely competitor in India, its largest global market based on users. That’s because Paytm, the $8 billion-valued company behind the country’s top digital wallet, is in the process of expanding its services into person-to-person communication, games and other mobile content. The planned update, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will… Read More
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SAIF Partners closes new $350M fund for India’s resurgent tech startup scene
SAIF Partners, one of India’s most active investment firms, has returned with a new fund of $350 million, its sixth to date. Unlike other firms, SAIF opted to keep its newest fund at the same size as its previous one because it allows it to be selective on deals, a number of partners told TechCrunch in an interview. SAIF has more than $4 billion in assets under management. Its… Read More
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Alibaba and Tencent are carving up Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem
Two global tech forces are putting their mark — and money — into Southeast Asia’s nascent startup ecosystem, but they may not be the Western names that you expect. Rather than Google, Facebook or Microsoft, increasingly Chinese duo Alibaba and Tencent are the driving forces behind the importing of large sums of capital and vast business experience into Southeast… Read More
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LinkedIn Lite launches as an Android app in India, coming to 60+ countries soon
LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with more than 500 million members, is taking its next step in its bid to court more users in emerging markets. The company has released an Android app for LinkedIn Lite, a pared-down version of its original LinkedIn mobile app that is developed for users in markets where data networks are slower and relatively more expensive for consumers. Read More
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India’s Rentomojo raises $10M from Bain Capital and Lending Club founder
Indian startup Rentomojo — which lets consumers rent appliances furniture, motorbikes and other urban living essentials — has closed a $10 million Series B to continue its expansion. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures; others that put in include Lending Club founder and former CEO Renaud Laplanche and existing investors Accel and IDG. Read More
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Moglix raises $12M Series B to digitize India’s manufacturing industry
Moglix launched in 2015 as an online store for tools and construction supplies, but now it’s venturing into enterprise software with the launch of GreenGST to help Indian manufacturers become compliant with the country’s new tax codes. The Noida-headquartered startup announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series B. Read More
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Tech veterans set up $100M fund to turn India’s top startups into unicorns
Two Indian technology veterans have set up a new fund that they hope will help the county churn out world-class, billion-dollar startups. Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal have come together to launch the Fundamentum Partnership. Initially a $100 million fund — half of which is committed already — the duo told TechCrunch they aim to help cover the funding gap for India’s… Read More
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Jeff Bezos says Amazon will ‘keep investing’ in India as rivals raise new war chests
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has pledged to continue to invest in India as it bids to keep pace with rivals in the country that have landed large investments from big name backers. SoftBank and Alibaba have pumped close to $2 billion into Paytm lately while India’s original online retailer, Flipkart, won the backing of prestigious trio Microsoft, eBay and China’s Tencent via a recent… Read More
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Hike beats WhatsApp to launching messenger app payments in India
India-focused mobile messaging service Hike landed funding from Tencent last year, and today it took a major step to emulating the Chinese firm’s WeChat app with the introduction of mobile payments. The launch of Hike Wallet not only shows an ambition to build a messaging platform, it also means Hike has beaten WhatsApp, the chat app that dominates India, to the punch. Facebook-owned… Read More
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Crunch Network
Banking the unbanked in emerging markets
As countries progress, citizens migrate from remote villages to large cities and foreign countries. Their economic power rises and they participate in the global economy. People need to purchase food, pay electricity bills, top up transportation cards, arrange online services, buy overseas goods, repay loans, and send money to relatives. Unlike the U.S., however, where 93% of people have… Read More
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India’s MobiKwik is raising new funding at $1B valuation to battle payment rival Paytm
With high-profile investments from Alibaba and SoftBank fueling an impressive growth story since demonetization last year, you could be forgiven for thinking that Paytm has India’s payments market sewn up. But at least one company will agree to differ on that. MobiKwik, the mobile payments startup that is number two to Paytm in India, is quietly confident that it can take advantage of… Read More
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India’s Supr Daily raises $1.5M to expand its milk and grocery delivery service
Milk deliveries may not sound like an industry in need of disruption, but that’s exactly what one startup in India is working to do. Supr Daily — the company in question — graduated the Y Combinator accelerator program this year and now it has raised $1.5 million from a range of investors to expand its service. The Supr Daily service is designed to bring formality and order… Read More
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Spotify steps up Asia expansion with plans to launch in Vietnam and Thailand
Fresh from speculation around an impending IPO, Spotify is hitting the gas on its expansion plans in Asia. Two sources close to the company told TechCrunch that the firm is working to launch its music streaming business in Vietnam and Thailand, two countries with a combined population of over 160 million. Read More
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