Thursday, August 15, 2019
ShareChat closes $100M equity financing round led by Twitter
Source: Coinbase has acquired the custody business of Xapo, a service best known for storing bitcoins in a vault under a Swiss mountain, for $55M (Jeff John Roberts/Fortune)
Source: Coinbase has acquired the custody business of Xapo, a service best known for storing bitcoins in a vault under a Swiss mountain, for $55M — Cryptocurrency firm Coinbase has acquired the custody business of Xapo, a service best known for storing Bitcoins in a vault under a Swiss mountain.
Overview of startup exits outside Silicon Valley from the past ten years, not including Asian companies: Sweden edges out UK, Boston remains big, more (David Frankel/Founder Collective)
Overview of startup exits outside Silicon Valley from the past ten years, not including Asian companies: Sweden edges out UK, Boston remains big, more — There's never been a better time to build a company outside the Bay Area — The Bay Area has been the best place to build a startup for the last two decades.
Apple is suing Corellium
Apple is suing virtualization software company Corellium, according to documents filed today in Florida.
Corellium allows customers to create and interact with virtual iOS devices — a software iPhone, for example, running actual iOS firmware, all within the browser. Apple says this is copyright infringement, and is demanding Corellium stops “all uses of” its iOS virtualization products and pays Apple unspecified “damages and lost profits”
Corellium could allow, for example, a security researcher to quickly fire up a simulated iPhone and hunt for potential bugs. If one is discovered, they can quickly load up prior versions of iOS to see how long this bug has been around. If a bug “bricks” the virtual iOS device and renders it unusable, it’s a matter of just booting up a new one rather than obtaining a whole new phone. Virtualized devices can be paused, giving researchers a detailed look at its precise state at any given moment .
Forbes did a deep dive on the company last year. As they point out, two of the company’s co-founders were some of the earliest members of the iPhone jailbreak scene, giving them an understanding better than nearly anyone else in the world as to how iPhones, iPads, etc work under the hood.
In its complaint, Apple writes:
The product Corellium offers is a “virtual” version of Apple mobile hardware products, accessible to anyone with a web browser. Specifically, Corellium serves up what it touts as a perfect digital facsimile of a broad range of Apple’s market-leading devices—recreating with fastidious attention to detail not just the way the operating system and applications appear visually to bona fide purchasers, but also the underlying computer code. Corellium does so with no license or permission from Apple.
This news comes just days after Apple announced that it would be launching a “iOS Security Research Device Program”, in which select security researchers would be given access to less-locked down iOS devices in order to help them find vulnerabilities.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
YC-backed Eden Farm wants to cut out the middlemen between farmers and restaurants in Indonesia
Eden Farm is a startup with the ambitious goal of building a food distribution network for Indonesia, where many restaurants currently rely on markets for fresh ingredients.
But this means high markups and unreliable supplies for restaurant owners and lower profits for farmers, co-founder and CEO David Gunawan tells TechCrunch. The company, part of Y Combinator’s current batch, wants to help both by simplifying the supply chain, ensuring stable pricing and reducing food waste. Eden Farm currently focuses on fresh produce and non-perishable items, but plans to expand its product line to meat and seafood, too.
The company launched in 2017 and now supplies produce from 60 farmers to more than 200 restaurants in six major cities: Jakarta, Tangerang, South Tangerang, Bekasi, Depok and Bogor. Eden Farm is currently raising an oversubscribed seed round. Gunawan says the target was originally intended to be $1 million, but has now increased to $1.75 million. Investors include Y Combinator and Everhaus.
Eden Farm started as a farm, but while talking to other farmers and researching the agricultural market, its founders realized there were many problems with food distribution in Indonesia.
“Every restaurant in Indonesia faces a huge problem with supply, stability and extreme price volatility,” Gunawan says. “Fruit and vegetable prices can go up and down around 30% to 50% every day. In peak season, for certain commodities, prices can go up ten times, like chilis in the summer.”
Eden Farm tackles the problem of supply and demand with a mobile app that gives demand forecasts to farmers so they can plan their next harvests. Traditionally, farmers don’t sell produce directly to restaurants, Gunawan says. Instead, their harvest goes through several layers of middlemen before arriving at markets.
Eden Farm working with farmers in Indonesia
Eden Farm is able to ensure price stability and also allow farmers to make more profit by purchasing produce wholesale from them. On the demand side, Eden Farm’s value proposition includes quality control. Before produce is delivered to restaurants, it is inspected and washed. Gunawan says restaurants typically have to dispose around 30% of the produce they purchase from markets, but Eden Farm has a 100% guarantee and will refund the price of any produce that is unusable. It also partners with two large markets in Jakarta to help supply large quantities of vegetables and ensure there are enough supplies during peak season. Gunawan says Eden Farm’s quality control can help save restaurants up to 50%.
Eden Farm wants to build a network similar to Sysco, the American food distribution giant, but it has to solve several problems unique to Indonesia.
“We are serving a very traditional industry. Farmers already have their own way of planting and their own culture, which has lasted for generations, and we’re trying to change that,” says Gunawan. “At first we didn’t know how to talk to them, how to convince them, but we learned a lot about how to pay respect to farmers. Every time we go to a village, for example, we know how to present, who to pay respects to, like the elders there. We have to do that before the elders will introduce us to the farmers in the area.”
The company currently handles about half of its deliveries in-house and uses third-party logistics providers for the rest. Most produce is sourced from farms close to where it is sold so it can be delivered in less than 24 hours, but Eden Farms goes further for some vegetables. For example, potatoes are purchased from farms in Central Java, while carrots come from North Sumatra.
Eden Farm works mostly with small, traditional farms, but it also carries produce like lettuce and kale from hydroponic farms. After finishing Y Combinator, Gunawan says the startup will begin focusing on expanding into five new cities: Bandung, Surabaya, Bali, Medan and Malang. As its order volumes increase, the company will begin focusing on smaller markets and once it hits 25,000 restaurants, expand into meat and seafood.
How to create and send Independence Day, Raksha Bandhan WhatsApp sticker
Profile of Microsoft's Executive VP of Gaming Phil Spencer, who has steadfastly advocated for cross-platform play since taking over as head of Xbox in 2014 (Laura Parker/GameSpot)
Profile of Microsoft's Executive VP of Gaming Phil Spencer, who has steadfastly advocated for cross-platform play since taking over as head of Xbox in 2014 — On a warm Saturday in early June, Phil Spencer, the Microsoft executive in charge of Xbox, was helping Keanu Reeves, the movie star …
LG has teamed up with this IoT firm for smart home solutions
Paytm says postpaid service 'active and operational' after Twitter backlash
India PC market grew 49.2% in Q2: Report
How video streaming is rapidly changing India's movie business
WeWork India business up in H1 2019
MediaTek says it has started to use Intel Foundry's advanced chip packaging in addition to TSMC's, as the mobile chip designer bets on AI demand for growth (Cheng Ting-Fang/Nikkei Asia)
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia : MediaTek says it has started to use Intel Foundry's advanced chip packaging in addition to TSMC's...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
