Monday, January 20, 2020
Facebook Says It Is Getting Better at Protecting Elections
Zomato acquires Uber's food delivery business in India
OnePlus 8 Pro Alleged Hands-on Photo Shows 120Hz Refresh Rate in Settings
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Uber sells food delivery business in India to Zomato
Uber said on Tuesday it has sold its food delivery business, Uber Eats, in India to local rival Zomato as the American ride-hailing giant races to shed lossmaking operations to become profitable by next year.
As part of the deal, Uber would own 9.99% of Zomato and its Eats users would become part of the Indian company, the two loss-making firms said. The deal valued Uber Eats’ India business between $300 million and $350 million, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
TechCrunch reported last month that the two were in advanced stages of talks for a deal. Indian newspaper Times of India first signaled about the two companies’ talks in November.
Satish Meena, an analyst at Forrester, told TechCrunch that despite the Uber deal, Zomato still lags Prosus Ventures-backed Swiggy, which services more number of orders each day.
“Our Uber Eats team in India has achieved an incredible amount over the last two years, and I couldn’t be prouder of their ingenuity and dedication,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber, in a statement. Uber Eats, which entered India in 2017, initiated conversations to sell the local business in late 2018, said people familiar with the matter.
“India remains an exceptionally important market to Uber and we will continue to invest in growing our local Rides business, which is already the clear category leader. We have been very impressed by Zomato’s ability to grow rapidly in a capital-efficient manner and we wish them continued success,” he added.
According to industry estimates, Uber is not the “clear category leader” in India. That title belongs to Ola, which processes twice as many rides as Uber in India and has presence in 110 cities, compared to Uber’s roughly three-dozen.
The announcement comes amidst of Zomato’s new financing round. The 11-year-old Indian firm last month raised $150 million from Ant Financial and is looking to secure another $400 million in the next few weeks.
Zomato told the New York Times that the deal would somehow help it add “Uber’s 10 million in monthly food orders to its own 40 million, giving it a slight edge over Swiggy.” That would be an amazing feat to accomplish since both Uber Eats India and Zomato together process between 1 million and 1.5 million orders a month and lag Swiggy.
But regardless of the false claims, offloading Uber Eats India would help Uber, which exit Southeast Asia last year, reduce its global losses. The company, which cut hundreds of jobs last year, reported a quarterly loss of more than $1 billion in November. In the prior quarter, it lost about $5.2 billion. Uber says that it aims to become profitable by 2021.
The ride-hailing giant projected a negative revenue of $107.5 million for its Uber Eats business in India for the period between August and December of last year. Zomato, too, has been reducing its burn rate. The company, which as of 2018 was losing more than $40 million each month, has cut its monthly loss to $20 million, Info Edge, one of the investors in Zomato, told analysts in an earnings call in November.
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Zomato Buys Uber's Food Delivery Business in India
Personio, the German HR platform for SMEs, raises $75M Series C at a $500M valuation
Personio, the Germany-founded HR platform for SMEs, has raised $75 million in Series C funding in a round led by Accel. I understand the investment values the company at around $500 million.
Also joining is Lightspeed Venture Partners, alongside Lars Dalgaard (the founder and former CEO of SuccessFactors). Existing investors Index Ventures, Northzone, Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, and Picus Capital followed on.
The Series C brings Personio’s total funding to $130 million since launching in 2015. The additional capital will help support the company’s expansion into the U.K. and Ireland, which is also being announced today. This will see Personio establish a new office in London to better serve clients in the U.K. and Ireland.
Combining human resources, recruiting and payroll into a single platform, Personio bills itself as a “HR operating system” for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) ranging from 10 to 2,000 employees.
The cloud-based software is designed to power all of a company’s people processes via the product’s own growing functionality or through its ability to integrate with third-party software.
To that end, Personio says its customer base has tripled in the past twelve months, and says it now serves almost 2,000 customers in more than 40 countries. In the same period, the number of employees at Personio has more than doubled to over 350. That figure is set to reach 700 employees by the end of 2020.
Along with traditional SMEs, Personio has naturally found a home amongst startups. “The strong growth of the last four years in German-speaking countries has shown that there is a great demand for HR software in SMEs,” Personio co-founder and CEO Hanno Renner tells me.
“42% of their time is currently spent on administrative tasks, according to a recent, as yet unpublished study from Germany. Personio automates repetitive tasks and thus gives HR staff time for value-adding tasks. This is an invaluable advantage that has already convinced several U.K. customers such as Raisin and millimetric.”
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Uber has agreed to sell Uber Eats in India to Zomato for 9.99% share in the company; all delivery drivers and basic customer information to be transferred over (New York Times)
Uber has agreed to sell Uber Eats in India to Zomato for 9.99% share in the company; all delivery drivers and basic customer information to be transferred over — The ride-hailing giant agreed to sell Uber Eats in India to rival Zomato, continuing its recent efforts to exit money-losing businesses.
A look at Personio, a cloud-based software platform for HR and recruiting, which raised a $75M Series C led by Accel at a ~$500M valuation (William Feuer/CNBC)
A look at Personio, a cloud-based software platform for HR and recruiting, which raised a $75M Series C led by Accel at a ~$500M valuation — - Hanno Renner, 29, was a yacht skipper while at college in Munich and began Personio with a group of three friends.
Soft Robotics, maker of gripping and sorting machines for warehouses that use a vision system and AI to report real-time metrics, raises $23M Series B (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
Soft Robotics, maker of gripping and sorting machines for warehouses that use a vision system and AI to report real-time metrics, raises $23M Series B — Soft Robotics raised another $23 million to continue developing its solutions to the seemingly intractable problems gripping and sorting machines face.
Zomato buys Uber Eats India for $350M
UK accountancy regulator FRC says auditors can't blame AI for audit failures, after it published what it called the world's first guidance on auditor AI usage (Ellesheva Kissin/Financial Times)
Ellesheva Kissin / Financial Times : UK accountancy regulator FRC says auditors can't blame AI for audit failures, after it published...
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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...
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