Brazilian fintech Dock will use crypto for international remittances

Brazilian financial services provider Dock said on Friday it will start using cryptocurrencies to process international remittances as it expands to Latin America and Europe. https://ift.tt/3fQLDLR

Analysis: AR and VR startups raised ~$1.9B in Q4 2021, more than any quarter ever, making 2021 the second-best year for AR/VR investments with ~$3.9B raised (Chris Metinko/Crunchbase News)

Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: AR and VR startups raised ~$1.9B in Q4 2021, more than any quarter ever, making 2021 the second-best year for AR/VR investments with ~$3.9B raised  —  Although the term metaverse has been around for nearly 30 years—coined in the novel “Snow Crash”—Facebook's name change to Meta …

Berlin-based Lendis, which helps companies set up and manage employees' equipment and software for hybrid work, raises an €80M Series A in equity and debt (Patricia Allen/EU-Startups)

Patricia Allen / EU-Startups:
Berlin-based Lendis, which helps companies set up and manage employees' equipment and software for hybrid work, raises an €80M Series A in equity and debt  —  Today, Lendis has just announced an €80 million Series A funding round for its SaaS solution that helps companies to set …

Santamonica group enters tech research in education sector

The company said the last two years saw 5.5 lakh schools shutting down in India without prior intimation due to the pandemic which in turn has affected more than 248 million students in the country. https://ift.tt/3nNb6di

Mobile towers torched in Jharakhand

​​​​​The incidents marked the first day of the "resistance week" being observed by the Maoists to protest the arrest of their top leader Prashant Bose, a police officer said. https://ift.tt/3fO2mPU

Bengaluru-based StockGro, a social investment startup with a gamified app for learning about and participating in stock markets, raises a $32M Series A (Sneha Shah/The Economic Times)

Sneha Shah / The Economic Times:
Bengaluru-based StockGro, a social investment startup with a gamified app for learning about and participating in stock markets, raises a $32M Series A  —  Mumbai: Social investment startup StockGro has raised $32 million led by marquee global investors such as Bitkraft Ventures, General Catalyst …

Jio completes 5G coverage plans for top 1,000 cities in country

The company has created teams to focus on dedicated solutions for 5G deployment in India, Reliance Jio Infocomm president Kiran Thomas said on Friday evening. https://ift.tt/3qQwj8b

Global crypto market suffers $1 trillion loss as Bitcoin crashes

Bitcoin, along with other digital cryptocurrencies, crashed to its lowest level on Saturday and the continuing meltdown has wiped out over $1 trillion from the global crypto market value. https://ift.tt/3GZDMaU

Nowsta, which runs an on-demand labor marketplace and develops tools to help companies manage their hourly, gig, and flex workers, raises a $41M Series B (Christine Hall/TechCrunch)

Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Nowsta, which runs an on-demand labor marketplace and develops tools to help companies manage their hourly, gig, and flex workers, raises a $41M Series B  —  Nowsta attracted venture capital for its approach to help employers better engage with their hourly workforces in this increasingly hybrid work environment.

Crowdbotics, which lets users launch React Native and Django apps without having to learn code, raises a $22M combined seed and Series A (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Crowdbotics, which lets users launch React Native and Django apps without having to learn code, raises a $22M combined seed and Series A  —  Sign up here.  —  As companies expanded their tech investments during the pandemic, developers became saddled with larger workloads.

Indian startups raised record $24.1 billion in 2021: Nasscom

Indian startups raised a record $24.1 billion in 2021, a two-fold increase over pre-Covid levels, while $6 billion were raised via public markets with 11 startup IPOs, a new Nasscom report said on Friday. https://ift.tt/3FVoHG0

ISRO test fires engine for India's human space mission rocket

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully fired the high thrust Vikas engine that would power India's first rocket that would carry humans. https://ift.tt/3GNZtdG

Android users, Apple may now 'pay you less' for switching to iPhones

Apple has significantly reduced the amount of discount users get when they trade in their Android smartphones for an Apple device. Previously, trade-ins could fetch buyers a decent $545 discount when purchasing from the Apple Store, but now, the maximum discount has been brought down to just $405. https://ift.tt/3nLDzAm

The Graph Foundation, which operates a protocol for indexing and querying blockchain data, raises $50M led by Tiger Global via a sale of its The Graph tokens (Joanna Ossinger/Bloomberg)

Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:
The Graph Foundation, which operates a protocol for indexing and querying blockchain data, raises $50M led by Tiger Global via a sale of its The Graph tokens  —  The Graph Foundation, which operates a protocol for indexing and querying blockchain data, raised $50 million in a sale of digital tokens …

Realme 8 gets Android 12 based Realme UI 3.0

Realme has started rolling out Android 12 based Realme UI 3.0 update to Realme 8. The company has announced an early access program for the Realme 8 users in India. The application channel will open on January 21, 2022. https://ift.tt/3tUnf3Y