Syfe founder Dhruv Arora Investment apps in Southeast Asia are attracting a lot of funding, and now some are raising fast follow-on rounds, too. For example, Indonesian robo-advisor app Bibit raised $65 million in May just four months after a $30 million growth round. Now Singapore-based Syfe is announcing that it has closed a $30…
Read more
Twitter has appointed a resident grievance officer in India days after the American social media firm said to have lost the liability protection on user-generated content in the South Asian nation over non-compliance with local IT rules. On Sunday, Twitter identified Vinay Prakash as its new resident grievance officer and shared a way to contact…
Read more
High-profile investors are doubling down on their bets to explore the future of social commerce in India. DealShare said on Thursday it has raised $144 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence in the South Asian market and eye opportunities in international markets. The new financing round, a Series…
Read more
Many teachers and parents in Indonesia rely on WhatsApp to keep in touch, creating “multiple groups that often become messy and highly ineffective, and result in confusion or lost threads,” says Rizky Aniez, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Gredu. The Jakarta-based startup was created to give everyone involved in the educational process—school administrators,…
Read more
Influential entrepreneurs like Paul Graham and Naval Ravikant always preach the need for startups to have founders-turned-investors on their cap table. As Ravikant puts it, “founders want to know that the people they are taking money from have first-hand experience.” His platform AngelList has helped individual founders-cum-investors source and participate in deals via collectives. However,…
Read more
As firework volleys launched out of New York City harbor last night, a very different celebration was likely taking place just a few blocks down the street at Verizon’s official headquarters in Midtown. The telco, which owns TechCrunch for hopefully just a few more weeks pending the close of the Apollo acquisition of our parent…
Read more
Furlenco, a Bangalore-based startup that operates an eponymous furniture and appliance rental service, said today it has raised $140 million in a financing round as it looks to scale its operations in the South Asian market and explore international market expansion. The new $140 million financing round, a Series D, comprises $120 million debt raise…
Read more
China has ordered app-store operators to remove the app of Didi from their stores, the latest as tension escalates between the nation’s largest ride-hailing giant and local regulators. The app has disappeared from several stores including Apple’s App Store in China, TechCrunch can confirm. The nation’s cyberspace administration, which unveiled the order on Sunday, said…
Read more
Swedish gaming giant Modern Times Group (MTG) has acquired Indian startup PlaySimple for at least $360 million, the two firms said Friday. MTG said it will pay 77% of the acquisition sum to Indian game developer and publisher in cash and the rest in company shares. There’s also another $150 million reward put aside if…
Read more
Tiger Global is in advanced stages of talks to back Indian embedded finance startup Yap, according to more than half a dozen people familiar with the matter. The New York-headquartered firm is in talks to lead a $35 million financing round in Yap — also known as YapPay and M2P — that values the Bangalore-headquartered…
Read more