In science, advances are a daily occurrence, but true breakthroughs are rare. What does it take to achieve world-changing scientific breakthroughs? Some are the result of a lucky accident, combined with curiosity: scientists traveling down one road suddenly find reason to veer onto another road, one they never planned to travel — a road that may well lead nowhere.

Other major breakthroughs stem from scientists pursuing a very specific dream. One day, usually early in their career, they get an idea that they can’t stop thinking about. It’s crazy, they say to themselves, but is it really impossible? They talk to respected colleagues who often remind them of all the reasons their idea might not work, and how damaging this could be for their career. It’s a sobering message, yet the idea won’t die. So, they scramble to find financial support and seek out colleagues willing to risk traveling that road with them — a road that may well lead nowhere. But sometimes the road leads to major breakthroughs like penicillin and mRNA vaccines.

Breakthroughs due to lucky accidents and curiosity

One day in 1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming at St. Mary’s Hospital in London was growing bacteria in a laboratory dish. Fleming was not pursuing a scientific dream. He was a microbiologist, just doing his job.

Then he noticed something odd: overnight, another kind of microbe, a fungus, had traveled through the air, landed on the laboratory dish, and started to grow and spread on the dish where the bacteria were growing. Fleming soon noticed that the growing fungus seemed to be killing the bacteria. He surmised that it was making some substance that killed the bacteria. Because the name of the fungus was Penicillium rubens, he called the substance the fungus was making “penicillin.”

When Fleming published a paper about his discovery, few were interested. It took another 10 years before other scientists tried to generate large amounts of penicillin to see if it might be able to cure bacterial infections and save lives. We all know how that worked out.

Fleming’s scientific breakthrough, like some others, occurred not because Fleming had a brilliant idea and exclaimed “Eureka!” Instead, it occurred because he noticed something and said, “That’s odd,” and then tried to figure it out.

Breakthroughs due to persistence and resilience in pursuit of a dream

The story of mRNA vaccines, like the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for COVID-19, is very different from the story of penicillin. For 30 years, a small group of scientists believed that mRNA vaccines would have great advantages over traditional vaccines — if only several obstacles could be overcome. Many of these scientists gave up as they encountered those obstacles, but a few persisted and, ultimately, succeeded. (I described what mRNA vaccines are, how they work, and how obstacles were overcome in a previous blog post.)

One scientist, Dr. Katalin Karikó, joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990s with the dream of creating an mRNA vaccine. She applied for grants to support her work, but was repeatedly rejected: the reviewers stated that it was so unlikely that she or anyone could overcome the obstacles that supporting her research would be a wasted investment. Her university only agreed to continue supporting her work if she accepted a demotion and a pay cut. She accepted both, and doggedly pursued her dream.

One major obstacle to mRNA vaccines particularly fascinated her: the violent reaction of the immune system when it encounters mRNA from a virus. Ten years of dogged work helped Karikó and her colleague Drew Weissman figure out how to make a small change in mRNA that prevented that violent immune response — a major step in making all mRNA vaccines possible. Without this, the world wouldn’t have mRNA COVID vaccines today.

Two other scientists who created the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID vaccine, Uğur Şahin and Őzlem Turëci, are Turkish immigrants to Germany who met, fell in love with the idea of creating an mRNA vaccine, and then fell in love with each other. According to The Wall Street Journal, one day in 2002 they took a break for lunch, got married, and then returned in the afternoon to their laboratory to finish an experiment — just one more among many conducted over 30 years. Each experiment was one more possible step toward their ultimate dream until finally, in 2020, they achieved that dream: their mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 proved to be very safe and effective.

Holding hard to their dreams

Whichever path scientists who achieve lifesaving breakthroughs travel, they often endure disinterest, like Fleming, or repeated skepticism, ridicule, and rejection, like Karikó, Weissman, Şahin, and Turëci. Only through sheer persistence did these scientists bring their dreams to life. They have been rewarded with fame and wealth and something even more valuable: the knowledge that because of their work hundreds of millions of people around the world never got sick, and millions never died before their time.

Of course, a relentless obsession with an improbable dream fails to pay off for many scientists. Their ideas, while quite brilliant, in the end are proved wrong: nature doesn’t turn out to operate the way they predicted. In the end, their beautiful theory is murdered by a brutal gang of facts.

Still other scientific dreamers ultimately prove to have been on the right track all along and would have achieved their dream — if only they had done the experiment a little differently, if only they had persisted a little longer, or if only the support for their work had not run out. As a result, neither they nor the rest of us benefited from what would have been — until other scientists rediscovered their work years later.

Ultimately, scientific breakthroughs are possible only if a society is willing to invest in dreamers, recognizing that not all investments will lead to major breakthroughs. However, the investments that do lead to breakthroughs bring an economic return that is far greater than the investment — as well as preventing suffering and death and changing the world.

This story originally appeared in the Harvard Health Blog.

Anthony L. Komaroff is the Steven P. Simcox/Patrick A. Clifford/James H. Higby Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, senior physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Health Letter.

The queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Unlike any other (including the king), it can move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

Now consider this queen’s gambit: If you put eight of them on a standard board of eight squares by eight squares, how many ways could they be arranged so that none could attack the other? Turns out there are 92. But what if you place an even larger number of queens on a chessboard of the same relative size, say, 1,000 queens on a 1,000-by-1,000 square chessboard, or even a million queens on a similarly sized board?

The original version of the n-queens mathematical problem first appeared in a German chess magazine in 1848 as the eight-queens problem, and the correct answer emerged a couple of years later. Then in 1869, the more expansive version of the problem surfaced and remained unanswered until late last year, when a Harvard mathematician provided an almost definitive answer.

Michael Simkin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, calculated that there are about (0.143n)ⁿ ways the queens can be placed so none are attacking each other on giant n-by-n chessboards.

Simkin’s final equation doesn’t provide the exact answer but instead simply says this figure is as close to the actual number as you can get right now. The 0.143 figure, which represents an average level of uncertainty in the variable’s possible outcome, is multiplied by whatever n is and then raised to the power of n to get the answer.

On the extremely large chessboard with one million queens, for example, 0.143 would be multiplied by one million, coming out to about 143,000. That figure would then be raised to the power of one million, meaning it’s multiplied by one million that many times. The final answer is a figure with five million digits.

Simkin was able to come up with the equation by understanding the underlying pattern for how large numbers of queens would have to be distributed on these enormous chessboards — whether they’d be concentrated in the middle or on the edges — and then applying well-known mathematical techniques and algorithms.

“If you were to tell me I want you to put your queens in such-and-such way on the board, then I would be able to analyze the algorithm and tell you how many solutions there are that match this constraint,” Simkin said. “In formal terms, it reduces the problem to an optimization problem.”

By focusing on the spaces that have the greater chances of being occupied, Simkin figured out how many queens would be in each section of the board and came up with a formula for to get a valid number of configurations. The calculations resulted in what’s known as the lower bound — the minimum number of possible configurations.

Once he had that number, Simkin then used a strategy known as the entropy method to find the upper bound, which is the highest number of possible configurations.

Simkin found the lower bound answer almost perfectly matches the upper bound answer. Simply put, it showed that the exact answer is sandwiched somewhere in between the two bounds in a relatively small mathematical space.

Simkin has been working on the n-queens problem for almost five years. He says that he personally is a terrible chess player but is seeking to improve his game. “I still enjoy the challenge of playing, but, I guess, math is more forgiving,” said Simkin, who became interested in the problem because of how he could apply breakthroughs from the field of math he works in called combinatorics, which focuses on counting and problems of selection and arrangements.

Working on the problem has been a test of patience and resilience. Four years ago as a Ph.D. student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he visited mathematician and chess wiz Zur Luria at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The pair collaborated and developed new techniques to get at an answer. In the end, after two years of work, they only came up with a better lower bound figure and knew they were missing something.

Simkin finished his Ph.D. in 2020 and moved to Boston to start working at Harvard. The problem was always at the back of his mind, and he came back to it when he realized he had to start focusing on spaces the queens would be rather than giving equal weight to each space.

Even though it’s theoretically possible to get a bit closer to an even more exact answer, Simkin for now is happy to let someone else come to it.

“I think that I may personally be done with the n-queens problem for a while, not because there isn’t anything more to do with it but just because of I’ve been dreaming about chess and I’m ready to move on with my life,” he said.

The Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars — but how did those stars form?

In a paper appearing today in Nature, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) reconstruct the evolutionary history of our galactic neighborhood, showing how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago led to the creation of a vast bubble that’s responsible for the formation of all nearby, young stars.

“This is really an origin story; for the first time we can explain how all nearby star formation began,” says astronomer and data visualization expert Catherine Zucker who completed the work during a fellowship at the CfA.

The paper’s central figure, a 3D spacetime animation, reveals that all young stars and star-forming regions — within 500 light-years of Earth — sit on the surface of a giant bubble known as the Local Bubble. While astronomers have known of its existence for decades, scientists can now see and understand the Local Bubble’s beginnings and its impact on the gas around it.

The source of our stars: The Local Bubble

Using a trove of new data and data science techniques, the spacetime animation shows how a series of supernovae that first went off 14 million years ago, pushed interstellar gas outward, creating a bubble-like structure with a surface that’s ripe for star formation.

Today, seven well-known star-forming regions or molecular clouds — dense regions in space where stars can form — sit on the surface of the bubble.

“We’ve calculated that about 15 supernovae have gone off over millions of years to form the Local Bubble that we see today,” says Zucker, who is now a NASA Hubble Fellow at STScI.

The oddly-shaped bubble is not dormant and continues to slowly grow, the astronomers note.

“It’s coasting along at about 4 miles per second,” Zucker says. “It has lost most of its oomph though and has pretty much plateaued in terms of speed.”

The expansion speed of the bubble, as well as the past and present trajectories of the young stars forming on its surface, were derived using data obtained by Gaia, a space-based observatory launched by the European Space Agency.

“This is an incredible detective story, driven by both data and theory,” says Harvard professor and Center for Astrophysics astronomer Alyssa Goodman, a study co-author and founder of glue, data visualization software that enabled the discovery. “We can piece together the history of star formation around us using a wide variety of independent clues: supernova models, stellar motions and exquisite new 3D maps of the material surrounding the Local Bubble.”

Bubbles everywhere?

“When the first supernovae that created the Local Bubble went off, our sun was far away from the action” says co-author João Alves, a professor at the University of Vienna. “But about 5 million years ago, the sun’s path through the galaxy took it right into the bubble, and now the sun sits — just by luck — almost right in the bubble’s center.”

Today, as humans peer out into space from near the sun, they have a front row seat to the process of star formation occurring all around on the bubble’s surface.

Astronomers first theorized that superbubbles were pervasive in the Milky Way nearly 50 years ago. “Now, we have proof — and what are the chances that we are right smack in the middle of one of these things?” asks Goodman. Statistically, it is very unlikely that the sun would be centered in a giant bubble if such bubbles were rare in our Milky Way Galaxy, she explains.

Goodman likens the discovery to a Milky Way that resembles very holey swiss cheese, where holes in the cheese are blasted out by supernovae, and new stars can form in the cheese around the holes created by dying stars.

Next, the team, including co-author and Harvard doctoral student Michael Foley, plans to map out more interstellar bubbles to get a full 3D view of their locations, shapes, and sizes. Charting out bubbles, and their relationship to each other, will ultimately allow astronomers to understand the role played by dying stars in giving birth to new ones, and in the structure and evolution of galaxies like the Milky Way.

Zucker wonders, “Where do these bubbles touch? How do they interact with each other? How do superbubbles drive the birth of stars like our sun in the Milky Way?”

Additional co-authors on the paper are Douglas Finkbeiner and Diana Khimey of the CfA; Josefa Groβschedl and Cameren Swiggum of the University of Vienna; Shmuel Bialy of the University of Maryland; Joshua Speagle of the University of Toronto; and Andreas Burkert of the University Observatory Munich.

The start of the new year can feel like the perfect opportunity to follow through with that resolution to learn a new skill or finally tackle a challenge. But sometimes it feels like the older you are, the harder it can be to change habits, add a new skill to your repertoire, or start a hobby. Is it really true that an old dog can’t learn a new trick?

One thing learning scientists do know is that fluid reasoning — the ability to think logically and solve problems quickly in new situations — does tend to decline as adults age. However, crystallized intelligence — knowledge that comes from experience and prior learning like reading comprehension or vocabulary — increases over time, explains Chris Dede, Harvard Graduate School of Education professor and co-principal investigator on the NSF-funded National AI Institute on Adult Learning and Online Education.

“Essentially, what this means is that some forms of learning are harder as one ages, but other forms of learning actually become easier,” says Dede. Here, Dede draws from research around adult development and learning science to provide five tips for learning new things that adults can keep in mind as they head into the new year:

1. Start with what you already know

This is because learning science suggests that people learn by building off existing knowledge or “the edges” of what they already know. So, for example, if you’re an accomplished photographer but you’ve always wanted to take up painting, you may be able to learn faster because you can build off what you already know about composition and light. “Because adults have more knowledge from past experiences, they have more edges to learn from and build off of,” says Dede.

2. Identify your motivation

Learning something new at a later stage in life tends to be more about positive self-concept and intrinsic interest. While motivation is key in the K–2 space too, adult learners don’t generally have to pass a test at the end of a unit. As a result, there’s often less pressure or lower stakes attached, making the conditions more conducive to positive experiences with learning tasks.

3. Analyze your interest to help find potential new areas to explore

Think about what you like doing and ask yourself why. Maybe you like cleaning the house because it’s a finite task with a concrete sense of accomplishment. Maybe you like jigsaw puzzles because you like recognizing patterns. By deconstructing your engagement with different activities, you’re exposing more “motivational edges” you can build on as you expand learning.

4. Find ways to connect and bond with others

The best way to learn is often to teach or to have someone to bounce ideas off. It can also help to have someone to hold you accountable. In fact, studies have found that you’ll often work harder to help a protégé than yourself. Find someone who appreciates what you know and tackle the project together.

5. Challenge yourself and have a growth mindset

Surmounting a challenge has been shown to make people happier — and learning something new can provide that kind of challenge. “Picking something you might enjoy and building your growth mindset by learning it in a challenging way that involves other people can really make all the difference and help form a successful learning experience for an adult,” says Dede.

The global pandemic threw a wrench in the plans of restaurants all over the world two years ago when diners stayed home, causing many eateries to shift their business to pickup or delivery.

Roberto Cebrián and David Villarreal both had experience working with restaurants in Mexico and recognized that many restaurants were not prepared to change their operations quickly, so they jumped on the opportunity to help them.

“There are a bunch of food tech solutions in Latin American and U.S., but it ended up turning the operations in both the front and back of the house into a mess,” Cebrián said. “The pandemic was a crazy experience. Not a lot of people knew what would happen, but the downside was that restaurants closed.”

Roberto Cebrián, co-founder of Parrot. Image Credits: Parrot

With an eye on reversing that trend, they created Monterrey-based Parrot in April 2020, and in 2021 launched with ParrotConnect, its point-of-sale software for restaurants enabling them to digitize and take advantage of the home delivery boom to accelerate growth.

Cebrián told TechCrunch that many restaurants were balancing an average of three delivery apps and 15 different menus at each location. Often connectivity issues and menu errors caused restaurants to get anywhere from 10% to 15% of the orders wrong or late when they were pushed from the apps to the restaurant’s point-of-sale software so that they could be made.

Instead, ParrotConnect offers a way for restaurants to centralize all of those fragmented operations, including table service and online orders — into one management portal where users can operate functions like menus, kitchen management, payment methods and reports.

The company is working with over 60 collaborators on the product and now has more than 500 restaurants across Monterrey, Mexico City and the Riviera Maya using ParrotConnect.

On Monday, the company announced it secured $9.5 million, led by F Prime Capital, to continue developing ParrotConnect and expand its footprint in Mexico. The new capital gives the company a total of $11.7 million in funding.

Parrot is the latest company raising capital as part of a broader trend of companies helping restaurants thrive in this new digital world, including Zak, also developing point-of-sale technology for restaurants, payment system Sunday and restaurant management software company MarginEdge.

Since making a soft launch in January 2021, Parrot is now working with over 500 restaurants — all paying customers, Cebrián said. It has 60 employees currently after starting in 2021 with 10 employees. The company has been focused on helping restaurants grow, and Cebrián said it was too early to disclose revenue figures. Plans for ParrotConnect start at $73 per month for companies with one POS.

“We are heavily investing in product because we want to give the right experience,” he added. “The restaurant industry is an old industry, and it always finds its way out, so we are happy to be helping them do that with technology. We admire the industry and how creative they are to make things work. Delivery has played a huge part in saving a lot of restaurants during this time.”

Instant purchase and delivery of food and other essentials was one of the big bubbles of opportunity in the world of e-commerce in the last year, with dozens of startups big and small emerging and scooping up funding to build out businesses to bring items like groceries, toilet paper and Tylenol to people’s doors in 30 minutes or less. Now a startup called Arive that’s applying this concept to the wider world of consumer goods in a Prime Now-style service — partnering with premium stores and brands to sell and deliver items like Apple electronics and Bose headphones, Lululemon active wear, furniture and beauty and bath products and Van Moof electric bikes, and then delivering items via its own courier service —  is announcing a Series A of $20 million to see if the idea finds traction beyond essentials.

The funding is being led by Balderton Capital, with Global Founders Capital (the firm connected to Rocket Internet’s Samwer family), Burda Principal Investments, La Famiglia and 468 Capital also participating. (La Famiglia and 468 Capital are repeat backers of Munich-based Arive, both having invested in the seed round for the company, which is not to be confused with the mortgage startup of the same name in the U.S.)

Arive’s funding, and list of backers, is notable in that it’s based on a pretty limited run so far. The startup launched only four months ago and is currently active in just four cities in Germany — Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt — although now the idea will be to use the investment to expand further across the country and to start considering which other markets to tackle next.

The reason for the vote of confidence is that so far, the numbers look promising. Arive is not disclosing how many customers it has or what its revenues are looking like, but it notes that the average order size is between €50 and €100 ($56 and $113) across some 1,000 SKUs, with the average basket containing between one and four items. That presents what Arive is doing as a very different proposition to what, say, a GoPuff or Getir is hoping to achieve with its instant delivery model, essentially replacing the weekly grocery shop with multiple baskets delivered to one’s door.

“It’s not just about being the next quick commerce vertical but building the next generation of e-commerce,” said Maximilian Reeker, who co-founded Arive with Linus Fries (the two co-lead the company). He described that next generation like this: “Very convenient delivery of between 30 and 60 minutes, connecting people to local stores with a bike-based service, in an app optimized for the phone.” All of its couriers are employed by the company, either full-time or part-time.

Arive has up to now split the model into three parts, providing consignment, wholesale and, in the next 2-3 months, marketplace options for sourcing supply. Fries said that currently the wholesale part accounts for the largest part of its business and sales.

Beyond that, white label services — where Arive might sell its backend technology and delivery infrastructure to third-party retailers to build their own instant delivery services — is another area that the company is considering, Fries said. This could be a very interesting opportunity in areas such as fashion: typically online sales of clothes have been challenged by issues of sizing and dealing with returns, which make for a high barrier of entry for a company like Arive without making extensive and focused investments to address them. What it could do, however, is provide its technology to fashion brands and retailers that have, who are considering ways of getting apparel faster to would-be online buyers.

Meanwhile, although it’s taking a different approach in instant delivery by eschewing groceries and FMCG essentials and focusing on higher-ticket slower-moving consumer goods, Arive is still operating very much with those grocery delivery startups in mind for another reason.

Reeker told me that Arive actually relishes the oversupply of these startups in certain markets — indeed, the bubble has definitely started to burst for some of these startups, as they get snapped up by much larger and highly capitalized rivals looking to expand to new geographies — because they become a signal for where Arive should be considering to expand to next.

“We want to go to more places in Germany and expand internationally, and while we haven’t decided which cities, we looking at those where existing grocery plays are live,” said Reeker. “The UK, France, they are all interesting. Having those grocery companies there is an advantage for us because it’s evidence of the consumer shift that has taken place. They are already used to getting their food quickly, which is the first step.”

Arive is not the first company to have thought of building a service around instant delivery of virtually any kind of item a person might like to have without leaving their homes to buy it. This was basically the premise behind Amazon Prime Now, which the e-commerce giant launched the service in 2014. Pointedly, although Amazon expanded it to several markets, eventually it discontinued the standalone app and branding it had built for Prime Now, which now exists as a faster-delivery option for some of the items that it sells via Prime.

The message there could be interpreted in two ways. It could point to challenges for scaling something like a fast-delivery service without also providing a wider range of options that offer cheaper options and longer delivery times to customers put off by the premium that comes with instant.

Or, it could point to how there remains an opportunity for a smaller and more focused company to get the model right, understanding that the market has matured in the last eight years and consumers are not only more willing to shop online than ever before due to Covid-19, but have focused their expectations of how that experience should more closely mirror the instant-gratification of shopping in person.

Investors are willing to bet that the two co-founders — which hatched the idea of Arive while at business school — have a shot in building something fit the latter of those.

“Linus, Max, and the entire team at arive are challenging e-commerce conventions with energetic execution and an acute sensitivity to the priorities of modern brands,” said Colin Hanna, partner at Balderton Capital, in a statement. “Using light electric vehicles to rapidly fulfill orders leaves a lighter footprint on our planet and ensures that customers are home to receive goods they’ve purchased online, avoiding costly failed deliveries. The team is also committed to building their UX in a way that protects, rather than erodes, the value of the brands they are lucky to work with. Finally, high basket sizes and no wastage means the company has a much stronger path to a sustainable business model over the long run.  Balderton is fortunate to be backing arive as it scales rapidly across Europe.”

Shares of Paytm dropped to ₹1,155 ($15.6), the lowest since its market debut in November following the nation’s biggest-ever initial offering after a key brokerage house further cut its price on the payments stock.

The stock, which opened Monday at ₹1,226, dropped 6% at 2.40 pm India standard time. Paytm, which has been struggling to improve its stock price ever since its debut, has slid by over 46% from its issue price of ₹2,150 ($28.9). The firm’s market cap, at the time of publishing, was $10.15 billion, nearly half of what it had sought during the debut and below the $16 billion valuation at which it raised a financing round in late 2019.

The plunge in price follows brokerage house Macquarie’s report on Monday in which it retained its lowest rating on One97 Communications, the parent firm of Paytm, and cut its target price to ₹900 ($12.14), down from ₹1,200 that it had assigned ahead of the market debut on November 18. Paytm, which says it has amassed over 300 million users, operates a number of businesses including mobile wallet, credit top-ups, movies and travel ticketing businesses, and an e-commerce service.

Macquarie was the only brokerage firm which had such a grim view on Paytm’s outlook at the time of market debut. Analysts at Bernstein, in comparison, had estimated that Paytm’s valuation will swing between $21 billion to $24 billion. (A Bernstein spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment in November.)

“Post the various business updates and results, we believe our revenue projections, particularly on the distribution side, is at risk and hence we pare down our revenue CAGR from 26% to 23% for FY21- 26E. We are roughly cutting revenue estimates for FY21-26E on an average by 10% every year due to lower distribution and commerce/cloud revenues offset partially by higher payment revenues,” Macquarie analysts wrote Monday.

“We cut our earnings (increase our loss projections) by 16-27% for FY22-25E owing to lower revenues and higher employee and software expenses. We cut our TP (target price) sharply by ~25% owing to lower target multiple of 11.5x (price to sales ratio) (from 13.5x earlier) and lower sales numbers. Maintain UP with a revised TP of ₹900.”

The brokerage firm said RBI’s proposed digital payments regulations could cap wallet charges, which would hurt Paytm’s business, where payments side still accounts for 70% of the firm’s overall gross revenue. Macquarie also cited departure of senior Paytm executives and the shrinking ticket size for loans disbursed by Paytm as other factors that could impact the firm’s future outlook.

In a report in the second half of December, analysts at Morgan Stanley labeled Paytm’s stock as “overweight,” and assigned a target price of ₹1,875 ($25.2), saying the firm was “well positioned to capitalize on upcoming acceleration in digital distribution of financial services/commerce in India.”

“Huge TAM (total addressable market), India’s distinctive tech architecture and regula- tory supportive partnership approach are key enablers, we believe. India is under-penetrated in financial services, and across segments we expect strong growth. More importantly, the penetration of third party digital distribution of financial services is significantly low and we will see strong acceleration over the next five years – this will be helped by the distinctive rails in India around identity, payments and data sharing,” they wrote in a report to clients on December 18.

“Also, we believe that Paytm’s financial services is synergistic, in line with the regulatory thought process and scalable. Balance sheet risk is low, and Paytm’s technology capabilities to leverage alternative data sets as well as design customized products are some key value adds against the above backdrop.”

The story was updated to reflect further price drop. 

Loyalty, deals and rewards services are a rarity in most African markets. The unit economics and other factors such as currency instability make such businesses hard to pull off in the region.

Yet, ThankUCash, a platform launched in 2018 by Connected Analytics, has managed to thrive, proving that not all is gloom in the deals, coupon and rewards business. And to that end, the startup, which announced an undisclosed seven-figure seed last year, has finally closed the round at $5.3 million.

VC firms 500 Global and Unicorn Growth Capital co-led the Lagos-based company’s seed round. It saw participation from U.S.-based accelerator Expert Dojo, Predictive VC, SaaS Growth Ventures, Betatron Venture Group, Accelerex Holdings. Individual investors like Andrew Dell, former CEO of HSBC and Craig Fenton of Google UK also took part.

The company plans to use the investment to expand within its home market Nigeria — where it operates in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja — and outside to Ghana and Kenya. It also wants to improve its product offerings and add more staff.

For years, store-like businesses in Nigeria such as supermarkets and restaurants have operated offline, relying on bookkeeping and head knowledge to record their customers’ activities in their shops. This made it difficult to offer cash back and loyalty points to customers.

Online platforms like ThankUCash present these merchants with an opportunity to delve into rewards and help them retain loyalty and increase revenue.

CEO Simeon Ononobi started ThankUCash with Suraj Supekar, Madonna Ononobi and Harshal Gandole, who act as a chief technical officer, chief operating officer and senior vice president of engineering, respectively.

The multi-merchant rewards platform (which means customers can hop on from one merchant to another to earn loyalty points in another) allows customers to earn rewards anytime they shop with thousands of merchants listed on its app.

The business raised a $320,000 pre-seed after grabbing the attention of accelerators such as 500 Startups, Google Launchpad and other local investors like Microtraction and Ventures Platform.

Up until this point, ThankUCash said it has recorded over 600,000 users and onboarded over 1,000 stores on its platform. Also, it claims to have processed over $80 million in transaction volume.

Having matured as a business, Ononobi and his team want to take on a more complicated task: building infrastructure for companies that want to offer akin services.

“We are creating solutions that help SMEs succeed while increasing consumer buying power and opportunities. We want to build an infrastructure for rewards, loyalty, deals, buy now, pay later, cashback,” he said to TechCrunch on a call.

“Cashback was our low hanging fruit and an entry point. We’re still going to go into deals, couponing, gift cards, buy now, pay later, anything that will help the business grow, but at the same time, allowing the consumer increase in opportunities of buying.”

Ononobi, a serial entrepreneur who previously built a payments company and also apps for Nigerian banks and the government, reckons that ThankUCash will do to rewards the same thing Flutterwave and Paystack did to payments in Africa.

Some companies such as banks have launched cashback programs via debit cards to users in the past. But most of them have been generally inefficient, from setup down to collections and redeeming of points, and Ononobi argues that their inefficiencies boil down to no technical support. ThankUCash sees a gold mine to provide plugins banks and fintechs can tap into to offer cashback and rewards.

ThankUCash cofounders

The bit about buy now, pay later is fuzzy now since only a handful of prominent BNPL services in Africa. However, the company seems to be positioning itself for the imminent proliferation of such services buoyed by similar happenings globally where buy now, pay later services have seen an uptake as a result of pandemic-induced consumer behaviour.

“The technology is such that we have our machines in stores. So as customers request loans, we generate a code for it, customers input it into the POS machine and the merchant gets credited directly. The code can only be used in the store chosen and only for the loan amount requested, such that at the end of the day the customer is buying straight from the merchants,” explained the founder, who also mentioned that his startup might venture into offering buy now, pay later services itself in the future.

ThankUCash’s consumer-facing platform will remain operational. But to set the infrastructure play in motion, it has signed a partnership with payments company Interswitch to onboard its merchants.

The company, which is also in the process of making integrations with payments gateways, said a couple of bank partnerships are in its pipeline.

In terms of how ThankUCash makes money, merchants pay the company a fee on every purchase made in their stores. For instance, ThankUCash gets a 1.5% commission for every customer it brings into the store to redeem a 5% cashback item. The Lagos-based company also takes commissions for deals and plans to charge a “heavy onboarding fee” for businesses that want to use its APIs for its services, including buy now, pay later. 

ThankUCash has perfected one offering: the cashback product where merchants can get more walk-in customers. It’s improving the deals category, allowing merchants to sell products fast (by hiring ex-managers of DealDey, a Nigerian defunct deals company). And while currently building out its buy now pay later infrastructure (which gives businesses a chance to sell products regardless of whether customers have money or not), ThankUCash plans to add a fourth offering soon: a remittance product where merchants can sell directly to the diaspora.

The chief executive doesn’t give details about this product. Meanwhile, its investors, who have doubled down while privy to information like this, are enthused about “the continued evolution of the company”, a remark made by Amit Bhatti, the principal at co-lead investor 500 Global.

“Since going through 500 Global’s accelerator in 2019, we’ve been impressed by Simeon and the ThankUCash team’s progress in implementing a rewards system that works for Nigerian consumers, regardless of cash or credit or online or offline payment,” said the principal. “It’s a win-win for businesses and banks, too, as TUC gives them the tools and data they need to grow.”

The 45-man team has hired Aaron Tindiseega to lead its expansion into Kenya and the eastern Africa region. The Ugandan professional has experience working for banks and tech companies like Uber, Standard Chartered Bank and Stanbic IBTC. For its expansion into Ghana, Kiki Anku, who has worked at Apple and a couple of startups, will spearhead the task.

French startup Ankorstore has raised a $283 million Series C funding round (€250 million). Founded in November 2019, it took Ankorstore around two years to reach a post-money valuation of $2 billion (€1.75 billion). The company operates a wholesale marketplace for independent retailers across Europe.

Ankorstore lets independent brands sell their products to independent retailers. Those retailers can then sell those products to their own customers. It’s a B2B2C play with a focus on offline sales at the end of the chain.

You can find a bit of everything on Ankorstore, from household supplies to maple syrup, candles, headbands, bath salts and stationery items. Some verticals have been working quite well in particular, such as non-perishable groceries, beauty products and items for your home.

And it’s been working extremely well given the company’s trajectory. There are currently 200,000 retailers using the marketplace and sourcing items from 15,000 brands. In May 2021, when Ankorstore raised its Series B, the company told me it was working with 50,000 shops and 5,000 brands.

This leads us to today’s funding round. Bond and Tiger Global led the Series C. Eurazeo and Coatue also participated in the round. Some existing investors put more money on the table, such as Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, GFC, Alven and Aglae Ventures.

There aren’t a lot of companies competing in the space. The best known wholesale marketplace is probably Faire, a U.S.-based company that has raised over $1 billion — it has recently started its European expansion. Creoate and Orderchamp also operate wholesale marketplaces in Europe.

A marketplace without inventory

Ankorstore has teams in five countries — France, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. It sells products in 23 European markets. Retailers can pay up to 60 days after ordering something and there are no hidden fees for them. Essentially, Ankorstore helps retailers focus on curation, service while the startup takes care of procurement.

As for brands listing their items on Ankorstore, they give a 10% cut on each transaction following a higher 20% cut on the first order through Ankorstore.

Some brands still have direct deals with massive retailers, such as department stores. And Ankorstore doesn’t prevent brands from hiring sales people, going to fairs, etc. The marketplace is just another sales channel and another opportunity to find customers.

And this is the beauty of the business model of wholesale marketplaces. Ankorstore doesn’t have any warehouse and doesn’t own any inventory. The company only facilitates transactions between brands and retailers without any capital investment.

“We think we’re closer to LinkedIn in the way we operate — it’s a network of professionals and we help them connect with each other,” co-founder and co-CEO Nicolas Cohen told me.

And like all social networks, there are some strong network effects as the platform gets bigger. In particular, Ankorstore expects to expand to new categories, such as perishable food.

The startup already has a deal with UPS to help brands with shipping. But the company hasn’t done much when it comes to warehousing solutions for small brands. That’s another opportunity down the road.

With 400 employees and a lot of money in its bank account, Ankorstore could act as the unifying layer of this highly fragmented industry.

Here we go with the last show of 2021, recorded in mid-December. It was Frank Radice’s last show from New York before he returned to London. It was nice to bid the year goodbye, but we were careful not to say good riddance like we did in 2020. It was nice to feel good about the Zoom-connected friendships we nurtured, and nice to appreciate the flow of working from anywhere and yet still being productive.

For me, the heartbeat of tech and its impact on so many things we struggle with — politics, streaming, and the media business — was and remains palpable. It may be that crypto will find its moment, but I wouldn’t gamble on it. The midterms loom, and social networks are turning topsy-TicTok and live audio, but I wouldn’t bet on the kind of numbers that will turn Wall Street on quite yet if at all. Newsletters are looking more and more like publishers, and publishers are going startup to head it off at the pass, but it will take talent not venture money to make it stick.

Not since Bill Gates and the Google twins ruled the world have we seen such a shift in the stars that define the nighttime skies. Dorsey, who invented Twitter as a side project, and Andreessen, who sped up thinking from 1X to at least 2X, are skating ahead of the curve now, more aligned than the media wants them to be. Television is gone, replaced by a hybrid of computer, mobile, and small movies that will survive the machine movie behemoths of the fifties. The Beatles are now the old guard, struggling with the transition from children to parents to divorce and rebirth. The more footage we resuscitate, the more we realize what an incredible courageous process they opened to the doors of our perception. Only they were too big to fail and did anyway, and even then let us see how far collaboration can go. As James Taylor echoed:

Just shower the people you love with love
Show them the way that you feel
Things are gonna work out fine
If you only will
Do as I say

the latest Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, December 10, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

What if the auto industry’s best solution to the chip shortage was not simply making more chips? Suppose we instead got a handle on what might be called “feature bloat” — the tendency, fueled by sales competition, to slather new cars with as much technology as possible?

Surveys show that consumers want — and expect — that their next car will be laden with whiz-bang features, demand that is a driver for the current bloat. CES 2022, which wrapped this week, provides a glimpse of what the future car might hold. Bosch said to expect double-digit annual growth in automotive software until 2030; Panasonic showed off an augmented reality head-up display with eye tracking, plus the ELS Studio 3D audio system with 1,000 watts and 25 speakers. BMW unveiled future technology that will allow owners to change the exterior color of their cars and display digital art inside them, not to mention a rear 31-inch Theatre Screen with built-in Amazon Fire TV.

And that’s just a tiny sampling of the car tech shown at CES 2022.

But if that tech is unreliable — as some of it has proven — then it’s not a win for consumers. Meanwhile, market reality has resulted in a collision course for buyers on the ground: higher prices and spotty availability of some of the features they say they most want.

“We don’t have a chip shortage; we have software bloat,” said Mike Juran, CEO and co-founder of Altia, which provides graphical user interface design and tools to many automakers. “There is way too much unnecessary software out there.”

Take the Chevrolet Volt. The plug-in hybrid had more than 10 million lines of code when it was introduced for the 2011 model year;  today’s mid- to high-level vehicles have something like 100 million lines, said Michael Hill, vice president of engineering at Altia.

“It’s at the level you might have seen in a jet fighter 10 or 15 years ago,” Hill told TechCrunch. “And there is no bug-free software.”

The bad news for consumers: the feature bloat is unavoidable and getting worse.

“Today’s cars are being burdened with features consumers aren’t necessarily asking for or demanding,” Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports told TechCrunch.

According to Fisher, CR’s 2021 Auto Reliability Report found that high-end electric SUVs are among the least-reliable vehicles.

“And it’s not because their powertrains are problematic,” Fisher said. “Instead, automakers saw an opening with the early EV adopters to package the cars with all the technology they could come up with. They’re trying to differentiate the product–and justify the high cost. And that results in cars that aren’t very reliable.”

Buggy software caused by inefficiency and coding problems are being driven by a shift — or more accurately, an acceleration — in the vehicle development cycle, according to Jason Williamson, vice president of marketing at Altia.

“People are used to seeing new phones every year, and automakers are trying to keep up with consumer electronics,” Williamson said. “They’re pushing to develop completely new cars in two years or less. And that means using building blocks that are maybe intended for laptops and not necessarily custom-built for automotive applications.”

It’s not only expensive EVs that are enticing consumers with tech; it’s happening in many mid- and upscale product lines.

“It’s more feature bloat than software bloat,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst for e-mobility at Guidehouse Insights. “The software is only there to make all the features work, and do we really need 30-way power adjustable seats with five massage-pattern options? Or sequential taillights, multi-zone automatic climate control and audio systems with concert hall and studio settings? The insatiable desire to one-up the competition is what’s driving this.”

The crux for automakers

Automakers that take the all-tech-is-good-tech option avoids the trickier, yet ultimately smarter approach.

“The hardest thing is to figure out what the feature set should be and stick to it,” said Mike Bell, senior vice president of digital at Lucid Group. “It can be easier to say, ‘We’re not sure what we’re doing, so we’re just going to throw in the whole kitchen sink.’ The smart approach is to decide what customers actually want to do, then figure out how to give them the best experience. There shouldn’t be seven ways to do something.”

Bell spent nearly 17 years at Apple, and recruited part of his Lucid tech team from there. He said one source of problems is that, contrary to tech company norms, automakers contract much of their software work out to suppliers. “You can’t farm it out and expect to have a good experience,” he said. “At Lucid, instead of buying from the tier whatevers, we do our own software and our own integration.”

Automakers are beginning to acknowledge the new tech dominance.

“Launching a car now is not just about the hardware, but about the software, too” according to Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath.  He added in an interview that the ability to do over-the-air updates of that software “makes a big difference in consumer satisfaction. We can quickly respond to issues that come up.”

Great expectations

A major factor here is consumer expectations. It’s true that auto buyers don’t need certain features, but they do appear to want them. A November study from CoPilot, a data-driven car-buying app, suggests that automakers are simply responding to public demand. It found that 65.7% of current lease holders expect better feature functionality in their next car or truck, and slightly more than 56% think they’ll pay about the same or less than they do for their current vehicle.

Similarly, a September CarMax survey of more than 1,000 car owners found that almost 50% “said they wish their current car had more tech features.”

Buyers in their 20s and 30s, a highly desirable demographic for automakers, were the most likely to say that tech features were “extremely important” to them as a purchase consideration. Overall, 15.9% considered the tech package extremely important; 36.7% saw it as very important; and 31.8% were in the “somewhat important” camp. Only 3.9% said it was “not at all” important.

Given the chip shortage, tech expectations are not likely to be met.

Pat Ryan, CEO and founder of CoPilot, said in an interview that consumers are likely on a collision course in three areas. “First, it may take three to six months just to get a car, and people aren’t used to that,” Ryan said. “The second issue is that shoppers may find that their new car actually has fewer features than the one they’re turning in.

Premium sound, wireless charging, even heated seats may not be available because of the chip shortage. And people used to paying maybe 95% of the sticker price may find themselves hit with stickerplus.”

But the desire for high-tech cars is not likely to go away. Jessica Caldwell, executive director, Insights, at Edmunds, told TechCrunch that automakers are touting their cars and trucks as multi-purpose offices and living spaces on wheels, and buyers are appreciative.

“Consumers are enjoying the growing number of features and amenities, and most importantly are willing to pay for these highly contented vehicles,” she said. “The chip shortage has made it challenging to produce models with more options and features, but the consumer interest is still there. And as long as there’s a consumer appetite, automakers will find a way to feed it for the sake of their own profits and market share.”

From turkeys to gasoline, clothes to dollar stores, nearly every avenue of human activity has been hit by the specter of inflation. Across the globe, rising inflation rates are disrupting purchasing plans and spending.

In the face of this inflationary inferno, consumers and institutions holding devaluing fiat currency have sought out alternatives to hedge against. Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are the current weapons of choice, driving the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to embrace crypto as an investable asset class.

Bitcoin has witnessed strong year-to-date returns, outshining traditional hedges by rallying over 130% compared to gold’s meager 4%. In addition, increased institutional adoption, sustained appetite for digital assets based on weekly inflows and growing exposure in the media strengthened bitcoin’s case among weary investors.

If these are the moves being made by big money, they must be smart moves. However, while the prospect of hedging against bitcoin may seem enticing to retail investors, certain lingering question marks remain over its viability in mitigating financial risk for individuals.

Miscalculated expectations

The ongoing discussion of bitcoin as an inflation hedge needs to be prefaced with the fact that the currency is often susceptible to market jitters and gyrations: Bitcoin’s value plummeted over 80% during December 2017, by 50% in March 2020 and by another 53% in May 2021.

Bitcoin’s ability to improve user returns and reduce volatility over the long term has yet to be proven. Traditional hedges like gold have demonstrated efficacy in preserving purchasing power during periods of sustained high inflation — take the U.S. during the 1970s as an example — something bitcoin has yet to be tested on. This increased risk, in turn, makes returns subject to the drastic short-term swings that sometimes affect the currency.

Many make the argument for bitcoin based on the fact that it’s designed for a limited supply, which supposedly protects it from devaluation compared to traditional fiat currencies. While this makes sense in theory, bitcoin’s price has been shown to be vulnerable to external influences. Bitcoin “whales” are known for their ability to manipulate prices by selling or buying in large quantities, meaning that bitcoin can be dictated by speculative forces, not solely the money-supply rule.

Another key consideration is regulation: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are still at the mercy of regulators and wildly varying laws across jurisdictions. Anti-competitive laws and shortsighted regulations could significantly hamper the adoption of the underlying technology, potentially depreciating the asset’s price further. All this is to say one thing: It’s far too early to be making judgments on bitcoin being an effective hedge.

Catering to the rich

Against the background of this debate, another salient trend has been driving its momentum. As bitcoin’s popularity grows, it continues to drive adoption and institutionalization of the currency among consumers, including several wealthy individuals and corporations.

A recent survey found that 72% of U.K. financial advisers have briefed their clients about investing in crypto, with nearly half of the advisers saying they believed crypto could be used to diversify portfolios as an uncorrelated asset.

There has also been a great deal of bitcoin advocacy from prolific individuals, known for being technologically progressive, namely billionaire Wall Street investor Paul Tudor, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the Winklevoss twins and Mike Novogratz. Even powerful companies such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have expressed their interest in bitcoin as a viable asset.

If this momentum continues, bitcoin’s infamous volatility will gradually dissipate as more and more wealthy people and institutions hold the currency. Ironically, this accrual of value on the network would lead to the concentration of wealth — the antithesis of what bitcoin was created for, subject to the influence of the elite and exclusive 1%.

In line with classical schools of financial thought, this would actually expose retail investors to greater risk, as institutional buying and selling would resemble whale-like market manipulations.

Defying the core ethos

Bitcoin’s growing popularity will no doubt lead to more people owning it, and one can argue that the people with the most money will be the ones who are going to (as usual) end up owning most of it.

This noticeable shift of influence toward ultra-high-net-worth individuals and firms among bitcoin and other crypto circles goes against the very ethos that the Bitcoin white paper was based upon when it described a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

Among the fundamental rationales for cryptocurrencies is their need to be permissionless and resistant to censorship and control by any given institution.

Now, as the 1% seeks a greater slice of the crypto pie, they boost the prices of these assets in the short term in a way that traditional and less influential retail investors are unable to.

While this move would undoubtedly make a few wealthier, there is an argument to be made that this might leave the market at the mercy of the 1%, contradicting Bitcoin’s intended vision.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports out this week. App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps this year than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion in new installs, it found.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that was up 27% year-over-year.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Instagram to bring back the chronological feed

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Instagram said it will begin testing a new feature that will allow users to select between three different feeds: the current algorithmically generated timeline as well as two new options, Favorites and Following, which are sorted chronologically. This is similar to the Recent & Favorites section that Facebook today offers — though that version is buried in the app’s More menu, making it difficult to access. It’s unclear how easy it will be to access Instagram’s new feed options — especially given the app’s growing clutter and strategic priorities. The latter even saw Instagram shifting its critical “post” button to an out-of-reach spot to give the prime real estate in the app’s navigation to Instagram’s Reels instead.

The feed changes were announced following a Senate hearing where Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified for the first time. The hearing had focused on the app’s teen safety track record but often branched into other areas, like user privacy, and to what extent users were being “manipulated by algorithms,” as one Senator put it. Mosseri had then responded by saying the company was developing a feature that would allow consumers to choose to view a chronological feed. In other words, it’s likely this “test” will soon evolve into a public-facing feature for all users, in order to deflect further pressure from Congress over the matter.

Although users have clamored for an option or full-on return to a chronological feed for some time, Instagram ignored those demands until now — when it’s a topic of legislative inquiry. That fact indicates the need for increased tech regulations as it proves companies won’t listen to user demands unless pressured to do so.

South Korea blocks new “play-to-earn” (P2E) games

The South Korean government’s Game Management Committee in the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (or GMC for short) has asked the major app stores to block any games that require an in-app purchase before users play. The games, which have become popular in the crypto industry, often require that players first purchase game pieces as NFT. Players can then compete for in-game rewards and prizes, giving them the name “play-to-earn” (or P2E). The GMC said it asked the app stores to remove the existing P2E games on the market and block the release of new ones.

The changes follow other difficulties for these types of games in South Korea, which have been battling in the courts to get age ratings required to be listed in the domestic app stores. The government limits in-game rewards to 10,000 Korean won (~$8.40), but some of the games’ cashouts exceed that figure but were being listed anyway — which would technically be illegal.

The government views this genre of gaming as a money-making scheme and is now taking a harsher stance to get them removed from the app stores and out of kids’ hands, in particular. In addition to penalizing games themselves, the new restrictions may impact other titles associated with games in this genre, like those tied to games like Axie Infinity and Splinterlands.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

• Apple launched App Analytics for in-app events. Events are a newer feature that allow developers to promote something happening inside their app at the present time — like game competitions, the release of seasonal features, livestreamed experiences, new movie releases and more. Now developers will be able to view information about their events’ performance, including event page views, reminder and notification data, and the number of downloads and redownloads that were driven by their in-app events. This data can also be viewed by territory, source type, device and more, Apple said.

Platforms: Google

• Google is working to catch up with Apple with a new series of integrations between its various platforms, including Android, Wear OS and Chromebooks. At CES, the company showed off a number of new software features that would allow its users to be able to do things like mirror their Android screen on their Chromebook or use its Fast Pairing feature generally meant for headphones on other devices like TVs and smart home devices. Later this year, Chromebook owners will also be able to instantly set up their devices using an Android handset to port over their data and logins. Smartwatches running Wear OS 3 will also be able to unlock Android phones and Chromebooks, the way Apple Watch works today. Plus, Windows PCs and Android will also work more closely, Google says.
• Google also at CES introduced a new integration with Volvo which will allow owners to do things like turn their car on and off, control the temperature, and get car information using voice commands on Google Assistant-enabled home and Android mobile devices.
• XDA Developers reportedly got ahold of Android 13 screenshots (aka “Tiramisu”) which show updates and changes in areas like app language selection, runtime permissions for notifications, the lockscreen clock and more. They also include a look at The Android Resource Economy (TARE), which focuses on energy use management.

E-commerce

• Amazon dropped to No. 4 in global shopping app installs in 2021, according to data from Apptopia. Amazon had topped the list last year, but has now fallen behind Singapore’s Shopee, China’s Shein and India’s Meesho. Amazon is still No. 1 in the U.S., however.

Augmented Reality

• Snapchat released a new AR filter ahead of the holidays which lets you see what you’d look like in the “metaverse.” In other words, the filter makes you look more like a virtual character (your SIMS self?) or some sort of gaming avatar. This is maybe even more impressive than that Disney filter?

Image Credits: Snapchat

Fintech/Crypto

• Messaging app Signal’s cryptocurrency feature seemed to have quietly launched to worldwide users in mid-November, but was only picked up on this past week. The feature, which was previously being tested in the U.K., integrates with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency called MobileCoin. Signal users can now send MobileCoin to others in the app worldwide. MobileCoin founder Josh Goldbard confirmed the rollout to Wired, noting Signal’s adoption helped the cryptocurrency jump to thousands of daily transactions compared with just dozens before the global release.
• Spare change investing app Acorns is inching into Robinhood territory with its plan to build a feature that allows users to customize their own stock portfolios instead of just using Acorns’ own ETFs.
• China’s WeChat will begin supporting the digital yuan (e-CNY), the country’s sovereign digital currency that’s been in the works since 2014. The move would bring the currency to WeChat Pay’s over 800 million MAUs.
• Apptopia revealed the top finance apps for 2021, including to 10 most downloaded crypto apps — a list that was led by Binance, Crypto.com, and Coinbase.

Image Credits: Apptopia

Social

• Twitter released a handful of new features this week, including its own take on TikTok’s video reactions and updated Spaces features, including the ability for hosts to see how many listeners joined live and how many replayed the Space after the fact.
• Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is the latest to clone Clubhouse with this week’s beta launch of interactive audio events, which will be followed by a video version in the spring. Hosts will be able to record and run their events directly on LinkedIn, host live conversations, moderate rooms and more.
• Snap is suing the USPTO for rejecting its application to trademark the word “spectacles” for its digital AR glasses. The application was rejected because spectacles is a generic term, and Snap’s version “has not acquired distinctiveness,” according to a report from The Verge.
• TikTok is testing its own version of a retweet with a new “Repost” button that shows up on video on the For You feed. Reposted videos will then appear on the For You feed for those who you’re mutual friends with on the app. You can also add a comment as to why you shared the video. TikTok said the feature is live for a limited number of users for the time being.

Image Credits: TikTok screenshot

• Instagram was spotted testing a new Stories feature that would allow users to “like” each other’s stories, but privately. Only the person who had posted the Story would be able to see the total number of likes and that there were not any plans to make the like count public.
• Tumblr has been getting in trouble with Apple’s App Review over the mature content in its app, leading it to new crackdowns that have confused Tumblr users. The company had been struggling to remove content featuring pornography, sex and other adult material from its iOS app, amid constant App Store rejections. It seems Tumblr’s own system requiring blogs to be labeled as “adult” wasn’t getting the job done to keep this sort of content out of the hands of iOS users. Complicating matters is how Apple’s review system works. Apple randomly assigns an app review to whoever is available at the time instead of allowing a company to work with an Apple employee on a more direct basis to solve a specific problem. That leads to inconsistent responses based on how each reviewer interprets Apple’s rules or their overall thoroughous. For Tumblr, it’s meant a lot of jumping through hoops to try to get its app cleaned up enough to be allowed back in the App Store.

Dating

• Tinder was spotted developing a feature called Swipe Party that lets users invite friends to their swiping session. Users send friends a link to establish a guest account, and then those friends can watch their friend using audio and video while they vet their dating prospects.

Messaging

• China’s WeChat (to be fair, a super app not just a social messenger) said DAUs of its mini-programs grew about 12.5% to 450 million in 2021 and its native search function added 200 million MAUs over the past year. The growth took place among government crackdowns on local tech companies.
• WhatsApp is preparing to introduce profile photo notifications in a future update, according to WABetaInfo. The feature is being rolled out to beta users on iOS (iOS 15+).

Streaming & Entertainment

• Spotify introduced a new ad format for podcasts. The cards will appear as the audio ad begins playing, and is supported by Spotify’s investment in streaming ad insertion technology. The cards will also remain on show and episode pages for users to discover later on.
• Clubhouse finally added support for listening to its shows via the web. The feature is first launching in the U.S. as an experiment. The company also rolled out a “Share on Clubhouse” feature that lets you post to social media when you’re in an interesting room that you want others to join. Creators will also be able to see Share and Clip counts at the bottom of their rooms, and access a new Room Insights page which will include more insights over time.
• TikTok teamed up with business-focused streaming service Atmosphere, which offers video content for commercial venues like bars, gyms and restaurants. Atmosphere will offer a new channel featuring curated TikTok content — the first time TikTok is offered on an out-of-home service.
• Apple is reportedly considering an entry into the audiobook market, according to a report by The Economist. A new service would fit into Apple’s broader goal of offering more subscriptions to its users, and the rumor fits with other reports of a services expansion in 2022.

Gaming

• Samsung at CES announced its 2022 TVs will bring cloud gaming services, including GeForce Now and Google’s Stadia, to a new gaming hub, where viewers can also watch YouTube gaming videos. The TVs will also support NFTs somehow but details were light on the implementation details.
• China’s continued gaming crackdown has put a freeze on new video game licenses, leading 14,000 gaming-related firms and small studios to shut down over the past several months. Regulators haven’t released a list of approved new video game titles since the end of July, making this the longest crackdown since the nine-month pause in 2018.

Utilities/Productivity

• Brave’s browser, available for both mobile and web, says it has doubled the number of MAUs for the fifth year in a row, going from 24 million MAU on December 31st, 2020, to over 50 million by the end of 2021. It also has over 15.5 million daily active users and sees 2.3 billion searches per year. In 2021, the browser added Brave Search, Brave Wallet, Brave Talk and, for iOS, Brave Playlist.
• At CES, gaming PC maker Razer introduced plans for a new Razer Smart Home app that will allow users to set up a range of smart home devices from across manufacturers.
• Hey’s email app was updated with a vacation auto-responder called “Away Autoresponder” that will send out pre-written automatic replies to incoming emails. Users can just toggle the feature on when they’re out, and can opt to restrict the auto-replies to screened-in contacts or to all.

Health & Fitness

• Apple updated its Apple Fitness+ service which will include Collections and Time to Run features starting on January 10. Collections are a series of workouts and meditations from the Fitness+ library focused on helping users reach a specific goal, like improving your posture or running your first 5K. Meanwhile, Time to Run is an audio experience designed for runners, where each episode focuses on a popular running route in select major cities, and includes music that aims to capture the spirit of the city and photos of the route being run. Time to Walk will also roll out its third season with new guests like Rebel Wilson, Bernice A. King and Hasan Minhaj. New Artist Spotlight workouts are being added as well.
• A study of over 2,000 adults by Sleep Junkie found that TikTok was the worst app to use before bed, as it causes difficulties in falling asleep. TikTok users took over one hour longer than average to fall asleep and spent 14% of their sleep in the REM phase, which is half of the recommended amount.
• Meditation app Calm has launched its first foray into physical activity and short-form video content with its new “Daily Move” video series. The series will feature elements from yoga, tai chi, Pilates, stretching, dance, walking and more, and each video will be 3-5 minutes in length.
• Most of the U.S. still isn’t using COVID-19 exposure identification apps, even as omicron surges, The Washington Post reported. More than 20 U.S. states don’t use the technology for exposure notifications built by Apple and Google, it found.

Travel & Transportation

• China’s ride-sharing app Didi disclosed a $4.7 billion loss after its revenues shrank in the last quarter, driven by new government regulations in the country, Bloomberg reported. The company plans to shift its listing to Hong Kong next year.

Government & Policy

• Indian antitrust regulator ordered an investigation into Apple’s business practices, including its requirement for app developers to use its own payments system for apps and in-app purchases. The inquiry was triggered by a complaint filed by nonprofit Together We Fight Society, which said the requirement makes a significant dent in developers’ revenues.
• Germany’s antitrust regulator found that Google met the threshold for special abuse control under its competition laws for digital companies. The assessment included Google’s dominance in online advertising as well as its role as gatekeeper on key services like YouTube and the Play Store on Android.
• Spotify’s Head of Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez, who led the company’s antitrust battles with Apple, is leaving the company for Disney. The move is also a loss for the Coalition for App Fairness, which recently saw its amicus curiae brief rejected by a regional appeals court in the Epic-Apple battle.

Funding and M&A

Twitter completed the sale of MoPub to AppLovin for $1.05 billion. The deal was first announced in October 2021, following Twitter’s reveal of its plan to double its revenue by 2023 to reach $7.5 billion or more. Twitter said it aims to redirect more resources toward performance-based ads, SMBs and commerce.

Pediatric mental health app Little Otter raised $22 million to scale its service providing treatment to kids and families. The round was led by CRV and brings the company’s total raise to date to $26.7 million.

Indian hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo raised $240 million in funding led by Reliance Retail. Its $200 million investment will give it a 25.8% stake in the six-year-old startup that now operates in seven cities in India.

Emotional wellness app Mine’d raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by Listen Ventures. The app offers interactive and short-form live and on-demand classes on a variety of topics like dating, breakups, career and purpose. The six-month-old app now has a community of over 100,000 users and 1 million videos.

Vietnam-based digital banking firm Timo Bank raised $20 million in its first external funding led by Square Peg. Founded in 2015, Timo Bank lets users sign up without visiting a bank branch and helps customers visualize their financial goals.

Delivery Hero is acquiring a majority stake in Spanish delivery company Glovo. The deal, announced on December 31, 2021, will allow Delivery Hero to acquire an additional 39.4% on top of its existing 44% stake.

Prune-based mobile-first credit card company OneCard raised $75 million in a new round led by existing investor QED, valuing the business at $722 million, post-money. That’s up 4x from the valuation in the company’s Series B round in April 2021. OneCard is offered in 12 cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, NCR and Bengaluru.

Fintech Ant Money, a micro-income startup, raised $20 million in funding (a mix of previously unannounced seed and Series A capital) and acquired Blast, a startup offering financial tools for gamers, via a stock-for-stock merger. The funding was led by Franklin Templeton’s Franklin Venture Partners. The startup declined to share the acquisition price for Blast.

Indian neobank Jupiter raised $86 million in Series C funding to launch new lending and wealth management services. QED and Sequoia Capital India co-led the round, valuing the startup at $711 million, up from $300 million in August 2021.

Downloads

The Oculus app, apparently

Image Credits: Facebook

Consumers worldwide downloaded Meta’s Oculus app, the mobile companion for Oculus VR devices including the Quest 2, roughly 2 million times globally since Christmas Day, according to new data from third-party app intelligence firms Apptopia and Sensor Tower. Already, there had been some indication that the Quest 2 was a popular holiday gift after the Oculus app shot to the top of the Apple App Store for the first time ever on Christmas Day and became the most popular free app on Google Play in the U.S., as well.

During the week of Christmas in the U.S. (December 23-29), adoption of the Oculus app jumped up by 517% week-over-week to reach 1.5 million installs, Sensor Tower’s data indicates.

In the week that followed, the firm saw those installs drop 77% to 345,000 from December 30 through January 5, but this figure is still higher than the week before Christmas 2021 by 42%. And it’s likely that these more recent downloads still include those who recently received a new Oculus device for the holidays, but hadn’t gotten around to setting it up yet.

While the U.S. accounted for the majority of the post-Christmas installs, app intelligence firms estimate that, in total, the app has seen around 2 million global installs from Christmas Day through the present across the App Store and Google Play combined.

(Read TechCrunch’s full report here.)