Roam And Wander, a toy and children’s entertainment studio that is currently participating in 500 Startups’ accelerator program, is now raising funds for its latest stuffed animal on Kickstarter. Called DiDi, the classic brown teddy bear is twice as large as Roam and Wander’s last toy, a bunny named TuTu, and comes to life with the aid of an iPad. Read More
HTC has posted another loss-making quarter. The company has released unaudited financial results for the first quarter of 2014 today, posting a net loss before tax of NT$1.88 billion ($62.06 million) on quarterly revenue of NT$33.12 billion ($1.1 billion). Read More
How many times have you stepped out of the group to click pictures, feeling left out as others posed? Or have there been instances when you’re jostling to get back for a group picture after setting the timer of a camera shutter? While there is Samsung NX Mini, which comes with an LCD screen that flips 180 degrees for taking selfies, it still requires users to make adjustments in the frame.… Read More
And the award for cutest wearable goes to… Moff! A smart bangle for kids that’s being developed by — you guessed it — a Japanese company (such kawaii) on a mission to transform boring everyday objects into toys with sound effects. The Moff wearable is a slap band — i.e. no need to fiddle with fastenings; you just slap it against your wrist and it wraps around. The… Read More
Another startup aiming to simplify the process of prototyping electronics by doing away with the need to wire up breadboards has taken to Kickstarter. This latest one, called AgIC, combines the approaches of two we’ve previously covered — the Ex1 3D printer for PCBs and the Circuit Scribe conductive ink pen — by offering a kit to let people turn a home inkjet printer into a… Read More
Good news, perhaps, for the impatient: the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is "hiring hundreds of new engineers and supply-chain managers" across Asia in an attempt to "speed up product development and launch a wider range of devices."
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There are almost 900 million active cell-phone users in India now, and from newer startups to some of the biggest companies in the world, everybody is chasing the next mobile disruption that could potentially result in a business model for all of the emerging markets.
One such startup is Ezetap, a mobile payment company backed by some of the biggest names in the VC industry, including Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and founder of Social+Capital Partnership, and Angelprime, an Indian seed fund run by serial entrepreneurs.
Today, Ezetap is raising $8 million in Series B funding led by Helion Advisors, Social+Capital and Berggruen Holdings. This round takes the total fund raised by Ezetap to around $11.5 million (including $3.5 million it had raised in Series A funding in November 2012). The fresh capital will be used to expand Ezetap in Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.
Ezetap is much like Square, at least in terms of the basic model. It uses a rectangular device that can turn any mobile phone into a point-of-sales terminal when plugged in. The device including a card reader and chip, costs around $50, and Ezetap has been able to sell around 12,000 of them to date. The startup is aiming to have over 100,000 such devices installed across Asia-Pacific, Africa and Middle East in a year.
“From day one, we wanted to go global and really felt that mobile payments in general is a great opportunity for emerging markets. There’s disparity in cash versus electronic payments leading to the challenges of financial inclusion,” Abhijit Bose, CEO of Ezetap, told TechCrunch.
Ezetap was incubated in 2011 by Angelprime, a $10 million seed fund backed by Mayfield Fund, Palihapitiya and several others in the Silicon Valley. It’s run by three veteran entrepreneurs — Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya and Bala Parthasarathy. With the latest round, Ashish Gupta of Helion is joining the startup’s board. Helion is an India focused, $600 million fund.
Ezetap is the second attempt by Abhijit and Sanjay to build a mobile payment company in India. In 2006, Sanjay was the CEO of mChek which had raised around $10 million by 2009, and Abhijit worked with another venture-funded payment startup called Ngpay.
Back then, mChek and several others fizzled out because of several challenges.
“I believe there was nothing wrong with mobile payment back then, it was just the timing,” said Bose.
Indeed, the environment has changed dramatically. Back then, there were only 10 million credit cards. Today there are around 316 million credit and debit card holders in India. More importantly, the telecom infrastructure has improved tremendously, allowing users to do much more than just voice calls and texting.
“For us, Android and iOS are the game changers, too. Moreover, consumers are much more willing to use mobile payments for ease of use,” said Bose.
After building the product for one year, Ezetap officially launched with a Citibank mobile payment pilot in January 2013. Since then, the startup has signed up several banks and newer e-commerce companies, including Flipkart and online grocery retailer BigBasket. In Kenya, Ezetap partnered with Mastercard and Equity Bank to launch its services in March last year. Later in May 2013, Ezetap’s solution received global certification from EMVCo, an organization that specifies processes and gives approval for chip-based payment cards.
“Chip and pin is now the established global standard for mobile payment processing, and will soon take over the U.S. as well. Ezetap has created the only product that is certified globally, at a price point materially better than any other player – regional or otherwise,” said Palihapitiya.
Both Ezetap and Square are using similar models to enable mobile payments, but for completely different target markets, which is perhaps why Bose doesn’t like being called “the Square of India.” Ezetap’s merchants include India’s biggest e-commerce company Flipkart and even much smaller mom-and-pop shops.
“I always hate it when people call it that [Square of India]. Fundamentally, we are attacking underserved markets and are both similar in thinking about mobile payments. But we want to build a business that makes us number one mobile payment platform in emerging markets,” said Bose.
To be sure, Ezetap is not the only mobile payment startup that’s beginning to do well. With around 2 million customers using its mobile wallet, MobiKwik is aiming to reach the 100 million mark in two years. While MobiKwik and at least two dozen others are offering mobile wallets, startups such as Mswipe are more similar to Ezetap. Mswipe raised its Series B funding earlier this year from investors including Matrix Partners. All these startups are shaping an ecosystem of mobile payments in India that goes beyond just creating a non cash economy.
HTC is working on three wearables which it’s planning to preview privately to carriers at next week’s Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona, according to a report in Bloomberg.
The three devices are said to consist of two smartwatches, one focusing on Google Now’s cards based recommendations feature, and another device based on Qualcomm’s Toq smartwatch, which was really just a hardware showcase for OEMs. (The Toq link tallies with a January report by ReadWrite’s Dan Rowinski that reported HTC had licensed Qualcomm’s Toq hardware and designs.)
The third wearable HTC is working on is apparently an “electronic bracelet that plays music”. Teenagers on buses are going to get considerably more irritating if the latter device becomes a successful commercial reality.
The news agency said the device details come from “a person with direct knowledge of the plans” — and that person also told it HTC has not decided if it will publicly demo any of these wearables next week, or simply allow carriers to have a sniff.
HTC declined to comment on the report when contacted by TechCrunch.
The mobile maker has been fighting sliding marketshare in the smartphone space for more than a year — so it’s likely viewing the rise of wearables, and the opportunity a nascent device space provides, as a potential lifeline for its business, over and above its stated aim of making more affordably priced phone slabs, targeting the $150 to $300 price range.
Earlier this month chairman, Cher Wang, told Bloomberg HTC would release its first wearable device by Christmas, although she did not provide details on exactly what form the device would take — so today’s report puts some more meat on those bones.
She did say HTC has spent ”years” on wearable development and tackling technical challenges such as ensuring a smartwatch has long enough battery life to be useful.
“Many years ago we started looking at smartwatches and wearables, but we believe that we really have to solve the battery problems and the LCD light problems,” she told the news agency. “These are customer-centric problems.”
These latest wearable hints follow some leaks around HTC’s forthcoming new smartphones. Yesterday a leaked image of an update to HTC’s flagship One was tweeted by the @evleaks Twitter account — sporting a new gold colourway (with silver and grey named as the other colour options for the flagship), and with camera enhancements apparently on board.
@evleaks has since tweeted an image of the charcoal grey version of the handset — along with specs for what sounds like a more mid-range forthcoming HTC smartphone, painted in a range of brighter colours:
HTC A5: MSM8928 (1.6GHz x4), 5.5" 720p SuperLCD2, 1.5GB/8GB (+microSD), 13MP/5MP, Sense 6.0, BoomSound, black/white/red/yellow/purple.—
@evleaks (@evleaks) February 20, 2014
Sony’s PlayStation 4 went on sale in North America in time for the holiday season three months ago, and in Western Europe on November 29 last year — and has yet to hit shelves in the company’s home market of Japan — but sales of the gaming console are still going strong.
Sony has surpassed it own full-year target of five million units by the end of March, reporting today (via Reuters) that it had sold 5.3 million units as of February 8.
This comes days after Sony tweeted that the PS4 had been the best selling console in the U.S. in January — beating out Microsoft’s Xbox One, which launched on November 22, although Redmond claimed the top spot for number of games sold.
Microsoft also claimed the top console sales position for December, based on NPD numbers. And said a total of three million of its XbOnes (as the device is colloquially know to tech hacks) were sold in 2013 (vs 4.2 million PS4s — 2.1 million of which were sold in the first two weeks).
Judging by today’s data, Sony’s PS4 is maintaining that early lead, with one core console country left to come in its current rollout schedule.
The PlayStation 4 is due to go on sale in Japan on February 22, kicking off with a live-streamed launch event at the Sony building in Tokyo. Microsoft has yet to nail down a firm launch date for the Xbox One in Japan, beyond saying it will land there sometime in 2014.
Last month, rival Japanese gaming giant Nintendo reported a sales target miss for its controller/console combo, the Wii U – and slashed sales expectations by almost 70% — as it struggles to compete with, on the one hand, home console heavyweights like the PS4 and, at the other end of the market, smartphones being used for casual gaming.
When you think about it, it’s odd that wearable tech makers are so obsessed with wristbands. Most wearable tech products currently focus on fitness, and the most popular cardio exercises–biking, running, swimming–are powered by the lower body.
Husband-and-wife team Jimmy Leu and Beatrice Chu created Flyfit, a fitness monitor that is worn on the ankle, after Chu, an avid cyclist, got annoyed that other fitness trackers weren’t accurately recording her workouts. Several of the bestselling fitness trackers, including the Nike Fuelband, aren’t even recommended for cycling.
Flyfit just launched its Kickstarter page today and wants to raise $90,000 by March 25. The early bird package starts at $89 for the first 200 supporters and includes a tracker and two interchangeable ankle bands. Shipment of mass produced Flyfit bands are scheduled for August, while beta test versions will be sent out in May.
Flyfit is one of the latest entrants to the wearable tech market, but its creators want to differentiate by focusing specifically on measuring different leg movements for cycling, swimming, running, or stair climbing. Plus, it will appeal to people who dislike wristbands, which are meant to be worn all day, but tend to get in the way while typing, irritate your skin, or snag on sleeves.
Chu says that she wanted to create an ankle monitor after realizing that her wristbands did not register movements accurately if she gripped her bike’s handlebars too tightly. For avid cyclists, the Flyfit is meant to be a portable alternative to cadence sensors that are installed on bicycle frames. Leu points out that this is especially handy if you use a bike lending service, like Citi Bike in New York City, or workout at the gym. Like a cadence sensor, the Flyfit lets you track distance, speed, and rotations per minute (RPM).
The app connects to an iOS app with Bluetooth 4.0/LE and lets you see your exercise data in real time, as long as you are willing to keep your eye on your smartphone while working out. Flyfit’s creators are working on an Android app and its development will be speeded up if the project reaches its $150,000 stretch goal. They also plan to open Flyfit’s API, add an online racing game so you can compete with your friends, and perhaps integrate it with other apps like Nike Run Keeper.
The tracker consists of a hardware module that is powered by a rechargeable Li-ion battery and interchangeable bands that are currently available in five colors. It has a simple LED panel that lets you check what activity you are tracking and battery life. The Flyfit claims to have an eight-hour battery life with real-time syncing and can run up to a week in off-sync mode.
The Flyfit may remind some people of the infamous ankle monitor worn by certain celebrities, like Lindsay Lohan, while under house arrest. The Flyfit is small and easy to hide, however, and can be worn over or under socks, so I can definitely see it appealing to people who are intrigued by wearable tech but sick of the ubiquitous wristband.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
