Scandit Raises $80M Led by G2VP to Digitally Transform Traditional Industries Through Computer VR

THE FUNDING WILL BE USED TO FURTHER ACCELERATE GLOBAL EXPANSION AND TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP

 

Zurich, Switzerland – May 26, 2020 – Scandit, the leading technology platform for mobile computer vision and augmented reality (AR) solutions for enterprises, today announced it has raised $80 million in Series C related funding led by G2VP, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm of former Kleiner Perkins partners. They were joined by Atomico, GV, Kreos, NGP Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Swisscom Ventures. Scandit has previously raised $43 million.

Since the last funding round in July 2018, Scandit has tripled recurring revenues, more than doubled the number of blue-chip enterprise customers, and doubled the size of its global team. The new funding will further accelerate growth in new markets such as APAC and Latin America, as well as expand Scandit’s footprint and operations in North America and Europe. It will also support continued R&D to develop new ways enterprises can transform their core business processes using computer vision and AR. Scandit’s global customers include 7-Eleven, Alaska Airlines, Carrefour, DPD, FedEx, Instacart, Johns Hopkins Hospital, La Poste, Levi Strauss & Co, Mount Sinai Hospital and Toyota, and perform tens of billions of scans every year on 100+ million active devices.

Scandit is a unique computer vision and machine learning platform combining leading-edge barcode scanning, text recognition (OCR), object recognition and augmented reality (AR) for any camera-equipped smart device – from familiar smartphones to drones, wearables and robots. The software is unmatched in terms of speed, accuracy, and the ability to scan in bad light, at any angle and with damaged labels.

Scandit enables companies to accelerate their digital transformation by blending the physical world with relevant digital information. Organizations in retail, transport & logistics and manufacturing use Scandit’s computer vision technology to create and power mobile apps or websites for mobile shopping, self checkout, inventory management, proof of delivery, asset tracking and maintenance. In healthcare, Scandit supports digital health, with healthcare workers using familiar smartphones to scan patient IDs, samples, medication and supplies. Scandit’s solutions help take time and cost out of operations in any industry, empowering employees and improving customer engagement and satisfaction.

The need for social distancing post COVID-19 has accelerated demand for mobile computer vision on personal smart devices, as companies seek to create a safer contactless environment for their employees and customers. Retailers and transport & logistics companies are also discovering that they can scale up faster to meet the soaring demand for Click and Collect and the millions of extra home deliveries, by providing workers with scanning apps on BYOD (bring your own device) or COPE (corporate owned, personally enabled) smart devices. Scandit is helping its customers rapidly ramp up these services.

“Scandit’s platform puts an enterprise-grade scanning solution in the pocket of every employee and customer without requiring legacy hardware,” said Ben Kortlang, General Partner at G2VP. “This bridge between the physical and digital worlds will be increasingly critical as the world accelerates its shift to online purchasing and delivery, distributed supply chains and cashierless retail.”

“COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on the need for rapid digital transformation in these uncertain times, and the need to blend the physical and digital plays a crucial role,” said Samuel Mueller, CEO of Scandit. “The smartphone is a personal tool that can be deployed with powerful computer vision software to seamlessly interact with everyday objects and display real-time insights with AR-overlays. Our new funding makes it possible for us to help even more enterprises to quickly adapt to the new demand for ‘contactless business’, and be better positioned to succeed, whatever the new normal is.”

AI start-up Privately launches Online Child Safety AI technology with the BBC

AI start-up Privately launches Online Child Safety AI technology in collaboration with the BBC

The BBC has launched its Own it mobile application to help to promote young people’s online wellbeing, in which Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Privately has been a major technology partner.

For the Own It project, Privately has collaborated with the BBC to develop software that uses AI to detect well-being and online safety markers of the child and create the basis of providing tailored real-time help and guidance as they interact with their device and the specific Internet services.

The app helps children manage difficult situations, offering advice, support and interventions to address issues like cyberbullying, privacy and sharing of personal information to help young children make better choices and develop resilience in the digital world.

With the Own It app, the BBC and Privately have taken a child-centric approach that will empower, support and educate children with a fun and engaging experience, without imposing the blocks, restrictions or filters of traditional parental monitoring and control software. The technology that has been co-developed is at the heart of this approach.

Privately, a Lausanne, Switzerland based start-up, is a pioneer in developing child-focused, AI based, GDPR compliant solutions for online safety and wellbeing of children.

“The privacy preserving AI element of the Own it application that was developed through this collaboration is an industry first,” said Deepak Tewari, CEO and co-founder, Privately. “This technology is now suitable as a powerful child-led solution for keeping children safe online for use by app developers, gaming companies and device manufacturers.

The company is working with a number of global clients and has announced the addition of two high profile advisors to its board – Robert Wigley, Chairman of UK Finance and Dr. Richard Graham, well- known psychologist and Director at Good Thinking.

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For further information visit www.privately.eu PR Contact:
Paul Allen – Rise PR
07515 199 487 / paul@risepr.co.uk

Optile acquired by US based company Payoneer

Yahoo Finance

As the world of digital payments continues to wait and see what kind of impact cryptocurrencies will have on the wider market (if any), consolidation continues apace among those that have built tools for today’s payment needs. Payoneer — a provider of cross-border payment services to millions of businesses in some 200 markets that’s valued at over $1 billion — is today announcing that it has acquired optile, a German startup whose platform lets businesses integrate different products offered by itself and third parties into a single payment experience.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but Scott Galit, Payoneer’s CEO (seated, left, with Keren Levy, Payoneer COO and Daniel Smeds, founder and CEO of optile), noted in an interview that Payoneer itself is profitable and the deal was done without any outside, additional funding.

Payoneer reportedly engaged advisors this past summer to help it raise its next round of funding, something that Galit did not deny.

“I think it’s not impossible to raise more,” he said. “Acquisitions may be one way to accelerate our growth, so we might do this as we identify more opportunities.”

Optile is Payoneer’s second acquisition: the company acquired escrow-as-a-service provider Armor Payments in 2016, just ahead of raising its last round of $180 million from Technology Crossover Ventures and Susquehanna Growth Equity. (Incidentally, that precedent — first, an acquisition; then, funding — could be another indicator that another fundraising event is on the way.)

Payoneer today competes with the likes of PayPal, Adyen, Stripe, PayU, traditional banks and many others in providing an array of services to enable payments between businesses.

Payoneer may not a company that you hear a lot of buzz about, but its customers speak to the traction that it has quietly amassed across a wide swathe of markets: they include the likes of Facebook Amazon, Airbnb, Fiverr, Rakuten, and Google, and Payoneer is used to make it easier to pay money out to businesses, for businesses to pay in money for goods and services, and (in the case of marketplaces) provide cash advances to businesses in order to make purchases.

Optile will bring another layer of service to that existing stack: specifically, in the form of payments integration. Companies — say, like Airbnb — that sell not just their own products, but those of third party providers (airline tickets, or tours, for example) can use optile’s platform to integrate all of these into a single payments experience.

Similarly, the platform can also be used to integrate different payment methods into a single experience as well. Both of these are important for the customer experience in commerce, since one of the biggest challenges in online purchasing is shopping card abandonment, when people simply walk away from buying things because the process of doing so is too tedious.

Optile is not just bringing a new level of technology to Payoneer: it’s bringing talent. The company was founded and run by Daniel Smeds, who had already built up a strong track record in payments, first as the first director of technology at payments giant Wirecard, and then founding and selling another payments business, Pay.On, to ACI for $200 million. Smeds and his team of 75 will be joining the larger startup, where they will continue to operate as an independent group based out of their current HQ in Munich.

It’s not clear how much optile had raised in funding prior to this, but the deal underscores how consolidation is a game that both medium-sized and large companies will play to increase their real estate and customer touch points, but also that smaller companies will become involved in as an alternative to trying to scale their businesses on their own.

“In joining forces with Payoneer, we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to leverage their global infrastructure and team to continue building the world’s leading open payment orchestration platform,” said Smeds in a statement. “Payoneer shares our obsession with customer experience, meeting their needs today while preparing them for tomorrow, and are equally committed to bringing simplicity, flexibility and scale to today’s digital business.”

The next steps for the combined business are likely to see that scope expanding further.

“Cross-border payments is $50 trillion dollar market,” said Galit. “That’s a gigantic and broad space in practice.” He declined to say whether that could include expansions into areas like cryptocurrency, but noted when I asked about Calibra that Facebook is a valued client.

Hammerteam Company Beekeeper raises 45M

We’re a very mission-driven company here at Beekeeper. We believe in the potential of every single employee. Our ultimate goal to connect the unconnected or 80% of the workforce composed of non-desk workers is our guiding light behind everything we do.

That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that Beekeeper has closed our Series Bee funding round raising a total of $45 million to invest in our mission. This latest round of financing gets us that much closer to our vision of connecting the world’s two billion non-desk workers through groundbreaking yet simple mobile technology.

Seizing the Global Market

Beekeeper has gained substantial traction in the global market as the favorite operational communication platform for frontline employees. The Series Bee funding round will help us continue to provide frontline workers around the world with a powerful operational tool to make their daily work lives easier and more meaningful.

“Beekeeper has really helped our internal communication in that we are able to easily engage with every member of the team, which email fails to do. Not only is it important for day-to-day operational communication, but it is also a fabulous tool with which to celebrate everything including individual birthdays, work anniversaries, guest feedback, and personal successes. I can honestly say that the team is much closer and far more engaged as a result of introducing Beekeeper to the business and there is no doubt that this has helped to improve our retention and satisfaction scores.”

David Connell, General Manager, Exclusive Hotels & Venues

This round will also allow us to continue to expand our team, both throughout Europe and the U.S., as we continue to develop our operational features and expand our already robust marketplace offerings.

Going forward, both our enterprise customers and frontline workers can expect to see Beekeeper continue to refine and perfect the internal communication platform they already know and love, as well as release new, innovative functionalities to complement our existing suite of operational features.

Fulfilling the Beekeeper Promise

One of the reasons why this funding round was so important is because we weren’t just looking for money; we were seeking strong, highly engaged partners who shared our vision and our values.

That’s why we’re so excited to announce that our two lead investors for this round are solid partners who each align with the Beekeeper vision in different, but equally important ways. After talking with many potential investors, we’re very excited to bring aboard two new partners who believe in the Beekeeper mission just as much as we do.

See the story behind the Beekeeper mission. 

The round was co-led by Thayer Ventures and Swisscanto Invest, with participation from other investors including Atomico, Alpana Ventures, Edenred Capital Partners, Fyrfly, Hammer Team, HighSage Ventures, investiere, Keen Venture Partners, Samsung NEXT, Swiss Post, and Swisscom.

A Powerful Plan for Global Growth

We believe that this global team of investors will provide Beekeeper with the strategic support necessary to help us transition into this next key growth stage as we continue to expand our global customer base and ultimately connect the world’s two billion non-desk workers.

The entire team here at Beekeeper would like to thank all our investors for their continued belief in our vision and values. We also appreciate our incredible customers and partners who have played a crucial role in reaching this milestone.

With our tight-knit community of customer advocates and our comprehensive network of partners, we’re excited to see what the future holds for our company. We look forward to further developing Beekeeper’s operational capabilities such as Shift Schedules and Documents.

This new momentum will carry us as Beekeeper continues to become the leading operational communication platform for frontline workers. 🐝🐝🐝

Hammer Company Fluent Commerce raises 33M to further accelerate Growth!

Order management software maker Fluent Commerce, picked up $20 million from Arrowroot Capital, a US private equity firm, with private investors injecting $10 million and the remaining $3 million of the round raised via a venture debt agreement with Marshall Investment.

“It’s typically very hard to get international capital in Australia, but that’s changing. Australian businesses are becoming more attractive to US private equity,” said Fluent Commerce chief executive Graham Jackson.

Read on

Zoovu Nabs $14 Million Series B for Expansion of AI Digital Sales Assistants

Zoovu to leverage funding to accelerate traction and growth in becoming the foundational provider of AI digital assistants

 

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zoovu, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) digital sales assistant platform, today announced that it has closed its Series B funding led by Target Global and Beringea, the latter of which previously led the Series A round. The company will use the funds to drive further growth and expand into APAC, as well as increase investment in AI and behavioral analytics to drive human-level experiences across digital channels. With this round, Zoovu has received a total of $25 million in funding to date.

“Zoovu’s digital assistants – driven by artificial intelligence – guide customers through the decision-making process as if they were having an insightful conversation with a member of staff”

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As part of the round, Zoovu announced that Rytis Vitkauskas, Venture Partner at Target Global, will be joining the company’s Board of Directors. Vitkauskas has served as a founder, angel investor and venture capitalist for more than a decade and will help drive Zoovu’s continued growth and expansion.

“Zoovu is rapidly becoming the foundational provider of digital assistant software for the world’s leading brands and marketplaces, including Amazon, Canon, Coty and Wilson,” said Vitkauskas. “We were impressed by Zoovu’s traction and growth in vertical markets and by the focus of its leadership team on building a future-thinking, seamless and intuitive SaaS platform. We are confident that Zoovu is well-equipped to simplify the shopping journey and are eager to continue supporting their ongoing growth.”

“The digital world has enabled businesses to deliver products and services at a scale that provides unparalleled choice to consumers,” added Eyal Malinger, Investment Director, Beringea. “However, many consumers are left struggling to know how to navigate the choices in front of them. This symptom is known as ‘choice paralysis,’ which leads to poor brand experience, poor conversion rates, high returns and loss of consumer trust.”

“Zoovu’s digital assistants – driven by artificial intelligence – guide customers through the decision-making process as if they were having an insightful conversation with a member of staff,” continued Malinger. “Zoovu therefore significantly improves brand experience, increases conversation rates and reduces returns.”

“Brands are quickly realizing that the typical customer persona is vastly different now than it was even just a few years ago, and they’re being forced to adapt to a unique generation of consumers by adopting new technologies and engagement strategies,” said Rob Mullen, CEO, Zoovu. “Zoovu is dedicated to alleviating these challenges by providing advanced behavioral data, which customers can take advantage of to differentiate themselves, allowing brands to deliver a more personalized and engaging customer experience. Our most recent funding round will be instrumental in helping us carry out this mission, while bolstering our continued software innovation efforts and growth within the Asian market.”

Zoovu is partnered with premium Fortune 100 brands, serving over 60 million consumers a year, across more than 300 categories including consumer electronics, healthcare, banking and telecommunications. For more information about Zoovu and the company’s Series B funding round, please visit: https://zoovu.com/why-zoovu.

About Zoovu:

Zoovu’s mission is to humanize the digital engagement experience. We engage and advise millions of consumers every day to help them find the perfect products and services. As a data-first and AI-centric company, Zoovu leverages all of today’s digital touchpoints to enable authentic 1-1 conversations. We empower brands to truly understand their customers and help deliver incredible brand engagement by asking questions. Zoovu has trained digital assistants across 300+ categories, including consumer electronics, healthcare, banking and telecommunications, and is used by over 150 premium brands and retailers in over 80 countries and across more than 40 different languages. To find out more, visit www.zoovu.com.

 

Hammer Team Video: Impact Story Beekeeper

 

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RAW Labs to Participate in “SmartDataLake” EU Initiative

Lausanne, September 7 – 2018.
RAW Labs SA has been awarded a contract to participate in the highly visible SmartDataLake project funded by the EU. RAW Labs will provide its NoDB Platform for the project. “This is an exciting moment for RAW Labs. Through this project we will be able to expose our unique NoDB technology to industry leaders and researchers”, says Anastasia Ailamaki, Co-Founder and CEO of RAW Labs. 




“SmartDataLake: Sustainable Data Lakes for Extreme-Scale Analytics”, abstract:

Data lakes are raw data ecosystems, where large amounts of diverse data are retained and coexist. They facilitate selfservice analytics for flexible, fast, ad hoc decision making. SmartDataLake enables extreme-scale analytics over sustainable big data lakes. It provides an adaptive, scalable and elastic data lake management system that offers: (a) data virtualization for abstracting and optimizing access and queries over heterogeneous data, (b) data synopses for approximate query answering and analytics to enable interactive response times, and (c) automated placement of data in different storage tiers based on data characteristics and access patterns to reduce costs. The data lake’s contents are modelled and organised as a heterogeneous information network, containing multiple types of entities and relations. Efficient and scalable algorithms are provided for: (a) similarity search and exploration for discovering relevant information, (b) entity resolution and ranking for identifying and selecting important and representative entities across sources, (c) link prediction and clustering for unveiling hidden associations and patterns among entities, and (d) change detection and incremental update of analysis results to enable faster analysis of new data. Finally, interactive and scalable visual analytics are provided to include and empower the data scientist in the knowledge extraction loop. This includes functionalities for: (a) visually exploring and tuning the space of features, models and parameters, and (b) enabling large-scale visualizations of spatial, temporal and network data. The results of the project are evaluated in real-world use cases from the business intelligence domain, including scenarios for portfolio recommendation, production planning and pricing, and investment decision making. SmartDataLake will foster innovation and enable European SMEs to capitalize on the value of their own data lakes.

Brief description of RAW Labs’ role in the project:
RAW Labs SA has designed a software stack that permits efficient and scalable execution of analytic queries directly on raw data files (i.e., without pre-formatting and importing them in a database). Therefore, it has extensive experience in the following two areas: (a) integration of heterogeneous data into one data model, and (b) optimization of query execution against these data, in particular in the context of distributed storage/computing. Accordingly, RAW Labs SA will participate in WP2, in particular leading the efforts on distribution and elasticity. The presence of RAW Labs SA will bring in not only the strong technical expertise but also a robust codebase of its flagship product called RAW, a distributed query execution engine for raw data. Starting from a mature and robust query execution engine codebase will enable the project participants to focus on the innovative aspects of SmartDataLake. In addition, RAW Labs SA will participate in the pilot testing and will contribute to the activities for dissemination and exploitation, particularly within its network of clients and collaborators.

Hammerteam-South Korean cooperation in the blockchain area

Zug/Bern, 17. August 2018 – During a visit of a high-level delegation from South Korea this week in Switzerland, a concrete cooperation was sealed: Song Kyeong-chang, Vice-Governor of Gyeongsangbuk-do Province and Swiss businessman Ariel Lüdi, founder of the Hammer Team www. hammerteam.com and chairman of blockchain company Mobilebridge (Momentum token) have agreed on a three-year cooperation

The cooperation will support measures that will further develop the blockchain industry in South Korea and Switzerland and bring new technologies to breakthrough. The two partners will build and support blockchain start-ups as well as train professionals. And the cooperation partners have agreed to plan and implement new collaborative projects such as building local blockchain networks.

Song Kyeong-chang, Vice-Governor of Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, was very pleased with the new agreement. “We are fortunate to have found a partner in the extremely dynamic Swiss entrepreneur Ariel Lüdi who will support us in the development of our blockchain industry.

Ariel Lüdi, founder and chairman of the Hammer Team, is also happy about the cooperation. “The visit of the South Korean delegation in Switzerland underlines how attractive Switzerland in general and Zug in particular are in the blockchain world. Such cooperation projects make sense and certainly contribute to the further development of the entire industry. ”

The South Korean delegation was led by Chin Dae-Je,former South Korea’s Minister of Information and Communication, former CEO of Digital Media of Samsung Electronics and current President of the Blockchain Association of South Korea: “We were thrilled with Switzerland and impressed by how entrepreneur-friendly the climate in Switzerland is. The new South Korean-Swiss cooperation is promising. ”

On the Swiss side, the delegation was greeted and looked after by Heinz Tännler, Finance minister of the Canton of Zug: “We in the Canton of Zug are fortunate that the whole world is interested in the Crypto Valley. But we have to take care of the environment. In particular, the access of blockchain companies to financial services needs to be regulated quickly. I do everything in my power to contribute to a solution. “

Hammer Team company Allthings raises 13.7 million

Basel, Switzerland/Berlin, Germany, 12 July, 2018 – The German-Swiss PropTech company Allthings closes its Series A with 13.7 Million Swiss Francs led by Earlybird and Idinvest Partners as well as Kingstone Capital Partners. With the participation of existing investors Creathor Ventures and Technologiefonds as well as current advisors, the latest financing will be used for further development of the platform as well as provide a boost to its expansion throughout Europe.

Allthings transforms buildings into digital products. The platform grants users of buildings access to digital functions and services that simplify everyday life by connecting people and improving communication among all parties. Property owners benefit from an unprecedented level of transparency in buildings, neighbourhoods and across entire portfolios. Thanks to the open, modular design of the Allthings platform, third-party services can be integrated as needed, much like an app store for buildings.

“The real estate industry is just starting to adapt to the digital age and it holds huge potential. Allthings integrates all key stakeholders like real estate owners, asset managers, property managers, service providers and tenants onto one platform. This fundamentally enhances value-creation and enables data-driven management decisions in the real estate sector,” said Dr. Fabian Heilemann, Partner at Earlybird.

“One way to make cities smarter is to start with its buildings. Connecting all stakeholders of a building and offering a variety of digital services increases the quality of living and working. This is what Allthings does very successfully and therefore the company is a perfect match for our smart city strategy,” said Matthieu Bonamy, Senior Investment Director at Idinvest.

Currently over 100 medium to large real estate companies in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, Portugal and the Netherlands are using the platform as part of their digital strategy. “Just like in other industries before, real estate owners now want to own and shape the customer relationship directly. This is what we are helping them to do in a highly scalable and modular way. With our new investors, we are taking the next steps on our journey for a better life in buildings.” said Marc Beermann, COO and co-founder of Allthings.