One Thing Today in Tech

Google’s parent Alphabet will slow the pace of hiring and investments through 2023, responding to the global economic slowdown, CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees on Tuesday, CNBC reports. HCL Technologies reported its services business grew strongly in its fiscal first quarter, joining TCS in signalling customers continue to invest in the move to the cloud. And Lightspeed announced a half-a-billion-dollar fund close for India and south-east Asia.

Notes:

Google’s parent Alphabet will slow the pace of hiring and investments through 2023, CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees on Tuesday, CNBC reports.

“Like all companies, we’re not immune to economic headwinds,” Pichai wrote in the memo, which was seen by CNBC. “We need to be more entrepreneurial working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” Pichai wrote, according to CNBC.

Pichai said in the letter that the company hired 10,000 employees in the second quarter. And “because of the hiring progress achieved so far this year, we’ll be slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year, while still supporting our most important opportunities,” he wrote.

“For the balance of 2022 and 2023, the company will focus on hiring on engineering, technical and other critical roles,” Pichai wrote, according to CNBC.

HCL Technologies, yesterday, reported fiscal first-quarter revenues of $3.025 billion, a 15.6 percent increase year over year in constant currency, and 2.7 percent over the previous quarter.

Noida-based HCL Tech, India’s third-biggest IT services company, joins larger rival TCS in signalling customers are continuing to invest in moving more IT to the cloud, which is helping India’s biggest software services companies win larger orders. The company’s main services business, which contributes the bulk of its revenues and profits, rose strongly at 19 percent year over year.

“Our services business continues to have robust growth momentum … driven by our digital engineering and digital application services with cloud adoption being a horizontal theme across all services and verticals,” CEO C Vijayakumar said in a press release. The company’s new orders grew by 23.4 percent with a good mix of large and mid-sized deals and its pipeline remains near a record high, he added.

Lightspeed yesterday announced the closing of a $500 million early-stage fund, the LSIP Fund IV, for India and Southeast Asia as part of its global $7 billion fundraise bringing its total capital under management to about $18 billion.

Lightspeed has been investing in Indian startups since 2007, and in addition to the fourth fund, it invests in growth-stage companies from its Select and Opportunity funds.

Lightspeed’s investments in this region include Indian Energy Exchange, Oyo, Byju’s, Grab, Acko, Razorpay, Udaan, Sharechat and Innovaccer.

Wheelocity, a supply chain network provider for fresh produce, has raised $12 million in series A funding led by Lightspeed. The round, a mix of equity and venture debt, also saw participation from Anicut Capital and other investors, according to a press release.

Wheelocity was started in September 2021 by Selvam VMS, Senthil and Cdr. Amresh. Its customers include Swiggy’s Instamart, Ninjacart, Dunzo and Blinkit.

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MFine, a mobile health app and digital healthcare platform provider facing a money crunch in the slowdown, is merging with the diagnostics business of LifeCell International, a stem cell bank and reproductive genetic testing services company, to form a new entity called LifeWell. Vegrow, a fruits marketplace, has raised more money. And Apple slipped in Q2CY22 worldwide PC shipment rankings, IDC says.

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MFine, a mobile health app and digital healthcare platform provider that was facing a money crunch in the ongoing slowdown, is merging with the diagnostics business of LifeCell International, a stem cell bank and reproductive genetic testing services company, to form a new entity called LifeWell.

LifeWell has also secured $80 million in investment from OrbiMed, a healthcare investment firm with approximately $18 billion in assets under management.

MFine was founded in December 2017 by Ashutosh Lawania and Prasad Kompalli in Bengaluru. The company didn’t provide any details about the terms of the deal with LifeCell. However, MFine will continue to offer its app platform and consumer brand, delivering digital healthcare services and tools, according to its press release. Tele-consultations, care plans, diagnostic tests, IP concierge, e-pharmacy and corporate subscriptions will continue to be offered on the MFine app.

The money raised will also be used for strategic investments in MFine’s fast-growing corporate and insurance channels.

Vegrow, a B2B marketplace provider for fruits, has raised $25 million in series B funding, led by Prosus Ventures, the company said in a press release. Matrix Partners India, Elevation Capital, Lightspeed India and Ankur Capital also participated in the round.

Vegrow was founded in 2020 by Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu, Kiran Naik and Shobhit Jain. The company has built a network of local advisors to digitally engage with farmers in more than 400 production pockets – processing more than 200 tonnes of fruits daily.

The fresh funds will be used for expansion into more demand centres, going deep into supply micro pockets and building a strong talent pool in product, engineering, and other support function domains.

Aerem, a solar financing platform provider for MSMEs, has raised $2.5 million in pre-Series A funding led by Blume Ventures, the company said in a press release. The money will be used for growing the loan book, building out its tech platform and hiring teams including leadership in technology, product, finance, and operations.

Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs declined 15.3 percent year over year to 71.3 million units in the second quarter of the calendar year 2022, according to preliminary results from International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, the company said in a press release.

Despite the recent decline and weakening demand, the total PC volume is still comparable to the beginning of the pandemic when volumes reached 74.3 million in the second quarter of 2020. And the market is still well above pre-pandemic levels as volumes in the second quarter of 2018 and 2019 were 62.1 million and 65.1 million units, respectively.

While rankings among the top three companies did not change, Apple slipped into the fifth position, tying the company with Asus, as production dipped during the quarter, according to IDC.

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Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services, said on Friday the company continues to see strong deal prospects ahead, amid a global economic slowdown, as customers continue to invest in technology. Elon Musk wants to walk away from his proposed $44 billion Twitter deal. And Bengaluru biotech startup String Bio has raised more money, including from an Australian oil and gas company.

Notes:

Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services, said on Friday the company continues to see strong deal prospects ahead, amid a global economic slowdown, as customers continue to invest in technology.

TCS, India’s biggest IT services company, reported fiscal first-quarter revenue of $6.78 billion, a 10.2 percent increase from the same period last year, led by strong sales to customers in the retail sector and in America, the company’s biggest market. Revenue was higher by 15.5 percent in constant currency, TCS told the stock markets after Mumbai trading on Friday.

Profits for the three months ended June 30 were at Rs. 9,519 crore versus Rs 9,031 crore, a 5 percent increase.

“We are starting the new fiscal year on a strong note, with all-around growth and strong deal wins across all our segments. Pipeline velocity and deal closures continue to be strong, but we remain vigilant given the macro-level uncertainties,” Gopinathan said in a press release.

“Looking ahead, we remain confident in the resilience of technology spending and the secular tailwinds driving our growth,” Gopinathan added.

TCS ended the fiscal first quarter with 606,331 employees, reflecting a net addition of 14,136 during the quarter. Staff churn, or attrition, was at 19.7 percent on the last 12 months basis. During the quarter, the company gradually accelerated its return-to-office programme, with about 20 percent of the workforce now back in offices, according to the press release.

Elon Musk wants to end his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, according to a letter sent by lawyers representing the world’s richest person to the social media company’s chief legal officer on Friday, CNBC reports.

“Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations” with respect to providing the data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in the letter that was also filed with the US capital markets regulator, Securities and Exchange Commission.

String Bio, a biotech company in Bengaluru that is developing useful proteins from greenhouse gases such as methane, has signed a strategic development agreement with Woodside Energy Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Woodside Energy Group, a large Australian oil and gas company, according to a press release.

Woodside is also investing an undisclosed amount in String Bio as part of the biotech venture’s series B equity fundraise. New and existing investors including Ankur Capital, Dare Ventures, Redstart, Zenfold Ventures and others have joined the first close of $20 million of the funding round.

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India’s information technology services sector will sustain double-digit revenue growth this fiscal, at 12-13 percent, driven by digitalisation, strong demand for new-age technologies, and depreciation in the rupee, rating agency Crisil said in a note yesterday. Rajeev Misra, head of SoftBank Group’s giant venture-investing arm, will step back from Vision Fund 2, And you can now search for spatial audio on Netflix.

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India’s information technology services sector will sustain double-digit revenue growth this fiscal, at 12-13 percent, driven by digitalisation, strong demand for new-age technologies, and depreciation in the rupee, rating agency Crisil said in a note yesterday.

This compares with the 19 percent growth last fiscal — the highest in the past eight years — given an expected tightening of IT expenditure by corporates amid the inflationary headwinds in America and Europe, which together contribute almost 85 percent to the sector’s revenue, Crisil notes.

However, revenue growth was supported by the shift in various industries globally towards automation, digitalisation and digital transformation services in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the higher growth last fiscal had come on the back of a modest uptick of 6 percent in fiscal 2021, which was hit by the first wave of the pandemic.

Operating profitability will also remain healthy, but could fall back a tad to the pre-pandemic low of 22-23 percent, compared with 24 percent last fiscal, due to rising employee costs and as travel comes back. All said, any further surge in inflationary headwinds leading to deferral of discretionary IT spending by corporates will bear watching, Crisil says.

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT company, will kick off the sector’s fiscal first-quarter earnings season after markets today.

Rajeev Misra, head of SoftBank Group’s giant venture-investing arm, will step back from his role to run a new outside investment outfit as the tech-investment giant struggles with the fallout of the tech stock crash this year, Wall Street Journal reports.

Misra, who joined Softbank in 2014, will stay on in a reduced capacity, overseeing the original Vision Fund investments, while stepping back from oversight of its successor, Vision Fund 2, according to a Thursday memo to staff signed by SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, the Journal reports.

Son will take an even more prominent role in directly managing the funds, according to the memo, the Journal reports.

Netflix is rolling out spatial audio to consumers around the world on its platform, in collaboration with Sennheiser, the video streaming company said in a press release yesterday. Spatial audio — which is an immersive surround sound experience — will roll out across Netflix’s catalogue, and users can find it by typing ‘spatial audio’ into the search bar to bring up shows that support the feature.

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Apple has introduced a ‘lockdown mode’ to help those small number of users who may be under threat of the most sophisticated mercenary cyberattacks, the company said in a press release yesterday. Amazon faces a new probe by UK regulators, even as it announces its Prime Day sales this month. And Axilor is raising $100 million for its second fund after backing more than 50 companies from its first fund.

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Apple has introduced a ‘lockdown mode’ to help those small number of users who may be under threat of the most sophisticated mercenary cyberattacks, the company said in a press release yesterday. Lockdown mode will harden Apple devices against attacks by significantly restricting several features and completely disabling certain others.

For example, most message attachments, except images and preview features, will be blocked. Certain complex web technologies such as just-in-time JavaScript compilation will be blocked unless the user excludes a trusted site from the lockdown mode. And a device can’t be enrolled in a mobile device management platform when lockdown mode is on.

These features will be available for iPhones, iPads and MacBooks starting with iOS 16 iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura, in the fall in the US, which starts around September. Apple is also setting aside $2 million for any researchers who can detect flaws in lockdown mode.

Amazon is facing a new investigation by Britain's antitrust watchdog on concerns it was hurting competition by giving its own sellers an unfair advantage in its marketplace over third parties, adding to global regulatory scrutiny of the US tech giant, Reuters reports.

Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it opened an investigation on Tuesday into whether Amazon's practices that affect sellers on its domestic marketplace may be anti-competitive and result in a worse deal for customers.

Meanwhile, July is usually the month for Amazon’s Prime Day sales and the ecommerce company yesterday announced July 23 and 24 as the dates in India.

Amazon India said in a press release it expects to see 30,000 new product launches from international and local companies including Samsung, Xiaomi, Intel and boAt. And 2,000 new product launches from more than 120 Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) like XECH, Cos-IQ, Himalayan Origins, SpaceinCart, Mirakii, Karagiri, and Nirvi Handicrafts in categories including electronics, fashion & grooming, jewellery and handmade products.

The ecommerce giant says it has 200 million Prime subscribers around the world, including India.

Axilor Ventures, an early-stage VC firm started eight years ago by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal, is launching its second technology fund, Axilor Technology Fund II, Economic Times reports. The firm expects to raise $100 million for this fund and is currently seeking approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It expects to close the fund by the end of September, according to ET.

The firm has invested 90 percent of its first fund of Rs. 200 crores in more than 50 startups, according to ET.

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Twitter on Tuesday asked an Indian court to overturn some government orders to remove content from the social media platform it offers, in a legal challenge that alleges abuse of power by officials, Reuters reports. The EU approved two landmark sets of rules that regulate big tech companies. And Indian entrepreneurs Darshan Bathija and Sanju Kurian’s crypto lender Vauld, which is in a financial bind, has been made a buyout offer by larger rival Nexo.

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Twitter on Tuesday asked an Indian court to overturn some government orders to remove content from the social media platform it offers, in a legal challenge that alleges abuse of power by officials, Reuters reports.

Twitter has been asked by Indian authorities over the past year to act on content including accounts that supported an independent Sikh state, posts alleged to have spread misinformation about protests by farmers, and tweets critical of the government's handling of the Covid pandemic, according to Reuters.

In a filing with the High Court in Karnataka, the top court in the southern Indian state, Twitter argued that some removal orders fell short of the procedural requirements of India's IT Act, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, European lawmakers approved two sweeping new pieces of digital regulation, paving the way for clashes between regulators and some of the world’s biggest tech companies over how the rules should be applied, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The European Parliament on Tuesday voted to approve the two laws — one focused on anticompetitive behaviour, the Digital Markets Act, the other on content deemed illegal in Europe, the Digital Services Act — after reaching an agreement on them with European Union member states in March.

The Wall Street Journal also reported yesterday that Amazon, Microsoft and Google accounted for 65 percent of the $53 billion global cloud-service spending in the first quarter of 2022, citing data from Synergy Research Group.

This compares with 52 percent of global sales four years ago. And their control of the crucial, rapidly growing market is expected to continue as their size makes them better able to keep investing and attracting clients seeking stability in turbulent times, executives and analysts told the Wall Street Journal.

Vauld, the Singapore-based cryptocurrency lender that halted operations earlier this week, has been made a buyout offer from larger competitor Nexo, CNBC reports.

Nexo said Tuesday it had signed a term sheet with Vauld giving it 60 days of exclusive talks to explore an all-equity acquisition of the company. If successful, Nexo said it plans to restructure the company and pursue an expansion in Southeast Asia and India, according to CNBC.

Vauld, started in 2018 by Indian entrepreneurs Darshan Bathija and Sanju Kurian, said on Monday it had paused operations and that it was exploring restructuring options due to “financial challenges” posed by the latest crypto crash that started last month. The company is backed by the likes of Coinbase and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.

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Tata Consultancy Services, told the stock exchanges yesterday that a US court, which was hearing the latest appeal in a case in which EPIC Systems, a US company, has accused India’s biggest IT services company of stealing intellectual property, has passed an order reducing the jury award of punitive damages to $140 million.

TCS is legally advised that it has strong arguments in its favour before an Appeal Court and the Order on the punitive damages are not supported by the facts presented by TCS before the Trial Court, the company said. “We have been advised that the Order and the Judgement (when issued) is appealable to the US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit Chicago,” TCS said in its statement.

TCS did not misuse or derive any benefit from EPIC’s documents, according to its statement. The lawsuit has been on for about seven years now.

Vauld, a crypto exchange and lender, has locked out customers, citing the economic downturn. The Singapore company, started by entrepreneur Darshan Bathija, is backed by investors including billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and a VC investor.

“We are facing financial challenges despite our best efforts,” the company said in a statement on its website. This is due to a combination of circumstances such as the volatile market conditions, the financial difficulties of key business partners affecting the company, and the current market climate which has led to a significant amount of customer withdrawals of nearly $200 million since June 12 — when the latest crypto crash started.

The company has hired lawyers and is in the process of filing an application to ask for a moratorium on any proceedings against it so it can explore options including a restructuring. “In the meantime, we have made the difficult decision to suspend all withdrawals, trading and deposits on the Vauld platform with immediate effect,” Vauld said in its statement.

Xiaomi’s latest flagship phone, Mi 12S Ultra, has a 1-inch camera sensor, The Verge reports. Xiaomi is said to have collaborated with Leica to develop the camera system, and with Sony on the sensor. The camera system has three cameras — a 48 megapixel ultra-wide lens, a 48 megapixel telephoto with 5x optical zoom (and 120x digital zoom), and a 50 megapixel main camera, which uses that 1-inch sensor, according to The Verge.

The smartphone itself has a 6.73-inch OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 system-on-chip, a 4,860 mAh battery, 67W wired fast charging, and IP68 water and dust resistance. The phone is also supposed to be the first Android device capable of shooting in Dolby Vision HDR.

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Google will delete location data of users who have visited personally sensitive places, including abortion clinics, the internet search giant said in a blogpost on Friday, a week after the US Supreme Court struck down a landmark 1973 judgement — now widely known as Roe V. Wade — that had ensured a woman’s right to an abortion in America. The reversal has polarised opinion world over.

“Some of the places people visit — including medical facilities like counselling centres, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centres, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others — can be particularly personal,” Jen Fitzpatrick, a Google senior vice president wrote in a blogpost on the company’s website.

“Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit. This change will take effect in the coming weeks,” Fitzpatrick added.

Apple’s next wristwatch may be equipped with a sensor that can tell if the wearer has a fever, and this feature is a go for the upcoming model, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. The feature will be part of both the standard Apple Watch, the next of which is the series 8, and also a rugged edition aimed at extreme sports athletes, Gurman writes.

It will, however, be absent in the next edition of the iPhone SE model that is also expected this year, he adds.

Private equity and venture capital investments in India during the quarter ended June 2022, were lower by more than 25 percent, at $11.3 billion, Venture Intelligence said in a blogpost yesterday.

The investments in Q2, across 315 deals, compared with $15.2 billion invested in 264 deals in the same period in 2021. The investments were also down almost 30 percent compared with the first three months of 2022 — which saw $16 billion invested in 390 deals — and marked three continuous quarters of decline, according to Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on private company financials, transactions, and valuations.

The latest quarter saw four new unicorns — Leadsquared, Purplle, PhysicsWallah and Open Financial Technologies — compared with 11 in Q1 of 2021 and 14 in Q1 of 2022. Overall, unicorn startups in India, attracted close to $8.5 billion in investments in the first half of 2022, down 16 percent versus the same period last year, which saw $10.1 billion being invested in unicorns, according to Venture Intelligence.

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Zendesk has agreed to be acquired by a group of buyout firms for $10.2 billion, bringing back a deal that will be one of the biggest private-equity takeovers of the year, Wall Street Journal reports. IT services employees are in no hurry to get back to the office, according to a survey by CIEL HR, Economic Times reports. And Intel has expanded its design and engineering capacity in Bengaluru by 2000 seats.

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Zendesk has agreed to be acquired by a group of buyout firms for $10.2 billion, bringing back a deal that will be one of the biggest private-equity takeovers of the year, Wall Street Journal reports.

The deal, with a group led by Hellman & Friedman and Permira, values the software company at $77.50 a share, Zendesk said Friday, according to the Journal. While that is a roughly 34 percent premium to the closing price on Thursday, it is down sharply from a roughly $17 billion bid from a similar group of buyout firms the company rejected in February.

Three in four employees working in IT services companies in India are not coming to office even once a week despite their organisations resuming work from office, according to a survey conducted by CIEL HR, Economic Times reports.

Many IT services companies are also going easy on their return-to-office policies as they fear coercion may trigger more resignations. CIEL surveyed 40 IT companies in India, including those among the top 10, employing a total of about 900,000 employees, according to ET.

Fintech startups in India have written to Reserve Bank, the country’s central bank, asking it to treat their prepaid payment instruments on par with bank accounts for customers who have undertaken certain verifications, TechCrunch reports. Reserve Bank last week signalled an industry-wide crackdown, saying that pre-paid instruments from non-bank companies couldn’t be used to sell loans.

Intel India last week announced the expansion of its design and engineering footprint with a new state-of-the-art facility in Bengaluru, adding 4.53 lakh sq. ft of space in two buildings which can accommodate 2,000 employees in total.

The expansion will help the semiconductor chip giant advance cutting-edge design and engineering work in client, data centre, IoT, graphics, artificial intelligence, and automotive segments, according to its press release.

Riot Games will begin background evaluation of recorded in-game voice communications on July 13 in North America, in English, PC Gamer reports. Riot said in a brief statement that the purpose of the recording is ultimately to "collect clear evidence that could verify any violations of behavioural policies,” according to PC Gamer.

For now, however, recordings will be used to first develop the evaluation system that may eventually be implemented.

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Apple’s iPhones and Android smartphones were hacked by an Italian company's spyware in Italy and Kazakhstan, Google said in a report on Thursday, according to Reuters. Flipkart has committed to decarbonising its operations by 2030 and that of its entire supply chain by 2040, the Walmart company said in a press release. And Fundamental VC, an early-stage Bengaluru investor, is raising $130 million for its first fund.

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Apple’s iPhones and Android smartphones were hacked by an Italian company's spyware in Italy and Kazakhstan, Google said in a report on Thursday, according to Reuters.

Milan-based RCS Lab, whose website claims European law enforcement agencies as clients, developed tools to spy on private messages and contacts of the targeted devices, the report said, according to Reuters.

Instagram is testing new options for young people on it to verify their age, starting with those in the US, the Meta company said in a blogpost yesterday. Instagram will require them to verify their age using one of three options: upload their ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age.

Flipkart, the Indian ecommerce unit of Walmart, has committed to the target of decarbonising its operations by 2030 and what it calls its “larger value chain” by 2040, the company said in a press release, yesterday.

Recognising that the majority of the climate impact comes from Flipkart’s extended chain of suppliers, waste in operations, transportation and logistics, and product end-of-life, it will also work with its sellers, consumers and partners to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, the company said.

Fundamental VC, a Bengaluru-based early-stage VC firm, started by former startup operators Saswat Sundar and Abhishek Rathi, has launched its first fund with a target corpus of $130 million. The firm will invest up to $1.5 million in each startup and aims to support 30 startups through the fund, over 2 years.

Cashify, a ‘re-commerce’ marketplace that facilitates gadget trade-ins and buybacks, has raised $90 million in Series E funding from NewQuest Capital Partners and Prosus, the company said in a press release.

WeRize, a financial services provider to small-town Indian customers, has raised $15.5 million from new investors, British International Investment, the UK’s development finance and impact investor — formerly known as CDC group — and Sony Innovation Fund, along with existing investors.

Neuron7.ai, a customer and field service software provider, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.

Vibrant Planet, a SaaS startup that is developing a Lidar and AI-based map of land and forests in California, to accelerate the restoration of forests, has raised $17 million in seed funding, TechCrunch reports.

The funding was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund and The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust. The mapping software and related data and analytics are called Land Tender, which the company calls an “operating system for forest restoration,” according to TechCrunch.

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