How to choose the right company car or vanA company vehicle is a must-have item for many businesses - but choosing the right one can be difficult.

A business car or van needs to tick a lot of boxes, so there are lots of factors to consider when selecting the right one for your firm.

Decorating your company car or van with a logo and contact details instantly creates a moving advertisement to get your business noticed.

However, if you have no equipment, and will simply be using the vehicle to travel to client meetings, a company car is ideal.

AffordabilityAside from the initial cost of the vehicle, you will need to consider the running and servicing costs of keeping your company car or van on the road. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584019805.307372/How-to-choose-the-right-company-car-or-van?ref=audio_experience

Zurich-based fintech Expense Robot has today announced raising seed funding of €1.6 million in a round co-led by Swisscom and SIX.

This Swiss startup is leveraging artificial intelligence to fully automate expense- and company credit card processes.

The Expense Robot team set out to create new system – maximum 5 seconds of manual work per expense and business credit card transaction and no shifting of work from the employee to the finance team.

After the successful prototyping and testing, Expense Robot went live with a first wave of customers in September 2019.

This new seed round was co-led by Swisscom Ventures and SIX, with participation from Angel investors like Gian Reto à Porta, Founder of Contovista and Myke Näf, Founder of Doodle. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584018005.8608394/Zurich-based-Expense-Robot-raises-€1.6-million-to-fully-automate-company-expense-processes?ref=audio_experience

Consequently, industry-leading review platforms are taking steps to incentivize authentic reviews that customers can trust.

However, if a Local Guide’s review is reported as fake, Google will penalize that user by banning them from the program.

So, Google is not using these incentives to encourage positive reviews; rather, they are incentivizing authentic reviews from verified Local Guides.

A 5-star review with a ‘Verified Purchase’ tag affects a product’s rating more than a 5-star review from an unverified customer.

All marketers want more reviews, but since each review platform has strict guidelines against incentivizing users for reviews, best practices must always be considered. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584016207.51131/How-Review-Platforms-are-Incentivizing-Authentic-Reviews?ref=audio_experience

Pet wellness brand Bella & Duke (“B&D”) has raised €3.9 million in its latest funding round, to expand into the cat food market, grow sales, marketing and recruitment activities, and overall turn dog owners and their dogs towards a raw diet.

Founded in 2016 after both founders’ pet dogs died of terminal illnesses, they embarked on researching mainstream processed pet food.

Four years later and Bella & Duke is producing raw, healthy fresh pet food with natural ingredients to over 45,000 dogs across the UK, serving 11 million meals a year.

This new investment comes from Mobeus, an investor providing around €2.2 million – €17 million to SMEs across all sectors.

Mark Scott CEO of Bella and Duke said: “This investment is great for Bella & Duke moving forward and reiterates to the industry how committed we are to our mission in getting raw pet food into the mainstream. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584014406.1598847/Scotland-based-Bell-&-Duke-raises-€3.9-million-to-grow-its-raw-pet-food-delivery?ref=audio_experience

Mobile phones paved way for several innovations and inventions that changed the way we function, that too for good.

Today, MI by Xiaomi is a household name that spans across mobile phones, televisions, earphones, laptops, bags, trimmers and what not!

Lei went on to pursue his BA in computer science from Wuhan University in 1991.

After spending 16 years with the software company, Lei resigned as the CEO due to health reasons and became the Vice Chairman at Kingsoft.

In 2011, the company launched its first smartphone, Xiaomi Mi1 which was followed by Mi2. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584012606.7389479/Lei-Jun:-The-Chinese-Steve-Jobs-And-Co-Founder-Of-Xiaomi?ref=audio_experience

MultiLiving, a real estate platform, announced it raised funding of $6 million (approx Rs 45 crore) from Lodha Ventures, the investment arm of Mumbai-based property developer Mangal Prabhat Lodha family.

Abhinandan Lodha from the Lodha Ventures joins the board of advisors of MultiLiving.

Set up by Pankaj Singh last year, MultiLiving will go live in Mumbai with this funding.

However, the final decision stays with the owner.”Meanwhile, for property owners, MultiLiving promises regular and steady returns.

It also covers the owner's property for any accidental damages, regular maintenance fees or unforeseen expenses through MultiLiving’s exclusive insurance policy – the HomeShield Plan. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584010805.594605/[Funding-alert]-Real-estate-startup-MultiLiving-raises-$6M-from-Lodha-Ventures?ref=audio_experience

Google will soon give “ethical” search engine Ecosia a more prominent place in Chrome, a move that comes as Google faces growing scrutiny over its anti-competitive practices.

But by including Ecosia in the prominent dropdown menu in Chrome’s settings, anyone looking to change their default search engine will now see Ecosia listed alongside Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

The main impact of changing the default search engine is that anyone who uses the “omnibox” web address bar at the top of the browser to search the web can stipulate which search engine provider delivers the results.

And it is definitely worth noting here that Ecosia is powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Ecosia is all about the “ethical alternative” to Google — on its homepage, it asks users to “search the web to plant trees,” with a rolling counter showing everyone how many trees Ecosia has helped to plant since its inception. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584009005.6255586/How-Google-Chrome-could-help-‘ethical’-search-engine-Ecosia-plant-more-trees?ref=audio_experience

Unitary, a startup that’s developing AI to automate content moderation for “harmful content” so that humans don’t have to, has picked up £1.35 million in funding.

Not only is the volume of content uploaded ever-increasing, but the people employed to moderate the content on platforms like Facebook can suffer greatly.

“Regulations are responding to this crisis and putting increasing pressure on platforms to deal with harmful content and protect our children from the worst of the internet.

Which, of course, is where Unitary wants to step in, with a stated mission to “make the internet a safer place” by automatically detecting harmful content.

“While current AI can deal well with short video clips, longer videos still require humans in order to understand them. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584007207.0782356/Unitary,-an-EF-alumnus,-raises-£1.3M-seed-for-its-content-moderation-AI-–-TechCrunch?ref=audio_experience

BENGALURU: PayPal India has announced the launch of its new employee benefit plan, ElderCare@PayPal, an in-house curated programme that facilitates holistic wellness for employees ’ parents and parents-in-law, said a company statement issued today.The initiative is PayPal’s endeavour to offer an elderly care infrastructure for employees’ ageing parents.

These parents may or may not be living with their children, may not have access to proper health and well-being services or face financial constraints in meeting such needs.

Keeping all this in mind, the programme is designed to touch upon different elements of parental health, right from physical to emotional and financial health.

PayPal conducted discovery sessions with its employees and their parents to understand the issues that affect their well-being.

This translates to supporting their families – spouse, parent, children, especially across different stages of their life. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584005406.8709967/PayPal-India-rolls-out-benefit-programme-for-ageing-parents-of-employees?ref=audio_experience

A report by the Gender Social Norms Index released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently revealed that as much as 90 percent of people are biased against women.

“With declining female workforce participation, how do we prepare young women for the future of work?

We need to make the world a more balanced place, where power is shared equally between women and men,” she added.

“We shall encourage closing the gap between girls and boys in STEM and equip young girls and women for an inclusive market.

Breaking gender stereotypes will benefit society as a whole,” she added. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1584003606.1168077/Gender-equality-is-a-fundamental-human-right:-leaders-say-at-UNDP’s-International-Women’s-day-celebration?ref=audio_experience