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Indonesian social commerce app KitaBeli’s team, including founders Prateek Chaturvedi (seated, left front row and Ivana Medea Tjandra (center front row)

KitaBeli, an Indonesian social commerce app for group buying, announced today it has raised a $10 million Series A. The round was led by Gojek’s investment arm Go Ventures, with participation from returning investors AC Ventures and East Ventures. KitaBeli currently focuses on selling fresh produce and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in areas outside of Indonesia’s major cities, including to people who have never shopped online before.

Launched in March 2020 in Jarkata, KitaBeli then entered the cities of Solo and Malang. Its new funding will be used to expand KitaBeli’s operations in Java, growing its logistics network and developing its mobile app. KitaBeli claims it has grown 80% month over month since launch, with a cost-per-install rate of just 10 cents USD per customers.

Unlike other social e-commerce apps, including ChiliBeli and Woobiz in Indonesia, that build networks of resellers or agents who market items through their social media profiles and take a cut of sales, KitaBeli’s buyers place orders directly through its app, participating in group deals for lower prices. For farmers and suppliers, KitaBeli’s value comes from the ability to reach new customers in more areas of Indonesia. It says users spend an average of USD $70 per month on the app and plans to add new categories like beauty, fashion and accessories.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Prateek Chaturvedi said KitaBeli focuses on direct relationships with end customers because “this enables greater customer loyalty and the ability to become the go-to e-commerce platform for new online shoppers. We don’t run the risk of losing our customers if an agent decides to stop working with us.”

While it doesn’t have a reseller network, KitaBeli works with delivery partners for last-mile deliveries, presenting the gig as an opportunity to earn extra money. It plans to continue building its delivery network across Indonesia to help KitaBeli solve the challenges of reaching smaller cities and more rural areas.

An obvious comparison to KitaBeli is Pinduoduo, the fast-growing Chinese e-commerce player that launched in 2015 as a group-buying service for fresh produce, and also focuses on growth in smaller cities.

On the other hand, “tier 2-4 cities in Indonesia still lack the digital and logistical infrastructure that similar cities in China have,” Chaturvedi said. “Indonesian customers are also new to the internet and need to be educated on how e-commerce works.” KitaBeli’s app is designed to be approachable for first-time e-commerce shoppers, and only takes 6MB to download, making it more accessible to people who have older smartphone models or slower internet connections.

KitaBeli will continue focusing on Indonesia instead of expanding into other Southeast Asia countries because “the Indonesian market is a massive and underpenetrated market,” he added.

In a press statement, Go Ventures’ senior vice president of investments Aditya Kumar said, “E-commerce penetration beyond the large metros has remained low, predominantly because of lack of trust, poor product availability, and high logistics costs. Kitabeli is well positioned to address these challenges through the social nature of its product, accelerating online shopping for a new generation of users and bringing the benefits of e-commerce to a wider population across Indonesia.”

Lime is rolling out several new features, including the ability to rent electric scooters without downloading the app, in an effort to attract more riders. 

The micromobility company announced Wednesday a series of product features that aims to remove barriers to entry for new users, while increasing accessibility to its vehicles. The new features include free vehicle reservations up to 10 minutes, closest vehicle recommendations and the option to view the app in dark mode.

The app-less experience is already live in more than half of Lime’s 130 markets, where developers have been monitoring and analyzing its usage. This feature is only available on e-scooters. The free vehicle reservations and recommendations features can be used when renting Lime’s e-scooters and e-bikes — and across every market and language, according to Lime developers.  

“We use rider feedback to build out the app or any features associated with it,” senior product manager Vijay Murali told TechCrunch. App store reviews, customer service tickets complaining about a feature or a lack of it, customer surveys and research sessions with riders from around the world all inform the direction developers take with new features. In the case of these latest updates, Murali said the team identified three goals their customers were trying to accomplish. 

“The first is that many users are ready to try this new form of transport, but they don’t want to download the app and make the commitment,” said Murali. “The second is a price concern for those who ride with us frequently, and the third is about making it easier, especially in a big city, to find the closest vehicle to you.”

Image Credits: Lime

Now when a customer open the apps, they’ll be directed towards the nearest vehicle and offered the option of reserving it for free, which Murali said streamlines the process of just jumping on a scooter and helps make riding a daily habit.

The app-less riding feature is geared towards those who are new to micromobility, might not have any space on their phones to download the app or are on an expensive international data plan.

To use the feature, customers need to scanning a QR code with their camera app which connects to Apple’s App Clips or Android’s Instant App features. Customers can then confirm the ride and use Apple Pay or Google Pay to start riding. Technically, users are actually downloading a sliver of the app — only 10 megabytes versus 100 megabytes for the full app, and only for eight hours. To the average rider, it just appears as if they’re opening a file or app on their phone, which is a lot quicker than downloading the app, creating an account, adding a payment method and reading a tutorial, which takes about five minutes rather than 30 seconds.

This feature will result in less Lime app downloads, and thus less user data. But Lime says it is more interested in hard sales at the moment. 

“We also see a relatively high download conversion rate,” said another senior product manager, Zach Kahn. “The reduction in friction and needing to choose a payment method or vehicle drastically increases that conversion and makes up a meaningful percentage of our first trips now.” 

Kahn declined to provide conversion rates for those who were introduced to Lime via app-less rides. Murali also noted that more riders in test cities began reserving vehicles when Lime removed the cost. Previously, adoption was low at around 3%.  

“It’s all about ensuring people from different segments of society, in particular underserved areas, have less friction to access Lime vehicles,” said Murali. “In an underserved community, how much a scooter costs to ride is top of mind, so removing these unnecessary reservation fees makes them more likely to ride now.”

Lime, which is backed by Uber and Alphabet, is one of the companies in the running for the coveted New York City pilot e-scooter program in the Bronx, a borough with many low-income communities and transit deserts. Each company has its own unique selling points. Superpedestrian, for example, chooses to err on the side of first-class safety features and geofencing compliance. But Murali says Lime’s leg up comes in its sheer size and ability to quickly execute new features.  

“We don’t just say we put riders first, but we figure out exactly how to do it, and then we make those features and improvements in the app happen,” said Murali. “That’s what differentiates us; how much meaningful progress we are making, at what scale and how fast. We have this new tech in the form of App Clips, for example, and we tested it fast, brought a product to market and now we’re rolling it out in every market we can.”

In a statement, Lime claims to be the first micromobility company to introduce app-less riding, however Apple appears to have demoed App Clips by renting a scooter from Spin, which also responded to New York’s RFP. A spokesperson from Spin said the company is working with Apple to bring the App Clip experience to its e-scooters in the future.

Public App, a location-based social network that connects individuals to people in their vicinity, has raised $41 million in a new round, just six months after securing $35 million as the hyper-local Indian startup looks to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market.

A91 Partners led the new round in Public App, valuing the Indian startup at over $250 million. The Indian startup, which also operates popular news aggregator app InShorts, said some of its existing investors also participated in the round but did not identify them. Public App counts Lee Fixel’s Addition, SIG, and Tanglin Venture Partners among its investors. (The startup didn’t specify the name of the new round.)

Azhar Iqubal, founder and chief executive of Public App, said the new social network has amassed over 50 million users already and he aims to expand it outside the country eventually. The app, launched in April 2019, has already attracted individuals such as politicians and several major firms such as Amazon, HDFC Bank, and GSK that are using Public App to reach their audience.

“Public has continued to maintain best in class retention and engagement metrics while scaling. We look forward to working closely with the founders to help build an outstanding company,” said Gautam Mago, General Partner at A91 Partners, in a statement.

Public App, which is available in several major Indian languages (including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi), allows shop owners and other local businesses to drive e-commerce and hire local talent, and political leaders, government authorities, and media houses to reach local audiences.

“The app is already being used by over 50,000 elected officials, government authorities and citizen journalists to connect with their locality. Additionally, many local businesses have also started to use the app to reach their customers in the locality,” the startup said.

The app, which also provides entertainment and news services, sees more than 1 million videos being created on the platform each month.

The startup plans to deploy the new capital to expand its tech infrastructure, broaden its content offerings, and hire more talent.

Once thought of a crowded space, several Indian startups have launched their social networks in recent years. Kutumb, an eight-month-old startup, is in talks with Tiger Global to raise funds in a round that values it about $170 million, TechCrunch reported earlier this month.

You may have seen an article over at Axios today about the rebrand of many of the Verizon Media products under a new Yahoo+ banner. I would like to congratulate all of the teams that have worked hard to build a cohesive brand identity and a new plan for a bunch of great properties with fine individuals at the helm.

Unfortunately, some of the wording in the article, and a subsequent Techmeme headline on the old twitter dot com have led some people to believe that TechCrunch would now be YahooCrunch or some such situation. That is not correct. TechCrunch is a brand that, against all odds, has stood the test of time in a radically changing and challenging landscape. That’s thanks to the bold idea of its founder as well as the tireless efforts of every member of the TC staff past and present who are all immensely talented, generous, multi-hyphenates that I have taken intense satisfaction from working with every day.

Since we’ve been around a while we have had the pleasure of being called dead a bunch of times by critics, owners, cynics and fans. But I just checked, and we’re still here.

See you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. I leave you with our motto of this day:

Airwallex, the fintech company for cross-border businesses, announced today it has added $100 million more to its Series D round, bumping its valuation up to $2.6 billion. The extension was led by Greenoaks, with participation from Grok Ventures and returning investors Skip Capital and ANZi Ventures.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Zhang told TechCrunch that the new funding will be used for Airwallex’s United States launch in the second quarter of this year, expand its payment coverage to new regions like the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America, and add more products, including physical cards.

This latest extension brings Airwallex’s Series D round to $300 million, and total equity raised so far to $500 million. Airwallex first announced its Series D in April 2020 after raising $160 million, then another tranche that added $40 million in September 2020.

Airwallex reached unicorn valuation after its Series C in March 2019. The company was founded in Melbourne in 2015, and now has more than 600 employees across 12 offices in Australia, China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States. In its announcement today, Airwallex said it is also hiring for more than 500 positions.

Airwallex’s products for cross-border businesses include foreign currency accounts and multi-currency debit cards with Visa, international money transfers and a suite of APIs that allow companies to do things like accept and manage international payments, and manage their foreign exchange risk.