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PhonePe, one of the largest digital payments services in India, on Thursday launched Pulse, a free product to offer insights into how people in the world’s second largest internet market are paying digitally. And PhonePe would know: the Flipkart-backed five-year-old startup said its insights are based on over 22 billion transactions it has processed over the years. Pulse offers an unprecedented level of understanding of the inroads digital payments and various financial services have made across Indian states, districts and over 19,000 zip codes. The new product offers a range of granular data including how many of its transactions in…

In Europe and the US we are very much getting used to groceries being delivered within 15 minutes, with a huge battleground of startups in the space. Startups across Europe and the US have raised no less than $3.1 billion in the last quarter alone for grocery deliveries within 10 or 20-minute delivery promises. But all are scrambling over a market where the average order size is pretty low. What if it was in the hundreds, and didn’t require refrigeration? This is probably going to be the newest “15/30minute” consumer battleground, as high-end consumer goods come to last-mile deliveries. The…

RISE, one of Asia’s largest tech conferences, is returning to Hong Kong in March 2022 as an in-person event, and will be held there for at least five years, announced organizer Web Summit today. Last year, Web Summit said RISE would move to Kuala Lumpur, but its return to Hong Kong means the conference will no longer be held in Malaysia’s capital, though a spokesperson told TechCrunch that it is plans to host other events there in the future. RISE will take place at the AsiaWorld-Expo from March 14 to 17, 2022. In November 2019, while large pro-democracy demonstrations were…

Market research and insights are often underutilized assets for enterprises but it’s usually too hard to find content and there’s a lot of duplication, or information isn’t used well. Swedish startup Stravito says it can centralize internal and external data sources and create something more akin to a ‘Spotify or Netflix’ for these kinds of assets, making them far more usable and consumable, they say. It’s clearly onto something, since it’s now raised a €12.4million ($14.6million USD) series A funding round led by Endeit Capital, with additional investment from existing investors HenQ, Inventure and Creades. To date, Stravito has raised…

Cheese is one of those foods that when you like it, you actually love it. It’s also one of the most difficult foods to make from something other than milk. Stockeld Dreamery not only took that task on, it has a product to show for it. The Stockholm-based company announced Thursday its Series A round of $20 million co-led by Astanor Ventures and Northzone. Joining them in the round — which founder Sorosh Tavakoli told TechCrunch he thought was “the largest-ever Series A round for a European plant-based alternatives startup,” was Gullspång Re:food, Eurazeo, Norrsken VC, Edastra, Trellis Road and…

French startup Cajoo is raising some money in order to compete more aggressively in the new and highly competitive category of food delivery companies. Interestingly, the lead investor in today’s funding round is Carrefour, the supermarket giant. Headline (formerly e.ventures) is also participating in the round as well as existing investors Frst and XAnge. Carrefour’s investment isn’t just a financial investment. Cajoo will take advantage of Carrefour’s purchasing organization. This way, Cajoo will be able to offer more products to its customers. Cajoo is part of a group of startups that try to create a whole new category of grocery…

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey gave a coalition of app-based service providers like Uber and Lyft the go-ahead to start collecting signatures needed to put a proposed ballot measure before voters that would define drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. Backers of the initiative, which is essentially a MA version of Proposition 22, would need to gather tens of thousands of signatures for the measure to make it to the November 2022 ballot. Despite the fact that last year Healey filed a lawsuit that challenged Uber and Lyft’s classifications of drivers as contractors who are therefore not entitled to…

Apple has made a settlement with Japanese regulator that it will allow developers of “reader” apps link to their own website for managing users account. The change goes to effect in early 2022. This settlement comes after the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has forced Apple to make a change its polices on the reader apps, like Netflix, Spotify, Audible and Dropbox, that provide purchased content or content subscriptions for digital magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video. “We have great respect for the Japan Fair Trade Commission and appreciate the work we’ve done together, which will help developers of…

The future for U.S. Social Security just got even bleaker. On Tuesday, the Treasury Department said that the Social Security trust fund reserves have been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 recession. The way things are going, the funds will only be able to pay scheduled benefits on a timely basis until 2034. The Social Security Administration’s website has stated plainly in the past that Social Security is “not sustainable over the long term at current benefit and tax rates.” Yet millions of Americans rely on these safety net programs that are now expected to run out…

Walgreens is the latest big company to promise it will pay workers at least $15 an hour. The drugstore chain announced on Tuesday it will begin phasing in a $15 base hourly wage for all its employees this fall. Although about half of the company’s employees already make at least $15 an hour, the change will affect tens of thousands of workers at one of the largest pharmacy chains in the U.S. Job openings were at a record high this summer, and employers hoping to stand out and attract workers have been offering higher pay and better perks and benefits.…