Javed, a middle-aged man, worked as a driver before losing that job earlier this year as coronavirus spread across India, prompting New Delhi to enforce a nationwide lockdown and temporarily curb several business activities.
There are millions of people like Javed in India today who have lost their livelihood in recent months. They are low-skilled workers and are currently struggling to secure another job.
An Apple alum thinks he can help. Through his app startup Apna, Nirmit Parikh is helping India’s workers learn new skills, connect with one another, and find jobs.
Parikh’s app is already changing lives. Javed, who could barely speak a few words in English before, recently posted a video on Apna app where he talked about his new job — processing raisins — in English.
In less than one year of its existence, Apna app — available on Android — has amassed over 1.2 million users.
The startup announced on Tuesday it has raised $8 million in its Series A financing round led by Lightspeed India and Sequoia Capital India. Greenoaks Capital and Rocketship VC also participated in the round.
In an interview with TechCrunch last week, Parikh said that these workers lack an organized community. “They are daily-wage workers. They rely on their friends to find jobs. This makes the prospects of them finding a job very difficult,” he said.
Apna app comprises of vertical communities for skilled professionals like carpenters, painters, field sales agents and many others.
“The most powerful thing for me about Apna is its communities — I’ve seen people help each other start a business, learn a new language or find a gig! Communities harbinger trust and make the model infinitely scalable,” said Vaibhav Agrawal, a Partner at Lightspeed India, in a statement.
The other issue they struggle with is their skillset. “An electrician would end up working decades doing the same job. If only they had access to upskilling courses — and just knew how beneficial it could be to them — they would stand to broaden their scope of work and significantly increase their earnings,” said Parikh.
Apna is addressing this gap in multiple ways. In addition to establishing a community, and rolling out upskilling courses, the startup allows users — most of whom are first time internet users — easily generate a virtual business card. The startup then shares these profiles with prospective employers. (Some of the firms that have hired from Apna app in recent weeks include Amazon, Big Basket, and HDFC Bank.)
In the last one month, Parikh said Apna has facilitated more than 1 million job interviews — up more than 3X month-on-month. During the same period, more than 3 million professional conversations occurred on the platform.
Parikh said he plans to use the fresh capital to expand Apna’s offerings, and help users launch their own businesses. He also plans to expand Apna, currently available in five Indian cities, outside of India in the future.
There are over 250 million blue and grey collar workers in India and providing them meaningful employment opportunities is one of the biggest challenges in our country, said Harshjit Sethi, Principal at Sequoia Capital India, in a statement.
“With internet usage in this demographic growing rapidly, further catalysed by the Jio effect, apps such as Apna can play a meaningful role in democratizing access to employment and skilling. Apna has built a unique product where users quickly come together in professional communities, an unmet need so far,” he added.
Netflix tests a free promotional offering, Amazon’s drone delivery gets trial flight approval from the FAA and Neuralink shows off its human-brain tech. This is your Daily Crunch for August 31, 2020.
The company has already been testing out making select titles free in certain markets, and today it expanded that test across the globe, with a library of Netflix content, including “Stranger Things,” “Bird Box,” “When They See Us” and “Our Planet” now available free to non-subscribers (only the first episode, in the case of series). A skippable 30-second ad for Netflix plays before you watch.
“We’re looking at different marketing promotions to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience,” the company said in a statement.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Earlier this year, online marketplace OfferUp raised $120 million and acquired a top competitor, letgo as a part of the fundraise led by letgo’s majority investor, OLX Group. As a part of the deal, OfferUp said it planned to eventually combine the businesses’ respective marketplaces into one but didn’t get into specifics of how that merger would take place. Today, OfferUp says it has now combined the OfferUp and letgo marketplaces into a new app and explained how the transition will work for former letgo users.
The newly combined OfferUp and letgo application is available across both iOS and Android, and expands the number of deals, buyers and seller, by naturing of its combined communities. With the expansion and merger, users on the new marketplace will also gain access to features like nationwide shipping and OfferUp’s safety programs like TruYou and Community MeetUp Spots. In addition, the listings on the app will never expire, though letgo had expired them after 30 days.
Existing letgo users will be directed to download the new OfferUp & letgo app, then use their letgo sign-in information to create their new OfferUp account. When they sign in, their account’s reputation, including their ratings, sales and purchase history, and join date will transfer from letgo to OfferUp.
However, items users had listed on letgo will not move over to OfferUp. Instead, they’ll need to be reposted. For customers who were in the middle of transactions, the company is offering a website legacy.letgo.com where those transactions can be completed. This site will be shut down after September 21, so it’s being advised that all parties quickly complete their sales.
As a result of the merger, customers with an active subscription to Super Boost Mode on letgo will have that subscription automatically cancelled. They can choose to use OfferUp’s Promote Plus service instead, but won’t be automatically signed up or opted in.
There will be some other differences between the two marketplaces that letgo users should understand. While the merger does bring nationwide shipping to former letgo users, it also means that some of letgo’s categories are no longer supported. These include jobs, services, rental listings and gift cards.
In addition, letgo won’t be supported in Canada due to the merger and OfferUp hasn’t yet reached Canada either. That means the company will lose some number of Canadian users as a part of the deal.
At the time of the deal, letgo brought to the table an app that had over 100 million worldwide downloads, so there is potential for at least some portion of its lapsed users to reactive their accounts upon their next launch. The two apps had also been neck-and-neck in terms of their App Store category rankings before the acquisition, though the iPhone version of OfferUp had a slight lead.
As of yesterday, OfferUp was still ahead with a ranking of No. 4 in iPhone’s Shopping category, compared with letgo at No. 12, per data from Sensor Tower.
Streaming services have built-in kids’ profiles, so why not devices? Google today is responding to parents’ demand for a better way for their children to interact with technology with the launch of the new “Google Kids Space,” a dedicated kids mode on Android tablets which will aggregate apps, books, and videos for kids to enjoy and learn from. The feature will launch first on the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 HD Gen 2, but Google aims to bring Kids Space to more devices in time.
The concept is somewhat similar to Amazon’s FreeTime, Amazon’s own well-built system for parental controls and access to approved and curated children’s’ apps and media. But in Google’s case, its new kids’ mode is building on top of the company’s earlier efforts focused on designing a safer, more controlled Android experience for families with children.
These efforts began with Family Link, a series of parental control features that’s now built into the Android OS. Family Link already allows parents to set screen time limits, engage content safety filters, set privacy controls, and more. Google then expanded into kids’ app curation with the launch of a Kids tab in Google Play where it can showcase “teacher-approved” mobile apps and games.
Image Credits: Google
The new Kids Space leverages Google’s earlier work in evaluating Android apps for its “Play” tab, and has expanded its curation to now include other types of quality content. For example, Google worked with publishers to make popular children’s books free of charge in Kids Space, and at launch offers over 400 free books in the “Read” tab for users in the U.S.
In the Kids Space’ “Watch” and “Make” tabs, Google is pulling in creative content from YouTube Kids that encourage off-screen activities.
Image Credits: Google
The feature is ultimately meant to be a selling point for Android devices and a way to lock families into the Google ecosystem. This differentiates it from Amazon’s FreeTime, which only partially has this aim. Amazon’s FreeTime is largely meant to a subscription offering, and it’s one that works across platforms — including Amazon devices like Fire tablets and Echo smart speakers, but also on iOS and Android devices. Google’s Kids Space, meanwhile, is only designed for Android.
Google Kids Space is initially available on on the Lenovo Tab M10 HD Gen 2. The company said it worked with Lenovo to ease the setup process for parents and to ensure that Kids Space is a pre-loaded feature. Google says it aims to bring Kids Mode to more Android tablets soon.
Motorola has really been pumping out phones in 2020 including the Moto Razr, two models of the Moto Edge, and a seemingly endless string of variousMoto G phones. But out of all those, the new Motorola One 5G almost certainly packs the best bang for your buck.
Over the past year, Netflix has attempted to expand its appeal in part by making a title or two free to non-paying users in select markets. Now the American giant is extending this test to users across the globe — with a larger free catalog.
The on-demand video streaming service is currently offering select Netflix Original movies and TV shows including “Stranger Things”, “Murder Mystery”, “Elite”, “Bird Box”, “When They See Us”, “The Two Popes”, “Our Planet”, and Grace and Frankie” to non-paying subscribers across all the nearly 200 nations and territories where it is operational. Only first episodes of the shows are available for free viewing, after which Netflix prompts users to become a subscribers. Movies are available in full-length, however.
“We’re looking at different marketing promotions to attract new members and give them a great Netflix experience,” a Netflix spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.
Users do not need to create an account to view these free shows or movies, Netflix says. The free viewing, first spotted by blog OnlyTech, is accessible only through web browsers. On a support page, Netflix says Android users can access this offer through their mobile browser as well — but iOS users can’t.
It also made “Bard of Blood”, a show it produced in India, free to users in the country. It also made talk show “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj” available to users for free on YouTube. The company had initially planned to make only first two episodes free on YouTube.
But this is the first time Netflix is making so many shows and movies (10, to be exact) available to non-paying users across the globe. The company has not shared how long it plans to run this experiment.
Speaking of India, the streaming giant has run several experiments in the country, one of the largest entertainment markets in Asia. It has explored making the service available for a few cents for the first month for new users, and is currently testing several affordable plans.
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
In this series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
This week, two big stories dominated the news: Apple’s fight with Fortnite maker Epic Games and TikTok’s negotiations with top U.S. tech firms over a sale. The former story saw Microsoft coming to Epic Games’ aid in court, in a surprise move.
Meanwhile, TikTok deal talks are happening quickly as both Oracle and Microsoft’s names have emerged as top suitors. But this week, we saw Walmart joining in the talks, too. Yes, Walmart!
One has to wonder if the TikTok that emerges from an acquisition like this will even be the TikTok that people today love to use, what with all these new corporate synergies that come into play.
Top Stories
Apple gets petty in fight with Epic Games
Image credit: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sorry, Apple, but this is not a good look.
On Friday, the $2 trillion company took its battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games to a whole new level of petty. Just as Fortnite for iOS and Mac was officially blocked from being able to issue updates for its apps, Apple featured Fortnite top competitor PUBG Mobile in the App Store in an editorial story on the Today tab. Apple’s App Store Twitter account also posted about PUBG Mobile’s New Era.
Oh my gosh they did it. They actually did it. They’re running a featured story on the App Store about PUBG today. pic.twitter.com/M4nwA3sBQA
This isn’t coincidental, but a conscious decision on Apple’s part to demonstrate its market power. That is: if you don’t want to play by our rules, fine — we’ll just give business to your competitor instead. Being featured on the App Store drives downloads for an app, which helps an app find new users and reconnect with existing ones.
Apple made its point, but it sure was an ugly way to do it.
In a surprise move, Microsoft came out in support of Epic Games this week. Microsoft GM of gaming developer experiences Kevin Gammill submitted a letter to the court that said Apple’s move to cut ties with Epic would harm game developers. Microsoft uses Epic’s Unreal Engine for its own title, “Forza Street,” but the company understands the damage Apple can do to the gaming industry if it stopped Epic from being able to work on Unreal Engine by disabling its Apple developer account.
Plus, if there’s a battle between the gaming industry and Apple, Microsoft will probably take game developers’ sides these days. After all, Microsoft is in the gaming business and its own cloud gaming service xCloud is banned from the App Store, too, as is Google’s Stadia. Apple’s decision to disallow cloud gaming is anti-consumer and fairly unpopular.
The judge in the Apple v. Epic case this week gave Epic Games a temporary restraining order against Apple, but only to stop Apple from retaliating against Epic Games by blocking the company’s Unreal Engine. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also chastised Apple for the move, saying that Epic and Apple were free to litigate against each other, but “their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders.”
Unfortunately, in battles of this size we’re not exactly left with a hero to root for. Epic Games is no indie underdog being crushed by the big guy. It is the big guy. Microsoft is doing okay too. And when Facebook complains that Apple wouldn’t allow its gaming app into the store, or when it rejected Facebook’s app for informing users of Apple’s 30% cut, it’s easy enough to shrug and move on. Oh poor Facebook is not a sentiment people are capable of feeling these days.
But it’s important to remember that what Apple is doing to these big guys, it’s also doing to the smaller ones. We already saw that with the Basecamp Hey debacle. More recently, Apple rejected the free, open-source WordPress app from the App Store for failing to add Apple’s in-app purchase system and because some of the app’s web views could lead to information about WordPress’s pricing plans.
Heads up on why @WordPressiOS updates have been absent… we were locked by App Store. To be able to ship updates and bug fixes again we had to commit to support in-app purchases for .com plans. I know why this is problematic, open to suggestions. Allow others IAP? New name?
The issue was resolved and Apple even apologized, but it’s clear that something is very, very broken at the App Store. And the ultimate loser is the consumer.
In Steve Jobs’ day, GV General Partner M.G. Siegler pointed out in a recent blog post, Apple believed in its App Store and payment systems would win on their own merits, not because they were forced. In Jobs’ own words: “Our philosophy is simple — when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing.”
On Thursday, things went from bad to worse as TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer resigned. The former Disney executive had joined the social network just over 100 days ago, but said this was not the job he signed up for. His hiring now increasingly looks like a way what many had suspected all along — a way for TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to point to Americans in exec roles at TikTok as a way to reassure U.S. regulators about its business.
According to reports, Mayer was left out of the negotiations to sell TikTok, which were instead headed by ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming. Mayer was also said to be scheduled to leave TikTok as part of a planned sale, as his role would no longer exist. But the exec’s sudden departure is bad for morale at a time when TikTok’s existence in the U.S. market remains in question.
Apple releases new betas. Apple’s 6th developer betas for iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7 and tvOS 14 rolled out this week, as did the latest public betas for iOS an iPadOS. The company typically releases its software updates in September, so these are getting close to the final versions.
Facebook and Instagram expand Shopping features. Facebook this week introduced a new “Shop” section in its app, which aims to redirect Facebook users to sellers’ storefronts without leaving Facebook, similar to Instagram’s existing shopping experience. Instagram also began testing live shopping, where businesses can show off content in live videos. Dozens of live video shopping startups will be impacted by the new competition.
YouTube is testing Picture-in-Picture mode on iOS. But will supporting the feature impact YouTube’s ability to upsell subscriptions to those who want access to background play?
Ever shuts down app after building facial recognition tech using customer data. Cloud photo storage app Ever is shutting down. The company last year was the subject of an NBC News report which found Ever had been using its customers’ photos to develop facial recognition technology that it turned around and offered for sale by way of the Ever API to business clients, including law enforcement and the military. Unfortunately, that ill-gotten business lives on, rebranded as Paravision.
Amazon launches a fitness band and app called Halo. The service will sell for $64.99 for a six-month membership at launch. Oh, do we trust Amazon with our health data now?
Facebook warns Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions will significantly impact app developers’ ability to target ads. The company says that without targeting and personalization, mobile app install campaigns brought in 50% less revenue for publishers and it expects the impact to Audience Network on iOS 14 will be even greater. Consumers, sick of being tracked everywhere on the web, are going to be fine with this. Facebook will also be OK. Small startups that used highly targeted ads to save themselves from having to pay for tons more impressions to reach their desired audience, however…
LaunchNotes raised a $1.8 million seed round to help companies better communicate their software updates. No more “bug fixes and performance improvements.”
Berlin-based Delivery Hero acquired InstaShop for $360 million. The latter is based in Dubai and has half a million users in five markets.
Unity files to go public. A rival to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine with its own Unity Game Engine, Unity claims its engine powers over half the top games on mobile, PC and consoles, and 53% of the top 1,000 games on iOS and Android. Not surprisingly, its numbers look strong.
Downloads
Bingie helps you find new things to watch.
Image Credits: Bingie
Bingie aims to turn getting Netflix recommendations from friends into a more structured experience. The app for streamers let them get together with friends to discuss, discover and share recommendations across services. The app looks well-built, but overlooks the fact that not all friend groups share common interests. It would be interesting to see it expand to include fellow fans, like TV Time offers, in a later update. Bingie is free on iOS. Read the full review on TechCrunch.
Mozilla this week launched Firefox 79 for Android, aka Firefox Daylight, after more than a year of development. The new browser is faster and entirely overhauled, offering a new user interface, Mozilla’s browser engine GeckoView, enhanced tracking protection, a private mode (based on the privacy browser Firefox Focus), a new bookmarking tools, support for add-ons and more.
Flipboard gets into video
Image Credits: Flipboard
News magazine app Flipboard has been around for years, but its latest update introduces a big change. The app now allows users to follow video content from hundreds of publishers, including national/global news outlets, local news and (carefully vetted) indie producers. Users can even build out their own video-only collections to stay on top of the latest news in the form of video, or they can add video-only feeds into existing magazines. Publishers can also add video to their static round-ups known as Storyboards. Flipboard TV, as the new feature is called, was previously a Samsung exclusive. Now the ad-supported version is available to all.
