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Investors double down on tech stocks in massive
DoorDash, Airbnb, C3.ai IPOs
Eric Eldon
How to find your next VC
Alex Wilhelm
FDA grants emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine,
distribution to begin within days
Darrell Etherington
Gift Guide: Smart exercise gear to hunker down and get fit with
Darrell Etherington
Extra Crunch
What to expect while fundraising in 2021
Russ Heddleston

The Latest
Cledara, the SaaS purchase and management platform,
raises $3.4M funding
Steve O'Hear
4:00 AM EST•December 14, 2020
Cledara, the SaaS purchase and management platform that helps
bring greater viability and control over a company’s sprawling software
subscriptions, has raised $3.4 million in additional fund...

German Bionic raises $20M led by Samsung for

exoskeleton tech to supercharge human labor
Ingrid Lunden
5:31 AM EST•December 14, 2020
Exoskeleton technology has been one of the more interesting
developments in the world of robotics: instead of building machines
that replace humans altogether, build hardware that humans can wear
t...

Nokia launches a laptop in India

Manish Singh
2:59 AM EST•December 14, 2020
Nokia, the 155-year-old iconic firm that has manufactured a range of
items from rubber to cables to phones and telecommunications
equipment, is ready to expand to a new category. The Finnish firm o...

China fines Alibaba, Tencent’s e-book subsidiary over

anti-trust violations
Rita Liao
2:38 AM EST•December 14, 2020
The Chinese government is moving to curb the power of some of
China’s most influential internet companies. The country’s top market
regulator announced Monday that it is fining Alibaba ...

Appboxo gets $1.1 million seed to build a

mini-app ecosystem for all developers
Catherine Shu@catherineshu / 2:18 AM EST•December 14, 2020
 Comment
Image Credits: Appboxo(opens in a new window)

Pioneered by WeChat almost four years ago, mini-apps are now

common in China and India, and gaining traction in other markets, too.
Mini-apps, or lightweight apps designed for integration into host apps,
allow smartphone users to access several services through one app,
saving them data and storage space. They also give host apps more
ways to make revenue. But most mini-app ecosystems are currently
tied to a specific app or company. Appboxo, a Singapore-based
startup, wants to make mini-apps more accessible by allowing any
developer to turn their app into a “super app.”
Appboxo  announced today it has closed $1.1 million in seed funding,
led by FF APAC Scout, a Founders Fund vehicle; 500 Startups’
Southeast Asia-focused 500 Durians fund; Plug and Play Ventures;
and Antler. The new funding will be used on product development and
to add more mini-apps to Appboxo’s ecosystem.
The startup currently works with about 10 host apps, including
Booking.com, Klook and Zalora, and has about 80 mini-apps on its
platform. Examples of how host apps have used mini-apps include
travel apps that added hotel, restaurant and activities bookings; and
mobile wallets that integrated insurance-buying and e-commerce
services.
Appboxo was founded in 2019 by chief executive officer Kaniyet Rayev
and chief technology officer Nursultan Keneshbekov while participating
in Antler’s Singapore incubator program. Rayev told TechCrunch that
the two initially wanted to build an all-in-one travel app, with different
travel-related services integrated into one platform.
“But when we actually started developing it, we realized there is no
easy way to plug in third-party services,” Rayev said. They began
thinking of ways for developers to create and offer mini-apps as a plug-
and-play solution.
The mini-app economy is currently siloed, with apps or companies like
WeChat, ByteDance, Meituan, Paytm, PhonePe, Grab and Go-jek
either developing mini-apps for their own use, or running mini-app
marketplaces for their users. But last year, the W3C Chinese Web
Interest Group started looking at ways to standardize mini-apps. The
group, including people from Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei, Intel, Xiaomi and
China Mobile, published the first working draft of its white paper in
September 2019 about how mini-apps can be created to work across
platforms.
“It was a really perfect time for us to read that paper, because it was
around the time we started our platform,” said Rayev.
Adding mini-apps can increase engagement because users open apps
more frequently if they can access different services through it. It also
gives app developers more ways to generate revenue through affiliate
partnerships, commissions or transactions fees.
But many native app developers simply don’t have the resources to
develop their own mini-apps, so Appboxo simplifies the process with an
SDK that allows them to integrate any of its platform’s mini-apps. A
second barrier for many app developers is working out business and
development partnership deals with mini-apps, so Appboxo helps guide
them through the process, too.
Since Appboxo is based in Singapore, a lot of its current users are in
Southeast Asia, and it also plans to target India, too. While mini-apps
are less common in Europe and the United States, where most
smartphone owners still use apps with one core offering, Rayev said
that is starting to change. For example, Uber announced it was
merging its ride-hailing and food delivery service, Uber Eats, into one
app, last year, while Snap introduced Minis a few months ago.
Appboxo already has partners in Europe, and “the whole super app
concept is coming to the Western world,” Rayev added. “Hopefully we
can find some new partners in the rest of the world as well.”
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Appboxo gets $1.1 million seed to build a mini-app
ecosystem for all developers
Catherine Shu
2:18 AM EST•December 14, 2020
Pioneered by WeChat almost four years ago, mini-apps are now
common in China and India, and gaining traction in other markets, too.
Mini-apps, or lightweight apps designed for integration into host...
Ola to invest $327M to set up ‘the world’s largest scooter
factory’ in Tamil Nadu
Manish Singh
2:03 AM EST•December 14, 2020
Ola said on Monday that it has signed a memorandum of
understanding with the government of Tamil Nadu in India to set up
what it claims would be the “world’s largest scooter manufacturing
fac...

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migrating data takes weeks or months! Check out the full report.
Reddit acquires Dubsmash
Catherine Shu
11:05 PM EST•December 13, 2020
Reddit announced that it has acquired short video platform
Dubsmash. The deal’s terms were undisclosed. Dubsmash will retain
its own platform and brand, and Reddit will integrate its video
creation...

Extra Crunch
An even bigger battle for gig worker rights is on the
horizon
Megan Rose Dickey
10:52 AM EST•December 13, 2020
In the year ahead, we’ll likely see lobbying efforts from both gig
companies and gig worker organizations — as well as more lawsuits.
TC Sessions: Space 2020
Dec 16 - 17
Meet the most important people in the space industry, across
public, private and defense.
Register today and save

Original Content podcast: David Fincher presents a

compelling character study in ‘Mank’
Anthony Ha, Jordan Crook, Darrell Etherington
9:00 AM EST•December 13, 2020
“Mank” is a change of pace for director David Fincher — instead of
exploring the world of startup backstabbing (“The Social Network”),
political backstabbing (“House o...

Gillmor Gang: Strange Days Indeed

Steve Gillmor
6:05 PM EST•December 12, 2020
The place we’re in, the valley of the dolls between the vote and the
Inauguration, is overshadowed by the battle to save our lives. The
vaccines look promising, and so does the persistence of the T...

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Human Capital: Dr. Timnit Gebru says Google’s memo
was ‘dehumanizing’
Megan Rose Dickey
6:00 PM EST•December 12, 2020
Welcome back to Human Capital, where I break down the latest in
diversity, equity and inclusion, and labor in tech. This week, Twitter
dropped its latest diversity report and Tesla released its fir...
Where we’ll be next

TC Sessions: Space 2020

Dec 16 - 17

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TC Sessions: SaaS 2021

Nov 3

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How to find your next VC

Alex Wilhelm
4:00 PM EST•December 12, 2020
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-
markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that
appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend
reading. ...

Investors double down on tech stocks in massive

DoorDash, Airbnb, C3.ai IPOs
Eric Eldon
2:00 PM EST•December 12, 2020
Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any
startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m.
PT). Subscribe here. Maybe it is a stock market bubble, or a tech-
stock...
This Week in Apps: Apple scolds adtech, Facebook hit
with antitrust suits, Twitter buys Squad
Sarah Perez
10:37 AM EST•December 12, 2020
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series
that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the
overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a...

FDA grants emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s

COVID-19 vaccine, distribution to begin within days
Darrell Etherington
9:40 PM EST•December 11, 2020
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an
Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the COVID-19 vaccine
developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, the New York Times
first reported...
Daily Crunch: Hyundai acquires 80% stake in Boston
Robotics
Anthony Ha
6:51 PM EST•December 11, 2020
Hyundai takes a controlling stake in an iconic robotics company,
Twitter acquires a screen-sharing startup and we round up some
security-themed gift ideas. This is your Daily Crunch for December
11...

Oracle is headed to Texas now, too

Connie Loizos
5:31 PM EST•December 11, 2020
Austinites, watch out; another tech company is headed into town. Just
days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during an interview that he
has moved to Texas, and less than two weeks after HP Enterp...
Here comes the Faraday fabric
Devin Coldewey
3:13 PM EST•December 11, 2020
You don’t have to buy into 5G conspiracy theories to think that you
could do with a little less radiation in your life. One way of blocking
radiation is a Faraday cage, but this is usually a ...
Extra Crunch
General Catalyst’s Katherine Boyle and Peter Boyce are
looking for ‘obsessive’ founders
There are definitely people who are working at companies that we
start engaging before they even ...
Jordan Crook
3:00 PM EST•December 11, 2020
Give the gift of Extra Crunch for 25% off
Travis Bernard, J.M. Donaldson
2:32 PM EST•December 11, 2020
This holiday season, TechCrunch readers can send an Extra Crunch
annual membership as a gift to a friend, family member or co-worker
for 25% off.  The gifting feature can be found here. Extra Crunc...

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