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The Station: Via hits $2.25B valuation, letters from readers, layoffs in a time of COVID-19

Hi, and welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages travel from Point A to Point B. I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. If this is your first time, hello; I’m glad you’re with us.

I have started to publish a version of the newsletter on TechCrunch. That’s what you’re reading now. For the whole newsletter, which comes out every weekend, you can subscribe by heading over here, and clicking “The Station.” It’s free!

Last week, I asked readers to share how they were doing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The response was overwhelming. It wasn’t just the number of you who reached out. It was your words — devoid of pretense, the veneer exposed — that struck me.

There were, of course, those who used the opportunity to make a marketing push or pitch a story. I get the impulse, but you won’t be rewarded here. I’m seeking something different. And I will share below some of what you sent me in hopes that it provides insight, solace or, dare I suggest, an esprit de corps among us.

I will repeat my appeal from last week: Maybe you’re a startup founder, a safety driver at an autonomous vehicle developer, a venture capitalist, engineer or gig economy worker. I’m interested in how you’re doing, what you’re doing to cope and how you’re getting around in your respective cities.

Please reach out and email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, opinions or tips or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin’

the

As we’ve seen the past few weeks, operators are stepping up to respond and adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lyft began offering its scooters for free to healthcare and other essential workers. As part of the program, up to 30-minute rides will be free for members of critical workforces through April 30 in Austin, Denver, Los Angeles, the Washington D.C. metro area, San Diego and Santa Monica.

Spin, similarly, introduced a new initiative that provides free, 30-minute rides and helmets to essential healthcare workers. Spin, which began offering this on April 1, is making this available in Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, Tampa and Washington, D.C.

‘Micromobility winter on steroids’

That’s how RideReport CEO William Henderson described the current state of the micromobility industry in a recent interview with TechCrunch reporter Megan Rose Dickey.

Ride Report creates software that enables cities to work with micromobility operators. That gives Henderson a bird’s-eye view on the industry, which he shared with TechCrunch.

Yep, this is an Extra Crunch article, and you need a subscription. A few of the highlights include biking as one of the few bright spots, how some companies have pivoted to providing rides to healthcare workers and insights on how the industry and cities might have reacted had the pandemic occurred two years in the future.

A novel rewards program

These times have sparked a host of new ideas. Here’s one. A Nashville-based startup called Hytch Rewards developed an app that companies and governments can use to give their employees incentives to walk, bike, rideshare or use public transit. The company’s entire purpose has been to reward commuter behavior that reduces traffic congestion and lowers emissions.

Now it’s pivoting to reward people for staying at home. The office of Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper is among the first employer to partner on Hytch’s Shelter in Place initiative, which offers a small daily reward to staff for working from home.

— Megan Rose Dickey  (with a cameo from Kirsten Korosec)

Deal of the week

money

This week, we’ll highlight Via’s Series E funding round that was led by Exor. The on-demand shuttle startup raised $400 million, TechCrunch learned. Exor contributed $200 million of that raise. The remaining $200 million came from new investors Macquarie Capital, Mori Building and Shell, as well as existing investors 83North, Broadscale Group, Ervington Investments, Hearst Ventures, Planven Ventures, Pitango and RiverPark Ventures.

Noam Ohana, who heads up Exor Seeds, the holding company’s early-stage investment arm, will join Via’s board.

Via gets the “deal of the week” designation not just because its post-funding valuation is now $2.25 billion. Via’s actions during the pandemic offers a little bit of understanding on how companies are adapting and where opportunities may lie. Via has two sides of its business: a consumer-facing shuttle and a “partnerships” division that sells its software platform to cities and transit authorities that allows them to deploy their own shuttles.

As you might expect, the consumer-facing shuttles has been adversely affected by COVID-19. There is some promise with the partnerships side of the business, according to CEO Daniel Ramot .

Existing partners, a list that includes transit authorities in Berlin, Germany, Ohio and Malta, have worked with Via to convert or adapt the software to meet new needs during the pandemic. A city might dedicate its shuttle service to transporting goods or essential personnel. For instance, Berlin converted its 120-shuttle fleet transport to an overnight service that provides free transit to healthcare workers traveling to and from work.

“There has been a real interest in emergency services,” Ramot told me, adding he expects to see more demand for the software platform and the flexibility it provides as the pandemic unfolds.

Via isn’t the only company shifting its attention to emergency services. Moovit, an Israeli-based Mobility as a Service startup, launched an Emergency Mobilization On-Demand service. The feature was developed to turn unused vehicle fleets into an on-demand solution to get essential workers to their destination. Moovit is also offering transit agencies and operators a transit data manager for free for three months. This management tool lets transit agencies communicate schedules, line changes and service alerts to users.

Other deals:

  • Qcraft.ai raised what it described as an “eight-figure USD investment” in a seed funding round from IDG Capital, Vision+ Capital and Tide Capital. Qraft didn’t provide the exact number; VentureBeat reported it is $24 million.
  • Phantom.ai, which has focused on advanced driver assistance systems, raised $22 million in a Series A round led by Celeres Investments; Celeres was joined by Ford Motor and Korean telecommunications giant KT. Two existing investors, Millennium Technology Value Partners and DSC Investment, also participated in the round.
  • Seegrid, a company that makes self-driving industrial vehicles for material handling, closed a $25 million growth-equity investment from G2VP.
  • GM and Honda deepened their relationship and said they will jointly develop two new electric vehicles slated for 2024. Under the plan, the automakers will focus on their respective areas of expertise. Honda will design the exterior and interiors of the new electric vehicles; GM will contribute its new electric vehicle architecture and Ultium batteries, its OnStar safety and security services and its hands-free advanced driver assistance technology, known as Super Cruise.
  • Enovix, which has developed a silicon-based lithium-ion battery, has raised $45 million in new funds. The company said T. J. Rodgers and York Capital participated, as well as an unnamed “major new strategic investor.”

Layoffs in a time of COVID-19

We’ve all seen the bars, restaurants, retail shops and salons in our community shuttered because of stay-at-home directives from local and state governments. We’ve started to see the results of those closures in the form of tens of thousands of jobless claims.

Startups are not immune. It is difficult to get an exact number, but Layoffs.fyi is working to track what is going on in the startup world. As of April 4, the site had calculated 126 startups had laid off more than 10,000 people since March 11.

The transportation sector has been among those hardest hit. Some of the companies that have laid off 20% or more of their staff include shared scooter company Bird; peer-to-peer car rental startups Getaround and Turo; Cabin; freight brokerage KeepTruckin: and Moovel and Zipcar.

Maybe your company is actually hiring. If so, go check out Layoffs.fyi, the site doesn’t just list layoffs. The site also includes spreadsheet that list employees you might want to hire.

From you

I have selected a few excerpts from readers who shared with me — and now you all — their observations about what is happening in their lives in this COVID-19 world. I have edited these for length and clarity.

I plan to share more with you in the weeks ahead, so please reach out.

From Canoo CPO James Cox, who also advises founders of Routable.ai, a startup that developed a real-time routing engine for high-capacity rides. Cox explained in his email to me that Routable’s CEO wrote a piece in Medium (which you can read here) about providing critical transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic:

As a result of the piece, the Boston Medical Center reached out last week. They’ve now adapted their technology to provide rides to homeless people and solve an allocation problem of which bed in which hospital in Boston to send them to.

They’ve worked directly with the frontline doctors and nurses and IT teams on it. They were previously using a whiteboard, which is obviously not going to scale to solve the problem! The trial launches Monday and is a really interesting short-term pivot that is solely focussed on doing good and adjusting to this crazy world we are now living in.

From Aryan Bhasin, a college student under lockdown in India:

There is no sense of transportation at all. Public transport is becoming interesting because even though all forms of transport are banned (one can only use a vehicle to buy essentials at grocery stores), the Indian government has been sending hoards of buses to get villagers back to their villages — completely blowing apart all rules of social distancing.

Airlines, too, have been a very interesting sector to follow. Most airlines have changed their business models significantly in lieu of COVID-19 as governments organize airlifts for stranded citizens.

From Luis Orsini-Rosenberg, CEO of GetHenry, a Berlin-based micromobility startup that focuses on B2B services. GetHenry, which is part of the Techstars Smart Mobility Accelerator, operates in Austria, Germany and Spain. He shared what is happening in Austria:

All of our business partners in Austria had to close its gates. A day after the lockdown was communicated by the government, we started to reach out to hundreds of restaurants, deliveries, couriers, hospitals, pharmacies and medical services to offer them our vehicles for individual transportation or last-mile delivery cases. Last week, the first e-scooters went out to restaurant partners and medical services.

We are starting to generate some revenues again, but it will not be enough to keep the business alive long-term. We have applied for public aid funds and wage subsidies and will cut costs to an absolute minimum in the coming weeks. Going forward, we will either: wait and do nothing or solely focus on the last-mile delivery service.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/06/the-station-via-hits-2-25b-valuation-letters-from-readers-layoffs-in-a-time-of-covid-19/

telecommunications

United Airlines CISO Emily Heath joins TC Sessions: Enterprise this September

In an era of massive data breaches, most recently the Capital One fiasco, the risk of a cyberattack and the costly consequences are the top existential threat to corporations big and small. At TechCrunch’s first-ever enterprise-focused event (p.s. early-bird sales end August 9), that topic will be front and center throughout the day.

That’s why we’re delighted to announce United’s chief information security officer Emily Heath will join TC Sessions: Enterprise in San Francisco on September 5, where we will discuss and learn how one of the world’s largest airlines keeps its networks safe.

Joining her to talk enterprise security will be a16z partner Martin Casado and DUO / Cisco’s head of advisory CISOs Wendy Nather, among others still to be announced.

At United, Heath oversees the airline’s cybersecurity program and its IT regulatory, governance and risk management.

The U.S.-based airline has more than 90,000 employees serving 4,500 flights a day to 338 airports, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

A native of Manchester, U.K., Heath served as a former police detective in the U.K. Financial Crimes Unit where she led investigations into international investment fraud, money laundering and large scale cases of identity theft — and ran joint investigations with the FBI, SEC and London’s Serious Fraud Office.

Heath and her teams have been the recipients of CSO Magazine’s CSO50 Awards for their work in cybersecurity and risk.

At TC Sessions: Enterprise, Heath will join a panel of cybersecurity experts to discuss security on enterprise networks large and small — from preventing data from leaking to keeping bad actors out of their network — where we’ll learn how a modern CSO moves fast without breaking things.

Join hundreds of today’s leading enterprise experts for this single-day event when you purchase a ticket to the show. The $249 early-bird sale ends Friday, August 9. Make sure to grab your tickets today and save $100 before prices go up.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/02/emily-heath-united-sessions-enterprise/

telecommunications

In healthcare these days, Theres an app for that unless you really need it

Sarah Lisker Contributor

Sarah Lisker is a Program Manager at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations and a collaborator in The OpEd Project. She manages SOLVE Health Tech, which bridges private sector innovation with public health expertise to make digital health accessible.

When a digital health company announces a new app, everyone seems to think it’s going to improve health. Not me.

Where I work, in San Francisco’s public health system, in a hospital named after the founder of Facebook, digital solutions promising to improve health feel far away.

The patients and providers in our public delivery system are deeply familiar with the real-world barriers to leveraging technology to improve health. Our patients are low-income (nearly all of them receive public insurance) and diverse (more than 140 languages are spoken). Many of them manage multiple chronic conditions. The providers that care for them struggle with fragmented health records and outdated methods of communication, like faxes and pagers.

So when companies tell us they will cure diseases, drive down costs, and save lives with state-of-the-art technology, I am often hesitant. 

More than thirty billion dollars have been invested in digital health since 2011. The resulting technological innovations, such as mobile applications, telemedicine, and wearables, promise to help patients fight diabetes, treat chronic disease, or lose weight, for example.

However, we have yet to see digital health drive meaningful improvements in health outcomes and reductions in health expenditures. This lack of impact is because digital health companies build products that often don’t reach beyond the “worried well” – primarily healthy people who make up a small proportion of health expenditures and are already engaged in the healthcare system.

If we’re designing health apps for those who already have access to healthcare, nutritious food, clean air to breathe, and stable housing, we’re missing the point.

It’s no surprise that health apps are incongruous with the needs of low-income, diverse, and vulnerable patients when these populations are unlikely to be a part of user testing. In addition, the science that technology developers draw from is generated by clinical trials conducted on participants who often do not reflect the diversity of the United States.

Over 80% of clinical trial participants are white, and many are young and male. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, as well as older adults must be included in clinical trials to ensure the results — drawn on not only for product development but also for clinical care and policy — are relevant for diverse populations. 

Research conducted by my colleagues at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations demonstrates that patients who are low-income are unable to access many digital health apps. One of our patients testing a popular depression-management app said, “I’d get really impatient with this” and expressed concern that “Somebody that’s not too educated would be like, ‘now, what do I do here?’” A caregiver testing a different app also voiced frustration, saying “Yeah, it’s an app that makes you feel like an idiot.” Yet, despite these barriers, the majority of our study participants (most of whom have smart phones) also express a high interest in using technology to manage their health.

 While the private sector is great for innovation, it will fail to improve health in a meaningful way without real-world evidence generated in partnership with diverse patients. In addition, these for-profit companies face long odds to benefit their shareholders in a substantial way without learning how to reach the 75 million patients on Medicaid (including 1 in 3 Californians) who stand to benefit from digital health solutions.

 There’s an answer, though, and it’s within reach. To truly improve health outcomes, digital health companies must partner with public health experts and patients to not only ground themselves in evidence-based research, but also build products that meet the needs of all patients. 

Along with the compelling business potential of innovating for Medicaid, infrastructure to support this work is growing. For example, organizations like HealthTech4Medicaid are bending the arc of innovation towards the patients who need it most through advocacy and key partnerships with payers, policy makers, care providers, and technology developers.

To truly revolutionize health, let’s demand that technology creators and scalers include diverse end users early and often. Otherwise, the app “for that” will be for them, not for all of us.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/21/in-healthcare-these-days-theres-an-app-for-that-unless-you-really-need-it/

Credit Cards

Partnering with Visa, emerging market lender Branch International raises $170 million

The San Francisco-based startup Branch International, which makes small personal loans in emerging markets, has raised $170 million and announced a partnership with Visa to offer virtual, pre-paid debit cards to Branch client networks in Africa, South-Asia and Latin America. 

Branch — which has 150 employees in San Francisco, Lagos, Nairobi, Mexico City and Mumbai — makes loans starting at $2 to individuals in emerging and frontier markets. The company also uses an algorithmic model to determine credit worthiness, build credit profiles and offer liquidity via mobile phones.

“We’ll use [the money] to deepen existing business in Africa. Later this year we’ll announce high-yield savings accounts…in Africa,” says Branch co-founder and chief executive Matt Flannery.

The $170 million round from Foundation Capital and its new debit card partner, Visa, will support Branch’s international expansion, which could include Brazil and Indonesia, according to Flannery. Branch launched in Mexico and India within the last year. In Africa, it offers its services in Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania.

A potential Branch customer

The Branch-Visa partnership will allow individuals to obtain virtual Visa accounts with which to create accounts on Branch’s app. This gives Branch larger reach in countries such as Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country with 190 million people — where cards have factored more prominently than mobile money in connecting unbanked and underbanked populations to finance.

Founded in 2015, Branch started operating in Kenya, where mobile money payment products such as Safaricom’s M-Pesa (which does not require a card or bank account to use) have scaled significantly. M-Pesa now has 25 million users, according to sector stats released by the Communications Authority of Kenya. Branch has more than 3 million customers and has processed 13 million loans and disbursed more than $350 million, according to company stats.

Branch has one of the most downloaded fintech apps in Africa, per Google Play app numbers combined for Nigeria and Kenya, according to Flannery.

Already profitable, Branch International expects to reach $100 million in revenues this year, with roughly 70 percent of that generated in Africa, according to Flannery.

In addition to Visa and Foundation Capital, the $170 Series C round included participation from Branch’s existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Trinity Ventures, Formation 8, the IFC, CreditEase and Victory Park, while adding new investors Greenspring, Foxhaven and B Capital.

Branch last raised $70 million in 2018. The company’s overall VC haul and $100 million revenue peg register as pretty big numbers for a startup focused primarily on Africa. Pan-African e-commerce startup Jumia, which also announced its NYSE IPO last month, generated $140 million in revenue (without profitability) in 2018.

Startups building financial technologies for Africa’s 1.2 billion population have gained the attention of investors. As a sector, fintech (or financial inclusion) attracted 50 percent of the estimated $1.1 billion funding to African startups in 2018, according to Partech.

Branch’s recent round and plans to add countries internationally also tracks a trend of fintech-related products growing in Africa, then expanding outward. This includes M-Pesa, which generated big numbers in Kenya before operating in 10 countries around the world. Nigerian payments startup Paga announced its pending expansion in Asia and Mexico late last year. And payment services such as Kenya’s SimbaPay have also connected to global networks like China’s WeChat.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/partnering-with-visa-emerging-market-lender-branch-international-raises-170-million/