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Travel startup snags an inside round to fuel product additions

With an industry upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, travel startup TripGrid has spent the last nearly two years working closely with its users and signing on big customers. Based on that work, the startup secured another $1.6 million from existing investors to capitalize on an even bigger opportunity.

TripGrid created workflow automation software designed for large group travel. Think project and production-based users like entertainment, sports and media companies that have internal travel coordinators and must move lots of people. These are projects and trips that are core to customers’ business and therefore are expected to recover. And they have to some degree as the pandemic has evolved.

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LiLz uses computer vision to read gauges and dials where humans prefer not to tread

No one wants to be the maintenance worker who has to hike through half a mile of damp hallways just to check the pressure gauge on a valve somewhere. LiLz makes it possible to keep an eye on such inconvenient physical interfaces remotely with a clever and practical application of machine learning.

The Japanese (specifically Okinawan) startup has been around for a little while — in fact our colleagues at TC JP have written them up. But despite the seemingly obvious value of its service, it hasn’t quite hit the big time yet. LiLz participated in CES as part of the country’s trade group, along with a bunch more companies listed here.

LiLz’s device looks a bit like a chubby tablet without a screen. It’s essentially a camera, light and processing and communications chips packed in with a big battery — enough power to last up to three years.

You mount the device so it can see the gauge or dial in question. After confirming picture and signal, you configure it in the app to interpret what it’s pointed at; it can read circular, semicircular and linear gauges, digital and rolling or analog digit displays, or things like colored warning lights.

Once it’s set up, it’ll send readings live or at intervals to a central dashboard, or make them available via API so they can be queried or recorded elsewhere. The data goes out via LTE or Bluetooth.

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‘Paradox’ startup company becomes unicorn with ‘Olivia’ investment

Paradox, the startup that developed Olivia – a digital recruiter that communicates with job applicants, completed a $200 million round of funding at a value of $1.5 billion and has become a unicorn, due to the company’s investment in the digital recruiter.
Olivia, Paradox’s core product, is a virtual personal assistant that joins human recruitment teams and helps them automate all recruitment processes. For example, the software checks and screens the suitability of a resume for relevant jobs, carries out automatic interview scheduling, reminds the candidate to fill out forms and provides information that would be accessible to recruitment teams and other candidates. It can also send job offers automatically to possible candidates.
Over the past year, Olivia has conducted 30 million job interviews for hundreds of companies in some 50 countries and has independently scheduled 3.1 million interviews. Paradox began operating in Israel in early 2021 after acquiring the startup Spetz, whose workers integrated with the company.

Augmented Reality Boosts Online Shopping Sales up to 200%

For shoppers who’ve yearned for an immersive, personalized experience that’s open 24/7, mobile augmented reality (AR) technology is the real-time deal of the next era. Bangalore-based startup Adloid is leading the charge with a platform that turns two-dimensional search and discovery into a full-fledged 3D experience, whether someone is in the market for automobiles or bikes, household furniture, consumer electronics, or personal lifestyle products.

“Our AR platform gives consumers and companies personalized virtual shopping and training experiences, expanding the horizon of what AR can do for any brand or company,” said Kanav Singla, founder and CEO of Adloid. “We’re making the benefits of this technology more accessible and contextual to create an immersive experience for customers or employees on an e-commerce Website or within applications, directly from someone’s mobile device.”

Unlike earlier AR tech that relied on clunky headsets with varied compatibility, Adloid’s AR platform runs on any smartphone, allowing customers to experience products at scale, in context. Once the online shopper logs in through their phone, the device’s camera scans their real-world surroundings and virtually mirrors the retailer’s or manufacturer’s product.

“People can see how a new sofa or chair would fit into their home or apartment with a click of their smartphone,” said Singla. “Consumers can virtually try on jewelry, makeup, and other products. Remote workers can see if that laptop, screen, and desk configuration will fit in their home office. It’s as if the actual products are in front of you.”

He added that manufacturers were interested in using the AR platform within training modules for industrial machinery service technicians, providing them with hands-on learning in a virtual setting.

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Digimarc Corporation Completes Acquisition of EVRYTHNG Ltd.

Digimarc Corporation (Nasdaq: DMRC), creator of Digimarc watermarks that are driving the next generation of digital identification and detection-based solutions, announced today it has successfully completed its previously announced acquisition of the Product Cloud company EVRYTHNG Ltd, based in London, UK.

As EVRYTHNG becomes part of Digimarc, it enables a complete solution set for customers, combining the best form of identification with the best cloud platform for gaining and managing the intelligence unlocked by that identification of objects.

“This acquisition is transformative to our business,” explains Digimarc CEO Riley McCormack. “EVRYTHNG’s market-leading product cloud offering provides Digimarc entrée into a potentially enormous market at the cusp of inflection, powers up our ability to sell robust, fully-integrated solutions that no one else can offer, and provides future cross-selling opportunities by providing more on-ramps to our dual platforms. In addition to adding 65 talented and passionate individuals to our team, we can leverage the complementarity of our geographic presence, expanding our ability to serve our increasingly-global customer base while also increasing our ability to attract and retain the best talent world-wide.”

EVRYTHNG is the market leader and pioneered the Product Cloud category, linking every product item to its Active Digital Identity™ on the web and joining-up product data across the value chain for visibility, validation, real time intelligence and connection with people.

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Offering Bespoke One-On-One Mentoring To Employees Helps Retain Workers

What keeps CEOs up at night is worrying about how to attract, recruit and retain workers. The job market is so challenging that Apple is awarding bonuses up to $180,000 to keep software engineers from being poached by rivals like Meta, Amazon and Google. Deskless people who work in warehouses, fulfillment centers, restaurants, bars and department stores are being offered sign-on bonuses, wage increases, flexible schedules and free college tuition.

Innovative startups are seeking out new creative ways to help businesses mentor, upskill, cross-train and help employees succeed, so that the odds will increase that people will stick around. GrowthSpace, an Israeli-based tech company, offers a clever way to help CEOs fight attrition by offering personalized learning and development programs (L&D), driven by an artificial intelligence data-driven platform.

The startup connects workers with an appropriate mentor. The employee will have one-on-one, personalized programs that match each employee’s challenge with the right expert, coach or mentor. In addition to specifically tailored advice and guidance, based on the employee’s needs, managers receive feedback simultaneously that measures progress to ensure the plan is efficient and effective.

On a Mission to Build the Next Generation of HR and Recruiting Software through Conversational AI, Paradox Raises $200M Series C

Paradox, the conversational recruiting platform built to give every recruiter, hiring manager, and talent professional an assistant to get work done, announced a $200M Series C investment. The round was led by Stripes, Sapphire, and Thoma Bravo, and included participation from Workday Ventures, Willoughby Capital, Twilio Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Geodesic, Principia Growth, DLA Piper Venture Fund and current investor Brighton Park Capital.

Paradox’s vision is embodied by Olivia — the conversational AI assistant helping companies like Unilever, Nestle, McDonald’s, CVS Health, and General Motors automate tasks like candidate screening, interview scheduling, onboarding, and more through smart, simple, mobile-first experiences. In just five years, Olivia has helped 500+ global clients save millions of hours of manual work — freeing their teams up to spend time with people, not software.

“When we created Paradox, we saw a future where software became invisible — driven by conversations that untether people from their desktop through an assistant who gets work done for them. That vision is now taking hold in some of the biggest companies in the world and we couldn’t be prouder of that accomplishment,” said Paradox founder and CEO, Aaron Matos.

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Sounding Board, Inc. Named Bronze Winner in the 2021 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Awards

Sounding Board, Inc, the first customizable leadership coaching platform that combines technology and coaching to drive measurable business impact, was recognized with a coveted Brandon Hall Group bronze award for tech excellence in the Best Advance in Online Coaching Tools category. Sounding Board’s award was announced earlier this month on the heels of the company’s recent news of its Series B fund.

“It is exciting to see the industry recognize the breadth and depth of our solution at Sounding Board – 54% of companies plan to increase their use of internal and external coaching to deliver coaching and Sounding Board will be the technology platform to enable that at scale,” Christine Tao, Co-founder & CEO of Sounding Board.

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Gtmhub’s $120 Million Series C Financing

Gtmhub, an objectives and key results (OKR) platform, announced its $120 million Series C financing led by Index Ventures. The company’s OKR management software is designed to help fast-growing companies combine goal management and data integration to support human decision-making. The new capital will be put toward hiring and product expansion.

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Automation Anywhere expands into process discovery with FortressIQ acquisition

Automation Anywhere, which is best known for its robotic process automation (RPA) software, plans to expand the platform. The company announced that it intends to acquire process discovery startup FortressIQ. The companies did not reveal the purchase price. FortressIQ gives Automation Anywhere this missing process discovery component, which enables AI-fueled software to map internal processes in an automated way, replacing high-priced consultants.

“Together, Automation Anywhere and FortressIQ will reshape the future of automation, changing the way our customers automate, adapt, and accelerate as they pursue digital transformation initiatives,” Automation Anywhere CEO and co-founder Mihir Shukla said in a statement.

While there is more than a hint of executive bombast in that statement, the acquisition does expand the company’s capabilities. Consider that FortressIQ raised $46 million since its founding in 2017, according to PitchBook data. We covered the $12 million Series A in 2018 and $30 million Series B last year.

But compare that with Celonis, the market leader, which has attracted $1.4 billion in investment, according to Crunchbase data, including a massive $1 billion Series B on an $11 billion valuation in June. That followed a significant agreement with IBM in April to help sell its services inside large organizations.

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South Korean Payments Firm CHAI Pockets US$45 Million in Series B+ Fundraise

South Korean payments startup CHAI raised US$45 million during a Series B+ funding round that was co-led by SoftBank Ventures Asia (SBVA) and Nyca Partners.

SBVA’s participation in this funding round marks their second Series B investment into CHAI.

The round also received additional participation from investors such as KT Investment, Conductive Ventures, Nordstar Capital, Samsung NEXT and B Capital.

CHAI said that it will use this funding to expand its footprint in Southeast Asia and develop a fully automated end-to-end payment infrastructure for digital merchants throughout Asia.

Founded in 2019, CHAI aims to bridge the payments gap in Asian markets by providing a unified payment orchestration solution for local merchants through a single application programming interface (API).

Through CHAI Port, merchants can activate and offer over 30 payment options such as credit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers and cross-border payments to their customers in under an hour.

CHAI currently processes more than US$6 billion on behalf of over 2,2 00 merchants and had launched CHAI Port in Vietnam and Thailand

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This CEO’s speech impediment led him to rethink virtual recruiting

As employers revamp their recruiting processes and continue to rebuild an ever-changing workforce, how can they be sure they’re allowing all candidates to be their genuine selves?

This is a common roadblock for people with speech impediments, says Jahanzaib Ansari, CEO of Knockri, a video recruiting platform. An estimated 3 million Americans struggle with stuttering, according to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. These speech impairments may impact a person’s ability to navigate high-pressure situations like a job interview, a challenge Ansari has faced throughout his career.

But the perceptions — and misconceptions — around this disability are often more damaging than the speech impediment itself, Ansari says.

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Olivia From Paradox Now Available on SAP Store

Paradox announced that its Olivia solution is now an SAP endorsed app, available for online purchase on SAP StoreSAP Endorsed Apps are a category of solutions from SAP’s partner ecosystem that help customers become best-run, intelligent enterprises and are meant to deliver value with desired outcomes.

“Our partnership with SAP has always been about working together to help clients solve their biggest recruiting challenges,” said Aaron Matos, Founder and CEO, Paradox. “Through our SAP partnership, we’ve been able to amplify our reach across a global client base. Achieving SAP endorsed app status is a testament to our longstanding partnership with SAP to provide clients with a fast, streamlined, mobile-first experience for candidates, hiring managers, and talent acquisition teams.”

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EPA Invests in Rheaply to Enhance Material Recycling

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently selected 30 small businesses to receive part of a $3 million investment to help develop new technologies to address environmental and public health concerns. Among the recipients was Chicago-based startup Rheaply.

Rheaply is based on the concept of circular economies, where waste or excesses resources are repurposed, significantly reducing waste. An example of a circular economy is a furniture designer repurposing wood scraps into other products instead of chucking the waste into the garbage and it ending up in a landfill.

Launched in 2016, Rheaply offers a SaaS platform that not only functions as an asset manager but also allows companies to publicly post assets they no longer need. With the platform, businesses can sell, share and rent unwanted assets with other businesses. A feature on the software also allows companies to request specific assets.

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Adloid raises $4 Mn in pre-Series A

Adloid, an AR builder platform, has raised $4 million in its pre-Series A round led by Chiratae Ventures (Formerly IDG Ventures), and Lenskart Vision Fund. EaseMyTrip co-founder Prashant Pitti, Seeders, and 100x Entrepreneur have also joined the new round.

With this round, Adloid is rebranding to Metadome, a metaverse that will provide the no-code infrastructure to creators and brands for the virtual world.

Started by Shorya Mahajan, Prashant Sinha and Kanav Singla, Metadome provides AR deployments across automobile, home-decor, beauty and accessories, and consumer electronics. The startup works with industry leaders such as Hewlett Packard (HP), Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, Asian Paints and others, to create immersive 3D & AR experiences for their customers.

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