After taking five consecutive business days off from my work laptop — and to shout at my personal laptop while losing games on Dominion online — I am back. I missed you. And while The Exchange’s regular columns were off this week (Friday aside, which you can read here), there’s still a hell of a lot to talk about.

First, a new website. If you click here, you’ll be taken to a sortable list (spreadsheet? database?) of startups with Black founders. Dubbed The Black Founder List, it’s a great asset and tool.

For folks like myself with a research and reporting focus, the list’s sortability of companies founded by Black entrepreneurs by gender, stage and market focus is amazing. And, for investors, it should provide potential dealflow. Do you write lots of Series C checks? The Black Founder List has 23 Series B startups with Black founders. Or if you prefer Series D checks, there are 11 Series C startups with Black founders to check out.

Who is writing the most checks to Black founders? Among the top names are M25, a midwest VC group, Techstars Boston and a number of angels.

The website was compiled by much the same team that TechCrunch highlighted earlier this year, when their data collection work concerning Black founders was more spreadsheet than app. So, please point your thanks for the new resource to Yonas Beshawred, Sefanit Tades, James Norman and Hans Yadav.

The Black Founder List also has a data submission button, so if you notice a missing name, add it. I want the data set to be as robust as possible, as, I reckon, it will prove a great reporting resource. And public data like this obviates certain excuses from the investing class.

Market Notes

• I missed a lot this week that I was looking forward to, including the Asana and Palantir IPOs. For fuller thoughts, head here. Summaries follow:
• Asana’s direct listing and resulting valuation and implied revenue multiples make its direct listing a win for the company, and the model. If other SaaS companies have the ability to raise ample pre-debut cash, perhaps the direct listing is not as dead as it seemed a few months ago when SPACs stole its spotlight, and most companies were pursuing traditional IPOs regardless.
• Palantir’s direct listing did not feel hot until it dropped some strong revenue guidance. With that, its direct listing went fine despite its cosmically comedic voting structure. Watching Palantir’s higher-ups try to snuff public input while still providing a thin patina of democracy made me think more about Russia or Texas than a functioning democratic system.
• Looking ahead, Airbnb is said to be hunting up $3 billion for its own IPO. Airbnb had to take on a lot of expensive cash when its business collapsed in the early COVID days. It wanted to direct list. Now it’s going to cash in a huge pile during its debut.
• Good. More capital > less capital.
• Sticking to our late-stage theme, when I left, Root was said to be pursuing an IPO, and when I came back, Roblox is now also tipped to be plotting with the public markets. (Root’s IPO in the wake of the successful Lemonade debut made sense. Insurtech is hot.)
• The news should not be a surprise; Roblox’s model has found cachet with young gamers and has found a great way to make money at the same time. With a mix of Legos and video game design and Minecraft, perhaps it’s not a surprise that the company is doing well.
• Reuters reports that Roblox could be worth $4 billion when it goes public. I believe it.
• Datto is going public. Ron and Danny have the details here.
• And I chatted with a few Accel investors, the juicy bits from which you can find here.

Various and Sundry

• Draper Esprit, a Europe-focused venture capital fund that trades on the London Stock Exchange, raised £110 million this week. Esprit is a fun shop to track (I’ve known its denizen James since his LSE days), because it’s more transparent than most VC firms than you’re familiar with thanks to its structure.
• According to the firm’s release, its share sale was “oversubscribed.” Tech.eu has more.
• Mobile app spend grew to $29.3 billion in Q3, driven by 36.5 billion installs, per SensorTower. Revenue was up 32% year-over-year.
• Uber sold $500 million worth of Uber Freight to a PE firm.
• As noted, tech stocks had a bad September, but just how bad might surprise you.
• And I covered Noyo’s Series A before I left, with the post going up on Monday.
• In short, Noyo is doing the hard work to build APIs to connect the world of health insurance. It’s a huge, hard task.
• The $12.5 million was “led by Costanoa Ventures and Spark Capital. Prior investors Core Innovation Capital, Garuda Ventures, the Webb Investment Network, Precursor Ventures and Homebrew upped their investment in the new round.”
• (I can’t shake the thought that there’s something in the middle of the no-code/low-code boom, and startups delivering more of their products via APIs instead of as managed services. And please don’t say mashups, we left that phrase behind ages ago.)
• I missed the window for officially commenting on the Coinbase culture dustup — the Equity crew did talk about it while I was AFK — so I will merely share this thread as my $0.02.
• Also, read this from Eileen Burbidge on TechCrunch concerning the same matter. It’s good.

Regular morning Exchange columns return Monday morning. It’s good to be back.

By the way, TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility is coming up next week. I am going! To help you get there, here’s a 50% off code for you to get full access to the event. Or if it’s your jam, this code will get you into the expo and breakout sessions for free.

Chat soon,

Alex

Source: Tech Crunch

Evan Weinstein, the founder of the Philadelphia-based startup, Cocoa Press, which makes a 3D printer for chocolate, doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth. But the young founder was fascinated by 3D printing technologies and was looking for a way to move the technology forward. “I stumbled on chocolate,” Weinstein said. And the result, was Cocoa Press.

The chocolate printer takes advantage of the fact that there’s something about food that people connect to, Weinstein has said, and that’s especially true of chocolate.

Worldwide, chocolate was a $130.5 billion industry in 2019, according to a report by GrandView Research, and Weinstein thinks that his printers can help amateur hobbyists and chocolate enthusiasts bite into that market.

The University of Pennsylvania graduate started developing the technology that would become his first business as a high school student at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, a private school in Northwest Philadelphia.

After documenting his progress on his personal blog, Weinstein hung up his cocoa nibs at Penn while he pursued his undergraduate degree. But he could never fully rid himself of the chocolate addiction, so he picked the project back up as a senior and returned to the chocolate shop.  A 2018 video from Weinstein shows the printer at work.

With a few grants from the University and a bit of funding from its Pennovation Accelerator, Weinstein began building in earnest and the company is now ready to take pre-orders for his $5,500 printer.

As he moves toward commercialization of his confectionary creation, Weinstein is following in some illustrious cocoa-dusted footprints. Five years ago, none other than Pennsylvania’s most famous chocolatier, Hersheys, tried its hand at a chocolate 3D printer. The company took its novel technology on the road and showcased its technical feat at a number of demonstrations, but the project melted under the harsh glare of unfeasible economic realities.

Weinstein has actually talked to the Hersheys folks and believes that his product can be a stickier proposition for consumers and businesses.

“They never ended up creating a sellable printer,” Weinstein said. “I’ve been able to connect with Hershey because they’re the main sponsors of the Pennovation Center… [they said] the limitations at the time were technical limitations, but the customer feedback that they got was really positive.”

That means, as far as Weinstein is aware, his is the only chocolate printing company in the U.S.

Sweet business model 

The first chocolate bar was created by the British chocolatier J.S. Fry and Sons in 1847, molded from a paste made of sugar, cocoa butter, and chocolate liquor. But it wasn’t until Daniel Pieter and Henri Nestle brought milk chocolate to the mass market in 1876 and Rudolf Lindt invented the conch machine to mix and aerate chocolate in 1879 that the bars really took off.

Form factors haven’t changed much since then, but Cocoa Press promises to change that, according to Weinstein.

The company sources its chocolate from the biggest white label chocolate providers on the market, The Guittard Chocolate Company and Callebaut Chocolate and will resell chocolate refills to its customers to create a recurring revenue model. Companies can make their own chocolate and use that as well, Weinstein said.

“We don’t want to be competing with the thousands of chocolate shops already out there,” he said. “We just want to get the chocolate printer out into the world. The business model is the machines plus the consumables for people who don’t have a background in chocolate.”

Weinstein envisions the Cocoa Press becoming an all-in-one chocolate shop, where customers can buy the printer and the chocolate from the company and then make their own. There are even plans to work with a couple of bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers to distribute some of their own single origin chocolates.

Image Credits: Noah Weinstein / Cocoa Press (opens in a new window)

Chocolate shops can spend roughly $57,000 to buy the equipment they need, according to Weinstein, and at $5,500 the Cocoa Press begins to look like a bargain.

Weinstein expects to be shipping the printers by the middle of next year and will be launching pre-orders on October 10. 

The young entrepreneur estimates that the market for 3D-printed confections would be half-a-billion dollar industry worldwide, but that doesn’t take into account chocolates, which have been too difficult for developers to manufacture an economical machine to produce.

And while Weinstein may not have started out with a sweet tooth, he’s certainly developed a taste for the industry now. And is looking forward to bringing the chocolates from small producers to a wider audience of connoisseurs who could potentially become entrepreneurs using his machine.

“I’m really excited about working with these small shops because they make some interesting stuff,” Weinstein said. “There’s a cinnamon cumin flavor… it’s just wonderful.”

Source: Tech Crunch

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.

Top Stories

Google changes its app store rules, too

Google Play Store screen

Just a couple of weeks ago, Apple revised its App Store rules to permit game streaming apps and clarify rules around in-app purchases, among other things. Now, Google has updated its rules, as well.

Under threat of regulation, Google announced this week it’s updating its Google Play billing policies to better clarify which types of transactions will be subject to Google’s commissions on in-app purchases. While the more detailed language doesn’t actually change the earlier policy’s intention, it will impact a percentage of developers who don’t currently use Google Play’s billing system when selling digital goods in their app.

In addition, the company announced it will make changes in Android 12 that will make it easier for users to install and use third-party app stores as an alternative to Google Play.

The company says that its current billing policies only apply to less than 3% of apps on Google Play. Of those apps, 97% already use Google Play’s billing library. That means there’s only a small percentage of apps that will need to come into compliance under the clarified terms.

The rules seem to want to bring into compliance larger services skirting in-app purchase rules, like Netflix and Spotify. But it’s not clear yet how permissive Google will be about allowing apps to communicate alternative ways to pay. Currently, Google says developers can tell users about how to sign up and use alternative payments outside of the Google Play app. But we don’t know if Google will allow such a link to be prominently placed on an app’s home screen, how it will allow such a link to be worded or whether an app can cater only to existing subscribers, and other key factors.

EU rule could force Apple and Google to share customer data, ban pre-installed apps

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Major tech companies, including Apple and Google, may be required to share customer data with rivals, if a proposed EU rule, the Digital Services Act, comes to pass. The rule takes aim at anticompetitive business practices among tech’s top players, like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook. One measure, detailed by The Financial Times, says platforms can’t use the data they collect for their own commercial activities unless that’s shared with businesses pursuing the same activities.

The draft also currently recommends that big tech companies could be prohibited from favoring their own services on their websites and platforms, meaning they couldn’t pre-install their own apps on laptops or phones, or forced businesses to pre-install their apps to gain access to their platform. In practice, that could mean Android phones that ship without Google apps, like Gmail or Drive, or iPhones without stock apps beyond those that offer core functionality, like the Camera.

In addition, another clause would ban the tech companies from blocking rivals that offer their products to customers outside the gatekeeper’s own platform, Reuters reports. This could impact the current app store rules around payments and in-app purchases.

Anticipating regulatory pushback, Apple has made small concessions with iOS 14. Already, Apple had allowed users to delete some, but not all, of its stock apps. In iOS 14, Apple now lets users select their preferred web browser and email app, too. And both it and Google (see above) recently modified their app store guidelines to offer more clarity with regard to their right to collect platform fees in specific circumstances.

Apple and Google will, of course, object to any attempts at regulation. Google, in a submission to the Act, argued that a platform may only have market power in some sectors, but could be a new entrant or marginal player in others.

Weekly News Round-up

Platforms

Image Credits: Apple screenshot via TechCrunch

• Apple releases new app marketing tools. Apple introduced new tools that allow developers to generate short links or embeddable codes that link to their App Store product page. These can also display your app icon, a QR code or an App Store badge.
• Second public beta of iOS 14.2 and iPadOS 14.2 arrive. The releases bring new emoji (see below), plus changes to the Now Playing screen in the Control Center and the Home app.
• Apple’s iOS 14.2 will bring new emoji. A new set of emoji are being tested in the beta version of iOS 14.2. The update will include the transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more.
• Google takes aim at beauty filters. Pixel phones will update to ensure face retouching features are off by default while labels and icons use “value-free” descriptions. The company said the decision to tweak the interface was based on expert recommendations over filters’ impact on people’s self-confidence and mental health.
• Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative launches. The program will focus on managing security issues specific to Android OEMs, drive remediation and provide transparency to users about issues Google discovered that affect device models shipped by Android partners.
• Apple bans more RSS readers in China App Store. Apple is still scouring its App Store for any services that don’t comply with Chinese censorship laws. This week, RSS reader apps — Reeder, Fiery Feeds and others — said their apps had been removed from the China App Store over content deemed “illegal.” Fiery Feeds only had around 1,000 MAUs, but Feedly’s latest app had 100K downloads.

Services

• Google Play Pass launches in 24 new European countries. The deal brings Google’s subscription-based apps and games store to 34 total markets, including the U.S.
• Twilio launches an app for frontline workers, a new IoT platform and a free video service, Video Web RTC Go. The latter allows you to add 1:1 video chat to mobile and web apps, like those aimed at distance learning or remote client consultations. It also launched Twilio Frontline, a React Native-based app for frontline workers who need to communicate with customers.

Trends

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

• Designer earns six figures in six days for iOS 14 icon set. In a blog post, indie designer @traf details his experience building custom icons for the iOS home screen redesign trend. After a tweet showing off his home screen gained interest, he quickly created a website to sell his icon packs. Then YouTuber MKBHD linked to him and soon, he was making big sales. The day after the video, sales jumped from $6K to $40K, and as of the time of writing the post this week, the set had earned him $116,147.
• Global app revenue up 32% year-over-year in Q3. Sensor Tower reports worldwide consumer spend grew to $29.3B and installs reached 36.5B across the App Store and Google Play in the third quarter. TikTok aws the highest-earning non-game app globally and the most downloaded.

Other News

• Indian startups explore alternative app store to fight Google’s monopoly. More than 150 startups and firms in India are working to form an alliance and toying with the idea of launching an app store to cut their reliance on Google, TechCrunch reported this week. Participants include Paytm co-founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Deep Kalra of travel ticketing firm MakeMyTrip, and executives from PolicyBazaar, RazorPay and ShareChat.
• App Store fees legal battle to be tried by a judge, not jury. Apple and Epic Games agreed this week that their court battle should be decided in a bench trial by a judge, not a jury. Apple had previously been pushing for a jury trial, but withdrew its request. The judge suggested a jury trial is preferred, as it would have allowed real people to have a voice on what’s shaping up to be a major anti-trust case. She also had harsh words for many of Epic’s tactics and arguments presented so far, noting that walled gardens already exist elsewhere and Fortnite players have many other places to play besides iOS.
• Astropad comes to Windows. A company sherlocked by Apple brought its Astropad system to Windows. The company’s dongle turns an iPad into a second display, now for a Windows PC, a market Apple’s Sidecar doesn’t address.
• TikTok’s U.K. numbers revealed. A leaked marketing presentation revealed that 1 in 4 U.K. users now launch TikTok every months, with 17 million users spending over an hour per day on the app. That means the app has achieved a following almost half as big as Facebook in the market in just three years.
• TikTok launches a U.S. elections guide. The company promised not to save users’ political affiliations for use in ad targeting or recommendations.
• Google Maps rolls out improved AR directions. Google Maps updated Live View, its AR walking directions feature that launched last year. The feature, which uses the camera and GPS to help you navigate, can now be invoked from the transit tab, identify landmarks in major cities, and use Live View in combination with Google Maps’ location sharing feature.
• Microsoft’s Bing search app will appear as a download prompt on new Android phones in Germany, the U.K. and France after it won slots in a Google auction for rivals.

Funding and M&A, Etc.

• Jamf acquires Mondada. MDM solution provider Jamf bought Melbourne-based Mondada, the maker of patch management solutions, Kinobi and Kinobi Pro. The deal will allow Jamf to expand Jamf’s application lifecycle capabilities, it said.
• Bloomscape raises $15 million, acquires plant care app Vera. Online garden shop Bloomscape raised a $15 million Series B from General Catalyst and others for its e-commerce business that ships live plants to customers’ homes. It also bought Vera, a plant care and tips app, for an undisclosed sum.
• Homer raises $50 million. Early learning app maker raised $50 million from Lego, Sesame Workshop and Gymboree for its apps that focus on early literacy and soon, more.
• Humane raises $30 million Series A to build the next iPhone…or something. Humane’s ex-Apple founders, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, haven’t revealed what they’re working on, but are promising to build something that’s as groundbreaking as the iPhone. Chaudhri had worked on the original UI design of iPhone and iPad and Bongiorno helped launch iPad. They believe technology is a net negative for society as it’s been built today, and their idea is to come up with a new computing vision entirely.
• Macrometa raises $7 million. An edge computing service for app developers, Macrometa raised a $7 million seed round led by DNX Ventures for its Global Data Network that allows developers to send app requests to regions closest to them.
• Beijing-based Sina Corp. agrees to go private in $2.6 billion deal. The company is the latest to delist following growing scrutiny from U.S. regulators.

Downloads

HoloVista

Mixed reality storytelling developer Aconite launched its new, story-driven puzzle game HoloVista on iOS, where players explore environments with the iPhone’s 360-degree camera in a mysterious mansion full of secrets. The game combines elements of hidden object search, puzzles and social media as you play as Carmen, a junior architect and new hire at an exclusive firm. The game also touches on themes like society’s focus on social media, for example, and our relationship with technology ($4.99 on the App Store).

Source: Tech Crunch

SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are all the rage right now, and people are emerging from all corners to raise them.

Among the latest entrants — and someone who might be of interest to Silicon Valley watchers — is Emil Michael, a former Uber executive and top lieutenant to former CEO Travis Kalanick. Earlier today, Micheal registered plans with the SEC to raise $250 million in an IPO for a blank-check company that will broadly acquire a company in the tech sector.

IPO Edge had reported earlier today that the SPAC might be in the works.

The filing lists as special advisors a bit of a rogue’s gallery, including Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor and advisor to the company who left his previous venture firm after being accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct; Alphabet’s former executive chairman (and erstwhile playboy) Eric Schmidt; and Betsy Atkins, a founder of Ascend Communications and investor who has served on so many boards that last year she wrote a book about it. Indeed, among her other roles currently, she’s on the boards of Volvo, Wynn Resorts, and Oyo Hotels.

Michael was a senior vice president of field operations at Tellme Networks, then later served as COO of the startup Klout before landing at Uber, where he was a senior vice president of business for nearly four years.

He gained prominence in the role but also some disrepute after he publicly made comments about hiring opposition researchers to quiet journalists critical of the company and following a later report that he had attended an “escort bar” in Seoul with other Uber executives, including Kalanick. Indeed, when he left the company in 2017, Uber declined to say whether he left of his own accord.

Despite — or perhaps even because of — his trajectory at Uber, Michael was reportedly vetted at one point for the position of Secretary of Transportation after Donald Trump was elected president. Now, he apparently sees a way to jump back into tech by using a SPAC to take public a still privately held company.

Certainly, we’re seeing the same trend with a small but growing number of tech companies, including electric vehicle makers, such as the troubled Nikola, and the electric-truck maker Hyliion, which revealed plans in August to go public through a reverse merger into a SPAC. (Nikola is already publicly traded; Hylion’s deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.)

Companies in other sectors of the economy are seemingly up for grabs, too. Just yesterday, Hims, a direct-to-consumer company that sells health products and services targeted at young men and women, revealed that it will go public by merging with a SPAC sponsored by Oaktree Capital Management.

Last month, Opendoor,  a home buying and selling platform, separately agreed to go public via a reverse merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp II, one of numerous SPACs that has been successfully raised by investor Chamath Palihapitiya.

And in late August, Desktop Metal, a Burlington, Ma.-based maker of 3D metal printing systems, agreed to go public via a reverse merger with a SPAC formed last year by veteran telecom investor Leo Hindery, called Trine Acquisition Corp.

Michael has a bit more M&A experience than some who are beginning to take an interest in SPACs. For example, he was involved in selling Uber’s China business in 2016 to rival Didi Chuxing in exchange for a stake in the company.

According to Kristi Marvin, a former investment banker who now runs the data site SPACInsider, she’s having, and hearing about, conversations with a much wider range of people interested in launching SPACs than in past years — and not all of them are necessarily equipped to manage the vehicles.

“You ask, ‘Have you ever acquired a company for $500 million or more? Do you have operating experience in the vertical that you’re targeting? Do you understand the reporting requirements involved?’ Often,” she says, “the answers are no.”

(Correction: an earlier version of this story did not list Shervin Pishevar as an advisor; we’d missed his involvement when scanning the filing originally.)

Source: Tech Crunch

A day after the Senate Commerce Committee moved forward with plans to subpoena the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google, it looks like some of the most powerful leaders in tech will testify willingly.

Twitter announced late Friday that Jack Dorsey would appear virtually before the committee on October 28, just days before the U.S. election. While Twitter is the only company that’s openly agreed to the hearing so far, Politico reports that Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg also plan to appear.

Members of both parties on the committee planned to use the hearings to examine Section 230, the key legal shield that protects online platforms from liability from the content their users create.

As we’ve discussed previously, the political parties are approaching Section 230 from very different perspectives. Democrats see threatening changes to Section 230 as a way to force platforms to take more seriously toxic content like misinformation and harassment.

Many Republicans believe tech companies should be stripped of Section 230 protections because platforms have an anti-conservative bias — a claim that the facts don’t bear out.

Twitter had some choice words about that perspective, calling claims of political bias an “unsubstantiated allegation that we have refuted on many occasions to Congress,” and noting that those accusations have been “widely disproven” by researchers.

“We do not enforce our policies on the basis of political ideology,” the company added.

It sounds like the company and members of the Senate have very different agendas. Twitter indicated that it plans to use the hearing’s timing to steer the conversation toward the election. Politico also reports that the scope of the hearing will be broadened to include “data privacy and media consolidation” — not just Section 230.

A spokesperson tweeting on the company’s public policy account insisted that the hearing “must be constructive,” addressing how tech companies can protect the integrity of the vote.

“At this critical time, we’re committed to keeping our focus squarely on what matters the most to our company: joint efforts to protect our shared democratic conversation from harm — from both foreign and domestic threats,” a Twitter spokesperson wrote.

Regardless of the approach, dismantling Section 230 could prove potentially catastrophic for the way the internet as we know it works, so the stakes are high, both for tech companies and for regular internet users.

Source: Tech Crunch

GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, will invest $752 million in Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, the Indian firm said Saturday midnight.

The Government of Singapore Investment Corp is the fifth high-profile investor to back Reliance Retail, India’s largest retail chain, in the past four weeks. Reliance Retail — like its sister sibling Jio Platforms — is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, India’s most valuable firm.

GIC’s investment gives Reliance Retail a pre-money valuation of $58.5 billion, the Indian firm said. GIC, which has backed firms in over 40 nations, will get a 1.22% equity stake in the retail giant.

The announcement today caps a busy week for Reliance Retail, which in the past three days has revealed that Mubadala ($855 million for a 1.4% stake), Silver Lake ($254 million for a 0.38% stake), and General Atlantic ($498 million for a 0.84% stake) would be investing in it.

In total, investors have committed about $4.1 billion in Reliance Retail in the current fundraising spree. (Silver Lake committed to invest another $1 billion in Reliance Retail last month, and KKR has announced it would invest about $754 million.)

Reliance Retail, founded in 2006, serves more than 3.5 million customers each week (as of early this year) through its nearly 12,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 cities and towns in the country. Physical retail commands about 97% of all retail sales in India, according to estimates from several research firms.

“We believe Reliance Retail will continue to use its extensive supply chain and store networks, as well as strong logistics and data infrastructure, to add value to its customers and shareholders,” said Lim Chow Kiat, CEO of GIC, in a statement.

Reliance Retail operates supermarkets, electronics chain, fashion outlets, and a cash-and-carry wholesaler. In recent months, the firm has rushed to widen its dominance in the retail market. It bought several parts of Future Group, India’s second largest retail chain, for $3.4 billion in late August.

Late last year, it also entered the e-commerce space with JioMart. JioMart, a joint venture between Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms, has presence in over 200 Indian cities and towns and maintains a partnership with Facebook for a WhatsApp integration.

Facebook, which invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms earlier this year, has it will explore various ways to work with Reliance to digitize the nation’s 60 million mom and pop stores as well as other small and medium-sized businesses.

Jio Platforms has raised more than $20 billion in India this year from a roster of marquee investors including Facebook, Google, General Atlantic, Mubadala, Silver Lake, and KKR. Some industry executives have argued that investments in Jio Platforms make no business case and is largely foreign firms’ push to get friendly with Ambani, India’s richest man and an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“I am delighted that GIC, with its track record of close to four decades of successful long-term value investing across the world, is partnering with Reliance Retail in its mission to transform the Indian retail landscape. GIC’s global network and track record of long-term partnerships will be invaluable to the transformation story of Indian Retail. This investment is a strong endorsement of our strategy and India’s potential,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, in a statement.

Source: Tech Crunch