Groww, an investment app for millennials in India, raises $6.2M

Groww, a startup hoping to make saving and investment opportunities more widely available to young people in India, has closed a $6.2 million Series A to grow its business.

Founded in 2017, the Bengaluru-based company was part of Y Combinator in the U.S. last year and it went on to raise a $1.6 million “pre-Series A” round in June of last year. Groww was started by four ex-Flipkart staffers — Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh and Ishan Bansal — who realized how difficult investing in India is, particularly among young people.

This new money is led by Sequoia India with participation from Y Combinator, Propel Venture Partners and Kauffman Fellows. The company also counts Singapore’s Insignia Ventures Partners, Lightbridge Partners and Kairos among its backers.

Groww lets its users invest in mutual funds, including systematic investment planning (SIP) and equity-linked savings scheme. It claims over one million registered users, most of whom are aged under 40 and mobile-first, according to the company. Currently on Android only, it offers over 5,000 mutual funds which can be invested in directly from its app.

Keshre, who is Groww’s CEO and previously led Flipkart’s logistics platform, told TechCrunch that the new money will be spent on hiring and developing tech to support the launch of new products. That could include direct investments and ETFs while, further down the line, Keshre said there’s an ambition to offer insurance and more.

“We’re used across India not just in metros,” Keshre said in an interview. “Our users are spread across all the major cities… [they’re] working-class, young millennials straight across India.”

Groww’s founding team [left to right]: Ishan Bansal, Lalit Keshre, Neeraj Singh and Harsh Jain

Keshre said the focus is on keeping the app and its design simple but, like Robinhood in the U.S, he said that the broader goal is to democratize investing, particularly among younger segments of the population in India. For now, he added, there is no plan to venture overseas since Groww is just scratching the surface of what it could become in India.

“There are 200 million people with investable income in India, but only 20 million investors. The only way to bring the next 180 million onboard is by making investing simple,” he said in a statement.

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The iPhone is reportedly going OLED-only in 2020

Apple could drop LCDs from the iPhone line next year, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. That interesting — if not altogether surprising — revelation in buried in a piece about a Japan supplier’s struggles in the wake of disappointing iPhone XR sales.

The news, which comes courtesy of people familiar with the matter, makes sense, as prices for the display technology should drop, making it more attainable for more people. Whether Apple is giving up on the budget take on its flagship remains to be seen, but the XR appears not to have gotten the reception the company was banking on.

Apple has downplayed any disappointment, noting that the cheaper handset (starting at $250 less than the XS) has been the “most popular iPhone” since going on sale in October. But handset sales are ebbing across the board — a phenomenon that’s hardly specific to Apple.

Besides, moving to a higher end technology across the board is just part of the inevitable march of progress, though the company is still expected to release an LCD-sporting successor to the XR later this year. A number of competitors, meanwhile, will be dipping their toes into the foldable display waters in 2019, though that technology isn’t expected to go fully mainstream any time soon.

2020 will also reportedly be the year Apple makes the move to a 5G iPhone.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2T5Uw7i

The iPhone is reportedly going OLED-only in 2020

Apple could drop LCDs from the iPhone line next year, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. That interesting — if not altogether surprising — revelation in buried in a piece about a Japan supplier’s struggles in the wake of disappointing iPhone XR sales.

The news, which comes courtesy of people familiar with the matter, makes sense, as prices for the display technology should drop, making it more attainable for more people. Whether Apple is giving up on the budget take on its flagship remains to be seen, but the XR appears not to have gotten the reception the company was banking on.

Apple has downplayed any disappointment, noting that the cheaper handset (starting at $250 less than the XS) has been the “most popular iPhone” since going on sale in October. But handset sales are ebbing across the board — a phenomenon that’s hardly specific to Apple.

Besides, moving to a higher end technology across the board is just part of the inevitable march of progress, though the company is still expected to release an LCD-sporting successor to the XR later this year. A number of competitors, meanwhile, will be dipping their toes into the foldable display waters in 2019, though that technology isn’t expected to go fully mainstream any time soon.

2020 will also reportedly be the year Apple makes the move to a 5G iPhone.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2T5Uw7i

Apple Pay is coming to Target, Taco Bell, Speedway and two other U.S. chains

A little more retail momentum for Apple Pay: Apple has announced another clutch of U.S. retailers will soon support its eponymous mobile payment tech — most notably discount retailer Target.

Apple Pay is rolling out to Target stores now, according to Apple, which says it will be available in all 1,850 of its U.S. retail locations “in the coming weeks”.

Also signing up to Apple Pay are fast food chains Taco Bell and Jack in the Box; Speedway convenience stores; and Hy-Vee supermarkets in the midwest.

“With the addition of these national retailers, 74 of the top 100 merchants in the US and 65 per cent of all retail locations across the country will support Apple Pay,” notes Apple in a press release.

Speedway customers can use Apple Pay at all of its approximately 3,000 locations across the Midwest, East Coast and Southeast from today, according to Apple; and also at Hy-Vee stores’ more than 245 outlets in the Midwest.

It says the payment tech is also rolling out to more than 7,000 Taco Bell and 2,200 Jack in the Box locations “in the next few months”.

Back in the summer Apple announced it had signed up long time hold out CVS, with the pharmacy introducing Apple Pay across its ~8,400 stand-alone location last year.

Also signing up then: 7-Eleven, which Apple says now launched support for Apple Pay in 95 per cent of its U.S. convenience stores in 2018.

Last year retail giant Costco also completed the rollout of Apple Pay to its more than 500 U.S. warehouses.

In December, Apple Pay also finally launched in Germany — where Apple slated it would be accepted at a range of “supermarkets, boutiques, restaurants and hotels and many other places” at launch, albeit ‘cash only’ remains a common demand from the country’s small businesses.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FGoHiq

Politiscope, an app to track Congressional voting records and bills, launches on android devices

Last September, two former National Football League players launched an app called Politiscope to track the voting records of members of Congress and the bills that they were introducing — and provide non-partisan information about what those bills and votes would mean to voters.

The pro-football-playing brothers, Walter Powell Jr. and Brandon Williams, launched the app to provide an accurate accounting of what Congressional leadership was doing — something the two felt was necessary given the political climate and the ways in which the traditional sources of education on political issues were being called into question.

“A claim of ‘Fake News’ from the current national leaders in response to unflattering news threatens this nation’s democracy and the concept that this great nation was built upon,” said Powell in a statement when the app first launched in September.

Now the two brothers are expanding Politiscope’s reach by launching the Android version of the service.

While the scope of Politiscope may be expanding, the brothers make clear that the company’s mission is still the same. To provide unbiased information sourced from places like the Congressional Budget Office, the Library of Congress, and the Pew Research Center.

Politiscope has two main features in the app.

The first is its “Today in Congress” section, which provides information on all of the proposed legislation that’s making its way through the House of Representatives and the Senate. The app summarizes the bills and gives statements from Republicans and Democrats on how they view the bill that’s been proposed.

The second feature is its profiles of elected officials. The profiles include voting records, business records and other information culled from Federal records and publicly available information to give voters a clear picture of their representatives in government based solely on data.

“Unless you’re studying the actual legislation, it’s almost impossible to find a good source of political information that isn’t at least somewhat slanted, either to the right or the left,” says Powell. “Today’s media is becoming more and more widely split along liberal and conservative lines, and political rhetoric is growing increasingly devoid of clear and objective information. Politiscope exists to eliminate bias and help people understand what’s actually going on in the world of U.S. politics.”

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Google starts pulling unvetted Android apps that access call logs and SMS messages

Google is removing apps from Google Play that request permission to access call logs and SMS text message data but haven’t been manually vetted by Google staff.

The search and mobile giant said it is part of a move to cut down on apps that have access to sensitive calling and texting data.

Google said in October that Android apps will no longer be allowed to use the legacy permissions as part of a wider push for developers to use newer, more secure and privacy minded APIs. Many apps request access to call logs and texting data to verify two-factor authentication codes, for social sharing, or to replace the phone dialer. But Google acknowledged that this level of access can and has been abused by developers who misuse the permissions to gather sensitive data — or mishandle it altogether.

“Our new policy is designed to ensure that apps asking for these permissions need full and ongoing access to the sensitive data in order to accomplish the app’s primary use case, and that users will understand why this data would be required for the app to function,” wrote Paul Bankhead, Google’s director of product management for Google Play.

Any developer wanting to retain the ability to ask a user’s permission for calling and texting data has to fill out a permissions declaration.

Google will review the app and why it needs to retain access, and will weigh in several considerations, including why the developer is requesting access, the user benefit of the feature that’s requesting access, and the risks associated with having access to call and texting data.

Bankhead conceded that under the new policy, some use cases will “no longer be allowed,” rendering some apps obsolete.

So far, tens of thousands of developers have already submitted new versions of their apps either removing the need to access call and texting permissions, Google said, or have submitted a permissions declaration.

Developers with a submitted declaration have until March 9 to receive approval or remove the permissions. In the meantime, Google has a full list of permitted use cases for the call log and text message permissions, as well as alternatives.

The last two years alone has seen several high profile cases of Android apps or other services leaking or exposing call and text data. In late 2017, popular Android keyboard ai.type exposed a massive database of 31 million users, including 374 million phone numbers.

Another huge database exposed millions of call logs and SMS text messages

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Privacy campaigner Schrems slaps Amazon, Apple, Netflix, others with GDPR data access complaints

European privacy campaigner Max Schrems has filed a fresh batch of strategic complaints at tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify and YouTube.

The complaints, filed via his non-profit privacy and digital rights organization, noyb, relate to how the services respond to data access requests, per regional data protection rules.

Article 15 of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides for a right of access by the data subject to information held on them.

The complaints contend tech firms are structurally violating this right — having built automated systems to respond to data access requests which, after being tested by noyb, failed to provide the user with all the relevant information they are legally entitled to.

noyb tested eight companies in all, in eight different countries in Europe, and says it found none of the services provided a satisfactory response. It’s filed formal complaints with the Austrian Data Protection Authority against the eight, which also include music and podcast platform SoundCloud; sports streaming service DAZN; and video on-demand platform Flimmit.

The complaints have been filed on behalf of ten users, per Article 80 of the GDPR which enables data subjects to be represented by a non-profit association such as noyb.

Here’s its breakdown of the responses its tests received — including the maximum potential penalty each could be on the hook for if the complaints are stood up:

Two of the companies, DAZN and SoundCloud, failed to respond at all, according to noyb. While the rest responded with only partial data.

noyb points out that in addition to getting raw data users have the right to know the sources, recipients and purposes for which their information is being processed. But only Flimmit and Netflix provided any background information (though again still not full data) in response to the test requests.

“Many services set up automated systems to respond to access requests, but they often don’t even remotely provide the data that every user has a right to,” said Schrems in a statement. “In most cases, users only got the raw data, but, for example, no information about who this data was shared with. This leads to structural violations of users’ rights, as these systems are built to withhold the relevant information.”

We’ve reached out to the companies for comment on the complaints.

Last May, immediately after Europe’s new privacy regulation came into force, noyb lodged its first series of strategic complaints — targeted at what it dubbed “forced consent”, arguing that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Google’s Android OS do not give users a free choice to consent to processing their data for ad targeting, as consenting is required to use the service.

Investigations by a number of data protection authorities into those complaints remain ongoing.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FyCNSQ