Startup funding down by 76pc; Facebook removes 2.2 billion accounts

Saturday May 25, 2019 , 3 min Read

In April, BJP’s election manifesto outlined the party’s plan for developing the country, including startups and small businesses. A lot was promised, including a Rs 20,000 crore ‘Seed Startup Fund,’ a new scheme to provide collateral-free credit of up to Rs 50 lakh for entrepreneurs, etc. For the Indian startup community, there remained a few concerns as well like the ease of doing business, too much paperwork, and a plethora of regulations. Exactly what do startups expect in the next five years? More investors, easy registrations, and more.

Startup funding down 76pc as India waited for election results

This week, startup funding saw a significant slowdown ahead of the results of the 2019 General Elections. The ecosystem raised only $45.6 million across nine deals. While Contagious Online Media, which owns and operates The Viral Fever (TVF), raised $5 million (Rs 34.6 crore) in Series D from Tiger Global Management, Gurugram-based Spinny raised $13.2 million in Series A led by Accel and SAIF Partners.

SucSEED Venture Partners invests in XploraBox

New Delhi-based Imagismart Solutions, which runs educational subscription activity box for children Xplorabox, raised angel funding led by SucSEED Venture Partners, with participation from Green Shoots Capital, Metaform Ventures LLC, JITO Angel Network, and SWAN Angel Network, among others. The startup plans to use these funds to scale up rapidly and establish an overseas presence.

Facebook removes a record 2.2 billion fake accounts

In its Community Standards Enforcement Report for the first quarter of 2019, Facebook claims it removed 2.2 billion fake accounts during this period in a serious crackdown on "bad actors". In the last quarter of 2018, the social networking giant had removed 1.2 billion accounts, implying that the number of fake accounts doubled in just three months.

With GIFkaro, say it with customised GIFs or make your own

Love 'em or hate 'em, but you cannot avoid GIFs anymore. They are everywhere - social media, instant messages, and even emails. But while a lot of global content is seamlessly translated into GIFs, everyone wants GIFs specially made for them. Meet GIFkaro, a New Delhi-based app that you can use to create short GIFs in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, and English.

Amazon's next device will be able to read human emotions

Tech giant Amazon is developing a voice-activated, wrist-worn gadget that can recognise human emotions. Described as a health and wellness product, the wearable device will work with a smartphone app. The device is expected to determine a person’s emotional state just from the sound of the wearer’s voice. However, it is unclear if the device will be commercialised at all.