China : Didi Chuxing, the local Uber !

Today, the Startuppers Club presents a Chinese startup: Didi Chuxing! The Chinese equivalent of Uber … Importing an idea from abroad can be a good idea if you understand the specifics of the target market. Travis Kalanick created Uber in 2009, Didi Chuxing released his app 4 years later! The competition was bound to rage for the Chinese market. Launch of Didi Dache on transportation on demand In June 2012, through its company Orange Technology, the startupper Cheng Wei created Didi Dache. It means “Beep beep Call a taxi”. Just 6 months after the launch of the application, in November 2012, the Chinese giant Tencent was investing $ 15 million in this promising local Uber. Indeed, Tencent is the chinese equivalent of Messenger, with some internet services added. When Tencent invested in Didi Dache, Uber was exploding in the United States and the investor hoped to be able to replay his own scenario (the boss of Tencent said that “copying is not bad”). Didi Dache against Kuaidi Dache But Didi Dache is not the only one on this big market! Kuaidi Dache is a serious competitor since Jack Ma, the investor and venture capitalist and his fund “Alibaba Group” backs the startup. Each contestant pay a price war and make the effort to gain market share. In February 2015, Didi Dache holds 55% of the market and Kuaidi Dache the remaining 45%. Each of them had fundraising in Series A, B and C in 2014. The global market is 150 million people which is huge, but the losses also start to be important for both competitors. Didi Dache suffers $ 700 million loss while Kuaidi Dache is around $ 600 million loss. The two rivals decided to merge, but to keep each their management, which could be likened to a practice of unlawful agreement. Didi Chuxing vs Uber As of September 2013, Uber was trying to penetrate the Chinese market. Price competition was raging against Uber, especially in 2015. Uber had taken over 40 cities in China for a valuation of 8 billion dollars. But the losses are massive, around the billion dollar, maybe even 2. The merger allowed Chinese groups to better defend themselves against Uber. And besides the American is financed by Baidu (equivalent of Google in China and giant of the Chinese Internet), Uber China has since been bought by … Didi Chuxing in August 2016! In December 2017, Didi raises $ 4 billion to establish its dominant position in the market and enter new markets like artificial intelligence. The new developments of Didi Chuxing Recently in 2018, Didi Chuxing launched its international expansion with the development of the application in Mexico, Australia and Japan. Also, we find in the projects of the startup ideas about artificial intelligence and autonomous driving of course. An artificial intelligence laboratory opened in Beijing in January 2018. Its goal is to solve transportation issues in China. 200 engineers and data scientists worked on it from the outset. 20 cities are already equipped with the Didi Smart Transportation Brain. This software makes it possible in particular to regulate the duration of the traffic lights and thus to make traffic flow more fluid. But artificial intelligence also serves Didi Chuxing. In China, Didi collects 10 billion trips every year. The developed AI can predict demand 15 minutes before it arrives with 85% accuracy. The launch of the application in Japan is planned for autumn 2018, in partnership with SoftBank. Didi also bought the group 99, which is also focusing on transportation on demand, but in Brazil. Didi Chuxing in Mexico in 2018: Guadalajara and Mexico The Chinese startup launched its app in July 2018 in Mexico! To get a good start, the application was deployed in 2 cities: Guadalajara and Monterrey. Respectively 3rd and 8th largest cities of Mexico, Guadalajara is 5 times less important than Mexico. But the student and international population is very important, less efficient transport can be noticed and competing applications are less advanced. To accelerate its development, Didi Chuxing offers recruited drivers the home navigation system and above all a guaranteed salary of around € 500. Finally Didi Chuxing proposes the lowest commission of the market for the drivers. Let’s see what happens !

10 startups from South America to watch in 2018

The startup environment of South America is exploding and bring new stars to life every year. Even though Argentina and Brazil remain the two giants of technological entrepreneurship, Mexico and Chile are beginning to emerge and produce beautiful startups too. Startuppers Club and Nathan Lustig, co-manager of the venture capital fund Magma Partners that invests in Latin American startups, present the 10 startups that should explode in the coming years: Trocafone, Brazil, Sale of electronic products Founded in 2014, this e-commerce platform buys and sells used electronic equipment, and mainly smartphones (hence the name Troca-Fone). The service offered by Trocafone is quite comprehensive. Indeed, the website buys used laptops, restores them professionally, and finally sells them. Customers of the site are reassured in their purchase of a second-hand laptop and actually earn on the price paid. Vendors enjoy a fast and efficient sales system with pre-addressed envelopes and a sale that only takes a few seconds to set. The fundraising confirms this good activity with already 49M $ raised in 4 years! The last round of funding is from November 2017 for $ 15M. The following funds participated in the fundraising round Sallfort, MIT Castor Ventures Fund, FJ Labs, Rocketship and … the fund of Mercado Libre! Indeed, the latest investment fund is from a heavyweight South American E-commerce sector that we detail just below: MercadoLibre. MercadoLibre, Argentina, South America MercadoLibre is no longer really a startup but rather a scale-up that looks like Amazon in South America. It is probably one of the most famous startups in South America, which today has a valuation of more than 14 billion dollars. In 1999, Hernan Kazah founded the startup that internationalized from 2008. Today it is listed on the Nasdaq and although it does not have the same progress as Amazon, its valuation has been multiplied by 3 in 4 years ! 99, Brazil, Shared Trips 99 is the second most used carpooling platform in Brazil. Its business plan looks like Uber or Lyft ones. The Brazilian startup raised $ 241 millions before being bought back. Indeed, in January 2018, the Chinese startup Didi Chuxing bought 99 for an alleged amount of one billion dollars ($ 1B). CargoX, Brazil, Transportation In 2013, the Frederico Vega former banker startupper in London created CargoX . It’s a little bit the “Uber of trucks” in Brazil. The solution finds you room on trucks where it remains and completes the cargo. The carrier is happy because it optimizes its loading. The customer is also happy since he pays generally less and will be able to access smaller volumes. Finally, data becomes the heart of the business: GPS tags are installed in the cargo and allow to know exactly where the goods are in real time. Many large funds have rushed to invest in this startup as Goldman Sachs in July 2016 for $ 10M. Since then, the startup has raised an additional $ 25 million, particularly in November 2017. CargoX already generates a turnover of $ 200 million and therefore ranks in the 25 largest trucks transport companies in Brazil, according to its founder! This convinced Unilever to become a customer and George Soros to invest. Satellogic, Argentina, Space Communications Elon Musk with SpaceX is not alone in building Space Tech startups! Emiliano Kargieman founded his startup after following NASA’s Ames Research Center program. Overall, the goal of Satellogic is to democratize access to space services by significantly reducing the cost of obtaining real-time data via satellite. To achieve this goal, the startupper produces nanosatellites. The final project envisages a constellation of 100 or even 300 satellites. This would allow revisits of the same land point every 15 minutes. In 2017, Satellogic secured a $ 27 million investment by Tencent and CrunchFund . Since then, the 6th microsatellite has been in orbit since the Jiuquan site in China. The 7th and 8th satellites of the network should be launched in the course of 2018. In 2018, the startup has 90 employees spread over the various offices: Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Barcelona. Psafe, Brazil, Mobile Security Psafe develops applications that optimize mobile security and privacy of personal data. With over 100 million downloads / installations and 20 million active users, Psafe is the largest mobile security platform in the Americas. In 2013, Psafe raised $ 30 million in Series C from Qihoo 360, Redpoint e.ventures, and Pinnacle Ventures. After these investments, the start up has partly relocated to San Francisco and boasts 10 million active users in the US. Nubank, Brazil, FinTech Nubank is the Brazilian specialist in digital finance. The startup is developing an online banking solution with a commission-free credit card that works with a mobile application. David Vélez gained “banking approval” in 2018, only 5 years after founding his company in 2013. Cristina Junqueira, the second founder, would never have thought that the growth of the first years would be as strong. The startup Nubank raised $ 80 million in 2016, notably from the DST Global fund. Then, the project get bigger again and spread to Europe with new offices in Berlin. Finally in 2018, a new raise of funds for $ 150M rushed Nubank to the closed club of unicorns (more than $ 1bn in valuation). The main investors in this new round are DST Global Investment, Redpoint Ventures, Ribbit Capital, QED and Founders Fund, the investment fund of Paypal Mafia. This last round raises the total raised funds to $ 330 million. Yogome, Mexico, EdTech Yogome develops educational games for children from 4 to 10 years old. The games are available on tablet and mobile. The application quickly climbed into the top 10 apps in the “Education” category on Apple’s App store. The games are developed by pedagogical experts and cover many topics seen in class. The company is already dreaming of a general brand of childhood. For now, the startup has raised funds around $ 27M during its last round. Previously, first fundraisers had already