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Hello,

A good day for startup funding.

While business-to-business fruits marketplace Vegrow secured $46 million in Series C funding led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, micro-enterprise lender Aye Finance raised Rs 310 crore in a Series F round led by the UK’s development finance institution British International Investment.

Also, men’s apparel fashion brand Snitch‎ bagged Rs 110 crore in a Series A funding round, and sports company Agilitas Sports received funding of Rs 100 crore from Nexus Venture Partners. 

In other news, banking API infrastructure provider M2P Fintech has acquired Goals101, a Transaction Behavioural Intelligence (TBI) software maker, in a multi-million-dollar deal. M2P Fintech aims to leverage Goals101’s technology and integrate it into its existing suite of financial services.

Elsewhere, representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed at the COP28 climate summit to begin reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to avert the worst of climate change, a first-of-its-kind deal, signalling the eventual end of the oil age.

Did you know? Global CO2 emissions have grown six-fold since 1950. Here’s a chart showing the top contributors. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Gogoro’s Made in India e-scooters
• MakeForms’ diverse data collection tools
• Inclusivity in organisations

Here’s your trivia for today: Coulrophobia is a phobia of what?

Electric Vehicle

Gogoro’s Made in India e-scooters

In a proactive move to expand its foothold in India, Gogoro has launched its battery-swapping ecosystem for B2B customers in Delhi and Goa, with plans to expand into Mumbai and Pune by the first half of 2024. 

The Taiwan-based company also unveiled its first made-in-India smart scooter—the CrossOver GX250.

New launch:

• Gogoro primarily works with B2B customers in India, where it gives access to third-party e-scooter manufacturers and users access to its swapping network. Zypp is one of the company’s notable clients.
• The scooter comes in three variants, of which only the CrossOver GX250 is available currently. The other two are expected to start shipping in 2024.
• The company said the smart scooter has been optimised for riders in India with more seating and storage space, as well as better ground clearance.

Startup

MakeForms’ diverse data collection tools

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MakeForms Team

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MakeForms is a SaaS tool, where one can build custom forms such as contact forms, feedback forms, surveys, job application forms, and quizzes for websites. It promises to prioritise security and compliance in data collection and storage.  

Founder Pratik Ghela, a web developer, began his professional journey at the age of 18. He has launched two products—MakeStories, a web story builder tool, and MakeForms. The products together cater to 1.5 lakh users globally, including in India, the US, and Brazil. 

Security first:

• MakeForms features include advanced form formats, conditional logic and workflows, custom branding, embedding and sharing, analytics, user-friendly domain mapping, and email-filing options. 
• It prioritises data security and compliance for all users, adhering to standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. The platform also ensures the security of sensitive data through features like data encryption, password protection, captcha, and IP blocking.
• Ghela has invested around $200,000 from personal savings in the development of the company.

Women in Tech 

Inclusivity in organisations

In our Women in Technology series, we feature Priyanka Swain, Director of Engineering at Tally Solutions. She takes us through her 22-year journey in technology, highlighting her successes and challenges and what her current role entails.

She feels organisations should offer support and encouragement from the top down. 

Balancing:

• Despite being a senior woman leader in technology, Swain admits that a lot of women find it difficult to sustain in this field. And it could be due to various reasons like family responsibilities and lack of a support network.
• Open inclusivity is crucial for any employee to feel at home in a company; it’s also important to have a physical connect, she adds.
• Swain believes the various flexible and employee-friendly policies at Tally help employees, especially women, to return to work after a break.

News & updates

• Open ecosystem: Alphabet’s Google, Meta Platforms, Qualcomm and seven other tech companies have teamed up to push for open digital ecosystems in response to new EU tech rules in a move that may also take the edge of possible future legislation.
• Great recall: Tesla is recalling more than two million cars after the US regulator found its driver assistance system, Autopilot, was partly defective. The recall applies to almost every Tesla sold in the US since the Autopilot feature was launched in 2015.
• Top app: Video-sharing platform TikTok has become the first app that isn’t a mobile game to generate $10 billion in global consumer spending, according to a new report, and is expected to become the highest-earning app ever.

Coulrophobia is a phobia of what?

Answer: Clowns

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