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18

TOP FUNDED AI DYNAMIC YIELD RAISES

STARTUPS $32 MILLION
TO WATCH IN 2018 PERSONALIZATION ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE STARTUP,
RAISED FUNDING SERIES D

EARLYSALARY
INDIAN
SEP 2018   |   VOLUME 15   |   ISSUE: INTERNAL

FINTECH
RAISES $2 MN IN ANGEL
FUNDING

BRAIN FROM
PAKISTAN
IMPRESSED SILICON INVESTORS
TABLE OF  
CONTENTS
02 DYNAMIC YIELD RAISES $32 MILLION
TO PERSONALIZE ONLINE SHOPPING

04 CRAZY START-UPS: GRABB-IT

06 INDIAN FINTECH STARTUP

EARLYSALARY HAS RAISED $15.7 MN

09 PARALLEL BANKING SYSTEM: $4.5

MILLION USD SEED FUNDING FOR
TECH DRIVEN FINANCIAL STARTUP
FROM PAKISTAN

13 TOP WELL-FUNDED AI STARTUPS

 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018   |   PAGE 1

 DYNAMIC YIELD RAISES $32
MILLION TO PERSONALIZE
ONLINE SHOPPING
Dynamic Yield, a personalization software startup, announced today that it has
raised a $32 million Series D. This round is led by Tel Aviv-based Viola Growth ABOUT
with participation from Israel-based Union Tech Venture. DYNAMIC
Founded in 2011, Dynamic Yield has so far raised a total of $77 million. Among
YIELD
the six disclosed funding rounds, Bessemer Venture participated in three of Dynamic Yield provides
them. Vertex Ventures co-led the company’s $31 million Series C in 2017. personalization,
recommendations, 1:1
Additionally, several notable corporations have also invested in Dynamic Yield,
messaging, and yield
including The New York Times and the Chinese search engine Baidu. optimization across
web, mobile, and email.
Dynamic yield pairs ecommerce experiences in an interactive digital shopping
setting with a personalized sales assistant. Using the Dynamic Yield Headquarters Regions
Greater New York Area,
technology, companies can automatically engage with customers on their East Coast,
platforms. For example, when a customer browses a clothing website, the Northeastern US
individual is prompted with a dialogue box that suggests items or promotions
based on the person’s previous activity on the site. Similarly, customers are Founded Date
reminded by email if they have left items in their online shopping carts, or are 2011
offered suggestions similar to the items in the cart.

02
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
 “When we built Dynamic Yield, we built it from the very get-go to be a technology Other
that will be used by product teams and engineering teams to create a better Featured
framework for their marketers to be able to launch campaign at scale,” said Dynamic
Yield’s CEO Liad Agmon. “Our technology can support very sophisticated use cases in
July Sets A Record
a much more elegant way.”
For Number Of
$100M+ Venture
Dynamic Yield prides itself on its ability to be highly integrated with its clients’
proprietary data, so the clients’ marketing campaigns can be tailored to individual
Capital Rounds
customers.

Agmon also notes that clients in different countries may also adopt different
personalization strategies. For example, Agmon told Crunchbase News that, mobile Boston-Area
use, specifically for retail, is much more prominent in Asia and South America than in Startups Are On
North America and Europe. Cultural nuances also play a role in varied personalization Pace To Overtake
strategies, like messaging and other creative work. NYC Venture Totals
Dynamic Yield aims to become “the industry’s first personalization anywhere
platform,” per its press release. According to Agmon, this means that instead of
having several siloed interactions with different digital interfaces, customers will Startups Serving
have one integrated experience through multiple digital channels. The Elderly Are
Tech’s Next Big
Currently, Dynamic Yield serves over 200 enterprise and mid-market clients around Market
the globe, and its personalization services mainly operate through online, mobile, and
email channels. With the new infusion of capital, the company is planning to expand
its personalization solutions to kiosks, call centers, point-of-sale systems, and IoT
devices.

03
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
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 SEP 2018   |   VOLUME 15 ISSUE: INTERNAL08
C PURATS YZAR

04
 GRABB-IT WANTS TO TURN
YOUR AR S WINDOW INTO A C ’
VIDEO BILLBOARD
Maybe it’s because it looks a bit futuristic
— a bit unreal. Maybe it’s because I’m
looking at an ad somewhere I never
expected to see one, like the skyscraper-
height ads of Ridley Scott’s future.
Grabb-It turns a car’s side rear window
into a full-color display, playing location-
aware ads to anyone who might be
standing curbside. They’re currently
aiming to work with rideshare/delivery
drivers, enabling them to make a bit of
extra coin while doing the driving they’re
already doing.
As the driver crosses town, the ads can
automatically switch to focus on
businesses nearby. Near the ball park? It
might pitch you on tickets for tonight’s
game. Over in The Mission? It could play
an ad about happy hour at the bar behind
you.
So how’s it work? I couldn’t figure it out
at first glance — but once they opened
the car door, it all clicked.
The key: projection. It turns your window
into a rear projection TV on wheels, of
sorts.
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
Grabb-It applies a material to the inside of
a car’s right rear window to act as a
projection surface. The material is thin
enough that the window can still be
opened — but, in what might annoy
some passengers, not thin enough that
you can see much through it. They mount
a small projector inside the car and point
it toward the window, blasting an image
bright enough to see from the outside. I
saw it running in a dim below-ground
parking lot and outside in direct sunlight,
and the image was surprisingly clear in
both cases.
The end result is quite neat to see (which
is something I’m really not used to saying
about tech meant to show me ads).
Because the projection material is custom
cut for each car, the image can cover
pretty much the entire surface of the
window glass. It gives the illusion of a
display custom built for the contours of
the car.
It’s meant to only run when the driver is
between rides. Once a passenger hops in
the car, the projector is shut off —
because, well, no one wants a projector
blasting light in their face on the way to
their next meeting.
While the company is working on its own
hardware kit, the build I saw was an early
iteration running a small off-the-shelf
projector. Even at this stage, it’s a pretty
effective demo. While this prototype
requires the driver to manually toggle the
projector by remote control, Grabb-It’s
founders tell me their eventual hardware
will automatically detect when the rear
doors open and cut the projector on-the-
fly. The image juddered a bit as the idling
engine vibrated, though that seems like
something that could be improved with
better damping.
I am a bit wary of the distraction factor;
will a fully animated ad playing on the car
next to you work out to eyes off the road
ahead? While Grabb-It tells me they’re
working with the proper authorities to
ensure it’s all road-legal, I imagine people
might contest it as more cars utilizing the
tech hit the streets.
Grabb-It says they’ll cover the cost of
installation for drivers — and if a driver
decides to remove it, it’s just a matter of
unmounting the projector and peeling the
projection material from the window.
05
 INDIAN FINTECH
REVOLUTION
FORECASTED TO CROSS

$2.4 BN
BY 2020

INDIAN
FINTECH
STARTUP
EARLYSALARY
WITH THE FRESH FUNDS, THE STARTUP IS AIMING TO HIT 100K
IN MONTHLY DISBURSALS BY THE END OF 2018

06
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
 Pune-based fintech startup EarlySalary has raised

Pune-based $15.7 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in Series B funding led by

Eight Roads Ventures India. Existing investors IDG
Ventures India, Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd

fintech startup (DHFL) and early backer Ashok Agarwal also

participated in the round.

EarlySalary has Commenting on the development, EarlySalary co-

founder and CEO Akshay Mehrotra said, “We will
use the funding to accelerate our growth. By end
raised $15.7 Mn of the year, we are aiming at 100K loan
disbursements per month (from about 14,000

(INR 100 Cr) in

loans a month now).”

In addition to offering new products and tenure

Series B
options to customers, the fresh capital will also be
used to bolster the company’s technology stack as
well as expedite the integration of machine
learning capabilities for faster and more efficient
risk management.

Mehrotra added, “We have been able to offer

access to short-term loans to young working
professionals, who don’t have a credit bureau
rating. We use social algorithm and artificial
machine intelligence for risk assessment.
Deploying machine learning has helped us in
faster loans approvals.”

The company aims to become profitable by the end

of 2018. As per the terms of the deal, Dhyanesh
Shah, Principal at Eight Roads Ventures, will be
joining the EarlySalary board.

Shah stated, “The company has cleverly leveraged

data and technology to provide instant affordable
loans to an otherwise excluded customer segment.
We look forward to working closely with Akshay,
Ashish and the management team at Early Salary.”

07
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
 Founded in 2015 by Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal, EarlySalary
EARLYSALARY: is a mobile-first lending platform. It provides salary advances and
instant cash loans and provides a smart risk scoring system. These
JOURNEY FROM loans are similar to salary/cash advances or credit card cash
withdrawal.
2015 TO PRESENT
The fintech startup provides salary advance up to 50% of monthly
salary to its users. The company claims that 70% loans are given in
under 10 minutes. Apart from this, salary advance/cash loans are
transferred to bank instantly.

The ticket size of loans ranges between $126.1-$3,154 (INR 8,000

to INR 2 Lakh), while the repayment period is anywhere from 7
days up to one month. To bolster its offerings, the fintech
company has partnered with corporates as well as SMEs across the
country to give salary advances to employees.

The credit scoring is done coupled with social profiling which gives
a better risk assessment and helps go beyond financial
underwriting and IndiaStack. Over the last couple of years, the
company has developed its ‘Underwriting System’ which is a self-
learning, algorithm-based decision making system. The system
reviews social media in real-time as well as Credit Bureau data of
customers and helps approve the loan.

EarlySalary co-founder and CEO Akshay Mehrotra went on to state,

“The key to our success will be helping more and more people
without any human interface.  08
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
 BANKING SYSTEM
GAME CHANGER

BY 2030 
40% BUSINESSES 
WILL MOVE TO
PARALLEL BANKING

PARALLEL
BANKING SYSTEM
$4.5 MILLION USD SEED FUNDING FOR TECH DRIVEN
FINANCIAL STARTUP FROM PAKISTAN

09
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
 First time in the history of tech driven financial developments, an
individual from Pakistan was able to get seed funding of $4.5
FIRST TIME, million USD for his startup.

AN INDIVIDUAL Mr. Siddiqui fortunate, passionate and optimistic individual, for the
FROM PAKISTAN very first time in the history of his country, has managed to achieve
a feat that others might not even have thought of, to begin with.
WAS ABLE TO Surpassing all odds, he has managed to pitch his daring idea and
indeed have impressed multiple investors and VCs of the famous
GET FUNDING OF Silicon Valley, for a seed funding to his venture.
$4.5 MILLION USD
The idea is simple yet brilliant, it addresses the core need of the
emerging online trading and banking economy to help the
struggling private sector who wishes to do business internationally.
There is a huge need for a globally recognized, legal and reliable,
core online banking system. This whole banking system will work in
parallel of the traditional banking system just like Crypto Currencies
that work in parallel to real traditional currency. Proposed banking
system is completely based on block chain technology.  

In simple words, if you wish to sell your services or products online

you will need a means to get payments from your clients globally,
and this idea enables you to do so by being an online bank that is
fully functional and capable of managing accounts, worldwide
transactions, buying and selling online, handling loans and much
more including cryptocurrencies.  
10
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
"
Therefore, The Idea is to create a mega financial platform, a bank
where a budding entrepreneur or a firm can register and have their
accounts associated. This firm will then make sure to help with their
MY AIM IS TO CREATE transactions in any currency including, cryptocurrencies. Whether
PARALLEL BANKING you are a freelancer or an owner of a large firm, this idea comes to
use for all. Anyone who wishes to do business online can benefit
SYSTEM  WHICH IS from this globally recognized and accepted form of currency
ACCESSIBLE TO EVERY exchange. It can indeed work as a parallel banking system with all
features of a conventional bank present.
ONE WHO WANTS TO
EXPAND GLOBALLY An online banking service will be established, which will be capable
of giving loans to small businesses and startups, providing greater
WITH OUT ANY

"
investment opportunities with much greater profit margins. At
BOUNDARIES. times posing a challenge to other local and conventional banking
systems of targeted countries.

HARRIS SIDDIQUI The operations of this venture will allow its users to trade initially
STARTUP OWNER from Middle Eastern countries and East Asia, which will eventually
be then grown to a truly global experience.

The Banking service will be available anywhere and everywhere 24/7

through internet and mobiles apps based on block chain technology.
Local banks can also join in on this venture and make a deal with
the owner of this idea and in many countries it is planned to bring
the local banks on board.

But as with any great ideas, come greater hurdles, some of them
being the current financial eco-systems around the world and
reliance on conventional form of payments like cash. Although the
VC investors have approved the funding but there are a lot of boxes
to be checked, a lot of doors to be knocked and a huge system that
needs to be made available and willing to allow the thing to work. A
lot of legal and infrastructure framework is to be done, and actual
working contracts are yet to be formed. 

But fortunately, everyone involved, especially the Silicon Valley

giants seem to be very confident of the system and the pending
prerequisites seem like achievable with of course some
determination and a lot of persuasion. As some investors take full
responsibilities for all legal framework in a list of countries
worldwide. 

11
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
"
Another good news is the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that has
been signed between the VC Investors and the owner of this idea at
the court to reserve the rights and patent it avoid any duplication or
BRILLIANT! WITH THIS a conflict of interest.

IDEA WE CAN CHANGE If this gets a good wind and everything falls into place as intended,
THE BANKING, IT WILL the individual wishes to get this institution open and start
operations form his country, the sheer magnitude of this venture
EMPOWER SMALL AND would not only boost the country’s economic output it may take its

MEDIUM BUSINESSES economy at par with its neighboring India, the already establish

"
emerging hub of technology and with substantial exports.

The question only remains to where and how Mr. Siddiqui wished to
MARK ALBERT do that. How much work is done how much is pending is yet to be
FINTECH VC BOARD revealed, but it is pretty certain that this idea hold a tremendous
potential and can fix a lot of problems being faced by the struggling
entrepreneurs and organizations.

"
Some key facts and figures that were presented to the VC investors
during the seed presentation included the lack of facilities that
could fulfil transaction needs of a staggering 17 million users,
THIS STARTUP WILL business and individuals included, who wish to sell their services
SURPASS MEGA online and are looking for a credible, reliable and legal way of
currency exchange.
FINTECH COMPANIES
LIKE PAYPAL AND The facts also included their current estimated turnover at being

"
around 4 million USD annually for each business which could be
ALIPAY BY 2030. boosted to a whopping 200% if such a facility is in place and readily
available to these small and medium size ventures.

Although final and exact figures are yet kept away from the public
LEONG HONG MUN eye before any significant development, but it’s pretty certain that
VC CONSULTANT numbers will speak volumes beyond expectations and this is the key
reason behind the funding approval from the VC investors in just 2
weeks of the initial presentation.

Now what is yet to be seen is how the events unfold and how a
grand dream of this visionary individual unravels itself to fruition.
Would it be a yet another brilliant idea that disappears into oblivion
due to the infamous ‘unforeseen circumstances’ or it actually turns
out to be a dream come true for this individual and countless others
who can benefit from the potential of this next generation idea…
only time will tell. 12
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
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 Top Well-Funded AI Startups To
Watch In 2018

Mechanical baristas, self-driving cars, robo-

advisors, and state-run facial recognition

campaigns. Artificial intelligence

13
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
Mechanical baristas, self-driving cars, robo-advisors, and
state-run facial recognition campaigns. Artificial
intelligence, in its many forms, will likely continue to
redefine how individuals think about government,
school, work, and daily life. And startups that are not
leveraging AI are beginning to fall behind the rest of the
pack.
“AI will be a true differentiator for companies in the
future. The companies that have mastered it will take off,
those who haven’t will dwindle (just like companies
choosing to embrace software and the internet early on),”
Scott Stephenson, founder and CEO of Deepgram, an
automatic speech recognition company, told Crunchbase
News in an email.
And in a world where supergiant rounds are now quite
common, AI startups have brought in some significant
capital. SenseTime, the most well-funded AI startup to
date, has brought in a total of $1.6 billion. Most recently,
the company raised $620 million in a Series C+ round led
by Tiger Global Management and Fidelity International.
The round raised the company’s valuation to more than
$4.5 billion, making it the most highly valued artificial
intelligence company in history, according to TechNode.
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
“THE INTELLIGENCE REVOLUTION IS A
NEXT NECESSARY STEP IN EVOLUTION
THAT SCALES OUT OUR ABILITY TO
REASON AND SOLVE MORE PROBLEMS.” –
SCOTT STEPHENSON, DEEPGRAM FOUNDER
& CEO
Co-Founder and CTO of Skyline AI, an artificial intelligence
company in the commercial real estate industry, believes
that we’ve reached a renaissance age in AI.
“The most significant difference is that AI is now much
easier to implement due to vast efforts by open source
communities and the large cloud vendors,” Co-Founder
and CTO of Skyline AI Or Hiltch told Crunchbase News in an
email. “The result is that many more companies are using
AI today compared to just five years ago.”
With more corporate VCs and others looking to cash in on
the hype surrounding AI, more early-stage companies will
likely hop onto the fundraising bandwagon. In the
meantime, Crunchbase News decided to demystify the
artificial intelligence space by taking a look at the leading
players in the industry.
14
We considered companies in the “artificial intelligence” and adjacent categories.
Included on the list are active startups that have raised at least one venture capital
round since January 1, 2016. The list includes companies that are working specifically
on artificial intelligence technologies. The startups are ranked based on known total
funds raised.

Notably, according to Crunchbase, 40 percent of the 30 most funded AI startups that

have raised since 2016 are based in China. As the Chinese government aims to become
a leading nation in the development of artificial intelligence technologies, Chinese
startups have reaped the benefits of the current innovation-focused state of the
industry in the country.

Companies in the chart range from the facial recognition company mentioned above
to biotech-focused AI company iCarbonX, audio processing company SoundHound,
and enterprise AI company WorkFusion.

SenseTime Beijing,                         Beijing, China                                       $1,630M

UBTech Robotics                            Guangdong, China                              $940M

Megvii Technology                         Beijing, Beijing, China                        $607M

Dataminr New York,                      New York, United States                    $577M

CrowdStrike                                    California, United States                     $481M

Yitu Technology                             Shanghai, Shanghai, China                $355.1M

Unisound Beijing,                          Beijing, China                                         $301.4M

Mobvoi Beijing,                              Beijing, China                                          $251.6M

InsideSales.com                            Utah, United States                               $251.2M

Pony.ai Fremont,                           California, United States                      $214M

15
 STARTUP.CO  |  SEP 2018
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