Startup News roundup for Week ending 29nd October
News you can use
- Catch them young! Amazon offers $250,000 prize fund for Alexa skills aimed at kids – Do you have an idea for a cool App using Alexa for kids? Then this competition is for you!
- Review of online Pharmacies and drugstores in India – The ‘eCommerce revolution’ seems to be making inroads into all aspects of life in urban India and is attempting to transform the highly fragmented medical supply and Pharmacy business. Startups and online ventures are trying to ‘transform’ and ‘disrupt’ the way people buy medicines, herbal products, fitness devices and other medical supplies. However, if I go by my recent experience – in September-October 2017 – the online ventures have a long way to go before they can disrupt the existing brick-and-mortar suppliers.
- Top 5 Cashback programs for eCommerce shoppers in India – Review of Indian Cashback , Discount and Coupon sites.
Corporate Startup Ventures and M&A
Delphi to Buy Self-Driving Car Tech Startup for $450 Million– Delphi Automotive PLC said Tuesday it has agreed to buy a self-driving car tech startup for $450 million, boosting the automotive supplier’s drive to bring autonomous vehicles to market by the end of the decade. Wall Street Journal reports “Purchase of NuTonomy to help company bring autonomous vehicles to market by end of decade”
Ford is making a big bet on technology that will help autonomous cars ‘see’ with laser light – Ford Motor Company’s Argo unit announced Friday the acquisition of Princeton Lightwave. Executives anticipate the partnership will help Argo develop affordable lidar sensors, which enable autonomous cars to “see” with laser technology.
This start-up is using AI to detect cancer before humans can for $1 – Zebra Medical Vision has created algorithms that read medical scans and detect disorders – The company announced plans of a business model that offers each scan for $1. This is aimed at expanding advanced medical technology into emerging markets
Cisco To Acquire Machine-Learning Startup Perspica To Boost AppDynamics – The networking and tech giant, Cisco Systems announced that it plans to acquire startup Perspica in an effort to enhance its AppDynamics platform. “With the addition of Perspica to our AppDynamics capabilities, customers will be able to further take advantage of machine-learning capabilities to analyze large amounts of application-related data, in real time and with business context, including when an application is deployed in a company’s public, private and multiple cloud environments”
Startups that failed this week
Failed Startup: Chinese Power bank rental startup LeDian shuts down – Chinese Power bank rental startup LeDian announced on a WeChat blog that it was shutting down after retrieving all devices.
Atlas Informatics announces shutdown – Seattle based startup Atlas Informatics announced (blog) on its website that it was shutting down.