Digital Startup News Roundup : Week of 5th March 2017

• This AI startup wants to help robot assistants ask people the questions – Artificial intelligence startup Ozlo thinks it has a solution for situations where virtual assistants fail in their responses: Getting the bots to ask questions back. Ozlo is launching a trio of software packages for other companies to enhance the virtual assistants they build. They’re aimed at making those assistants more sophisticated, including getting them to ask clarifying questions when they don’t understand a user request. Current virtual assistants, meaning conversational apps and bots like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, “have this problem with being very brittle,” Ozlo CEO Charles Jolley told Recode.

Joaquin Phoenix contemplates his AI system in “Her.”

• Cisco’s Chambers: US was ‘the start-up nation’ but has fallen way behind – Snap’s IPO Thursday was “tremendous” but the country needs five times as many start-ups going public to meet economic growth targets, said John Chambers, executive chairman and former CEO of Cisco. “We used to be the start-up nation and we have fallen way behind,” Chambers told CNBC’s ” Power Lunch ” on Thursday. “It’s tremendous to have a Snap but we need 5 Snaps.”
• Grocery Delivery Startup Instacart In Talks to Raise $400 Million In Fresh Funding – Axios is reporting that Instacart is in talks to raise another $400 million in fresh funding that would value the grocery delivery service at $3 billion, or 50% more than what the company was valued in its last funding round. Sequoia Capital will reportedly lead the round. Instacart last raised money in January 2015, which brought the total money the company had received from outside investors to $275 million. At the time, investors seemed encouraged by the fact that the company was making profits in some of its markets. But it was only profitable on a gross margin level, meaning the company was still losing money is all of its markets once you factored in marketing, R&D, and even salaries. Still, investors rewarded the company with a $2 billion valuation at the time.
• Insurtech startup Digital Fineprint gets selected for MetLife’s collab programme – Digital Fineprint, a London-based InsurTech startup, has been selected as one of the eight InsurTech companies in the world to take part in MetLife’s collab Partnership. The announcement comes on the heels of the company’s selection into Accenture’s Fintech Innovation Lab in London in January 2017. Founded in 2015, Digital Fineprint is funded by Eos Venture Partners, RAW Capital and a stellar group of angel investors. It uses ground-breaking predictive analytics to turn social data into insurance data. The company has been selected out of 135 competing applicants from 34 countries.
• Softbank reported to be investing billions in work-space sharing start-up – ARM’s owner Softbank is reported by CNBC to be spending up to $4 billion on a US workspace-sharing start-up called WeWork. The deal is said to be that Softbank will invest an initial $2 billion and may subsequently invest another $2 billion. WeWork is backed by Chinese investor groups Hony Capital, backed b Legend Holdings, and China Oceanwide Holdings among others.
• Deutsche Telekom calls on Irish start-up – Anam Technologies, a Dublin-based startup, has signed a deal with Deutsche Telekom to help the German company boost its revenues by blocking unbilled messaging.The Irish startup will help the company’s international carrier sales and solutions division (ICSS) block app-to-person (A2P) messaging sent via unauthorised channels.
• Ratan Tata, Hrithik Roshan in talks to fund health startup, CureFit – Ratan Tata and Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan are in talks to invest in CureFit, a healthcare startup founded by former Flipkart executives.  The year-old entity started by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori has so far raised about $20 million and counts venture capital firms Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures as investors. Roshan wants to take an equity stake in the company. “This partnership will mostly be a cash-plus-equity deal,” said Roshan, who worked with Bansal in Myntra for his lifestyle brand HRX. The deal is expected to be finalised in the next few months.

Check out previous weeks news roundup