Automation

Sales automation software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform LeadSquared has joined the unicorn club after the Bengaluru-based company raised $153 million from WestBridge Capital as a part of its Series C funding round. The company is India's 103rd startup to be valued at $1 billion or more even as concerns mount over funding and the growing number of layoffs in the industry. "(We will) start building in APAC and EMEA, add new offerings to our product portfolio, and fund acquisitions. To support our growth, we plan to double our headcount in the next 18 months,” LeadSquared's founder and chief executive office Nilesh Patel said on June 21. He was referring to the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, the Middle East and  African countries. The company would also use the funds to invest more for growth in its existing markets—India and North America, Patel said. LeadSquared follows edtech company PhysicsWallah and online beauty products marketplace Purplle to become the third … [Read more...] about Sales automation firm LeadSquared joins unicorn club with $153 million funding from WestBridge

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin M edallion had a great first quarter in 2022. The San Francisco, California-based healthtech startup, whose software automates back office operations and compliance, doubled its customer base and revenue in the six months since raising a $30 million Series B , according to founder and CEO Derek Lo. With nearly 200 customers, mostly other digital health startups, the next push is to sign up big incumbents – mainly hospitals and health insurers – to use Medallion’s software to cut through these time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles. Looking at a much longer sales cycle ahead coupled with the possibility of an economic downturn, Lo started talking with Medallion’s existing investors and everyone agreed the best defense is a good offense. Even though Medallion has barely touched its Series B capital, the company raised a preemptive $35 million Series C co-led by Spark Capital and GV to ensure a more than three-year runway as … [Read more...] about Healthcare Automation Startup Medallion Raises $35 Million To Go On The Offensive

- A + A KUALA LUMPUR (June 23): The global 5G network automation market is gathering momentum and expected to reach US$5 billion (about RM22.04 billion) by 2026 from approximately US$3.5 billion in 2021. In a statement on Wednesday (June 22), Frost & Sullivan said with the 5G network moving to the cloud, the network is now software-based and requires automation to succeed operationally and financially. Frost & Sullivan ICT industry principal Troy Morley said network automation is an essential part of 5G because it enables efficiency and cost savings for communications service providers (CSPs). “While the entire 5G network will benefit from network automation, the most significant growth opportunity lies within the 5G RAN, where CSPs invest the largest portion of their capital expenditures and operating expenditures (opex),” he said. Morley said with nearly 70% of infrastructure spend, slight improvements in the RAN due to network automation would lead to … [Read more...] about Global 5G network automation market expected to hit US$5 billion by 2026

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Andrew E. Chrostowski , Chairman and CEO, RealWear, Inc. Today, industrial companies around the world find themselves trying to adjust to the fourth wave of industrialization—Industry 4.0. This new wave of industrialization finds companies integrating information technology (IT), operation technology (OT), robotics, 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and machine-learning/AI technologies in ways that interconnect our physical, digital and even biological worlds. The new Industry 4.0 technologies that have typically received the most notice are those that automate simple or dangerous tasks that human workers previously performed. Some examples of how industrial companies are using Industry 4.0 technologies to automate such tasks include: • AI and IoT-enabled high-resolution cameras are being used to detect and prevent flares at chemical plants, blowouts on oil rigs and other safety issues at industrial … [Read more...] about Not Just Automation: How Industry 4.0 Augments Front-Line Workers

Welcome to Inc.'s Founders Project podcast with Alexa Von Tobel, where we bring you tales of guts, inspiration , and drive that define the entrepreneurs building the future. Each week, we dig into a founder's professional playbook and uncover what makes them tick. On this week's episode: How A.I. Can Drive Customer Insights with Amit Bendov of Gong In 2015, Amit Bendov was not looking to start a company. But he was looking for a way for his sales team to more automatically capture CRM data. So he and his co-founder ended up launching Gong to help sales teams have better conversations with customers and win more deals. Gong quickly found product-market fit, which only accelerated when Covid pushed most sales calls to a digital format. Gong has since grown to over 2,000 customers with a valuation north of $7 billion. Bendov shares why he charged early customers a high price to stay in beta, why he believes autonomous applications are the way of the future, and why you … [Read more...] about How This Founder Is Bringing Automation to Sales Teams

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Darwinbox, an AI-powered human resources software startup in Singapore, has raised $72 million in Series D financing at a $1 billion valuation. The funding round was led by Menlo Park-based TCV, best known for its investments in LinkedIn, Netflix and Spotify. Other investors include JG Digital Equity Ventures, the investment arm of Filipino billionaire Lance Gokongwei ’s Gokongwei Group, Menlo Park-based Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India and Salesforce Ventures. In January last year, the startup raised more than $15 million in Series C financing led by Salesforce Ventures. Darwinbox’s cloud-based human resources management software uses AI and machine learning to automate payroll, recruitment, travel and expense, and employee onboarding. Its platform helps automate interview scheduling and digitize attendance and payroll. More than 650 enterprises in over 90 countries, including Del Monte Foods, … [Read more...] about Singapore HR Software Startup Achieves Unicorn Status With $72 Million Funding

Once upon a time, Slack was a sort of Switzerland of workplace productivity—a central collaborative hub that offered an array of integrations with other business tools rather than competing with them or treating one third-party offering differently than another. But the company entered a new era in December 2020, when it agreed to sell itself to software-as-a-service giant Salesforce for $27.7 billion. And today, at Salesforce’s TrailblazerDX ’22 conference, Slack and Salesforce are announcing Salesforce Platform for Slack, a joint project that is most definitely a result of their unified ownership. advertisement advertisement The new platform allows Salesforce developers—there are more than 11 million of them—to create functionality that shuttles data from Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud services into Slack. Along with leveraging a Salesforce automation system called Flow, the platform supports the company’s Apex … [Read more...] about Slack is definitely part of Salesforce now, and here’s proof

Box , the online file-sharing service, just outflanked rival Dropbox in a very lucrative sphere: Healthcare. On Wednesday, Box announced a major push for its Box for Healthcare initiative. Google Health’s Missy Krasner joined Box , the service announced HIPAA and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) compliance, and partnerships were announced with 13 major health care organizations. Box is also launching a competition to spur development of healthcare apps on their platform. advertisement According to Box, its target market for healthcare includes physicians, pharma reps, life science developers, and third-party healthcare organizations. Box Senior Vice President Whitney Bouck told Fast Company , “We want to connect disparate parties in healthcare by providing a secure, cloud-based content collaboration platform.” Partnering institutions include 13 electronic health record, imaging, workflow automation, and care access … [Read more...] about Box Wants To Be Your Doctor’s Cloud Service

Representative Image India’s payment system has gone through a transformation in the past decade, and demonetization has hastened the speed of the changes. Even as digital payment systems have grown exponentially, cash still remains a critical component in financial transactions. As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), currency in circulation (CiC) or cash with the public is higher now than before demonetization. At the same time, Unified Payment Interface (UPI) has dwarfed all other retail payment systems in terms of transactions and surged ahead. The ratio of UPI transactions to GDP has risen sharply even as cash continues to endure. What has suffered are cheque payments. Cheques have plummeted as a mode of transactions to just 27 percent of GDP in FY22 from as high as 50 percent in FY16. Part of this has been also due to the regulator’s efforts to reduce paper transactions in the economy and nudge even larger transactions towards digital routes. Most digital platforms, … [Read more...] about Chart of the Day: UPI on fire, cheques burn but cash endures

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin This week’s jaw dropping announcement by Crystal Cruises that in one fell swoop it is expanding into river cruising, offering a yacht product, operating its own private jet tours and selling 144 multi-million dollar residences aboard three new build cruise ships was part of a vision President and CEO Edie Rodriguez had in mind when she joined the line in October 2013. However, it wasn’t until this May, when the company was acquired by Genting Hong Kong , the dream began to take hold. She tells Forbes.com, more significant initiatives will be unveiled in the next six months. For industry observers, joining Crystal may have seemed a surprising move for Rodriguez, even if it was for the top job. A 34-year industry veteran, who started as a travel agent, she served in senior leadership positions at Carnival Corporation’s Carnival Cruise Lines, Cunard and Seabourn, as well as most recently senior vice president of sales and … [Read more...] about How Crystal Cruises Pulled Off Its Massive Expansion