Toppr raises $46 million to scale its online learning platform in India

Toppr, one of the largest online learning startups in India, has secured $46 million in a new financing round as it looks to scale its platform, including a new product. Dubai-headquartered investment firm Foundation Holdings led the Mumbai-based seven-year-old startup’s Series D round. Kaizen Private Equity, an existing investor, also participated in the new round, …

Instrumental raises $20M to scale its AI-powered manufacturing tech

This morning Instrumental, a startup that uses vision-powered AI to detect manufacturing anomalies, announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B led by Canaan Partners. The company had previously raised $10.3 million across two rounds, including a $7.5 million Series A in mid-2017. According to a release, the Series B was participated in …

Mirror competitor Tempo raises a $60M Series B

No doubt about it, home fitness is hot. The category had already been gaining considerable traction in recent years and months, but the ongoing pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated interest by orders of magnitude. And understandably so. After all, while some businesses have begun reopening in some locations, gyms are still a big red flag, with …

Hevo draws in $8 million Series A for its no-code data pipeline service

Hevo founders Manish Jethani and Sourabh Agarwal According to data pipeline startup Hevo, many small- to medium-sized companies juggle more than 40 different applications to manage sales, marketing, finance, customer support and other operations. All of these applications are important sources of data that can be analyzed to improve a company’s performance. That data often …

Advertima rings up $17.5M for computer vision-powered behavioral analytics for in-store retail

Swiss computer vision startup Advertima has raised a €15 million Series A (~$17.5 million) to build out a machine learning platform for physical retail stores to ‘upgrade’ the shopping experience via real-time shopper behavior analytics. The round is led by existing shareholder, Fortimo Group, a Swiss real estate company. Fed by visual sensors, Advertima’s platform …

Teespring’s comeback story

Startup stories are often too reductive — an entrepreneur dreams up an idea, snags some co-founders, raises a bit of money, and presto: success and riches. It’s nearly never true. Even breakout successes like Slack that may feel straightforward have complicated stories. Amongst the most valuable startups there are hidden crises and disappointing quarters. Some …

ClimaCell raises $23M Series C for its weather intelligence platform

ClimaCell, the weather forecasting and intelligence service that is using a number of interesting new techniques to gather weather data, today announced that it has raised a $23 million Series C round co-led by new investor Pitango Growth and existing investor Square Peg Captial. With this new round, the Boston- and TelAviv-based company’s total funding …

Digital elective care and telemedicine provider Ro raises $200 million at a reported $1.5 billion valuation

In three years Zachariah Reitano’s startup, Ro, has managed to hit a reported $1.5 billion valuation for its transformation from a company focused on treating erectile disfunction to a telemedicine service for a range of elective and urgent care-focused treatments. Through Rory for women’s health, Roman for men’s health, and Zero for smoking cessation, Reitano’s …

Why is SAP spinning Qualtrics out via an IPO?

Over the weekend, software giant SAP announced that it will take Qualtrics public, with the German software company retaining a majority stake in the Utah-based “experience management” firm after its forthcoming debut. SAP paid $8 billion in cash for Qualtrics back in 2018, right before the smaller firm was set to go public. Chatting with …

Startups Weekly: What education do you need to build a great tech company?

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. The easy startup ideas have all been done — the ones that just required some homebrew hardware hacking or PHP dorm-room coding to get off the ground. These days, you might need multiple …