Ride sharing apps struggle amidst COVID crisis

The Daily Stack
May 7, 2020

Uber has announced the company will be cutting another 14% of its workforce. The news comes on the heels of Lyft's layoffs just last week. Overall spending on ride-sharing apps has dropped some 85% as of the week of April 20th. The deep drop could be temporary with some of Uber's competitors in China and South America seeing smaller hits and faster recoveries. DiDi, the buyer of Uber's China operation, has said their current business is only down by low double-digits.

Addressing obvious concerns about health and safety in ride-sharing, DiDi and its various south American subsidiaries in Chile and Brazil began organizing regular fleet disinfection through motorized sanitizing stations in major cities in March. Hygiene supplies, including over 2 million masks and sanitizers, are being provided to drivers in some international markets. Work is underway to install plastic protective dividers to separate drivers and passengers, starting with 20,000 vehicles in Mexico. Read more here.

Fortnite maker Epic Games is fundraising at above a $15B value. Epic also produces a top downloaded app Houseparty. The interactive video chatting tool that started with teenage hangouts has managed to hold its own among fierce video conferencing competitors Zoom, Skype, GoogleMeet, and Webex.

Funding & Deal Highlights:
N26, a challenger bank, has announced another $100M in funding in a Series D extension. PrivCo finds that fundraising activity since the Covid-19 outbreak has favored later stage companies. See the full report here.

Edtech’s newest unicorn, ApplyBoard, has landed a $1.4B valuation with fresh funding. Investors are bullish, with a heavy focus on software tools providing access to remote learning post-Covid. Check out all 1,423 educational services companies on PrivCo here.

Sticky.io has announced a growth equity investment following its recent rebrand. Formerly known as Limelight CRM, Sticky.io is a tool that aims to help e-commerce conversion and lifecycle. As online becomes ubiquitous, could it be the next CRM unicorn (other than Salesforce)?

Intel Capital takes $11.5M stake in Hypersonix

First Dollar raises $5M for a consumer-friendly healthcare savings account

GigaSpaces raises $12M to accelerate AI workloads with in-memory computing

ThayerMahan closes on $10M in financing from AE Industrial Partners

American Institutes for Research to acquire IMPAQ

Anser Advisory announces H.R. Gray acquisition, expanding market expertise & geographic coverage

Since last week, PrivCo has added/updated:

767 Profiles updated

113 M&A added

117 Fundings added

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