Technology
Nurture aims to teach children important life skills through interactive gameplay and entertainment.
Parents understand how difficult it’s to keep their children engaged in online learning. Education is a brand new app designed for youths aged 4 to 7 that gives interactive content and games that can keep them engaged. The company’s mission is to equip kids with key life skills comparable to socialization, basic financial literacy, mindfulness, fitness, nutrition and more through story-driven adventures that children can actively take part in.
Nurture announced its $2.8 million pre-seed round on Wednesday, led by Golden Gate Ventures. The funding will go toward hiring preschool content creators to help create content for the platform.
The flagship title that Nurture first launched is known as “Doki’s Delivery” and focuses on helping children learn social-emotional skills. The series follows a gaggle of characters who’re on a mission to deliver an egg via spaceship.
The app also has a dual-screen component that requires parents to download the Nurture TV app on Fire TV or Google TV so kids can interact between each screens. In the case of “Doki’s Delivery,” kids can use their phone or tablet as a game controller while playing on the TV screen. They can tilt their mobile device from side to side to help the characters avoid obstacles.
Other interactions include responding to the protagonist’s calls, designing a spaceship, and hatching a mysterious egg that players can then take care of – similar to Tamagotchi, the favored children’s toy.
“I didn’t want it to be passive, mindless screen time. I want it to be an active, interactive learning process,” co-founder and CEO Roger Egan told TechCrunch. “(Once kids) understand the concepts, we use games and interactive materials to practice the skills and apply them.”
The company plans to release latest original content focused on “growth mindset and financial thinking,” Egan explained. Additionally, Nurture is in talks with about 20 popular third-party creators to expand its content library. Nurture’s creator platform lets creators host content on their very own digital “islands,” which users can access with a swipe of the app’s menu.
In addition to engaging educational content, parents will have the opportunity to track their children’s gaming performance.
“We have these moments called reflection moments where we ask questions and the child can answer them…With that answer, we can synthesize that information and understand how well they understand a concept, and then feed that into the product and let the parents know how the child is learning and how they’re progressing,” Egan said.
Offline classes may even be available to help parents learn the way to consolidate the knowledge they’ve acquired through the app, and to encourage children to apply their knowledge in on a regular basis situations.
Nurture was founded in 2022, just a few years after Egan’s children began distant learning throughout the pandemic. With a front-row seat to his children’s education, he felt that traditional education wasn’t adequately preparing children for a rapidly changing world, especially one dominated by artificial intelligence. He also believes that children should learn things like adaptability, critical pondering, digital literacy, mindfulness, and empathy to achieve success in the long run. But he struggled to find suitable alternatives to complement his children’s education.
Egan previously founded online food market RedMart, which was acquired by Alibaba. He was joined by co-founders Danny Limanseta (chief product officer), who served as product design manager at Redmart; Sally Doherty (chief human resources officer), who previously worked at Microsoft; and Scott and Julie Stewart (creative directors), a husband-and-wife team specializing in animated children’s content comparable to “Lego Friends: The Next Chapter.”
In addition to being an investor, Priebe can be a game design advisor at Nurture. Priebe was chargeable for creating Club Penguin, the wildly popular online multiplayer game.
“The next generation of kids are learning games faster than they are learning shows,” Priebe told us. “I really like the idea that you’re not just going to sit and watch linear TV anymore… It’s really innovative how the (Nurture) characters stop and pull the kid into the adventure and ask, ‘What would you do?’ or ‘How would you like us to do this?’”
Nurture is currently in an invite-only beta for users within the U.S., U.K., and Canada. It plans to expand to other markets in 2025. The company may even launch a paid subscription once the app is publicly available.
Other participants within the round included Reach Capital and Seedcamp, with participation from Club Penguin co-founder Lance Priebe. Other notable advisors included Manual Bronstein, Roblox’s chief product officer; Scott Kraft, former head author and executive producer of “Paw Patrol”; and Joey Mazzarino, a puppeteer on “Sesame Street” known for his roles as Murray Monster, Stinky the Stinkweed and other Muppets.
Technology
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal is leaving PhonePe’s board
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal has stepped down three-quarters from PhonePe’s board after making an identical move on the e-commerce giant.
Bengaluru-based PhonePe said it has appointed Manish Sabharwal, executive director at recruitment and human resources firm Teamlease, as an independent director and chairman of the audit committee.
Bansal played a key role in Flipkart’s acquisition of PhonePe in 2016 and has since served on the fintech’s board. The Walmart-backed startup, which operates India’s hottest mobile payment app, spun off from Flipkart in 2022 and was valued at $12 billion in funding rounds that raised about $850 million last 12 months.
Bansal still holds about 1% of PhonePe. Neither party explained why they were leaving the board.
“I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Binny Bansal for being one of the first and staunchest supporters of PhonePe,” Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO of PhonePe, said in a press release. His lively involvement, strategic advice and private mentoring have profoundly enriched our discussions. We will miss Binny!”
Technology
The company is currently developing washing machines for humans
Forget about cold baths. Washing machines for people may soon be a brand new solution.
According to at least one Japanese the oldest newspapersOsaka-based shower head maker Science has developed a cockpit-shaped device that fills with water when a bather sits on a seat in the center and measures an individual’s heart rate and other biological data using sensors to make sure the temperature is good. “It also projects images onto the inside of the transparent cover to make the person feel refreshed,” the power says.
The device, dubbed “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (the human washing machine of the longer term), may never go on sale. Indeed, for now the company’s plans are limited to the Osaka trade fair in April, where as much as eight people will have the option to experience a 15-minute “wash and dry” every day after first booking.
Apparently a version for home use is within the works.
Technology
Zepto raises another $350 million amid retail upheaval in India
Zepto has secured $350 million in latest financing, its third round of financing in six months, because the Indian high-speed trading startup strengthens its position against competitors ahead of a planned public offering next yr.
Indian family offices, high-net-worth individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, maintaining Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agrawal, family offices Mankind Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram’s, Sekhsaria and Kalyan, in addition to stars Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are amongst those backing the brand new enterprise, which is India’s largest fully national primary round.
The funding push comes as Zepto rushes so as to add Indian investors to its capitalization table, with foreign ownership now exceeding two-thirds. TechCrunch first reported on the brand new round’s deliberations last month. The Mumbai-based startup has raised over $1.35 billion since June.
Fast commerce sales – delivering groceries and other items to customers’ doors in 10 minutes – will exceed $6 billion this yr in India. Morgan Stanley predicts that this market shall be value $42 billion by 2030, accounting for 18.4% of total e-commerce and a pair of.5% of retail sales. These strong growth prospects have forced established players including Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa to cut back delivery times as they lose touch with specialized delivery apps.
While high-speed commerce has not taken off in many of the world, the model seems to work particularly well in India, where unorganized retail stores are ever-present.
High-speed trading platforms are creating “parallel trading for consumers seeking convenience” in India, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this month.
Zepto and its rivals – Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Tata-owned BigBasket – currently operate on lower margins than traditional retail, and Morgan Stanley expects market leaders to realize contribution margins of 7-8% and adjusted EBITDA margins to greater than 5% by 2030. (Zepto currently spends about 35 million dollars monthly).
An investor presentation reviewed by TechCrunch shows that Zepto, which handles greater than 7 million total orders every day in greater than 17 cities, is heading in the right direction to realize annual sales of $2 billion. It anticipates 150% growth over the following 12 months, CEO Aadit Palicha told investors in August. The startup plans to go public in India next yr.
However, the rapid growth of high-speed trading has had a devastating impact on the mom-and-pop stores that dot hundreds of Indian cities, towns and villages.
According to the All India Federation of Consumer Products Distributors, about 200,000 local stores closed last yr, with 90,000 in major cities where high-speed trading is more prevalent.
The federation has warned that without regulatory intervention, more local shops shall be vulnerable to closure as fast trading platforms prioritize growth over sustainable practices.
Zepto said it has created job opportunities for tons of of hundreds of gig employees. “From day one, our vision has been to play a small role in nation building, create millions of jobs and offer better services to Indian consumers,” Palicha said in an announcement.
Regulatory challenges arise. Unless an e-commerce company is a majority shareholder of an Indian company or person, current regulations prevent it from operating on a listing model. Fast trading corporations don’t currently follow these rules.
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