Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday January 14

• Instacart raises another $220M, valued at > $2B; Pinterest like UI, nimble org drive 10x growth in 2014: Instacart announced it had closed a $220 million round of venture capital from Silicon Valley investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, among others. The new round brings the total amount of funding raised to $275 million, and values the company at a whopping $2 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of continuing ties to the company. It is an ambitious bet on the future of how we think about grocery shopping and delivery services. The company, which was founded in 2012, allows customers to peruse the online catalogs of their favorite grocery stores — like Whole Foods, a major Instacart partner — and schedule deliveries directly to their homes. The user interface is akin to other consumer tech start-ups, like Pinterest, and lays out everyday grocery items in a simple-to-browse grid. Instacart is currently available in 15 American cities. The concept is not entirely new. Competitors like Fresh Direct, which operates primarily in New York, have offered local grocery delivery services for more than a decade. And even larger technology giants like Google, eBay and Amazon — companies with much more money and vastly greater resources than Instacart — have tried to play in the space with their own same-day delivery services. Apoorva Mehta, Instacart’s chief executive, said his company’s size and structure is why it is likely to succeed. “We have the ability to try new things in a very quick way,” Mr. Mehta said in an interview. “We don’t hold inventory, we don’t own warehouses, we don’t own trucks. The changes we make are software changes.” That, Mr. Mehta said, is in stark contrast to companies like Google and eBay, which are much larger and offer a wider range of delivery items. Ebay Now, eBay’s same-day service, touts its ability to deliver anything from big-screen TVs to hammers and nails from companies like Best Buy and Home Depot. He said Instacart’s focus on one particular type of product, groceries, allows the company to be more nimble than its competitors. The proof, Mr. Mehta said, is in the growth numbers. Instacart would not provide specific financial information, but it said that its revenues grew by more than a factor of 10 in 2014, and doubled in the final quarter of last year alone. While the company employs only around 100 employees, it has more than 4,000 contract employees who do its shopping and delivery.

• IBM Introduces z13, a mainframe with potential eCommerce applications: more coverage here IBM has designed the latest version of the mainframe, which is being introduced on Wednesday, with the smartphone in mind. The new mainframe, the z13, has been engineered to cope with the huge volume of data and transactions generated by people using smartphones and tablets. IBM spent $1 billion to develop the z13, and that research generated 500 new patents, including some for encryption intended to improve the security of mobile computing. Much of the new technology, Mr. Rosamilia said, is designed for real-time analysis in business. For example, he said, the mainframe system can allow automated fraud prevention while a purchase is being made on a smartphone. Another example, he said, would be providing shoppers with personalized offers while they are in a store, by tracking their locations and tapping data on their preferences, mainly from their previous buying patterns at that retailer. These real-time applications, according to Donna Dillenberger, a distinguished engineer at IBM’s Watson lab, can be done in a mainframe environment. They are not yet possible on clusters of smaller, industry-standard computers, she said. But there are several open-source software projects, like Apache Spark, that focus on real-time data processing across large numbers of computers.TechCrunch reports: IBM claims this machine has the ability to process 2.5B transactions per day, the equivalent of 100 Cyber Mondays every single day, or so they say. Mike Gilfix, who is director of enterprise mobile at IBM said with its latest model, the company paid particularly close attention to the growing complexity around mobile transactions and designed the system to handle the intricate interplay between systems, while maintaining security with what they are calling “real-time mobile encryption,” and providing high-end analytics on the fly. As an example, he talked about a single eCommerce transaction on a mobile device. When we touch Buy, he explained, it requires a bunch of different systems to communicate including credit card transactions, inventory control and shipping — and they all have to work in tandem. He said when you extrapolate that out into billions of transactions moving across conventional networks, the power of the z13 can eliminate much of the lag. Gilfix suggested that the majority of sales would probably come from existing customers in finance, large retail customers and healthcare, and others who have a large investment in data stored on mainframes already. Still, the company is hoping that the mobile nature of this system will attract buyers who might not have considered a mainframe in the past. One scenario Gilfix suggested is using the z13 as a private cloud and running OpenStack on it, which is certainly an interesting idea.

• Alibaba buys controlling stake in digital marketing firm AdChina: China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Wednesday it had bought a controlling stake in online marketing company AdChina, an investment aimed at bolstering its advertising business. Alibaba did not close the size of the deal or the stake it would take in AdChina, a Shanghai-based firm founded in 2007. The internet marketing firm, which generated $51 million in sales in 2011, had filed for a $100 million initial public offering in Feb. 2012, but pulled the listing a year later. The deal is the first Alibaba has disclosed this year, after spending more than $6.2 billion on acquisitions in 2014, the same year as its record-setting $25 billion New York listing. The AdChina investment is geared towards improving Alibaba's online and mobile advertising efforts through Alimama, the group's advertising arm. This unit sells marketing to merchants using Alibaba's e-commerce sites like online marketplace Taobao and online retail platform Tmall.com.

• GoPro plunges on Apple patent win: GoPro shares plummeted 12 percent, their steepest decline since August, after Apple was granted a patent for a remote-control camera system. The stock dropped to $49.87 at the close in New York. The plunge followed Apple gaining a patent today from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a system that lets consumers control a digital camera remotely. Investors are concerned that the patent will let Apple, the world’s largest company by market valuation, make products that are similar to what GoPro offers, said Charlie Anderson, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. Apple sold more than 270 million units of its various products in fiscal 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. GoPro, which went public in June and is trading at more than twice its initial public offering price of $24 a share, has been volatile in recent months. The world’s biggest maker of wearable cameras used by surfers and sports enthusiasts to record their exploits is facing questions about its ability to create a media business around the videos that consumers post online using their GoPro devices. About half of the company’s outstanding shares will also become available on the market on Feb. 17 when a lock-up lifts on employees and other insiders’ shares, Anderson said.

• France’s BlaBlaCar comes to India with ride-sharing between cities; its first expansion outside Europe: While taxi apps like Uber and Ola find themselves in a regulatory quagmire in Indian cities, a new car pooling service has just come in for rides from one city to another. France-based BlaBlaCar launched in India today, its first stop in Asia. This follows the arrival late last year of Tripda from Brazil, another ride-sharing marketplace. “India, with its young, highly connected population, and multiple major urban hubs separated by long distances, has great potential for ridesharing. Chronically overcrowded transport infrastructure forces travellers to book their train or bus tickets weeks in advance, while the high price of fuel makes long-distance car travel often unaffordable. BlaBlaCar will make last-minute city-to-city travel both available and affordable. Car-owners will be able to offer seats to co-travelers, so they can travel together and share fuel costs,” says Nicholas Brusson, co-founder of BlaBlaCar. BlaBlaCar connect drivers who have empty seats in their cars for a long distance ride with co-travellers. The charge for the co-traveller is limited to sharing the fuel and running costs; so it’s not meant to be a profit-making avenue for drivers. The company usually takes a 10 percent cut from what the co-traveller pays or driver receives. BlaBlaCar had a US$100 million funding round last year, and operates in 13 countries in Europe. India is its first market outside Europe. BlaBlaCar will initially operate out of Delhi and its satellite town of Gurgaon, connecting cities in north India. Delhi is where Uber got into trouble last month after the arrest of a driver for raping a young woman, and still faces a ban as regulators insist on compliance with their rules. Car pooling services like BlaBlaCar, however, have yet to come under that kind of scrutiny. BlaBlaCar’s co-founder makes a distinction between a marketplace model and a taxi app. “At Uber, you don’t choose your driver,” says Brusson. “At Blablacar, there’s a two-way community where you need acceptance from both sides.”

• App Annie raises $55M in series D: App Annie, an app analytics service for developers, revealed today that it has secured US$55 million in series D funding. The investment eclipses the previous US$17 million round in May 2014, which was accompanied by news that it had acquired competitor Distimo for an undisclosed sum. App Annie’s newest input comes from Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greycroft Partners, and IDG Capital Partners. App Annie claims it doubled its team to 300 employees in 2014 and tripled its revenues.

• Flipkart reports some marketplace stats: Flipkart today said it aims to help over 10,000 sellers generate business worth Rs 10 lakh through its platform this year. “In 2014, Flipkart helped over 2,000 sellers become millionaires through Flipkart sales. December 2014 alone saw over 500 sellers doing an average business of Rs 10 lakh each, while 50 sellers did an average of Rs 1 crore each,” Flipkart said in a statement. With a year on year growth of close to 30 per cent, apparels and consumer electronics categories have the most number of sellers who have crossed the millionaire mark followed by sellers of home decor, jewellery, handicrafts and large appliances. Nearly 60 per cent of millionaire sellers came from metros (Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore) and the rest from the non-metros, it said. “2015 projections estimate that the numbers from the latter will double,” the statement added.