FinTech Startup Funding Alert: Memo Bank launches business offering and lands €20m

#fintech #bank #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks #lending #lendingsolutions #lendingtech #startups #smesector #smes #fundingalert #startupfunding

Formerly known as Margo Bank, the newly named Memo Bank, a French fintech, is launching its exclusive business offering, which is set to tap small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Alongside its launch and lending licence, the start-up has landed a €20 million funding round led by Paris-based, BlackFin Capital Partners | Investors in Financial Services, and existing French investors, Daphni and Bpifrance Digital Venture.

The bank targets SMEs that generate over €2 million a year and houses more than ten employees. Its key focus will be on delivering paperless credit lines to businesses in just a few days, directly competing with France’s online lenders, rather than the country’s neobanks.

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Memo Bank launches business offering and lands €20m - FinTech Futures

Memo Bank has launched its business offering which is set to tap SMEs, in addition to obtaining a licence and securing a €20 million funding round.

How Hormonal Growth Factors, using Boron, Gibberellic Acid and Ethrel, can improve the yield of vegetables

#agriculture #organicfarming #farming #farmingwithminimumcost #agricultutre

I did week-end agriculture way back in 2005 to 2006 to grow vegetables, mainly bottle gourd (Loki) and bitter gourd (Karela) by only using natural organic compounds without use of any chemicals whatsoever. These vegetables are chosen as their prices don’t fluctuate during the entire period of the year.

Many farmers do not know the fact that both bottle gourd and bitter gourd plants have both male and female flowers, and yield depends only on number of female flowers. In bottle gourd the ratio is usually 11:1 i.e. there is one female flower for every 11 male flowers. Similar, in bitter gourd, the ratio is 25:1.

I wanted to see whether this sex ratio can be tweaked in favour of female flowers, using natural minerals or acids. Then I found that by spraying Ethrel and Boron (in ppm and only two or three sprays) at a four leaf stage we can change the ratio. Similarly, I used Gibberellic acid at flower stage to retain as many flowers as possible. With these methods I used to get tremendous yield and these vegetables used to be fresh even after keeping it for 10-15 days without refrigeration.

Some of the search articles on the issue:-

For the readers, I am giving links for some of the research articles on how Boron and Ethrel effects sex ratio and yield in bottle gourd and bitter gourd farming:- 

Significant increase in growth and fruit characters would be obtained by the spraying of ethrel @200 ppm at 2 and 4 true leaves for bottle gourd:- https://www.ijcmas.com

GA3 (Gibberellic Acid) @ 50 ppm was effective for enhancement in vegetative growth, fruit and seed yield and modification of sex expression while sprayed twice at three leaf stage for bitter gourd: https://www.researchgate.net

How Boron @4 ppm decreased number of days to first male, flower production, reduced male: female flower ratio for bitter gourd:  https://www.ijcmas.com 

Last but not the least, these are very cheap material available anywhere in India, which can be used to reduce the cost of agriculture and increase the yield beyond the traditional methods of agriculture.

Startup Strategy: Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options

#MSME #SME #lendingsolutions #lending #credit #fintech #startups #startupstrategy

Santander’s invoice and expenses app, Asto, has partnered with alternative UK lender, Funding Options, to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Funding Option’s CEO, Simon Cureton, calls Asto “one of a new breed of ambitious and innovative lenders laser-focused on providing truly flexible finance solutions for businesses”.

Key takeaway:

Partnering with e-commerce giants would give lending company a better access to financial strength of the sellers on these platforms.

The above fintech venture broke into lending last year when it partnered with eBay to off loans to the 200,000 UK SMEs which sell their products through the ecommerce giant’s platform.

The app connects to eBay’s data to measure sales and cash flow to identify prospective customers and shape its credit decisioning process.

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Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options - FinTech Futures

Asto, Santander's fintech app, has partnered with alternative UK lender Funding Options to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and SMEs.

VORTEX developed an innovative bladeless wind turbine - A break-through in the wind energy sector

#renewableenergy #greenenergy #windturbines #bladeless #windenergy #technology #breakthrough

VORTEX has developed an innovative wind turbine that would represent a break-through in the wind energy sector. This aero-generator is a new paradigm of harnessing wind, with a disruptive technology to generate energy from the wind without blades. This may be one of solutions to generate wind energy in urban areas.

The technology seeks to optimize aerogenerator´s specifications as maintenance and operational requirements, amortization costs, noise, logistics, environmental impact and design whilst producing energy in a secure, clean and efficient way, and cheaper than current small wind turbines (SWT).

VORTEX built a 6-meters wind turbine pilot prototype in Spain, which generates up to 40% of energy solely from wind. The technology is being scaled up from small devices to medium. Their goal for the Phase 2-SMEInst is to scale-up and test a prototype up to 275 meters and 100W power.

VORTEX produces an affordable and cheaper renewable energy for our end-users: private individuals, general public, households, wind energy cooperatives, energy services companies (ESCOs), manufactures and distributors, businesses, utilities, etc.

Watch a demonstration on YouTube

Bank of Canada: Designing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for universal access

#CBDC #centralbankdigitalcurrency #UAD #universalaccessdevice

Key design matrix given by Bank of Canada on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) based on universal access are

1. A CBDC should be as accessible as cash - 

A CBDC is a digital product that can be designed to include many of the attributes of cash (e.g., ease of use, portability, offline function).

2 Multiple formats for a CBDC can embody the design principles of universal access - 

The Bank is exploring multiple formats for a CBDC, including conventional online and mobile technologies, as well as custom devices and deviceless solutions.

3. A CBDC could be used through a dedicated universal access device (UAD) -

 One potential concept the Bank is investigating is a custom device that is engineered for universal access while securely storing and transferring a CBDC. The device could incorporate attributes of cash and take advantage of specialized technologies. Such a device should be manufactured at a low cost and issued by the Bank to ensure maximum inclusion.

4. A UAD could be resilient in ways that a smartphone is not - 

A UAD could embed a local, secure store of value, be network-independent and operate for long periods on a local power source.

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Designing a CBDC for universal access

If the Bank of Canada issues a central bank digital currency, the technology should be designed for universal access.

Startup Funding: Nextbillion.ai raises $7M funding led by Lightspeed India Partners and Falcon Edge Capital

#ai #localmapping #hyperlocal #artificialintelligence

NextBillion.ai raises $7M funding led by Lightspeed India Partners Advisors and Falcon Edge Capital. It builds mapping and other AI-based hyperlocal services for emerging markets, was founded earlier this year by Ajay Bulusu, Gaurav Bubna and Shaolin Zheng, all former employees of Southeast Asian ride hailing giant Grab.

“Mapping is our first use case, but as we progress in our journey, we want to get into more verticals with an AI-first approach. Natural language processing, facial recognition and cybersecurity will be some of these areas,” said Bulusu.

“We have a lot of hyperlocal nuances. For instance, no company gives you a specific #API for route optimisation of trucks, or autos, or two-wheelers. But the route a truck takes to deliver a package versus a bike might be significantly different,” added Bulusu.

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Nextbillion.ai raises $7M funding led by Lightspeed India Partners and Falcon Edge Capital - ETtech

Nextbillion.ai has raised $7 million in Series A funding, led by Lightspeed India Partners and Falcon Edge Capital. The company, which builds mapping and other AI-based services for emerging markets, was founded earlier this year by Ajay Bulusu, Gaurav Bubna and Shaolin Zheng, all former employees of Southeast Asian ride hailing giant Grab.

Forbes: How The Health Crisis Has Changed The Digital World Permanently

Forbes: How The Health Crisis Has Changed The Digital World Permanently?

1. Payments Technology Is Going Touchless:

We're now likely to see digital wallet solutions grow further, including things like digital IDs, transaction monitoring and even location tracking. We could soon be living in a world where your smartphone could tell you which stores were too crowded or which parts of the mall to avoid.

2. Health Care Is Leveraging Telehealth And IOT For Remote Patient Care:

Telehealth, coupled with wearable data or biosensor technology, will change the health care landscape at a rapid pace. A handful of companies have recently begun development of new ingestible sensors that can be swallowed by patients. These "smart pills" could be used to track gut health or monitor medicine ingestion, and could eventually be mounted with miniscule cameras to help doctors monitor or diagnose a range of conditions.

3. Opti-Channel Services Are Becoming More Crucial:

An opti-channel strategy requires businesses to not only find the best channel to reach each type of customer, but to use that channel to its fullest potential in order to maximize engagement at each and every point along that customer's journey while ensuring continuity of experience and personalization.

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Council Post: How The Health Crisis Has Changed The Digital World Permanently

Experienced technologist and CEO of Infostretch , a digital engineering services company that helps enterprises prosper in digital age. Payments Technology Is Going Touchless If the digital customer experience wasn't a boardroom issue before, the global health crisis has certainly brought it to the foreground.