Startup Funding Alert: Canva, a startup for non-designers to design, raises $60 million on a $6 billion valuation

#startups #designs #saas #unicorns #unicornclub #startupideas

Any SaaS startup venture, which enables non-designers to design their requirements like sales pamphlets, is an opportunity even in India. Please listen to this.

Sydney-based Canva, the design platform for non-designers, has announced the close of a $60 million funding round, bringing its valuation to $6 billion, according to the company.

Canva was founded in 2012 with the mission of democratizing design tools. While many non-designers can navigate their way around Google Slides or PowerPoint, or maybe even crop an image, going more in-depth on a design project can be daunting, as the suite of tools provided to designers can be incredibly complex.

The company’s tools are meant to simplify the design process for folks who don’t work in the design department, whether it’s the sales team putting together sales materials, marketers working on content or other departments working on internal materials to send to the broader organization. The drag-and-drop interface gives folks a way to create something beautiful and impressive without having to learn Photoshop.

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Canva raises $60 million on a $6 billion valuation

Sydney-based Canva, the design platform for non-designers, has today announced the close of a $60 million funding round, bringing its valuation to $6 billion, according to the company. The startup has raised a total of more than $300 million, including this latest round of financing, from investors...

UK challenger Picnic Bank to address 'fintech for good' - FinTech Futures

Picnic Bank, a UK start-up focused on ‘fintech for good’, is set to launch its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) lending platform in September, before rolling out its fully licensed banking service sometime next year.

Whilst Picnic Bank lends to SMEs, earning interest on the loans, and taking referral fees from partners, it intends to build its bank in the background. But upon launch in September, it will be offering payment cards alongside its lending service until the full bank comes into play.

Once the bank is built, the start-up will look to offer three account tiers. The first will be a gamified, ‘eco-concierge’ to inspire users to live greener lifestyles. The second will be a ‘fintech for good’ toolbox, with features such as overdraft alerts – West points out that UK consumers needlessly waste £2 billion a year on overdraft fees. The third account in Picnic Bank’s suite will be focused around debt rebuilding, specifically to help those loaded with student loan debt, or debt due to losing a job.

The toolbox will also offer a guarantor to bring account holders back into the clear if they go into a negative balance. As well as Picnic Bank’s own features, the toolbox will offer services from a series of partners such as Better.com, a fintech eliminating fees from the UK mortgage process, Omnipresent, a German fintech which builds impact funds, Pynk, a social investment platform, and Fundsurfer, a crowdfunding and investment platform.

A number of other fintechs are either starting up, or are adapting their offering to the ‘fintech for good’ space. UK challenger Kestrl is set to launch later this year with an ethical banking offering which would track carbon emissions through open banking and allow users to donate through an integrated charity donation platform.

Netherlands-based challenger bank bunq, which has been around since 2015, revamped its banking app at the beginning of this month to allow users to donate to charities in the app and create their own local charities which they can invite other members to.

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UK challenger Picnic Bank to address 'fintech for good' - FinTech Futures

Picnic Bank, a UK start-up focused on 'fintech for good', is set to launch its SME lending platform in September, before its fully licensed banking service.

The Ideal Neobank: We're still a long way from the perfect digital bank | Sifted

#fintech #startupstrategy #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks

Former Lloyds Bank director Alessandro Hatami explains what he thinks digital banks need to do next and feels that the so called neobanks are not doing the right thing.

He opined that there are three things banking customers fundamentally need — and are worth disrupting to look like in ‘The Ideal Neobank’:

1. A Payment Account: Imagine a bank that allows you to seamlessly pay anyone, anywhere: be it your babysitter, your favourite retailer or a holiday home abroad.

2. A Credit Line: Instead of an overdraft, personal loan, credit card, car finance or a mortgage you get a credit line. The bank knows you and will advance cash (with guarantees if required) as you need it. You make one payment a month — like a subscription — to pay for it.

3. A Savings/Protection Tool: You have some excess capital and the bank enables you to buy any product in the market that allows you to protect and grow it. And your bank would sell you any such product in the market that meets your needs — whether or not it’s their product or a third party’s.

Many banks and fintechs claim they already offer this, but he is not sure their customers agree. These neobanks still sell financial products rather than financial solutions.

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We're still a long way from the perfect digital bank | Sifted

Over the last decade, so-called "challenger" banks like Monzo, Starling and Revolut have served as beacons of opportunity, promising a new way of banking. This has prompted their predecessors - the incumbents - to undergo several phases of digital transformation; something I watched first-hand when I was a digital exec at Lloyds Bank.

Funding Alert: US-based Gesture Raises $1M for its On-Demand Gifting App

#fundingalert #startupfunding #gifts #startupideas #ecommerce #aggregator

Startup: Gesture

Sector: eCommerce

Segment: Gifting

Gesture raises $1M for its On-Demand Gifting App That Takes an Uber-Like Approach.

Gesture is the on-demand mobile gift delivery platform that allows consumers to select gifts from an inventory of pre-selected items that can be delivered in less than 30 minutes. This gifting on-demand solution starts at $20 and helps people gift for a variety of occasions including birthdays, thank you’s, and “just because.” Gesture presently delivers in over 30 cities across the United States such as New York, Miami, Atlanta, and more.

Its customers send flowers, wine, champagne, and other thoughtful gifts, all starting at $20 with free delivery, and delivered in one hour or less.

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Gesture Raises $1M for its On-Demand Gifting App - AlleyWatch

Our society has progressed in so many ways; the iPhone in your pocket is estimated to have at least 100,000 times the processing power of the Apollo 11 computer that helped astronauts land on the moon 50 years ago. Yet we still wait until the last minute to do our shopping.