📣 Fun(d) News - 08/20
Success with crowdfunding, recognition and new deals

what3words launches a crowdfunding opportunity on the UK's Crowdcube with great success. The company not only reached its goal of raising €1,106,000 but, more than exceeded it. They’ve now raised €7,787,954 in funding for equity of 4,53% and have been backed by over 10,300 individual investors. These have now joined some of the world’s top investors, and the Design To Improve Life Fund, in helping what3words create a global standard for location.

Agribuddy featured in Techwire Asia’s feature on the disruptive potential of agritech for South Asian farmers. The article explores the challenge of reinventing the region’s oldest and most valuable trade and how tech can provide a solution. With ongoing climate change and sudden obstacles like COVID-19, the importance of agritech is more evident than ever. In the three years Agribuddy has existed it’s already made quite an impact through its collective intelligence, buddy-system and credit profiles for smallholder farmers.

Zipline signs a contract with Medikabazaar, India’s largest B2B marketplace for medical supplies. The partnership between the two will cut down Medikabazaar’s delivery times to 30 minutes and is likely to go operational by the end of 2020 or first quarter of 2021. Over the next months, 100 hospitals will be on-boarded and then eventually serviced by Zipline drones through Medikabazaar’s two distribution centres in Pune and Nandurbar. CEO of Medikabazaar Vivek Tiwari explains how more rural cities can now “reap the benefit of products that are usually not available at their locations due to supply chain inefficiencies."

StartUs Insights, a Rolodex of disruptive start-ups, have identified Seaborg Technologies as one of the top five nuclear energy solutions who are making a change in the industry. Out of 388 nuclear energy solutions, Kairos Power, Elysium Industries, Deep Isolation, Orano and Seaborg were mentioned as the solutions to watch out for. The Danish start-up was especially commended for its simplicity and the promise of their compact molten salt reactor.

The CEO and Co-founder of Iris.ai Anita Schjøll Brede have been shortlisted for the EU Prize for Women Innovators 2020. The prize was launched in 2011 to raise awareness on the need for female entrepreneurs and the benefits of women in leadership. 21 female entrepreneurs have made it to the final round, whereas 13 of them, including Brede, are competing for three prizes of €100,000. The winners will be announced at the European Research and Innovation Days that takes place virtually from 22-24th of September.