Crea will help e-commerce companies target millennial and younger customers through social media platforms.

Lazada Co-founders launch social ecommerce startup [TechInAsia]

Lazada Co-founders Aimone Ripa di Meana and Alessandro Piscini have launched Crea, a social e-commerce startup, to help e-commerce companies target millennial and younger customers through social media platforms.

The company will help businesses with online branding, analytics, and digital marketing, among others.

According to a media statement, the company will focus on the beauty and personal care industry in Thailand over the next 12 months, which is expected to reach US$5.5 billion and is growing at 7.5 per cent a year. It will also expand regionally over the next 12-24 months.

India’s NoBroker raises US$51M from General Atlantics, Beenext, others [press release]

NoBroker.com, a brokerage-free real estate platform, has announced that it has raised US$51 million in Series C funding, led by General Atlantic. Existing investors SAIF Partners and Beenext also co-invested.

This brings the total funding raised by NoBroker to US$71 million.

Saurabh Garg, CBO and Co-founder of NoBroker.com, said: “This funding round will help us reach more people across cities and go deeper in current cities to become the preferred choice for any real estate transaction in India. We believe that with our differentiated technology and product, we will continue to enhance the experience for users of our platform.”

Singapore’s Accelerating Asia launches ASEAN ‘Smart City’ accelerator programme [press release]

The Australian Government announced today that it will partner with Accelerating Asia, a regional network of startup programs, to develop a Singapore-based ASEAN Smart Cities Accelerator (ASCA).

ASCA is a first of its kind seven-month startup accelerator programme, which is designed to provide the best possible support for early-stage Southeast Asian startups specialising in future city development, an initiative supported by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

ASCA is a seed-stage accelerator programme that selects, funds and provides a development programme for smart city startups in Southeast Asia through access to regional opportunities, knowledge, networks, and resources. The programme is split into two parts beginning with a three month program period with weekly activities in Singapore and followed by four months that consists of remote support, a Demo Day as well as a one-week immersion trip. Women entrepreneurs are vital to the success of this programme and are encouraged to apply.

China’s Didi Chuxing starts ride-hailing services in Chile, Colombia [Reuters]

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing said on Thursday that it had launched services in Chile and Colombia, as part of its push into Latin America.

The company kicked off operations of Didi Express in the two countries earlier this week and plans to launch a taxi-hailing service in Colombia later this year, it said in an e-mailed statement.

Reuters reported in February that Didi was recruiting managers in Chile, Peru and Colombia as part of a planned launch that would see it take on US rival Uber.

Pratilipi raises US$15M Series B led by Qiming Venture Partners [press release]

Bangalore-based Indian language story telling platform Pratilipi  has raised Series B funding of US$15 million led by Qiming Venture Partners.

Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network India, Shunwei Capital, Contrarian Vriddhi Fund and WEH Ventures also participated in the round.

Founded in 2014, Pratilipi is an Indian language story telling platform. It has over 100,000 writers who have published over 800,000 stories in 9 languages and over 5.2 million monthly active readers across its web and app platforms.

Over the next 12-18 months, the company will be focusing primarily on improving the technology infrastructure including its recommendation and personalization engines and on expanding the number of writers on platform. The company will also be focusing on expanding to newer forms of storytelling including audio stories.

The post Today’s top tech news, June 06: Lazada Co-founders launch social e-commerce startup Crea appeared first on e27.

Source: E27