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Entrepreneur Victor Madu on the future of e-commerce post the pandemic

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COVID-19 has turned the world on its head. The business world, in particular, has felt the impact of the virus in a big way. While traditional brick-and-mortar industries which rely on face to face interaction and physical footfall have taken a severe hit, the e-commerce industry has positively flourished under the ‘new normal.’

Entrepreneur Victor Madu is the CEO of ‘For the Leaux Clothing’ and believes COVID-19 will be remembered, amongst other things, as an agent of monumental change in the retail industry. Here are excerpts of an interview with Madu:

IM: Victor, how has COVID-19 impacted e-Commerce?

Victor: The e-commerce revolution is just beginning, but I believe historians will look back and highlight the significant role COVID-19 played. The statistics speak for themselves. E-commerce giant Amazon nearly doubled its sales in May of this year, and every click to purchase is another step on their journey to complete market domination.

IM: Do you think e-Commerce has survived the pandemic as compared to other sectors?

Victor: Unfortunately, many companies won’t survive this terrible pandemic, and that needs addressing, but the profits and power of the e-commerce sector are constantly growing. I’ve seen the upsurge in demand within my own company, and it’s been quite unexpected and phenomenal.

IM: Although there has doubtless been a dramatic rise in online shopping habits worldwide during the pandemic, with more and more people opting to shop from the comfort of their own homes, do you think this trend will continue when COVID-19 has finally been beaten, or will consumers be eager to rush back to the mall for a physical shopping experience?

Victor: There’s no doubt that there will always be a place for physical stores that offer both quality and choice. People love to do things in the flesh, and shopping is no different. But, and it’s a big but, shoppers have found the habit of buying mostly online a hard habit to break. It’s convenient, time-saving, extremely accessible, safe, and the choice online is limitless. I don’t think there’s any going back. My advice to more traditional businesses during this difficult time is to build and enhance your online presence if you’re serious about investing in the future. You cannot rewind the clock, but you can certainly adapt and thrive in the post-COVID-19 landscape.

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Business

Zopper, an Insurtech Company, Raises $25 Million in a Round Sponsored by Elevation Capital and Dharana Capital

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Zopper, an insurtech firm, announced in a note today that it has raised $25 million in a new round of funding led by Elevation Capital and Dharana Capital.

Dharana Capital has supported companies like NoBroker and Urban Company, while Elevation Capital is an active investor in the Indian fintech ecosystem.

The financing also included Blume Ventures, an existing investor. Other investors in Zopper include Creaegis, Bessemer Venture Partners, and ICICI Venture. To date, the business has raised a total of $96 million in equity investment.

The business from Noida will utilize the money to improve its insurance distribution network and expand its digital technology infrastructure. Additionally, the funds will improve Zopper’s device and appliance protection businesses’ post-sales and maintenance capabilities and speed up the expansion of the company’s current bancassurance products. The method used to sell insurance products through banking channels is known as the bancassurance model.

Banks and other businesses can use Zopper’s technology stack to package and market insurance products to their clients.

The company claimed in a statement that it presently has over 2,500 ecosystem actors and 40 insurance providers as partners.

At the moment, Zopper offers customized insurance solutions for consumers in India by integrating them into the ecosystem’s current digital channels.

“We are here to transform and automate the insurance distribution model in India, effectively, strategically and keeping customers in mind. We are mission-focused as a team. If we get this right, it will be transformational for the ecosystem and the country,” stated Mayank Gupta, Zopper’s chief operating officer.

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Amazon Invests an additional $4 Billion in the AI Firm Anthropic

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As the e-commerce behemoth competes with Big Tech rivals to profit from generative artificial intelligence technology, Amazon.com (AMZN.O.) opened a new tab and invested an additional $4 billion in OpenAI opponent Anthropic.

Amazon’s stake in the company famed for its GenAI chatbot Claude has doubled, but it is still a minority investor, the business announced on Friday. Like Amazon’s prior $4 billion investment, it is made in installments, starting at $1.3 billion and taking the form of convertible notes.

According to sources who asked not to be named in order to discuss private topics, Anthropic is also in discussions with other investors in order to raise more money with Amazon’s support.

Amazon, which has steadily become Anthropic’s main cloud partner, is in intense competition with Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) to provide AI-powered tools for its cloud clients. As a major distributor of its most recent models, AWS is generating a substantial amount of revenue for Anthropic.

“The investment in Anthropic is essential for Amazon to stay in a leadership position in AI,” Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, stated.

The increased investment by the e-commerce giant in Anthropic highlights the billions of dollars that have been invested in AI startups in the past year as investors seek to profit from the technology’s surge in popularity following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.

Last month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI collected $6.6 billion from investors, potentially valuing the company at $157 billion and solidifying its place among the world’s most valuable private enterprises.

Anthropic intends to use Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and implement its core models. Securing expensive AI chips is a big concern for startups since the rigorous process of training AI models demands powerful processors.

“It (partnership) also allows Amazon to promote its AI services such as leveraging its AI chips for training and inferencing, which Anthropic is using,” Luria stated.

Amazon is one of the many so-called hyperscaler clients of Nvidia (NVDA.O), which opens a new tab and presently controls the market for AI chips.

However, through its Annapurna Labs branch, which Anthropic stated it was “working closely with” to help create CPUs, Amazon has been striving to develop its own chips. Additionally, Amazon has been working on developing its own AI model, code-named “Olympus,” which it has not yet made public.

Anthropic, which was co-founded by brothers Dario and Daniela Amodei, former executives at OpenAI, said last year that it had obtained a $500 million investment from Alphabet, which pledged to contribute an additional $1.5 billion over time.

The startup’s operations also make advantage of Alphabet’s Google Cloud capabilities.

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Wiz will pay $450 million to acquire Cloud Remediation Startup Dazz

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Wiz revealed on Thursday that it will buy channel-focused company Dazz in an agreement to add cloud remediation capabilities to the vendor’s cloud and AI security platform.

With features like application security posture management and continuous threat and exposure management, Dazz provides a remediation-focused cloud security platform.

Jared Phipps, a seasoned cybersecurity industry executive who most recently worked for SentinelOne, was hired by Dazz in February as its CRO as the business sought to expand its collaboration with channel partners. Presidio, situated in New York, has been one of the key partners.

Dazz said in July that it has raised a $50 million round of funding, increasing its total funding since its 2021 launch to $110 million.

Dazz provides a “industry-leading remediation engine,” according to a post published on Thursday by Wiz Co-Founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, which will allow Wiz to “empower security teams to correlate data from multiple sources and manage application risks in one unified platform.”

This is Wiz’s third purchase overall and its second acquisition of 2024 after the company’s April acquisition of cloud detection and response provider Gem Security.

Wiz, a four-year-old startup, reported in May that it had raised $1 billion in new capital at a $12 billion valuation, citing its continued strong development in the cloud and AI security areas. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) for the business reportedly increased from $350 million earlier this year to above $500 million.

After making a number of management additions aimed at facilitating quicker partner-driven growth, Rappaport stated in February that Wiz would prioritize its channel operations moving ahead.

I“In cybersecurity partners are super, super important in the success of a company. So we’ve always [seen that] this has huge potential for us to tap into. I think there is so much more we can do,” he stated at the time.

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