Technology

Chinese electric scooter startup Niu Technologies has filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq to raise up to $150 million. In its form, Niu said it is &the largest lithium-ion battery-powered e-scooters company in China,& according to data from China Insights Consultancy, and also a market leader in Europe based on sales volume.

Founded in 2014 and based in Beijing, Niu says it currently holds a market share of 26% in China based on sales volume. Niudebut will the latest in a string of recent Chinese tech IPOs, the most prominent of which include the recent Hong Kong listings of Xiaomi and Meituan.

Niuscooters connect with an app that give drivers maintenance and performance data and also delivers firmware updates. As of the end of June, Niu claims it had sold more than 431,500 smart electric scooters in China, Europe and other markets.

According to the CICdata, China is the largest market for electric two-wheeled vehicles, with retail sales expected to increase to $13 million by 2022, up from $8 billion in 2017. Niu says its growth markets also include Southeast Asia and India, where scooters are a popular form of transportation.

In its filing, Niu said its net revenue in 2017 was RMB 769.4 million ($116.2 million), an increase of 116.8% from RMB 354.8 million in 2016. Its net losses during that time decreased to RMB 184.7 million ($27.9 million) in 2017 from RMB 232.7 million in 2016. More recently, net revenue for the first six months of 2018 was RMB 557.1 million ($84.2 million), an increase of 95.4% from RMB 285.1million the same period a year earlier. Net loss was RMB 314.9 million ($47.6 million) during that period, compared to RMB 96.6 million the year before.

French startup BlaBlaCar just released some interesting metrics. The company has reached profitability if you look at revenue between January 2018 and today.

BlaBlaCar forecasts that 50 million people will book a ride on BlaBlaCar in 2018, which represents a 40 percent increase compared to 2017.

BlaBlaCar is a marketplace for long-distance rides. People driving from point A to point B can find riders willing to go in the same direction to share the cost of the ride.

A few years ago, when BlaBlaCar raised multiple megarounds, co-founder and now president Frédéric Mazzella told me that the company was at a crossroad and had to choose between growth first then profitability, or profitability then growth. It looks like the company has now completed its growth-then-profitability journey.

There are now 65 million registered users on the platform, including 15 million users in France. The service is currently live in 22 countries.

In France in particular, 40 percent of people aged between 18 and 35 are using BlaBlaCar. While the company is reaching market saturation on this segment, elderly people currently represent a growth opportunity.

It is the fastest growing segment and the user base has doubled in six years when you look at this part of the user base in particular — I know, these are some soft metrics so ithard to understand if itgoing to impact the companybottom line.

Foreign countries now represent 75 percent of BlaBlaCarrevenue.

When it comes to features, BlaBlaCar finally started automatically matching people who are departing or arriving from a small city. Drivers don&t have to manually input a list of cities on the way. 20 percent of departure or arrival cities surface thanks to this new algorithm.

One way of reaching profitability is by reducing costs. And ittrue that BlaBlaCar faced some growth pains and is now a leaner company.

Now, BlaBlaCar is in great shape for an acquisition or an IPO. But the company says that it&ll keep investing to innovate, diversify and open new markets. So all options are still on the table.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai will meet in private with Republican lawmakers on Friday to discuss issues including its work in China and alleged political bias, reports the Wall Street Journal. The meeting was organized by House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, who has accused Google of &controlling the internet& by boosting negative news stories about conservatives in its search results, despite the companydenials.

The WSJ reports that Pichai also plans to appear at a House Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled to take place in November after the mid-term elections.

Pichai told the newspaper that &I look forward to meeting with members on both sides of the aisle, answering a wide range of questions, and explaining our approach. These meetings will continue Googlelong history of engaging with Congress, including testifying seven times to Congress this year.&

A vocal opponent of net neutrality, McCarthy tweeted earlier this month that &an invite will be on its way& to Google, which he accused in the same tweet of making a &silent donation& to an unnamed left-wing group to stop Trump; working with Russia and China to censor the Internet even though it cancelled a U.S. military contract and ignoring a Senate hearing.

McCarthy told the WSJ that &Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anticompetitive behavior and business dealings with repressive regimes like China.&

As an example of what he claims to be Googleanti-conservative bias, McCarthy previouslycited search results that listed &Nazism& under the California Republican Partyideologies. Google blamed vandalism on Wikipedia for the descriptor, which appeared in an information box, and quickly removed it.

Though McCarthy did not specify what contract he was referring to in his tweet, it may have been Project Maven, an aerial drone imaging program that provided artificial intelligence to the Department of Defense. Google reportedly decided not to renew the contract when it expires because of ethical concerns and employee backlash.

In August, however, sources told the Intercept that Google is working on a version of its search engine for China, code-named Project Dragonfly, that would adhere to the governmentcensorship regulations. This prompted bipartisan outcry and more employee backlash, including the resignation of senior research scientist Jack Poulson.Poulson told the Intercept that about five of Googleemployees have resigned over Project Dragonfly, which he says represents &the forfeiture of our public human rights commitments.&

As part of the Republican Partyonslaught against what it perceives to be political bias on social media, Attorney General Jeff Sessions will also meet with state attorneys general to discuss social mediaalleged suppression of conservative users.

TechCrunch has contacted Google for comment.