Technology

Byton, the new China-based automaker founded by former BMW and Infiniti executives, has produced the first 10 prototypes of its tech-centric all-electric SUV and some of them will be in the U.S. before the end of the year,company president and co-founder Daniel Kirchert told TechCrunch.

Byton plans to produce another 100 prototypes of the SUV, which the automaker calls the M Byte, by the end of 2018, Kirchert said in recent interview during Monterey Car Week. Some of these vehicles will be shipped to the U.S., whereself-driving vehicle technology startup Aurora will take over.

Aurora, a startup founded by self-driving tech stars Chris Urmson, Sterling Anderson, and Drew Bagnell, will begin testing its Level 4autonomous driving systems on the Byton SUV prototype before the end of 2018, according to Kirchert. The two companies announced a partnership in January at the big tech trade show CES.

Byton will continue with its own tests such as vehicle reliability and cold-weather testing at its Nanjing prototype manufacturing plant. The plant is built on the site of Bytonfuture factory, which is already under construction.

The prototype production milestone comes on the heels of $500 million in fresh funding that was announced in June. The Series B round included investorsFAW Group, Tus-Holdings and CATL, which TechCrunch has learned will supply Byton with batteries.

A production version of the M Byte is targeted for the end of 2019, with the first vehicles to be sold in China. Sales will then move to the U.S. and Europe in mid-2020, Kirchert said.

Back when Byton first revealed its SUV concept at CES this January,founders Kirchert and CEO Carsten Breitfeld said it was close to what the final production version would look like. Itabout 80% complete, Kirchert said recently, adding that the prototype has modest changes from the concept, including a slight changes to the height and headlights as well as improvements to the door latches.

The rest, including a massive touchscreen that takes up the entire dashboard, is largely unchanged. the M Byte also hasanother touchscreen on the steering wheel and a variety of &smart& connected features that lets customers use hand gestures and voice commands via AmazonAlexa assistant to control aspects of the car. The vehicle also monitors the driverheart rate, weight, oxygen saturation, or blood pressure.

The SUV, which Byton likes to call an SIV oror &smart intuitive vehicle, will come in a base model featuring a70-kilowatt-hour battery pack that can travel 250 miles on a single charge. A pricier version with a 90-kwH pack willbe able to travel about 325 miles on a single charge.

The M Byte SUV will not come equipped with a Level 4 system, a designation by SAE International that means the car takes over all of the driving in certain conditions. Instead, it will have come out with Level 2 capabilities, which means the vehicle has combined automated features such as steering and acceleration, but still requires the human driver to remain and ultimately responsible.

Kirchert explained that the company is using its SUV prototypes to ensure a Level 4 self-driving system, can be properly integrated in future vehicles such as the K Byte, a new concept from Byton that was on display Sunday at Pebble Beach Concours d&Elegance. The sedan will be the second vehicle in Bytonportfolio and is expected to have a global market launch.

Two weeks ago,Walmartconcluded its investments to acquire a majority stake in Flipkart.

This is one of the largest transactions in e-commerce and in the internet space globally, with Walmart deployingUS$16billionto obtain an approximate 77 percent shareholdingat closing. As part of this transaction, my company,Naspers,exited fully, selling our11.18 percent stake for $2.2billion.

In addition tothe obvious financial success — a3.6x or $1.6 billion absolute returnin six years — being partofone ofthe greatest successstoriesof the Indian and global e-commerce market led to countlessinsightsforNaspers.

Our journey with Flipkartwill help usto furthershapehow wepartner with entrepreneurs to build leading technology companiesin the future.

I was fortunate enough to havehada front-row seatatFlipkartforthe past six years, leadingourvarious investment rounds and being Naspers&appointed board director. Here are some of the key lessons that Iwill remembermoving forward.

Pursue big market opportunities and solve big problems

E-commerce is a global trend that manifests in every market around the world. The potential of Indian e-commerce is beyond any doubt,with atotal retail marketofmore than $500 billion.Before Flipkart,Indiane-commercecustomers were repeatedly disappointed by mediocre selection, low product quality, little flexibility in payment options and a lengthy delivery experience.

Flipkart was the first player to solve these issues at scale, opening up the marketplaceto morecategories (starting with media and then rapidly expanding into electronics, lifestyle, etc.), offering warehouse services, and introducing its own courier network,Ekart,that ensured customer delightand cash on delivery.Other playerseventually offeredsimilar services, but Flipkartwasthe pioneer.

Market leadership is key to sustainable success, even in e-commerce, which tends tohave&winner takes most&as opposed to&winner takes all& characteristics.Leadersenjoyattention fromsellers,buyers, as well as existing and prospectiveemployees.They continue to innovate while laggards are trying to catch up.Throughoutour six-year journeywithFlipkart,the company was in a market leadership position against strong competitionfrom global and localonlineplayers.

Given the rapid growth of the Indian e-commerce market, Flipkart had to scale its tech platforms while also scalingitsbusinessmodelandorganization.This is hard to do, and we&veseen many businessesfailto scale. Flipkartwasnot one of them.

As a market leader and pioneer in the Indian e-commerce market, Flipkart had to sailunchartered waters.Experimenting while increasinginscalecarried significant riskfor the organization and had consequencesforthe market — Flipkart made many bold decisionsover the years. Many of these worked out beautifully, such asacquiring Myntrain May 2014to obtain a strong position in thestrategicfashion and apparel category,or establishing Big Billion Day as the marquee sales event of the year.

There were others thatdid not work out, like trialing app-only shopping, but these failures never deterred the team fromtakingchancesandchangingcourse if needed,while always capturing thelessons.In the end, the app-only move allowed the company to becomemobile-centric and a clear innovation leader in this area.

Think globally, but act locally

Flipkart is focusedon the Indian market,but thecompetitive battleforsellers,buyers and talent is fought globally.The teamadoptedglobal best practiceslikeBig Billion Day, which was inspired byideas from the U.S., China and Romania.

They also measure success based onKPIs constantlydrawing comparison withglobal market leaders. Most importantly though, Flipkartalways innovatedfor the local market, takinglocal tastesinto account(as serviced by the multitude of private label brands at Flipkart andMyntra), as well as bandwidth and affordability constraintson the customer side, leading to super-light mobile sites and apps,as well as various trade-in and financing programs.

Play the long game

Despite multi-billion-dollar trading volumes, thecurrente-commerce market in Indiaisstillmostly driven by affluent metro city dwellers in placeslikeMumbai, Delhiand Bangalore. This is not dissimilar to what we&ve seen in other countries around the worldat a similar development stage as e-commerce in India.

However, to really unlock the potential of Indian e-commerce, one has to reach the hundreds of millions of customers that live in tier-twoor -threecities, or in the countryside.

This will require a very unique approach in terms ofselection, price points and delivery and payment mechanisms.Flipkart management spendsaconsiderable amount of timestrategizingabout thesechallenges.

The common thread in all of these lessons is that you need to havestrong,inspiring leaders who come from the local market and have the vision and desire to scale their platforms responsibly and skillfully. Whether it wasBinny and Sachin asco-foundersofthe business, or Kalyan, Ananth andSameer in leading the respective Flipkart,Myntra andPhonePebusiness units, without these leaders it would have not been possible for Flipkart to grow to what it is today. I&m very grateful for my time with Flipkart and wishthe teamand Walmart all the best in continuing this incrediblejourney… a journeymade in India.

Reaching event organizers to help them sell tickets isn&t cheap. Eventbrite — the 12-year-old, San Francisco-based ticketing company that announced plans last week to go public and sell $200 million worth of shares on the NYSE — has been losing money since 2016, posting losses of $40.4 million in 2016, $38.5 million for 2017 and $15.6 million so far this year.

Now the company is trying to make up for some of those losses by announcing a new pricing scheme. Today, it sent customers a note explaining that for those using its &Essentials& package (unlike its &Professional& package, whose bells and whistles include customer support, customer questions for attendees and more), reduced prices are coming for many. Specifically, payment processing fees are dropping from 3 percent to 2.5 percent. Fees for tickets are falling from .99 cents to .70 cents.

The moves don&t really mean that Eventbrite is charging less. In fact, instead of charging one percent of every ticket price as a service fee, Eventbrite will now take a 2 percent cut, which should add up for organizers that use the service for bigger events. Italso removing a service fee cap of $19.99 that it used to institute no matter how much an event organizer was charging.

Asked about the pricing changes, a spokesperson sent us a fairly bland statement: &At Eventbrite we have always been committed to enabling event creators to deliver a diverse range of live experiences by offering a superior product at a fair price. The changes we announced today will mean lower ticket fees for the vast majority of our creators, and the millions of people that attend the events they plan, promote and produce each year. We succeed when our creators succeed and this change is indicative of a focus on ensuring we make the best decisions for the majority of our customers.&

It isn&t surprising that Eventbrite is looking for ways to fight rising acquisition costs owing to the competition it faces from all corners. In addition to platforms for smaller get-togethers like Paperless Post and competition for bigger events like Ticketmaster (which owns Live Nation), Eventbrite acknowledged in its S-1 filing that it could face competition from large internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, too.

Eventbrite had reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO back in July. As noted on TechCrunch&Equity& podcast last week by Susan Mac Cormac, a partner at the global law firm Morrison Foerster, companies often file confidentially first if they are exploring other options, including, most notably, M-A.

&These unicorns,& says Mac Cormac, &itdifficult for them to go public because they have such a huge valuation to begin with that M-A is often a better option. You don&t want to go out and have your stock fall 30, 40, 50 percent as sometimes happens.&

Partly through acquisitions, Eventbrite saw its revenue rise from $133 million in 2016 to $201 million last year.Last year, for example, Eventbrite acquired Ticketfly, a ticketing company that focused largely on the live entertainment industry and which had sold to the streaming music company Pandora in 2015 for a reported $335 million but Eventbrite was able to nab last year at the discounted price of$200 million.

Eventbrite has also made a broader international push in recent years,acquiring Ticketea, one of Spainleading ticketing providers, back in April, andacquiringAmsterdam-based Ticketscript back in January of last year. And those deals followed roughly half a dozen others.

Over the years, the company has raised roughly $330 million from investors, according to Crunchbase. Its biggest shareholders, shows its S-1, are Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital and T. Rowe Price. Collectively, the three entities own roughly half of Eventbritepre-IPO shares.