Technology

A national six-day taxi driver strike in Spain has ended after the government agreed to pass regulation that will allow the countryautonomous communities to cap the number ofprivate hire vehicle permits within their cities.

The VTC licenses are used by Uber and local ride-hailing rival Cabify to offer professional driver services in the country. So the governmentdecision looks likely to limit the size of their businesses in regional markets which choose to uphold the cap.

Previous decisions by European courts have essentially closed down Uberp2p (non-professional driver) ride-hailing services in the region. So lobbying cities to deregulate and reform taxi laws in its favor is Ubergame now.

But ita long game, and one that may not work in every market — underlining the drivers behind the companyrepositioning itself as a multimodal transport platform, after buying its way into e-bikes.

SpainDevelopment Ministry issued the news the taxi industry had been pressing for yesterday, in a press release, following a meeting of the National Transport Conference that had been forward as a result of the strikes. It said measures to enable the countryregional governments to regulate the VTC sector locally, allowing them to put in place their own urban mobility policies, will be implemented in September.

Taxi associations have parked their strike as a result — albeit, making it loud and clear on Twitter that they&ll be returning to keep up the pressure on legislators come September.

It was an attempt by the mayor of Barcelona to pass a law to locally enforce the 1:30 ratio — subsequently blocked by the courts — that triggered the latest strike.

A strike that — as Uber hyperbolically tells it— ¶lyzed Spain&.

Of course the reality was rather closer to an inconvenience, and mostly for tourists, given the country has multiple, typically low cost urban public transport options. And locals love to scoot.

Spaintaxi associations have been holding fiercestrike protests for several years, ever since Uber re-entered the market with a licensed service offering — after some of the same associations had successfully challenged its p2p service in the Barcelona courts and got UberPop banned.

Taxi drivers denounce Uber and another local ride-hailing player, Cabify, as exploitative and corrupt, and have been applying pressurize on local and national governments to protect their industry.

A judgement from the CJEU at the end of last year,deeming Uber a transport company— and therefore firmly subject to local transport laws — looked like the final nail in the coffin for ride-hailing platforms to circumvent taxi regulations in Europe.

Making lobbying for deregulation and (in the case of Uber) pushing into multi-modal transport options the regional long play for ride-hailing startups. Uber&se-bikes are heading to Europe this summer.

In Spain the taxi industryanger has been focused on failure to uphold a 2015 reversion of a transport law which reinstated an earlier VTC license cap, dating back to 1990, that sets a ration of one VTC per 30 taxis.

However the provision has not been actively enforced, and has seemingly been easy (though not necessarily cheap) for ride-hailing firms to circumvent in practice — with the firms buying up VTC licenses from local operators and recruiting drivers via social media ads and job ad platforms like Jobandtalent.

Reuters reports there are currently 9,000 VTC permits granted to the online services vs 70,000 taxi permits. If the 1:30 ratio were to be upheld it would mean at least 6,600+ fewer permits — so likely thousands of Uber and Cabify contractors being put out of work.

VTC association, Unauto VTC, has sought to block attempts to enforce the cap — such as by challenging the Barcelona city authorityattempt to enforce the ratio last month.

And ride-hailing companies appear to be seeking legal avenues to block the governmentlatest move to devolve regulatory powers (for instance an Uber spokesperson pointed us to this report, in Mercado Financiero, which quotes a law professor questioning the constitutional validity of the governmentuse of a decree to transfer the competency).

At the same time they are making public noises about wanting to work with the taxi industry.

In a blog post responding to yesterdaygovernment announcement that VTC regulatory powers would be devolved, Uber holds out an olive branch to taxis, calling for all players in the urban mobility space, private and public, to work together — and arguing that if people are going to leave their cars at home &we must offer them more and more alternatives, not less&.

&If we have learned something these days, we should work together. All together. Because although some insist on presenting this problem as a war, the truth is that it is not so different from the crossroads that all the great cities of the world live,& it writes.

&And at this crossroads, it is in our hands to decide which path we want to take. We can restrict the new mobility alternatives, or we can start working to achieve the objective that we share with the Government, the City Councils, the taxi sector, the VTC and Uber: that fewer private vehicles circulate on our streets every day.&

The company also makes a direct plea to taxi drivers to work with it by backing deregulation of the taxi industry, instead of a cap on the number of VTCs.

&We firmly believe that the solution is not to restrict the VTC, but to make the taxi more flexible so that it can compete better. So you can compete with Uber, not against Uber. Uber and the taxi It may sound weird, but it is not. We already do it in several cities around the world, and we want to do it in Spain,& it writes.

&It is not about VTC or taxi. It is about that, little by little, we learn to work together to fulfill the objective of all: that you leave your car at home.&

An Uber spokesperson we reached for comment also told us: &The ways people move around cities is changing around the world — we want to partner with all local stakeholders, including taxis, to build better cities in Spain together.&

A spokeswoman for Cabify said the company did not have anything to add beyond its statementlast week when it made a similar plea for stakeholders to unite around a multi-modal urban transport mix — writing then: &We believe that unilateral solutions are not the right solutions to build the mobility of the future and that all players must work together with the administration in order to find the way to ensure the marketevolution and the protection of all of those who operate in it.&

However the taxi industryattacks on the ride-hailing companies include claims that their platforms create precarious ‘jobs& and underpay their workers.

Neither Uber nor Cabifypublic statements have engaged with that critique.

The most recent taxi strikes started last month in major cities including Spaincapital Madrid and in the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona.

The strikes were initially scheduled to run for two days but the drivers changed up a gear — announcing a huelga indefinido andgoing to on spend almost a weekblocking streets and making life especially miserable for suitcase-laden summer tourists trying to make trips to and from airports.

There were alsoviolent scenes witnessed on the first day of the strike in Barcelona— which drew widespread condemnation after cars were damaged and there were reports of drivers being attacked and threatened.

The violence was not repeated after appeals for calm, including from one of the main taxi associations organizing the protest action.

This same organization, the Elite Taxi association, has since tweeted that Barcelona taxis have been offering free trips to hospitals to improve relations with citizens.

Cisco today announced its intent to buy Ann Arbor, MI-based security firm, Duo Security. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco is paying $2.35 billion in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo.

Duo Security was founded in 2010 by Dug Song and Jonathan Oberheide and went on to raise $121.M through several rounds of funding. The company has 700 employees with offices throughout the United States and in London, though the company has remained headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI.

Co-founder and CEO Dug Song will continue leading Duo as its General Manager and will join CiscoNetworking and Security business led by EVP and GM David Goeckeler. Thereno word if Duo will continue to operate out of Ann Arbor if the deal closes.

The acquisition feels like a good fit for Cisco. Duosecurity apparatus lets employees use their own device for adaptive authentication. Instead of issuing key fobs with security codes, Duosolution works securely with any device. And within Ciscoenvironment, the technology should feel like a natural fit for CTOs looking for secure two-factor authentication.

&Our partnership is the product of the rapid evolution of the IT landscape alongside a modernizing workforce, which has completely changed how organizations must think about security,& said Dug Song, Duo Securityco-founder and chief executive officer. &Cisco created the modern IT infrastructure, and together we will rapidly accelerate our mission of securing access for all users, with any device, connecting to any application, on any network. By joining forces with the worldlargest networking and enterprise security company, we have a unique opportunity to drive change at a massive scale, and reshape the industry.&

Over the last few years, Cisco has made several key acquisitions: OpenDNS, Sourcefire, Cloudlock, and now Duo. This latest deal is expected to close in the first quarter of Ciscofiscal year 2019.

Duo SecurityDug Song On Company Priorities | Disrupt NY 2017

Shedul, an online booking platform for salons and spas, has raised $5 million in funding. The round is led by BerlinTarget Global, with participation from New York based FJ Labs. A number of individuals also invested personally, including Niklas Östberg (founder and CEO of Delivery Hero), and Hakan Koç (co-founder and co-CEO of Auto1 Group).

Launched in 2015, Shedulfirst product is a free SaaS designed to help salons and spas manage their day-to-day sales and operations. The platformfeatures span managing appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records, inventory, and financial reporting. A second, more recent offering is the Fresha.com marketplace, and it here where the London-headquartered company generates revenue by charging merchants a small percentage fee on top of bookings.

&We&ve built the worldbest platform for beauty and wellness industry and given it to all businesses globally 100 percent subscription free,& says founder and CEO William Zeqiri. &Good free software has spread virally with users in the industry enabling us to acquire new merchants very fast&.

This has seen Shedul acquire salon and spa operator customers in more than 120 countries, primarily in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. Around 6 million appointments are booked each month, growing at an average rate of 20 percent month-on-month, while the platform is on track to process $3.5 billion worth of appointment bookings by the end of 2018.

&Leveraging our existing pool of global merchants allowed us to bootstrap the consumer marketplace with a lot of liquidity,& explains Zeqiri. &This created additional value proposition for both merchants and marketplace customers. With our Free SaaS-enabled marketplace business model we are leveraging the critical mass of merchants and marketplace users to scale the platform exponentially&.

Currently in the initial rollout phase, Zeqiri says Fresha.com provides mobile apps for customers and real-time booking integrations through Instagram, Facebook and Google, along with in-app payment processing. It also incorporates intelligent features to help merchants grow revenues. This includes displaying price and availability options based on a customerpurchase history and the merchantprojected occupancy.

&With our two-sided Marketplace platform, we&re automating many processes of running a business in the beauty industry with powerful online booking features, marketing tools and access to our consumer marketplace to attract new clients. This frees up merchants to do what they do best and spend more face time with customers,& adds the Shedul CEO.

&We have salons where 80 percent of their bookings are now made though our online marketplace Fresha.com. Our technology helps businesses optimize their schedule with real-time online availability; in some cases it has increased merchant revenues more than 30 percent&.

Shedul counts its main competitors in the U.S. as MindBody, Vagaro, and StyleSeat. In Europe, the startup competes most directly with marketplace TreatWell.

Meanwhile, Shedul says the new capital will be used for product development and to support the continued rollout of the new marketplace offering. It brings the total amount raised by the company to over $11 million to date and should see it through to an upcoming Series B round.