Technology

The model of building vertical market-specific accelerators is now well known, but in the UK, Founders Factory, which has emerged from Lastminute founder Brent Hobermanstable of projects, is poised to take it to another level.

Today it launches Founders Factory Retail, a joint venture with UK retail giant Marks - Spencer&s, focused on investing and growing start-ups. M-S will become Founders Factoryexclusive UK - European partner, and invest in a number of start-ups, sourced through Founders Factorynetwork, which will expose the retail business to new &technologies, business models and entrepreneurial thinking&.

M-S famously admitted it had a ‘burning platform& recently, so itto be hoped this startup DNA will re-energise the company. M-S will become the majority shareholder within the JV.

Steve Rowe, Chief Executive said: &Partnering with Founders Factory as their exclusive retail partner gives M-S access to a global network of start-ups and entrepreneurs which will provide disruptive thinking and questioning to the way we work at a time of critical transformation within the business. Founders Factory have a great track record in creating successful businesses and by investing in new innovative technologies and products we hope to change the way we work and operate.&

Brent Hoberman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Founders Factory: &We are excited to partner with M-S as our exclusive retail investor in the UK and combine the companyscale and experience to support early-stage founders. After over 60 investments in the last two years we have seen the huge potential of combining startup innovation with corporate scale and expertise, and so we are excited by this new chapter in a sector that is changing rapidly through technology.&

Started by Brent Hoberman and Henry Lane Fox, Founders Factory has received investment from L&Oreal, easyJet, Guardian Media Group, Aviva, Holtzbrinck, CSC.

The ideas is that as well as accelerating companies it also incubates them, thus creating, from scratch, around 13 new startups every year. It also invests in 35 startups every year, investing cash, six months of support and provides commercial opportunities with their investors. To date, itbacked and built over 60 companies and is aiming for 220 within five years.

In an interview with TechCrunch Hoberman added: &This deal with M-S is a new model for us. We expect to expand to more sectors in this way. M-S is an iconic British brand so ita really good next step for us. We think we&re succeeding because of the sheer nature of the ambition we have for the project. Just funding an accelerator would not be as successful as this combination of best ideas from the cross-fertilization of sectors, big corporate partners and the network of experience we can tap into.&

&This is a bespoke program with a full-time team of 60 operational people to help. Ita very different model from the likes of Techstars or Startup Bootcamp, for instance. It has full-time employees and multiple corporates. We have seven corporate backers with shared equity, then on top have WPPWunderman agency. I think this is a globally innovative model. We didn&t copy this from the US.&

SoftBank is best known in Japan as a mobile operator but the company, which is behind the near-$100 billion Vision Fund, is increasingly getting into other types of consumer services in its homeland.

The Japanese firm last month launched a parking app, it is in the midst of rolling out a taxi-hailing service in conjunction with ChinaDidi Chuxing and now it is developing a mobile payment service, too.

Bloomberg reports that Softbank is working with IndiaPaytm — a startup that counts long-time SoftBank ally Alibaba as its main investor — to introduce a payment service before the end of this year. A source close to the companies confirmed the plans to TechCrunch, adding that an official announcement is expected very soon.

The plan is to start out with payments before moving into financial services, such as loans and insurance. The Japan launch would then be a springboard to expand to other global markets in the future, according to the Bloomberg report. Although it isn&t clear how the service would compete with offerings from Ant Financial, the Alibaba fintech affiliate that has local operations spread across numerous countries in Asia.

Paytm was the first mobile payment service to reach meaningful scale in India. Today it claims over 100 million registered users, thanks to a surge in adoption following the Indian government2016 demonetization campaign which removed 500 INR and 1,000 INR notes in a bid to crack down onillicit usage and counterfeit cash.

The company recently claimed to have hit an annual run rate of five billion transactions, and reached $50 million in gross transaction value over the past twelve months, but Paytm has plenty of competitors waiting in the wings. GoogleTez app has now passed 50 million downloads, while rivals such as MobiKwik hope Paytmfocus on services like shopping will present a window to out-perform it on payments.

Japan will be Paytmfirst major international expansion — it has a modest service in Canada, where it has an R-D team — but even then thereplenty of others in the market. Those include the likes of Line, Japantop chat app, and e-commerce giant Rakuten.

WARR Hyperloop has done it again. The engineering students from the Technical University of Munich won SpaceXhyperloop pod competition on Sunday for the third time.

This year, WARR Hyperloop pulled off the win when their self-propelled pod reached a top speed of more than 290 miles per hour, a new record for the competition. The pod traveled 50% faster than WARR Hyperloopwinning entry in the previous SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition held in August 2017. In the first competition, held in January 2017, WARRwinning pod traveled just 58 mph. Thatprogress.

The event was hosted, as it has since the beginning, by SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk at the companyHawthorne, California headquarters. The Boring Company, another Musk business pursuit, provided additional support this year.

The competition this year illustrates the evolution and advancements in hyperloop technology. For instance, in theprevious two Hyperloop Pod competitions, student teams had the option of accelerating their pod down the test track with support from a SpaceX-made vehicle called a &pusher.& This year,all pods had to be self-propelled. SpaceX also added another sub-competition focused on levitationtechnology. In this challengethe pods had to maintain alignment with the test track while hovering above it for an extended period of time.

WARR Hyperloop was one of three teams to make it to the finals—a 1.25-kilometer Hyperloop test track adjacent to SpaceXheadquarters. Delft University from the Netherlands and EPFLoop of Switzerland also made it to the finals. The competition accepted 20 student teams from more than 40 countries to showcase their pods at SpaceXthird Hyperloop Pod Competition.

Student teams had to demonstrate their podability to pass key tests and safety inspections. Each teampod also had to undergo testinginside a 26-foot long vacuum chamber and along a 150-foot long external test track built by SpaceX.

SpaceX isn&t working on or connected to any of the startups currently pursuing Hyperloop technology. But Musk is still involved in supporting the idea ofa system of reduced-pressure tubes that would theoretically hurtle people and packages long distances at super speeds that he proposed in a nearly 60-page public white paper back in 2013.