📅 [12/14/20–12/27/20] DWDG “Weekly” Digest #12

Published in

The Good AI Podcast

5 min readDec 30, 2020

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Hi folks! Hope you had a relaxing holidays! With the Christmas holidays we decided to skip last week and combine this edition into one end-of-year bash 🎉 . Enjoy your final 2020 fix of DWDG news, funding, and jobs below!

DWDG News

The World Economic Forum has created an alliance in April 2020 of social enterprises around the world to tackle COVID-19 and is prepping an action agenda for the annual January 2021 meeting in Davos to jumpstart some new projects [Read Agenda Report]
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a generous Christmas gift to a social enterprise in New Zealand, MakeGiveLive, to help support families in need of warm clothes this winter. [ Read More]
Indonesian startup, XSProject, is turning trash into sellable goods and empowering trash workers to become designers and earn a great living . It’s been around for over 15 years, but only established itself as a business in 2019 and has continued to expand since them. [Read More]

DWDG Fundings

Arya, a seven-year-old, Noida, India-based lender to farmers in the country, has raised $21 million in Series B equity and debt funding led by Quona Capital, with participation from LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore. The company isn’t breaking out how much of the round is equity versus debt, or who its debt lenders are. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Arya’s services helps underserved farmers in India obtain the capital they couldn’t otherwise, and better store food for longer periods of time

Joro, a 2.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup whose app measures your carbon footprint in real-time as you shop and suggests new habits based on your behavior, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital, Expa and Amasia, as well as from numerous angel investors. Among them: James Park, the co-founder of Fitbit, and Rich Pierson, the co-founder of Headspace. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Joro is an app focused on helping individuals reduce their carbon emissions and has already reduced 1200 lbs of carbon emissions, increasing that with each new user on the platform.

Self Financial, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup that helps consumers establish and build credit history, has raised $40 million in Series D funding. Meritech Capital Partners led the round, joined by earlier investors Altos Ventures, Conductive Ventures and Silverton Partners. [ The Austin-American Statesman Report]

Doing Good: Self Financial is focused on enabling customers who traditionally struggle with maintaining good credit better build a reliable credit history

Brainly, an 11-year-old, Krakow, Poland-based peer-to-peer learning platform for students, parents, and teachers to ask and answer homework questions, has raised $80 million in Series D funding. Previous backer Learn Capital led the round, joined by other earlier investors, including Prosus Ventures, Runa Capital, MantaRay and General Catalyst. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Brainly’s platform is providing free homework and virtual learning services to vulnerable students for free while making money from those parents that can afford it.

Better Dairy, a 1.5-year-old, London-based startup that’s using fermentation and biology to produce products that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding led by Happiness Capital, with participation from CPT Capital, Stray Dog Capital and Veg Capital. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Better Dairy is making dairy production more sustainable by reducing the 1.7B tons of carbon emissions emitted in traditional dairy production worldwide.

Umba, a 2.5-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based digital bank for emerging markets, including in Africa, has raised $2 million in seed funding from former Stripe exec Lachy Groom, Ludlow Ventures, Frontline Ventures, and Act Venture Capital. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Umba enables access to free credit and basic digital banking features like P2P money transfers to those traditionally unable to access legacy African banks.

Creditas, an eight-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based lending business, has raised $255 million in new funding from new and earlier backers. Among its new investors is LGT Lightstone, Tarsadia Capital, Wellington Management, and an affiliate of Advent International, Sunley House Capital. Previous investors that joined the round include SoftBank Vision Fund 1, SoftBank Latin America Fund, VEF, Kaszek and Amadeus Capital Partners. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Creditas is one of many new lending startups in LatAm expanding access to credit and secured loans by lowering barriers to obtaining them.

Foresight, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based insurtech startup centered around workers with more hazardous jobs, says it quietly raised $15 million funding earlier this year, including from Blackhorn Ventures and Transverse Insurance Group. Altogether, it has raised $20.5 million from investors, including Brick and Mortar Ventures and Builders VC. [ TechCrunch Report]

Doing Good: Foresight helps vulnerable unionized blue collar construction workers get the worker’s compensation coverage they need to stay safe while earning a living.

Urbeez, a two-month-old, Brussels, Belgium-based company piecing together a fleet of all-electric delivery vehicles (including bikes, vans, and scooters), has raised €2.5 million in funding from unnamed investors said to be “specializing in logistics.” [ Tech.eu Report]

Doing Good: Urbeez is reducing carbon emissions the more vehicles they add to their fleet of all-electric delivery vehicles.

Public, a three-year-old, New York-based social investing network company that invites users to buy any stock with any amount of money and to participate relatedly in social communities, has raised $65 million in Series C funding round led by Accel. The new investment comes eight months after the company raised a $15 million Series B round. [ Crunchbase News Report]

Doing Good: Public’s mission is to expand access to the stock market by removing the financial and psychological barriers for those typically unable to access these gains.