Amazon Business Punch-in, an industry-first tool is now available to business buyers of all sizes in the UK and US. Punch-in is currently available with Compleat Software. Punch-in is the latest feature in a growing suite of procurement products that simplifies the buying experience while increasing organisational compliance. This feature was created to enable buyers to start their purchasing journey directly on Amazon Business and submit the cart to their e-Procurement system for Purchase Order creation and reconciliation. Prior to the launch of Punch-in, buyers would start their purchasing journey within their e-Procurement environment in order to remain compliant with their organisation’s buying policies. In some cases, buyers would bypass Punchout and make purchases directly on Amazon Business due to its familiar interface and easy-to-use functionality. With the added convenience of Punch-in, organisations can allow buyers to start the purchasing journey on Amazon Business and complete the purchase order in their existing e-Procurement system once they are ready to check out, helping administrators keep more of their spend in one place.
Glasswall, a cybersecurity company that offers instant protection against file-based threats with Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) technology, has announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Nihon Cyber Defence (NCD), a Japanese cybersecurity specialist. The partnership will enable public and private sector organizations in Japan to benefit from proactive protection against a growing range of sophisticated threats. Tokyo-headquartered NCD provides robust, intelligence-driven cyber defence solutions, services and support to governments, businesses and public sector organizations to proactively identify and protect them from all forms of cyberattack designed to cause financial, political or social disruption. Managed via its recently launched Premier Partner Program, Glasswall will work with NCD and its partner network in Japan to implement and support CDR solutions and deliver protection across a variety of use cases.
Azerion, the digital entertainment and media platform, and Cavai, the global conversational advertising cloud company are reaping the rewards of their partnership focused on the expansion into new international markets and escalating the adoption of personalised conversational advertising. Having initially worked with Cavai in the Netherlands and the UK, Azerion has enabled the company to expand into additional regions including; Italy, France and Portugal, with plans to implement this success in other markets. Through Azerion’s ad tech expertise, coupled with its excellent advertiser, agency and publisher connections, it has provided Cavai with the ideal platform to help the company launch in these new markets. What’s more, with twenty-six offices globally, Azerion’s regional teams are able to offer international support to clients at a local level and ensure campaigns are being delivered successfully. This partnership provides Cavai’s creative advertisers and agencies access to premium in-depth insights on publisher inventory via Azerion’s SSP, Improve Digital. This robust infrastructure to manage the supply-side has ensured that brands, publishers, and agencies can utilise creative, conversational formats quickly and efficiently.
Bellator MMA, a world-renowned fighting league, has just signed an exclusive contract with Mola, an interactive streaming service, for broadcasting rights in Italy. The first fight will air on Sunday, January 29th between Bellator Heavyweight Champion Ryan Bader and interim champion Valentin Moldavsky. Leveraging this partnership and exposure, Bellator MMA and Mola aim to have the Italian market drink the MMA kool-aid. Mola is a streaming service that holds live and on-demand broadcasting rights for multiple sporting events, including the NFL, NHL, and WWE Raw, in Italy among 4 other countries globally. In addition to the Italian market, Mola is already the official streaming provider for Bellator MMA in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Gismart, the developer of mobile games and entertainment apps, has released BillionPeeps: an NFT collection dedicated to its recent milestone of one billion downloads. The company has been researching the blockchain gaming market for some time, making a decision to open a new internal division dedicated to blockchain games. The blockchain games unit is currently under formation with talent partially moved from the existing casual games team as well as new hires. Gismart’s employees became the first owners of the BillionPeeps collection. 360 current employees of Gismart and Flime by Gismart (a casual games studio owned by Gismart) received one NFT each; distributed at random. All new employees will also receive one NFT from the collection on joining the company as a part of the company’s benefits package. The collection is limited to 10,000 NFTs. BillionPeeps is already available on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, meaning gaming and NFT enthusiasts can get involved too. The BillionPeeps collection will be featured in the company’s new project, which is planned to be released next year. NFT owners will be among the first to participate in the in-game events and will have early-bird access to valuable in-game items. In addition, all holders of NFTs from the BillionPeeps collection will be able to participate in an annual lottery and other exclusive events.
NextPlay Technologies, Inc., a digital business ecosystem for digital advertisers, consumers, video gamers and travelers, has reported that its licensed Longroot digital token offering platform will serve as the financial advisor and underwriter for Ample’s proposed security token offering (STO). Ample Health is an emerging cannabis company operating from seed to sale in Southeast Asia. The company is looking to use the proceeds from its STO to fund its development and global expansion. Longroot will be responsible for structuring the offering and raising the initial capital to fund the STO. This will involve developing the registration statements for all relevant jurisdictions, including preliminary and final prospectuses. It intends to lead Ample through the entire regulatory approval process, and then assist in the pricing and launching the STO through the Longroot portal.
LINK Mobility, a specialist in mobile messaging and CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) solutions and services, continues to deploy RCS in France by partnering with Selligent Marketing Cloud, an advanced SaaS omnichannel marketing platform. With this partnership, Selligent becomes one of the first marketing automation platforms in Europe to make the RCS channel, the new generation of multimedia SMS, available to its customers. Combined with Selligent’s advanced personalization capabilities, and integrated into an omnichannel strategy, RCS provides a powerful communications channel for marketing and transactional messaging. Example use-cases include showcasing product catalogues, presenting new products, and making appointments or confirming orders and deliveries. Through this synergy with LINK Mobility, Selligent opens new communication opportunities for brands and marketers.
Beelivery has acquired the Pinga business with their 600 London-based low-emission drivers and riders in the latest in a series of major expansions that the company has made over the last 2 years. Incorporated in 2015 as the first rapid grocery service in the UK, Beelivery has been providing rapid delivery of essential and emergency groceries to doorsteps, achieving an average delivery time of 46min, with 21% of orders delivered in under 25mins. Beelivery is set to acquire over 5,000 customers, in addition to 600 drivers and couriers using sustainable vehicles from the Pinga acquisition. This will allow them to further extend their already sizable lead in grocery, late-night alcohol, and convenience deliveries across London. Beelivery will also look at continuing to offer delivery of Boots the Chemist’s range of products to maintain Pinga’s successful service, adding a broader range of products to Beelivery’s existing 4,000 SKU’s.
Arqit Quantum Inc (“Arqit”) is pleased to announce that a project with the company’s involvement has been selected by DCMS to develop a wideband solution for 5G cellular Open RAN platforms. Funded as part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) and the Future RAN Competition (FRANC), the project, in which Arqit is a partner, aims to democratise radio access networks (RANs) in order to end vendor lock-in and improve flexibility, affordability, and interoperability – all key to the UK Government’s recently-announced plan to see 35 percent of UK cellular traffic carried over Open RAN architectures by 2030. The project will see Arqit, working alongside other partners to secure a new wideband solution for 5G cellular Open RAN platforms. The project will see Arqit incorporate its QuantumCloud™ platform. This will enable security by design, making the security of 5G unbreakable even by a quantum computer.
Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program in Southeast Asia and India has launched its sixth cohort, showcasing 20 early-stage startups with funding totalling USD $60 million from Surge and co-investors. Several companies in the cohort are from AgTech, EdTech, FinTech, direct-to-consumer and e-commerce sectors. In EdTech, companies are leading the way in digital learning and mentoring. Several startups are building e-commerce platforms to connect customers to a wider range of goods and services, and are providing unprecedented access to digital payments and retail investing. Innovation in AgTech is also a highlight, focusing on streamlining complex agriculture supply chains and sending a lifeline to farmers in rural areas.
Circulor, the provider of supply chain traceability and embedded carbon tracking, has been selected by DIGITALEUROPE, Europe’s leading digital trade association, as one of three finalists to be awarded its annual Future Unicorn Award. Now in its fifth year, the Future Unicorn Award celebrates scale-ups from across Europe that have the potential to become future tech giants. Circulor was selected from a shortlist of 17 companies that were nominated by each European country’s national trade association in a process that considered thousands of potential participants across all sectors.
Pure Storage®, the IT pioneer that delivers storage as-a-service, has announced its role in Meta’s new AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), which Meta believes will be the fastest AI supercomputer in the world. RSC is helping Meta’s AI researchers build new and better AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, work across hundreds of different languages, seamlessly analyse text, images, and video together, develop new augmented reality tools, and much more. RSC will pave the way toward building technologies for Meta’s next major computing platform, the metaverse, where AI-driven applications and products will play an important role. Meta chose Pure as it needed a storage partner that can deliver robust and scalable storage capabilities to power RSC. With FlashArrayTM and FlashBlade®, RSC will have unparalleled performance to rapidly analyse both structured and unstructured data, underpinned by Pure’s foundation of simplicity, reliability, and sustainability.
