Techin' Geek

As rapid commerce emerges as India’s upcoming e-commerce showdown, Walmart-supported Flipkart announced on Wednesday that its Minutes service has established a network of 1,000 micro-fulfillment centers — compact, strategically placed warehouses aimed at enabling deliveries within minutes — in under two years since its inception, a landmark that Amazon is also pursuing as it grows its fast-delivery operations in the South Asian region.

Flipkart mentioned its intention to increase the network to 1,500 micro-fulfillment centers by the close of 2026, a swift expansion that would further solidify its standing in India’s highly competitive rapid-commerce market, where Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, and Amazon are competing to enhance infrastructure and attract customers.

Considering current store quantities and declared expansion strategies, Flipkart may become India’s second-largest rapid-commerce network by the number of micro-fulfillment centers, trailing Blinkit, which operates 2,243 such facilities, as noted in a recent report by Jefferies. Competitors Zepto and Swiggy Instamart are similarly broadening their networks.

India has surfaced as one of the fastest-growing rapid-commerce arenas globally, with enterprises hurriedly constructing networks capable of delivering a variety of items from groceries and beauty products to electronics in mere minutes. Blinkit, under the food-delivery giant Eternal, holds the top position, while Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart, and Amazon are significantly investing to broaden their presence and gain clientele.

The competition has escalated recently as Amazon hastens the launch of Amazon Now, which is now operational in over 15 cities and runs more than 500 micro-fulfillment centers. The company has plans to extend the service to 100 cities with over 1,000 micro-fulfillment centers while diversifying its product range beyond groceries, incorporating categories like clothing, electronics, and home goods.

The change is also reflected in consumer behavior on Flipkart Minutes, which started in August 2024. Demand is increasingly originating from sectors such as electronics, beauty, and personal care, rather than solely groceries, Kunal Gupta, head of Flipkart Minutes, informed TechCrunch. Orders on the platform have surged about 400% year-over-year, along with a 20% increase in customer retention year-over-year, he noted. Both statistics are from the company and could not be independently verified.

“What started as a solution for everyday essentials has transformed into a fundamentally new shopping behavior for millions of Indians,” Gupta explained. “Customers are not only ordering more; they are ordering differently.”

Flipkart announced it has brought Minutes to over 130 cities and 8,000 postal codes, with growth increasingly emerging from smaller cities beyond India’s major urban centers. These markets experienced more than 4,000% growth compared to a year ago, supported by its expansion into 90 new cities, according to the company.

Gupta indicated that the trend is evident in the speed at which newly launched markets are developing. He mentioned cities like Patna, Guwahati, and Siliguri as examples where new locations are scaling up quicker than anticipated, and highlighted Lucknow as one of the best-performing markets for Flipkart Minutes, despite not yet fully covering the entire city with its network.

Amazon is also placing its bets on demand outside of India’s largest urban areas. The company told TechCrunch that 70% of new Prime members come from smaller markets and it is on track to double its Prime membership base from 2023 levels by year-end. Amazon added that everyday essentials now represent one in every two units shipped on Amazon.in, with Amazon Now enhancing shopping frequency among customers.

Gupta stated to TechCrunch that Flipkart is observing customers utilizing Minutes alongside its primary e-commerce platform rather than as a substitute, leading to more frequent purchases and assisting in the expansion into categories such as fresh produce and daily necessities. The company reported a 30% year-over-year increase in average order values for fruits and vegetables.

Flipkart, Gupta detailed, intends to persist in launching between 75 and 100 micro-fulfillment centers monthly while further extending into additional cities across the nation.

The swift expansion by Flipkart and Amazon highlights how India has become a testing ground for the next stage of e-commerce, with corporations racing to evolve rapid commerce from a grocery-delivery service into a more comprehensive shopping platform. The country already boasts over 5,500 dark stores, per Bernstein, and industry analysts predict that number will reach approximately 7,500 by 2030 as businesses extend into smaller cities and broaden their product ranges.

“We will keep expanding rapidly, will not pause after 1,000 stores, and we are going all in,” Gupta confirmed.

MoEngage, an Indian company specializing in customer engagement software for brands worldwide, has acquired Aampe, a startup based in San Francisco, in a cash-only transaction, betting on the future of marketing being driven by AI agents that tailor decisions for individual consumers.

The specifics of the financial agreement were not revealed by MoEngage; however, a source acquainted with the situation informed TechCrunch that the cash transaction amounts to tens of millions of dollars.

Established in 2020, Aampe creates software that allocates a personalized AI agent for each customer, enabling brands to customize communications based on unique behaviors instead of relying on conventional audience segments and campaign strategies. The startup boasts over 30 clients spanning the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific, having increased its annual recurring revenue by 150% in the last year, according to MoEngage co-founder and CEO Raviteja Dodda during an interview.

Dodda expressed to TechCrunch that this acquisition will aid in attracting clients currently utilizing competing marketing platforms like Salesforce and Adobe.

“A significant portion of our growth comes from the migration of enterprise clients from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud,” remarked Dodda.

According to Dodda, MoEngage recently secured three to four contracts valued in the multimillion-dollar range with clients transitioning from Salesforce. He is optimistic that the Aampe acquisition will assist in acquiring more such clients.

This acquisition occurs amidst a rush among software companies to integrate AI more profoundly into enterprise applications, advancing beyond tools that generate content or assist staff towards agents capable of making independent decisions. In marketing, this encompasses determining which customers to approach, the content of the messages to be sent, and the optimal timing for sending them.

Brands like Swiggy, Grab, and Taxfix utilize Aampe’s technology, with some also employing MoEngage’s customer engagement platform.

This acquisition follows MoEngage’s recent $280 million fundraising through a combination of primary and secondary transactions over six months ago. Approximately 20 employees from Aampe will join MoEngage, raising the total workforce of the company to around 820 individuals.

MoEngage stated that it caters to more than 1,350 consumer brands across 75 countries, representing clients in industries such as retail, financial services, media, and food delivery.

Having raised around $28 million over three funding rounds since its inception in 2020, Aampe counts Peak XV Partners, Z47, and Theory Ventures among its backers.

On Tuesday, Menlo Ventures revealed a historic $3 billion fundraise, the most significant in its five-decade existence, largely fueled by its AI investments, notably in Anthropic. According to sources, its investment in the model creator is now valued at approximately $14 billion, as reported by Bloomberg.

According to Menlo’s team, they were extremely anxious when they made a foundational $750 million investment in Anthropic back in 2024, effectively leading the model creator’s Series D. This round notably increased the company’s valuation to $18.4 billion.

Although the investment was not seen as excessively perilous, the way the firm acquired that level of funding was quite remarkable.

Menlo had been an initial backer during the Series C, even before Anthropic had launched a product. By 2024, prior to the emergence of Claude Code and Claude Mythos, the company was already displaying strong potential. They secured a significant $4 billion agreement with Amazon and attracted considerable VC interest, having been established by ex-OpenAI researchers, including siblings CEO Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei. It was a quickly ascending AI firm, similar to many startups founded by OpenAI alumni today.

However, the method by which Menlo garnered the investments was astonishing. In 2024, the venture landscape was just starting to recover from the post-pandemic funding slowdown, while major firms such as SoftBank and Tiger Global were still recovering. Few were willing to issue checks for three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Menlo structured most of the deal, approximately $500 million, as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) — an ad hoc investment entity designed to aggregate funds from various sources for a single transaction. Additionally, Menlo invested $250 million from its own resources and contributions from company insiders, as sources informed Forbes at the time, resulting in a total round of $750 million.

Since that time, AI SPVs have proliferated, with Anthropic being a specific target — to the degree that the AI firm issued a warning last month, labeling all unauthorized SPVs and secondary markets claiming to sell its shares as “scams.”

However, for the investors involved in Menlo’s official 2024 deal, the bold strategy proved to be very lucrative. Menlo proceeded to invest in the company’s Series E and F rounds.

Moreover, Menlo followed this by setting up a $100 million startup fund in partnership with Anthropic in 2024, which they affectionately named Anthology. That fund has since grown to deploy nearly $250 million to date, according to a knowledgeable source speaking to TechCrunch. It has not only supported over 60 companies (providing them with benefits like access to Anthropic leadership and credits for Claude) but has also generated a number of successful exits, including Graphite, acquired by Cursor, and Astrix Security, acquired by Cisco.

This fund has allowed Menlo to stay attuned to the evolving landscape of AI startups, categories, and technologies from the earliest stages. The venture capital firm has since enhanced its reputation for AI investments, counting prominent AI ventures like OpenRouter, Higgsfield, Legora, Lovable, OpenEvidence, among many others, in its portfolio.

Research firm Klue has disclosed that a credential from a restricted pilot program dating to 2022 was exploited by hackers earlier this month to obtain vast amounts of data from its corporate clients, including several firms in the cybersecurity sector.

This new information indicates that Klue might have had ample time to retire the credential utilized in the pilot, raising concerns about the company’s security measures and what preventive steps could have been taken to safeguard its clients’ data.

The intrusion at Klue, headquartered in Vancouver and detected on June 12, was made public last Friday, allowed cybercriminals to retrieve data from numerous clients, among them the maker of password manager LastPass and several other cybersecurity firms. The attackers leveraged their access to Klue’s systems, which store the keys — referred to as OAuth tokens — used to retrieve their clients’ data saved in various clouds and databases, enabling them to download that information and extort the firms.

Klue spokesperson Katie Berg informed TechCrunch that the ongoing investigation suggests the credential utilized by the attackers to access client data “was initially given to a third-party in 2022, for a limited pilot.”

When queried by TechCrunch, Klue refrained from explaining the pilot’s purpose, its duration, or disclosing the identity of the third-party that received the credential. Klue also did not clarify why the credential was not revoked after the pilot’s conclusion.

Klue did not reply to follow-up inquiries regarding the incident prior to publication.

Uncertainties surround the incident as the company states its investigation is ongoing.

Klue has not disclosed what type of credential was compromised, merely mentioning in a blog post that it was a “legacy credential linked to an integration service.” Klue also did not specify whether the credential was an employee’s username and password, or if it believes the credential was taken from the third-party rather than its own systems.

These specifics could be vital for understanding how the breach occurred — and for preventing similar incidents in the future.

In its statement to TechCrunch, Klue added that the firm is “undertaking a thorough review of credential management, vendor access controls, monitoring capabilities, and deployment security processes,” without providing additional details.

A hacking collective known as Icarus has claimed responsibility for the breach on its data leak platform and has issued public threats to release the stolen data if their ransom demands are not met.

Klue has not indicated whether it has engaged with the hackers or if it plans to acquiesce to their demands.

Do you have further information regarding the Klue cyberattack? Are you a business impacted by the breach? We would like to hear from you. To securely reach out to Zack Whittaker, contact him via Signal at username zackwhittaker.1337.

Anthropic is launching a novel service named Claude Tag, an “always-on Claude” that resides in Slack, functioning as an AI colleague. This new option — enabling users to tag @Claude for insights in conversations and task assignments — will be available in beta for Slack users of Claude Enterprise and Claude Team.

Claude Tag represents an advancement of several current integrations. Users can currently DM @Claude within Slack or mention it in channels for immediate assistance, while Claude Code in Slack channels coding requests from mentions to comprehensive coding sessions online, providing updates within the thread. 

However, Claude Tag introduces a layer of ongoing context and memory that was challenging to maintain with earlier tools. “As Claude engages with its channel, it continuously learns about the work,” stated Anthropic. “Claude can also autonomously collect information from other parts of the organization, provided it is authorized to access other channels.”

With Claude Tag, every participant in a Slack channel can connect to a single Claude identity, meaning “anyone can see what Claude has been doing and can continue the discussion from where the last individual left off.” System administrators will determine which tools, data, and channels Claude is permitted to access, and each Claude identity will remain confined to the channels defined by the admins, ensuring that a Claude configured for legal tasks cannot influence the engineering channel, for instance.

When tasked with a specific assignment, Claude Tag will deconstruct the task into phases and will progress through them utilizing whatever tools are available, responding in a Slack thread with what it has accomplished. Yet, Claude Tag also includes an ambient mode that proactively engages in the conversation to keep the team informed, highlight items from around the organization, and follow up on neglected threads or responsibilities.

Anthropic claims this creates the experience of “collaborating with a genuine colleague — one capable of producing work publicly, with significantly enhanced context and understanding than previously possible.”

That context is an increasingly vital component of enterprise applications, and Anthropic is not alone in this focus. Microsoft is also emphasizing context through Graph, manifested in Copilot and Work IQ. Snowflake and Databricks are positioning their platforms as back-end support containing implicit organizational insights that agents can utilize. Glean is also developing an intelligence layer that comprehends company context, bridging the model and enterprise data.

LastPass, the password management provider, is alerting its clients that their personal data and customer support case files were compromised in a recent security breach involving one of its technology partners, representing the company’s most recent data leak in years.

An email forwarded to TechCrunch from an impacted user indicated that LastPass stated the breach was linked to market research company Klue, rather than its own systems. Nonetheless, hackers leveraged their access to extract vast amounts of data regarding LastPass users.

LastPass is among a growing cadre of cybersecurity firms that have reported data violations due to the breach at Klue, which the firm revealed last week. Other affected companies include HackerOne, Recorded Future, and Tanium.

In a blog entry detailing the incident, LastPass disclosed that the attackers acquired users’ names, phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, along with customer support case information and sales-related data.

LastPass confirmed that its own systems, including users’ password vaults, remained secure.

It is not yet clarified what information was included in the customer support tickets, although they probably contain bits of potentially confidential or sensitive information. Clients usually reach out to customer service regarding billing problems or to gain access to their accounts. Previous cases involving customer support tickets have involved credentials and government-issued identification documents.

Representatives from LastPass did not promptly reply to TechCrunch’s inquiries for comments or questions regarding the incident, including the number of customers impacted.

According to its website, LastPass has over 33 million users and approximately 1.6 million paying clients as of 2024.

In 2022, LastPass faced a data breach, in which hackers compromised the entire collection of customer password vaults, utilized for storing sensitive credentials, including passwords, tokens, and various personal and card numbers.

Although the vaults were secured with master passwords known solely to the customer, the breach enabled hackers to brute-force and crack the vaults offline using the weakest master passwords and subsequently access the information within. Several cryptocurrency thefts were later connected to the LastPass breach, as thieves were suspected of pilfering the victims’ wallet keys by cracking their password vaults.

Klue CEO Jason Smith stated in a blog post that the company detected hackers within its systems on June 12. A hacking and extortion organization named Icarus claimed responsibility for the breach and publicly threatened to disclose the stolen data if a ransom isn’t fulfilled.

Smith has not responded to TechCrunch’s emails regarding the incident, including inquiries about how many customers are affected and whether the company has communicated with the hackers.