CDC commits $10 million to Chiratae
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
The UK’s publicly-owned impact investor CDC Group has committed $10 million to Chiratae Ventures’ Fund IV, which focuses on highly scalable, tech-enabled companies, as it seeks to increase its presence in India’s tech startup ecosystem. The funds advised by Chiratae Ventures have over $775 million assets under management and over 85 investee companies. “CDC’s commitment to Chiratae Ventures’ Fund IV is a show of confidence in India’s innovative ecosystem,” said Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman, Chiratae Ventures. The CDC strategy focuses not just on backing startups through VC funds, but also investing alongside the funds, besides making direct investments into startups. It has so far committed about $60 million across six funds in India-pi ventures, Stellaris, Pravega, Chiratae, Omnivore and Ankur Capital. As a development finance institution, CDC focuses on investing in VC funds which partner with businesses using disruptive technologies to deliver services for mass consumption at reduced costs of products and services. Its direct investment portfolio includes three investments at present, across which CDC has committed $70 million.
MCS enters the Indian AI automation market with Auditoria
Published on 21st August, 2020 | 1 min read
Ai and MCS Group have announced a partnership that will deliver AI-based finance automation to Indian corporates. With this new agreement, several of MCS Group customers will be able to leverage artificial intelligence to automate routine repetitive business processes that take days to complete. The enterprise AI market India is estimated to be at $100 million, growing at 200-250% CAGR, according to recent research and market reports. To fill this gap, MCS will help MSMEs and large corporates to define and achieve their financial goals with AI driven automation. “We are excited to bring Auditoria’s innovative technologies including Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and more to our clients, thereby helping them accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, and bring greater efficiencies and productivity to the back office function,” said Chetan Shah, Senior Partner, MCS, in a statement. Auditoria SmartFlow Skills offers an alternative to traditional approaches to execute typical finance back-office processes, which result in significantly improved business resiliency. Auditoria SmartFlow Skills is available for companies in India, Singapore and the Middle East through MCS Group.
Park+ joins hands with Vatika Group to offer its tech-led parking solutions
Published on 21st August, 2020 | 1 min read
On the back of this partnership, Park+ will be going live with its tech-driven suite of parking services through its mobile app in all the 11 commercial properties owned by Vatika. Catering to a capacity of over 50,000 tenants in Vatika Group’s properties, Park+ will be providing them real-time updates of parking availability. In a statement, Amit Lakhotia, Founder & CEO, Park+ said, “Today with increasing car ownership, there exists the problem of not knowing the number of parking slots available in the office premises without manually checking, which becomes a tedious process. With the Park+ app, both employees and visitors can check for available parking slots prior to their arrival with real-time updates and park elsewhere in case of unavailability.” Gaurav Bhalla, Managing Director, Vatika Group, in a statement, said, “Finding parking slots can be tiresome, particularly in rush hours while reaching the workplace. Especially during the current scenario, employees are being encouraged to use their personal vehicles, resulting in the necessity for additional space. This partnership will not result in delays while parking your vehicle.”
HFCs require ₹3.8-4.5 tn to meet refinancing requirements this fiscal: Report
Published on 21st August, 2020 | 1 min read
Housing finance companies are likely to see a muted portfolio growth and would require ₹3.8-4.5 trillion to meet their refinancing requirements in the current fiscal, says an Icra report. The pandemic effect is expected to lower the housing credit growth to 5-8% in the financial year 2021, significantly below the last three years’ CAGR of 14%, the report expects. “While portfolio growth for HFCs is expected to be muted, they would require ₹3.8-4.5 trillion to meet refinancing requirements and achieve portfolio growth of up to 5%,” it said. The overall gross non-performing assets of HFCs increased to 2.4% as on March 31, 2020 from 1.6% as on March 31, 2019. Going forward, the net interest margins of the HFCs are expected to remain stable as the cost of funds could moderate. The agency expects the return on assets to remain range-bound between 1% and 1.2% in financial year 2021 with the credit costs expected to be 0.8-1% in financial year 2021 compared to 1.1% last year.
Maruti Suzuki, IIM Bangalore tie-up to incubate startups
Published on 21st August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: To incubate startups, automobile major Maruti Suzuki India has tied up with the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Accordingly, this partnership will help startups working in technology-based innovations that can be applied in the mobility sector. “The collaboration marks first-of-its kind initiative by an automobile manufacturing company to help early-stage startups become large scale businesses,” the company said in a statement on Thursday. “This will be a 3-month and 6-month engagement. Maruti Suzuki has launched MAIL in January 2019, which supports startups by co-creating innovative business solutions in the mobility space.” According to the company, the futuristic solutions being developed under the MAIL initiative have a positive impact on Maruti Suzuki’s business. “These solutions help to efficiently bring in technological advancements relevant to automobile business,” the statement said. “To expand the collaboration with startups, Maruti Suzuki now plans to engage with IIMB to incubate startups in the area of mobility.”
Signzy brings on board Altimetrik’s Ashok Pillai as global delivery head
Published on 21st August, 2020 | 1 min read
Fintech company Signzy has appointed Ashok Pillai as its global delivery head, said a statement issued today. Pillai will be leveraging his 25-plus years of banking and payments industry expertise to oversee and lead Signzy’s delivery innovation to provide efficient customer services in his current role. “These are challenging yet exciting times for the entire banking and financial services industry. The current scenario has also presented unprecedented opportunities to fasten digital transformation in the sector. Signzy is aptly geared to tap into these opportunities and further intensify its growth. I hope to further unleash its potential and transform it into a globally scalable delivery organisation through my efforts,” said Pillai. “Ashok brings proven leadership and a wealth of industry knowledge and expertise from his 25-plus years in industry. His appointment will prove invaluable to Signzy as we continue to grow business with a focus on helping our customers stay ahead and relevant in this digital age and ready to turn Signzy into a global brand catering to banking and financial institutions across the world. I am delighted that Signzy’s efforts will now be steered by Ashok’s experience and able leadership,” said Ankit Ratan, co-founder of Signzy.
Delhivery partners Volvo Trucks for express operations
Published on 21st August, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: Logistics unicorn Delhivery and Volvo Trucks have joined hands to test and deploy a new transport solution for express operations that will help them address the challenges in speedy delivery and cost efficiencies of services. Volvo’s unique solution of a tractor-trailer combination, the Volvo FM 4×2, that has been running in Europe will be deployed by Delhivery to help the startup achieve faster turn-around time, expand its fleet and increase productivity. “… we are building some of India’s largest trucking terminals at key locations in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, while expanding and upgrading our own fleet and bringing in more partner fleets. Our partnership with Volvo and the first deployment of Tractor-Trailers in Express Trucking is a significant step towards getting future ready,” said Sahil Barua, chief executive officer and co-founder, Delhivery. While the pandemic disrupted operations for companies like Delhivery, Barua said that remobilising the network was a challenge initially, but after that the company reoriented its network to deliver essential goods like medicines and all their trucks were soon back on the road. “We are delivering 1.5 million orders per day today, which is more than what we were doing pre-covid,” added Barua.
Apple bites into history, is first US firm to reach $2 trillion in market cap
Published on 20th August, 2020 | 1 min read
It took Apple 42 years to reach $1 trillion in value. Even more stunning: All of Apple’s second $1 trillion came in the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever before in the coronavirus pandemic. On Wednesday, Apple became the first US company to hit a $2 trillion valuation when its shares climbed 1.2% to $467.8 in morning trading. Apple is the second publicly traded company to hit $2 trillion. Apple’s rapid rise to $2 trillion is particularly astonishing because the company has not done much new in the past two years. From April through June, even as Apple shuttered many of its retail stores because of the virus, it posted $11.25 billion in profits, up 12% from a year ago. Apple has repurchased more than $360 billion of its own shares since 2012, by far the most of any company, and has announced plans to spend at least tens of billions of dollars more on Apple stock.
Reliance retail acquires majority stake in Netmeds' parent for Rs 620 crore
Published on 20th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI|BENGALURU: Reliance Industries said on Tuesday that its subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures has acquired a majority equity stake in Netmeds’ parent Vitalic for approximately Rs 620 crore giving the Mukesh Ambani-led group a 60% stake in the Chennai-based company. PharmEasy, Medlife merger Meanwhile, online medical store PharmEasy has agreed to merge with smaller rival Medlife, filings with India’s antitrust body show. Medlife will sell 100% shares to API Holdings, the parent entity of PharmEasy, in return for 19.59% ownership in the combined entity, according to the filing with the Competition Commission of India. Sources in the know of the deal details pegged the valuation of the combined entity at $1.2 billion, which values the stake of Medlife shareholders at around $235 million. “The proposed combination relates to the acquisition of 100% equity shares of Medlife by API Holdings, and as consideration, the acquisition of up to 19.59% of the equity share capital of API Holdings, by the Medlife Promoter Shareholders and other shareholders of Medlife,” the filing read. Medlife was founded by Tushar Kumar, son of Alkem Laboratories owners Prabhat Narain Singh and Prashant Singh, Ananth Narayanan, who was appointed Medlife CEO in August last year, will stay on as an advisor for some time even after the deal is closed, sources added.
Dream11 pips Byju's & Unacademy to win IPL 2020 title sponsorship
Published on 20th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Dream11 won the rights with its bid of Rs 222 crore, Brijesh Patel, chairman of the IPL Governing Council told ET. “Dream11 has won the bid. The other two bids were from Byju’s and Unacademy for Rs 201 crore and 171 crore, respectively. We did not receive any more bids,” Patel said. ET had earlier reported that edutech startups Unacademy and Byju’s as well as the Tata Group had expressed interest in the title sponsorship rights of IPL 2020. For Dream11, which was already paying Rs 40 crore per year to the Board of Control for Cricket in India as the official partner of the IPL, it is an additional pay out of Rs 182 crore for IPL 2020. Under the deal, Vivo had agreed to pay the board Rs 2,190 crore, or about Rs 440 crore per season. A day after it was decided that IPL 2020 will be played in the UAE on account of Covid-19, the BCCI was criticised for allowing a Chinese company to be the title sponsor of the league in the aftermath of the dispute between the two nations along the border. In its EoI document, the board stipulated that a bidder should have posted a minimum turnover of Rs 300 crore in the last financial year. While the BCCI was expecting at least Rs 200-220 crore, marketers believed that the fair value of rights could be in the range of Rs 150-170 crore.
Yatra.com partners with Amazon Business to cater hospitality partners
Published on 20th August, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: Taking another step towards diversification of its portfolio beyond travel, Yatra.com on Wednesday announced its collaboration with Amazon Business in an effort to provide hospitality partners with a wide selection of products across categories. Hospitality partners of Yatra can enjoy benefits of bulk pricing and GST invoices to ensure compliance and claim input tax credit along with four per cent “Unlimited cashbacks” on business purchases, the company said. “We are glad to announce our association with Amazon Business to help our hospitality partners for all their daily and monthly product requirements,” Dhruv Shringi, Co-founder and CEO, Yatra.com, said in a statement. These partners can choose from a wide selection of products like commercial-grade kitchen appliances, kitchen storage solutions, linen and decor items, waste management products, large appliances, office supplies, safety and sanitisation products and much more. “We are happy to partner with Yatra.com and help its hospitality partners get access to a one-stop destination for all their emerging operational needs,” said Peter George, Director, Amazon Business.
Able Jobs raises $1.8 million seed funding from SAIF Partners & others
Published on 20th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Entry-level talent hiring platform, Able Jobs, has raised a seed amount of $1.8 million from SAIF Partners, Y Combinator, former-WhatsApp executive, Neeraj Arora; Titan Capital and Firstcheque. According to the company, the fresh round of funding will be used by the brand for acceleration of its product growth and expansion of its team. Launched last year, Able Jobs provides end-to-end hiring support to companies right from finding the right candidate to getting talent deployed. “Over the past decades companies have invested a lot of capital in hiring and training entry level talent. We, at Able jobs, are focused on solving this by partnering with companies and helping them hire trained professionals with a single click and no upfront investment,” said Ravish Agrawal, CEO, Able Jobs. Able Jobs also helps companies acquire talent through social channels and gives them access to people beyond job portals. “We are extremely thrilled to partner with Ravish and his team who are catering to the flourishing bracket of job-seekers in the country. With the rising needs of such platforms in a post-covid job market, we are confident that Able Jobs can catalyze the growth and development of the entry-level hiring ecosystem in our country while scaling up efficiently at the same time,” said, Deepak Gaur, MD, SAIF Partners India.
In a first, Indian space tech company Pixxel gets $5 million
Published on 20th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Started by 22-year-old Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, the startup plans to send its first earth-imaging satellite into space in November. GrowX Venture, Inventus Capital India, Stanford Angels and Ryan Johnson, who co-founded satellite imaging firm BlackBridge, have also participated in the fund-raise. The new capital would largely be allocated to get the satellites into space and also build its proprietary data platform. “Satellite has been manufactured and it’s being tested right now. We are working on a second satellite as well, which we plan to fly in the second half of next year,” said Ahmed. Ahmed said Pixxel has two Indian clients and eight more globally, across the US and Europe. Space tech, as a sector, has seen increased entrepreneurial action as demand for imaging-tech grows across sectors, and it gets cheaper to make and launch small satellites. There are now 15 to 20 startups in the space tech sector compared to just a handful a few years ago, industry executives said.
MG Motor ties up with Zoomcar for vehicle subscription
Published on 19th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: MG Motor India on Tuesday said it has partnered with Zoomcar, one of the country’s largest personal mobility platforms, for vehicle subscription. Through the tie-up, the company will leverage Zoomcar’s end-to-end technology solution for its vehicle subscription platform, MG Motor India said in a statement. As part of the collaboration, Zoomcar would now be managing the subscription programme on behalf of MG Motor. “The subscription model will further make MG vehicles more accessible to all auto enthusiasts in India. We are confident that our partnership with Zoomcar will generate considerable thrust in the market,” MG Motor India Chief Commercial Officer Gaurav Gupta said. The Zoomcar and MG Motor partnership will also provide 24×7 support to their subscribers regarding bookings and vehicle listings. “Along these lines, Zoomcar continues to focus on adding more and more vehicle models to subscription. We are delighted to partner with MG Motor India on the next phase of their growth to offer flexible subscriptions as an alternative to vehicle ownership,” Moran said.
Cataloging startup Text Mercato gets Rs 4.85 crore in series-A funding
Published on 19th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Text Mercato, digital cataloguing startup that serves e-commerce platforms, has raised Rs 4.85 crore in series A funding from a clutch of investors. While the funding is led by 1Crowd, others who have participated include Hong Kong-based startup accelerator Betatron, and angel investors Andrew Dell – former head HSBC Africa, and Raaj Shah, CFO of Sequent Software, the startup said in a note. Bengaluru-based Text Mercato was founded by Kiran Ramakrishna and Subhajit Mukherjee in 2015, and serves the content needs of digital companies. 1Crowd is an early-stage venture investment fund and a platform – set up in 2015 – to provide an institutionalised approach to investing in startups, and has invested over Rs 100 crore in 31 startups across sectors, ranging from enterprise tech and deep tech to B2C startups. Text Mercato aims to disrupt the multi-department and multi-role problem of listing and marketing a product into one single seamless process by focussing on end-to-end stacks, single sign-ons, central management and scale across languages. Text Mercato currently serves over 100 clients, including several leading online retail and e-commerce players like Myntra, and the Dubai-based The Luxury Closet, among other clients spanning fashion, electronics, FMCG, hospitality etc.
FPL Technologies secures $10 mn in Series A funding from Sequoia India, others
Published on 19th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Pune-based fintech startup, FPL Technologies said that it has raised $10 million in Series A financing round from Sequoia India, Matrix Partners India, Hummingbird Ventures, along with angel investors. With this round, FPL Technologies’ has raised a total funding of $15 million, since launch. Further, the company said that it will be leveraging the funds to rapidly scale up its engineering and product teams, while growing the issuance of its card service, OneCard, to more customers. Founded in February, last year, FPL Technologies, currently helps users monitor their credit score and get a credit report on a monthly basis, through its app. Along with this, FPL also focuses on credit education via blogs, quizzes and in-app tips. “We are absolutely convinced about the potential of the Indian credit card market on the back of massive growth of card acceptance, consumer adoption towards digital payments and availability of a large base of risk-scored customers in bureaus,” said Anurag Sinha, co-founder & CEO, FPL Technologies. FPL Technologies isn’t the only physical card startup which has received funding in the recent weeks.
DrinkPrime raises Rs 21 crore led by Omidyar Network India
Published on 19th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Subscription-based water purifier startup DrinkPrime on Tuesday raised Rs.21 crores in a Pre-Series A round from Omidyar Network India and Sequoia Surge. “We are currently operating in Bangalore and looking to expand to multiple geographies this year. Now with a much more robust product, our customers’ love for DrinkPrime is pushing us to grow rapidly. We aim to reach a million households in the next couple of years and be true to our vision,” said Vijender Reddy Muthyala, CEO and co-founder of DrinkPrime. Founded by Muthyala and Manas Ranjan Hota in 2015 with a vision to provide safe drinking water to all, DrinkPrime uses technology to make drinking water affordable without the hassle of installation or periodic maintenance. It does this by leveraging Internet of Things technology and a seven-stage filtration process that gives its customers access to clean drinking water on tap while being charged on a ‘pay-as-you-use’ model. “We believe that DrinkPrime’s innovative direct-to-consumer business model, which makes quality drinking water more affordable, will help improve the lives of India’s next half billion, i.e. those belonging to the lower 60 % of India’s economic distribution,” said Badri Pillapakkam, Investment Partner, Omidyar Network India.
Online trading company Robinhood now valued at $11.2 bn with new fund backing
Published on 18th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Robinhood Financial raised new funding at a valuation of about $11.2 billion, as Dan Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners poured $200 million into the online trading company. The seven-year-old firm was most recently valued at $8.6 billion during its July funding round, before it posted record trading figures for June. The latest investment and valuation were announced by Robinhood in a blog post on its website. D1’s new investment marks a vote of confidence from a prominent hedge fund investor. It was one of the largest hedge fund launches of that year, and he was among an early crop of investors to invest in both publicly traded and privately held stocks. Robinhood recently blocked access to information about the individual stock trades that users were flocking to. The platform has been seeking to attract users to its other offerings, such as Robinhood Snacks, its newsletter and podcast – which now has over 2 million active monthly listeners, according to a blog post.
Mitron raises $5 million in funding led by Nexus Venture Partners
Published on 18th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Homegrown short-form video app Mitron has announced that it has raised $5 million, led by Nexus Venture Partners. Launched in April 2020, Mitron is a short-form social video app that allows users to create, upload, view, and share entertaining short videos. According to the company, it has more than 33 million downloads on Play Store and 9 billion video views per month. The company will use the new infusion of capital to accelerate its product development to increase user engagement and hire high quality talent. The company also plans to onboard a wide network of Indian content creators on the app and invest in building Mitron brand. Khandelwal said in a statement, “We have been rapidly improving our product experience and with this funding round, we plan to invest further in hiring top notch product & engineering talent that will help us build a world-class platform that can scale seamlessly.” Pratik Poddar, Principal at Nexus Venture Partners, said in a statement, “We love backing ‘product and tech-first’ entrepreneurs. We believe eventually the best product with long term thinking will win. Focus is to create a high engagement and high retention community. Then only you can be long term partners for creators.”
Lightspeed India raises $275 mn
Published on 18th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU : Venture capital firm Lightspeed India Partners Advisors LLP has raised a $275-million fund, its third, as it continues to focus on early- and growth-stage opportunities in startups across the consumer Internet and software space. Lightspeed India Partners III is considerably larger than the $175-million second fund which closed in December 2018. US-based Lightspeed, which is operating in India for 13 years, launched its first dedicated fund for India in 2015. With its new fund, Lightspeed will focus on emerging segments, such as health and wellness, direct-to-customer brands and fintech, besides other consumer internet segments, Harsha Kumar, partner, Lightspeed, said in an interview. Kumar said Lightspeed will continue to scout for new startups, even as valuations saw “Slight” corrections in certain segments that have been impacted by the pandemic. Lightspeed and its affiliates currently manage more than $10 billion across the global Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors spread across India, the Silicon Valley, Israel, China, Southeast Asia and Europe.