Chargebee Raises Rs 403 Crore In Its Series F Funding Round
Finshorts | 7th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Mumbai: Chargebee has raised Rs 403 crore in its Series F funding round, led by Insight Partners. The current round, the biggest so far by the subscription billing startup, comes at a time when brick and mortar companies are adopting subscription models in their businesses, following the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing investors Tiger Global and Steadview Capital also participated in the funding round, bringing the total funding raised by the Chennai-based company so far to Rs 771 crore. Chargebee announced a Series D fundraise of Rs 102 crore led by Steadview Capital in August last year. It also raised an undisclosed Series E round earlier in May. Founded as a bootstrapped Software as a Service startup in 2011, Chargebee’s platform is currently used by over 2,500 companies. The company has also seen traditional businesses across Europe, United States and India signing up for online subscription management during the pandemic. AJ Malhotra, vice president of Insight Partners, said, “Even beyond SaaS and software, we’re seeing a global movement where businesses from cars to coffee pods are launching and scaling with a subscription-first model. The need for an underlying revenue platform that allows businesses this degree of adaptability is paramount today.”
Credit Wise Capital Raises $6 Million From Family Offices, Angels
Finshorts | 7th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Credit Wise Capital, a consumer finance NBFC raised $6 million in its seed funding round. “Tech is an enabler and not a panacea for all the ailments. Technology cannot convert a delinquent customer into a good one,” said Hirak Joshi, co-founder of CWC. Currently, present in Mumbai and Pune, CWC has an active dealer network with over 100 dealers and has disbursed 12,000 two-wheelers in a span of 16 months with an average ticket size of 65,000. “We were impressed with the systems and processes that CWC have built. The razor-sharp focus on cost reduction to achieve scalability in this business was one of the primary reasons for our investment in Credit Wise Capital,” said Mayank Shah, Chairman of M.J. Shah Group and the lead investor of CWC. The Indian two-wheeler industry is expected to grow at 8% CAGR over the next 5 years. CWC’s focus is on collection by deploying the right mix of human capital and tech processes while keeping a major check on the costs. “At CWC, the endeavour is to bring complete transparency and enhanced choices for the customer. Dynamic and risk-adjusted pricing, easy to understand offerings and constant customer engagement are the key aspects of this strategy followed at CWC,” added Joshi.
New Investors May Bring $150 Million To Zomato's Table
Finshorts | 6th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: A set of four new risk investors is expected to join the ongoing $600-million financing round at online food delivery company Zomato, two people in the know of the matter said, signalling continued interest in India’s internet story despite the Covid-19 crisis upending businesses across the board. Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital, South Korean Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, US hedge fund Luxor Capital and private equity firm Bow Wave Capital are likely to collectively pump $150 million into the company, these people said. UK’s Baillie Gifford, which had invested earlier in the round, will add more funds, a person familiar with the matter said. Interestingly, Mirae backed Zomato’s closest competitor, Swiggy, earlier this year through another vehicle – Mirae Asset Capital Markets.
SAVE THE DATE: Inflection Point Ventures And MoneyControl Join Hands To Launch Pitch Right
Finshorts | 6th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Inflection Point Ventures, one of India’s largest and most active angel platforms, and Moneycontrol, one of India’s leading financial news platforms, are coming together to launch Pitch Right. Vinay Bansal, Founder CEO, Inflection Point Ventures, says, “We always stand for the founders as it is them who are fighting for the highest stake in the game. Since March, we have seen the funding tap being constantly squeezed leaving many early stage startups run on a dry cash flow. The macro triggers motivated us to seek a formidable partner in MoneyControl, a brand which is a trusted source of news, to become our co-passenger on this journey to find high potential entrepreneurs and startups and help them in their journey both with capital and mentoring.” Pitch Right will launch on October 8 with an AMA to be conducted with Vinay Bansal, Founder CEO, IPV and Ankur Mittal, Co-founder IPV, and to be moderated by Priyanka Sahay, Special Correspondent, MoneyControl. “India’s startup ecosystem is undergoing sweeping changes, changes that have the power and impact to resolve the complex challenges that the world faces today. Our partnership with Inflection Point will help founders with the most disruptive ideas find a stage that will provide them the scale and the direction to make them big,” said Binoy Prabhakar, Editor, Moneycontrol.
Sistema Asia Fund Plans $150-175 Million Vehicle For India
Finshorts | 6th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Russian conglomerate Sistema Public Joint Stock Financial Corporation, an active investor in the Indian startup ecosystem through its Sistema Asia Fund, is thinking of raising a larger investment vehicle next year, a senior executive at the Moscow-headquartered fund told ET. The $120 million Sistema Asia Fund counts Rebel Foods, Lendingkart and Licious among its investment portfolio. The fund is targeting a larger corpus – $150-175 million, according to Sumit Jain, senior partner at Sistema Asia Fund Advisory. “It’s a little early to talk about it, but we think we will do a slightly bigger fund next, potentially $150 up to $175 million. We think that for the stage we operate in, and the size of opportunity we’re looking at, actually warrants a slightly larger fund. And slightly larger cheque sizes, as we look at fresh deals from the new fund,” Jain told ET in an exclusive interaction.
Uni Raises $18.5 Million Led By Lightspeed And Accel
Finshorts | 6th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Fintech startup Uni has raised $18.5 million in seed funding led by Lightspeed India Partners and Accel Partners. Uni aims to bridge the gap in the credit card market by making them more accessible to consumers across different regions. “Over the last five years, we have witnessed a 3x acceleration of digital and electronic payment platforms the share of credit card payments has fallen drastically. There is an opportunity to expand the market from 58 million credit cards in India today to 200 million credit cards over the next 5 years by building new products, catering to underserved customer needs and getting new customer segments,” said Nitin Gupta, founder and CEO, Uni. The credit card market in India today is still under-penetrated as compared to digital payments, with just 34 million credit card users having 58 million credit cards whereas there are more than 100 million Indians today who pay digitally and electronically. “Credit cards is a very large and exciting market. It has over $100 billion in annual spends and still less than 2.5% of the Indian population has a credit card today. The opportunity in front of us is truly immense,” said Prayank Swaroop, Partner, Accel India.
2nd Largest Cinema Chain In U.S. Considers Closing All Theatres
Finshorts | 5th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Regal Cinemas, the second-largest theatre chain in the United States, is considering closing all 543 of its theatres in the country due to continued revenue losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. Regal’s British parent company Cineworld said Sunday it is considering the move. “Fifty Regal locations are expected to keep operating during weekend hours.” In the United States, Regal is the No. 2 chain after AMC with 7,155 screens in 543 theaters in 42 states. They closed in mid-March due to the pandemic, and reopened where they could just prior to Warner Bros.’ release of “Tenet.” Deadline, a leading online entertainment industry news site, reported Sunday that the local cinema was hit by not only fewer viewers who are hesitating to see movies but also studios who continue to delay the release of big films amid the coronavirus pandemic. Large chains such as Regal count on blockbusters like the Bond films to sustain operations.
Almost Everyone At SoftBank Thinks Going Private Is A Bad Idea
Finshorts | 5th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Inside SoftBank Group Corp., the idea of going private through a buyout has been discussed off and on for at least five years. Almost everyone except founder Masayoshi Son opposes it, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Son has been frustrated that SoftBank’s market capitalization continues to fall far short of the value of his holdings, particularly Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Preliminary work on a buyout got under way after a record drop in SoftBank shares in March, but the effort was later tabled as the stock price more than doubled with asset sales, buybacks and media reports about a possible deal, one person said. One theory at SoftBank is that whenever Son gets too serious about the idea, executives leak to the media, so the share price rises and a buyout becomes less compelling. Asked whether there were factions within SoftBank with different opinions about a buyout, one insider laughed and said there’s no group in favor. As a banker, Misra had helped Son pull off the acquisition of Vodafone Group Plc’s Japanese wireless operations in Asia’s largest-ever leveraged buyout and thought a SoftBank buyout was feasible, the person said. After SoftBank shares tumbled in March with the coronavirus pandemic, Son returned to the idea of a buyout.
WhatsApp: Battered By Lockdown, How Small Businesses Used The World's Largest Messaging Platform To Bounce Back
Finshorts | 5th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
“For Sneha Sirivara, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur running Sambar Stories, popular messaging platform WhatsApp has been a great way to connect with customers.Even during the pandemic, the free-to-download app has been a boon for her as it enabled her to effectively tap into a broader customer base, particularly the older generation that isn’t very comfortable placing orders online.”WhatsApp has been our main channel of contact with our. “Our groups on WhatsApp have helped us immensely in reaching out to the poor. We have created a WhatsApp group called Apni Roti Squad, which is mainly used to share the location of the roti-dispensing van so that anyone who wants to volunteer can come aboard,” says Bikash Agarwal, Founder of the social initiative, Apni Roti. “Small businesses are the heart of local communities and the engine that makes the economy go. WhatsApp cares deeply about the small business community and is playing an instrumental role in helping those across the country connect with their customers, increase sales and grow their businesses. That’s more important now than ever when digital tools can serve as a lifeline for businesses and customers to stay connected,” says Abhijit Bose, Head of India, WhatsApp. Why WhatsApp clicks?Today, despite a plethora of messaging apps available, a majority of users prefer WhatsApp over its other alternatives. Besides the mega deal, Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail, and WhatsApp also inked a deal to support small businesses on WhatsApp.
Paytm Launches Its Own Mini App Store
Finshorts | 5th Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU : Digital payments firm Paytm has launched a mini-app store to support Indian developers, in a direct challenge to Google’s dominance in the space. The launch of the store follows the payment app being temporarily removed from Google’s Play Store on 18 September for violating developer guidelines on real-money gaming. While the removal of the app may be a trigger, Paytm’s move is perhaps a direct fallout of Google mandating that developers listed on its Play Store use its billing service. Last week, startup founders such as Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Razorpay’s Harshil Mathur, along with 50 other founders, discussed the possibility of building an Indian app store to challenge Google. “Other app stores have not been able to catch up with Google Play because they lack network effects. Google’s Play Store is mandatory to make use of Google Mobile Services, that includes other apps such as Google Maps,” Manjunath Bhat, senior director analyst at Gartner, told Mint last week. On 29 September, Google said, “Play distributed apps must use Google Play’s billing and revenue sharing system as the method of payment if they require or accept payment for access to features or services, including any app functionality, digital content or goods. This applies only to apps and has been purportedly done to prevent revenue leakages to Google from Google Play from January 2021.”.
Airbnb Aims To Raise Roughly $3 Billion In IPO: Report
Finshorts | 3rd Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Home rental company Airbnb is aiming to raise around $3 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said on Friday, taking advantage of the unexpectedly sharp recovery in its business after the Covid-19 pandemic roiled the travel industry. Airbnb will be one of the largest and most anticipated U.S. stock market listings of 2020 which has already been a blockbuster year for IPOs, featuring the likes of record label Warner Music Group, data analytics firm Palantir Technologies and data warehouse company Snowflake. Airbnb said in August it had filed confidentially for an IPO with U.S. regulators. This would be substantially higher than the $18 billion Airbnb was valued at in April when it raised $2 billion in debt from investors. Shares of U.S. online travel agency Booking Holdings Inc , which some Airbnb investors use as a conservative public market proxy for its own stock, have rebounded more than 35% in the past six months. Reuters reported last month that billionaire investor William Ackman had approached Airbnb about going public through a reverse merger with his blank-check company but that Airbnb was prioritizing going public through a traditional IPO..
This New Google Maps Update Will Give You A Better Direction Sense
Finshorts | 3rd Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
The Live View feature implements augmented reality to help show directions to Google Maps users in real time. Now, when the user selects or searches for a place on Google Maps, they can tap on the Live View button to visualize their destination in the real world. Live View will show how far away certain landmarks are from the user and what direction they need to take to get there. Live View can be accessed from the transit tab in Google Maps. While using transit directions, when the user comes across a portion that needs to be crossed on foot, Live View can be used to ease out navigation. The users will start seeing Live View in the transit tab and Location Sharing on Android and iOS in the coming weeks, along with a more accurate pin.
Amazon Alexa Auto Mode To Roll Out In India: Here's How It Aims To Make Cars Smarter
Finshorts | 3rd Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
The new Auto Mode aims to turn the user’s phone into a smart display that enhances Alexa’s in-vehicle voice experience. The company claims that the Auto Mode was designed to help the driver stay focused on the road with easy to read visuals, large touch targets and intuitive features and shortcuts for the most common actions used in the vehicle like navigating to saved locations, placing calls to contacts and Alexa devices, and playing recent media. According to the company’s official blog, the new Auto Mode is rolling out to Android and iOS in the coming weeks and will be available in India, U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Auto Mode consists of four screens – the Auto Mode home screen, Navigation, Communicate, and Play – and a persistent menu bar allows users to quickly switch between them. The Auto Mode home screen is designed to provide one-touch access to frequent actions, with shortcuts to play and pause current media source, navigate to home or work, and to make a call. As Alexa reads back the responses, Auto Mode displays a simplified list showing relevant information, allowing input via voice or touch.
IIT Delhi Startups Launch Antiviral Protection Kit
Finshorts | 3rd Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology Delhi incubated startups- E-TEX and Clensta- have partnered to launch an antiviral protection kit for masses. The antiviral kit consists of a novel Clensta protection lotion and hand sanitiser; E-TEX Kawach Antiviral T-Shirt and Kawach Mask. The products are backed up by experts from the chemical and textile departments of IIT Delhi. “It is indeed a proud moment for IIT Delhi to see such Indigenous technologies impacting and creating job opportunities amidst this pandemic and making India Atmanirbhar,” said V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi. The antiviral fabric in E-TEX Kawach has been designed using advanced technology that inhibits hosting microbes, reduces the likelihood and speed of contaminations, and transmissions by destroying micro-organisms on contact. The antimicrobial property of the garment remains effective even after 30 washes at mild condition, stated a release issued by the IIT. Clensta Protection Lotion, launched under the brand name COVID-19 Protection Lotion, offers 99.9% virus protection with antiviral and antiseptic properties for up to 24 hours.
Ahead Of Festive Season, Amazon Infuses Rs 1,125 Crore Into India Marketplace Business
Finshorts | 2nd Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Ahead of the festive season which is expected to boost economic sentiment, online retailer Amazon has pumped in Rs 1,125 crore into its India marketplace business, according to regulatory filings. Amazon has invested the money into Amazon Seller Services, which runs the India marketplace business. The money has been routed through two of its foreign units- Amazon Corporate Holdings in Singapore, and Amazon.com Inc Limited in Mauritius, according to filings accessed via Tofler. Earlier this week Amazon also said it has ramped up its delivery network in anticipation of high demand during the festive season. It has added close to 200 delivery stations, including those operated by delivery service partners across the country, including in remote northeastern towns such as Champhai, Kolasib, Lumding and Mokokchung. Amazon India has close to 250 Amazon-operated and more than 1,500 partner delivery stations run by more than 280 people across the country to enable deliveries across the country. This is also in line with e-commerce companies generally ramping up delivery infrastructure and raising funds from off-shore units to be sufficiently funded and efficient during the festive season.
India Open To Launching Own Mobile App Store As Start-Ups Criticise Google
Finshorts | 2nd Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
India is open to launching its own mobile app store or expanding an existing one if it receives enough demand from domestic firms for an alternative to Apple and Google platforms, a senior government official said on October 1. Alphabet-owned Google also said this week that it will strictly enforce a policy which will levy a 30 percent commission on payments made within apps on its Android store. India already runs a mobile app store that lists over 1200 mainly government-backed applications, but also Paytm, and the government could also consider expanding that instead of starting from scratch, the official added. Google has previously said that fewer than 3 percent of developers with apps on its Play store sold digital goods over the last 12 months, and nearly 97 percent comply with its payment system policy. Several Indian start-up founders are calling for a local app store that doesn’t charge a high service fee. “It’s absolutely necessary to have a local app store,” said Vishal Gondal, co-founder of Bengaluru-based gaming firm nCore Games. Paytm disagreed with Google’s assessment but removed certain promotions to have its app reinstated.
Lee Fixel Returns To India, Makes First Investment From New Fund Addition
Finshorts | 1st Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
After a hiatus of almost two years, Lee Fixel, the media shy former Tiger Global fund manager, known widely as the big bull of India’s consumer Internet story, is back to investing in local startups. Fixel, who launched his own $1.2 billion fund Addition in the US earlier this year, has led a $35 million round in Inshorts, a platform which aggregates news and information. His first new bet in India comes at a time when New York-based Tiger Global has been actively investing in the country under Scott Shleifer, who took over the private equity portfolio of the firm last year after Fixel’s departure. “We are profitable at Inshorts and raised this capital for our new app Public. With more than 50 million active users and over 1 million videos being created every month on the app, Public aims to connect the local communities of Bharat and become the one-stop solution for all their local needs,” Iqbal said. Fixel has invested in DLocal, a cross-border payment processor, mental health startup Lyra Health, developer-first security company Snyk, among others.
India Tries To Beat The Pandemic, The Health-Startup Way!
Finshorts | 1st Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Now, Indian health tech startups are reaping the benefits of growing awareness among Indians as more take to working out at home. Sharing its revenue figures, Chief Executive Officer Jitendra Chouksey said the company had recorded $800,000 in revenue in August, and was looking to clock $900,000 in September. Another Bengaluru-based fitness platform, Healthifyme, has reported a revenue run rate of $15 million in August. Revenue run rate is what the company would make in a year, if it were to make the same revenue for the next twelve months. Consumers are driven to these platforms by the need to invest in health and ensure that co-morbidities such as hypertension, obesity, diabetes and other related lifestyle diseases can be controlled. Fitness experts have pointed out since COVID-19 is turning out to be less fatal for healthy humans, many people are choosing a healthy lifestyle and working out regularly. Cult Fit, which is the fitness service offered by the Bengaluru-based startup, has used celebrity trainers, and a wide range of live classes of different types to get users to the platform through the pandemic.
Sunstone Raises Rs 24 Crore In Series A From Saama Capital, Others
Finshorts | 1st Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
Sunstone Eduversity has raised Rs 24 crore in its Series A round of funding led by Saama Capital along with participation from venture capitalist Ashish Gupta and PeopleStrong co-founder Pankaj Bansal, who invested in their personal capacities. The education technology company will use the fresh capital to invest in its technology platform, hiring and curriculum. Sunstone works closely with corporates to develop industry-ready specialisations across sectors like BFSI, logistics, analytics, sales management and digital marketing and others. Sunstone tries to produce students who are ready to foray into the job market right after college and have the desired skill sets required to manage daily office work. The company had received 10,000 applications this year compared to 2,500 last year. Founded by IMT-Ghaziabad alumnus Ashish Munjal and Piyush Nangru, Sunstone has eight partner institutions in six cities and will have 20 partners in 15 cities by July 2021.”One of the challenges faced by freshers is the lack of industry-relevant skills that reduce their chances of getting hired by reputed companieswe focus on imparting practical skills training instead of outdated theory and remote learning methods. For the batch of 2019-21, we generated more than 450 Internship offers even during this pandemic,” Co-Founder Ashish Munjal said.
Social Network App Public Raises $35 Million From Lee Fixel's Addition, Others
Finshorts | 1st Oct, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Location-based social network app Public has raised $35 million from venture capitalist Lee Fixel’s Addition, SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners. Tiger Global, advised by Fixel, was one of the most active investors in India consumer internet companies, making early bets in Flipkart, Ola and Quikr India Pvt Ltd. Public App is social network platformfor everything local – from local updates and happenings to local commerce, jobs, classifieds and more. “We are thrilled to have this support from Addition, SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners in our journey towards building the world’s largest location based social network,” said Azhar Iqubal, Founder & CEO, Public App. “With more than 50 million active users and over 1 million videos being created every month on the app, Public aims to connect the local communities of Bharat and become the one stop solution for all their local needs,” Iqubal added. After its launch last year, Public app is now available in multiple Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi. It has around 50 million active users, with one million videos being created every month. The app allows people to record and share happenings around them enabling real-time local updates.
The Big 5G Question Before India
Finshorts | 30th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
In India, 5G has the potential to bring major societal transformation and support the government’s flagship schemes in infrastructure, development and e-governance. Key ministries and departments in the government have worked on policy documents, reports and papers to help build a concrete roadmap to deploy 5G in India. A final decision on allowing Huawei to build India’s 5G networks remains an open one. The opinion of India’s largest mobile operators can significantly influence the government’s decision on any future 5G policy. A recurring concern for all nations – including India – has been operational risks and vulnerabilities related to security. A proposed way to offset security concerns is to boost indigenous development of the 5G technology – an important step given that India imports 90 percent of its telecom equipment. There can be only two scenarios for New Delhi: one, where it allows Huawei to supply India’s 5G network, or another, where it bans Huawei and other Chinese vendors.
Of All The EV Startups, Why Is Ather Energy's Valuation Down?
Finshorts | 30th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The dip in valuation is beyond comprehension, especially when seen against the fact that Ather is the only EV startup to have a product in the market. From a mere Rs 35 crore in 2017 when TVS made its maiden stake-buy in Ultraviolette, the startup’s valuation has increased to a whopping Rs 805 crore as of September first week when TVS increased its stake to 29.48 percent, with an infusion of Rs 30 crore. Incorporated in 2015, Pune-based startup Tork Motors is yet to launch its first all-electric product but the valuation of the Bharat Forge-backed company is at Rs 113 crore. The Series A2 fundraising done a few months ago saw Yulu’s valuation increase to Rs 585 crore after venture capital fund Rocketship. Engine manufacturer Greaves Cotton acquired a 67 percent stake in the 10 year-old, Ratan Tata-backed start-up Ampere Vehicles in 2018 for Rs 77 crore, thereby giving it a valuation of Rs 115 crore. After having bought the remaining stake, Ampere’s valuation shot up to Rs 325 crore in less than 18 months. This transaction gave Ather a valuation of little under Rs 2,550 crore.
BigBasket In Talks For $400m Round
Finshorts | 29th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI| BENGALURU: Online grocery retailer BigBasket is in discussions to rope in a bunch of new investors like Singapore government’s Temasek, US-based Generation Partners, Fidelity and Tybourne Capital, for a $350-400 million financing round, two people in the know said. The ongoing talks also include at least $100-150 million in secondary sale of shares by early investors, said people close to the matter, who did not want to be identified as the talks are private. BigBasket, which has gained traction on the back of the pandemic as consumers purchase grocery and everyday essential online, is likely to see its valuation gain about 33% to around $2 billion, post the investment, another person privy to the details said. “The non-binding term sheets are in and the round is likely to close in a month’s time. Alibaba’s not participating, which means the company is looking to diversify its list of investors by getting new backers in,” said one of the people cited earlier. Alibaba, which is a significant investor in the Bengaluru-based company with an around 28% stake, is not pumping any new capital in the e-grocer amid a larger anti-China sentiment and FDI restrictions enforced by the Indian government, which have affected Chinese money coming into domestic firms. A source said Alibaba would be cutting its shareholding to 20% post this financing round.
Uber Weighs Purchase Of BMW-Daimler Ride-Hailing Venture
Finshorts | 29th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Uber Technologies Inc. is considering a purchase of Daimler AG and BMW AG’s ride-hailing joint venture Free Now, a deal that could boost its market share in Europe and Latin America, people with knowledge of the matter said. Uber expressed interest in a potential acquisition of Free Now after the venture’s efforts to attract additional investors struggled to gain traction amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Representatives for Uber and BMW declined to comment, and a Daimler spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on speculation. Daimler and BMW merged their mobility operations last year and folded them into a joint venture called Your Now, which comprises five business including the Free Now ride-hailing service. Daimler valued the equity investment in its half of the Your Now venture at 618 million euros at the end of June. Uber has been looking to shed minority holdings in several ride-hailing operations recently, including portions of its stakes in China’s Didi Chuxing and the Southeast Asian ride-share company Grab. Daimler and BMW’s shopping of Free Now reflects their focus on generating cash and improving efficiency within their core automotive operations.
Sales Acceleration Startup SquadStack Raises $5 Million Led By Chiratae Ventures
Finshorts | 29th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: San Francisco and New Delhi-based startup SquadStack has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by Chiratae Ventures. SquadStack helps consumer businesses that sell high-ticket products and services across sectors such as real estate, financial services, education, healthcare, and retail improve their sales conversions and funnel efficiency. “In today’s competitive business environment, organisations need a sales acceleration platform and analytics throughout the sales cycle. SquadStack is helping consumer companies across industries solve the principle challenge to turn prospects into customers faster and more profitably.” says Venkatesh Peddi, executive director at Chiratae Ventures. In 2018, SquadStack launched its sales acceleration platform, SquadVoice in the Indian market. This led to the creation of their offering ‘Auctm’, a business management platform that helps broker teams boost revenue, cut costs, and improve agent training and retention by applying its core principles of data-driven sales acceleration. “We’re grateful to everyone who believed in our mission to create the ultimate sales acceleration and funnel efficiency stack for consumer focused businesses around the world. To our customer partners, we promise that our vision to make your lives easier by providing the best quality products will never change.” Said Apurv Agrawal, CEO of SquadStack. The firm in 2017 had raised $2.1 million in pre-series A funding led by Blume Ventures.
Smallcase Raises $14 Million From DSP Group, Others
Finshorts | 29th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Capital markets infrastructure startup smallcase on Monday said it has raised $14 million as part of its Series B financing round led by DSP Group along with existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures, Beenext and WEH Ventures. At present, the smallcase platform is integrated with Zerodha, HDFC Securities, Kotak Securities, 5Paisa, and AxisDirect to help offer stock and ETF smallcases to their client base. “Smallcase is targeting 40 million direct equity investors in India with its innovative, easy to understand, transparent and digital first products. Their rapid growth, exceptional investor retention, unique marquee partnerships across the ecosystem have been key reasons why the Sequoia India team has doubled down on their partnership with the company”, said Harshjit Sethi, Principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP. smallcase also launched its ‘publisher platform’ last year, a business-in-a-box solution to democratise investment product manufacturing. Apart from brokerage integrations and its B2B offering, smallcase also directly engages with retail investors through the smallcase app that enables users to invest and track their investments across different brokerages.
Paytm Money Now Live With Stock Broking Services And MF Trades
Finshorts | 28th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Paytm’s wealth management subsidiary Paytm Money has gone live with its stockbroking service for all customers. The company aims to register 1 million new retail investors on the platform by close of the ongoing fiscal year in March 2021, according to Varun Sridhar, the newly appointed CEO of Paytm Money, leveraging on the demand for equity trading among first-time users. According to a statement shared by Paytm with ET, the platform’s early access version saw 220,000 users registering on Paytm Money for retail stockbroking. Paytm Money faces competition from Zerodha, Upstox and Groww, among startups, and traditional players such as ICICI Securities and Motilal Oswal. In an interview with ET last month, Sridhar had explained Paytm Money’s business model as a mix of commissions on intraday trades, interest income on loan against shares, and subscription income from select services that will be launched over the next few months in a 60%-20%-20% mix, respectively. “The platform witnessed higher adoption from tier 1 cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Smaller cities such as Thane, Guntur, Bardhaman, Krishna and Agra are also showing high traction,” Paytm said. The Bengaluru-based Paytm Money has also set plans to launch more complex features on the platform, including commodity and derivative trades by next year, Sridhar had told ET..
Vahdam Teas Partners With Byju's To Tutor Children Of Tea Estate Workers; Pilot Launched In Darjeeling
Finshorts | 28th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Global direct-to-consumer tea brand Vahdam Teas has partnered education technology startup Byju’s to digitally tutor less privileged children of tea estate workers from about ten tea estates in Darjeeling. By the end of the academic year, the partnership plans to expand to 20 tea estates and cover about 50,000 children across tea-growing regions in India. The five-year-old homegrown tea brand, popularised by international celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Mariah Carey, launched the social initiative in 2018, where it earmarked minimum 1% of its revenues for the education of tea-estate workers’ children. India is the largest consumer of tea, accounting for nearly 30% of global tea production. According to experts, the country consumes tea ten times more than coffee. The premium tea startup added that tea is the second largest employer of organised labour only after railways providing direct employment to approximately 1 million, of whom 51% are women. About 10 million people derive their livelihood from tea through forward and backward linkages.
How This ERP Solutions Provider Is Redefining The Online Education System
Finshorts | 28th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
It has wreaked havoc in the education system with the closure of academic institutions. With everything being virtual, the schools and colleges are leveraging new age technology solutions to empower remote learning for students of all age groups. MasterSoft, a ERP solutions provider in the country takes on streamlining the everyday work processes of schools, colleges, and universities through its integrated cloud-based solution. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the years old conventional system to virtual education models. To implement this seamless transition, MasterSoft features comprehensive ERP solutions that support digital transformation and motivate immersive learning experience. MasterSoft bets on versatile solutions that enable the students and teachers to adapt to the new normal. The secured solution enables the teachers to create competitive question banks, prevent malpractices during the online examination, and provide data-driven reports to identify the learning gaps of the students.
IISc Startup Equine Biotech Develops Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit, Gets ICMR Nod
Finshorts | 28th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The GlobalTM diagnostic kit, developed by Bengaluru-based Equine Biotech, got approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research to join the list of made-in-India diagnostic test kits for Covid-19. The kit uses the Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction method of testing. “Our startup has been working on testing for coronavirus infections for many years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic started. This experience has helped us engineer the kit for COVID-19,” said Tatu. This “Sensitive, rapid, and affordable COVID-19 diagnostic kit” is easy to use with 100 percent specificity, meaning there are no false negatives, according to the start-up. The test kit shows results relatively faster than those available in the market, IISc said in a statement. “Equine Biotech is looking to licence the above kit for large scale manufacturing and sale,” the statement added. “The agreement would involve tech transfer and support in manufacturing of kits. We are looking at med-tech companies with experience in distribution and marketing of diagnostic kits,” it further added.
Marque Angel Investors Pick Up Stake In Wellbeing Nutrition
Published on 26th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Wellbeing Nutrition, a startup founded by Mumbai based Avnish Chhabria, has raised angel funding from marquee investors to scale up operations in the fast growing startup. The investors include Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah, the co-founders of Beardo, who had recently sold their company to Marico, family office of Nikhil Gandhi, TikTok India CEO, and well known angel investors Harsh Vardhan Bhandari and Jeenendra Bhandari. “The investors have bought a minority stake in the startup. The funds would be utilised to launch new products, scale up its existing product volumes and to acquire talent,” said a person aware of the development. A spokesperson for Gandhi Investments Pvt. Ltd, the family office of the TikTok India head, responding to an ET query said, “We refrain from divulging any details on our family investments. You may connect with Wellbeing Nutrition for more details. But we can confirm we have made the investment.” The investment comes at a time when many well known angel investors are looking at trends amidst Covid pandemic.
Chqbook Launches Digital Ledger, Lending, Insurance Services For Small Merchants
Published on 26th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Chqbook, a fintech startup focused on small business owners such as kiranas, merchants and chemists, has launched a suite of services, including current account for daily transactions, short to long-term business loans and insurance products on its platform. Many of these small mom-and-pop business owners currently depend on manual ledgers to record daily transactions, and some do not even own a bank account, without a which access to credit is almost impossible. Chqbook said it plans to address this gap by opening current accounts and providing financial products such as insurance and credit access to help bring small business owners to the formal economy. The three-year-old start-up already has over 300,000 customers across the top 25 cities and on-boards over 25,000 customers on its platform every month for various products and services catering to small business owners. “Chqbook’s mobile app brings together all the financial transactions a small business owner must handle, now available on demand and at their fingertips. Our ‘financial control center’ aggregates a simple to use current account, traditional khata transactions, lending, and insurance. It brings all daily transactions in one place making them easy to access, so that small business owners can focus on what they do best – running and growing their businesses,” Vipul Sharma, founder, and chief executive, Chqbook said in a statement.
MonotaRO Enters Into JV With Industrybuying, Invests $15 Million
Published on 26th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Japanese business-to-business ecommerce company MonotaRO is set to invest $15 million in a joint venture with Emtex Engineering, the holding company for Industrybuying. The joint venture will only include Indusybuying’s small and medium enterprise business and the company’s large enterprise supply business will continue to function independently, the company said in a press note on September 25. MonotaRO had first announced the deal in the Tokyo Stock Exchange on September 23. TechCircle in a report said through the deal, MonotaRO will pick up 51.6 per cent stake in the joint venture with Industrybuying. In the press note, the Gurugram-based startup said this deal will help Industrybuying access global expertise and infrastructure in this business. Industrybuying is backed by large VCs like Beenext, Saif Partners, Kalaari Capital and others. Founded in 2013 by Swati Gupta and Rahul Gupta, the platform sells industrial products online for large businesses operating across 40 categories of products.
End Of Loan Holiday Threatens Pain, Defaults For Indian Business
Published on 26th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Small businesses in India, already struggling amid the pandemic, are now having to repay mounting debt after a loan holiday ended last month. The Reserve Bank of India gave borrowers a six-month freeze on their loan repayments, which ended on Aug. 31, with about a third of India’s $1.8 trillion outstanding loans being deferred under the program. Businesses still trying to cope with a collapse in demand must now figure out how to pay back their loans or face closure. “The Reserve Bank should ask banks to extend the moratorium,” said Philip, managing director of Cosmos Agencies LLP. “Else, I may have to resort to cut capital expenditure and staff retrenchment.” The central bank has provided some relief to borrowers by allowing banks to extend the moratorium and restructure loans, but the process isn’t automatic. Lenders can grant extensions of as long as two years, and have until the end of the year to pick which loans to recast and until June 2021 to get it done. Withhold Payments Banks are against extending the loan payment freeze as they see it as a strain on their finances and an opportunity for borrowers – who have the capacity to repay – to withhold payments.
Heydays Ahead For Online Grocery, Market Size To Zoom To $18 Billion By 2024
Published on 25th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The online grocery delivery market is set to become $18.2 billion in size by 2024, from around $1.9billion in 2019, found a report by Redseer and BigBasket released today. The share of online out of the total food and beverages industry is set to grow to 2.3 percent from 0.3 percent in the next four years, the report titled ‘Online Grocery: What Brands Need to Know’ has predicted. This report highlights that growth will be slow for traditional retailers and aided by Covid and its effects on digitisation online grocery will grow rapidly and eat out a small chunk from the total retail business. While online will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 57 percent, the organised retail segment which includes the likes of Reliance Fresh, Spencer’s, DMart and More will grow at a CAGR of 16 percent. The online grocery space in India, saw heightened activity since 2011 with the first set of players BigBasket, Grofers, followed by new players like Milkbasket, Amazon, Flipkart in this sector and recently others like Zomato, Swiggy and Reliance Jio. Further working urban mothers prefer online shopping because of time constraints and tier two consumers who go online for the varied choices.
ShareChat Raises $40 Million In Pre-Series E Round From Pawan Munjal's Family Office, Twitter, Others
Published on 25th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Homegrown content sharing platform ShareChat has announced a $40 million fund raise in a Pre-Series E round from Pawan Munjal, the Chief Executive and Chairman of Hero MotoCorp, and Ajay Shridhar Shriram, Chairman of DCM Shriram. The current round of funding will be utilised to drive growth for the company’s newly launched video platform Moj. ShareChat and Moj together claim to having over 240 million monthly active users currently. In April last year, Twitter led ShareChat’s Series D funding round along with SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Ventures and India Quotient. The trio have also been involved with ShareChat as investors since its early days. ShareChat recorded over 15 million downloads in just 36 hours of the app ban. With the new round, ShareChat’s total funding now stands at $264 million.
WeWork Sells Control Of China Unit, Says Unit Got $200 Million In Funding
Published on 25th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU/SHANGHAI : US office-sharing firm WeWork on Thursday said it will sell control of its China division to one of its investors – private equity firm Trustbridge Partners – as it steps back from a competitive market where it has suffered low-occupancy rates. The deal effectively offloads the China unit away from the parent, which has faced fundraising issues since a failed attempt to go public in 2019. WeWork said it will maintain a minority stake and “Participating interest” in WeWork China and that it will receive an annual fee from the unit for use of the WeWork brand. Concurrent with the deal, the division has received $200 million in funding from existing investors, WeWork said. Michael Jiang of Trustbridge Partners will serve as WeWork China’s acting chief executive officer. Trustbridge and Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings Ltd held talks with WeWork’s Chinese unit over increasing their stakes and taking majority ownership, Reuters reported in January. WeWork shelved its initial public offering in 2019 after investors grew wary of its losses, business model and corporate governance, leading to the resignation of co-founder and former chief executive officer Adam Neumann.
Unacademy Acquires UPSC Test Preparation Startup Coursavy
Published on 25th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Online learning firm Unacademy on September 24 said that it has acquired Coursavy, a platform for UPSC test preparation for India’s civil services exams, for an undisclosed amount. In the last few months, it has also acquired smaller startups such as Mastree, an online tutoring firm in the K12 space, and PrepLadder, a learning platform for medical entrance exam. Solves the challenge of a lack of discipline in learning – the most cited roadblock to a learner’s success, and has replicated the personal guidance and engagement a student received in an offline setup, hence promoting a community learning environment. Through Coursavy, students who completed over 70 percent of their daily targets have witnessed improved learning efficiency and outcomes. Currently, Coursavy has various experts teaching over 70,000 learners through their YouTube channel and platform. The Union Public Service Commission exam preparation has been one of Unacademy’s earliest focus areas and its co-founder Roman Saini is an Indian Administrative Services officer himself. Unacademy was valued at $1.45 billion earlier this month when SoftBank invested, making it India’s second-biggest online learning startup by valuation.
Hopscotch Raises $25 Million From Eduardo Saverin's Investment Arm EE Capital, Others
Published on 24th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Hopscotch, a quick-style children’ clothes model, has raised $25 million from Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin’s investment arm EE Capital, Lionrock Capital, Rise Capital, RPG Ventures and IIFL Seed Ventures Fund, at a time of rising investor in new-age client manufacturers. Angel traders together with Wei Yan, the cofounder of Diapers.com, and Techpro Ventures, the fund owned by Atul Nishar, the founding father of Aptech, additionally participated within the investment spherical. Hopscotch is a youngsters’s clothes model within the up-to-10 age group. “Eighty percent of our revenue comes from repeat moms, we launch 400 styles every day, while most brands launch 800 a year,” Anand, who can also be its CEO, stated. The platform has 3 million moms transacting since inception. Hopscotch plans to maneuver its model past its personal platform to different marketplaces. In 2011-2012, Hopscotch began as a vacation spot the place main manufacturers from all over the world listed merchandise and largely on pre-orders, serving to moms uncover the newest in children’ style from the consolation of their houses.
Bharti Airtel Picks Up 10% Stake In Kerala-Based Startup Waybeo Technology
Published on 24th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The Waybeo Technology Solutions hit a milestone on September 23 when telecom giant Bharti Airtel announced picking up 10 percent stake in the company with focus on deep AI analytics for cloud telephony. The deal, which is a part of the Airtel Startup Accelerator Programme, would enable the 2011-founded Waybeo earn larger distribution reach, a press release said. The Thiruvananthapuram-based Waybeo is now located in the scale-up space of Kerala Startup Mission. Established to provide assistance to the creation of a startup ecosystem that contributes to Digital India, the Airtel endeavour aims to support growth of early-stage startups in the country. Waybeo CEO Krishnan R V said the tie-up with Airtel would help the telecom company use the startups telephone-based AI services. “We envisage a technology that analyses the feedback of Airtel customers, besides improve automation for the telecom company to perform better,” he said. KSUM is the nodal agency of the Kerala government for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in the state.
ShareChat Adds $14 Million To ESOP Pool
Published on 24th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Indian social media platform ShareChat on Wednesday said it has expanded ESOP pool by $14 million to $35 million to reward its employees. The company has also announced a 50 per cent bonus for the existing employees holding ESOPs in the company. “This ESOP scheme has also been extended to every employee on payroll, including administrative staff. The decision was taken to recognise their hard work behind the incredible growth achieved by both ShareChat and recently launched short video platform, Moj,” a statement said. More than 300 employees on the company’s payroll as of June 30, 2020, have been the beneficiary of the company’s ESOP grant scheme. The company said existing employees who already hold stock options have been given 50 per cent additional ESOPs as bonus. ShareChat offers ESOPs to its qualified employees, equally vested over four years. When an employee with ESOPs leaves the organisation, the person leaves with the vesting percentage and continues to enjoy the benefit of owning it as ESOPs without any defined timelines, the statement said.
Servify Raises $23 Million In Series C Round Of Funding
Published on 24th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Mumbai-based Servify has raised $23 million in its series C round of funding led by existing investor Iron Pillar and a host of other investors. All the existing investors Blume, Beenext and Tetrao SPF participated in the round along with new investors who joined the cap table Global Alternatives Investor 57 Stars, strategic investors like Sparkle Fund, SF Roofdeck Capital LLC, Go Ventures and Madhu Kela Family Office. Servify’s existing Venture Debt provider Trifecta Capital also participated in the round. Founded in 2015 by Sreevathsa Prabhakar, Servify offers a digital platform to manage after-sales services for large white goods manufacturers. Currently, Servify counts brands like Bose, Godrej, Panasonic, Croma and most of the smartphone manufacturers like Nokia, OnePlus, Samsung and others as its clients. The company has to date raised close to $46 million through three funding rounds. With most of these manufacturers being global brands, Servify has managed to expand its work outside India too.
Apple's First Online Retail Store In India Goes Live
Published on 23rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Apple’s first online store in India went live today. With the web store, Apple customers in India can engrave specific products in six Indian languages, and English. The Apple Store will also offer specialized support for Apple products in both Hindi and English. Apple’s newest products, including the Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 6, are also being sold through the store. “It creates tremendous interest in our products, which are available on our online store and through our network of trusted resellers, allowing us to connect with our customers where they are. As of today Apple Store Online is selling a wide range of Apple products,” she added. The store offers Apple’s complete range of products in India, and the Apple One subscription-based services will also be offered later this year. Launching its online store should allow Apple more control over the retail experience, something the company is known for globally.
ClanConnect.Ai Raises Rs 5 Crore Led By Venture Catalysts
Published on 23rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Ai, a platform that connects influencers to brands, has raised Rs 5 crore from investors led by Venture Catalysts along with a clutch of angels including Samrath Bedi, managing director of Forest Essentials; Sandeep Aggarwal, founder, Droom. In; Aakrit Vaish, co-founder of Haptik; and Haresh Hingorani, chief creative officer, Redchillies VFX. The tech-enabled platform allows brands in the automobile, fashion, food, technology and lifestyle businesses to scale up their influencer marketing efforts by bringing discovery, management and performance analytics in one system. “At the back-end, we collaborate with individual influencers, talent hubs and agencies, bringing the supply side on one platform, connecting them to brands,” said ClanConnect CEO Sagar Pushp. “We offer 30 different parameters to quantify the suitability and reach of each influencer… along with a structured process of selecting influencers for brands,” said Kunal Kishore Sinha, co-founder, ClanConnect. “With pandemic giving a boost to digital adoption, we are confident that people-to-people marketing will become a mainstream marketing tool. We are excited to become a part of the ClanConnect.ai’s journey into a fiscally disciplined SaaS business that will solve fundamental problems of this growing industry,” said Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, president, Venture Catalysts.
Byju's Onboards New Investors, Valuation Now At $11.1 Bn
Published on 23rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Online education startup Byju’s on Tuesday said BlackRock, Sands Capital and Alkeon Capital have joined as new investors, as part of the ongoing $500-million fundraising round. Earlier this month, Byju’s raised funds from a group of investors, including private equity firm Silver Lake Partners along with existing investors General Atlantic, Owl Ventures and Tiger Global at a valuation of $10.8 billion. “We are excited to welcome Blackrock, Sands Capital and Alkeon as our partners. As we continue to create engaging and personalised learning solutions, partnerships like these reaffirm our commitment to build and transform the global learning landscape through technology, innovation and quality pedagogy. Continued support from our existing investors is a testament of their confidence in us and our mission,” said Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO. Since the lockdown, Byju’s has added over 25 million new students on its platform. The company, named after its founder Byju Raveendran, has raised around $1 billion since January, reflecting the surge in investor interest in Indian edtech startups as remote learning replaced classrooms amid the lockdown. That round had elevated Byju’s valuation by 45%. Since then, Byju’s valuation has increased by a further 35%. It had turned into a unicorn in late 2017 when it raised money from a group of investors, led by China’s Tencent.
Onsitego Raises Capital From IFC, Extends Series B Round To $30 Million
Published on 23rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: Onsitego, a Mumbai-based after-sales services startup, has raised capital from IFC in an extension to its Series B investment round, closing it at $30 million. The fund will be utilized for consolidating its market position in the after-sales services industry, and strengthening its consumer offerings like annual maintenance contract, home protection and on-demand services, the company said in a statement. “IFC brings in a strong global footprint and expertise of investments in fintech which is valuable as we scale our business by expanding new business lines like AMCs, home warranty, doorstep repair services, new distribution channels and in other emerging markets,” said Kunal Mahipal, founder and CEO, Onsitego. Onsitego aims to plugs these gaps with its focus on customer service by leveraging a pan-India network of brand-authorized service centers with its technology platform and direct integrations with distribution and service partners. “India is one of the largest and fastest growing appliances and consumer electronics markets globally and the ACE protection market is significantly underdeveloped. There is a clear market need for innovative and customer-service-focused players like Onsitego to drive growth in this market,” said Jun Zhang, country head India, IFC. Zhang further added that they would support Onsitego in its growth journey by sharing their experience from emerging markets in disruptive technology and fintech.
Narzo 20 Series Is Built To Cater To Performance Seekers: Madhav Sheth
Published on 22nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The success of narzo 10 series gave us confidence and motivation to step further to cover the wider price segment, attempting to meet the needs of young gamers and performance seekers and offer them a variety like portrait lens. How is the narzo 20 series different from the narzo 10 series? Narzo 20 is our series upgrade over narzo 10 and with the new 20 series, we have brought more features and options to the Indian consumers. “Powerful Processor” – narzo series is known for being performance-oriented and all three products – narzo 20 Pro, narzo 20 and narzo 20A feature best-in-segment processors to cater to young players. Narzo 20 Pro has the world’s leading MediaTek G95 SoC, narzo 20 has a MediaTek G85 gaming processor and narzo 20A offers Qualcomm Snapdragon 665. Will the new narzo 20 series cater to this audience? Yes, narzo 20 series exactly caters to this and brings the world’s leading gaming-focused chipsets with MediaTek Helio G95 SoC and MediaTek G85 SoC in 20 Pro and 20 respectively, while the powerful Snapdragon 665 processor is brought to narzo 20A for the first time in this price.
Charged Up By Demand From B2B Companies, Hero Electric To Design Customised E-Scooters For Segment
Published on 22nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Hero Electric, India’s biggest electric two-wheeler company, is witnessing a steady increase in demand for electric scooters from companies that specialise in last-mile deliveries. Logistics providers of e-commerce companies such as Flipkart or those hired by Amazon and others, as well as food delivery agents of Zomato and Swiggy are switching to electric scooters. With an eye on this segment, Delhi-based Hero Electric is developing e-scooters specifically for institutional, business-to-business buyers. According to a senior Hero Electric executive, such e-scooters promise better cost dynamics than personal scooters. “It is difficult to convince a personal buyer to give up petrol and switch to electric. But in the B2B segment it is much easier. To ride 80 km, someone may be using two litres of petrol, which is more than Rs 160 a day. But in the case of electric, the same range can be done in four units of electricity, which is around Rs 30. This is a very appealing cost proposition for the B2B customer,” Sohinder Gill, CEO, Hero Electric, said in an interview with Moneycontrol. Electric two-wheelers saw a jump of 20 percent in sales to 152,000 units in FY20, up from 126,000 units in FY19, according to the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicle.
HCL Tech Acquires Australian IT Firm DWS For $115.8 Million
Published on 22nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: HCL Technologies has announced the acquisition of Australian IT firm DWS Ltd for $115.8 million in a bid to further expand its digital offerings especially in Australia and New Zealand. The DWS Group closed FY 2020 with revenues of $ 122.9 million and has over 700 employees with operations in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Canberra. “Michael Horton, Executive Vice President & Country Manager, Australia & New Zealand, HCL Technologies, said”We are excited for this expansion of HCL Technologies in Australia and New Zealand and are confident that our combined strengths will further accelerate the digital transformation journeys of our clients and innovations for their end customers. HCL has invested in the region for over 20 years and is committed to enabling digitilisation and growing the local ecosystem, he added. HCL currently employs 1600 people in major cities, including Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth. Danny Wallis, CEO and Managing Director, DWS said, “We are delighted the DWS team is joining HCL. This acquisition represents an outstanding outcome for all DWS stakeholders: shareholders, employees, clients and other business partners.”
MPL Bags $90m; Valuation Rises To $450 Million
Published on 22nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Gaming startup Mobile Premier League has raised $90 million in its latest financing round, its top executive told ET. The company also executed a buyback of employee stock ownership plans worth $3.2 million as part of the fundraising. The latest round, valuing the real money competitive mobile gaming platform at $450 million, was led by SIG Global and RTP Global, along with MDI Ventures and Pegasus Tech Ventures. Existing investors Sequoia India, Go-Ventures and Base Partners also participated in the round. MPL’s early investor also includes Times Internet, a part of the Times group, which publishes this paper. This takes the total investment raised by the two-year-old firm to $130.5 million. “Our goal, with respect to this fundraise, is to set us up to go to multiple international markets… and, separately, as a part of this raise we are doing a significant Esop buyback,” Sai Srinivas, cofounder and CEO of MPL, told ET.”This valuation is more of a validation of the business. We look at long-term success as listing our company on the Nasdaq or equivalent exchange,” he said. MPL is a gaming platform that offers more than 70 real-money games, including fantasy sports, rummy, poker, chess, 3D pool, ludo, and carrom.
34K Startups Gave Direct Employment To 4.2L: Government Data
Published on 21st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Emerging as a major job creator, more than 34,000 startups, as of September 2020, gave direct employment of over 4.2 lakh people. According to data released by the ministry of commerce and industry, the department for promotion of industry and internal trade has so far recognised 36,106 startups, of which 34,267 have self-reported employment data. The 4.2 lakh count is a significant increase from the 1.9 lakh such jobs startups created in 2016. Guruprasad Mohapatra, secretary, DPIIT, told TOI, “The figures have been provided by startups registered with us. The registration enables them to avail some direct and indirect tax benefits. It also helps them gain access to other departments and ministries of the central government. But yes, not all startups register with us.” The latest data trend shows that 36% of the jobs were created in Maharashtra and Karnataka, which are also states that have the most number of startups, followed by Delhi. V Balakrishnan, chairman, Exfinity Ventures, a venture capitalist firm that invests in startups, said, “The overall number is positive, but new employment is happening only in patches. The startup job environment is not so bad, but it is not as good as last year as firms are more concerned about fundraising and business management.”
How Fintech Can Provide Innovative Financing Solutions To India's EV Sector
Published on 21st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Here, the Fintechs, with their innovative solutions, have stepped up their contribution to the growth of the sector. Fintech solutions for the EV industry Fintechs offer speed, ease and reach to the EV industry. Credit supply solutions for potential buyers – Access to finance for buying e-rickshaw is difficult for the buyer. Digital payment solutions – Fintechs are looking to drive digital payments in the commercial e-rickshaw first/last-mile delivery segment. Other innovative digital solutions – Embedded IOT devices help lenders and insurers to keep track of vehicles, limit the range of vehicle movement through geo-fencing or immobilize vehicles in case of theft. Fintechs supporting the EV ecosystem – Fintechs are playing a significant role in developing the ecosystem for electric vehicles, through tie-ups with insurance providers; partnerships with battery manufacturers to finance replacement batteries; creating an instalment-cum-subscription model to make it easier for buyers to buy the vehicle. A healthy combination of digital technologies of fintechs, eCommerce players, insurers, in addition to support from the government, spell a fantastic time of growth for the EV sector in India.
Mandi Alternatives: How Agri-Tech Startups Beat The Lockdown Blues
Published on 21st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Gurgaon: While the farmers’ union protests against the Centre’s agriculture reform ordinances, now bills, the alternative path for farm produce that these legislations seek to open up – outside the mandi chain – has been evident for the past six months. That’s how a Sonipat farmer found a reseller in a Gurgaon condominium. Another in west UP found the tomatoes and brinjals he grew being delivered by food aggregators like Swiggy and Zomato in Delhi-NCR. It began with the lockdown, which froze all gears of the mandi machinery, setting off a desperate search for ways to sell millions of tonnes of farm produce. How startups linked farmers and merchantsOn June 5, the Centre passed the ordinance ending the monopoly of APMCs and allowing farmers to opt to sell directly to private players. In the March-August period, when the economy hit rock bottom, startups marketing farm produce all registered significant growth. Farmers who tied up with startups saved on transportation, unlike in the mandi system where they have to carry it themselves.
Vedantu Co-Founder Launches Edtech Platform Uable
Published on 21st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Saurabh Saxena, co-founder of online tutoring platform Vedantu and Lakshya, is on to his third entrepreneurial venture with Uable, a life skill development online platform for kids. Uable focuses on the 6-12 year-old category and aims to nurture creative intelligence and develop future-ready skills among them through playful learning methods. Most edtech startups primarily focus on school curriculum for students and online entrance exam preparation for college students. Saxena made an exit from Vedantu in 2018 after a successful stint with the live tutoring startup for about eight years. Saxena said his aim is to make Uable a one-stop platform for beyond-curriculum learning for children and bridge the skill gap even before a child finishes from school. In June, 2019, Uable raised seed funding from venture capital firm 3one4 capital and a clutch of angel investors including Pine Labs’ CEO Amrish Rau. “We are growing 50% month on month,” said Saxena, adding that Uable makes sense in a post-covid world.
Paytm App Removed From Google Play Store
Published on 19th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Google has removed Paytm’s mobile application from its mobile app store platform Play Store. The app could have been removed because of Paytm First Games, sources said. Paytm, in a statement shared on Twitter, said its Android app is temporarily unavailable on Google’s Play Store for new downloads or updates but will be back very soon. Sources pointed out that Google does not allow apps to redirect users to other platforms from within the apps and, in this case, Paytm was doing it for Paytm First Games, they said. “This includes, if an app leads consumers to an external website that allows them to participate in paid tournaments to win real money or cash prizes, it is a violation of our policies,” the blog post read. Google said the developer is always notified and the app removed till it complies with the guidelines. While Google did not specify which service on the Paytm app was non-compliant, sources pointed fingers at Paytm First Games that offers cash prizes against participation in paid tournaments. Moneycontrol found that other Paytm applications like Paytm Money and Paytm for Business are still available on the Google Play Store.
Zuper Raises $1.1 Mn From Prime Venture Partners And Others
Published on 19th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Workforce management platform Zuper has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Prime Venture Partners along with other investors Gunderson Dettemer and Gemba Capital. Zuper is a SaaS-based mobile first workforce management platform that helps businesses modernise operations and provide on-demand customer experience. Zuper was founded in August 2016 with offices in Seattle, US and Chennai by Raghav Gurumani, Karthik Rao and Vijay Narasiman. Anand Subbaraj, joined Zuper as its chief executive in 2020, having spent more than 13 years in Microsoft as a head of product in Azure Data. The company claims that enterprises and mid-sized businesses which have used Zuper have benefited from 50 percent increase in workforce utilization, 35 percent reduction in service turnaround time, 45 percent increase in customer adoption and profitability, and 30 percent reduction in costs. The solution helps businesses across different industries ensure their workforce stays compliant and up-to-date with the latest COVID-19 protocols and guidelines. “We formulated our hypothesis based on our own experiences with customer service and started reaching out to service businesses in different parts of the world…we soon realized that it was a huge global problem that needs to be tackled at scale using a modern technology solution,” said Anand Subbaraj, co-founder, Zuper.
Byju's Acquires Virtual Simulations Startup LabInApp
Published on 18th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Education technology leader Byju’s has acquired LabInApp, a startup that offers lab-like simulations for science students on a mobile app. The acquisition, for an undisclosed amount, will give Unitus Ventures, a backer of LabInApp, a full exit. Hubli-based LabInApp uses technologies to make desktop and mobile games to create virtual simulations of science experiments, giving students an ability to gain practical knowledge in the absence of physical infrastructure. “While schools have their set of challenges, students shouldn’t miss out on experiential learning. Keeping this in mind, we have created a virtual learning and teaching environment representing science laboratories where teachers can teach practical concepts to students,” said Pavan Shinde, co-founder and CEO of LabInApp. The startup said it had onboarded over 5,000 schools for its product with its simulations covering concepts across Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics, for students in grades 6-12. “Acquisition of LabInApp by Byju’s during the course of a global pandemic exemplifies the growth story of innovative ed-tech solutions. Unitus remains steadfast in mentoring early stage start-ups applying advanced technology to meet the needs of India’s lower-income populations,” said Will Poole, Managing Partner at Unitus Ventures.
Fourth Partner Energy Raises $16 Million From European Investment Funds
Published on 18th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
India’s leading solar solutions provider Fourth Partner Energy has raised $16 million in mezzanine funding from a consortium of European impact investment funds, led by Symbiotics. Fourth Partner will utilise these funds for the construction of around 150 MW worth of new solar assets. “At Fourth Partner Energy, we are working hard to bring into India high-quality global financiers committed to the long-term impact of distributed solar… We will be utilising these funds for expanding our distributed solar footprint,” said Pradhyum Reddy, head, corporate finance at Fourth Partner Energy. Fourth Partner Energy has an operational portfolio of 400 MW of solar assets and is looking to add 350 MW capacity this fiscal. “Medium, small and micro enterprises, the backbone of the Indian economy, are likely to adopt solar energy at a large scale in the coming years as it is a cleaner and cheaper renewable energy alternative and provides tariff certainty for up to 25 years,” she said. Founded in 2010, Fourth Partner Energy has grown to become India’s largest company in the distributed solar sector, catering to over 150 major businesses including Walmart, Hindustan Unilever, Ferrero, UltraTech Cement, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, DMart, AkzoNobel, Skoda, Colgate Palmolive and Myntra.
UK-Based Compass Group's India Unit In Talks To Acquire Food-Tech Firm SmartQ
Published on 18th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Online food-tech startup SmartQ that provides services in the digital cafeteria segment is in talks to be acquired by UK-based Compass Group’s India unit for $6-7 million, a source has told Moneycontrol. SmartQ did not respond to Moneycontrol’s emailed queries on the deal and the status of the talks. Founded in 2014, by Krishna Wage and Abhishek Ashok, SmartQ provides services such as automated billing kiosks, centralised billing system, NFC prepaid cards, POS software to companies. Along with companies such as Goldman Sachs, Airtel and Razorpay, is also a client of SmartQ. SmartQ last announced a $1-million fundraise from a consortium of Dubai-based investors in 2018. To cater to the now-limited segment, companies like SmartQ are also working on slot-based booking systems in the cafeterias to minimise the risk of infection. Compass Group is one of the world’s leading providers of contract food and support services with a presence in 45 countries. Compass Group India is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Compass Group PLC and has been in the country since 2008.
E-Health Startups Gear Up For Smaller Cities, Towns
Published on 18th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
E-health startups that saw a spike in business during the covid-led lockdown have their eyes set on smaller cities and towns to attract new customers with offers of value-added services like chronic illness care. The founders of these startups believe the covid-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in consumer behaviour toward online health services due to their convenience and faster access, prompting a search for the next wave of growth. Online health platform Practo that saw a sharp increase in online consultations claims that teleconsultations on its platform have grown by 10x in the last six months; 80% of all telemedicine customers were first-time users and 50% consultations were for patients from non-metros. For online health platform 1mg Technologies, the focus is on value-added health services like chronic care plans, expanding its diagnostic business to include vaccinations at home and building its healthcare advertising business. Startup founders believe that the government’s efforts to digitize the interaction between consumers and providers like pharmacies, doctors and diagnostic centres have also given an impetus to online health platforms. “This has given a huge structural and regulatory boost to the digital health sector. Digital health is here to stay and India has a long way to go,” 1mg’s Tandon said.
Govt To Reward Startups For Building AI Solution For Health, Education, Mobility
Published on 17th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The Centre has launched an Artificial Intelligence Solutions Challenge, inviting startups to develop and innovate solutions to address challenges across sectors such as healthcare, education, agriculture, smart mobility, transportation and natural language processing. The development assumes significance as the government in the last few months has launched challenges such as Atma Nirbhar app innovation challenge to promote existing apps and develop new ones and ‘Chunauti- next generation startup challenge’ to further boost startups and software products. “Challenges like these are now common in many countries and is being widely used by various governments to solve problems by roping in young innovators. This AI challenge is a bit different as usually these challenges try to solve a particular problem. Still, this is a welcome step and will encourage start-ups to share their solution,” DD Mishra, senior director analyst at Gartner said, adding that crowd sourcing solutions is going to be the next big thing in India. The US government has set an example on how crowd sourcing can be used to solve complex problems using emerging technology, be it the state’s department of defence’s 2019 AI challenge to automate post disaster damage assessment using computer vision algorithm or crowd sourcing attempts by the White House earlier this year for development of new AI solutions to help researchers answer important question about covid-19. The AI Solution challenge can be big boost for cash strapped start-ups and can pave the way for future investments into them.
Chinese Gaming And Social Media Group Tencent Puts $ 63mn In Flipkart's $1.2 Bn Round
Published on 17th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Chinese gaming and social media group Tencent has invested $62.8 million in Flipkart’s $1.2 billion round, regulatory filings in Singapore showed. Vc that says Tencent owns 4-5.3% in Flipkart Pte, the Singapore-based holding company. On July 14, US retail giant Walmart said that it had led a $1.2 billion investment in Flipkart’s commerce business, valuing it at $24.9 billion. Walmart already owns around 80% in the Bengaluru-based online retailer. Though the investment itself is small, it is significant since Flipkart is the most valued internet company in India and has come at a time when tension between India and China is on the boil. Since April, the government has taken multiple steps to limit China’s exposure to Indian businesses, including revising its foreign direct investment regulations as well as banning Chinese apps. The investment has come within months of India opening up for business after a nationwide lockdown, and at a time when the Indian online retail battleground has been redrawn with Reliance Jio’s plans to aggressively enter online commerce.
Acko Raises $60 Million Led By Munich Re Ventures
Published on 17th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru-based insurtech start-up Acko has raised $60 million in its Series D funding led by Germany-based Munich Re Ventures, with participation from existing investors Amazon, RPS Ventures and Intact Ventures Inc., which is the corporate venture arm of Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer. The company said it has issued over 650 million policies to over 60 million unique customers to date. “Munich Re has been a strategic partner to Acko since inception and we are really excited to bring them on board as our investor. As one of the largest reinsurance companies globally, their investment shows confidence in our data and technology-driven business model,”said Varun Dua, founder and CEO, Acko. “We’re excited to join forces with one of the leading digital insurers in India, as well as other investment partners, to help support Varun and his impressive team as they continue their journey,” said Oshri Kaplan, Director, Munich Re Ventures. “Since our first investment in Acko which was made last year, it has scaled quickly to become the leading digital insurer in India by leveraging data and technology to create a unique customer-centric experience,” said Karim Hirji, senior vice-president & managing director of Intact Ventures.
Bengaluru Based Ed-Tech Startup Newton School Raises $650,000 In Seed Funding
Published on 17th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
City-based ed-tech startup Newton School on Wednesday said it has raised $650,000 in a seed round of funding led by early-stage venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners. Newton School will use the raised capital to strengthen its product and expand its team. Newton School is an online edtech platform that trains people to be highly skilled software developers and get them placed in top companies and startups as frontend, backend and full stack software developers among other roles, it said in a release. “While software engineering is one of the highest paying and fastest growing career paths, access to quality software development training remains limited to students of few top colleges. With our unique pay after placement online platform we are democratising software development training and allowing people to cross financial and location barriers to achieve their dream of becoming a great software developer,” Newton School Co-founder Siddharth Maheshwari said. With a highly capital efficient business model, Newton School is close to break even just after a few months of operations and is on the path to become profitable in the next couple of months. The coming months will see Newton School deploy this funding round to further evolve its platform and increase its user capacity to handle thousands of simultaneous learners, the company said.
House Panel For Abolition Of LTCG Tax On Investments In Startups
Published on 16th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
A Parliamentary panel has batted for the abolition of long-term capital gains tax for all investments in startups which are made through collective investment vehicles such as angel funds, alternate investment funds and investment Limited Liability Partnerships. “The Committee would like to strongly recommend that tax on Long Term Capital Gains be abolished for all investments in startup companies which are made through collective investment vehicles such as angel funds, AIFs, and investment LLPs,” the committee said in its report “Financing The Startup Ecosystem”. “The Parliamentary Panel has given voice to a longstanding ask of the Indian startup ecosystem. Investments into startups are in the form of primary investments into the company, which in turn generates new assets, economic growth and jobs. These measures, if adopted, will help accelerate the Indian startup ecosystem and allow them to meet the PM’s goal of startups contributing 20% of India $5 trillion GDP by 2025,” said Siddarth Pai, founding partner at 3one4 Capital & co-chair Regulatory Affairs Committee at IVCA. The panel recommended that after this two year period, the Securities Transaction Tax may be applied to CIVs so that revenue neutrality is maintained. At present, LTCG earned by foreign investors in private companies attracts taxation at concessional rate of 10%, in comparison to the domestic VC/PE investments being taxed at 20% with an enhanced surcharge of 37%. The panel also proposed that the sectors in which Foreign Venture Capital Investor are allowed to invest should be expanded to include all sectors where Foreign Direct Investment is permitted, as this route provides a flexible investment framework and hence will be able to attract significant capital in the economy.
GullyBuy Software Raises Rs 4 Crore Pre-Series A Funding
Published on 16th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Pune: Pune-based software startup GullyBuy Software said it had raised Rs 4 crore in Pre-Series A funding from SEED Enterprises and a few individual investors. “The funding will help our sales/marketing team to promote the app more aggressively and engineering to accelerate the product roadmap. This space has unlimited potential but is also highly competitive, and hence we continue to seek more funding,” said Shirish Deodhar, co-founder of GullyBuy Software. GullyBuy provides a unique digital hyperlocal marketplace solution that enables buyers to order online from nearby stores selling groceries, food, medicines and other daily necessities. “While offline-to-online retail solutions are proliferating, we decided to back GullyBuy because of their vision of empowering local stores, a segment that has been underserved by the digital economy. Others either enable standalone online stores or are logistics apps that bypass stores, while the e-commerce giants’ strategy is to effectively make them their agents,” said Siddharth Sethi, CEO of InfoBeans, who joins the GullyBuy board following the investment. GullyBuy’s mobile apps are aligned to the informal nature of the regular buy-sell transactions with local stores.
Health Monitoring Startup Dozee Raises ₹12.5 Crore In Funding
Published on 16th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Remote health monitoring startup, Dozee has raised ₹12. 5 crore in its new round of funding from Prime Venture Partners, YourNest Venture Capital and 3one4 Capital. “Healthcare is a basic necessity and everyone deserves quality care. Over the last 5 years led by intense R&D, our focus has been to hone Dozee as the most convenient, accurate, and cost-effective health monitor that can easily reach masses. We are thrilled to get support from brilliant product thinkers and market experts in PrimeVP, YourNest and 3one4, in our growth journey to touch a billion lives,” said Mudit Dandwate, CEO & co-founder, Dozee. During the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, over 1200 Dozee sensors have been deployed in over 20 quarantine centres across eight states in India. “Recent events have accelerated the need for realtime vitals sensing, home health care, and continuum care. Dozee has shown tremendous agility in this context to combine deep technology and healthcare expertise into a scalable and sustainable sensor and data platform in the form of their step down ICU system,” said Pranav Pai, managing partner, 3One4 Capital.
Airmeet Raises $12 Mn Led By Sequoia Capital, To Accelerate Global Expansion
Published on 16th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Virtual events platform Airmeet has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by new investors Sequoia Capital India and Redpoint Ventures. “With digitization of largely traditional spaces leapfrogging by years, the $800+ billion global offline events space is up for grabs. There is massive potential for players who drive the industry’s transition towards online-events”, said Abhishek Mohan, vice-president, Sequoia Capital India LLP. While meetings, webinar categories existed with more popular alternatives like Zoom and Skype, Mangal said platforms such as Airmeet have not been conceptualised for peer-to-peer interactions. Airmeet does not require an event organiser to have a subscription. Professional communities like Microsoft for Startups, Linux Foundation and Florida International University have hosted their events on Airmeet with a maximum of 10,000 participants. “There is an excitement for virtual conferences now, and we want to create a global platform to enable community managers and event organizers across the world to engage with and expand their audience,” he said.
Paytm First Games Ropes In Sachin Tendulkar As Brand Ambassador
Published on 15th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Paytm First Games, a subsidiary of the digital financial service platform Paytm, has signed cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar as the brand ambassador for the platform, ahead of the 2020 edition of the Indian Premier League. Paytm First Games has also set aside Rs 300 crore to spend on marketing and promotions during the remaining six months of the current financial year, to grow its market share in the space currently dominated by Dream11. “As India’s homegrown gaming platform, our vision is to get the sports fans closer to the action with fantasy sports,” said Sudhanshu Gupta, COO Paytm First Games. “With Sachin as a brand ambassador, we wish to inspire mobile gaming enthusiasts to experience fantasy sports which are about tactics, strategic planning and research.” As its brand ambassador, Tendulkar will help PFG in creating awareness about the genre of fantasy sports in the country. “Cricket is an engaging sport, and we all tend to have opinions about the game – right from player selection to playing strategies. Paytm First Games will give fans the opportunity to don their thinking hats and experience the thrill of making the correct choices and getting their teams to win,” Tendulkar said. PFG offers over 50 games, where the most popular is fantasy sports.
CashKaro raises $10M in Series B round led by Korea Investment Partners
Published on 15th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
CashKaro, a Gurugram-based cashback and coupons site, has secured $10 million in Series B funding round led by Korea Investment Partners and existing investor, Kalaari Capital. “CashKaro has seen incredible growth over the last two years, while consistently reducing losses. We felt it was the right time to raise money and use it to tactically scale up marketing, open up new brand building avenues, user-acquisition, product development, and hiring new talent.” CashKaro’s business model is that it is a marketing channel for 1500+ ecommerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Ajio, etc. Brands pay CashKaro commission for every transaction driven, and CashKaro passes a large portion of this as cashback to its members. “India is a growing market for us and CashKaro is a great way for us to participate in the Indian ecommerce industry. CashKaro and EarnKaro together have shown exceptional unit metrics and we are really excited to be a part of India’s affiliate story,” added Hudson Kyung-sik Ho, Managing Partner of KIP. According to Rajesh Raju, Managing Director of Kalaari Capital, who also participated in the Series B round of funding, “CashKaro has grown more than 5x in the last 12 months, have been ROI focussed, and is a clear market leader today. We foresee some truly exciting times for CashKaro in the coming years.”
The Moms Co Raises $8 Million From Saama, DSG, Others
Published on 15th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The Moms Co has raised $8 million from Saama Capital and DSG Consumer Partners, along with angel investors. The mom and baby care brand has raised $10 million so far including the latest round. The Moms Co works with experts across India, Australia and Switzerland to create products that are safe and natural, using ingredients that are globally accepted to be toxin-free. The brand, with its 30-product portfolio and one million transacting customers, has focused on catering to the mom and baby market – from pregnancy to postpartum and baby care. The Moms Co competes with Johnson & Johnson, Cetaphil, Sebamed, Aveeno and Himalaya across some product categories, as well as Sequoia Capital-backed MamaEarth. In a few years, The Moms Co has established a niche for natural products and trust, given its early tie-ups with maternity hospitals across the metros. “Over the last few months, we have seen an accelerated trend of moms re-evaluating their choices when it comes to the personal care products they use. They are searching for natural and safe products,” Sadani said.
Tiger Leads $225 Mn Dream11 Fundraising
Published on 15th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Dream Sports, India’s most valuable online gaming startup, has secured $225 million in new funding, led by Tiger Global Management, TPG Tech Adjacencies and ChrysCapital, as investors bet on the country’s nascent but fast-growing e-sports business. Footpath Ventures also invested in the company that runs the Dream11 fantasy sports platform, the startup said in a statement on Monday. “We are proud to continue adding value to our 10 crore Indian sports fans, investors, employees and the overall sports ecosystem in India. In the last two years, we have grown beyond fantasy sports to sports content, merchandise, streaming, experiences, and there is much more to come,” said Harsh Jain, CEO and co-founder, Dream Sport. Parent Dream Sports was valued at $700 million in September 2018, when it raised $100 million from Chinese internet giant Tencent. Gross revenue of online fantasy sports operators has nearly tripled to ₹2,400 crore in the year ended 31 March 2020 from ₹920 crore in the previous year, according to a FIFS-KPMG 2020 report. Apart from offering fantasy gaming, the startup launched a multi-sport aggregator platform for sports fans, FanCode in 2019.
Around 20% Of Online Train Ticket Inventory Has Opened Up For Public: RailYatri
Published on 14th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Around 20% of train ticket inventory has opened up for online booking within months of resumption of train services in the northern and southern states, said a top executive of online train tracking and booking platform RailYatri. RailYatri’s online train booking platform is currently seeing around 2,500-3,000 daily bookings, which is around 50% of the demand it had before March. “We have recovered to about 50-55% of the bookings that we used to process before March 2020. This is because only about 15-20% of the trains’ inventory. We used to process around 5,500-6000 daily bookings before March,” Manish Rathi, chief executive, RailYatri said in an interview. It also provides train ticket PNR predictions, similar to other tech startups such as Confirmtkt, Railofy, and IRCTC, which launched a prediction feature on its online ticket booking platform in May 2018. Apart from train bookings, RailYatri also offers bus booking options, but this option is mostly dedicated to users whose train tickets are wait-listed. Mint reported on May 2019 that around 40% of the daily 600,000 train bookings made in India, via both online and offline medium, go directly into a wait-list, as per data sourced from Confirmtkt. Black-marketing of tickets, low capacity on non-premium trains and the rising influence of middlemen in train ticketing are contributing factors to wait-listed tickets.
Govt Is Working On Credit Guarantee, Seed Fund Schemes For Startups: DPIIT
Published on 14th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI : The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade is working on two schemes – credit guarantee and seed funds – to support startups in the country, a top government official has said. DPIIT Secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra said that an inter-ministerial consultation process is on to work out the contours of the two schemes. “We are working on a credit guarantee scheme and a seed fund scheme. Both are under inter-ministerial consultations,” the secretary told PTI. He said there would be a corpus in the credit guarantee scheme which would be given to banks and they will leverage that to lend to startups. This scheme would give banks a comfort to lend, he said adding that it is for credit not for venture capital. On the seed fund scheme, Mohapatra said that most startups actually face problems in raising finance or funds in the ideation to the proof of concept stage. Some states like Gujarat and Kerala already have schemes like seed funds, but they are small, he said. Both the schemes would require approval of the finance ministry and then the DPIIT would seek nod of the Union Cabinet for these two schemes.
India Startup Rankings: Gujarat, Andaman And Nicobar Best Performers
Published on 14th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Gujarat and Andaman and Nicobar Islands are the best performer in the government’s ranking of startup-friendly states for 2019. Karnataka and Kerala have been hailed as “Top performers” while Maharashtra, Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan and Chandigarh emerge as leaders in the ranking done by the Department for Promotion of and Internal Trade, CNBC-TV 18 reported. The ranking is based on each state’s or union territory’s efforts to foster innovation and entrepreneurship, also commensurate with its size. Haryana, Jharkhand, Punjab, Telangana and Uttarakhand have been ranked under the “Aspiring leaders” category. Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh have been listed as “Emerging hubs” for startups, the report said. States are ranked on performances in categories such as institutional support, easing compliances, relaxation in public procurement norms, incubation support, seed-funding support, venture funding support and awareness and outreach. Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal also recommended that startups be focused on product, processes, and people.
Kerala Bags 'Top Performer' Honour In States' Startup Ranking 2019
Published on 14th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Kerala has bagged the “Top Performer” honour for developing a strong start-up ecosystem for the second consecutive year in the States’ Startup Ranking 2019, announced by the Centre, recognising the state as a leader across all pillars of startup ecosystem. While four states were adjudged as the top performers last year, only Kerala and Karnataka have been selected this year, a press release said. The States’ Startup Ranking Framework 2019, prepared by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, recognized Electronics and Information Technology Department of the state government as an institutional leader, regulatory change champion, procurement leader, incubation hub, seeding innovation leader, and scaling innovations leader. Initiatives like robust venture funding mechanism for start-ups are being implemented through the Kerala Startup Mission, the nodal agency for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in the state. The ‘State/UT Startup Ranking Framework’ 2019 is spread across seven areas of intervention with a total of 30 action points, as compared to the 38 action points in the Previous Year State Ranking Framework.
SMBs Banking On Digital Transformation To Rebound From COVID Impact: HP Study
Published on 12th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Small and Medium Business in India are looking to bounce back after facing stiff challenges due to the ongoing pandemic. The HP Asia SMB Report 2020 – a study conducted among SMBs in the region has revealed that over 73% of SMBs in India are confident that they will survive and bounce back post COVID-19. SMBs in India recognize the importance of going digital to revive their businesses. 75% of the surveyed businesses believe that digital adoption is essential to their success. Indian SMBs have also recognized 4 key aspects that will help them best to bounce back. “SMBs are critical to our economy as they contribute nearly a third of our GDP and generate employment for millions. The ongoing pandemic has impacted them as much as any other segment. It is critical to discover their challenges and address their pain points, which was ther reason for this study. The results of this study will enable HP in helping SMEs adapt to the new work environments, providing them the technology for innovation and drive growth for themselves,” said Ketan Patel, Managing Director, HP India Market, in a statement. The research shows that growth correlates with how a company values digital adoption for its success.
Asian Influencer Marketing Platform CastingAsia Launches In India
Published on 12th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: AnyMind Group, a technology company in the marketing, entertainment, HR and direct-to-consumer industries, is set to launch CastingAsia, its influencer marketing platform, in India through Indian subsidiary, POKKT. CastingAsia, a full-stack influencer management platform, claims to be one of the largest influencers and creators’ networks in Asia with over 170,000 influencers. The influencer marketing platform will be rolled out in India by POKKT, the in-app mobile gaming ads platform, which was acquired by AnyMind Group in March this year. “This is a huge initiative for us and we are immensely committed to this project in terms of investments and resources in the Indian market. With multiple marketing firms entering the lucrative segment of influencer marketing, we aim to introduce a systematic and measurable system, in the otherwise relatively fragmented market,” said Rohit Sharma, COO, Anymind Group and co-founder, POKKT. CastingAsia is an end-to-end solution that includes influencer discovery and analysis, campaign and content management, and real-time reporting and attribution. “India represents a unique opportunity – not just for businesses in India to scale domestically or overseas, but also businesses outside of India that are looking to reach Indian audiences. We are looking to bring influencer marketing up another level in India, and further develop the influencer marketing ecosystem,” said Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder, AnyMind Group.
Fintech Startup Market Pulse Raises $750,000 In Pre-Series A Funding
Published on 12th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Market analysis platform Market Pulse has raised $750,000 in pre-Series A funding, led by HNI investors Ameet Desai, Aditya Goel, Rashmi Kwatra, and Umasankar Nistala, according to a release. Market Pulse will use the capital to invest in technology to enhance its core trading platform, kick start branding and marketing initiatives and expand its team from 30 to 100 people. Market Pulse has registered 2 million downloads and has a rating of 4.6 on the Google Play Store. Market Pulse aims to level the playing field for traders and investors, providing everyone with access to real-time data and insights. Aditya Goel, director, Securcap, UK, said, “Building a trading platform is a complex business and Market Pulse, in just a few years, has demonstrated its success and sustainability. The investment market is set to grow and Market Pulse is at the helm to nurture both the seasoned investor and those entering the field for the first time, giving them the right tools, knowledge, skills and support to make smarter decisions and better profits. We are happy to partner with Market Pulse and wish them the best as they reach newer heights”. Market Pulse was founded in 2015 by Amit Dhakad and Hiral Jain. The core team at Market Pulse comprises senior technology leaders with expertise in building user-centric products.
Ola Technologies To Lease Over 4.25 Lakh Sqft Office Space In Bengaluru
Published on 12th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Ride-hailing company Ola is consolidating its multiple offices in Bengaluru in a 425,000-sq ft office space in the city’s Koramangala area, according to people aware of the deal. The tenure of the deal will be around 15 years, with a rental escalation of 15% every three years, the person said, adding, “Ola currently operates out of 6-7 offices spread around 250,000 sq ft in Bengaluru and will now move into one property, as it looks to save cost.” The facility will be used for Ola’s existing operations, including financial service, and also to expand its electric mobility business. A spokesperson for Ola confirmed the deal but did not share any details. This is one of the largest real estate office deals post the lifting of lockdown. Ola, India’s largest mobility platform, recently restructured its business and also reduced staff strength. The company has operations in more than 250 cities across India, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. India’s office space has seen large transactions in the last six months, totalling over 11 million sq ft, and there is additional request for proposals for another 8 million sq ft of office space.
Electric-Car Startup Lucid To Follow Tesla Into Energy Storage
Published on 11th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Lucid Motors Inc., the electric-vehicle startup that has yet to build a production car, is following Tesla Inc.’s footsteps into the energy-storage business. His comments came ahead of the unveiling Wednesday of the production version of Lucid’s Air electric sedan, which the company says has an EPA estimated range of 517 miles and claims is the fastest-charging EV ever. Lucid has an agreement with LG Chem Ltd. for the cells in its battery packs. The fund – which invested more than $1 billion in Lucid in 2018, giving it a much-needed injection of cash and credibility – declined to comment when asked about any energy-storage discussions. Lucid has catching up to do in both EVs and energy storage. The timing of Lucid’s move into energy storage is odd because the company has yet to start production on its EV, according to James Frith, a BloombergNEF analyst and head of energy storage. Lucid is aiming to begin assembly of the cars, and the battery packs that will power them, by year-end at a plant under construction in Casa Grande, Arizona.
Start-Ups Incubated By DST Generated 65,864 Jobs, Created Around Rs 27,262 Crore Wealth
Published on 11th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Start-ups incubated by the Department of Science and Technology generated 65,864 jobs as cumulative direct employment and created wealth of Rs 27,262 crores from 2014-19, according to a report launched by the DST this week. The report on the journey of the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board in catalysing innovation, entrepreneurship, and incubation was launched by DST secretary Ashutosh Sharma at an online programme earlier this week, a statement by the DST said. This activation process included a range of measures like establishment of a network of technology business incubators, scouting innovations, supporting ideas to prototypes, enabling transition from being innovators to start-ups, provision of timely seed funding to the incubated start-ups, and support to scale up the start-ups through focused mentorship, partnerships, and networks. The collective strength and power of NIDHI program, the DST’s incubator network and its start-ups was tested successfully during the COVID-19 pandemic through the Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health Crisis program by supporting various solutions to resolve the crisis, it added. The nurturing of 3,681 start-ups under incubation through the network of 153 incubators created by DST, generation of 1,992 intellectual property has been reported.
US Startup Lightmatter Looking To Speed Up Computing Via Light
Published on 11th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
The idea of using light instead of electricity in computing has been around for decades. Boston-based startup Lightmatter Inc. believes the technology’s time has finally come. It is pitching the solution to big data center operators, such as Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google, which is an investor via GV, venture capital arm of parent Alphabet Inc. The startup’s technology uses tiny structures called “Wave guides” that redirect light. Known as silicon photonics, turn the light into electrical signals that existing computing gear can understand. The system can send data between components 100 times quicker than the fastest PC and uses 10% of the energy, according to Lightmatter co-founder Nick Harris. With data centers forecast to account for more than 15% of global power use in the next five years, anything that saves electricity is valuable, Harris said. The Lightmatter system speeds this up immensely, he said.
Zomato raises $103 million from Tiger Global, looks to go public by mid-2021
Published on 11th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Foodtech unicorn Zomato has raised $103 million from New York- based investment firm Tiger Global Management as part of its ongoing Series-J financing, according to regulatory filings. Swiggy raised $156 million in March quarter of 2020 from Naspers and others. As Zomato looks to attract new investors to the company, these funds raising efforts might be its last before it hits the public markets. This investment from Tiger Global comes a week after the Gurugram-based foodtech major closed $62 million from MacRitchie Investments Pte. The company in March raised $5 million from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust, which is managed by UK-based Baillie Gifford & Co. Ltd. Earlier in July, Zomato said that its revenues doubled to $394 million, although it recorded a loss of $293 million, for the fiscal year 2019-20. In FY19, the food aggregator unicorn reported a revenue of $192 million and a loss of $277 million. In its latest report, Zomato estimated that business for the food delivery industry will come back to pre-covid levels in the next 2-3 months, with 70% of restaurants on its platform delivering food at present.
Walmart To Test Drone Delivery Of Grocery, Household Items In Battle With Amazon
Published on 10th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Walmart Inc said on Wednesday it would run a pilot project for delivery of grocery and household products through automated drones, along with end-to-end delivery firm Flytrex, as the U.S. retailer looks to beef up its delivery business. Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart said the test would start on Wednesday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with cloud-controlled drones picking up and dropping off select items. “We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone. That still feels like a bit of science fiction,” Tom Ward, senior vice-president, customer products, said in a statement. The company has accelerated the expansion of its pick-up and delivery services in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, as virus-wary consumers increasingly prefer having items delivered at their doorsteps. Walmart, whose U.S. online sales doubled in the second quarter, has previously partnered with Ford Motor Co and self-driving vehicle startups Gatik and Nuro to explore delivery through autonomous vehicles.
Lightspeed Leads Hasura's $25 Million Round
Published on 10th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Developer tooling startup Hasura has raised $25 million in Series-B funding, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures US, Nexus Venture Partners, Strive VC and SAP.iO Fund. Microsoft chairman John Thompson also participated in the new round as an angel investor. The investment comes roughly six months after the company raised $9.9 million in Series-A funding. The San Francisco and Bengaluru-based company has raised $36.5 million so far. Hasura said it will utilise funds to accelerate hiring and will invest in open source and commercial product development. The company has added GraphQL support for MySQL and early access support for SQL Server, extending support for all three major database technologies. “We want our users to be able to access that data instantly with Hasura’s secure, scalable data access infrastructure, so adding support for MySQL and SQL Server was our obvious next step. It opens up huge potential for all the developers who need to access the vast amounts of data that lives in MySQL and SQL Server today,” said Tanmai Gopal, cofounder of Hasura.
Groww Raises $30 Million In Series C Funding From YC Continuity, Sequoia, Ribbit Capital
Published on 10th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru-based wealth management platform, Groww on Thursday said that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding, led by Y Combinator’s growth stage fund, YC Continuity. Groww is YC Continuity’s first investment in India. The fundraise comes exactly a year after Groww raised $21.4 million in Series B financing from Ribbit Capital, Sequoia India as well as Y Combinator. “We believe Groww is building the largest retail brokerage in India. At YC, we have known the founders since the company was just an idea and they are some of the best product people you will meet anywhere in the world. We are grateful to be partners with Groww as they build one of the largest retail financial platforms in the world,” said Anu Hariharan, partner at YC Continuity. “India is seeing increased participation of retail investors in financial markets – with 2 million new stock market investors added in the last quarter alone. In the last two years, Groww has expanded their product offering and built a strong team in its journey to make investing simple for Indians”, said Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP. At present, 60% of Groww users hail from Tier 2,3 cities, with 60% of its user base being first time investors.
Happiest Minds: An IPO That Flew Under The Radar In Startup Land
Published on 10th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Happiest Minds, a company founded in 2011, has just listed on the bourses. About 4.2 million shares in the company were earmarked for retail investors but the company is seeing bids for more than 164 million shares. He’s taken companies from zero to IPO twice and zero to $100 million thrice. He’d quit as the Chief Executive Officer of Mindtree – a company he co-founded and took public – in a huff. He wanted Happiest Minds to become the fastest company to reach $100 million in revenue. At his home in Koramangala, where conducted most of his meetings then, he’d dribble out bits of information about the new company that he was building. After he’d left Mindtree, a lot of writing in the press was about how the relationship between him and the rest of the founders at the company had soured. With the public listing of Happiest Minds, Ashok Soota has cemented his legacy as one of the finest founders India has ever had.
Piaggio Partners With Financing Startup For Vehicle Leasing Plans
Published on 9th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Italian two-wheeler maker Piaggio has partnered with automotive financing startup OTO Capital to offer vehicle leasing plans to the customers of Vespa and Aprilia range of scooters. The facility, currently available for customers in Pune and Bangalore, allows leasing of Vespa or Aprilia scooters for low down payment and with 30 per cent discount on the EMI besides other benefits, Piaggio India said in a release. The company said that the merit of this new ownership model lies in the fact that one would have to pay only for the number of years they want to keep the vehicle and then return it anytime, thereby paying less and gaining more on their Vespa and Aprilia models. Further, through the leasing option, one can even upgrade to a more premium model of Vespa and Aprilia in the same EMI budget. “We see flexible ownership to be a desirable new trend amongst the youth of India and we believe Vespa and Aprilia would lead it to extend the premium experience to the aspirants,” said Diege Graffi, Chairman and Managing Director, Piaggio India.
We Will Be In 30,000 Societies By This Fiscal-End: MyGate
Published on 9th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU : Online learning platform Byju’s has raised $500 million in a fresh round of funding led by US-based private equity investor Silver Lake, along with participation from existing investors including Tiger Global, General Atlantic, and Owl Ventures. Silver Lake’s investment into edtech platform Byju’s comes shortly after the PE investor picked up a 0.93% stake in telecom major Reliance Jio for ₹4,546. The new round values Byju’s at $10.8 billion, up from its last valuation at $10.5 billion from its earlier Series F round that was closed in August, said a person aware of the deal asking not to be named. On 27th August 2020, the edtech unicorn also raised $122 million funding from DST Global, the investment fund headed by tech billionaire Yuri Milner. “We are delighted to lead this investment and partner with Byju and his impressive team of education technology pioneers in their mission to help children in India and around the world achieve their true potential,” addedGreg Mondre, Co-CEO of Silver Lake. Recently, Unacademy raised $150 million in funding from Japan’s Softbank, valuing the startup at over 1.4 billion.Edtech startup Toppr raised $50 million during the pandemic period, while Vedantu raised $100 million led by New York-based hedge fund Coatue, valuing it at $600 million.
We Will Be In 30,000 Societies By This Fiscal-End: MyGate
Published on 9th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI : Backed by a strong set of investors like Tiger Global and Tencent, MyGate, a four-year old security software solutions startup, claims to be a part of over 2 million homes across 10,000 societies in the country. During the covid-induced lockdown, the startup tied up with various service providers, e-commerce platforms and now eyes – a three-fold growth, by expanding its services to 30,000 societies by the end of this financial year. By the end of September, we’ll be close to 12,000, closing 1500 societies every month. Aside from the growing importance of our solution to gated communities, we have been able to build a viable operations framework to onboard, train and service societies remotely. We’re now in just under 11,000 societies and are growing faster than we have ever before. This will be a space of tremendous growth for the foreseeable future, and we see ourselves in 30,000 societies by the end of this fiscal – in part, on the back of some headwinds offered by the current crisis.
Inflexor Ventures' New Fund Marks First Close At Rs. 230 Crore
Published on 9th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU : Venture capital firm Inflexor Ventures has raised ?230 crore, marking the first close of Inflexor Technology Fund. The fund’s target corpus is ?500 crore along with an additional Rs. 200 crore green-shoe option, over the next few months from domestic and international investors. Investors in the fund include SBICap Ventures, SIDBI, family offices and ultra-rich individuals. The fund, launched earlier this year, claims to have drawn significant interest from limited partners and capital being raised the midst of the covid-19 crisis. The fund eyes investment in startups at pre-series A to Series A+ stages. Venkat Vallabhaneni, managing partner of the fund said, “We see a huge opportunity for emerging new- age Indian technology companies given the availability of large young talent pool and the entrepreneurial spirit of founders.” Valuations too seem to have corrected by 10-15%. The fund will invest around ?5-7 crore on 3-4 shortlistedcompanies with follow-on funding of up to Rs. 15-20 crore based on performance, growth and capital requirements.
StartupXseed Makes First Close Of Rs 150 Crore Fund-II
Published on 8th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: StartupXseed Ventures has made the first close of its new investment vehicle – at 65 crore – and expects to raise its full 150 crore corpus over the next 6-9 months. Following StartupXseed Ventures’ first fund – a 2016-vintage 34-crore fund – the early stage focused Fund-II has been backed by a number of family offices and professionals from the information technology sector. It counts former Infosys senior executives, TV Mohandas Pai, who invested from his fund Aarin Capital, and V Balakrishnan, who has invested in his personal capacity, as general partners in the fund. According to Naidu, formerly a director with Software Technology Parks of India, the Sebi-registered, Category-I Alternative Investment Fund will look to make 15-odd investments, writing a first cheque of between Rs 3 crore and Rs 10 crore. “Our goal from the first fund was to stabilise the process, identify the thesis of our process and provide post-investment support. We had seen 1,200 companies, and finally ended up investing in just 12 of themThe success of the first fund has largely been due to the processes that we followed,” Naidu told ET in an exclusive interaction.
BluSmart Raises $7 Million In Pre-Series A Funding
Published on 8th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI : Delhi NCR-based all-electric ride hailing platform BluSmart Mobility Pvt Ltd has raised $7 million or ₹51 crore in pre-series A funding from multiple investors including Inflection Point Ventures, Venture Catalysts, Survam Partners, Mumbai Angels, Chhatisgarh Investments Ltd., JITO Angels, Lets Venture Fund and Kaplavriksh Fund, the company said on Monday. The company, which is also in talks to raise venture debt, said that the funds would be utilized in expanding its fleet, setting up electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and making technology related improvements while increasing its footprint. The startup also has appointed Anirudh Arun as COO and Rishabh Sood as the CTO. The startup, which is looking to forge strategic partnerships with automotive, infrastructure and energy companies, plans to add ‘thousands of electric cars and hundreds of charging stations’ toits platform in 2021, it said. “We are looking at augmenting the EV uptake by expanding fast electric car charging infrastructure for an easy charging practice,” said Goyal. Mitesh Shah, Cofounder, Inflection Point Ventures said that the venture capital firm, with its vast investor base of CXOs from diverse industries including EVs, automotive and banking, financial services and insurance, will help BluSmart in growing its fleet economically as well as expand its network.
Proxgy Launches Virtual Commerce Platform In India
Published on 8th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Proxgy aims to change the way people navigate through their daily outdoor tasks by hailing a Proxgy through the Proxgy user app which links the user to their Proxgy. The camera access is controlled by the user via a multidirectional joystick control within the Proxgy user app, giving users a real-time immersive experience of the Proxgy’s surrounding. Once a Proxgy accepts a user’s booking, the user is linked in an instantaneous ride-hailing manner to his or her Proxgy via two-way audio, one-way video. The user can then see and listen live to what their Proxgy is seeing and hearing in the place of Proxgy’s service, while the user sits at home and asks their Proxgy to perform the tasks of his choosing via audio commands relayed to the Proxgy through the Proxgy’s service app. “These cutting edge technological innovations have helped us create a truly immersive and exceptional augmented reality experience for the end-user. Proxgy is now using 360-degree rotation cameras on Proxgy smart helmets, 3D viewing options, VR head controlled camera movements and one to many broadcasting abilities to provide the end-user an ultimate mix of the real and augmented worlds right at their home.” added Pulkit Ahuja.
Meet The Indian Startup Founder Trying To Digitise Small Business In Indonesia
Published on 8th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Menon went to Indonesia in 2013, at a time when the rapidly growing Asian economy was. “There are 60 million micro merchants in Indonesia, while almost all of them use WhatsApp for social commerce, their businesses are still run manually,” said Menon, speaking with Moneycontrol over the phone from Jakarta. What Menon is trying to do in Indonesia, is being attempted by multiple startups in India too. Players like Khatabook, OkCredit are trying to digitise micro retail businesses, Bengaluru-based Open is trying to become a neo-banking platform for small businesses and JioMart is trying to leverage WhatsApp to enable local kiranas to accept orders digitally and deliver them at the doorstep of consumers. Indonesia gets a clear winner and a runner-up in every sector, said Menon. After landing up in Indonesia seven years ago, Menon worked with the Lazada Group for a year. “Businesses never shut down here due to the pandemic and the economy is still growing, albeit at a slow pace,” Menon said.
Gaja Capital: PE Firm Gaja Capital May Lead $100 Million Round In 1MG
Published on 7th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Amid the consolidation in the e-pharmacy space, 1MG is in talks with Indian and global private equity funds for a new fund-raise of around $100 million as it prepares to fight rivals – Reliance Industries, Amazon and PharmEasy-Medlife combine. Private equity firm Gaja Capital is in an advanced stage of talks to lead the round at 1MG, while Tata Capital and Europe’s Partners Group are also looking to participate in the deal along with another ‘global private equity major’, said three sources briefed on the matter. 1MG’s existing investors, which include Sequoia Capital and World Bank investment arm IFC, are also expected to participate. “It is looking to raise north of $100 million and the talks have accelerated following the Reliance-Netmeds deal as it would require capital as a standalone player. Around $70 million of new capital has been finalised but 1MG is negotiating for a bigger cheque,” a person aware of the matter said. When contacted, 1MG co-founder and CEO Prashant Tandon, spokesperson for Gaja Capital and Tata Capital declined to comment on the matter. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March, 6 million new households tried online medicine taking the total to 9 million households, a recent Ficci-Redseer white paper said.
Rooter: Gaming Platform Rooter Partners With AI Firm Stradigi
Published on 7th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
PUNE: Paytm and LeAD-backed gaming community platform Rooter today announced a strategic partnership with Stradigi AI, a North American AI software company. “Data analytics is critical for us to gain accurate user insights. Rooter has amassed a large amount of data, but a shortage of experience and infrastructure around AI and machine learning has held us back from implementing data-powered applications. Having an AI company like Stradigi AI will empower us to utilise our data and improve our product, personalise content, churn superior interactive content, create prediction models to help users to make fantasy teams, and enhance user experience.” Leveraging Stradigi AI’s Kepler AI platform will help Rooter accelerate the creation of multiple machine learning-driven features for the sports and gaming industry, improving user experiences through predictive capabilities for match play and fantasy content. “We are very excited about our partnership with Rooter and the opportunity to work with them to augment their platform with predictive capabilities.” said Basil Bouraropoulos, CEO, Stradigi AI. “These capabilities will create a more compelling experience for their users, further cementing their position as a leader in the online sports and gaming market. Kepler is designed to enable any business to rapidly benefit from advanced machine learning, maximize their data investments and ultimately generate value to their business and customers.”
Elon Musk's Option Haul Swells To $8.5 Billion With Third Payout
Published on 7th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Tesla Inc.’s stock setback this week wasn’t enough to hinder Elon Musk’s improbable payouts, now amounting to a staggering $8.8 billion. On Friday, Musk cleared the final threshold for a third tranche of his moonshot award, pegged to Tesla’s financial and market value. A Friday afternoon rally in the automaker’s stock price ended a three-day rout that saw the company’s market capitalization drop by almost $90 billion from its all-time high on Monday. The latest sum, which is roughly worth $2.9 billion after accounting for the cost of exercising the options, is more reminiscent of the hauls collected by hedge fund managers in rare blowout years than the $15-million-a-year packages awarded to the typical S&P 500 chief executive officer. Its market value stands at more than $380 billion, far above that of its global rivals, despite producing far fewer vehicles. His latest tranche was unlocked after Tesla’s 6-month and 30-day average trailing market value both exceeded $200 billion. Another performance goal – logging a combined $3 billion of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization topping $3 billion over four quarters – was achieved as of June 30, a filing shows.
Harsha Bhogle invests in gaming startup Fantasy Akhada
Published on 7th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle has invested an undisclosed amount in gaming startup Fantasy Akhada, and will be the brand’s face for the next two years, the company said on Friday. Fantasy Akhada founder Amit Purohit said that onboarding of Bhogle as an investor will boost subscribers’ confidence towards the platform, while the startup will continue building technology to serve the gamers on the platform “I have realised that during a cricket match, everyone wants to join the game. While limited people can play on the ground, several fans engage in the game online through various sort of games. There fantasy gaming is growing and it is good to invest in something which is growing,” Bhogle told PTI. The company did not disclose the investment details. “Besides the growth potential, I like to work with young people who want to make a difference in society with their energy. I was comfortable with people involved in Fantasy Akhada hence I decided to make an investment in the platform,” Bhogle said. Fantasy Akhada claims to be growing by more than 100 per cent month on month post the lockdown.
Wework India Raises $100 Million From Wework Global
Published on 5th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: US-based office space provider WeWork Global has bought 20 per cent stake in Wework India, a fully-owned subsidiary of Bengaluru-based estate developer Embassy Group, for $100 million as the company looks to scale up India operations over the next 36 months. Embassy Group had 100% rights over WeWork India, which is an independent entity with the right to execute WeWork’s business in the country. WeWork entered into a partnership with Embassy Group in 2017 and started operations in the Indian market. “India is one of the key markets for WeWork.The fresh round of capital from our long-term partners at WeWork global represents a vote of confidence in our strategy and in India operation. Sandeep Mathrani, global CEO of WeWork will also have a board seat in the India operation,” said Karan Virwani, CEO of WeWork India. The transaction valued the WeWork India business at around $500 mn. WeWork India had earlier told ET that it plans to raise $200 million to expand its India operations. WeWork India, which had earlier planned to increase the number of desks to 90,000 by the end of 2020, said the focus is now on profitability rather than growing the number of seats.
Agri-Tech Startup Aibono Raises Rs 15 Cr For Business Growth, Expansion
Published on 5th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Agri-tech startup Aibono has raised USD 2 million from investors to fund expansion plan and growth of the business, its founder Vivek Rajkumar said on Friday. With the help of its AI powered full-stack farm services and demand-supply syncing technology, Aibono helps farmers from the Nilgiris and surrounding villages in Tamil Nadu to grow premium perishable and herbs with better yields. After procuring farm produce from farmers, the company sells it to retailers in Bengaluru city. “Aibono leverages data science driven demand-supply synchronisation, farm analytics and”just in time engines to prevent food wastage, improve agricultural efficiency as well as stabilise livelihoods of farmers specialising in perishable. “In Aibono, we see a balance of scale and profitability, with equal emphasis on farmer and retailer growth alongside a sustainable business model.” Audrey Selian, director of Lesing Artha associated with Rianta Capital said: With this infusion of funds, agri-tech enablers like Aibono with experience in JIT harvest and demand-supply synchronisation will make significant social impact for farmers possible.
Legal-Tech Startup Lawyered To Raise Rs.7 Crore In Pre-Series Funding
Published on 5th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: Lawyers and legal education aggregating platform, Lawyered Friday said it is seeking to raise Rs. 7 crore in a pre-series funding from investors, days after it concluded an angel investment round. The startup is bringing practicing advocates, and clients on a technology platform and onboarding legal students and connecting them with jobs in law firms. “There are at least demand for a three billion legal helps – from notarized record to startup compliance, from family legal cases to criminal offences every year, but people are not aware about how to get legal help and how to reach out to lawyers of their choice,” he said. “While it’s often a challenge for small companies, startups and individuals to get the right legal support, our start up helps them through its digital platform to get an array of legal experts to choose from without any commission or fee,” he claimed. “The covid-19 has increased the acceptance of technology adoption in legal fraternity as well as people who are not hesitating to seek legal help while sitting in remote locations with the help of technology. This is aiding our growth and we see a good potential here,” Gupta added.
Paytm FY20 Loss Narrows By 40%, Revenue Rises To ₹3,629 Crore
Published on 5th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI : Digital financial services firm Paytm on Friday said its revenue for fiscal year ended March 31, increased to ₹3,629 crore supported by increase in number of transactions across various segments and point of sale devices. “We are on path to become profitable by 2022. Paytm is also moving its efforts to become a dominant digital financial services platform with Paytm Postpaid, Paytm Money and Paytm Insurance services contributing an increased turnover in the coming fiscal years,” Deora said. Paytm has expanded its financial services with lending, wealth management and insurance segments, which the company claims have opened up new revenue streams. Paytm expects significant push in recently launched stock trading segment on its online investment and wealth management platform Paytm Money and expects to get traction of both experienced as well as first-time investors. “Paytm has registered over 1.7 crore merchant partners benefiting from its payment and financial services with launch of merchant focused products such as Paytm for business app, Soundbox, Business Khata, Payout services among others that are transforming the way SMEs do business in the country,” Deora said.
E-payments jump in small towns, cities
Published on 4th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Digital payments are moving beyond the metros, and electronic payment firms are positioning themselves for the change. “In the past five months, with people staying indoors, the demand for online payments grew by 40% in tier-II and -III cities. Earlier, consumers from a lot of these tier-II and -III cities would only order essentials online, but are now demonstrating high adoption for non-essential purchases like bill payments, video streaming subscriptions and even dating and matrimony services,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO and co-founder, Razorpay, an online payment gateway provider to businesses. Paytm Payments Bank has earmarked ₹100 crore to promote its point-of-sale device, Paytm Soundbox, in tier-II and -III regions, apart from introducing digital ledgers for merchant partners and a product to help small enterprises make bulk payments. “We’ve seen much higher propensity to use digital payment methods in tier-II cities and beyond. BharatPe has seen a 30-35% jump in transaction value on the platform in these areas post lockdown,” said Suhail Sameer, group president, BharatPe.
Gaming startup WinZO raises $18 million in Series B funding
Published on 4th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Online gaming platform WinZO has raised $18 million in Series B funding round led by Singapore based Makers Fund and US based Courtside Ventures, making it the single largest investment into an Indian gaming startup since the covid-19 outbreak. Last month, Gamezop received $4 million in series A funding from Bitkraft, Velo Partners, FJ Labs and others. Kalaari Capital, which led a $5 million series A funding in WinZO in 2019 was involved in the series B round. “Mobile gaming is a large opportunity in India, and in a short span of time, WinZO has built a high quality vernacular gaming platform for the masses. We are very excited to partner with Makers and Courtside in the next leg of WinZO’s journey and bring superior entertainment to the next 200M gamers,” Rahul Garg, Principal at Kalaari Capital said in a statement. Founded by Paavan Nanda and Saumya Singh Rathore in 2018, WinZO is one of the fastest growing gaming platforms with revenue growing at 1500% and 20 million new user additions in the last 12 months. With the new round of funding, WinZo plans to improve its content pipeline and engage mobile first gamers.
Railofy raises ₹7 crore from Chirate Ventures
Published on 4th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Railofy, a data science startup that provides a travel guarantee to waitlisted or RAC train passengers, has raised ₹7 crore in seed funding from Chiratae Ventures. Railofy offers flight tickets to railway passengers if their train ticket is not confirmed after chart preparation, at a similar price. For shorter distances, the startup provides buses at nominal prices if the train ticket is not confirmed. “As India becomes more aspirational, passengers will demand a more reliable experience while travelling by the railways. Railofy is working towards this by solving one of the biggest problems affecting railways – Waitlist due to Congestion,” said TC Meenakshisundaram, Founder & Managing Director of Chiratae Ventures India Advisors. Passengers can purchase the protection from Railofy’s portal against their ticket for an average price of around ₹200. If the ticket is not confirmed post chart preparation, Railofy provides a flight close to the price of a train ticket or bus for nominal prices to the destination. The price for flight/bus options is fixed at the time of purchasing WL & RAC protection itself, thus ensuring that passengers are shielded from last-minute rising fares.
Biofourmis raises $100 million funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2
Published on 4th Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Health-tech company Biofourmis on September 3 said it has raised $100 million in funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. In May last year, Biofourmis closed its $35 million series B round. “COVID-19 is pushing remote monitoring and digital therapeutics to the forefront of medicine. Our vision is to use digital medicine to empower patients, clinicians and researchers everywhere by providing software-as-a-treatment for patients with unmet clinical needs, from post-acute care to optimal medication therapy,” Biofourmis CEO Kuldeep Singh Rajput said. Biofourmis will use the funding for developing, validating and commercialising several released and unreleased digital therapeutics solutions across cardiology, respiratory, oncology and pain, with a focus on the US and key Asian markets, including Asia Pacific, China and Japan, the company said. “We believe predictive health is the future of medicine and Biofourmis is a leader in using AI and machine learning-based solutions to advance digital therapeutics,” Greg Moon, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said. The new business structure will include two verticals – Biofourmis Therapeutics and Biofourmis Health.
Interior Design Startup Livspace Raises $90m Led By Kharis Capital, Venturi Partners
Published on 3rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
This marks the Series D round for the company that was led by Kharis Capital, a Switzerland based investment firm focussed on managing selective direct private equity investments, and Venturi Partners, an investment platform targeting growth investments in the consumer space in India and Southeast Asia. The latest capital infusion will be utilised for further development of the technology platform, fund new market expansion, creation of new market offerings, expansion of supply chain and private labels in APAC. Established in 2014 by Anuj Srivastava and Ramakant Sharma, Livspace claims to be the market leader in the home renovation space in all its launched markets. The company is currently evaluating its foray in countries such as Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia in the APAC region and the Middle East as its next markets, where the interior and renovation industry is equally fragmented and presents a ripe opportunity for Livspace’s platform-based market entry. In India, where Livspace is already present in nine metro areas, the company is evaluating dozens of new cities including Kolkata, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad. Since its last funding round by Ingka Capital, TPG Growth and Goldman Sachs last year, Livspace claims to have quadrupled its revenue, doubled its margin.
Strata Raises Rs 140 Crore To Invest In Three Warehousing Assets
Published on 3rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: SAIF Partners-backed Strata, a tech-enabled fractional investment platform for commercial real estate, has raised Rs 140 crore from investors to jointly buy three preleased warehouses amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. These three assets, to be owned fractionally by investors, collectively account for 0.7 million sq ft warehousing space. Of these, Strata Avigna Warehousing I & II located in Hosur received 100% commitment from investors within 42 days of its launch, while the pharmaceutical warehousing asset in Bengaluru was closed in just 7 days. “Avigna is planning on developing multiple industrial and warehousing projects spread over 9 Million sqft in the next five years across 7 cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, etc. We look to strengthening our association with Strata with new projects on the horizon,” said Abhijit Verma, CEO, Avigna Space Industrial & Logistics Park. Minimum investments for these preleased assets ranged between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 50 lakh and the same can be liquidated anytime, while rentals can be received from the first month of investment.
Cashaa Raises $5 Million From Dubai Based O1ex, A Blockchain Investment Firm
Published on 3rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Crypto banking companies platform Cashaa mentioned it has raised $5 million from Dubai primarily based O1ex, a blockchain funding and advisory agency and can use the funds to broaden into the Indian market and patch the customers loss from Delhi OTC hack in July. To faucet into the nation’s rising crypto person base, Cashaa will launch its neo-bank in India, which will probably be regulated below the Reserve Financial institution of India. Aside from India, we may even faucet into the African and Caribbean market,” Kumar Gaurav, CEO & Founder, Cashaa mentioned. In 2017, the London primarily based agency had raised $33 million in the course of the token sale but in addition rejected $14.7 million citing the shortcoming of token consumers to cross its KYC Policy. Cashaa can be the the second firm which didn’t cross the lack of Bitcoin hack to its customers.
Unacademy raises $150 million led by SoftBank, valuation triples to $1.45 bn
Published on 3rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Edtech platform Unacademy has raised $150 million, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2i , trebling its valuation to $1.45 billion. “Learning from the best experts to achieve a life goal has mostly been a privilege, available only to those living in the top few cities of the country. At Unacademy, we are breaking that barrier and helping people achieve their life’s most important goals by giving them access to the best coaching from experts in the field,” said Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy. The startup, which is now the official partner for the Indian Premier League for the next three seasons, had raised money at a valuation of $510 million just six months ago. “By bringing quality education to a vast network of students for the first time, Unacademy is bridging the privilege gap in India,” said Munish Varma, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. In February, Unacademy had raised $110 million from Facebook, General Atlantic, and Sequoia at a valuation of $510 million. Other learning platforms like Vedantu raised $100 million funding during the pandemic, doubling its valuation to $600 mn. Startups in education have already raised around $795 million funding in this period, largely led by Byju’s.
Zomato closes $62 million funding from Temasek
Published on 3rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU : Food tech startup Zomato has closed $62 million as part of its latest funding round from MacRitchie Investments Pte. Mint had reported on 22 August that MacRitchie may infuse at least $60 million in Zomato. In March, Zomato had also raised $5 million from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust, which is managed by UK-based Baillie Gifford & Co. Ltd. The fundraise from Temasek, comes at a time when the Gurugram-based firm has been struggling to access the $100 million it was to receive, as a part of the $150 capital raise in January from Ant Financial. Zomato had received the first tranche of $50 million from Ant Financial, a unit of Chinese internet giant Alibaba, in January. Zomato’s rival Swiggy holds a valuation of more than $3.6 billion, ascribed to it as a part of the $156 million round it raised in the first quarter of 2020, from Naspers, Meituan Dianping and Wellington Management Company. In July, Zomato said that its revenues doubled to $394 million, although it recorded a loss of $293 million, for the fiscal year 2019-20. Zomato has also scaled down its online grocery vertical, Zomato Market, as it looks to continue its focus on improving food delivery experience for customers.
AI startup Entropik Tech raises $8 million in funding led by Alpha Wave
Published on 3rd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI : Entropik Tech, an artificial intelligence-powered emotional intelligence platform, has raised $8 million in a series-A funding round led by Alpha Wave Incubation. The funding round also saw participation from existing investors- Bharat Innovation Fund and IDFC Parampara Fund, the startup said in a statement on Wednesday. Entropik Tech plans to utilise the funds to expand its presence to the US, European Union and South East Asia. This round of funding will help further scale international growth and ramp up its deep-tech capabilities. “As part of this investment from Alpha Wave Incubation, Entropik will expand its presence to the US, European Union, South East Asia while leveraging Abu Dhabi as a base to scale in GCC and MENA markets,” the company said. Through its platform, Entropik plugs a critical gap in consumer insights and research industry and has over 17 patent claims in facial coding, brainwave tracking, and eye tracking. “We have seen a huge demand for our Emotion AI platform, achieving over 10X revenue growth in the last 3 quarters. I am proud of our team for their persistence, and thankful to our investors for believing in our vision,” Entropik Tech founder and CEO Ranjan Kumar said.
E-commerce, hyperlocal supply chains to get cheaper with EV adoption
Published on 2nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU : The electric vehicle revolution isn’t just mushrooming from consumer demand but also from e-commerce and hyperlocal delivery firms. EV scooter makers including eBikeGo, Okinawa and Ather Energy are helping e-commerce and food delivery firms to convert their petrol-based scooters, used for deliveries, to more cost-efficient EV variants. With more net income being paid to delivery workers, Bigbasket is also able to bring down delivery costs from the earlier ₹50-65 per order to around ₹40-45 per order in areas where it has an EV deployment in the last-mile. Delhi-based EV manufacturer eBikeGo, currently supplies EV scooters to delivery startups such as Bigbasket, Zomato, and to retail brands including Burger King, Nandos, among others. “There is a huge opportunity for EV Industry in e-commerce and hyperlocal delivery market. In the post COVID era, e commerce is going to play a major role in the EV industryWe are in process of building presence in e-commerce and hyperlocal market currently,” added Sharma during a phone interview.
Dunzo to raise $28 million from Google, Lightstone and others
Published on 2nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo has raised around $28 million, as part of its Series E round led by Google International LLC and Lightstone Fund S.A, according to documents sources from business information platform Tofler. Dunzo has allotted 10,310 Series E cumulative compulsory convertible preference shares to Google LLC and Lightstone at ₹1,13,811. “At Dunzo our mission is to make our cities more accessible, and to do so, we have to empower local businesses with the necessary e-commerce capabilities to master the changing marketplace. We have constantly wanted to steer the narrative and conversation in the ecosystem to a better product, user experience, and what makes a dent in the business. It is our humble contribution towards creating a thriving ecosystem for India that impacts users, merchants, and delivery partners. In light of this, we will not be able to comment further on this round,” said a Dunzo spokesperson. In July, Dunzo suffered a data breach that leaked phone numbers and email addresses of its users, the company’s chief technology officer Mukund Jha had said. Jha’s post said that the servers “Of a third party” Dunzo works with were compromised, and it allowed the attackers to get “Unauthorized access” and breach the company’s database.
Kaagaz Scanner, which has had 1.1 million downloads after it was launched in mid-June, works offline—for now— and doesn’t store data
Published on 2nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
India’s ban on Chinese apps left gaping holes across sectors that homegrown apps rushed to fill in. Before it was banned, CamScanner was a popular document scanning app, with more than 100 million downloads in India despite storing sensitive user data abroad and malware concerns. Now, an Indian startup wants to build a similar product but with a promise not to abuse users’ data. “Chinese apps could still operate, but something needed to be done about the data abuse. For Kaagaz, the app, all its data is offline. Even when we launch online storage, our cloud servers will be only in India,” Shrishrimal told Moneycontrol over the phone from Mumbai where the company is based. The app works offline only, which means it stores no data online, on its cloud or anywhere else. The automatic sorting ties in neatly with Sorted AI, an app Shrishrimal and the other two founders’ launched a year before Kaagaz Scanner.
Bikayi has raised $2 million from a clutch of international investors
Published on 2nd Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
YCombinator-backed startup Bikayi has raised a seed round of $2 million from a clutch of international investors including Mantis ventures, a VC fund promoted by the musical band Chainsmokers. The Hyderabad-based startup helps small merchants create online storefronts and accept orders online. The merchants using the platform are already doing business worth Rs 2 crore. Mantis is a $50 million VC fund to invest in startups and this is their first investment in an Indian entity. Other investors who participated in the round include YC, Pioneer Fund, angel investor Ankur Nagpal among others. “They are a part of upscaling Bikayi, with these funds we will hire more talent to accelerate product development, ramp up the platform and onboard a million new merchants,” said Sonakshi Nathani, cofounder, Bikayi. Bikayi allows small businesses to quickly create their online stores and give them the right tools to manage e-commerce on Whatsapp.
Leeds, Prosus lead $113-million round in edtech firm Eruditus
Published on 1st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Edtech startup Eruditus has raised $113 million in funding led by Leeds Illuminate and South African internet giant Prosus Ventures with participation from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropic organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. People familiar with the deal told ET that about $20 million of the investment is a secondary cash out, while $93 million has been infused in the company. With the latest investment, the company’s valuation has jumped to over $800 million, sources said, making the executive education firm among the most valued edtech startups in the country. Eruditus partners with top-tier universities across the US, Europe, Latin America, India and China to bring professional education to a global audience. “Covid-19 is dramatically accelerating change across higher education,” said Ashwin Damera, cofounder and chief executive at Eruditus. “We are engaging more deeply with universities worldwide to help them expand their online portfolio and global footprint.” Eruditus has partnered with more than 30 universities to date, including MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Cambridge, INSEAD, Wharton, UC Berkeley and NUS, launching more than 100 courses across multiple languages. CZI had backed Byju’s in 2016, its first investment in India and Asia.
Jobs app for Indian workers gets $8 million from investors
Published on 1st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Apna, an app startup that aims to connect millions of bottom-of-the-pyramid workers to employers amid the devastation of India’s lockdown, has raised $8 million from a clutch of investors. The funding, from new investors Greenoaks Capital, Rocketship VC as well as existing backers Lightspeed India and Sequoia Capital, will help the app expand to more cities, the Indian firm said in a statement published Tuesday. It also wants to grow across verticals such as accounting, customer service and nursing. The startup, founded by Apple Inc. alum Nirmit Parikh, is a sort of LinkedIn for non-English-speaking, poorer Indians. The app helps first-time internet users access job opportunities by entering their name, age, and skills to generate a virtual “Business card” that’s shared with potential employers. Less than a year after its December launch, Apna has 1.2 million users.
boAT raises ₹25 crore from InnoVen Capital
Published on 1st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Consumer electronics startup boAT has raised ₹25 crore from InnoVen Capital, underlining the venture debt and specialty lending firm’s strategy to back consumer brands that are disrupting their categories. BoAT is a lifestyle brand company that manufactures and sells consumer electronics products such as earphones, headphones, speakers, soundbars, travel chargers, and premium rugged cables. Sameer Mehta, co-founder, boAt said, “We continue to stay focused on delivering on our brand promise to our boAtheads. It’s been an exciting journey to build one of the leading homegrown digitally native brands from India but we are more excited about the next phase as we expand our product offering.” In July, 2019 boAt had raised ₹20 crore in venture debt from Sachin Bansal-owned BAC Acquisitions Pvt Ltd. Prior to that, in May, 2018, it had raised ₹6 crore from Fireside Ventures. “BoAt is one of the high performing companies in our portfolio, which has not only grown over 3X since we started the relationship but has managed to do that while being profitable. It’s a perfect case-study on how to build a new age brand, through superior customer insights, effective marketing and relentless execution,” said Ashish Sharma, CEO, Innoven Capital India.
HomeLane raises ₹60 crore in bridge round led by Stride Ventures
Published on 1st Sept, 2020 | 1 min read
Online home interiors start-up Homelane has raised ₹60 crore in a bridge round led by Stride Ventures. Stride Ventures participated through debt funding of ₹20 crore in the company. Existing investors Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Evolvence India and JSW Ventures have also participated, infusing another ₹40 crore in equity. “This round isn’t purely a runway extension. We have invested in the company keeping in mind the fundamentals in place. The company has a significant target addressable market. Furthermore, they have limited competition and are building a technological moat. Post-lifting of lockdown restrictions, the company has quickly scaled up their orders,” said Ishpreet Singh Gandhi, founder and managing partner, Stride Ventures. Bengaluru-based HomeLane said it will deploy the new funds to enter new markets with a greater focus on non-metro expansion while strengthening the brand’s presence across existing markets. 4 crore operating revenues for the year ended March 31, 2020, a growth of 130% over its revenues of ₹99. During the last six years, the company has established operational presence across 10 cities with 19 experience centres and 900+ design experts on its tech platform.
Investing in social good is finally becoming profitable
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
By Paul Sullivan Impact investments, which aim to promote a social good or prevent a social ill, have significantly outperformed traditional bets during the coronavirus pandemic. Impact investing typically focuses on three categories: environmental, social and governance, known as ESG. Returns can be tracked through various exchange-traded funds. Now, other investors are coming to him with questions about sustainable and profitable agriculture, said Kirkpatrick, who is also a founder of Impact Capital Managers, a trade group that seeks to show that impact investing can be a way to achieve higher returns. “The impact portfolios are very significantly outperforming the traditional ones,” said Brad Harrison, a co-head of impact investing at Tiedemann Advisors. Eric Lemelson, a philanthropist and vineyard owner in Oregon, has focused on clean-energy investments for nearly 20 years, and his portfolio has been almost entirely made up of impact investments for the past decade. There is some skepticism that impact investments look good because investments like energy and financial companies in traditional portfolios have not performed well over the past nine months.
Humans take a step closer to ‘flying cars’
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
Today, the world is closer to combining those two concepts as a Japanese tech company said it completed a manned test flight of a “Flying car.” The company, SkyDrive, said in a news release Friday that it had completed a flight test using “The world’s first manned testing machine,” its SD-03 model, an electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive’s chief executive, said Saturday that five years ago there were various prototypes of flying cars, usually with fixed wings. SkyDrive was started in 2012 by members of a volunteer organization called Cartivator, and the company began developing a “Flying car” in 2014, according to its website. Several companies are developing similar technology, including Boeing and Airbus, as well as automakers Toyota and Porsche. Safe autonomous technology for eVTOL aircrafts is still being developed, Aksaray said. Fukuzawa said SkyDrive plans to begin selling a two-seat version of its eVTOL by 2023 for about $300,000 to $500,000.
Tech startup, trying to be Amazon for farms, runs into agricultural giants
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
He was Charles Baron, co-founder of Farmers Business Network, or FBN, a Silicon Valley startup that is trying to build an Amazon-like online marketplace for agricultural supplies. Major farm retailers and wholesalers have urged farmers and suppliers to avoid the platform, in some cases circulating letters and emails warning that FBN’s goal is to gather and secretly sell data on crops and farms. After FBN purchased a Canadian agricultural supplier in 2018, some large farm-supply companies stopped providing their products to the business, leaving FBN unable to sell them. Bayer AG, the world’s largest supplier of biotech seeds, tractor maker Deere & Co., grain giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. and other companies in recent years have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build data-powered platforms geared toward selling farm-management services, while also deepening their own view into farms. In 2016, officials for CHS Big Sky, a Montana branch of the biggest U.S. agricultural cooperative, warned farmers in a letter that FBN wasn’t doing anything different than the typical farmer-owned retail operation. FBN in June 2018 sued Univar in a Saskatchewan court, accusing the Illinois-based company of making false statements and encouraging other farm suppliers to avoid doing business with the startup.
Hena Mehta’s startup Basis has set out to solve every woman’s pain point of not having the right resources to plan out financial goals
Published on 31st August, 2020 | 1 min read
After completing her MBA, returning to Bengaluru and speaking to over 500 women in various Indian cities, Hena realised she was not alone in facing challenges related to managing money. The app is jargon-free and targets women and their specific needs using algorithms that analyze five years of data. “Our vision is to build a platform that empowers women with all their money management needs: education, updated information, tailored advice and curated products. We aim to impact 10 million women over the next five years,” says the 33-year old, who co-founded Basis along with her school friend and financial expert Dipika Jaikishan. Hena, who is also the founder of Lean In Bangalore, narrates case studies of young women learning how to save wisely, build emergency funds, plan for early retirements, and even how to negotiate a salary equal to their male colleagues, all through Basis content and services. “To live a life truly on your own terms, you need to have complete autonomy of your money. Earning it, saving it, investing it, protecting it, and spending it. My advice to all women is to take complete ownership of your financial decisions. Outlining your goals and figuring out how to reach them is empowering and liberating. Chalk out as little as 30 minutes a week to educate yourself, and be in touch with your financial situation.”
Wonderchef expects Rs 400 crore revenues in current fiscal
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Wonderchef, kitchenware brand co-founded by renowned chefs Sanjeev Kapoor and Ravi Saxena, is looking at adding Rs 100 crore to the revenues this fiscal over the Rs 300 crore it clocked last fiscal, a senior company official said. Started off in 2009 as a direct selling company by entreprenuerial women who now number over 75,000, the firm nets 40 per cent of its volume from modern and general trade sales now, and online accounts for an equal share, co-founder and managing director of Wonderchef Home Appliance, Ravi Saxena said. “We have seen our sales, mostly through online, increasing by over 30 per cent in May as the lockdowns forced people to stay indoors and eat home food… We closed 2019-20 with a topline of Rs 300 crore and going by the current volume, I am confident of closing this fiscal at Rs 400 crore,” Saxena told. Wonderchef products, mostly mixer grinders and pressure cookers and other cookwares, command a 10-20 per cent premium over products from other brands. “We will plan an IPO when our topline crosses Rs 1,000 crore, which we expect over the next five years. Rs 300-400 crore sales is too small to get a good valuation,” he said.
Revolt Motors looks to raise $100 million in equity capital
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma’s electric vehicle venture Revolt Intellicorp plans to raise equity capital of up to $100 million to fund product development and expansion into more cities. The company will launch operations in Mumbai – its sixth market – this Sunday and aims to have a pan-India presence within a year, Sharma told ET. It is also working on at least two new vehicle platforms. The company has not raised any external equity capital so far, according to Sharma. The cloud-connected motorcycles have cumulatively run for about 5 million kilometres on Indian roads so far, according to Sharma. Foot traffic at the company’s experience centres in Delhi, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad have yet to recover, but sales have been picking up thanks to online bookings, Sharma said. The company aims to completely localise the sourcing of products by December this year. Speaking about the slow uptake of EVs in the country, Sharma said products that were sold earlier either did not match the performance of conventional vehicles or were too deemed expensive.
GOQii to launch medical-grade wearables in 6-12 months: CEO
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Home-grown wearable devices maker GOQii will launch its own range of medical devices over the next 6-12 months, a senior company executive told ET. The Mumbai and Palo Alto-based company will launch the medical-grade wearable devices that will be clinically accurate and monitor ECG, blood pressure and temperature, among others, Vishal Gondal, founder and chief executive of GOQii, told ET. The company is launching its first product, under its Smart Vital smartwatch, which can track blood pressure, oxygen levels, among other functions, and which, according to Gondal, has undergone third-party clinical trials as part of the required regulatory process. “Over the last six months, we have upgraded all our medical manufacturing processes, and now, we have completed clinical trials, and our devices are classified as close to medical devices. This was conducted by third-party performed in India, and GOQii devices will be apt to be used for remote consultations and remote diagnostics,” Gondal said. The company is also in talks to ink a partnership with a major pharmaceutical company, which will serve as its go-to-market partner as GOQii launches the products over the next 6-12 months, Mondal said. “They will bring these devices to pharmacies, hospitals. The partnership will be announced in about a month’s time. The devices are now the same grade as any consumer medical device,” Gondal said.
Wellness startup Sarva raises funding from Cutting Edge Group
Published on 29th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Yoga and mindfulness-focussed startup Sarva has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from international music provider Cutting Edge Group. The deal will enable Sarva gain access to over 20,000 minutes of music and meditation-based content provided via Myndstream, Cutting Edge’s record label, a press statement issued by the company said. Cutting Edge will also help design and manage music priorities across Sarva’s platform, the release added. According to its website, the Cutting Edge Group is an independent music publisher, financier and services provider for film and television studios, as well as production houses, gaming studios and online media platforms. The United States and United Kingdom-based group’s services also include music branding and royalty analysis. The fund raise from the Cutting Edge Group comes just a little over two months after the firm raised capital from cricketer Shikhar Dhawan. Founded in March 2016, the company’s offerings include guided meditation and interactive fitness.
Monster.com partners with Nasscom for SME jobs
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Job portal Monster.com on Thursday said it has partnered with the National Association of Software and Service Companies as its exclusive talent search partner for small and medium- sized enterprises. Through this partnership, Monster aims to support over 2,400 small and medium- sized enterprises in meeting their talent requirements by offering its cutting-edge hiring solutions, the job portal said in a statement. In addition to offering Monster’s platform, this alliance will provide solutions to help SMEs to connect with job seekers from remote locations, it added. “It has been our constant endeavour to connect the right people to the right jobs. Our expertise in reaching job seekers, especially at a time when the job market is adversely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, will help alleviate Nasscom’s SME Advantage programme.” “Committed to bringing cost savings and best in class solutions to Nasscom SMEs, we are glad to partner with Monster.com under our SME Advantage programme,” Nasscom Senior Director and Head – India Market Development, Gaurav Hazra said.
IIT Kanpur-backed startup Phool.co raises $1.4 mn in pre-Series A funding
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
During the covid-19 lockdown, the company ensured its supply chain by sourcing flower waste directly from the distressed horticulture farmers, bringing them critical income in these times. Co, a start-up backed by the-Kanpur, said on Thursday it has have raised $1.4 million in a pre-Series A funding round. The funding was led by IAN Fund and San Francisco-based Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, according to IAN Fund’s institutional investors include SIDBI’s Fund of Funds for Startups, apart from several marquee individuals in the league of Kris Gopalakrishnan, Sunil Munjal etc. During the covid-19 lockdown, the company ensured its by sourcing flower waste directly from the distressed horticulture farmers, bringing them critical income in these times. The company has developed ‘Fleather’ leveraging the flower cycling technology. He claimed his company was perhaps India’s first natural incense brand taking a digital-first approach and having a first-mover advantage as bio-leathers were barely available in India. “We are delighted to get IAN on board as an investor and the funds raised will be used to advance the research and scale operations of the company.”
Avail Finance raises $11.5 Mn round from Alphawave and Matrix
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Blue collar-focused lending startup, Avail Finance has raised Rs 85.6 crore~$11. 5 million in a Series B funding round from Alphawave Incubation Fund and Matrix Partners. The fresh round for the Bengaluru-based company has come after a gap of 13 months. Alphawave Incubation which is managed by Falcon Edge Capital led the latest round by infusing Rs 57 crore, while the existing backer, Matrix Partners poured in Rs 30.2 crore. Post allotment, Matrix Partners will be one of the biggest stakeholders in the company, commanding 26.4%, whereas Alphawave has picked up 11.5% in the company. As per Fintrackr’s estimates, Avail Finance has been valued north of Rs 500 crore in this transaction. Founded by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta in February 2017, Avail Finance caters to India’s blue-collared workforce, who are currently underserved by organized lending institutions.
Indian gaming startup Gamezop raises ₹32 crore from US investors Bitkraft
Published on 28th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Homegrown multi-games platform Gamezop with over 34 million monthly active users has raised ?32 crore in Series A funding from US-based Bitkraft Ventures, Velo Partners, and FJ Labs. “Gamezop powers the gaming section on various other platforms which want to drive up user engagement using games. Pushing on a new gaming application can be expensive. These partner tie-ups account for roughly 75% of Gamezop’s business,” said Gaurav Agarwal. “We have been looking to enter the Indian gaming market for a while and with Gamezop, the factors that excite us the most came together nicely – proven model ready to scale, extreme capital efficiency, solid product moat, and an unfair advantage in user acquisition. That Gamezop could scale to over 34 Mn users in a highly competitive space, while being profitable and with minimal external capital highlights the team’s capabilities to be a major internet company,” Malte Barth, Founding General Partner, Bitkraft said in a statement. In June, another gaming startup Bombay Play had raised $1.5 million in pre-series A round from Leo Capital, an angel investor and co-founder of Livspace Ramakant Sharma.
Byju's Gets $122m From Tech Billionaire Yuri Milner's Fund DST Global
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Homegrown education technology unicorn Byju’s has raised $122 million from tech billionaire Yuri Milner’s investment fund DST Global as part of its ongoing funding round, a month after storied Silicon Valley investor Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital chipped in $23 million at a $10.5 billion valuation. Byju’s has allotted 42,666 Series F preference shares to DST Global for ₹908. The company hopes to raise as much as $400 million in the ongoing round, sources told ET. It was unclear whether DST Global and other investors were also purchasing secondary shares and at what valuation. Byju’s has so far in the year raised around $550 million, with Tiger Global and General Atlantic ploughing in $200 million each in January. Investor interest in the company has been piqued after registered users grew to 57 million and it enrolled over 3.5 million paid subscribers quickly. ET reported last week that Unacademy was in talks to raise $150 million led by Japan’s SoftBank at a valuation of $1.3 billion, or more than two and a half times its valuation from its previous round. Vedantu, too, saw its valuation more than doubling to $600 million when it raised $100 million from US-based Coatue Management recently.
Trevor Milton: This Founder Is Giving His First 50 Employees $233 Million Of His Stock
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Trevor Milton, the founder and chairman of Nikola Corp., is giving the first 50 employees of the electric-truck startup 6 million of his own shares after making a promise when he hired them. “When I first started this company I was looking for the best employees in the world and it was a huge risk,” Milton said in a video posted on his Instagram page. I’m making good on my promise when I hired the first +- 50 employees – giving 6,000,000 of my personal shares to them. Trevor Milton August 26, 2020 The shares he’s handing over in the Phoenix-based company are currently worth about $233 million. The stock has surged since Nikola started trading on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger in early June, driven by investor appetite for electric-vehicle manufacturers, even as the company has yet to produce its first vehicle. Milton said a couple of those first employees have since departed. Among them is the Agnelli family’s CNH Industrial NV, Jeff Ubben’s ValueAct Capital Management, South Korea’s Hanwha Group, and Nikola’s first backer: Worthington Industries Inc., the metals manufacturer where Milton used to work.
IIT Bombay-developed app Lokacart is looking to solve inventory woes of small businesses and farmers
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
The e-commerce platform, developed jointly by Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan and Ashvin Gami, looks to address inventory management woes of small businesses and farmers. The app has been developed for Android and iOS platforms. Speaking to Moneycontrol, Ramakrishnan said the app has been developed after gathering feedback through various meetings and discussions with farmers and farmer groups. “This app is tailor-made for small enterprises. The idea behind Lokacart was to complement the existing arrangements in the MSME market place. We did not want to disrupt existing arrangements of customers with their suppliers. Many other e-commerce platforms take the discount model. But we realise that every seller has an USP and therefore, we have stayed away from that model. There are a lot of hidden costs in the discount model and we don’t want to overload the customer with these comparisons,” he told Moneycontrol. “They are already operating in other areas and have channel partners. Lokacart will be leveraging that avenue as it is very robust. They will be able to guide the sellers on how to use the app,” he said.
Alibaba arm Ant Group highlights 'significant influence' over Paytm, investments in Zomato, in IPO prospectus
Published on 27th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Chinese technology major Ant Group has reiterated in its IPO prospectus that it has significant influence over Paytm’s holding company One97 Communications in which it has a 30.33 percent stake. Ant’s stake in Paytm would be pegged at around $5 billion, based on its total $16 billion valuation after it raised $1 billion in November 2019, The Economic Times reported. Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has been criticised as the company’s major investors are Chinese. Ant also highlighted its investment position in Zomato – where it holds a 25 percent stake. The food delivery platform is yet to receive $100 million of the $150 million it had raised from existing backer Ant Group, the report noted. Ant said it has made its interests known after the Centre mandated that all investments from bordering countries will need government approval, stating: “Separately, in 2020, a change in foreign investment regulation in India led to our further evaluation of the timing of our additional investment in Zomato.” Paytm and Zomato did not respond to queries, the report added.
Sequoia top backer of Indian unicorns with eight bets, China's Tencent 11th with 3 investments
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Venture capital fund Sequoia Capital India is the top backer of unicorns, or firms which have attained a valuation of over $1 billion, a report said on Wednesday. The India-based Sequoia has invested in eight Indian unicorns including Byju’s and Unacademcy, followed by Japanese investor SoftBank and British Steadview Capital’s seven investments each, as per the Hurun India Unicorn Investors List. Even as concerns get raised about the Chinese play in Indian startups, the report said that only one investor from the country’s northern neighbour – Tencent Holdings – features among the top unicorn backers. With three unicorn investments, Tencent was ranked joint eleventh along with six other investors that include Bennett Coleman and Company, Bessemer India Capital Holdings, Chiratae Ventures, General Atlantic Singapore, IFC and LTR Focus Fund. In the list of top investors, where each has backed at least three unicorns or more, American venture capital funds lead the way with seven investors in the list, followed by India-origin funds which have five investments, it said.
Brew House records 10X growth during COVID-19 lockdown as consumers turn health conscious
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Brew House is one such startup that offers certified bottled iced tea. Part of the Positive Food Ventures and founded in 2017, the company is a collaborative effort of Food Empire Holdings of Singapore and Siddharth Jain, who is also the founder of Brew House Ice Tea. Jain always harboured entrepreneurial ambitions, and he realised that ice tea had become a huge beverage category globally, amounting to $65 billion, and growing on the back of rising health concerns. Brew House is now set to launch new ice tea products – ginger turmeric lemonade and strawberry hibiscus lemonade. Brew House has been aggressively working with both smaller cloud kitchens, and hospitality brands such as Taj Palace Mumbai and the ITC Grand Bharat apart from direct online sales through their platforms. As people feel the need for an organic beverage brand that offers cleaner, healthier products, Brew House now has an enormous opportunity to sell in a space where the consumer post-COVID-19 has become very conscious about health and what they consume. “We have seen a 10x growth from the start of the lockdown to now, in August, and we hope that this will continue to rise as people become more aware of what they are eating and drinking,” Jain revealed.
Redis Labs joins unicorn club with $100 mn fundraise
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI : Database software startup Redis Labs has raised a $100-million Series F round led by Bain Capital Ventures and TCV, at a valuation of over $1 billion. Redis Labs, known for its open-source database, has so far raised over $246 million. In India, it caters to companies across sectors ranging from Saas startup Freshworks, messaging service Hike, matchmaker Matrimony.com, online payments Razorpay and OTT platforms such as SonyLiv. The US-headquartered firm will use this capital to expand the global Redis community, beef up its go-to-market team and programmes, invest in product development, expand sales and marketing, and build partnerships, besides developing and launch Redis AI. “India is one of our fastest growing markets over the past 18 months and we’ve made significant investments there to support and grow the massive opportunity…our success is driven by two factors-developers love for Redis, and the move to the cloud by so many companies in India,” said Ofer Bengal, co-founder and CEO, Redis Labs.
Verloop.io raises $5 million in Series A funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation
Published on 26th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Customer support automation platform Verloop.io has raised $5 million as a part of its Series A funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation, managed by Falcon Edge Capital, along with existing investors IDFC Parampara and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan. The five-year old startup will use the funds to fuel its product development roadmap, which includes hiring top talent across the data science and engineering domains and will expand its presence across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Verloop.io enables businesses automate customer support across channels and claims to have processed over 2 billion queries from customers across its clients, with over 100 million unique users having interacted with the platform. “With rapidly changing consumer behaviors, brands are now looking to enhance their customer support experience. We are excited to back Verloop.io and believe their offering is well tied with increasing demand for solutions that enable brands to supercharge their support teams and drive growth,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder and partner of Falcon Edge Capital. In 2018, the Y-Combinator backed startup had said that it was supporting Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, and Telugu.
Vy Capital buys Urban Company Esops worth $5 million
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
According to Urban Company chief executive Abhiraj Singh Bhal, about 183 employees, across designations and roles, were eligible to participate in the latest Esop transaction, of which about 120 people, ranging from call centre executives to senior leadership, took part. In 2017, Urban Clap, as it was known then, had undertaken a $1 million Esop sale round, which was followed by a $2.5 million secondary round in December 2018. Under Urban Company’s Esop programme, every employee gets Esops at a face value of one rupee and the prevailing stock price has crossed Rs 1 lakh. Founded by Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra, Urban Company runs spa, beauty, grooming, repairs and cleaning services and earns revenue through a commission fee model based on transactions made on its platform. In August last year, the company had raised $75 million in a Series E round led by US-based investment fund Tiger Global Management, valuing it at close to $1 billion. The firm has till date cumulatively raised about $200 million from investors, including SAIF Partners, Accel, Steadview Capital, and Vy Capital.
ShareChat buys hyperlocal information platform Circle Internet
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Homegrown social media app ShareChat has acquired hyperlocal information platform Circle Internet. “The acquisition will help us penetrate deeper into geographies and nurture a thriving hyperlocal content ecosystem that will understand and serve the latent content needs of the next billion internet users more effectively,” said Manohar Charan, VP – Corporate Development and Strategic Finance, ShareChat. SAIF Partners is a common investor in ShareChat and Circle Internet. Circle Internet provides locally-relevant information to Indian language internet users across tier-II and tier-III cities. Circle Internet’s 15-member team has joined ShareChat, and CEO Shashank Shekhar will head the overall content strategy of the Twitter-backed social media platform.
Co-living startup COVIE to start with 3000+ beds in Pune, Bangalore, and Mumbai
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
PUNE: Real estate entrepreneurs Swapnali Bhosale Kadam and Abhishek Kumar have launched COVIE, a new age co-living startup with 3000+ beds in Pune, Bengaluru and Mumbai. The startup aims at clocking revenue at an industry average of Rs 10,000 per bed in the first year through aggressive acquisition of customers, beds and geographical reach. Talking about the new venture, Swapnali Bhosale Kadam, Co-Founder, COVIE said in a statement, “The co-living ecosystem in India has been growing at a speedy pace with newer working models coming into the scenario. The concept has brought in opportunities, mostly catering to students, professionals, and senior citizens, thus bringing much growth for this segment. Currently, our focus is on building long-lasting capabilities that are vital in strengthening the co-living ecosystem in India.” COVIE caters to all the three segments of students, professionals, and senior citizens under the brands Covie Ed, CovieLiv & Covie Plus.
Mumbai startup Passwork offering 'Walk to Work' solutions raises angel investment
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
To ease this, Passwork is a mobile based real-time marketplace for using co-working spaces and workspaces which allow users to book a place to work from near their homes. Through its ‘Walk to Work’ platform, Passwork has initiated a B2B network for offering customized flexible workspace solution and remote workforce management tools to corporates. With the introduction of ‘Walk to Work’, employees will be able to work in an office-like environment with all the necessary supplies and amenities without needing to go to an actual office, allowing employees to do away with all the inefficiencies they face at home and secure the interests of the organization. Passwork’s remote workforce management software has been specially designed to help corporates efficiently manage their remote workforce by issuing e-passes for employees to come to a particular satellite office, QR code based check-in and check-out to analyze work hours, sharing virtual and physical meeting details on the Passwork app and keeping a tab on meeting hours to avoid work-life imbalance. McKinsey research indicates the percentage of time worked in main and satellite will decline while flex office space and work from home will increase.
Paytm Payments Bank enables Aadhaar card-based services
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Paytm Payments Bank Ltd on Monday said it has enabled banking services via Aadhaar cards for its customers. With the integration of Aadhaar enabled Payment System, PPBL’s customers can now access basic banking services such as cash withdrawal, balance enquiry and obtain a mini statement through the business correspondent of any banking and financial institution in the country. Will also be made live, the company said, adding that this will benefit people in rural and semi-urban areas who have limited access to the physical bank branch and ATM. “With AePS, we are aiming to accelerate the financial inclusion in our country and ensure that people in the remotest part of India are able to access complete banking services,” Satish Kumar Gupta, CEO and Managing Director, Paytm Payments Bank, said in a statement. AePS is a National Payments Corporation of India-led model which allows online interoperable financial inclusion transaction at point of sale through the business correspondent of any bank using the Aadhaar authentication. The only inputs required for a customer to do a transaction under AePS mode are IIN, Aadhaar number and fingerprint.
Interview Mocha raises pre-Series A round, sees participation from Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI: Pune-based digital skills assessment platform ‘Interview Mocha’ has raised a pre-series A funding round of $600,000 with participation from Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks, Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, and Anand Chandrasekharan, former director at Facebook. Co-founder Mishra said that the pandemic had accelerated digital transformation initiatives across organisations and this was fuelling demand for the company’s online assessment products. The fresh round of funding will be used for the company’s rebranding campaign among other operations, he said. On the funding, Domkundwar of Better Capital said, “Talent leaders of global companies are struggling to upskill their workforce to continue to be competitive. Interview Mocha brings one of the most important tools for human capital management – a ‘skill meter’ for talent leaders to rapidly assess skills and invest in learning and development scientifically. I am not surprised by the demand Interview Mocha is seeing and am glad to be an investor.” Mathrubootham of Freshworks, said, “Amit and Sujit have built a solid team, and a product that customers love. The company is already profitable and has a big addressable market.”
Education-focused lender ISFC raises $30 mn
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
MUMBAI : ISFC, a non-bank lender focused on lending to educational institutions and entrepreneurs managing such institutions, has tied up equity and debt commitments worth $30 million from existing investor Gray Matters Capital and other partners such as non-banking financial companies, including Incred, U Gro Capital, and Profectus Capital. “We believe this sector is undervalued and will go through a significant evolution and expansion in the next few years,” said Erika Norwood, president and chief executive officer, Gray Matters Capital. The new investment round and joint lending partnership will enable ISFC to expand its current partner network from 6,500 schools to 15,000. “Out of this $30 million, $8 million is from Gray Matters, our existing investor. The remaining $ 22 million is from three NBFCs in the form of direct assignment to create liquidity and joint lending arrangement for disbursements for the remaining part of this financial year,” said Sandeep Wirkhare, managing director and CEO, ISFC. The lender believes demand from education institutions will be better because of spending on infrastructure, digitisation, and teachers training, following the implementation of the New Education Policy, Wirkhare said.
Mindtree co-founders’ Mela Ventures to invest in early-stage startups
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Early stage startup fund Mela Ventures, started by Mindtree Ltd co-founders Krishnakumar Natarajan and Parthasarathy NS, has done a first close of its maiden fund ‘MV Core Tech Fund – I’ with ₹130 crore in commitment from a set of Indian investors. The Sebi-approved ‘Category-2 AIF fund’ for early stage companies targets a fund size of ₹200 crore. The announcement comes a year after Natarajan and Parthasarathy, now managing partners with Mela Ventures, left Mindtree post acquisition by business conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd in June last year. Other India-based Mindtree cofounders – Subroto Bagchi, Rostow Ravanan, Janakiraman Srinivasan, and Kalyan Banerjee – are also part of Mela Ventures in the form of investors. The founders believe their experience in building Mindtree to a billion-dollar company from a VC-funded startup will be a valuable asset to the entrepreneurs. Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani invests in startups through VC fund Fundamentum while Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal have launched Axilor Ventures focussed on early-stage startups. TV Mohandas Pai, former Infosys board member invests in technology startups through VC fund Aarin Capital.
Otipy raises $1 million from Inflection Point Ventures
Published on 25th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Otipy, the social commerce venture of farm-to-fork agritech startup Crofarm, has raised a million dollars from Inflection Point Ventures, the company said on August 24. Otipy is working on a model that connects consumers to farmers through women resellers. It has partnered with 1,000 resellers to cater to around 1 lakh consumers, it said. The company offers fresh fruits and vegetables sourced directly from farms and prices them 25 percent lower than market rates. “We have built a very strong community with our partner resellers and have empowered them by providing an alternate source of income especially in these times when other sources have dried up. Also, with the recent changes in APMC our farmer network is growing at a very fast pace,” Otipy cofounder Varun Khanna said. Otipy will use these funds to augment the existing technology infrastructure, expand the reseller base in Delhi-NCR and go deeper with its farmer relationships. It also uses customer relationship management tools on WhatsApp to seamlessly interact and serve consumers while keeping the overall transaction fully transparent at every step.
PhonePe Looks To Go Public Even As Twitter Calls For ‘Uninstall’
Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read
PhonePe plans to go public by 2023 and will list itself in India or the US depending on market conditions. Walmart-owned digital payments platform PhonePe is reportedly working aggressively to go public by 2023 as a separate entity in the US or India, eyeing a valuation of $7 to $10 Bn. PhonePe will finalise between India or US initial public offering, based on the market conditions. A person close to the matter said that Flipkart plans to go public by 2022 in the US. Interestingly, a Morgan Stanley report published last year had valued PhonePe at $7 Bn. It had highlighted that the company could be worth as much as $20 Bn in the bull case, especially due to the growing potential of the company beyond just payments. According to a Business Standard report citing sources PhonePe has been looking to diversify its portfolio after the government’s zero MDR rule which leaves very little revenue potential in UPI alone, and this remains a key aspect of the company’s plan to go public. Even as PhonePe plans its path to profitability and to go public, consumer sentiment is something the company needs to be taken into account too.
Edtech companies see record buyouts this year
Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Edtech and e-health startups are on an acquisition spree as stronger companies attempt to fill gaps in portfolios or try to gain scale amid a surge in demand for remote learning and treatment options. Year to date, there have been 13 buyouts and funding rounds worth $954 million in edtech startups, compared to nine buyouts and investments of $520 million in 2019, according to data sourced from researcher Tracxn Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Healthtech saw four acquisitions and funding rounds totaling $300 million, in the year to date period, according to Tracxn data. Unacademy bought PrepLadder, a postgraduate medical entrance exam preparation platform for $50 million in July, as it looks to strengthen its presence in medical entrance examination categories. While Unacademy raised $110 million at a valuation of more than $500 million earlier this year, Byju’s has raised $500 million this year at a valuation of $10.5 billion and is in talks to raise another $400 million from DST Global. Much like e-commerce marketplaces, dominated by the duopoly of Flipkart and Amazon, a spate of mergers and acquisitions in both e-health and edtech may see the rise of a few, strong companies.
Digital payments market in India likely to grow 3-folds to Rs 7,092 trillion by 2025: Report
Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: Digital payments in India are expected to grow over three-folds to Rs 7,092 trillion by 2025 on account of government policies around financial inclusion and growing digitisation of merchants, according to a research report. The country’s digital payment market was worth around Rs 2,162 trillion in 2019-20, RedSeer Consulting said in its report. “Mobile payments will drive around 3.5 per cent of total digital payments of Rs 7,092 trillion by financial year 2025, up from the current 1 per cent. The total mobile payment users who currently stand at about 162 million would reach around 800 million during this period,” the report said. RedSeer, which serves various e-commerce companies and venture capitalists including Tiger Global, estimates that the growth of digital payments specifically will come out by increasing penetration with offline merchants and the penetration with the unorganised retail sector will grow on the back of increased merchant digitisation in cities beyond tier II. Redseer sees COVID-19 as a catalyst to digital payments across India.
sense.bio, fitness startup launches e-store for covid-19 essentials
Published on 24th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bio, an IOT based health and fitness app in India has announced the launch of an e-store offering covid-19 essentials and personal protective gears to meet the surge in demand during the outbreak of the global coronavirus crisis. Launched with an idea to reduce the risk of viral transmission, the store makes it convenient for the customers to order the products while staying indoors. Bio said” Now since the unlock is happening across nation and people are resuming work now it’s the time to take extra safety measures with protecting themselves and boosting their immunity. Bio e-store witnesses the need for modern personal protective gear. The store strives to reduce the gap and boosts the implementation of safety measures. Bio is a data-driven app backed by innovative technology. The products can be ordered from its user-friendly mobile app and website.
Employee social network Mesh raises funds from Y Combinator, others
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
One of Silicon Valley’s most influential startup incubators, Y Combinator, has backed Mesh, an internal social network for employees. Started in March this year by Saurabh Nangia, Rahul Singh, and Gaurav Chaubey, Mesh is building an internal social platform for companies that makes it easier for employees to track their daily and weekly tasks, manage long-terms goals, and get timely feedback from managers. “At present, corporates typically use two disparate platforms, one for managing their monthly and quarterly goals, and another one for managing their daily and weekly deliverables. We are offering both in a central place, thereby making performance management a simple, ongoing habit rather than a forced, periodic process” chief executive Saurabh Nangia told ET. Mesh also has a Facebook-like social feed that helps employees interact with their co-workers, to recreate a physical office environment. Over time, Mesh starts curating the user’s public profile showcasing their top strengths, competencies and contributions based on the progress made on their goals and feedback received from other employees. In the future, Mesh also plans to integrate data from third-party platforms like customer relationship management platforms onto the feed, Nangia said.
Palantir, tech’s next big IPO, lost $580 million in 2019
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
SAN FRANCISCO: Palantir, a Silicon Valley company with strong links to the defense and intelligence communities, is poised to be the latest in a string of tech companies to offer shares on Wall Street well before turning a profit. Palantir’s revenue in 2019 was $742.5 million, nearly 25% more than the year before. Palantir has recently been the subject of sustained protests over its government contracts, particularly its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and critics have called on the company to stop assisting the agency with deportations. Despite efforts to land more commercial customers, Palantir earned $345.5 million from its work with government agencies in 2019 and $397 million from commercial entities, the documents said. Palantir has arranged a structure to ensure that its founders retain power. In the documents, Palantir made the case that its strong ties to government contractors were an opportunity, citing the “Systemic failures of government institutions to provide for the public.” Karp, who received roughly $12 million in compensation last year, controls 8.9% of the company’s voting power.
Goldman plans to raise about $2 billion for a new venture fund
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is considering raising a venture and growth fund of around $2 billion, a move that would make it a bigger player in the competitive world of technology investing, according to people familiar with the matter. A $2 billion fund for investing in growth- and venture-stage companies would be one of larger ones in the industry and could give the bank an edge with large startups that are seeking big checks from investors. Other than SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund, which has about $100 billion, only a handful of firms have several billion dollars of venture and growth capital to invest. This new fund comes after Goldman reorganized its investing teams last year. Investing in startups at different stages could help Goldman Sachs work with some of these same businesses when they go public through its investment banking divisions. Goldman Sachs has made a number of growth stage investments and has also made lucrative bets in Uber Technologies Inc. and Plaid Inc., when they were private. Growth-stage investing is just one of the pillars under its newly reorganized merchant bank and it has already been active in the market with a new giant credit fund that could raise at least $10 billion.
FarEye raises $13 million led by Nilekani’s VC fund
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: FarEye, a logistics software-as-a-service platform, has raised $13 million as an extension to its Series D round, taking the total funding in the round to $37.5 million. The funding was led by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum Partnership, a growth-capital fund for mid-stage technology companies in India, backed by Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal, and Korea’s largest investment firm KB Global Platform Fund. Nilekani and team are putting in $10 million, while KB Global has added $3 million, said Kushal Nahata, chief executive officer, FarEye. Investment in logistics space is essential for the economic growth of a nation and FarEye has captured the pulse of this industry and has all the ingredients to head towards global leadership, said Sanjeev Aggarwal, co-founder of Fundamentum. “… FarEye paves the way for its enterprise customers such as DHL and Walmart to gain flexibility as well as visibility in logistics by providing the easy-to-use platform to manage all moving parts,” said Chunsoo Kim, managing director at KB Investment. In April, FarEye had raised $24.5 million in Series D from M12 with participation from Eight Roads Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, and existing investor Saif Partners.
SAIF Partners in talks to back Country Delight at Rs 1,000 crore valuation
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
SAIF Partners, one of India’s leading venture capital firms, is in advanced talks to lead a Rs 100-crore round in direct-to-consumer milk startup Country Delight, sources have told Moneycontrol. The round will value Country Delight at Rs 1,000 crore, up from the Rs 600 crore it was valued at in February 2019. SAIF Partners and Country Delight did not respond to Moneycontrol’s emails seeking comment. The Delhi-NCR-based, which delivers in Pune, Mumbai, NCR and Bengaluru, has a revenue of about Rs 30 crore and an EBITDA of Rs 3 crore per month, indicating it is close to profitability. Country Delight is also the only venture-backed player in the D2C milk brand market. Country Delight competes with Parag Milk Foods Ltd, a listed stock whose brand Pride of Cows runs a similar premium subscription-based delivery model. For the quarter ended March 31, 2020, Parag Milk Foods reported a net profit of Rs 8.5 crore, on an operating income of Rs 524 crore, less than Rs 26.8 crore profit on an income of Rs 623 crore for the December 2019 quarter.
OLX launches franchisee model for used cars
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Consumer-to-consumer marketplace OLX on Friday launched its new franchisee-led pre-owned car retail offering where dealers and consumers can buy and sell pre-owned cars. The franchise-led model which will be branded as ‘OLX Autos’ will enable dealers to become a part of OLX India’s dealer network and is an extension of OLX’s online classifieds marketplace, according to a release. As OLX exclusive partners, the dealers will leverage the OLX Integrated-Omni Channel Store experience where they will be able to retail pre-owned cars across OLX’s online marketplace as well. The new franchise-led model contributes to further strengthen OLX’s market leadership in the pre-owned car segment thereby augmenting the largely untapped and unorganised pre-owned car retail market in India. Talking about the launch of the franchise network in India, Amit Kumar, head OLX Autos India, said, “We are launching the franchise operations to cater to the growing demands to organize retail of pre-owned cars in the country. We are confident that our move into franchising will bring several entrepreneurs onto our platform. Together, we will significantly enhance the customer experience for buyers and sellers.”
Edtech startup LEAD School raises $28 million led by Westbridge capital
Published on 22nd August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Education technology startup LEAD School, which helps private schools digitize their curriculum, has raised $28 million in a Series C funding round led by Westbridge Capital along with existing investor Elevar Equity. The latest round of funding will be used by the company to accelerate the development and roll out of new product offerings, increase its school network in Tier 2-3 cities and hire talent across domains. It started off as a full-fledged school focused on middle school students. Sumeet Mehta, co-founder and chief executive of LEAD School said that the firm’s partner schools have seen class averages improve from below 60% to above 70% after they adopted digitized curricula. “In the new world order, the lockdown ensuing the pandemic has given a massive boost to online education. In the last few months, the edtech sector has evolved rapidly, changing the trajectory of the Indian education system multifold. As a firm, we believe in investing in ventures that have a large scale impact and are convinced LEAD School will create a strong positive impact on the educational outcomes of millions of young minds”, said Sandeep Singhal, managing director, WestBridge Capital.
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.
Trell raises $11.4 million series A
Published on 18th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Mumbai: Indian community-commerce platform Trell announced a $11.4 million Series A round led by KTB Network. After the Indian government banned many popular Chinese apps like TikTok in the country, a lot of Indian brands like Trell, Chingari and Roposo have tried to fill the void left behind these apps. Since the Chinese app ban, Trell claims it has witnessed 500% growth with a total of 15 million plus creators on its platform receiving more than 5 billion monthly views and has been rapidly growing since then. With over 75 million downloads and 25 million monthly active users on its app, Trell claims its has grown 27 times in the last 12 months and has emerged as one of the biggest lifestyle social platforms in India. In March, Trell had announced a $4 million pre-Series A funding round. Trell is a mobile application, where users come together to share 3-minute vertical videos in native languages. Trell monetises through social commerce where the passion-based community of content creators enable users to make well informed and suitable purchase decisions for better lifestyle choices.
Milagrow expects 15-20-fold growth in robot sales in FY21 due to Covid-19
Published on 17th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Homegrown robot maker Milagrow expects a 15-20 fold jump in sales this fiscal with machines replacing humans in various processes due to the spread of Covid-19 pandemic. The demand for floor cleaning and other has picked up as people faced domestic help constraints amid concerns around the pandemic, Milagrow founder and chairman Rajeev Karwal told PTI. “We have seen the market exploding for In the first four months, we have achieved the entire turnover of what we did in last year. In early August we already sold 50 per cent of what we did in the last four months. We expect to sell 1 lakh units this fiscal with an average price of Rs 45-50 thousand,” Karwal said. “At 300,000 units, India market will be around 10 per cent of China market which 3 million units. India market mirrors China market with a lag of five years. I have seen the same for colour television segment, washing machine. This year also dishwashers, robotic vacuum cleaners have gone through the roof,” Karwal said. Karwal said that Milagrow market share may decline this year to about 35 per cent due to various brands coming in with a boom in the market but would again recover in the next financial year to 50 per cent.
Samsung may move part of smartphone production to India, plans to make devices worth $40 billion
Published on 17th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Electronics major Samsung might move part of its smartphone production to India from Vietnam and other countries. The South Korean company is planning to produce devices worth over $40 billion or Rs 3 lakh crore in the country. As per the daily, Samsung has submitted an estimate to the government to make smartphones worth $40 billion in the next five years under the PLI scheme. Samsung makes nearly 50 per cent of its phones in Vietnam. If Samsung’s plans follow through, it will join smartphone major Apple in moving a key part of its productions to India. “A total of 22 companies have filed their applications under the PLI Scheme. The benchmark for international mobile phone manufacturing companies was to manufacture mobile phones worth Rs 15,000 and above, whereas there wasn’t any such benchmark for the domestic companies. We welcome Apple and Samsung to India. Domestic companies – Lava, Micromax, Padget Electronics, Sojo – are welcome to go ahead,” said the minister. The global smartphone export market is estimated around $270 billion, out of which Apple has 38 per cent market share and Samsung 22 per cent by value.
Reliance Industries may buy Urban Ladder, Milkbasket to boost e-tail
Published on 17th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Reliance Industries is in talks to acquire online furniture brand Urban Ladder and milk delivery platform Milkbasket as it looks to strengthen its e-commerce play, said multiple sources familiar with the matter. The discussions with Urban Ladder have been going on for the last few months and are now at an advanced stage, said four sources briefed on the matter. A deal with Urban Ladder could be pegged at around $30 million, including further infusion in the business and earn-out for the management team, said one of the sources. Milkbasket’s previous talks with firms like Bigbasket and Amazon India haven’t fructified due to valuation mismatch, according to one of the sources. The Bengaluru-based Bigbasket, at the same time, also acquired DailyNinja to boost its subscription-based morning delivery business BB Daily. “It would not be productive to comment on media speculations,” said Urban Ladder co-founder Ashish Goel when contacted by TOI, adding that the company is “Working round-the-clock to rejuvenate the business”. Milkbasket co-founder and CEO Anant Goel did not respond to TOI’s emailed query.
Google in talks with ShareChat as latter scouts for $150-200 million
Published on 17th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU|MUMBAI: Google is in talks with ShareChat for investing in the Bengaluru-based social media firm, two people familiar with the matter told ET. ShareChat is looking to raise $150-200 million and is holding discussions with investors and technology companies, as it prepares to battle it out with over a dozen rivals to fill the gap left by banned Chinese apps, including TikTok and Helo. Google is not the only firm that has held discussions with ShareChat, which counts microblogging platform Twitter as one of its investors. In an interview with ET last week, ShareChat chief executive Ankush Sachdeva said the company is seeing a lot of inbound interest and it is talking to everyone, including all the global players. “Given how things have changed, especially after the ban, ShareChat benefits a lot in terms of time spent, in terms of revenue, in terms of daily active users. We are suddenly a lot more valuable than our previously thought valuation. We have got a lot of inbound interest and we are talking to everyone, including all the global players,” Sachdeva told ET. In July, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a $10 billion India Digitisation Fund, most of which will be invested in Indian companies over the next five to seven years.
For Nykaa, fashion is the next biggest frontier
Published on 15th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: Online beauty retailer Nykaa, which entered the unicorn club recently, is betting big on fashion and has seen sales recover by over 90% compared to pre-covid levels, said a top executive. “Fashion may be nearly 20% of our GMV in the near term. And we are working towards building it to almost 40% of our business in the next 3-5 years … our fashion category is already trending 160% of February levels,” Falguni Nayar, founder and CEO, Nykaa said in an interview. As covid-19 continues to disrupt businesses, Nykaa is capitalising on the trend of offline fashion retailers trying to sell their inventory online, as customers flock to shop virtually. “However, we at Nykaa pride ourselves on a small percentage of our goods being discounted. With offline stores being disrupted, fashion brands want to sell 20-30% of their goods on e-commerce, and with that they are bringing their new seasons online,” she said. “For a lot of fashion brands, which continue to look at India as a strong growth market, and establish a presence, Nykaa is not just an online retailer, but also has a strong omni-channel play with offline stores. And brands are looking to partner with us to not just help them create a presence but also retail their products, creating an end-to-end.” said Anchit Nayar, CEO, Retail, Nykaa.
SoftBank commits $1.1 billion to WeWork amid membership drop
Published on 15th August, 2020 | 1 min read
SoftBank Group Corp. is adding $1.1 billion to its WeWork commitment as the co-working company weathers declining membership amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a staff memo obtained by Bloomberg News. While WeWork’s second-quarter revenue rose 9% to $882 million from a year earlier, that marked a decline from its $1.1 billion haul in this year’s first three months. Still, the cash burn was less than the $1.3 billion in WeWork’s peak outflow in the fourth quarter of 2019, Ross noted. The new investment from SoftBank comes after its roughly $100 billion Vision Fund recorded losses after writing down WeWork’s valuation to $2.9 billion, down more than 90% from its $47 billion peak. SoftBank has invested more than $10 billion in WeWork. Last month, We Co., the parent of WeWork, asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by two of its board members against SoftBank for reneging on a $3 billion offer to buy the co-working company’s closely held shares. The new debt financing replaces a $1.1 billion commitment that was conditional on the tender offer agreed to last October, a SoftBank representative said.
Unacademy in talks to raise $150 million, led by SoftBank
Published on 15th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Unacademy is finalising a deal to raise around $150 million led by SoftBank, sources in the know told ET, boosting the ed-tech startup’s pre-money valuation to $1.3 billion, second only to industry leader Byju’s. Unacademy last picked up $110 million from Facebook and PE firm General Atlantic in February, at a valuation of $510 million. A SoftBank spokesperson said the firm will not comment on market “Speculation”. The fundraising will mark the first investment in an Indian firm by SoftBank since December, when it had backed eyewear retailer Lenskart. SoftBank Vision Fund’s other big Indian portfolio companies such as budget hotels chain Oyo and digital payments platform Paytm have also been under the scanner due to mounting losses. News website moneycontrol.com was the first to report SoftBank’s plans to invest in Unacademy on Friday. The likely funding from SoftBank comes after Unacademy saw a spike in online learners in the days following the Covid-19 outbreak.
Walmart's Flipkart eyes alcohol delivery foray with Indian startup, letters show
Published on 15th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Walmart’s e-commerce platform Flipkart has partnered with a startup backed by spirits giant Diageo to deliver alcohol in two Indian cities, according to government letters seen by Reuters, months after Amazon planned a similar foray. Flipkart and Amazon’s interest in delivering alcohol in India marks a bold move to make inroads into an alcohol market that is worth $27.2 billion, according to estimates by IWSR Drinks Market Analysis. The local governments of eastern West Bengal and Odisha states have said that Flipkart can be associated as a technology service provider of Diageo -backed HipBar, an Indian alcohol home delivery mobile application. HipBar, 26% owned by Diageo India, and Flipkart did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In June, Reuters reported that Amazon had secured clearance to deliver alcohol in West Bengal, signalling the U.S. e-commerce giant’s foray into the sector. Some states in India, like Gujarat in the west, prohibit alcohol retail. India’s top two food-delivery startups, Swiggy and Zomato, have also started delivering alcohol in some cities, as companies look to cash in on the high demand for booze from people staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
TikTok and its employees prepare to fight Trump over app ban
Published on 14th August, 2020 | 1 min read
TikTok and its US employees are planning to take President Donald Trump’s administration to court over his sweeping order to ban the popular video app, according to a lawyer preparing one of the lawsuits. Trump last week ordered sweeping but vague bans on dealings with the Chinese owners of TikTok and messaging app WeChat, saying they are a threat to US national security, foreign policy and the economy. The TikTok order would take effect in September, but it remains unclear what it will mean for the apps’ 100 million U.S. users, many of them teenagers or young adults who use it to post and watch short-form videos. The order would prohibit “Any transaction by any person” with TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance. TikTok didn’t return multiple requests for comment this week. The Fifth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution safeguard life, liberty and property from arbitrary government action lacking “Due process of law.” Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok, in a potential sale that’s being forced under Trump’s threat of a ban. The looming ban has annoyed TikTok users, some of them Trump supporters like Pam Graef of Metairie, Louisiana.
Gold prices fall today, down ₹2,000 per 10 gram this week
Published on 14th August, 2020 | 1 min read
On MCX, October gold futures fell 0.65% to ₹52596 per 10 gram while September silver futures dropped 1% to ₹70,345 per kg. Gold prices have been volatile since hitting a record high of about ₹56,000 last week. In the previous session, gold had risen 1% amid volatile trade while silver had surged about 6%. So far this week, gold is down over ₹2,000 per 10 gram. In global markets, gold prices were flat today at $1,952 per ounce. Gold has has fallen 4% so far this week amid a wild ride. Gold was supported by a weak dollar, which fell for a third consecutive session against its rivals, making gold cheaper for holders of other currencies. Gold ETFs have seen record inflows this year as investors rush for the safe-haven appeal of gold amid the coronavirus crisis upends markets and low returns on bonds.
PM Modi launches Transparent Taxation platform to benefit honest taxpayers
Published on 14th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Three main features of the platform are faceless assessment, faceless appeal and tax payers’ charter, PM Modi announced. India’s tax administration has been known for tax harassment, where overzealous well-intentioned officials while raising tax revenues, have dampened growth and at times done more damage than good. Tax officers told Reuters that faceless tax assessment may reduce tax collection and raise pressure on officers that are under stress to meet lofty tax targets for the current fiscal year. “The CBDT has given a framework and put in place a system in the form of this platform, a transparent efficient and accountable tax system,” she added. The platform will use technology such as data analytics and AI. “This adds strength to our efforts of reforming and simplifying our tax system. It will benefit several honest taxpayers, whose hard work powers national progress,” PM Modi had earlier said on Twitter. The launch of the platform carries forward the journey of direct tax reforms, following the several measures that have been taken by the CBDT to aid taxpayers. The focus of the tax reforms has been on reduction in tax rates and on simplification of direct tax laws.
Amazon India launches online pharmacy service
Published on 14th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Bengaluru: E-commerce firm Amazon India has launched Amazon Pharmacy, marking its entry into the online medicine segment that has significant gained momentum during the covid-19 led lockdown and even after unlocking. It has launched the online pharmacy service in Bengaluru to begin with, and may conduct pilots in other cities too going forward. “As a part of our commitment to fulfill the needs of customers, we are launching Amazon Pharmacy in Bengaluru allowing customers to order prescription-based medication in addition to over-the-counter medicines, basic health devices and Ayurveda medication from certified sellers. This is particularly relevant in present times as it will help customers meet their essential needs while staying safe at home,” an Amazon spokesperson said. Bigger healthcare firms like Practo, 1mg, Medlife, PharmEasy, Netmeds as well as smaller startups like BeatO and mfine are registering increasing user interest and demand post covid, as people spend on boosting their immunity, treat illnesses through online consultations and buy medicines online. Several countries are trying to shift healthcare delivery on to the internet, incentivise telemedicine, encourage online medicine bookings and use chatbots to answer patient queries.
Medtronic to invest Rs 1,200 cr to expand Hyd R&D centre
Published on 13th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Hyderabad: In a move that’s sure to boost Telangana’s ambitions to emerge as a global medical devices hub, the $30.6 billion Irish medtech giant Medtronic Plc is investing Rs 1,200 crore over the next five years in expanding its existing R&D centre in Hyderabad into its largest global R&D centre outside the US housing over 1,000 engineers. The Medtronic Engineering & Innovation Centre at Hyderabad will conduct advanced engineering R&D and product development in the areas of design, analysis, advanced hardware and software development and testing, Madan Krishnan, VP-Indian Subcontinent and Minimally Invasive Therapies Group-APAC, Medtronic, said in a statement. The existing Medtronic R&D centre, spread over 90,000 sq ft at Gachibowli, has been operational since 2011 and currently houses over 350 engineers. The centre, which was acquired by Medtronic following its acquisition of Covidien in 2014, has already filed over 140 patents and made over 400 IP disclosures. Medtronic is looking to ramp up its operations to over 1,000 engineers and has leased about 1.5 lakh space at the DSR Infratech in Financial District, Shakthi Nagappan, director, Telangana Lifesciences, told TOI on Tuesday after a virtual meeting held by Telangana industries & IT minister KT Rama Rao with the Medtronic top brass.
Hyperion says it’s developed a hydrogen-powered supercar, now it needs money
Published on 13th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Hyperion Companies Inc., a decade-old Los Angeles outfit, is entering the race for speculative transportation capital today when it pulls the cover off a supercar that it says will turn oxygen and hydrogen into water and speed. The car will purportedly sprint from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in 2.2 seconds and travel 1,000 miles before running out of fuel. “We’re proposing what the penultimate hydrogen car should be,” said CEO Angelo Kafantaris. “This car is meant to showcase the beauty of hydrogen.” On a highway, hydrogen is cleaner than gasoline and doesn’t require a massive battery and the precious lithium and recycling headaches that go with it. There are only three hydrogen models to choose from: the Honda Clarity, Hyundai Nexo and Toyota’s Mirai, all relatively bare-bones sedans that cost about $60,000. Not surprisingly, hydrogen filling stations are hard to come by.
Paytm kick-starts stockbroking services
Published on 13th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Paytm Money, a subsidiary of One97 Communications Ltd, which operates Paytm, has been planning to enter the stockbroking business from its inception in October 2018. Paytm Money will build products for users who are new to trading. With a full-scale launch expected in September, Paytm Money expects to reach 100,000 daily trades within six months and achieve 250,000 customers in the first year. Paytm Money chief executive officer Varun Sridhar said in an interview that it currently has 90,000 users who are on a wait list for stockbroking, with almost half of Paytm Money’s total user base wanting to try it. “With a bank, and other financial offerings, Paytm’s aim currently is financial inclusion, and owing to the demographic the company targets, it is really easy for the platform to get access to a new set of users that has never traded before. Hence, cost is definitely a USP for us for stock broking. Also, only 25% of Indian population currently trades in the public market. With Paytm Money’s entry and the scale we provide, we can definitely expand the size of the market,” said Sridhar. Paytm Money plans to enter the derivatives segment as well as provide options around futures trading.
Eduvanz raises $5 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia India
Published on 13th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Digital non-banking company Eduvanz has raised $5 million as part of its Series A round led by Sequoia India, along with existing investor Unitus Capital. Eduvanz provides loans to students for upskilling as well as school fees, and leverages parameters like social media scores, education scores as well as taking guardians or parents as guarantors, to enhance its underwriting process. “Over the next decade, our country will need skilled workforces trained in new technologies and new skills. By 2022, we need 700 million skilled workers. However, only 10% of the total workforce receives any formal skill training. By combining innovative student-centric loan solutions, Eduvanz is enabling higher enrollment for learners across colleges, universities, certification partners, institutes, and schools,” said Varun Chopra, chief executive, Eduvanz. “There is a large unmet credit need for education in India. Eduvanz is catering to this by building a differentiated lending business with exceptional credit quality. Their future employability-based underwriting approach will make education and skilling more accessible to accelerate a diverse range of careers,” said Ashish Agrawal, principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP. Eduvanz aims to disburse ?400-500 crore in loans over the next two years. In the first six months of 2020, Indian edtech startups raised close to $795 million compared with $108 million in the year-ago period, according to data from Venture Intelligence research.
Skyroot India’s first private company to test upper-stage rocket engine
Published on 12th August, 2020 | 1 min read
HYDERABAD: Aerospace startup Skyroot Aerospace has successfully test fired an upper-stage rocket engine, becoming the first Indian private company to demonstrate the capability to build a homegrown rocket engine. The 3-D printed rocket engine – Raman, named after Nobel laureate CV Raman – has fewer moving parts and weighs less than half of conventional rocket engines with a similar capacity. “We demonstrated India’s first 100% 3D-printed bi-propellant liquid rocket engine injector. Compared to traditional manufacturing, this reduced the overall mass by 50%, reduced the total number of components and lead time by 80%,” Chandana said. Over the years, India has emerged a global hub to launch small satellites using the polar satellite launch vehicles. As the country opens its space sector to private players, startups such as Skyroot, Agnikul and Bellatrix are building small launchers, with 3-D printed engines, hoping to bring down the cost of launching satellites and capturing a bigger pie of the global small satellite launch market. V Gnanagandhi, another former Isro scientist and a senior vice president at Skyroot, who is leading its liquid-propulsion team, said: “This test has qualified a unique monolithic design of injector with complex internal channels and demonstrated high performance for hypergolic rocket propellants.”
Rocketship.vc - built on data science and analytics - marks final close of Fund-II at $100 million
Published on 12th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Vc has made the final close of its second fund at $100 million, the Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture capital firm announced on Tuesday. The Los Altos, California-headquartered venture capital firm’s latest investment vehicle has been backed by the likes of Vulcan Capital, the investment arm of Vulcan Inc, the company founded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, US private markets investment manager Adams Street Partners, the family office of Marc Andreessen, and Chris Dixon, both partners at Silicon Valley investment powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz. Rajaraman was also an angel investor in Facebook and Lyft.The firm, whose maiden investment vehicle was a $40 million fund that closed in 2015, has been a growing presence in India, having invested more than $14 million in Asia’s third-largest economy till date. Vc has invested in 44 companies across seed, Series A and B rounds, with 46% of its investments outside the US, according to data shared by the investment firm. “Venture Capital is undergoing its biggest shift in decades. As entrepreneurship goes global, firms are recognising that the traditional Silicon Valley-based networking approach of VC is unable to scale to the new reality of meeting startups wherever they are,” Ramakrishnan said.
Zin Boats reinvents the electric speedboat in a bid to become the Tesla of the sea
Published on 12th August, 2020 | 1 min read
“The reason I started working on electric boats specifically is because I had a kid, and I had a come to Jesus moment,” he told me. That level of draw limited electric boats to being the aquatic equivalent of golf carts – in fact, carts and some of the more popular old-school electric boats share many components. Considering traditional boats’ fuel efficiency and the rising price of marine gas, going electric might save a boat owner thousands every year. “The boat was designed around the battery. The unique part of using an electric system is we can put the motor anywhere we want,” Zin said. “So if you live on a lake in Montana that’s electric only, you have the option to go at five knots, and you can’t even cross the lake because the boat is so slow or you can have a fully functional powerboat that you can water ski behind, the same speeds you get in a gas power boat, but it’s absolutely emissions free. I mean, this boat is as clean as it gets – there’s zero oil, zero gasoline, zero anything that will get into the water.” In fact there are a few competitors, but they tend to be even more niche or piecemeal jobs, mating an electric engine to an existing hull and saying it’s an electric boat that goes 50 knots.
Transit-focused payments startup CityCash raises $1 million in seed funding
Published on 12th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Public-transit focussed payments firm CityCash has raised $1 million as a part of its seed round from early stage venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners. National Common Mobility Card is an interoperable transit card project for Indian transportation ecosystem and was launched by the Indian government last year. At present, the startup is focussing on creating an offline tap-and-pay based payments ecosystem for low to middle income Indian consumers who use public transit and make small retail transactions. Earlier, CityCash has raised funds from lending fintech company FinoPaytech, the promoter of Fino Payments Bank. At present, the startup has partnered with Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation, and has issued 3 million cards to consumers. “India’s micropayments cannot be carried out online, as they are dependent on network availability, with merchants facing high charges. UPI and card POS machines only operate in online mode, which is not suited for micropayments. These micro SMEs and consumers are also denied formal working capital or loans due to absence of data. CityCash is uniquely positioned to create a transit-led, offline tap-n-pay ecosystem,” said Anup Jain, managing partner at Orios Venture Partners.
Flipkart launches accelerator programme for idea-stage startups
Published on 11th August, 2020 | 1 min read
BENGALURU: Walmart-owned Flipkart has launched an accelerator programme for idea-stage startups in the consumer internet technology space, to help them build market-ready solutions. Startups that are shortlisted for Flipkart Leap will undergo 16-week mentorship training and receive an equity-free grant of $25,000, the homegrown ecommerce company said in a statement. “With innovations and disruptions in the field of technology coming about each day, we want to be at the forefront of driving scalability and helping these startups bring value to the industry as well as Indian consumers,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer of Flipkart Group. After completing the programme, the final participants of Flipkart Leap will pitch their successful model to investors, corporates, and other ecosystem players and may also be considered for funding by Flipkart. Last year, the company announced the launch of a venture fund to back early-stage technology startups in the ecommerce, fintech, payments, and other complementary spaces.
Homegrown Chingari raises $1.3 million seed funding
Published on 11th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: Indian social media platform, Chingari, which rose to fame following the government’s ban on 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, has received seed funding of $1.3 million from AngelList, LogX Ventures, iSeed, Village Global and some others. The company says it will use the funds for hiring, accelerate product development, ramp up its platform and improve consumer engagement. According to the company, it has about 25 million downloads right now and 3 million daily active users. Indian short video apps like Chingari and Mitron have risen to fame following the government’s ban on TikTok. The ban has also started a race amongst Indian platforms to secure new funding and take advantage of the void. As reported earlier by Mint, Indian platform Sharechat is in talks with Microsoft for an investment of $100 million. While Chingari’s funding is good news for the market, it could also be seen as a lack of confidence on Indian platforms from investors.
Balance of payments will be strong this year, says Piyush Goyal
Published on 11th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Clawing back: In July this year, we have reached about 91% of exports witnessed in July 2019, says Mr. Goyal. India’s balance of payments this year is going to be “Very very strong” on the back of significant improvement in exports and a fall in imports, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday. “We are in July at about 91% export level of July 2019 figures. Imports are still at about 70-71% level of July 2019. So, broadly, our balance of payments this year is going to be very, very strong, which is why we feel confident that Indian industry will see opportunities for themselves, will see opportunities of growth,” he said at a FICCI webinar. India’s exports fell for the fourth straight month in June as shipments of key segments like petroleum and textiles declined but the country’s trade turned surplus for the first time in 18 years as imports dropped by a steeper 47.59%. The country posted a trade surplus of $0.79 billion in June. Mr. Goyal said that the government was taking steps to support and promote domestic manufacturing and industry. “We shall ensure that any unfair treatment meted out to Indian industry across the world will be taken up at the highest levels on your behalf,” he said.
IndiGo to raise up to ₹4,000 crore through QIP
Published on 11th August, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: The board of directors of InterGlobe Aviation Limited, which operates the country’s largest domestic airline IndiGo, has approved raising up to ₹4,000 crore through a qualified institutions placement, the company said on Monday. The board of directors “At its meeting held today, i.e., August 10, 2020, has considered and approved the raising of funds for an aggregate amount not exceeding ₹4,000 crores through an issue of equity shares by way of a qualified institutions placement, in accordance with the relevant provisions of applicable law and subject to approval of the Company’s shareholders and receipt of applicable regulatory approvals”, the airline said in a stock exchange notification. 81 crore in the March quarter, from a year-ago profit of ₹596 crore. At the company’s post result call last month, the airline’s chief financial officer Aditya Pande had said the airline’s operations weren’t being able to off-set its fixed costs though the company managed to bring down its daily cash-burn to ₹30 crore from ₹40 crore during the previous quarter. 8 crore comprising 7,527.6 crore of free cash and ₹10,922. 6 crore on 30 June, up 27.8% from the year-ago period.
LeapFrog ramps up India exposure, scouts for deals
Published on 10th August, 2020 | 1 min read
NEW DELHI: LeapFrog Investments, one of the largest impact investors globally, will consider ramping up its exposure to India, a critical geography for the growth-stage investor, as it looks to scout for more deals in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The London-based firm, which has pumped in an estimated $200 million in local ventures, may look to allocate as much as 20% of its third fund – a $750 million investment vehicle – which it launched last year, to India. “We plan to put more capital into India, and increase the amount beyond what we have historically put in. The digital evolution in India has been massively accelerated by the telcos, in particular, Jio. The context of a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem, and a highly-accelerated digitisation, along with now Covid-19, has created a vast opportunity to reach out to lower-income people, and the last mile, which is real India,” Kuper told ET over phone. The global impact investment firm has so far exited Shriram CCL, the group’s financial services distribution arm, and Mahindra Insurance Brokers Ltd. It currently has nine companies in India in its portfolio, including Ascent Meditech, MedGenome, Northern Arc, Dvara, Fincare, Magma and NeoGrowth.
81% SMEs confident of recovery post Covid, 57% have no cash reserve: Survey
Published on 10th August, 2020 | 1 min read
As per the revised criteria, any firm with investment up to Rs 1 crore and turnover under Rs 5 crore is classified as a. Despite several businesses remaining closed during the lockdown, 81 per cent of micro-enterprises polled are confident of a recovery post Covid-19 whereas 57 per cent reported not having any cash reserves to survive, according to a survey. Initial results of a six-month survey that is underway by GAME in association with LEAD at Krea University covering 1,500 micro-enterprises also reveal that 40 per cent tried to borrow money to cover expenses. Only 14 per cent of the overall borrowing was from formal borrowing sources. As per the revised criteria, any firm with investment up to Rs 1 crore and turnover under Rs 5 crore is classified as a “Micro” enterprise. Madan Padaki, co-founder of GAME, said Covid-19 has left a devastating impact on the Indian economy, especially micro-enterprises that comprise around 99 per cent of all firms in India. 70 per cent female business owners suggested inter-house conflicts as the biggest challenge while 53 per cent men responded to the same. Women also faced more unaffordable expenses than men, with 46 per cent suggesting the same, the survey said.
PM Modi launches ₹1 lakh crore Agriculture Infrastructure Fund
Published on 10th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Mr. Modi launched the scheme via videoconferencing and interacted with farmers across the country. He also released the sixth instalment of funds under the PM-KISAN scheme, which amounted to ₹17,000 crore to about 8.5 crore farmers. The first ₹1,000 crore was sanctioned on Sunday to over 2,280 farmer societies under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, which was approved by the Cabinet a month ago, the statement said. “The scheme will support farmers, PACS , FPOs , agri-entrepreneurs, etc. in building community farming assets and post-harvest agriculture infrastructure. These assets will enable farmers to get greater value for their produce as they will be able to store and sell at higher prices, reduce wastage, and increase processing and value addition,” the statement said. During the launch event, Mr. Modi spoke to representatives from three PACS from Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh who are beneficiaries of the scheme. He said the scheme would give farmers and the agriculture sector as a whole a boost and “Increase India’s ability to compete on the global stage”, the statement said. The agriculture fund, a 10-year ₹1 lakh crore scheme starting this financial year, was a “Medium-long term debt financing facility for investment in viable projects for post-harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets through interest subvention and credit guarantee”, it said.
Asia-Pacific may see $31.4-54.3 bn remittance losses due to COVID-19: Asian Development Bank
Published on 10th August, 2020 | 1 min read
New Delhi: Asia Pacific, which accounts for a third of the global migrant workforce, is likely to face remittance losses of USD 31.4-54.3 billion due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Asian Development Bank said in a report. Job losses stemming from COVID-19 are hurting households around the world, but for Asia and the Pacific’s 91 million migrant workers – a third of the global migrant workforce – the impacts will be particularly severe, the ADB said in August 2020 brief on ‘COVID-19 Impact on International Migration, Remittances, and Recipient Households in Developing Asia. The countries likely to face more severe effects from the pandemic-induced decline in remittance inflows are the ones where remittance shares to gross domestic product and per capita remittances are high. “The remittance flows to developing Asia is to plunge amid the pandemic as during the first months 2020, remittances began to contract in major migrant source countries…While some migrant workers may feel altruistic and send more money to their families in extremely difficult situations, prevailing weak economic forecasts are pointing toward declining remittances.” A study based on microdata from selected economies in South Asia and Southeast Asia suggests that a 10 per cent increase in remittance inflows leads to a 3-4 per cent rise in real GDP per capita, it said.
India got FDI worth $22 billion during pandemic: Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant
Published on 9th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Kant also lauded India’s FDI regime and called it among the most liberal in the world. “Our FDI regime is the most liberal in the world. We have continued to attract huge amount of investments. During the pandemic itself, India attracted over 22 billion worth of direct investments into India. Almost 98% of it comes through automatic route,” said Kant. According to United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, India’s economy could turn out to be most resilient in South Asia and will continue to attract investments in 2020 even though global FDI is expected to fall. India had jumped to 9th position in the list of countries with top FDI investments in 2019, up from 12th position in 2018. In July, India’s PM Narendra Modi invited foreign investors to invest in India and assured global companies that the government is capable of carrying out deep structural reforms. While India has been getting huge investments from global companies, investments form China has been put under scanner. Under the new rules, notified in April, prior government approval is required for all foreign investments from countries which share a land border with India.
Grofers starts grocery sales with Rs 50 cr support to local partners
Published on 9th August, 2020 | 1 min read
Softbank-backed online grocery seller Grofers on Saturday announced a nine-day sales scheme and Rs 50 crore working capital and advance payments support for partners manufacturing products locally. The company aims to sell 9 crore items produced by its partners including 5.5 crore items that are produced locally, Grofers said in a statement. “Our aim, with the latest edition of GOBD is to help our small scale manufacturing partners, MSMEs to come back on track so that we can together continue serving customers across India,” Grofers CEO and co-founder Albinder Dhindsa said. The company has partnered with 800 micro small and medium enterprises for the GOBD that started on Saturday. The brand, under its proprietary initiative Brandfarm works with small and local businesses. The company has ramped-up its warehouse capacities by adding three new facilities to its network and has hired additional 2,000 warehouse staff to meet heightened demand, the statement said. “The company has deployed more than Rs 50 crore as working capital support and advance payments to support its small manufacturing partners in a single month. The e-grocer over the nine days aims to sell 2.5 crore items and 5.5 crore items manufactured by its partners and Make in India products respectively,” the statement said.
With Instagram Reels' launch, Zuckerberg's personal wealth hits $100 bn
Published on 9th August, 2020 | 1 min read
The personal wealth of Founder and CEO has touched $100 billion after the social network launched a Tik-Tok rival called Reels this week. Amid uncertainties surrounding TikTok’s business in the US, Facebook has introduced Reels that will allow people to create and discover short, entertaining videos. With Reels, one can record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects and new creative tools. Reels can be recorded in a series of clips – one at a time, all at once, or using video uploads from your gallery. Reels was first introduced in Brazil last year as a pilot. Instagram announced the extension of the testing of Reels to India in July, barely a week after India announced the ban of 59 Chinese apps including. On Friday threatened legal action against an executive order that US President Donald Trump issued, prohibiting the China-based company from doing business with the US firms after 45 days.
Amazon, Flipkart set to witness business worth $600 mn during sale events
Published on 9th August, 2020 | 1 min read
E-commerce Amazon and Flipkart are expecting to witness a total business of about $600 million during their ongoing sale events. This is at least 25 per cent higher in terms of sales compared to the business these firms would have generated for such small scale events during pre-Covid times, according to the industry insiders and analysts. Walmart-owned Flipkart is running the 5-day ‘Big Saving Days’ sale till Monday, coinciding with Amazon’s 48-hour Prime Day sale which ended on Friday night. “These are not dominant sale events compared to Flipkart’s Big Billion Days and Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, but these are expected to witness a total sales of about $600 million,” said a person familiar with the sale events of Flipkart and Amazon. Amazon India witnessed bumper sales of smartphone handsets during the two-day sale with “Many items getting out of stock,” according to a person familiar with the development. During Amazon’s Prime Day sale, several handsets such as the OnePlus 7 range were sold at a discount of up to Rs 10,000 on Amazon. “Based on consumer feedback, just because the sale was on and many don’t want to visit markets and malls for non-essentials they need, they have ended up placing orders during these sales,” said Taparia.
Byju’s eyes initial public offer, buyouts
Published on 8th August, 2020 | 1 min read
At a time students across the country continue to learn from home, top edtech firm Byju’s has doubled down on its business, raising large chunks of capital and buying code training platform WhiteHat Jr for $300 million.In an interview, Byju Raveendran, CEO, Byju’s, spoke of how the deal will help the company’s planned entry into the code-skilling segment; merger and acquisition plans; and a possible initial public offering.Most of the changes in our traditional school curriculum in the last few decades were focused on passive learning methods, but we believe that the future of learning must be based on active leaning methods.Coding is a subject and a skill that fits well into the active learning methodology, and young kids are always curious in their early schooling days; and somewhere down the line, because of exam or performance fears, they lose curiosity.In the future, we will also look at companies that fit into our long-term vision of helping students get access to different learning formats of online learning.There are not many large edtech companies in India yet and, since the acceptance of online learning is better than before in the country, there is still room for growth in certain edtech segments.