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Sep 29

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BigBasket In Talks For $400m Round

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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.

Sep 29

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Uber Weighs Purchase Of BMW-Daimler Ride-Hailing Venture

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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.

Sep 29

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Sales Acceleration Startup SquadStack Raises $5 Million Led By Chiratae Ventures

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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.

Sep 29

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Smallcase Raises $14 Million From DSP Group, Others

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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.

Sep 28

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Paytm Money Now Live With Stock Broking Services And MF Trades

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Paytm Money Now Live With Stock Broking Services And MF Trades

Finshorts | Published on 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..

Sep 28

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Vahdam Teas Partners With Byju’s To Tutor Children Of Tea Estate Workers; Pilot Launched In Darjeeling

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Vahdam Teas Partners With Byju's To Tutor Children Of Tea Estate Workers; Pilot Launched In Darjeeling

Finshorts | Published on 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.

Sep 28

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How This ERP Solutions Provider Is Redefining The Online Education System

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How This ERP Solutions Provider Is Redefining The Online Education System

Finshorts | Published on 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.

Sep 28

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IISc Startup Equine Biotech Develops Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit, Gets ICMR Nod

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IISc Startup Equine Biotech Develops Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit, Gets ICMR Nod

Finshorts | Published on 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.

Sep 26

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End Of Loan Holiday Threatens Pain, Defaults For Indian Business

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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.

Sep 26

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Marque Angel Investors Pick Up Stake In Wellbeing Nutrition

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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.