15 Indian Startup News That You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [News Roundup]

We bring to you the weekly dose of important Indian startup news of the week.

The biggest Indian startup news for the week was Freshdesk rebranding to Freshwork. Freshworks is a new umbrella brand, that will bring together the company’s growing, a suite of business software. Freshdesk was launched in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as a helpdesk software for customer support. The company currently has more than 100,000 clients in 145 countries.

Amazon infusing $32 Mn (INR 207 Cr) in Amazon Transportation Services, the logistics arm of Amazon India was another big Indian startup news of the week. The company had earlier invested $10 Mn (INR 67 Cr) in the logistics platform, in September 2016.

Also, Logistics company DHL India announced its plans to invest more than $100 Mn to expand its warehouse capacity in India. The company aims to increase the warehouse space to more than 10 Mn square feet by 2020, from the current 7 Mn sq ft.  Also,

Important Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

Jobs To Depend On Startups: Pranab Mukherjee

Another important Indian startup news that gained media attention was President Pranab Mukherjee stating that the solution for job creation depends on Indian startups and small businesses. He made this statement while addressing a special session of the All India Management Association, at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, on June 7, 2017, The AIMA also announced during the event, the setting up of a council for teaching management and entrepreneurship skills.

iVOOMI To Invest $38 Mn In Indian Market

Hong Kong-based electronics major, iVOOMi announced plans to invest about $38 Mn (INR 250 Cr) in the Indian market. The funds would be used to strengthen the company’s foothold in the market by entering into alliances with technology and retail companies.

State Govt. Launches Goa Startup Policy

The draft focus on the promotion of IT startups and the concept of IT. The aim of the policy is to create 5,000 new jobs in the IT sector, over the next five years. It will also work towards putting Goa on the global startup ecosystem map by 2025.

Flipkart Ads Targets Digital Marketing Channels

The company has tied up with, Google and Youtube to target customers across digital marketing channels. They expect to sell bundled digital products, which will generate additional revenue for Flipkart ads. Flipkart Ads, launched in May 2015, aims to become a $100 Mn business by March 2018.

Also, the company has launched a Gridlock Hackathon to solve Bengaluru’s traffic woes. The contest will run from June 7, 2017, until June 21, 2017. It is open for technology centric solutions, as well as those that partially leverage technology through out-of-the-box thinking. The hackathon will run online and participants can submit their solutions for macro problems like Bengaluru’s overall traffic, or traffic snares in specific areas like Silk Board, KR Puram etc.

Online Housewive Resellers Are Going To Touch 21-23 Mn By 2022

As per a recent report released by Bengaluru-based consulting firm Zinnov, 2 Mn women homemakers across the country registered $9 Bn gross sales by selling apparels and lifestyle products adding to the online resellers’ community in the country. With India’s ecommerce market aiming to touch $220 Bn by 2025, benefitting from this – the online housewive resellers are going to touch 21-23 Mn by 2022.

Aditya Birla Group Will Launch Payments Banks

This was another important Indian startup news of the week. The move will come into effect after the merger of Aditya Birla Nuvo, with Grasim Industries. The deal is supposed to get completed by September quarter end in 2017. In August 2015, The Reserve Bank of India had granted the payments bank licenses to 11 companies including Aditya Birla Nuvo and Vodafone.

Banks Look To Cash On UPI Payments

According to a mail sent by, HDFC, INR 3+ taxes, would be charged for transactions ranging from INR 1-INR 25K. It will be INR 5+ for transactions ranging from INR 25K – INR 1 lakh. These charges on UPI transactions would be levied from July 10. UPI is a one touch transaction for transferring money between any two parties, using a ‘unique virtual address’ on a smartphone.

Airtel Business Allows SMBs Internet Plans Without Data Caps

Airtel aims to aid the development of Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) and startups in India. It will allow small and emerging businesses to select and purchase Internet plans via unlimited leased line connections. It also offers new communication enhancing and collaboration products that will allow a faster Internet connectivity for these startups and SMBs and improve their ease of doing business.

UberPool Saved 936K Fuel In Mumbai In 1 year

The cab’s sharing service is currently available in six Indian cities – Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune, and Kolkata. Together in these six cities, Uber claims to have saved,  3.44 Mn liters of fuel, logged 73.38 Mn kilometers of travel and reduced 8.12 Mn kg of carbon emissions with UberPool. In Mumbai, it has travelled 14 Mn kilometers and reduced 2622 Metric Tonnes of carbon emissions.

DEN Network Sells Teleshopping Channel To Pimex Broadcast

DEN Networks has planned an exit from the TV commerce business which it operated by the name of DEN Snapdeal Home Shop Channel. Post the sale, DEN will focus on the cable and broadband industry. Snapdeal already exited the network in March 2017. Following the exit, the DEN and Snapdeal names will be dropped from the TV commerce business’ branding.

Cloudtail Gets Injunction Against Excel Telesonic

Delhi High Court has asked Excel telesonic to stop using the alleged “deceptively similar name” – Cloudtele. In its lawsuit, Cloudtail mentioned that it a “well-known mark” and the use of Cloudtel by Excel Telesonic leads to an infringement of its registered trademark. The company has asked either or the destruction of the domain name ‘ http:www.cloudetele.com’ or transfer it to the ecommerce seller.

Paytm CEO Buys $12.72 Mn Lutyen’s Bungalow

This was the most interesting Indian startup news this week. The new Bungalow is a 6,000 ft. residential property, for which an advanced payment has already been paid by Vijay Shekhar, after signing a MoU. Lutyens is amidst the most expensive real estate zones in New Delhi.  All the land and buildings in Lutyens belong to the central government. Except for 254.5 acres which are available for private use.

Besides this, Paytm has enabled traffic challans payments. This service is currently live in Mumbai, Pune, and Vijayawada and will get expanded to other cities soon. Vehicle owners can log onto Paytm, tap on ‘Traffic Challan’, enter their vehicle number, and after verifying the details, proceed to pay for the challan. This will generate a digital invoice and the customer’s surrendered documents will be dispatched via postal services by the respective police department.

Other Indian Startup News Stories Of the Week

MagicX And Mihup Halts Operations

MagicX’s website is no more operational as well as the mobile app can no longer be installed. The founders Pratyush Prasanna and Arun Kumar have already quit the startup. Based out of Bengaluru MagicX was an on-demand task management app which provided utility services through an AI-based chat enabled platform. It was earlier known as Magic Tiger.

On the other hand, Mihup was an artificial intelligence based platform which provided recommendation engines, based   information on travel, sports, news, entertainment restaurants etc. Based out of Kolkata, the site is no more operational and displays message as ““Working hard to come back soon.” The founders however termed it as a pivot and as hift to B2B business model.

Excelity Global Partners With Zeta

Excelity can now offer its customers Zeta Optima’s digital portfolio comprising electronic meal vouchers and paperless reimbursements for medical, fuel, communications, LTA and so on. Also, Excelity customers can now access Zeta’s single digital interface to monitor and administer multiple employee benefits across their organisation. Excelity processes $20 Bn payroll & benefits per annum on its proprietary platform.

Via.com Ties Up With Jewelsouk.com

Travel, retail & fintech company, Via.com has tied up with online jewellery marketplace with multi-brand Jewelsouk.co, to sell exclusive branded collections of gold and diamond jewellery through VIA outlets. VIA agents can book products from Jewelsouk for their customers on the agent portal or mobile app. It also marks VIA’s foray into leveraging its formidable physical agent presence in the smaller towns and cities,

Knowlarity To Integrate With Zendesk

With this association, Zendesk aims to expand its services in India. The partnership with Knowlarity will help Zendesk to enrich its product by closing the loop of its offering and integrating a call solution in its software. Also a feature will be included in the customer engagement software suite for emerging markets like India.

Idea Money Partners With OYO

The partnership aims to support Idea Money customers with limited or no internet access, to book hotels online with OYO at their nearest Idea Money Retail store. The collaboration will allow users to easily book an OYO across 200 cities in India. Idea retailers will enable OYO to extend its standardized offerings to Tier 3 and Tier 4 markets.

Fynd Collaborates With Reliance Brands Limited

RBL will take the Fynd Store live in stores for its other premium brands. This includes 17 GAS stores, 10 stores of Brooks Brothers, 7 Hunkemöller, and 17 Superdry stores. Early February, Fynd introduced Fynd Store in over 20 brand outlets of Steve Madden by collaborating with RBL.

AI Startup Talespin Forays Into Image Tagging

Talespin’s technology stack uses deep learning to classify and tag product images on different attributes like color, collar, sleeves, occasion, etc. This coupled with the chatbot helps retail brands answer three core questions for customers shopping online – “What should I buy?”, “Is this available in my size?” and “Is there anything similar to this?”. This can help brands cut down on costs that come with current manual processes of tagging as well as reduces room for error.

Acer India, CAIT & Tally Solutions Launch “BIZGURU”

BizGuru, will be a one-stop plug and play business solution for all accounting and GST compliance needs. BizGuru comes with Acer’s world-renowned PC products and pre-installed Tally.ERP 9. The initiative is supported by CAIT, who have been helping Indian traders embrace new technology for the last decade.

Indus OS Partners With Digital Turbine

Currently live, Indus OS launched Digital Turbine’s Ignite platform to power its mobile app campaigns mid May 2017. The partnership further aims to provide tailored app recommendations that fit the local market and improve end customers’ overall experience.

DJUBO Launches PoS Android App

DJUBO POS is a cloud solution for restaurants and food outlets, and hotel outlets. The POS app is expected to increase the adoption of DJUBO within the hotel’s operations. The app is also GST ready along with customer tax & service charge options. It is equipped to manage Kitchen Order Ticket (KOT) and create orders for dine-in, in-room dinning & takeaway.

Kraftly Launches ‘MySite’

Through MySite, Kraftly will design, integrate, and support a dedicated website for registered sellers who sign up for this offering. These websites will empower the small-scale sellers to run their own complete website in one click using existing products on Kraftly. Also, MySite will help strengthen the online base of the sellers via paid & social media marketing tools.

Advantage Media Partners With White Rivers Media

Advantage Media looks to bring their proprietary Remarketing Tool to the country. White Rivers Media will have exclusive rights to represent this tool in the Indian Sub-Continent. With this collaboration, they aim to provide strategic online re-targeting solutions to the top ecommerce players in India.

Stay tuned for the next edition of the News Roundup: Indian Startup News Of The Week!

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