News Roundup: 9 Indian Startup News Stories That You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [25-30 June 2018]

We bring to you the latest dope of the Indian startup news stories of the week from the Indian startup ecosystem.

One of the biggest news impacting the Indian startup ecosystem was the announcement of Delhivery’s $350 Mn IPO. As the Indian logistics sector continues to expand and witness increased competition, ecommerce logistics startup Delhivery is looking at its next phase of growth with this IPO in the next few months. Currently, Delhivery is valued at $650 Mn. Further, the company is aiming for a valuation of $2-2.8 Bn in the IPO through a mix of primary and secondary share sales.

Important Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

Central Government To Bring In A Regulator For Skills Training

The proposed regulator will be set up at an arm’s length from the ministry through an executive order. Discussions are at an advanced stage and the ministry will issue an order in a month. The skill development and entrepreneurship ministry will act as the administrative ministry for the regulator. This will help in further standardising the quality of skills training in India.

CAIT To Hold Protests Against Walmart-Flipkart Deal

CAIT has now announced to hold dharnas in 1000 places across the country. CAIT threatened a nationwide agitation if the government clears $16 Bn Walmart-Flipkart deal.  CAIT also approached the CCI stating that the deal will create unfair competition and an uneven level playing field for domestic players.

Defence Ministry Issues New Rules For Startups

The ministry seeks to encourage new companies to undertake research projects to develop or upgrade weapon systems and to work towards reducing imports. There will be no government funding for developing the prototype, but there is an assurance of orders on successful development and trials of the prototype.

WhatsApp Pay Stuck For Approval From NPCI And RBI

WhatsApp Pay is stuck in a limbo to fully launch its payment services. The NPCI has not disclosed about giving the approval for the formal launch of WhatsApp Pay, also,  there is lack of clarity on whether WhatsApp Pay is fully compliant with the RBI’s rules. WhatsApp Pay is bound to be a disruptive force among big players such as Paytm, Google Tez,  and more, but when will it launch has become a big question now.

It was also reported this week that WhatsApp has been testing its payments services on the Facebook platform in India. In order to provide more support to its data privacy drive in India, WhatsApp has also put on stage its offer to become an interoperable payments platform with other BHIM-UPI apps.

Zomato Reaffirms Its Commitment To India, Adds ‘Tip’ Feature

Zomato has launched its restaurant reviews and rating platform across 25 new cities in India. According to the global head of  Zomato, India continues to be the highest-priority market, so it wants to enable the growth of the restaurant industry and help the consumers to make better food choices.

In another development, Zomato has added a new feature in it that allows customers to give a ‘tip’ to the delivery executive.  This is said to be an initiative aimed to support, empower, and appreciate the job of delivery executives.

Smartphone Brand Gionee To Sell Its India Operations

Gionee is to sell its India operation to the promoters of handset maker Karbonn Mobile and Gionee India’s minority shareholder, Arvind R Vohra, entering into a long-term brand licensing deal. It is being speculated that the Indian partners will have the rights to use the Gionee brand for over 10 years. Gionee’s plans to stay ahead in the game with the change in hands can be seen as a major step up for the company.

Tamil Nadu and J&K To Launch Startup Policy Soon

The Tamil Nadu government is set to come out with its startup policy in the next three months. Also, the Tamil Nadu government will launch ‘Innovation voucher scheme’ to promote startups.  Innovation voucher scheme, the government will provide these promising startups with small lines of credit of $2.9K (INR 2 lakhs) to $5.8K (INR 4 lakhs). For this, the government has allotted $2.94 Mn (INR 20 Cr). The officials have planned to make Tamil Nadu an innovation hub, to ensure startups don’t move out of the state.

Also, The Jammu and Kashmir state government and Invest India are looking to provide a much-needed boost to the state’s startup ecosystem. The first step in this direction is to formulate a comprehensive startup policy for J&K. The state government is looking to establish an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) facilitation centre at the JKEDI. This year, the JKEDI has trained 254 youth for entrepreneurship.

Ecommerce War Zone In India To Have A New Army, Myntra vs Amazon Fashion War And More

• Google is now planning to launch ecommerce business in India later this year. The company is expected to get a huge benefit of its subscriber base of over 18 Mn (for Gmail) and several other features including supporting vernacular content. The company has also partnered with business chambers for digital programmes.
• Amazon Fashion, and Myntra hosted their Wardrobe Refresh Sale and End Of Reason Sale (EORS) and the competition has been super close. In the third edition of the Wardrobe Refresh Sale, hosted from June 21-24, Amazon Fashion offered a selection of over 2 Mn styles from over 500 fashion brands. At the same time, Myntra, which hosted its End Of Reason Sale (EORS) from June 22-25, recorded 2 Mn people shopping across Myntra and Jabong for 9 Mn products.
• Amazon India announced the launch of a new monthly plan that offers more payment flexibility to the customer. Prime is Amazon’s membership program, where for a subscription fee for INR 129, members can enjoy benefits for a month. Customers who prefer to pay annually can sign up for the annual plan for INR 999 per year.

Other Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

Ecommerce Task Force To Examine Data Localisation

The Indian government has sought inputs from the ecommerce task force to explore ways to prevent Indian data from being controlled or mined by entities outside the country. With a view to regulating the space, the government wants the policy to facilitate “continued Indian ownership of Indian startups.

Paytm To Provide Life Insurance Cover

The One97 Communications owned company has announced to offer life insurance cover to eligible offline partner stores and their staff that accept digital payments. The aim is to help secure the lives of families whose financial security is often severely threatened at the demise of their sole bread-earner. They will also have the option to insure their families or increase the cover value in exchange for a nominal amount.

Freshworks Crosses $100 Mn In ARR

The company has also introduced a fully integrated cloud bundle – Freshworks 360. the $100 Mn ARR mark has been led by its flagship support product Freshdesk (Customer Support Software) and continued rapid growth with its Freshservice (IT Service Management Software) and Freshsales (CRM Software) products over the last several quarters. This is being accredited to its growing user-base of more than 150K businesses and organisations worldwide, including both larger enterprises and thousands of global SMB customers.

Govt May Delay Implementation Of Tax Collection At Source

With continued changes to the provisions of Goods and Services Tax (GST), the government may now defer the implementation of tax collection at source (TCS) which is a major relief for ecommerce service providers like Amazon and Flipkart. It has been decided to defer for three months, by a senior government official. For ecommerce platforms, this will mean tax deduction and deposit of 1% on every payment made to a vendor whenever goods are sold.

Globally, Bengaluru Ranks Second To Launch A Startup

Following the global tech startup ecosystems such as Boulder, Bengaluru has claimed the second spot in the list of best locations for launching a tech startup. Bengaluru performed exceptionally well in the business category with, over 7,500 startups and the largest amount of investors (6,236).

The Karnataka government had launched the Karnataka Startup Policy in 2015 with a vision to stimulate the growth of 20,000 tech startups by 2020. The government also announced the launch of ELEVATE 100, an initiative that is aimed at identifying and supporting 100 of the most innovative startups.

OYO To Now Expand Its Business In Other Countries

OYO Hotels is planning to launch its operations in Indonesia, UK and a few other European countries, within next 12-18 months. The primary focus is to strengthen the foothold in India. The company claims to have transformed over 5,000 exclusive hotels in its chain through franchise and manchise. It has reached 100,000 keys and aims to reach 180,000 keys by this year.

InMobi Partners With Microsoft

Indian mobile adtech company InMobi has entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft Corp. as part of a technology collaboration.  Microsoft Azure claims to provide the global scale and platform to meet the needs of the marketing industry with more regions than any other cloud provider. The companies will work in cooperation on the go-to-market approach, offering these integrated advertising and marketing solutions to Microsoft’s global enterprise client base.

Modi Lauds Startups’ ‘Can Do’ Attitude, Urges Corporates

PM Modi was speaking to about 41 top business leaders in India at the third annual meeting of the AIIB. During the meeting, he urged the corporate sector to invest in a ‘big way’, especially in the agriculture sector, which provides a livelihood to over 58% of the rural households in India. At the AIIB meet, Modi also touched upon other areas such as medical devices, electronics, and defence equipment.

BankBazaar Adds Short Term Loans

BankBazaar has planned a partnership with two of the key players in the arena, CASHe and EarlySalary. The companies have combined for the purpose of salaried customers, the category has similar eligibility criteria as personal loans or any other unsecured credit product. BankBazaar is the partner of both customers and lenders for personal loans. The company is looking forward to e the platform’s wide distribution network and its customer portfolio, especially in the short-term lending space.

 Payoneer Collaborates With e-Residency Programme

E-Residency programme is now collaborating with Payoneer, to transform the way e-residents in India send and receive cross-border payments. It offers dedicated support to the spontaneously growing e-resident population across the world. The mission of Payoneer is to grow the business globally by providing them with a wide range of cross-border payment solutions.

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