News Roundup: 7 Startup Stories That You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [14 November – 19 November]

Alibaba’s Single Day’s sales crosses $1 Bn in sales in the first one hour, which is way ahead from Indian ecommerce unicorn’s entire year sale. Alibaba’s Singles’ Day Sale has reportedly grossed $17.8 Bn in sales. However, the festive season sales in India which ran in the last week of October, right before Diwali saw $2.2 Bn in sales, which is the combined amount for Flipkart, Myntra and Snapdeal.

In another development, Udacity India has launched GetHired to get direct interviews for its Nanodegree graduates. This initiative is limited to 500 people in first batch and the admission is invite based. The salaries range from INR 6 Lakhs to INR 18 Lakhs per annum, with average of more than INR 10 Lakhs per annum.

Important Developments Of The Week

Flipkart Says No To IIM And IIT’s

Flipkart has decided against hiring new candidates from IITs and IIMs for the year 2017. The company will first focus on absorbing the students it previously hired.

LetsVenture Open Sources Legal Documents For Founders, Investors

In order to make paperwork more efficient, online deal-making platform LetsVenture has open-source all legal documents necessary for incorporation and fundraising for startups and investors. The goal is to make documentation transparent and easily accessible to founders and investors.

TiE Announces First Ever Global Summit In India

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a non-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals is organising its annual tech-focussed conference, the TiE Global Summit on December 16-17, 2016 at The Taj Palace, New Delhi. The summit aims to support early-stage entrepreneurs with guidance, mentoring, and direction.

Axis Bank Partners With Fintech Startup Active.ai

Axis Bank has announced to launch intelligent banking chatbots in partnership with Active Intelligence Pte (Active.ai), a Singapore-based fintech platform. The initiative aims to bring mobile banking services for its customers in the form of a conversational interface.

Zomato To Invest In Infrastructure And Loyalty Programmes

Restaurant discovery and food ordering platform, Zomato is working to launch two new initiatives, Zomato Red and Zomato Infrastructure Services. As per an official statement, Zomato will roll out the new services between February and June 2017.

Ola Launches Post Paid Service, Ola Credit

With an aim to tackle the ongoing cash crunch in the country, online cab hailing platform, Ola has launched a credit service called, Ola Credit. It is a postpaid service that will allow users to pay later for their rides. It will offer users credit for seven days that can be used for booking cabs via Ola’s platform. It can be repaid within those seven days via net banking, debit/credit cards, and Ola’s e-wallet.

Intex Technologies Partners With Indus OS

Indus OS has announced its partnership with Intex Technologies for providing innovative solutions for the Indian users and make India truly digital. With this partnership, Intex will be strengthening its regional push to tap the fast growing regional language consumers and launch Indus OS powered smartphones soon.

Other Developments Of The Week

Bata India Ties Up With Paytm And Freecharge

Bata India Limited has extended its payment options by accepting Paytm and Freecharge alternatives, to help consumers during demonetisation crisis. Additionally, members of Bata Club – the loyalty program, can avail of the many rewards and privileges, including redemption of points for purchases at this time.

Happay Launches ‘Express Onboarding Program’

Happay, a Bengaluru-based fintech startup has launched “Express Onboarding Program” for SMEs across India. The programme aims to accelerate the whole onboarding process from registration to card delivery, reducing it to two business days for companies in metro cities and three days for companies in non-metro cities.

Gaana And Willow TV To Offer Bundled Access To Both The Services

Music streaming app Gaana and Willow TV, the leading broadcaster of cricket in North America, will now offer bundled access to both services, and jointly market their offerings to the non-resident Indian (NRI) audience. Both businesses are part of Times Internet, which collectively reaches 10 Mn NRIs in the US market, making it the largest media offering in the NRI segment. With this partnership, Gaana will leverage Times Internet’s global assets to build its international presence.

AasaanJobs Launches A New Vertical – IT Recruitment

AasaanJobs, the online recruitment marketplace that connects entry-level job seekers with employers has announced the launch of its service in IT recruitment. Through this offering, AasaanJobs will cater its services in IT staffing for both permanent and contractual job roles.

The job profiles that are included under the new IT recruitment service are: Java developer, Dot net developers, network engineers, hardware engineers, etc.

Crownit Partners With YES Bank

YES Bank has partnered with Crownit, a merchant discovery and privileges platform, to distribute meal vouchers to employees. This includes an app-based digital meal wallet linked with a meal debit MasterCard which enables employees to avail unlimited food, beverage & grocery redemption options, both online and offline.

Walnut Launches Feature To Help Find An #ATMwithCash

Walnut, a personal finance management app, has launched a new feature that allows users to find a working #ATMwithCash, by tracking aggregate ATM withdrawals across India in real time. Walnut will track the ATM usage of its 1.8 Mn users to help people across the country find a functional ATM with cash near them. Every time a Walnut user visits an ATM successfully, the app will prompt the user for details on the queue status at the ATM. The feature allows users to help fellow Indians by sharing this information on WhatsApp and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Travelyaari Partners With Paytm

Travelyaari has partnered with Paytm and Reliance Jio for offline payment integration. The platform, which offers solutions to both travellers as well as bus operators, is bringing cash-free payments to all its customers at select inter-city offline counters. The payment option integrated in the ERP system available with operators will enable cashless transaction at offline bus counters.

Razorpay Unveils Its New Product eCOD

Razorpay, an online payments platform, has unveiled its new product, eCOD to provide its merchants the option of collecting payments from their customers, at the time of delivery, via non-cash payment modes like UPI or digital wallets like OlaMoney, Mobikwik, PayUmoney, and Freecharge. Delivery person can also generate an instant payment link at the time of delivery that enables the customer to pay via credit/debit card or Netbanking. Razorpay has partnered with Shadowfax, the logistics provider for local businesses and various online merchants like Licious and GoZefo to launch eCOD feature.

Indepay Aims To Add 100 Mn New Customers To Banking System

Indepay will partner with multiple banks to launch its pre-paid cards and mobile application to provide near cash digital alternative. Indepay, a payment network focused on new adopters of banking, will enable its banking partners to attain 100 Mn new customers through its pre-paid products. Indepay will launch its pre-paid cards in February, this fiscal; focussing on under-banked and unbanked masses. The branchless mode of operation will involve enrollment of unbanked masses with simple Aadhaar card identification.

Paytm Now Available In 10 Regional Languages

Mobile payments and commerce platform, Paytm has announced that its user interface on Android will be available in English and in ten different regional languages. The list includes Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, and Punjabi. With this, Paytm has expanded its reach to over 80% smartphone users in India, who prefer internet-based services in regional languages.

MobiKwik Slashes Bank Transfer Fee To ZERO

MobiKwik, an independent digital wallet has announced that users will be able to transfer money instantly to any bank account at 0% fee. The move is expected to encourage more and more retailers, shopkeepers, and users to use mobile wallet and overcome the challenges that they are facing in procuring and using cash. Earlier, to transfer money from a mobile wallet to the bank, a non-KYC user was charged 4% fee and the fee for a KYC user was 1%.

FundsIndia Launches Gamification In Mutual Fund Investing

FundsIndia, the online-only investment platform has launched a first-of-its-kind innovative tool – ‘Gamification in Mutual Fund Investing’ for its investors. This feature will encourage good investing behaviour and ensure that investors stay on the right path to investing successfully.

The goal is to make financial markets accessible for everyone and encourage good investment behaviour among individuals in a healthy and competitive manner.

Flipkart Forays Into Online Learning

Ecommerce marketplace Flipkart has partnered with Shaw Academy, which claims to be the world’s largest live online educator. The move will enable Flipkart to provide a range of online certified courses focused on practical skills on its portal.Initially, Flipkart customers will have access to a four -week photography course delivered by Shaw Academy.

Paytm Facilitates Cashless Payments At Toll Plazas

Ecommerce and payments platform Paytm has enabled real-time cashless toll collection across 40 highways in the country. Using Paytm, commuters can now pay toll charges instantly with their mwallet.