News Roundup: 6 Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [13 February – 18 February]

India Post has been granted $74 Mn (INR 500 Cr) in the latest Union Budget 2017-18. The allocation has been made keeping in mind India Post’s aim to open 650 new branches for the payments bank.  The government has allocated $18 Mn (INR 125 Cr) as “capital infusion into the corporate entity for India Post Payments Bank” and the remaining $56 Mn (INR 375 Cr) will be allocated as “grant-in-aid to India Post Payments Bank (IPPB).”

Important Developments Of The Week

Amazon Plans To Open Retail Outlets In India

The company is planning to undertake “retail trading of food products (produced or manufactured in India) to customers at any location through any channel, offline or online, including ecommerce, across India. It plans to sell locally produced and packaged food products, by third-party or its own private labels.

Ola-Uber Strike In Delhi Enters Day 8

The ongoing battle between cab aggregators Ola, Uber, and their drivers in Delhi has become fiercer than initially expected. The drivers’ association has refused to back down from its stance. The strike, which was supposed to be a two-day protest, has now extended to over a week, affecting the daily commute of users. The drivers claim that since they did not hear back from the cab aggregators, they were left with no choice but to continue their protest and air out their grievances.

 Flipkart To Consolidate Ekart Operations

Flipkart has suspended Ekart’s customer-to-customer (C2C) courier operations. In addition to that, it has also ceased its hyperlocal delivery service in Bengaluru that was launched in November 2016.

AskMe-Astro Clash Sees New Twist

The Delhi High Court has now appointed the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) to look into allegations of “misappropriation of funds and company assets.” The development comes in conjunction with the High Court’s appointment of a provisional liquidator for Getit Infoservices Pvt. Ltd.

Amazon Development Centre Announces 2 New Customer Care Facilities

Amazon Development Center announced the launch of two new customer service facilities to be opened in Noida and Coimbatore. The centres will be used to support Amazon with customer care experiences both pre- and post-orders through the usual channels of email, chat, and phone.

Other Developments

ScoopWhoop Launches Pulse

Pulse is a dashboard that gives viewers and brands real-time insight into the stories, ideas and topics that Indian youth are reading & talking about. With ScoopWhoop Pulse, brands can discover what content in the category excites young people and use that information to uncover new consumer insights. It’s also useful to compare your own content effort with what’s trending, analyse what you are doing right, and what you need to change.

LatestOne.com Launches ‘DaZon’

DaZon watches are specially crafted for youth aged 16 to 24 years. Its range includes mechanisms like analog, digital, and quartz. In Gen Z, watches are associated with personalities and lifestyles. DaZon watches are exclusively available on LatestOne.com and are targeted to reach sales of 50,000 pieces per month from April 2017.

Crownit Expands To 6 Cities

The company has expanded to six more cities, namely Jaipur, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Chandigarh. The app is now live in all the new cities and users there can avail vouchers, discounts, and cashback options on restaurants, purchase of groceries, fuel, and utilities. The app currently has 10 lakh+ users and, with the expansion, it will connect more users from different parts of the country.

BrowserStack Expands To Ireland

BrowserStack, a mobile and web testing platform, has operationalised its state-of-the-art real device Mobile Data Centre in Dublin. BrowserStack will expand its Dublin operations and employ world-class talent to lead the development of the next generation of mobile and web testing solutions. BrowserStack was supported by the IDA Ireland India in setting up its Irish operations. This expansion will create more than 40 roles within the next 24-36 months and recruitment is already underway.

Ecom Express Launches Seller Fulfilment Services

Ecom Express Private Limited, an end-to-end ecommerce logistics solutions provider, has expanded its services with the launch of its largest warehousing facility ‘INDIA-1’ in Bilaspur, Haryana-NCR Region. The state of the art facility spread across over 500,000 sq. ft. houses a Fulfilment Center, Pickup Processing Centre, and a Hub. With this launch, the company enters into full-fledged fulfilment services – Ecom Fulfilment Services (EFS) – along with its existing end-to-end logistics solutions for the industry. The company has additionally opened fulfilment centers in Bengaluru and Lucknow spread over 40,000 sq. ft.

Fork Media Launches Bollyworm

Fork Media, a digital media and ad technology company, has launched Bollyworm, a new digital destination for Bollywood fans, globally. This will be Fork Media’s third-owned content vertical in two years – following the success of Hauterfly, the women’s fashion and lifestyle site, and Curly Tales, its travel, food, and trends site, in addition to licensing and operating Askmen and IGN India.

Truckola Launches Kings Club

Truckola, a transportation service provider, has launched Kings Club, a one-of-a-kind loyalty programme for its B2B customers. A Kings Club membership is currently by invitation only and is offered to a select group of Truckola’s customers.

Credihealth Launches 24×7 Online Ambulance Service

Launched in Gurugram, the service aims to bring emergency medical care to people’s doorstep, ensuring immediate attention to serious medical cases. Leading hospitals such as Medanta, The Medicity, Artemis, Fortis, etc. have partnered with Credihealth to be a part of this endeavour.

Roposo Launches Bizdrum

The fashion social network launched Bizdrum to provide comprehensive end-to-end solutions for various services, ranging from media to creative consultancy and others. Bloggers and brands just need to log on to Bizdrum.com and create a profile for free. Then, the brands can create a campaign and choose the desired bloggers through a 12-factor evaluation criterion that includes reach, cost, demographics, content format, etc. Post-that, the team at Bizdrum would connect with the bloggers and recommend creative solutions, initiate campaign execution and, in a special feature, provide extensive tracking data to help brands measure RoI. Currently, more than 2,000 bloggers and 500 celebs are listed on the platform.

DigitalOcean Releases Load Balancers

Load Balancers is a product that enables developers and small businesses to distribute traffic across their infrastructure to achieve 100% uptime for their production workloads. Using Load Balancers to distribute connections enables developers and small businesses to scale their applications, horizontally, by sending traffic only to healthy Droplets, ensuring no single point of failure and increasing availability across their infrastructure.

Jugnoo Forays Into Taxi Aggregation Business

Jugnoo is launching this service as a pilot in Gurugram and will soon expand to other cities. Drivers empanelled with cab aggregators are upset with the decreasing incentives and are demanding the taxi fares to be increased to make running taxis viable. The rates offered by Jugnoo cab services are expected to be higher than current operators.