News Roundup: 10 Indian Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [17 April – 22 April]

The controversies have not ended for the online marketplace Snapdeal. This time the founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal and the company’s former Senior Vice President (Finance) Vijay Ajmera have been accused of copying the business model of entrepreneur Gaurav Dua. In his complaint, he claimed that the non-inventory holding marketplace model was his idea and the ‘Snapdeal officials cheated him under the garb of raising funds for his business.’

Not only this, the Delhi-based ecommerce marketplace was caught also in the crossfire of citizens reacting to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel’s “poor India” remark, and erroneously venting out their anger on Snapdeal app instead of Snapchat. It all started after an interview of ex–Snapchat employee Anthony Pompliano’s appeared in Variety magazine.

Important Developments Of The Week

Uber To Launch UberEATS In India

Uber will be launching its food delivery app UberEATS in India in the second quarter of 2017. The services will initially be launched in six cities – Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai and Gurugram – and will expand further.

Also, Uber has  launched its business solution ‘Central’ in India. Central allows an organisation to centrally request, manage, and pay for rides.

Zoho Launches Zoho Finance Plus

The GST-ready financial suite will help Indian businesses make a smooth transition to the new GST regime, offering an end-to-end integrated cloud platform for businesses to manage their finances and operations, including the filing of GST returns.

PM Modi And Paytm’s VSS Now On Time’s List Of Top 100

TIME Magazine recently published its list of ‘100 Most Influential People 2017.’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma were the only Indians on the list. Other ‘Leaders’ on the list include the likes of Pope Francis, Theresa May, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Julian Assange.

Delhi HC Comes To The Rescue Of Ola-Uber

Earlier this week, the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association of Delhi (SDAD) and the Rajdhani Tourist Drivers’ Union were planning to go on a strike. However, later in the day, the court issued an injunction against the taxi driver unions from disruption services of the cab aggregators.

Paytm Rolls Out Food Wallet

The new food wallet will provide tax saving opportunities for corporate employees. The move will allow companies to pass on food allowance to employees under the Government-approved tax-redemption bracket. The Food Wallet will be available on the Paytm app.

Additionally, the company also partnered with Generis Luxury a global brand that markets and distributes international luxury and premium labels in India. The partnership will enable customers to pay using Paytm at all Genesis stores of fashion brands such as Michael Kors, Armani Exchange, Club SP, Armani Jeans, Bottega Veneta, and more.

Quikr Doorstep Expands Across 900+ Cities

With this move, Quikr has launched intercity C2C transactions across 900+ Cities. The company launched Quikr Doorstep last year by integrating digital payments and logistics into C2C transactions.

Craftsvilla Launches In-house Brand ‘Anuswara’

The new brand offers craft-inspired contemporary ethnic wear for women, curated in four unique collections. This includes Ikat Illustrations, Kalamkari Tales, Summer Hues, and Indigo Impression.

Jugnoo Launches AskLocal

AskLocal is a geo-location based, hyperlocal content platform for users, where they can access locally relevant information. The AskLocal vertical offers a location-based content network, allowing users to view local feeds for their city. It also allow users to share content anonymously, making it a secure space for people to ask sensitive questions without any inhibitions.

Rentals Go Live on Housing.com

Housing.com, part of Elara Technologies Pte Ltd which also owns PropTiger.com and Makaan.com announced that its Rentals offering has gone live on the portal. The move aims to further strengthen Housing.com’s position within the real estate ecosystem.

Other Developments

RBL Bank announced RBL iLabs

RBL iLabs is a hackathon aimed at fostering the creation of new solutions in Banking and Financial Services. The contest is aimed at engineering students, IT professionals, tech enthusiastic, start-ups, and app developers. The initiative is supported by IBM, StartupBootcamp, PricewaterhouseCooper Private Ltd, The Hive, 91springboard, Amazon Activate, and NetMagic.

Gupshup Launches ‘InterBot’

InterBot is a bot-to-bot communication platform that can revolutionize botkind. With the power to communicate with each other, bots will be able to transact, co-ordinate, compete, collaborate and negotiate with each other. This will open new possibilities, for instance – a taxi bot can ask the café bot to have the coffee ready by the time the user’s taxi arrives; gaming bots can play strategy games with dealer bots and more.

Netmeds Ventures Into Offline Space

In the pilot phase, 10 physical stores will be launched in Chennai under the franchise model. The company will gradually expand its offline reach to other metro cities in the country. The healthcare firm will invest around INR 15 Lakhs-INR 20 Lakhs to set up the physical stores, as claimed in an official statement.