News Roundup: 8 Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [13 April – 18 April]

In a recent incidence, the food and drug administration (FDA) department of the Maharashtra government raided the premises of the Delhi-based online marketplace Snapdeal at Goregaon in Mumbai for selling prescription drugs such as Ascoril cough syrup and Vigora tablets. The organisation has further, asked the company to remove the listing of such drugs from the website.

Lets have a look at the important developments of the week:

Paytm now has 50 Mn Wallets, Facilitating Over 60 Mn Transactions Every Month

Paytm, India’s largest mobile commerce player, has recently announced that it now has 50 Mn wallets on its platform and further wants to take the number to 100 Mn by the end of this year. Paytm authorizes inter-wallet money transfers and wallet-to-bank transfers, wherein a customer can transfer the money stored in the online wallet to a bank account. Paytm clocks over 60 Mn transactions per month, with an average user transacting four times every month on its platform.

Tata Group Joins The Grocery Ecommerce War with the Launch of My247market

Tata Group has launched an grocery e-retail shop www.my247market.com, which is owned and operated by Fiora Hypermarket Ltd, a subsidiary launched by Trent in March 2014. The ecommerce platform include, fruits, vegetables, staples, meat, bakery and dairy products, along with packaged food, beverages, confectionery, baby care products, personal care products, home need products and pet care products among others. It currently delivers products to a small part of Mumbai and is expected to increase presence soon.

Godrej Nature’s Basket ties up with Amazon India

Godrej Nature’s Basket, the food retail branch of the Godrej Group, joined hands with the ecommerce giant Amazon, to sell its products through it. The partnership will offer India an easy access to a wide and unique selection of gourmet products. Godrej Nature’s Basket sells a varied range of gourmet products, including fresh fruits and vegetables, international cheese and cold cuts, bakery products, ice creams, desserts, fresh made-to-order party snacks and patisserie. Also, the company offers same day delivery in the five of its operating cities.

Housing.com is launching a INR 250Cr. Advertisement Campaign

Housing.com, an online real estate website is reportedly planning to spend around Rs.250 crore on advertising and marketing in the current year. They have already spent about INR 50-80 Cr. during the eight-week campaign, which ended last week. However, Housing is pacing up the campaign, which will mean few more newspaper jacket ads and a surfeit of billboards in seven cities.

After Ola, and Zomato; Foodpanda starts Food Delivery

Uptill now, foodpanda which was facilitating online ordering and the delivery was done by the respective restaurants. But, now Foodpanda has started delivering food from the restaurant to customer, all on their own. They have already started the service across five cities, hired over 500 personnels to manage delivery and is further planning to hire another 2000-2500 delivery executives while expanding the service to 10-12 cities by the end of this year. The firm is currently targeting restaurants, which have delivery services as well as those that have not yet stepped into this realm.According to Saurabh Kochhar, Foodpanda’s India CEO and chief business officer, they are hoping to escalate their revenues to 60-70% by next year.

Times Group, Flipkart, Cleartrip & NDTV Come sforward to support net neutrality

Times Of India, Flipkart, NDTV and Cleartrip has come forward to support Net Neutrality while Flipkart withdrew its talks with Airtel for Airtel Zero Platform, Times Group, NDTV and Cleartrip announced to withdrew from Facebook’s Internet.org.

Ixigo launches ixigo Cabs app

Travel search engine, ixigo.com, launched a new app called ixigo Cabs which lists the availability and fares across various taxi service providers and cab booking companies. It allow users to book cabs from any of the cab operators and also lets one to book cabs from offline cab providers. It currently have over 250 offline taxi providers (local taxi & cab providers) in over 100 cities. It also offer fare breakup for rides and currently has Ola, TFS, Meru, among others on its platform. Though, Uber was not found on their platform.

Let’s have a look at the other developments of the week:

Saregama starts Free Streaming for 1.1 Lakh songs

The online music store, Saregama now has about 70% of all the Bollywood music and 14 other languages for free streaming.The users can download the songs at 320 kbps. The songs can be purchased for INR 9 (per song) which provides 10 downloads for each song (using single ID) and which can be used to store it in different gadgets such as laptop, desktop, tablet and smartphones.

Snapdeal’s CFO Aakash Moondhra to leave firm

Snapdeal.com’s chief financial officer Aakash Moondhra, is going to leave his position to pursue other interests. Moondhra, has been on this post since June 2012, during which, Snapdeal raised about $1 Bn from investors including SoftBank, Indian billionaire Azim Premji’s investment unit and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte. According to a Snapdeal’s e-mailed statement, Moondhra will be at a advisory position in the company.

Niffler launches iOS app

Co-founded by Edul Patel, Prince Arora and Viraj Shah, Niffler is your compass to find best deals from offline merchants involved in food, drinks, spas, apparel, and home décor etc.They  have 3,000 offers in over 60,000 stores across six cities. Niffler recently raised a funding of $1 million from SAIF Partners. Their base has grown to 40,000 engaged users and having cracked this feat, they have now released an iOS app to welcome a yet another steep to their user base.

Selfdrive.in introduced hourly rental services

Selfdrive.in selfdrive ecommerce portal founded in 2011, has now introduced flexibility in choice of rental hours from hourly / daily / weekly / monthly / yearly lease options, with rentals starting from INR100 per hour for the first six hours, and INR 45 per hour beyond. One can book self-drive cars through website or phone, and choose from 21 different car models over nine brands including luxury labels too.

Temasek renames SVB India as InnoVen; ex I-Sec CEO Madhabi Puri Buch will head the board

Temasek Holdings, Singapore government-owned investment firm, which has recently acquired the debt financing company SVB India Finance and  has rebranded it as InnoVen Capital India. Madhabi Puri Buch, former CEO of ICICI Securities (I-Sec), has been appointed as chairperson of this Indian venture debt arm. InnoVen Capital India is acclaimed to be the largest provider of debt financing to VC-backed early stage and mid-growth companies, as backed by a record of  offering 75 loans to more than 50 companies in India, rendering a figure  of more than $110 Mn of  India’s venture debt.

Snapdeal snaps Flipkart’s Customer Service Head – Dharmarajan K

Snapdeal has appointed Dharmarajan K as its Head of Customer Service. Dharma will be responsible for creating world class customer service operations at Snapdeal. He boasts over 15 years of experience in senior leadership roles at multiple sectors – Ecommerce, Telecom and Financial Services. He has been associated with names like Etisalat, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank and Flipkart.

Snapdeal Messes Up again, Delivers Stone Instead Of Samsung Galaxy Grand Max

Nithin Augustine, Bangalore, placed an order on 11th April and even paid through online payment mode. He received his order on 13th April and to his utter shock, he was delivered a piece of stone instead of a brand new Samsung Galaxy Grand Max. He immediately filed a complaint to Snapdeal’s Customer Care, which followed a hustle of over 30 minutes after which he ended up asking for the refund, which was thankfully done within two hours.

KartRocket Launched KartRocket Seller App

Ecommerce enabler KartRocket has launched a mobile app namely ‘KartRocket Online Seller App’. The app creates free online store in just 24 hours from any mobile, simplifies selling on Whatsapp and Facebook, manages orders and inventory, integrates free payment gateway,signs-up with leading affiliates, automatic listing to google places, and marketplaces like Shopclues, Paytm, Snapdeal. Moreover,App features mobile store designs and enables shipping to 15,000+ pin codes.

Amazon India lures small businesses with a cup of ‘tea’

’Amazon Chai Carts’ have been deployed all across the Panchkula district of Haryana, to get locals more aware about ecommerce. These carts will serve tea, cold water and lemon juice to business owners, sellers, retailers and SMEs in that area. Each Amazon Chai Cart has a trained staff on board, to initiate discussions and conversations with interested sellers on the process of selling online, introduce them to the seller specific and also to Amazon’s seller education programs. The Amazon Chai Cart will be seen in  Panchkula only for a week for now. Facilities for on-the-spot registration to Amazon India are also available on the cart. Looks like, a lot is happening over tea

MobiKwik brings on board Saurabh Srivastava As Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

MobiKwik, Indian Mobile Wallet with over 15 Mn users, announced the appointment of Saurabh Srivastava as Chief Marketing Officer. Saurabh was previously VP – Marketing& Product Strategy at ixigo.com.He has a 13 plus years experience with leading consumer and media brands like Goodyear, Maruti Suzuki, Dainik Jagran, GroupM and DDB in the past. Speaking about his new role, Saurabh said, “This role will give me an opportunity to shape the way Indians look at payments and make mobile wallets a household phenomenon. I look forward to create the next generation mobile payments system for India.”

Checkout the funding galore of the week. 

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