News Roundup: 9 Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [3August – 8August]

Just few days after imposing ban on more than 800 pornographic websites, the Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced that the government is lifting ban from porn websites except those serving child porn.

Lets have a look at the important developments of the week

Snapdeal’s New Instant Service Promises 1-Hour Delivery

Snapdeal will starting up with the Instant services in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and in the second phase the services would be extended to eight other major cities across.

Mahindra Group Appoints Jaspreet Bindra As Senior Vice President

Bindra has joined as the Senior Vice President for Digital Innovation and Ecommerce and will be  initiating a digital and commerce strategy for the group.

Snapdeal Partners With HDFC Bank

Following this partnership, Snapdeal has launch of co-branded ecommerce credit card. Snapdeal’s customers from small cities and towns will be able to make online payments instead of availing the cash on delivery option.

Tyroo Introduces Product Listing Ads (PLA)

PLA which will be open to all App publishers and will compete with Google and Facebook’s PLA. This was launched globally at Mobile World Congress last month will now be available in India as well.

TaxiForSure Shuts Down Operations In 22 Cities

Five months after getting acquired by Ola, TaxiForSure has announced that they are now migrating to Ola.

Snapdeal Launches FindMyStyle

FindMyStyle bridges the gap between online and offline shopping by making online search more feasible and modulated according to user’s need.

Way2Online Plans To Harness The Regional News Sector With Way2News

This App will focus on offering news in local languages. It will beam news in a nutshell in local languages and the App will have a magazine style format. Raju Vanapala talks more about it, here

Talentpad Is Shutting Down

According to a mail sent by the company, the reason for shutting down was an unscalable business. Talentpad was funded by Helion, last year.

Lets have a look at other developments of the week

KartRocket Launches C2C Mobile Marketplace: Kraftly

Kraftly is a C2C mobile marketplace for unique and handcrafted products, covering a wide range, including art, home & living, apparel, fashion accessories, costume jewelry, craft supplies, food, bath and beauty products, toys and unique products

ShopperStop Partners Up With Snapdeal

This strategic partnership will help Shoppers Stop to take its products online, while Snapdeal will expand its reach. Shoppers Stop will initially sell in Ludhiana, Delhi, Lucknow, Noida, Meerut and cities where it has stores.

Flipkart rolls another ball; Forays Into Furniture Retail

Flipkart has partnered with regional sellers and large format home retailers like HomeTown, Durian, @Home and Homestopacross the country to offer varied range of furniture products.

News In Shorts Rebrands As Inshorts

Post the rebranding, application will evolve from being a news aggregator to a content discovery platform, offering a broad spectrum of content streams like videos, infographics, podcasts, blogs and others.

TravelKhana to start meal booking for bus travellers

Before this, TravelKhana used to deliver food for train passengers only. It was founded in 2013, as an experiment aboard Ashram Express.

AdNear Rebrands to Near

The change in name, is to reflect their focus in use location data and not just targeted mobile advertising. The company has its headquarters in Singapore, and holds offices in Bangalore and across Asia.

Helpchat appoints Deena Jacob as its CFO

Before joining Helpchat, Deena worked with TaxiForSure, as their head of finance for almost 2 years.

Ola to apply for cab-sharing service licence

Ola is also in advanced talks to raise a new round of funds, along with  seeking to ensure cab-sharing service compliance with laws and accelerate its expansion into new businesses.

Amazon opens third customer service facility in Pune

The facility will help Amazon with pre and post-order customer service,, host teams that provide support to Amazon India’s operations and also create employment opportunities in Pune area.

Swipe Is Going To Launch An Online-Only Brand “Elite”

With Elite, Swipe plans to bring more premium smartphones to the online customer. The launch of first elite smartphone is scheduled in month of August.

GetVee Technologies launches Hyperlocal Social Discovery Platform, Vee

It enables youth to connect with other relevant people on the basis of their specific interest or need.With powerful and precise location-based features, this unique application offers innovative features such as ‘Conversations’ and ‘Tribes’.

PepperTap scales higher with 10,000+ orders per day

PepperTap has been assisting over 300 retailers to consolidate with the ecommerce ecosystem based in Delhi NCR, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Chandigarh, Jaipur & Kolkata.

Qwikcilver launches Gift card Superstore, Woohoo.in

Woohoo is a fully integrated mobile responsive online gifting superstore for gifting personalized gift cards and e-gift cards across more than 400 cities with the choice of 150+ brands, both offline and online.

Walmart And MobiKwik Gets Into An Exclusive Partnership

MobiKwik Mobile Wallet will power 20 walmart best price stores in 9 states to enable payments by Small Businesses and Kirana Stores. Also, MobiKwik will be the exclusive mobile payments partner to Walmart, offering members of its Best Price program, which comprises of small businesses and kirana stores a secure, swift and convenient payment option across channels.

FashionAndYou Strengthens Its Product And Technology Teams With New Leadership

Mahinder Narang has been appointed as Vice President – Product Management while Sanjay Kumar takes charge of Engineering & Technology.  Mahinder has previously worked in managing product development teams at Jabong, PropTiger and Yatra. And Sanjay has been previously associated with Wadi.com, Yatra.com and eGain Communications.