News Roundup: 7 Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [30 November – 05 December]

RBI passed a new regulations regarding foreign investment in Alternative Investment Funds (AIF) on 16 November which stated that any AIF as long as it is sponsored or managed by an Indian resident, is to be considered as a domestic vehicle. This would be independent of what percentage of its corpus is from overseas funds.

Ola, Didi Kuaidi, Lyft, And GrabTaxi Join Hands To Form Anti-Uber Alliance

Four of the world’s largest taxi-hailing apps – India’s Ola, China’s Didi Kuaidi, US-based Lyft and Malaysia’s GrabTaxi, entered into a strategic partnership which will allow passengers to book rides on any of these four services using just one app.

Myntra Makes A U-Turn On App-Only Strategy

The once confident companies about the app-only strategy have now planned to re-launch its mobile site. Following Flipkart’s step, Myntra, who reported 90% of its traffic and 70% of sales through mobile app, has now decided to relaunch its mobile website.

Indian Tele Operators Blocked Ringo App

Some of the Indian Telecom operators were allegedly reported to block Ringo app on their networks, due to which the company has to suspend its domestic call service launched just a few days back.

Uber Launches New Features & Services

Uber announced ‘Ride Request’ feature for third party developers. With this users can instantly get a ride with one tap. The ‘intent to ride’ button is added next to every address in the app. The company also  launched its uberASSIST service in India, a specialised service for disabled and elderly passengers.

Snapdeal Launches Snapdeal Ads

Snapdeal’s Snapdeal Ads, an in-house advertising platform, will help sellers drive discovery of their products and increase revenue through targeted advertising tools. Snapdeal Ads will have a self-service panel integrated into the seller platform.

Paytm Launches Virtual Prepaid Card For Users

Paytm has tied up with ICICI Bank to launch a co-branded virtual prepaid card that will be linked to user’s Paytm wallet. With this, Paytm users will be able to add money to their mobile wallets through cash deposits at all ICICI bank branches.

Other Developments Of The Week:

Facebook Announces First SME India Council In Asia-Pacific

To help businesses grow locally and regionally across India, Facebook announced the first SME India Council in Asia-Pacific with 12 small business owners. The group will meet throughout the year to share feedback, discuss new ideas and work with Facebook to build better ads solutions from different geographies and with varied business objectives and goals.

Khan Academy Launches Hindi Portal For India

Khan Academy, an US-based non-profit educational organization, launched a Hindi portal for students in India. In the initial stage, the portal will cover syllabus of National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) for math.

Wingify Launches PushCrew

PushCrew will help digital businesses engage with website visitors via push notifications helping them build in time and contextual connect with their users, which will be delivered even when the visitors are not on the website.

Hike Hits Milestone

Hike claimed that its users exchanged 1 Bn messages every day. Also, monthly usage on the hike app is increased by 50 per cent to 30 Bn messages from 20 Bn in October.

Govt Ties Up With eBay

The Ministry of Women and Child Development has tied up with eBay to build a platform for economically disadvantaged women to sell their products to a global market. The ministry will identify, train and equip women to open ‘Eshops’ for selling their products on eBay, while eBay will train women in branding, designing and competitive pricing.

ConveGenius Upgrades Its’ Edutainment app ‘Battle of Minds’

ConveGenius’ Edutainment Social Network app – Battle of Minds, is upgraded for competitive exam aspirants. The application has introduced test preparation content to form groups of motivated individuals preparing for similar examinations, and enable learning by competition through high-quality, curated content.

Pluss Launches Its iOS application

Pluss has intensified its online operations with the launch of its iOS app. It aims to process faster ordering and delivery of medicines, within 60 minutes. Presently, Pluss has 11,000 Android subscribers.

EasyFix Expands to 11 Cities

Axilor ventures backed EasyFix.in has expanded its reach to 11 cities. It is now present across all metros apart from Delhi and NCR. The company has over 2500 professional handymen in its network.

RedMango Analytics Launches Its Mobile App & Consumer Portal

RedMango Analytics launched mobile app Experience.Me and its consumer portal.The move is in sync with RedMango’s vision to engineer a better telecommunications sector in the country. Experience.Me will allow mobile users to measure the quality of service provided to them by their telecom service providers across various services such as coverage, voice, data & video.

The Quint Forays Into Documentary FilmMaking

The Quint forayed into documentary film-making with ’The wild west of Uttar Pradesh – Rise of Radical Hindu Vigilante Groups’. The documentaries will be shot in ‘guerrilla style’ with minimal shooting gear or often with just a smartphone. The company will also publish related opinion pieces written by The Quint’s contributors to give a real 360 degree view to the audience.

UrbanPro launches “ProScore”

With ProScore, UrbanPro.com will enable its consumers to hire the best service professionals like tutors, trainers and other service professionals based on their profile, experience, ratings and reviews.

RemitGuru Introduces ‘Sofort Banking” Option

Remittance startup RemitGuru introduced ‘Sofort Banking’ option for their customers in the UK and Europe for seamless money transfer. RemitGuru’s ‘Sofort Banking’ is similar to similar experience to the “Net Banking” option like present in any other bank.

YatraGenie Rolls Out ‘YatraGenie Autos’

On demand auto rickshaw services can now be booked through YatraGenie mobile app. The service is rolled out in 60 cities across all district headquarters in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

YuppTV Launches YuppFlix!

YuppTV launched on-demand movie streaming service YuppFlix with more than 5000 movies in 12 languages. YuppFlix will offer its users on-the-go entertainment across genres like Comedy, Thriller, Romance, Action, Drama, Devotional & more.

RoomsTonite Partners With Paytm

Under the partnership, over 100 million Paytm customers can book over 4000 hotels available with RoomsTonite using the Paytm app on Android.

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