News Roundup: 6 Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [15Feb – 21Feb]

After being a success on mobile payments front Paytm has now planned to set 50,000 offline retail outlets to provide customer with cashless exchange and basic customer service. Paytm has already a store which deals in apparels and electronics apart from its mobile payment service. The company was to make transition from a cash economy to a cashless one. For this, it will hire 4500 people and add 10,000 sellers.

Here are the important developments of the week.

GSF Accelerator With Cisco Investments To Accelerate Cloud & IoT Startups

Startups often get stuck in a deadlock and then accelerators come into play to keep them on the right track. GSF accelerator has collaborated with Cisco Investments to launch an Accelerator program for innovative startups in  India. They focus on cloud and internet-of-things startups looking at their hardware as well as software platforms. It will also provide $45K in funding to each selected startup and five selected startups will spend a month in Silicon Valley. 

TCS Partners With Startupbootcamp FinTech To Host Pitch Days

Pitch Days are most important for early stage startups as it provides them with a stage to tell people about their startup. To make this a breeze Tata Consultancy services has joined hands with Startupbootcamp FinTech. Pitch Days will be a one-day event open for finance tech startups. Selected startups will be provided valuable feedback as well as access to top markets. Not only this they will be provided exposure to 200 angels and venture capitalists. 

Snapdeal Seeks To Make Shopping A Breeze With Single-Factor Authentication

Snapdeal has pitched for a single-factor authentication regime for small value transactions, starting initially with a cap of INR 3,000. The current scenario is a two-factor authentication where the customer has to enter his PIN first and then a One Time Password to authenticate the transaction. This move will facilitate Indian Startups who has to move out of India to get a  recurring payment gateway.

DIPP Pledges Support To Ecommerce Firms, Opposed To Consumer Affairs Ministry Proposal To Regulate Ecommerce

Department of Industrial Policy And Promotion(DIPP) is against the plan to regulate the ecommerce sector citing reasons that it would hinder innovation and the spirit of entrepreneurship.  The departments wants to promote ease of doing business and not complicate it. Owing to a lot of complaints by brick and mortar stores’ owners about predatory pricing and unethical trade practices by ecommerce companies led to a proposal under which different govt. departments would look into ecommerce sector.

ValPro Comes Up With A Platform To Facilitate Startups For Their Funding Rounds

Funding rounds are often filled with chaos due to lots of paperwork. To ease the same ValPro has launched a platform Enablersinvestment.com to facilitate startups and SMEs for seed round and Series A funding. The firm has also joined hands with  Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups initiative, SIDBI Innovation and Incubation Centre, IIT-Kanpur for the foundation. The company with charge a listing fee of INR 30,000 for reviewing startups profiles and grooming.