News Roundup: 10 Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [25 January – 30 January]

Indian ecommerce major, Flipkart, plans to hire talent without indulging the candidates into interviews and group decisions. The company has partnered with Udacity, an online learning company to hire graduates, to select candidates based on its Nanodegree projects and Udacity profiles.

Important Developments Of The Week:

All India Radio Launches Live Streaming App For Mobile Platforms

All India Radio (AIR) launched a non-conventional audio broadcast channel through Internet and ‘free dish’ called RAAGAM. The channel is presently available as an app on the mobile over Android, iOS and Windows platforms.

AutoRaja Shuts Down Services

Auto-rickshaw aggregator, AutoRaja, suspended its operations due to lack of funds and inability to sustain competition. With the shut down, the top officials including the founders and the remaining fleet has joined Ola.

Practo Pilots Online Delivery Of Medicine

Practo users in Bangalore can now order medicines online. Medicines listed on the platform include over-the-counter, prescription drugs as well as Ayurvedic medicine. However, for the medicines that are marked ‘Rx’ on the app, users are asked to show a prescription at the time of delivery.

Delhi Govt Introduces MSeva App

Delhi Government launched an Android app called mSeva in association with the Delhi Jal Board to help citizens pay their water bills. The app will generate a bill, if a user takes a picture of their water meter.

Goibibo Ranked No.1

A recent report by Morgan Stanley stated that online travel platform Goibibo is ranked No.1 for hotel booking. The ranking was given by top hoteliers on various parameters such as confirmed bookings, last-minute bookings, backend & IT support, insights and market intelligence, etc.

Paytm Partners With Alibaba

Paytm will now expand its network to global markets with its partnership with Alibaba’s cloud computing arm AliCloud. As per the deal, Paytm will spend about $18 Mn (INR 120 Cr) to utilise Alipay’s technology via AliCloud (also known as Aliyun).

Ecommerce Sites To Deliver Goods At Delhi Metro Stations

Customers who order goods from ecommerce sites can now get their orders delivered at 10 Delhi-Metro stations from February 2016 onwards. Consumers can get the orders delivered to a preferred station and can collect them later at their convenience.

Paytm Signs MoU With Madhya Pradesh Govt

Paytm signed an MoU with the Madhya Pradesh government to start a back-end centre in Jabalpur (M.P.). As per the terms of the agreement, Paytm will invest about $3 Mn (INR 20 Cr) to set up this back-end center. The center is expected to start functioning by next year and will provide employment to almost 2000 people.

Amazon & Walmart To Invest More Than $300 Mn

Amazon and Walmart Stores Inc will invest over $300 Mn (INR 2,000 Cr) in a bid to build their network and to gain a share in the Indian retail market. The two are planning to gain a commanding position by building scale through deep discounting in the Indian retail market, which is expected to cross $1 Tn by 2020.

Other Developments Of The Week:

Baba Ramdev Takes Hyperlocal Route

Pluss, the on-demand medicine and healthcare products delivery service partnered with Baba Ramdev-promoted Patanjali Ayurved in Delhi. Patanjali’s range of FMCG products, including staples, groceries, nutrition, hair care, skin care, dental care and toiletries, will be sold through the Pluss App across Delhi​/NCR​

Bulbul Apps Inks Partnership With Boclips.Com

Bulbul Apps entered into a partnership with UK-based Knowledgemotion’s bo (boclips.com) to deliver cleanly-categorised and contextualised kid-friendly educational video and app content to children below eight years. With this, Bulbul Apps joins bo’s list of international content owners.

Wizikey Partners With 91springboard

Wizikey announced its partnership with 91springboard to provide PR expertise to startups in the 91springboard community. With this initiative, over 7000 startups working out of 91springboard will get an opportunity to track, connect and measure their brand reach in media.

ShopClues Launches Seller App

ShopClues launched its Android app exclusively for sellers. This will help SME merchants boost their business, the new app will help sellers manage their ShopClues store better. They can run certain features of their store anytime and anywhere and also engage with customers in real time to close sales.

Shuttl Reaches New Milestone

Shuttl reached its one millionth ride across Delhi-NCR in only 194 days of its operations. It has also been able to save INR 5.10 mn per day in fuel cost for commuters, has kept 4,727 vehicles off the road daily and saved 53,460 tonnes carbon emissions till date.

SpiderG Launches E-invoicing App For SMEs

SpiderG, ERP integrated e-invoicing provider for SMEs, launched its free e-invoicing app. The app is designed to enable companies to create, send, and receive invoices, purchase orders, and other such documents online, and have organized communication over these transactions. It provides SMEs with a quicker, easier and more comprehensive platform to manage B2B transactions, B2B communication, and AR & AP management.

Deyor Rooms Plans Footprint In 80 cities

Deyor Rooms will expand to 15 more cities to offer access to over 800 properties by the end of this fiscal. Its portfolio is currently spread across 500 hotels in over 65 cities. The startup is also looking at revenue of INR 4 Cr.

QiK Stay To Add 800 Hotels, 50 New Cities in 2016

QiK Stay plans to add around 800 hotels and expand to 50 new cities across the country this year. The company currently has over 200 hotels with an inventory of around 3,000 rooms in 50 cities. Apart from strengthening its presence in metros and big cities, the company will focus on tier-II and tier-III cities for expansion, he added.

ROPOSO Introduces New Features in its Social Media App

With the growing user base and increasing technology advancements, ROPOSO announced the launch of four unique features – repost, save offline, block and trending – on its social media app. The feature allows users to discover what’s popular on the app. Furthermore, the application’s core features of search and login have been improved to enable superior user engagement.

ToneTag Brings Blockchain To Contactless Payments

To address these security issues in contactless payment, ToneTag introduced blockchain technology for its global customers. The startup enables sound wave based contactless payments that are traceable, transparent, and secure. Blockchain creates a distributed public ledger that records all transactions in a particular system.

Treebo Expands Its Operations

Treebo announced the launch of its operations in Pune and Kolkata. The startup will initially launch one property each in these cities, thereby extending their presence to 52 hotels in 11 cities. With Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad already covered, the company has now established presence in all major metros in India.

Attune Technologies Launches DoCom’ and ‘PathWorks’

The apps are tools designed by doctors for doctors to offer seamless communication and notification that is created based around the doctor’s schedule. With the DoCoM app, hospitals can share images like X ray, ECG, Clinical pictures (like a skin rash) and videos (like an angiogram) with a closed group of doctors. With PathWorks, doctors can view lab report results, see previous reports and authorize on the go from their handheld device.

Buzzmeeh Launches Online Mobile Repairing Platform

Buzzmeeh.com, an online portal offering services for mobile repair, has launched a marketplace so that users can search for a local mobile repair shop and solve their inconvenience of being stuck with an inefficient standby handset. The startup even offers pickup and drop off services.

Inshorts Empowers Users To TOSS The News

Inshorts launched one-of-a-kind social notification feature – TOSS on its android app. Toss allows users to send notification for news items to other users in their contacts list.

Fountainhead Marketing Launched In India

Fountainhead Entertainment, which got acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network, is offering full services of marketing in India. Within Dentsu, Fountainhead and psLIVE India will be merged to form Fountainhead-MKTG.

M-TAXI Collaborates With Paytm

M-TAXI partnered with Paytm to integrate its payment wallet in the M-TAXI app. The collaboration is a strategic step towards making cashless payments on the go.

Industrybuying.com Partners With Grainger

Industrybuying.com allied with Grainger to augment its product offering and brands that are otherwise inaccessible to Indian customers. This will also help the company in assessing the product offering gaps in the market and incorporating best practices in procurement. ​​

Kwench Launches kfit

Employee Engagement firm Kwench has launched kfit – a Cloud based Corporate Health and Wellness platform which leverages the power of wearable technology, social, mobile, gaming and analytics (SMAC) to bring about and sustain positive behavioral changes among employees.

Mytaxiindia.com Unveils Mobile App

Mytaxiindia.com unveiled first-of-its-kind mobile app for outstation travelers. The mobile app offers outstation taxi cab bookings from 102 cities with 7000 plus taxi fleets across 10,000 plus routes, making it the India’s largest outstation mobile application, available on iOS and Android platform.

UpGrad Partners With IIIT Bangalore

UpGrad, an online higher education platform for working professionals, and IIIT Bangalore collaborated to launch a first-of-its-kind Post Graduate Diploma in Data Analytics. The program has been created to bridge the gap between industry needs and the expected shortage of over 1.5 Mn professionals with expertise to make data driven decisions.

Yes Bank Launches Technology To Control Debit Card Spends

Yes Bank launched YES InControl in association with MasterCard. YES InControl will allow bank customers to fully control their debit card usage. The customers can customize usage parameters and limits for their debit cards for better safety and efficiency.

Bounty Launched In Delhi

Bounty app has extended its services to Delhi. The app is currently functional in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai. The users can collect bounty points on their visit to 1000+ places in Delhi including restaurant, pub, saloon, spa, retail store, grocery store etc.

WeTravelSolo Launches App for Solo Travellers

WeTravelSolo launched a mobile app to bring solo travellers and travel enthusiasts under an accessible forum. The app has been made available for download on all Android enabled platforms.