News Roundup: 8 Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [21 March – 26 March]

In a complaint filed by Ola in Delhi High Court, Uber has alleged that Ola employees and agents are making false bookings on its app. The complaint claimed that over 20K drivers left the company platform due to Ola’s wrongdoing. Therefore, it is seeking damages worth $7 Mn (INR 50 Cr) from Ola. After Uber, Jugnoo also accused Ola of employing unethical practices to sabotage their business and aggravate the drivers who are trying to earn a decent living by plying autorickshaws. About 20K cancellations through 800 fake accounts have been reported to occur during this period.

Important Developments Of The Week

Mukesh Bansal And Ankit Nagori To Launch Startup

Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra and  Ankit Nagori, a former chief business officer at Flipkart, who recently moved out of Flipkart, have teamed up to launch a startup in the areas of healthcare, sports and fitness.

Alibaba Announces India Entry

After making investments in Indian startups, Alibaba finally announced its plans to launch its operations in India. Last week, Alibaba Group president Michael Evans and global managing director K Guru Gowrappan met Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Tata Group’s Chairman Cyrus Mistry to share their plans for the company’s interest in India and a possible partnership.

Kunal Bahl Takes On Sachin Bansal

Sachin Bansal took to social media to give his opinion about Alibaba’s entry in India, he tweeted – “Alibaba deciding to start operations directly shows how badly their Indian investments have done so far“. Reacting to his comments, Kunal Bahl tweeted “Didn’t Morgan Stanley just flush 5Bn worth market cap in Flipkart down the ? Focus on your business not commentary :)“

Avenues India Launches ‘CCAvenue Finance’

CCAvenue has launched ‘CCAvenue Finance’, a financial assistance program that connects web merchants and consumers using the payment gateway platform with trusted lenders, to help them secure easy loans. For the ‘CCAvenue Finance’ initiative, the platform has partnered with Lendingkart to provide loans.

Paytm Ties Up With PVR Cinemas

PVR Cinemas has partnered with mobile payments platform Paytm to bring PVR’s movie tickets to Paytm’s ecommerce platform. In the first year of this relationship, PVR targets to sell tickets worth INR 2.5 Bn to INR 3 Bn on Paytm’s ecommerce platforms besides selling tickets from the box offices and other channels.

Modi Launches Kisan Suvidha App

Pitching for the second green revolution in the country based on science, technology and modern inventions in the agricultural sector, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Kisan Suvidha app for the farmers.

Roadrunnr Forced To Rename As Runnr

After an unknown company filed a lawsuit against Roadrunnr over an intellectual property right, hyperlocal delivery startup Roadrunnr has been forced to change the brand name to Runnr. It will also change their domain name to  runnr.co.in

Other Developments Of The Week

Bangalore Police Lodges Case Against Uber Driver

A case has been lodged against Uber driver, who was allegedly misbehaving with a women passenger while driving her back home. The passenger’s brother took to twitter to report the lewd behavior of driver during the drive but did not hear an immediate response from the company. The case has been filed with the Bangalore police, which is being treated as high priority.

BandraRoad Enters Ecommerce Space

Fashion content blog BandraRoad has launched its online store. The online store will offer ‘Comfort Wear’ in quintessential styles for men and women, with shipping across India.

Styletag Launches Mobile App

Lifestyle startup Styletag has launched a mobile app. The app is designed to allow users to browse and purchase from the online shopping website’s wide catalogue.

BigBasket To Deliver Goods On Electric Vehicles

BigBasket has signed on a range of electric vehicles to increase efficiencies and cut down on operating costs as part of its environment-friendly initiatives.

Ola Signs MoU With Maharashtra Govt

Ola has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Govt of Maharashtra, to develop and create quality opportunities for entrepreneurship for 100K youth in the state including women. As per theMoU, Ola will work towards skilling people to be independent driver-entrepreneurs over the next five years.

FirstCry Collaborates With Microsoft

Firstcry is using analytics to boost sales at its offline stores. The company has designed a new system in collaboration with Microsoft to understand customer footfall, customer activity, store heat map and sales data to improve merchandising and assortment planning in the offline stores.

Craftsvilla Expands To International Markets

Craftsvilla has expanded its services to cover the Middle East, New Zealand and Australia. The company aims to touch INR 100 Cr in revenue in 2016-17.

Baxi To Work Without Internet

Baxi will roll out a new feature to help users book rides on the app without using Internet. The service will be available to its 30,000 users from next week.

ScoopWhoop Ties Up With Newslaundry

ScoopWhoop in collaboration with Newslaundry plans to launch a hard-hitting 5-6 webisode documentary series about issues in different parts of India, every quarter. This move indicates ScoopWhoop’s interest towards diversifying its content by delving into serious documentary style reportage, focused upon unearthing stories in difficult to access locations.

SAS Online Forays Into Mutual Fund Platform

SAS (South Asian Stock) Online announced its venture into mutual fund business with the launch of WealthForce. It offers investors a safe and secure Paperless online platform to invest in various Mutual Fund products.

Mumbai Metro & RSRTC Users To Pay With Ola Money

Ola Money announced that it has partnered with Mumbai Metro which will enable commuters to recharge their prepaid metrocards by using the Ola Money app. Ola Money is also the exclusive digital payment partner for RSRTC- the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation, where users booking tickets online on or offline during their bus ride.

Revv Launches In Bangalore

As a part of its geographical expansion in the Southern market, Revv launched its operations in Bangalore with a fleet of over 100 cars across models starting from hatchbacks to sedans to luxury.

Voylla.com Launches Store in Noida

Voylla.com announced the opening of its first Fashion Jewellery & Accessories Store in Noida. This flagship store will offer omnichannel experience to customers with App and a state of the art website in the fashion jewellery domain.

Carzonrent To Make Myles A Separate Entity

Car rental company Carzonrent plans to invest $20 Mn (about INR 133 Cr) in its selfdrive business, Myles, which is said to be growing 30% on a monthly basis since its launch two years ago, and make it an independent entity in 2016-17. The company expects to close the current fiscal with revenue of INR 325 Cr up from INR 260 Cr a year ago.