News Roundup: 6 Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [11 July – 16 July]

Amazon India inaugurated its largest Fulfilment Centre (FC) in Sonipat near New Delhi. The centre is spread over 200,000 square feet with more than 800,000 cubic feet of storage space. The FC will enable thousands of small & medium businesses to save money by replacing their upfront capital expense with low variable cost and pay only for the storage space they use and the orders that we fulfill.

Important Developments Of The Week

Stayzilla May Face Ban From Campus Recruitment

Nine students of IIT Kharagpur were reportedly left in a lurch, when Stayzilla revoked their job offers. Taking cognisance on the incident, the All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) may take action against Stayzilla. The initial offers to these students included a fixed compensation of INR 12 lakh and performance linked variable pay of INR 2 lakh. However four months before joining (August), the company revised the offer by cutting 30% from fixed and variable pay.

20 Companies Certified As Incubators Under Startup India

The government certified 20 private organisations, including iSprit and Nasscom as incubators under the Startup India Action Plan. Currently, under the Startup India initiative, only 278 government-run incubators are allowed to certify and recommend startups.

Quikr Launches ‘AtHomeDiva’

Quikr launched on-demand beauty service ‘AtHomeDiva’ within its category of QuikrServices. AtHomeDiva provides a wide range of beauty and styling services at home. This service is currently available on Quikr app and website.

Ola Brings Surge Back In Karnataka

Ola has been issued a notice by the Karnataka Transport Department for flouting the rules after obtaining the license. The department has asked it to explain why its licence for running its services should not be cancelled on grounds of violating the licence conditions. The aggregator had got the licence only on June 19 under Karnataka’s new regulations for technology based taxi aggregators notified on April 2.

Snapdeal Tweaks Return Policy

Snapdeal has eliminated its ‘no questions asked’ return policy on electronic products. Now buyers returning electronic items will need proof from an authorised service centre, within seven days, showing that the delivered item is defective. This step is expected to bring down the fraudulent cases of false returns. It will also reduce the delivery cost for sellers as only certified products will be exchanged.

Paytm Facilitates Collateral-Free Working Capital Loans

Paytm, has announced that it will now provide collateral-free working capital loans for small merchants and service providers. The company has tied up with various financial institutions like Capital Float, Aditya Birla Finance and Capital First to facilitate the loan for small merchants and service providers like kirana store owners and auto drivers. These small loans are said to range from INR 10,000 to INR 1 lakh.

Other Developments Of The Week

Horntell Launches Actionable Cards

Actionable Cards, claimed to be 2.0 of push notifications allows your app to embed richer content in them and allow the intended action to be completed from the notification itself. Horntell comes as an Android SDK (also as a Website Javascript SDK) that sits in your application/website and creates a feed of Actionable Cards when you push some using their API.

Lenskart Ties Up With Ola

Lenskart partnered with Ola to provide free eye check-up to tens of thousands of Ola drivers across Delhi-NCR as part of a road safety programme. The initiative has already seen participation from 3,000 drivers.

Start-O- Vation – A National Summit On Startups

Founding members of FICCI, and the Indian Chamber of Commerce presented “Start-O- Vation”, a national summit. The summit was attended by business experts, industrialists, economists and policy makers who shared their opinions on innovative business approaches and everyone emphasised upon to promote a culture of start-up and entrepreneurship.

The event saw the presence of many prominent personalities, VIPs and the media personnel. Key speakers at the summit were Debmalya Banerjee, Regional Director, Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Harry Lagad, Summit Chairman, R Chandrasekhar, President – NASSCOM, Ashish Kumar Chauhan, Managing Director & CEO – Bombay Stock Exchange, Padmashree, Dr. Bibek Debroy, Member -Niti Ayog, and Digbijoy Chakraborty, Director | Public Sector & Government Consulting Practice, South Asia, Middle East, North Africa, Frost & Sullivan to name a few.

The conference was called to discuss the importance of entrepreneurship in India, which in turn may help boost country’s economic growth and sustainability. ICC is among India’s top 5 business chambers and had arranged more than 100 conferences in a year in various sectors. ICC has been associated with GOI for most of its outreach programmes.

EuroKids Launches EuroVarsity

Education services provider in the pre-school segment, EuroKids International, has announced the launch of EuroVarsity, an online skill development platform. EuroVarsity will help skill young aspiring early childhood educators with the latest practices in the care, welfare and education of children.

SINE Partners SBI

SINE at IIT Bombay has entered into a pact with State Bank of India to promote innovation by start-ups in the financial sector. Both the institute and SBI will identify fintech start-ups that have products or applications to cater to the financial sector and can help SBI to explore opportunities to enhance the synergy for their banking services.

Shopclues Partners StoreKing

To improve penetration in tier III and tier IV towns, Shopclues has partnered with hybrid ecommerce company StoreKing. As part of the deal, Shopclues’  products will be shown in the digital catalogue on the StoreKing app. Customers can browse through the catalogue at franchisees’ outlets and can make purchases with the help of a local shop owners.

Trendin To Branch Out Into 5 Different Sites

Trendin, Aditya Birla Group’s online retail platform, will be spun off into separate portals. While the platform is fully functional now, the transition will take place in a phased manner when all the websites are up and running. It plans to have separate ecommerce websites for its five labels – Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen, Peter England and People – as part of the company’s “digital transformation journey.

Book Ola Rides On Via.com

Online travel and ecommerce company Via.com entered into a partnership with mobile cab operator Ola to integrate cab booking interface for 75,000 agents and millions of users. With this integration, Via.com will provide comprehensive travel solution that allows a complete range of service from flights and hotel bookings to cab bookings for local as well as outstation mobility needs.

Travel Boutique Online Ties Up With Fxkart.com

Travel portal Travel Boutique Online has entered into a strategic partnership with Fxkart.com, a marketplace of foreign exchange dealers. The company said the move will enable its 19,000 travel agents to make foreign exchange bookings for their customers seamlessly.

Stayzilla Expands Presence In North East, Sikkim and Bengal

Stayzilla.com expanded the number of homestays in North East, Sikkim and Bengal, given the remoteness and demand for stays in these areas. Stayzilla works closely with various state tourism departments for opening up more homestays across the hilly terrain of the East.

Voylla Expands Its Footprints In South India

Voylla expanded its presence in South by setting up three kiosks at prominent locations in Bangalore. Voylla states that Bangalore has a large number of fashion forward audience and it well caters to their needs by being a one-stop destination that brings a fusion of trendy and traditional statement jewellery.

OYO Partners With Travelport

Travelport and OYO announced a new agreement whereby 6,000 hotel properties offered by OYO will be made available through Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform to its travel agency users both in India and around the world. OYO currently operates in over 180 Indian cities including Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Bangalore and Goa.

Mobikwik Reaches Benchmark

MobiKwik announced that its exclusive cash pick up service has completed 1 Mn transactions. The service was launched to cater to those users who are either unbanked or aren’t comfortable using net-banking, credit or debit cards.

VEQTA Launches Flagship Mobile App For Sports Fans

VEQTA, digital broadcast network (OTT) dedicated to sports has launched its flagship sports app. The VEQTA app is now available for all android and IOS based mobile phones on the respective app stores. Sports fans in India will now be able to watch a unique selection of amazing sports content from around the globe across Football, Cricket, MMA, Wrestling, Basketball, Motorsports, Tennis, Golf, Olympic Sports and many more from the most authentic sources all over the world.

Jugnoo Partners With Trainman

Jugnoo partners with Trainman to enable passengers to book auto-rickshaws while travelling to and from their respective railway stations, using the Trainman mobile app. The service will be available to users of Trainman mobile app in 35 cities where Jugnoo is currently operational.

Helpchat & Zomato Join Hands

Helpchat partnered with Zomato to make the food ordering experience simpler and faster for consumers. Through this partnership, Helpchat has integrated Zomato directly into their app. Users are now able to search for, and order food online via Zomato from within the Helpchat app.

ClearTax Launches India’s First Self-Filing Tax platform

ClearTax launched a revolutionary system for business tax filing that will help small business owners and freelancers across the country to self e-file their taxes using an intuitive and simple interface. This will enable them to not only become tax compliant but also gain access to working capital and business loans at competitive interest rates and avoid tax notices.

Ola Launches E-Rickshaws In Lucknow

Ola announced the launch of E-Rickshaws on its app in Lucknow. With this launch, Lucknow becomes the second city in India to get E-Rickshaws on the Ola app, after Delhi-NCR.  The company plans to onboard more than 300 E-Rickshaws over the next 3 months.

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