News Roundup: 12 Startup Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [25 July – 30 July]

In a bid to have a leaner organisation structure, and make better utilisation of its cash resources, Flipkart will let go number of its employees  based on performance. The company has given 700-1000 of its employees an option to either resign or be sent off with severance pay.

Important Development Of The week

Paytm, Zomato, Makes To Breakthrough Brands List

Paytm, Zomato and Faircent has been included in a global list of breakthrough brands, which examines emerging companies that are brand-led—organizations that have both unique business models and strong brands. Paytm has been included in the list, “Growing Global: Breaking Borders,”, while Zomato makes it to the Food & Beverage category and Faircent has been included in the Finance category.

Doormint Shuts Down Operations

Home services platform Doormint has shutdown its operations in some parts of Bangalore and Gurgaon. Doormint CEO Abhinav Agarwal said that the startup is planning to shut operations in these cities. While the team claims that plans are underway, the website states otherwise. The option to search for a service in Gurgaon states that the service is ‘yet to expand in the locality’.

Naspers Brings Stradia To India

South African internet major Naspers launched Stradia.in, an online used car marketplace in India. Users can search for an option by brand, model, price, year, mileage and fuel type across all segments.

Delhi City Taxi And Auto Unions Ask For Ola-Uber Ban

Delhi Autorickshaw Sangh and Delhi Pradesh Taxi Union have called for an indefinite strike against app-based taxi services in New Delhi. The city taxi rivals believe that despite of not having permit to run taxis in Delhi, Ola-Uber are operating fearlessly and taking away their livelihoods.

Amazon Launches ‘Amazon Prime’ & ‘Amazon Pantry’

Amazon launched Amazon Prime membership program in India. With Prime, customers in over 100 cities can avail unlimited free one-day and two-day delivery on eligible products.

Amazon Pantry is a service that will offer grocery and household essentials. It will also deliver the orders in a day. Amazon Pantry will be accessible to all customers in India, whereas globally, it is only available to Amazon Prime customers.

Snapdeal Launches Shopo Website And Escrow Protection

Shopo has on-boarded 2 Lakh sellers and over 5 Mn listings within a year. Celebrating its first anniversary Shopo announced its web and WAP presence. The team also introduced escrow account for buyers and sellers powered by Freecharge.

Startups Now Need Only DIPP Certificate For IPR Benefits

In an announcement made by the Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the startups would now need only a certificate of recognition from the government to avail IPR-related benefits. With this initiative, the government is providing yet another platform for the startups to allow them to do their business easily.

Jugnoo Files For Patent

In a bid to become internet-independent, Jugnoo filed a patent that allows operations of its app in offline mode as well. The move will allow users to book rides on the app in the absence of internet connectivity.

Amazon Announces Q2, 2016 Results

Amazon has gained $30.4 Bn in revenue and earnings of $1.78 per share in Q2, 2016, thereby beating the analysts expectations of $29.54 Bn in revenue and earnings of $1.11 per share. As said, it is the fifth straight profitable quarter for the company, credited mainly to its cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Myntra To Remove 200 Low-Selling Brands

Myntra is delisting around 200 brands, or about 10 per cent of its fashion offerings, from its platform due to low sales. It is planning to focus on larger brands with higher traction. A person familiar to the development said that Myntra will start trimming the last 150-200 lowest selling brands on its platform to begin with, and then may follow it up by pruning more such brands in future.

Buy Mutual Funds Through E-Wallets

In order to make financial products more accessible to consumers, SEBI is planning to utilise digital wallets for the purchase of mutual funds. It is in talks with RBI to frame regulations for the same.

Other Developments Of The Week

Livspace Launches Home Design Automation Platform

Livspace launched its ‘Home Design Automation Platform’ to allow startups to automate complete design workflow, generate invoices through ecommerce integration and provides online 2D and 3D designs. With this, it aims to create 30,000 ‘Design Entrepreneurs’ in India.

Snapdeal Partners Uber

Snapdeal has partnered with cab aggregator Uber to allow customers to directly book an Uber cab from the Snapdeal app. The services are currently available on Android version 4.0 and higher.

PayU India Plans To Double The Total Value Of Transactions

PayU India said its payment gateway business plans to double the total value of transactions processed, to $1 Bn per month in the next one year. The company also expects to launch products related to investments and lending in a bid to have a foothold in all key fin-tech domains by October.

Sattviko Plans Cafes As Idea Addas

Vegetarian food chain Sattviko plans to set up Sattviko Idea Cafes across IITs and other premier institutions in the country, which will work as innovation and incubation centres for students besides serving food. These idea cafes will also conduct mentoring sessions by a group of over 300 entrepreneurs and professionals including InMobi co-founder Mohit Saxena, Commonfloor founder Sumit Jain, and Raman Roy, chairman of Quattro BPO Solutions.

CreditMantri Partners With Bank of Baroda

Public sector lender Bank of Baroda announced that they will be using alternate data sources for lending decisions in partnership with Creditmantri. With this partnership BoB can also lend to SMEs in a real time basis.

SBI Ties Up With IRCTC & Aditya Birla

State Bank of India (SBI) has tied up with IRCTC and Aditya Birla Group to allow customers to make payments using the bank’s mobile wallet SBI Buddy. Apart from this, SBO will also extend its wallet services to more than 2,500 educational institutions, government entities, ministries and departments, and other govt-owned public services.

Grofers, Swiggy Starts Outsourcing Their Deliveries

Consumer-facing delivery companies such as Grofers and Swiggy, which relied on their own crew and fleet of delivery vehicles until recently, have started tying up with logistics startups in an attempt to increase efficiency and cut losses. The development comes at a time when investors are growing increasingly cautious about their bets in India and coaxing startups to trim costs

Govt To Scale Up Existing Incubators

The government plans to identify 10 incubators out of existing 200 such centres and invest INR 200 Cr on scaling up their capacity. It is also planning to set up 100 new incubation centres this year.

SmartShift To Expand To 29 New Cities

Mahindra Group funded SmartShift, a logistics startup that enables small and medium businesses to transport cargo and transporters to find each other, is looking to expand its geographical footprint to 29 cities.

Chai Point To Introduce IoT-Enabled Tea Dispensing Machines

Tea retail chain startup Chai Point is set to introduce IoT-enabled tea dispensing machines to corporate offices as the next step towards serving its product to office employees. The company already has about 1000 semi-automatic dispensers across 100 companies, and the new product, called boxC, is expected to bring 100 more corporate customers for the company by the end of the year.

Nazara Games and Moong Labs Partner

Mobile gaming companies Moong Labs and Nazara Games have partnered to launch a 4D cricket game featuring Virat Kohli that will be available in September. The game play uses an artificial intelligence based system, creating a realistic simulation cricket game where the end player can experience playing like Virat Kohli.

EarlySalary.com forays Into Delhi NCR

EarlySalary.com announced its operations in Delhi NCR today. Over the past 5 months the company was piloting its mobile app based lending product and building algorithm based underwriting & robo decisioning system, which it has successfully implemented. After successful beta phase in Pune & Bangalore it has started to go live with real time loans processing capabilities and added Chennai & Mumbai operations in quick succession.

AHA Taxis Integrates With PayPal

AHA Taxis announced a partnership with PayPal to integrate its payment gateway for ease of online payment transactions for international customers. With this integration, AHA Taxis will now be able to receive payments through PayPal enterprise on all their platforms including Android, iOS, Windows, mobile and desktop web.

TO THE NEW Launches Wear Camcorder

TO THE NEW announced the launch of Wear Camcorder, an intelligent camera app for smartwatches. The new application available on the Google Play Store, lets its users control their phone cameras from their smart watches, thus letting them click images, selfies and record videos.

Wudstay Launches Student Accommodation Space

WudStay has launched student accommodation category that offers PGs and hostels for the students. The startup has facilitated 35,000 beds since the launch of its hostel and PG network across 5 cities. It started its hostel operations from Kota and plans to expand its operations to Chennai, Pune and Indore.

Tolexo Signs MOU With Madhya Pradesh Laghu Udyog

In a constant bid to enable MSMEs across India to bolster their business, Tolexo signed an MOU with Madhya Pradesh Laghu Udyog Nigam Pvt Ltd (MPLUN). The MoU incorporates promotion, marketing and distribution of goods manufactured by MSME units of Madhya Pradesh on Tolexo’s online platform.

Paytm Automobile Vertical Witnesses Exponential Growth

Paytm witnessed tremendous traction for its automobile vertical. Through continuous strategic partnerships with leading automobile companies, the platform is reaching its goal of being an all-in-one vehicle booking platform in the next six months. With increased product offerings, the mobile commerce platform is experiencing a growth rate of 45% month-on-month for its auto vertical.

CareOnGo Launches InstaStock

CareOnGo launched B2B Mobile Application platform enabling Pharmacy Retailers, hospitals, health institutions to procure Medicines and Health products from more than 100 brands directly from manufacturers. InstaStock, is aimed at providing seamless experience to the retail pharmacies to buy products at higher margins directly from brands with assured 18-hour logistics.

SquareYards Forays Into Fintech

Square Yards announced that it is aggressively investing in technology for its mortgage advisory platform – Square Capital – with an aim to become the largest online to offline (O2O) loan aggregator in India. It has facilitated disbursement of loans worth INR 1550 Cr through its tie-ups with more than 45 banking partners.

Mebelkart Announces Alliance With Continental Group

MebelKart.com announced its entry into the B2C ultra luxury furniture segment with the first-of-its-kind of tie-up with the Continental Group. With this alliance, MebelKart aims to reach out to the high net worth individuals (HNIs) across the country. It will be marketing and selling products from STROT, a South Delhi based lifestyle boutique of the renowned Continental Group. The products can be shipped across 7 cities including all key cities in the country.

Paytm Powers Cashless Payments At Select CITYWALK

Select CITYWALK will now be able to make cashless transactions for parking, meals at food court, movie tickets and flea market using their Paytm wallets. Select CITYWALK has become the country’s first mall to adopt mobile payments with this partnership with Paytm.