Daily News Roundup: Myntra, Shopclues, LoginRadius, Kickstarter and More

Myntra to launch Marketplace

After raising a $50 Mn funding round led by Premji Invest, Myntra is soon going to follow the Flipkart way, i.e. Myntra is now going to be a marketplace, says reports. The online retailer, will allow local stores and boutiques to sell their products on it, which it plans to launch by April. The new model of the company is aimed at earning profits and expanding its reach in India’s smaller towns and cities.

“We would like to make a serious effort towards this (marketplace) direction,” said Ashutosh Lawania, co-founder of Myntra

The company expects to have about 500 vendors on the platform, but along-with this it plans to sell premium and private label brands through the inventory model.

A few other existing marketplaces in India include – Flipkart, Snapdeal, eBay, Shopclues etc.

Shopclues launches Express checkout

Online marketplace, ShopClues.com has recently launched the ‘Express Checkout’ feature to help customers to place orders in just 2 clicks, which the company claims will save up to 80% of the total transaction time.The feature picks up stored information like the customer’s preferred shipment address, preferred payment type , available Clues Bucks (reward points) and applicable Coupon Codes (Discount Codes) which can be disabled by the customers. As per the company, the feature will be very much useful for the people who shop via mobile devices.

Sanjay Sethi, CEO & Co-Founder, ShopClues said “We want our customers to get the best online shopping experience, with minimum transaction time and with maximum security. Customers who access the Internet through mobile devices for online shopping, will find it especially useful since Express Checkout requires very little tying of information. With this feature, users will now be able to shop in 1/4th of the time taken earlier.”

ShopClues.com has recently completed two years of existence and is currently is doing over 3 lakh transactions a month.

SaaS startup LoginRadius raises $1.3 Mn

LoginRadius, a Canada based startup, co-founded by Rakesh Soni and Deepak Gupta, has raised $1.3 Mn in angel funding from Accelerate Fund, Yaletown Venture Partners, Real Ventures, BDC Capital, and other angel investors.

Launched in mid-2011, LoginRadius is Software as a Service (SaaS) product that allows users to register and log into a website using their existing accounts on Facebook, Google, etc. without filling the registration forms every time.

Currently, LoginRadius supports more than 30 major social networks including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter and serves about lakh businesses in 190 countries and with a reach of 15 Mn users on a monthly basis, claims the company.The startup competes with the companies like Gigya Inc. and Janrain Inc.

Google acquires sound based password startup – SlickLogin

Israeli startup SlickLogin which uses high frequency sounds and Smartphone as a security check for login to websites has recently been acquired by Google. The terms of the deal have been left undisclosed by now, disclosure of the acquisition came from SlickLogin’s website, the existing three member team of SlickLogin will be joining Google’s team.

Since Google already has a two step authentication option to securely login to Gmail, looks like the acquisition is aims at enhancing the capabilities.

SlickLogin helps to identify the user’s identity when they log into a website. When someone login into a website, the computer’s speaker emits nearly inaudible audio waves, the Smartphone picks up these audio waves and confirms via signals that you are attempting to log into the website.

Yahoo acquires technical recruiting startup Distill

Yahoo has acquired San Francisco based technical recruiting startup and will be shutting down its services. Like always the financial terms of deal have been left undisclosed and as per the post on Distill’s website, it will be shutting down its services on March 30th.

Distill’s founders have previously worked for Tapjoy – a mobile performance-based advertising platform that drove deep engagement and monetization opportunities for mobile app publishers. The Distill’s team will now be working for Yahoo’s mobile advertising solutions.

Recently, Distill has picked up $1.3 Mn in funding from Felicis Ventures, China’s Innovation Works and DN Capital.

Kickstarter Hacked – company urges people to change passwords

Recently, crowdfunding website Kickstarter was hacked and database of its customers was compromised. Though the company said that no credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers.

According to the company, hackers were able to access a database that contained usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords.

While passwords were not revealed, people with computer expertise could still decipher encrypted passwords, and thus the company recommended users change their passwords as well as those for other sites or accounts for which the users had the same password.