The job market saw an uptrend in the March quarter (Q1), with job interviews increasing 13.71 per cent quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to over 30 million, according to Apna.co, India's largest jobs and professional networking platform. It recorded a 42 per cent QoQ growth in its employer base. As a result of the second wave of Covid-19 last year, sectors such as healthcare, delivery, and e-commerce were booming while others had fairly low employment.
Since then, 129 startups have joined this star status, of which 100 were added from January 2019, generating a total value of $535 billion. Entrepreneurs are building bigger enterprises at a faster rate -- 50 per cent of the 130 companies reached unicorn status in the first five years after their initial institutional fundraising.
Thousands of small brands are ruling the consumer market despite the predatory pricing and deep discounting by foreign e-commerce companies and efforts of certain FMCG companies to sideline the distributor network, said the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which represents about 70 million traders in the country. "If the government gives support policies to non-corporate sector and tighten the e-commerce companies to obey the policy and the law both in letter and spirit, the retail trade of the country is bound to blossom in pursuance of the vision of PM Narendra Modi for Make in India and Atmnirbhar Bharat," said CAIT national president BC Bhartia and secretary general Praveen Khandelwal.
Ola founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Bhavish Aggarwal will step back from day-to-day operations to focus more on engineering functions, team building, and products, apart from focusing on long-term strategic projects, such as two-wheelers, cars, and innovations in quick commerce and international expansion. "I'll be spending more time with all engineering functions, team building, and on products," said Aggarwal in an internal note, adding, "I'll also be increasing my focus on our longer-term strategic projects, including new two-wheeler products, our car project, innovations in quick commerce, electrifying ride-hailing, our cell research and development (R&D), international expansion, building our Pune technology (tech) centre, and Futurefoundry UK." To drive scale, speed, and quality, Aggarwal said he is expanding Ola Group's chief financial officer (CFO) G R Arun Kumar's role to help him steer 'day-to-day operations' across the group.
SoftBank-backed internet commerce firm Meesho has downsized its grocery vertical Meesho SuperStore (formerly Farmiso) in an attempt to drive efficiency. The Bengaluru-based firm did not reveal the number of laid-off employees. However, the company officials said that about 150 employees have been laid off.
Food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy reported a nationwide outage on Wednesday. Both the platforms witnessed technical glitches and were unresponsive for almost an hour. Downdetector, a platform that collects status reports from a series of sources, recorded about 3,619 reports of outage against Zomato at 2:05 PM and about 771 reports of outage against Swiggy at around 2:21 PM. According to the sources, the outage was caused by Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-services platform, which runs both platforms. Though Swiggy and Zomato are working now, some customers reported that the issue has not been solved completely and they are not able to place orders and there are payment related issues.
Located in a small township in the eastern part of Bengaluru is IBM's new Security Command Centre, which is surrounded by offices of multinational tech companies. This unit is the centrepiece of IBM's multi-million dollar investment to help businesses prepare for the growing threat of cyberattacks across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. This facility is the first of its kind in the region. It helps train in cybersecurity response techniques through highly realistic and simulated cyberattacks.
If there is a morality tale here, it is that debt and death spare no king.
'Why is the government asking parents to be careful rather than coming up with strict rules and regulations for the companies?'
Amazon has filed a legal challenge at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) suspension of the US e-commerce giant's 2019 deal with Future Retail (FRL). Amazon has challenged the CCI order on at least five grounds, and the matter is likely to be listed this week, according to the sources. Parallelly, Amazon's Indian unit has approached the Supreme Court against a halt on an arbitration case against Future Retail's (FRL) asset sale to Reliance Industries (RIL).
Besides growing tech and digital enhancements, the firms are ramping up the hiring of more delivery partners and reinforcing existing Covid protocols.
The world is full of family businesses that withered away with the passing of generations, creating much bitterness and ill will. Entire clans that used to be household names have become pale shadows of their once-mighty empires.
Biryani was the top dish on Zomato and Swiggy followed by dosa and samosa.
Fintech unicorn Razorpay has raised $375 million in the Series F round of funding at a $7.5-billion valuation, making it India's second-most valuable start-up in this space, after Paytm. The company valuation has surged over seven times in 15 months, helping it push Walmart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe to the third spot on the country's most-valuable fintech list. Razorpay's latest round of fundraising was led by Lone Pine Capital, Alkeon Capital, and TCV.
The studies that put Virat Kohli as the top brand now do not have Rohit Sharma in the Top 10. That will change quickly if he delivers the T20 World Cup next year or the ODI championship the year after.
IPO-bound mobility platform Ola, said it has successfully raised $500 million via a Term Loan B (TLB) from marquee international institutional investors. This term loan has no impact on the valuation of Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola. The Bengaluru-based firm recently raised $139 million. This is part of a $1 billion funding round for which the company is in talks with investors, increasing its valuation to about $7.5 billion, according to the sources.
Ronnie Screwvala-led edtech unicorn upGrad, has filed a suit for trademark infringement against another EdTech company called Scaler. The suit has been filed in the Delhi high court for violation of intellectual property relating to upGrad's trademark. It has also sought damages of more than Rs 3 crore. upGrad accused Scaler of using its brand name 'upGrad' through Google Ads to appear on top of search results on Google Search Engine and in turn gaining illicit benefit.
Black Friday sales in India received a good response as brands dropped their prices making customers queue up outside stores where discounts were steeper. Discounts were offered both online and offline. Most of the international brands in India offered discounts under the Black Friday Sale banner. The Black Friday Sale started in the US on the Friday after Thanksgiving Thursday. The day typically marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season ahead of the festival.
US e-commerce giant Amazon has written to the independent directors of Future Retail Limited (FRL), including Gagan Singh, Ravindra Dhariwal and Jacob Mathew, and its audit committee, providing data and alleging that there have been significant financial irregularities to the prejudice of public shareholders, banks, creditors, and third-party suppliers. Amazon has said this warrants a thorough and independent examination of all relevant facts and related-party transactions, including of past financial years, by an independent agency. Separately, Amazon has written to Securities and Exchange Board of India Chairman Ajay Tyagi, seeking the withdrawal of the regulator's conditional approval granted to FRL related to the merger deal between the Future group and Reliance.
Their startup investments number 13 so far, compared to 17 deals in 2020.
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