Its growth has been driven by discounts rather than enticing new customers to its platform
PhonePe wants to dethrone its Alibaba and SoftBank-backed rival, Paytm, claiming that additional capital that Walmart will bring to the table will help it grow much faster
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is in India this week and is expected to meet top government functionaries, business leaders and SMBs.
Shivani Shinde reports. The youngest member of the Tata group, the much-awaited Tata Neu, has finally been launched for people across the country. The 'super app' offers a number of services ranging from financial services to tech, travel and even groceries. The app takes off with a customer base of 120 million, with 2,500 offline stores. According to the Tata group, the app will be a one-stop destination for all consumer needs. The super app also offers a bouquet of financial offers like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), bill payments, loans and insurance. Tata Neu will also provide other services like fashion, gadgets, groceries, travel and health.
The Competition Commission of India has approved Tatas' proposal to acquire up to 64.3 per cent stake in BigBasket, a deal that will provide the diversified group a strong foothold in the fast-growing online grocery market.
Amazon's huge investment of $80 million a month didn't win it favour over customers during the festive season, with rival Flipkart selling more goods, reports Alnoor Peermohamed from Bengaluru.
It all started with Flipkart and Amazon trying to outdo each other - after Flipkart announced $1-billion fund-raising in July.
Flipkart and Snapdeal take a cue from Amazon even as they differ on who is ahead in the race
This year, festive sales are expected to push up the annual gross merchandise value of e-commerce companies to around $38 billion, a 40 per cent growth over the previous year.
The possible acquisition of Holcim India business will be one of the biggest inbound corporate deals in the country. Currently, Walmart Inc.'s $16-billion acquisition of Flipkart Online Services in 2018 remains the biggest acquisition of an Indian asset by any acquirer, followed by BP plc acquisition of 30 per cent stake in Reliance Industries' 23 oil and gas production blocks in 2011 for $7.2 billion. Bloomberg reported late on Wednesday night that Holcim - the world's biggest cement maker - is considering a potential sale of its India business and gauging interest in its controlling stake in Ambuja Cement.
Union Minister of Commerce and Textiles Piyush Goyal has stirred up a hornet's nest by taking on India Inc, specifically the Tata group, which is among the companies that lobbied against the Modi government's pro-consumer draft e-commerce policies. While Goyal's comments, made at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) event, were streamed live on YouTube, the industry lobbying body later edited the video and subsequently withdrew the entire speech. Goyal had said the Tata group and other Indian companies often lobbied for their interest, while ignoring national interest.
When the Delhi police served him a notice in May for a case involving tagging some political leaders' tweets as carrying manipulated media, a spirited Maheshwari said he was employed by Twitter Communications Private Limited, and not Twitter Inc, and, therefore, could not help them. The authorities were understandably not pleased.
On a cloudy Monday this month, Mohammed Irshad flew from Kochi to Gurugram to attend an exclusive investor networking event. Among a handful of founders selected for the event, Irshad was to pitch his peer-to-peer learning start-up Notespaedia for funding in front of top venture capital investors such as AngelBay, Elevation Capital, and Inflection Point Ventures. He failed to woo them, but the feisty entrepreneur was determined to continue his hunt.
Karan Kundrra's tips to make your first date work for you.
Unlike many other B-schools, IIM Ahmedabad follows a cluster system of final placements process where sectors are invited in cohorts at regular intervals.
This was only four days after many aggrieved buyers chose social networking sites to attack Flipkart's 'Big Billion Day' discount this Monday (October 6), followed by an apology from the company's co-founders, Sachin and Binny Bansal.
From almost a thousand employees, 300 have exited the firm.
All of the 56 impacted associates, eight in the senior management and 48 in the middle as well as lower management, have been offered enhanced severance benefits and out placement services to support their transition, the company said.
E-commerce major Amazon on Wednesday said it will acquire Prione Business Services - its joint venture firm with Catamaran, subject to requisite regulatory approvals. Prione Business Services was formed in 2014 and was coming up for renewal on May 19, 2022. In August this year, Amazon and NR Narayana Murthy's Catamaran announced that they will not continue their JV beyond May 2022. The two parties had not disclosed the reason behind the decision.
Mobile device maker Realme has overtaken South Korean giant Samsung to grab the second spot in the branded smartphone market, with 18 per cent volume share in October this year, revealed Counterpoint Research. Its rival Samsung ended October with 16 per cent share. Xiaomi (including its brand POCO) was at 20 per cent; Vivo at 13 per cent. The ascent brings Realme closer to its ambition to reach the No. 1 berth by 2022 when it hopes to sell over 40 million smartphones annually.
People who have worked with Mukesh Bansal describe him as approachable and extremely polite but someone who likes to maintain a strict work schedule.
Experts believe adoption of AI in developing countries will be much faster than in developed nations, as the magnitude of change it will bring will be far larger.
Flipkart's model is a money guzzler
Koo has so far raised $4.1 mn in Series A funding from existing investors Accel, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and 3one4 Capital.
Recipients of these damaged mementos have been given the option to either seek a refund of their bid amount or get a replacement for these broken items.
The Tata group has proposed to acquire more than 60 per cent stake in online grocery platform BigBasket, according to a filing, as the conglomerate seeks to expand in the fast-growing e-commerce space. The group plans to buy up to 64.3 per cent stake in Supermarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd (SGS) through a combination of primary and secondary acquisitions, a filing with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) showed. The parties to the proposed deal are Tata Digital Ltd (TDL), SGS and Innovative Retail Concepts Pvt Ltd (IRC) -- which is engaged in B2C (Business to Consumer) sales through www.bigbasket.com and related mobile applications.
172 firms participated in the final placement process.
Close to $18 billion that Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail mopped up from a slew of private equity transactions in 2020 has pushed up the money inflows through this route by 108 per cent to $33.8 billion, according to an industry report. As per the data collated by Refinitiv, private equity investments increased 108 per cent in 2020 over the previous year, with the number of deals jumping from 665 in 2019 to 791 in 2020 at $33.8 billion, despite the pandemic. In 2019, total PE deals stood at $16.2 billion. Most of the fund inflows were in the third quarter, fetching $24 billion, which, however, tapered off in Q4 to just about $4.57 billion, as per the data from the agency that tracks financial transactions at a global level.
After multiple attempts at selling itself, including to larger e-commerce player Snapdeal, ShopClues has found a buyer in Singapore-based e-commerce platform Qoo10 in an all-stock deal.
The IPL will get underway from September 19 in the UAE, moved out of India due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Live commerce, quick commerce, group buying, WhatsApp commerce, dukaantech have made their mark.
Everyday consumerables, such as grocery and order-in food items are the key buyout sector, analysts say, and a major reason for kirana stores' digitisation push.
In a short span of time, with the help of Amazon, Cloudtail was able to devise a model that could protect it from the vagaries of online retail business.
While the first half of the year saw India's e-commerce market shrinking, the success of Diwali sales will boost the sector beyond last year's benchmark
Vinai Kumar Saxena's current job as lieutenant governor of an Opposition-ruled state will raise the bar -- not just for him, but also for the Aam Aadmi Party government, which never says no to a fight with the representative of the central government in India's capital.
Some companies are already seeking review of the new norms.
Over the last 12 months, thanks to bold bets by venture capital firms like Sequoia, SoftBank Vision Fund, and foreign strategic investors like Naspers, pipeline of start-ups with potential to achieve $1 bn in valuation is at an all-time high.
Credit card spends jumped 57 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in September, aided by the festive season. According to the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, in September, credit card spends totalled Rs 80,477.18 crore compared to Rs 77,981 crore in August, thereby registering a 3.2 per cent growth sequentially, despite the high base. In the corresponding period last year, credit card spend was to the tune of Rs 51,356.68 crore.
The Centre has slapped as many as 148 notices on e-commerce players in the past three months for not complying with the mandatory display of the 'country of origin' tag on products sold. "Of the 148 notices, 56 have compounded it (the offence) and paid up around Rs 34 lakh," a senior official told Business Standard. "Every product has to display the country of origin, along with other basic information," the official added. In the case of e-commerce companies, these details have to be clearly displayed on their portals.
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.
