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 duo spent almost $400 million in 2018 on rapid expansion as well as discounting to gain new customers, and Uber Eats has managed to edge out Foodpanda by 2 million orders.
The drying up of funds for a number of start-ups is affecting the firms' unicorn status across the globe. The past six months have seen the valuations of 147 unicorns drop, of which 71 were from the US and 29 from China, according to the latest Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2022. Eighty-one unicorns from across the globe saw their valuations drop below $1 billion-the threshold for a start-up to be labelled unicorn-from last year.
Electric vehicle retail sales in the country witnessed over three-fold jump last fiscal with two-wheeler offtake leading the segment, according to data compiled by automobile dealers' body FADA. Total electric vehicle (EV) retails reached 4,29,217 units in 2021-22, a rise of three-fold from 1,34,821 units in the financial year 2020-21, the industry body said. Total EV sales had stood at 1,68,300 units in the 2019-20 fiscal, it noted.
Foodpanda delivery executives were assured they could make Rs 50,000. There were promises made on surge and demand. But the demand never kept up with the supply.
The FM said, change in the mindset of the millennials not to commit any EMIs towards buying an automobile and instead taking Ola, Uber or the Metro (train) services also led to automobile sector slowdown.
Even at early stage, start-ups are raising more money faster owing to the rise of a lot of specialised early-stage VCs and emergence of seed-stage programmes.
Ending Paytm's monopoly as the only wallet payment option on Uber, the ride-hailing service has decided to allow payments through Jio Money. Alnoor Peermohamed reports.
Flipkart's appointment of Kalyan Krishnamurthy as CEO and Ola's choice of PepsiCo's Vishal Kaul for COO speaks to the growing trend of bringing in experienced professionals to run business. Karan Choudhury reports.
Recently, TPEM's first born electric concept, Avinya broke cover. The model promises a minimum range of 500 kilometres and advanced technology features, aimed at buyers in India and outside. TPEM, the newly formed entity may also consider a separate dedicated sales channel for the EVs with a distinctive corporate identity once the volumes reach a critical mass and throughput is large enough for the dealers to be profitable, said Chandra. Elaborating further on the hiring strategy he said, "We will hire from everywhere-wherever the talent of the required competency is available."
Modi will get the maximum chunk of the session time.
A slew of Indian firms, including Flipkart, Byju's and Zomato, is building a path to profitability and diversifying into newer business segments ahead of mega-IPO plans.
Uber on Thursday said it is now showing trip destination to drivers before they decide to accept a ride to enable them to make informed choices as the ride-hailing app announced a host of new measures promising to improve platform experience for drivers as well as riders. Upfront destination feature is already live across 20 cities and will be expanded to all others, Uber said in a statement. The move assumes significance as the government recently warned cab aggregators, including Ola and Uber, of strict action unless they improve their systems and redress mounting consumer complaints.
The government on Monday asked online food business operators like Swiggy and Zomato to submit a proposal within 15 days on improving their consumer grievance redressal mechanism amid rising complaints from customers. The department of consumer affairs directed e-commerce FBOs "to transparently show consumers the breakup of all charges included in the order amount such as delivery charges, packaging charges, taxes, surge pricing etc." According to an official statement, "The Department of Consumer Affairs has directed major e-commerce Food Business Operators (FBOs) to furnish the current framework as well as a proposal on improving the consumer grievance redressal mechanism within 15 days."
'The digital trust level has drastically gone up due to Covid, not only in tier-I and II cities, but also in tier-III, IV and V geographies,'
The 'buy-now, pay-later' (BNPL) juggernaut continued to roll on during the festive season with multiple players seeing disbursals grow by more than 100 per cent compared to Diwali last year. LazyPay, the BNPL platform of Prosus-owned payments major PayU, witnessed a credit demand increase of 300 per cent over the festive season last year, especially in segments like travel, food & beverages and entertainment. "We also saw an uptick of 70 per cent in user acquisition in the last two months.
Meru Cabs' founder says they were a traditional company.
Ford, which had announced to quit the Indian market last year, said it was exploring the possibility of using one of its plants in India to produce electric cars for exports.
OlaCabs' hyper-growth and an ambitious plan to expand to 100 cities by the end of 2015 are perhaps what attracted Japan's richest man, Masayoshi Son, chairman of telecom and media group SoftBank Corp, to announce an investment of $210 million (around Rs 1,260 crore) in the company.
Oil marketing companies IOC, BPCL and HPCL have invited expressions of interest from start-ups that wish to be enrolled as fuel entrepreneurs for doorstep delivery of high-speed diesel through mobile petrol pumps.
With Kona catering for the high-end market, the South Korean automobile conglomerate wants to introduce a product in the EV segment to address the mass segment.
Predatory pricing petitions against Ola, Uber were filed from across cities.
With the 21 unicorns collectively valued at $73.2 billion, India is the fourth biggest in terms of unicorns, behind the US, China and the UK, as per the Hurun Global Unicorn List.
Once the 21-day lockdown is lifted, which may happen in phases, those who have been contemplating purchasing a car may actually do it, said analysts. Thanks to social distancing norms and rising hygiene awareness, daily commuters may ditch public transport and shared mobility solutions like Ola and Uber. Many are likely to prefer the confines of a car over roughing it up in crowded public transport services such as a metro, local sub-urban trains and buses, they said.
Investors spent much of 2016 cleaning house. And a VC tells Ranju Sarkar, "There's still some bad news left in the portfolios (of VC firms). What happens to Ola and Flipkart will drive sentiment in future."
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group on Wednesday said it has recorded loss from investments to the tune of USD 1.4 billion, or over Rs 9,000 crore, for 2016-17 in Indian startups like Snapdeal and Ola.
A team of more than 60 people under Neeraj Mittal, an IAS officer, was instrumental in getting up the New Industrial Policy 2021 targeting investments of around Rs 10 trillion by 2025.
The Code on Social Security, 2020 gives a lot of comfort to gig firms which recognise cab drivers or food delivery executives as 'independent contractors' who directly do business with customers with the help of their digitised platforms.
Takes on UberEats, Swiggy; experts question cash burn.
He was illegally probing a 2014 Delhi rape case using the victim's medical records to find out if it was a ploy by Ola to sabotage Uber's operations
Unacademy may see a funding dry spell for at least next 12-18 months and even last till 24 months and will cut costs to weather the lean period, said the chief executive of the education technology unicorn that recently laid off more than 600 employees. "This is a test for all of us. We must learn to work under constraints and focus on profitability at all costs. We must survive the winter," said Unacademy's co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal in a letter to the employees. "Winter is here. We are looking at a time when the funding will dry up for at least 12-18 months.
Sumit Nagal was beaten by world number 46 Albert Ramos-Vinolas 6-4, 2-6, 5-7.
The aim is to replace nearly 40 per cent of its existing last mile fleet of delivery vans with EVs by March 2020. o start with, the company is looking at deploying nearly 160 e-vans by the end of 2019.
Its executives are test-marketing the model in New Delhi.
With a new campaign that talks about togetherness, Uber challenges Ola's homegrown narrative.
Swiggy is rapidly scaling up its technology (tech) teams as the food delivery giant is witnessing strong recovery and growth over the past few months. The SoftBank-backed company is hiring across engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science functions in the next two quarters. Building this team, Swiggy is setting up a new development centre in Gurugram. Its rival Zomato, which had a stellar debut on the Indian stock exchanges in July, is also headquartered in Gurugram.
Gig workers are usually spoken of in the context of the sharing economy, like Uber, Ola drivers, delivery persons for Zomato and Swiggy and so on. This is the first time such workers will be covered under India's social security law.
Uber would look to expand the service to six Indian cities
It should be clear to all that flyovers don't solve urban traffic problems, says Subir Gokarn.
Uber is locked in an intense battle with market leader Ola, which counts Didi as an investor.
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