'Instant home services act as an on-demand household support system, bridging the gap between informal domestic help and structured service platforms,'
More than 30 technology startups, collectively valued at $100 billion, are poised to go public by 2027, signalling a potential rebound in India's stock market activity, according to a report by investment bank The Rainmaker Group. Walmart-owned Flipkart, financial technology (fintech) leader PhonePe, SoftBank-backed Lenskart, Razorpay, Zetwerk, and Meesho are among the top companies preparing to go public in India.
'Women are taking on key roles in warehouses, such as picking and packing, as well as in our last-mile operations across India.'
'Domestic investors are opening up to the idea of high-growth Internet companies as a pool of value creation.' 'They like the execution that they see with Zepto, and for us, that is the most important factor.'
Electric two-wheeler (e2W) maker Ather Energy has submitted preliminary papers to the Securities and Exchange Board of India to raise funds through an initial public offering (IPO). According to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), the IPO will comprise a fresh issue of equity shares valued at Rs 3,100 crore, alongside an offer for sale of 22 million equity shares by its promoters and investor shareholders.
Flipkart's hyper-value e-commerce platform Shopsy is intensifying efforts to tap over half of the 821 million internet users (about 442 million) in rural India. These efforts are being led by Prathyusha Agarwal, who recently joined as business head at Shopsy. The aim is to become the go-to destination for consumers seeking entry-level products across various categories.
Flipkart, the e-commerce company owned by Walmart, is intensifying its efforts to achieve profitability as it is eyeing a valuation of approximately $60 billion at the time of its initial public offering (IPO), now planned in 2025-2026, instead of this year, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm might consider listing in the US or any other geography, including India. The company, which counts the likes of Amazon and Reliance's JioMart among its competitors in India's burgeoning e-commerce market, had also contemplated launching an IPO in 2022-2023.
Meesho has emerged as the second-largest player by order share in this year's festive sales till now, surpassing Amazon, while Flipkart Group platforms topped the market in both orders and gross merchandise value (GMV), according to according to a report by consultancy firm Redseer. It said Flipkart Group maintained its leadership position with a 62 per cent market share in terms of GMV during the first week of the festive season, followed by Amazon which had 26 per cent share, while the remaining 12 per cent was distributed among other e-commerce players. In terms of order volume, Flipkart Group again leads the market with about 49 per cent share and SoftBank-backed Meesho ranks second with about 21 per cent order share, according to Redseer.
India is likely to see over 100 mature, large-scale profitable or on the path to profitability startups in the next five years, of which 80 have the potential to go for public listing, market research and consultancy firm Redseer said on Tuesday. Redseer Strategy Consultants, in a report on IPOs, said 20 of the mature startups have gone public so far. "India may see over 100 matured, large-scale profitable/path-to-profitability start-ups in the next five years.
The Softbank-backed company has set a price band of Rs 72 to Rs 76 per share for the maiden share sale and is expected to test the appetite for new-age loss-making companies.
The Indian entrepreneurship success story will soon see one more company debuting on the public markets. Ola Electric, the electric vehicle (EV) company, has become the first such firm that has filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India for its initial public offering (IPO). This is a fresh issue of equity shares of up to Rs 5,500 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of more than 95 million equity shares at a face value of Rs 10.
India's consumer digital economy which was pegged at $85-90 billion in calendar year 2020, is expected to become a $800 billion market by 2030, according to reports released by consulting firm RedSeer at its flagship event Ground Zero 5.0. The digital economy includes 60 per cent of travel, 40 per cent non-grocery retail, 30 per cent of education, 25 per cent of food and beverages services and 6 per cent of pharma/grocery going through digital channels by calendar year 2030. Online retail is set to become the third-largest market by scale by CY30 with an annual gross merchandise value (GMV) of $350 billion in CY30, said RedSeer.
Tucked away at a lane in Arehalli Guddadahalli, a small village in Bengaluru Rural district is a nondescript factory of LaundryMate, one of India's first organised technology-led online laundry services firms. The company has built the country's largest laundry facility, which is spread across 53,000 square feet - the size of a football field. Inside the hangar-like building, one can hear the whooshing and humming sound of big hi-tech washing machines being operated by the newly-recruited staff of LaundryMate.
E-commerce firms Amazon, Flipkart, and others are expected to witness blockbuster festival season sales of around $9 billion this year, surpassing pre-pandemic sales of $5 billion in 2019. The pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, with more consumers shopping online at a higher frequency than last year, observed analysts. This year's festival sales (gross merchandise value or GMV) are expected to grow 30 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to $4.8 billion during the first week of the season and potentially clock over $9-billion GMV during the whole festival month, revealed consulting firm RedSeer's e-commerce festival season report.
Canada has emerged as the most preferred country for Indian students abroad.
...followed by financial services, IT, and sales and marketing.
E-commerce firms like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and others witnessed successful festive season sales this year, Experts say e-commerce adoption in the country is accelerating by multiple years or what it would have looked like in 2025.
According to a 2021 Redseer report, India's overseas education market is estimated to more than double to $80 billion by 2024.
The writing has been on the wall for some time and it showed up prominently during the festival-season sales last year, when Meesho toppled Amazon to become the second-largest player in order share. During the sales season, 60 per cent of the orders Meesho received were from tier-4 cities and beyond. According to a report by consulting firm Redseer, festival-season sales last year were driven primarily by tier-2 and tier-3 cities, with 64 per cent of the shoppers coming from those.
E-commerce major Flipkart has burnt cash of $3.7 billion (about Rs 30,000 crore) in about a year ending September 2022, according to regulatory filings. Flipkart had $1 billion in cash in July 2021, which came down to $887 million by September 2022. The company, in July 2021, raised $3.6 billion (about Rs 29,000 crore), which has been completely exhausted, according to regulatory filings of Flipkart and Walmart.
Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC) has expanded its pilot to 15 more cities. This comes at a time when it plans to begin operations next month. Snapdeal has also signed the onboarding agreement with the network and will debut on it next month. On Monday, ONDC expanded to Noida, Faridabad, Lucknow, Bijnor, Bhopal, Chhindwara, Kolkata, Pune, Chennai, Kannur, Thrissur, Udipi, Kanchipura, Pollachi, Mannar and Ramnathpuram.
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.
Zomato said it has consistently gained market share over the last four years to become the category leader in the food delivery space in India in terms of gross order value from October 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021.
There are several discussions going around in the e-health sector for consolidation with key players being PharmEasy, 1mg, Medlife and Netmeds. According to reports, Reliance Jio is in talks with Netmeds to acquire the latter.
E-commerce companies managed to beat the odds by adopting a flexible approach in terms of transforming their business models and leveraging emerging technologies. They had to constantly align their objectives with evolving customer needs. With companies hiring thousands of temporary workers, expanding to smaller cities, and launching new products, e-commerce giants gird up to celebrate the peak festival season without Covid restrictions after a three-year time-out.
Even as the gaming industry battles multiple regulations in different Indian states, it has received more than double the amount of investment this year compared to 2020. Industry watchers attribute this to the growing popularity of gaming, spurred by the pandemic, and the innovative business models gaming firms have built. According to data from industry tracker Venture Intelligence, investment in India's gaming sector in 2021 has more than doubled to $794 million, as against a total investment of $339 million last year. In 2019, this number was $176 million. Marquee investors such as Tiger Global (Dream11), Sequoia Capital India (Mobile Premier League), WinZO (Griffin Capital Partners), Tencent (Dream11) and Matrix Partners (Zupee) have pumped money into the sector.
According to analyst firm RedSeer, the absence of cash on delivery has hit daily e-commerce sales by 30% over the past few days.
"It went up to 20-odd per cent in 2019 and to 25 per cent a year later. "That's when we decided to pull the plug; it was not sustainable for our business," says Chadha. Madison & Pike, instead, turned to Mumbai-based start-up Thrive, which provides third-party delivery services to restaurants at a much lower commission - three to five per cent.
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.
Future's home retailing interests, including furniture and furnishings, are housed under Praxis Home Retail, which was created in FY18 when the group demerged the business from Future Retail.
The e-commerce industry is expected to return to high growth next year as large players such as Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm Mall begin to look beyond the 20 million customers who shop online on a monthly basis.
The groups plan to take on well-entrenched players like Amazon, Flipkart, and Paytm by merging their offline businesses with e-commerce initiatives.
Amazon signed up Motorola as an exclusive brand partner for its new devices, which in turn helped it grow
Reliance Retail has bought a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, India's leading quick commerce player, for $200 million (around Rs 1,488 crore) as it looks to expand its presence in online grocery delivery business. Dunzo has raised $240 million (about Rs 1,787 crore) in its latest funding round that was led by Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) - the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the two firms said in a statement. Existing investors Lightbox, Lightrock, 3L Capital and Alteria Capital also participated in the funding round.
PharmEasy has acquired Medlife for an undisclosed amount, the e-pharmacy unicorn said on Tuesday. The deal will make PharmEasy the largest player in the domestic online pharmacy sector, with the combined entity set to serve 2 million customers a month.
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.
State govt asks the two taxi aggregators to end surge pricing.
Experts say Biyani will now become a contract manufacturer of fashion and FMCG products, with the Reliance group being one of his customers.
BigBasket co-founder Abhinay Choudhari has exited the company, and in his next entrepreneurial journey, he is looking to "solve another equally painful chore for many Indian households" after grocery shopping. The Tata group acquired a majority stake in the online grocery store in May. And when the deal happened, Choudhari decided he won't continue to be part of the management team.
The deal, which is expected to close in the next four to five weeks, will give exit to investors Alibaba, Abraaj Group and IFC. The parties are awaiting approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
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