Wednesday, May 1

Author: Ankita

T-Hub Tie-up With Israel’s StarTau For Agritech Startups
News

T-Hub Tie-up With Israel’s StarTau For Agritech Startups

T-Hub, a technological incubator started by the Telangana government, today said it has signed an MoU with Tel Aviv University's entrepreneurship centre StarTau for launching an accelerator program for agritech startups. According to an official release from T-Hub, an accelerator program will be launched in India and Israel and it will be a part of T-Hubs T-Challenge program charter which will focus on agritech for facilitating the growth of startups in this sector. The program will start in October 2016. "The Israeli innovation corridor for T-Hub is an extremely important one, given the opportunity India has to innovate over the next few years and Israels offering. "T-Hub is paving the way to lead this effort in healthtech, agritech and data sciences through T- Hubs cluster-f...
A Report Says Fintech Market is Expected to Double to USD 2.4 Billion By 2020
ANALYSIS

A Report Says Fintech Market is Expected to Double to USD 2.4 Billion By 2020

Indian financial technology (fintech) market is expected to double to USD 2.4 billion by 2020, primarily triggered by rising customer experiences, e-commerce and smartphone penetration, according to a report. Emergence of fintech companies in India is a prelude to the transformation in payments, lending as well as personal finance that has attracted significant investor interest, the joint report by KPMG India and Nasscom 10,000 Startups said. "Investor inclination in startup funding is evident in the swelling number of angel deals from 370 in 2014 to 691 in 2015 and investments increasing multi-fold from USD 247 million in 2014 to USD 1.5 billion in 2015," the report said. Global fintech investments rose to USD 19 billion last year with more than USD 8 billion coming from...
Sequoia Capital Backed Fashion Marketplace Startup Voonik Acquires 3 Startups
ACQUISITION

Sequoia Capital Backed Fashion Marketplace Startup Voonik Acquires 3 Startups

Voonik, a Sequoia Capital-backed fashion marketplace startup which is focused on curated fashion has acquired three startups to build its premium fashion product Vilara. Voonik is attempting to strengthen its leadership in the unbranded fashion segment largely via acqui-hires or team acquisitions of startups in niche fashion offerings. Bengaluru based Voonik has now acquired five startups in the past six months. It raised $5 million funding from Sequoia Capital and SeedFund last year. It has claimed $100-million run rate and is aiming to grow four-fold in GMV by the end of this fiscal. The three companies are online marketplace for designers and boutiques Zohraa, which has a 12-person team, the eight-person team at online silk store Picksilk.com and the nine person team at Styl, whic...
Jugnoo Launches Auto-Rickshaw Pooling Feature on Its Domain
News

Jugnoo Launches Auto-Rickshaw Pooling Feature on Its Domain

India's leaidng Auto-rickshaw aggregator Jugnoo has announced the launch of its latest auto-rickshaw pooling feature, ' Jugnoo Pool' observing the World Environment Day. The feature gives the customers an option to share their trip with those traveling in the same direction. This is a humble initiative undertaken by the company, in a bid to counter the increasing carbon footprint and traffic situation in various parts of the country. The concept is not only environment friendly, but also comes across as a cost effective solution for customers, making the Jugnoo auto-rickshaw ride a little expensive but much more convenient than a public bus ride. In addition to this, the feature is lucrative for the auto drivers as well. Elaborating on the concept further, Founder and CEO Jugn...
Times Group Will Invest 500 Crores in Flipkart
News

Times Group Will Invest 500 Crores in Flipkart

Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL) also known as Times Group would like to invest in Flipkart Ltd, India’s largest e-commerce firm. The amount is about Rs.500 crore for small equity. The deal is partly by cash and ads, as per mint report said. As per the report, Flipkart will issue shares to BCCL in return for cash and ads of its media properties such as The Times of India, The Economic Times newspapers and ET Now and Times Now channels for several years. Flipkart and Times Group has not confirmed yet. Theoretically, at Flipkart’s presumed $15 billion valuation, aRs.500 crore deal would translate into a 0.5% stake. If the Flipkart deal goes through, it will boost BCCL’s already strong connections with India’s booming start-up business. BCCL struck a similar deal with online...
Facebook Board Proposed Removing Mark Zuckerberg’s Majority Voting Control in Facebook
News

Facebook Board Proposed Removing Mark Zuckerberg’s Majority Voting Control in Facebook

Facebook Inc's board has proposed removing Mark Zuckerberg's majority voting control in the event of the social media giant's chief executive and founder deciding to exit management at some point in future. In a proxy filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook's board said it would ask shareholders to vote on a proposal that would convert Zuckerberg's Class B shares into Class A shares if he is no longer in a leadership position. The move was first proposed in late April in a regulatory filing. As of June 2, Zuckerberg beneficially owned about 4 million Class A shares and about 419 million Class B shares, collectively representing about 53.8 percent of total outstanding voting power and 14.8 percent of total outstanding economic interests. The proposed move,...
Micromax Said Will Earn Money In India and Burn Money in China
BUSINESS

Micromax Said Will Earn Money In India and Burn Money in China

India’s home-grown mobile phone giant Micromax is looking east. Micromax Informatics has successfully seen off Chinese rivals on its home turf, which is now being hailed as the world’s most important smartphone market. But to realize its lofty ambition to be a top five global handset maker by 2020 the Gurgaon-based company will also need to sell in China. That’s exactly what Micromax plans to do, Co-Founder Vikas Jain revealed during an on-stage conversation at the RISE conference in Hong Kong. India’s smartphone market is rapidly catching up with its larger neighbour. Shipments grew 135 percent in the two years until December, five times the rate of growth in China, according to data from IDC. Micromax, which churns out over 30 new handset models a year and also makes tablets and tel...
Alibaba Group Will Purchase Its Own Share From SoftBank Group
News

Alibaba Group Will Purchase Its Own Share From SoftBank Group

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) today announced the terms of its previously announced purchase of Alibaba Group ordinary shares from SoftBank Group. Alibaba Group has agreed to purchase 27,027,027 Alibaba ordinary shares from SoftBank Group at US$74.00 per share for an aggregate of US$2 billion. Members of the Alibaba Partnership, acting collectively, have also agreed to purchase 5,405,405 Alibaba ordinary shares from SoftBank Group at the same price per share for an aggregate of US$400 million. Alibaba Group has agreed to purchase 27,027,027 Alibaba ordinary shares from SoftBank Group at US$74.00 per share for an aggregate of US$2 billion. Members of the Alibaba Partnership, acting collectively, have also agreed to purchase 5,405,405 Alibaba ordinary shares from SoftBank ...
Microsoft Launches Early Stage Investment Venture Arm That Will Replace Microsoft Accelerator
News

Microsoft Launches Early Stage Investment Venture Arm That Will Replace Microsoft Accelerator

Nagraj Kashyap, the Corporate VP of Microsoft Ventures announced a new early-stage investment group of Microsoft called Microsoft Venture. The entity will look after investment in early age startups.  In his blog, Nagraj mentioned, The Microsoft Venture name was assumed from an existing team within our Developer Evangelism team. That team has now been rebranded to Microsoft Accelerator. Microsoft Ventures will focus on start-up investments while Microsoft Accelerator will focus on start-up enablement, primarily through our seven accelerators around the world.  On one side of the spectrum, we help early stage companies with tools, technology and consulting through Microsoft Accelerator*. And at the other end is where you’ll typically see our larger investments and acquisitions. Microsoft ...
Swachh Bharat: 94% People Willing to Be Part of E-commerce Packaging Reuse
News

Swachh Bharat: 94% People Willing to Be Part of E-commerce Packaging Reuse

IANS- With e-commerce rapidly growing in India, a survey has said that 94% people want to be part of any initiative for recycling of packaging material and contribute to the cleanliness campaign. "94% people surveyed said that they would be willing to recycle for a small incentive," said the survey by LocalCircles, a citizen engagement platform. The participants were asked if they would take part in box recycling programme towards the cause of Swachh Bharat (Clean India) if e-commerce companies or their affiliates collected empty goods boxes for a small shopping credit. The survey report has also been shared with the Urban Development Ministry and the Commerce Ministry. According to an Assocham report, digital commerce market in India has grown steadily from $4.4 billion in 2010 to...
NewsBytes Launches its News Bot on Facebook Messenger
News

NewsBytes Launches its News Bot on Facebook Messenger

Started by IIT, IIM and Ivy League alumni; Gurgaon-based news technology start-up NewsBytes launched its automated bot on Facebook Messenger. The beta version of their cross-platform bot is a part of Facebook's Messenger program revealed at F8 conference. It is known to be India's first news bot. In its one year of existence, NewsBytes, by Elysium Labs Private Limited, with around 40k downloads on Play Store, has seen a spectacular growth so far. It is one of the highest-rated news apps in India. Its primary focus is to reduce information overload in your everyday news consumption. Its engine along with human curators picks up the most significant news events of the day, summarizes them and creates the contextual timeline around them. Available globally, in English, the bot lets user...
Freecharge Now India’s Fastest Growing Payments App
News

Freecharge Now India’s Fastest Growing Payments App

The reach of the digital payments platform Freecharge has grown from 17% to 30% in the period from October 2015 to April 2016 in India -- the highest growth in app usage for any payments app in the country, a Nielsen study revealed on Monday.   Freecharge also emerged as the most engaging app in the category with the average time spent on the app per month -- increasing from 28 minutes to 55 minutes in the period October 2015 to April 2016, said the data from Nielsen Informate Smartphone Panel.   Freecharge core philosophy is focused on making transactions swifter and more secure. A number of features such as On the Go Pin (patent pending), Speed Pay (making transactions within 10 seconds), first of its kind Social Pay services like Chat n Pay, payments throug...