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China-based Didi Chuxing Raises $500 million from US-based Travel Firm

18Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

China-based Didi Chuxing Raises $500 million from US-based Travel Firm

Didi Chuxing, a China-based ride-hailing online company has secured funds amounting to $500 million from a US-based travel company known as Booking Holdings. The basic aim of this funding round is to bolster the company’s plans to make an entry into the fresh markets outside of China. Both the companies announced the investment in a joint statement, however, its details were undisclosed. After this funding round, the valuation of the company has reached $56 billion. Didi Chuxing is also expected to go public and launch an initial public offering (IPO) in the near future. The deal will witness Booking work in association with Didi to offer its on-demand car services through its Booking.com apps. In the same way, Didi customers will have the option to book hotels through Booking.com...

Online Firm Cars24 raises $50 Million For the Purpose of Expansion

18Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

Online Firm Cars24 raises $50 Million For the Purpose of Expansion

Online marketplace for the sale and purchase of second-hand cars ‘Cars24’ has raised funds amounting to $50 million (Rs 340 crore). The latest funding round was led by Sequoia Capital. The other existing investors that participated in the funding round were Cayman Islands-based Kingsway FCI Fund and Toronto-based KCK Global. After this round, the market valuation of the company is expected to reach around $250 million. The Gurugram based firm is planning to use these funds for the purpose of boosting up its expansion plans. Cars24 is based on an asset-heavy customer-to-business (C2B) model, in which it purchases used cars from individuals and dealers and sells them to other dealerships. Since its establishment in 2015, the company has sold around 1,00,000 cars. The founders of th...

Kuwait’s Rami Joudi Becomes the PR & Communications Manager of Rolls Royce

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Kuwait’s Rami Joudi Becomes the PR & Communications Manager of Rolls Royce

The luxury automobile maker Rolls Royce has appointed Rami Joudi at the position of PR and communications manager, for Middle East, Africa and India. The new PR officer will be based in Dubai while his duration of work. Kuwait born Joudi started with his career in 1999. “I am delighted to announce that Rami Joudi has been appointed as Regional PR & Communications Manager, Middle East, Africa & India. Rami has exceptional experience across the public relations spectrum in the region, and he is ideally positioned to embrace this role in a very important market for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars,” said Richard Carter, director of global communications of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. Rolls-Royce names new communication & PR manager for Middle East, Africa and India https://t.co/J...

Thailand Based Eatigo Raised Funds From the Leading Travel Firm

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

Thailand Based Eatigo Raised Funds From the Leading Travel Firm

The Southeast Asia based restaurant booking company Eatigo has raised a considerable amount of funds from its existing investor TripAdvisor. The funding amount has not been disclosed yet. The other sources, however, claim that the funding amount was $9.5 million making the whole capital raised by the firm to about $25 million. The valuation of the company till now was $15.5 million and after the latest funding, it has raised. The funds so raised will be utilized for the further expansion in markets “within Southeast Asia and beyond,” though the company’s “key focus remains within Asia.” “TripAdvisor has been helpful in optimizing our efficiency, sharing best practices for organizational structures, and cooperating in the commercial field,” said Michael Cluzel, Eatigo co-founder and ...

Global Telephone Directory Truecaller Launched In-app Call Recording Feature

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Global Telephone Directory Truecaller Launched In-app Call Recording Feature

The global telephone directory Truecaller has now launched a new feature that will include call recording for its premium users on the Android version of the app. With this feature, the users will be able to record the incoming as well as the outgoing calls from within the app, with no need to install any other app for recording calls. As the users make or receive a call, he gets an option to record it, and then the recorded call is saved on the device locally. The company stated that this is a next move towards upgrading the "premium" offerings which aim to make communication safe and smooth. This will also help the users in reporting harassment related or fraudulent calls. The basic purpose of this move is to wash out the inconvenience that is caused by the fraudulent calls and ...

Amazon Invests Rs 230 Crore in its Indian Payment Platform

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Amazon Invests Rs 230 Crore in its Indian Payment Platform

The e-commerce giant Amazon has freshly invested Rs 230 crore in ‘Amazon Pay' which is the Indian payment platform of Amazon. According to the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Amazon Pay India has allotted 23 crore equity shares worth Rs 230 crore to the existing shareholders on the right basis. The shareholders include Amazon Corporate Holdings and Amazon.com.incs. The event has come months after the company invested Rs 195 crore in the same business in March. Since 2016, the total amount invested in the payments business till date is around Rs 1,000 crore. With this, the company aims to make its operations stronger in the country and compete with the other players including PhonePe and Paytm. Apart from this, Amazon is also aiming to increase the user base and traction on the platf...

LinkedIn Hits the 50 Million User Milestone in India, Non-metros Dominate

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

LinkedIn Hits the 50 Million User Milestone in India, Non-metros Dominate

The professional social networking platform LinkedIn has successfully reached the milestone of 50 million users in India. Two years ago, the user base of the company was around 37 million including students and people from smaller towns. LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented social platform that has been specially designed for career and business professionals to connect. The company is the best platform for building connections for freelance work, a customer base, potential partners, and to keep job prospects open. The company stated that the people who belong to non-metro cities and other backward areas have been increasing on the platform for the purpose of staying professionally connected and also for the job opportunities. LinkedIn had introduced its app’s lighter ve...

Flipkart’s PhonePe Acquires Leading Hyper Local POS Platform

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Flipkart’s PhonePe Acquires Leading Hyper Local POS Platform

One of the leading digital payment platforms PhonePe that is owned by Flipkart has announced that the company has reportedly acquired Zopper Retail which is a hyper-local POS (point of sales) marketplace. However, the amount of the deal has not been disclosed. Neeraj Jain who is the founder and CEO of Zopper, will be joining the PhonePe team as head of product in offline merchant solutions. Sameer Nigam, CEO of PhonePe said, “We welcome the Zopper Retail team to PhonePe and are excited leveraging their domain expertise to rapidly expand our offline merchant network across India. Zopper has a very strong technology and innovation DNA, and Neeraj and team are also a great culture fit for PhonePe. Zopper Retail is specifically designed to meet the needs of millions of small retailers in I...

17Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

Unacademy Raises $21 Million in Series C Funding Round

Online learning platform Unacademy has secured $21 million in a series C funding round. This funding round saw the participation of Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and other existing investors as well. Followed by this funding round, the valuation of the company crossed $100 million. Apart from the above-mentioned investors, Blume Ventures also participated in this round. Gaurav Munjal, co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, said, “Right from the outset, we have focused on growing the platform by empowering the best educators. We have grown tremendously since our inception, and just last month, more than 3,000 educators were active on the platform and lessons created by them were watched more than 40 million times by learners.” The company plans to utilize the funds so ...

5 Best Mutual Funds To Invest in For Long Term Benefits

16Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Market

5 Best Mutual Funds To Invest in For Long Term Benefits

A mutual fund is an investment fund where the many investors pool their money for the purpose of investing in securities including stocks, bonds, money market instruments and other assets. Since the money is pooled up, it is called a mutual fund. These investors may be retail or institutional in nature. There are various kinds of mutual funds that one can invest in for long-term benefits. Today, we will talk about the five best mutual funds that may be beneficial for the investors. 1) Money market funds The money market funds are comprised of safe short-term debt instruments that generally include Treasury bills. This is a safe place where the investor can put in their money. The people won't get considerable returns, but they won't have to worry about losing their...

Co-Working Dominates Office Space Leasing, Read The Full Report Inside

16Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ANALYSIS

Co-Working Dominates Office Space Leasing, Read The Full Report Inside

The year 2018 witnessed an increase in the office space leasing by 10 percent to over 20 million sq ft. This increase has been recorded in the first six months of this year. This clearly shows how the demand for co-working space is rapidly growing recently. What is office space leasing/ co-working leasing? Nowadays, the trend of renting a space for business operations is growing day by day. With a number of startups coming up in the business world, the demand and need for working space is also increasing. And for this, the startups need to lease a portion of an office to carry on their operations. This process is called office space leasing. According to the reports, the supply and leasing of co-working space saw an increase in these major nine cities including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Che...

After China and Malaysia, OYO Starts Off with Operations in London

16Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

After China and Malaysia, OYO Starts Off with Operations in London

The online hospitality service provider OYO seems to be on an expansion spree. Soon after spreading its footsteps in countries like China, the company has landed in London and already begin with the operations. The Softbank-backed firm has been offering bookings in Sussex Gardens, Paddington, London. According to the reports, an OYO Townhouse property in London was seen recently. After foodtech unicorn Zomato, it is said to be the second Indian startup to have expanded to London. However, there is no option to book a hotel at the previously mentioned property through the app or website, it is being guessed that the pricing would be in the range of Rs 6,500 to Rs 8,000. Currently, OYO claims to operate 8,500 hotels and 70,000 rooms over 230 cities in India. ...