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Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani Invests in RailYatri.in

2May By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani Invests in RailYatri.in

Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and former chairman of UIDAI invested an undisclosed investment in RailYatri.in. Founded by Kapil Raizada, Sachin Saxena, and Manish Rathi, Railyatri is a web and mobile app-based startup that provides real-time and analytics-based travel-related information to passengers. The startup claims to serve 2 million users a month. Helion Ventures, Omidyar Networks and Blume Ventures has also invested an undisclosed sum along with Nilekani. “What excites me about RailYatri is the fact that this is a new-age product made by Indians for Indians,” said Nilekani in a statement. “The RailYatri app, which intelligently harnesses the power of smartphones, data and mobile payments, has a huge opportunity of impacting the lives of millions of travellers.” “...

Facebook Reports Surge in Revenue From Ads

30Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

Facebook Reports Surge in Revenue From Ads

Social networking giant Facebook has announced an increase of 15 per cent in active users and as a result surge in advertising revenues as well by 57 per cent. "We had a great start to the year. We are focused on our 10-year roadmap to give everyone in the world the power to share anything they want with anyone," said founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Last month, the site announced that it would be letting people order things within its chat services. People can head to the Messenger app and chat to their favourite flower or pizza company, the independent reports. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering in February 2012 and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of USD 10...

6 Percent Levy Tax Will Hurt Indian Tech Startups: Report

29Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

6 Percent Levy Tax Will Hurt Indian Tech Startups: Report

The proposed 6 percent levy on online advertisement revenue of foreign companies will "severely raise the cost of doing business" for Indian tech startups, industry body IAMAI said today. "Tech startups are already paying 14.5 per cent service tax to use these ad platforms, which amounts to an estimated Rs 906 crore of taxes to government. With GST implementation, the tax rate is likely to move to 18 per cent bringing more taxes to the government from this segment," Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said in a statement. Considering that the incidence of 6 per cent levy will be passed on to the advertisers by the ad platforms, the total burden to SMEs and tech startups on account of equalisation levy would be an additional burden of Rs 429 crore, a massive hike of nearly 50...

After Rahul and Advitiya, 3 More Co-founders Quit Housing.com

22Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

After Rahul and Advitiya, 3 More Co-founders Quit Housing.com

Abhishek Anand, who was the Chief Technology Officer, Sanat Ghosh, who was the AVP Product, and Ravish Naresh, who was CEO of Indian Real Estate Forum are the latest three co-founders of Housing.com quits. They will start their new venture, according to the company source. "Abhishek, Ravish and Sanat played an important role in building the foundation of Housing.com. They are moving out to pursue their new dream of starting another new venture. I sincerely thank them for their contributions and wish them the very best. I am sure what they undertake next will be as exciting as Housing." said Jason Kothari - CEO, Housing.com in an emailed statement. Apart from the quitting side, in the latest development, Housing.com received an undisclosed funding from the former business head of 99Acr...

20Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Mobile Fashion App Fashalot Raises Funding From YourNest & Others

Location-based mobile fashion platform Fashalot has received Series-A strategic funding led by YourNest Angel Fund and marquee investor Rahul Garg for an undisclosed amount. The company said it will invest the fund in product development, top talent and accelerating its business growth. Operational in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru, the brand aims to aggressively ramp up operations in new cities by the end of this year, it said in a statement. "We are on track to be the largest online-to-offline location-based fashion discovery network in India and the capital raised will contribute significantly for us to achieve this goal," Amit Koshal Founder and CEO of Fashalot said. The startup connects shoppers with offline stores through its horizontal network effect platform. It claims to have ...

What’s the Cost of Surfing the Internet? ‘Earth Mode’ Browser Plug-in Will Tell You

19Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

What’s the Cost of Surfing the Internet? ‘Earth Mode’ Browser Plug-in Will Tell You

You might not realise it but the amount of time you spend and what you do online takes its toll on the environment. Research* suggests that the average online user consumes 130 kgs of carbon a year - the equivalent to driving 740 km in a car - which could be offset by planting four trees. A new plug-in for Google's Chrome browser launched ahead of Earth Day on Friday (22 April) will help educate people about how much energy they consume online by calculating their digital carbon footprint and, as a result, inspire them to think about their everyday energy efficiency. The new Chrome plug-in comes from Johnnie Walker®, makers of the world's best-selling Scotch whisky, who are partnering with Earth Day Network to urge people to take a small but progressive step towards he...

18Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

JK Tyre Completes Rs 2,195 cr Acquisition of Cavendish

JK Tyre & Industries has completed the Rs 2,195 crore acquisition of Cavendish Industries, a Kesoram Industries unit, enhancing its position in the domestic market, especially the truck and bus radial segment. "With the completion of the acquisition of Cavendish Industries we have further strengthened our position in the truck and bus radial segment. It has also given us entry into two and three wheeler vertical," JK Tyre & Industries Chairman and MD Raghupati Singhania told reporters here. The acquisition is in line with strategic vision of JK Tyre to become one of the leading tyre companies of the world having a well rounded portfolio of product offerings, he added. The acquisition brings an additional capacity of 100 lakh tyres to the JK Tyre, he added. Caven...

“It’s Lack of Journalistic Ethics” Said Ola After a Report on Uber Acquisition

16Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

“It’s Lack of Journalistic Ethics” Said Ola After a Report on Uber Acquisition

India's leading Taxi aggregator platform Ola and its one of the investors Matrix Partners India denied a report on DNA, which alleged that Uber was acquiring stakes of all the investors, including the founders, except SoftBank, with a term sheet likely to be signed by this quarter. "We would like to state that the article, attributed to an 'unnamed source' is completely false, misleading, malicious and planted in the said newspaper with the intent of causing harm to the Ola brand and creating confusion among our stakeholders." a statement from Ola said. Ola slammed the publication for its lack of journalistic ethics, and said that it will initiate appropriate legal action and seek redressal and compensation from the newspaper for the damage caused due to the report. "We also had received...

Prime Venture Partners Invests $750,000 in KredX

13Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Prime Venture Partners Invests $750,000 in KredX

Prime Venture Partners today said it has invested USD 750,000 (about Rs 4.95 crore) in KredX, an invoice-discounting platform that connects credit-worthy MSMEs looking to raise working capital against their unpaid invoices to individual financiers. Launched last year by IIT and Stanford alumni Manish Kumar, Anurag Jain and Puneet Agarwal, KredX (previously known as Mandii), enables the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) by unlocking cash tied up in customer invoices that would otherwise be paid in 30 to 90 days. "There are 36 million SMEs in India. Many of these often struggle to keep their cash flow intact and can hardly withstand the burden of late payments. They are in dire need for working capital. With our technology platform, we are helping them get access to w...

10Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

Story

India’s Affordable Home Automation Module App

A startup by two college students has developed a compact home automation module claiming it to be the most affordable in the market. The prices of 'Smitch' module, ranging from Rs 2,999 to Rs 13,499 and focussing on savings and comfort, will be launched at a consumer fair here on April 21, H R Sanathkumar of PSG College of Technology said. Sanathkumar, also Chief Executive Officer of start up firm Karsan Technologies Pvt Ltd, said the compact smitch module can be placed comfortably behind any existing switchboard and does not require rewiring or change in existing wiring. The product, with its interactive mobile app and on-board timers allows customers to control and schedule any home appliance, he said, adding that it also allows users to optimise energy consumption b...

Digital Ad Spending in India Will Touched $1 bn in 2017, $11.82 billion in 2020: eMarketer

8Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

Digital Ad Spending in India Will Touched $1 bn in 2017, $11.82 billion in 2020: eMarketer

Digital ad spending in India is forecast to surpass the USD 1-billion mark, accounting for 14.3 per cent of the total media advertisement outlay, in 2017, a report by eMarketer today said. The report, which pegs the total media advertisement spending to grow to over USD 8.2 billion next year, said advertisers in India will spend more than USD 1.1 billion towards digital advertisement. "This year, just 12.6 per cent of all advertisement spending will go towards digital. In 2017, digital ad spending in India will surpass USD 1 billion and will amount to 14.3 per cent of total outlays. By 2020, the figure will be 20.2 per cent," it added. eMarketer estimated that advertisers in India will spend about USD 7.41 billion on paid placements in all media in 2016, up 11.3 per cent over the ...

A New Smartphone App With Shakespearean Touch

7Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

Story

A New Smartphone App With Shakespearean Touch

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the world famous playwright, a new smartphone app with Shakespearean touch using text messaging, was launched today. The app is called ShakeSpeak. ShakeSpeak has been developed by software company SwiftKey, best known for their language prediction app. By analysing the Complete Works of Shakespeare they developed an app that helps turn users text messages into Shakespearean prose by predicting the playwrights best known phrases. Swiftkeys app, which is available to download free of cost, allows the user to simply type the first word or two of a famous Shakespearean quote and the technology will do the rest. SwiftKeys Head of Partnerships Sarah Rowley said: "We are delighted to be combining the Bards works with our smartphone ke...