Saturday, May 18

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Logistics startup BlackBuck raises $25M from Tiger Global
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Logistics startup BlackBuck raises $25M from Tiger Global

BlackBuck, a business-to-business logistics startup, has raised $25 million in Series B funding from Tiger Global and other investors. Russian billionaire investor Yuri Milner’s Apoletto fund and existing investors Accel Partners and Flipkart also put money in this round, BlackBuck said in a statement. The startup, owned by Zinka Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd, would use the funds for expansion, to build products and set up the team. BlackBuck was founded in April this year by IIT Kharagpur alumni Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramaniam B. It had received $5 million in funding earlier this year from Accel Partners and Flipkart. BlackBuck has 200 employees and has presence in 40 locations across the country. It plans to expand to 200 locations over the next year. The c...
Kejriwal's odd-even rule to benefit startups
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Kejriwal's odd-even rule to benefit startups

In a bid to control the alarming levels of Delhi's air pollution, CM Arvind Kejriwal has planned to allow private vehicles with even and odd registration numbers on alternate days from January 1 next year. This step, however odd it may sound, can get really beneficial for bus aggregation startups like Shuttl and ZipGo, who can jump on the opportunity to offer their services to more people now. Shuttl, which is the largest bus aggregation players in the Delhi-NCR has around 500 vehicles on its network. ZipGo too has entered the Delhi market, and has plans to launch women-only buses. 3 million people already use metro every day to commute, while for buses this number is 5 million. With 50% of Delhi's private vehicles taken off road, the public transport needs to be made more efficient....
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Apple releases first Arabic version of Siri

Reuters- Apple Inc on Tuesday released a version of its virtual personal assistant Siri for Arabic speakers in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, potentially making its iPhones more attractive in a largely affluent market of more than 30 million people. The move, part of Apple's latest software updates, means people in those countries will be able to use Siri in their native tongue on iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch. It follows Google, whose Android phones' voice search function already offer some support in Arabic. "This is part of the consumerisation and personalisation of IT-based services that we're seeing at all levels of the industry," said Paul Black, director of telecoms and media at IDC Middle East, Turkey and Africa. Apple and its primary smartphone competitor...
Dr Lal PathLabs raises $28.6M ahead of IPO
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Dr Lal PathLabs raises $28.6M ahead of IPO

Dr Lal PathLabs Pvt Ltd, operator of the second-largest medical diagnostics services chain in the country, has raised Rs 191 crore ($28.6 million) by selling shares to anchor investors ahead of its initial public offering. The company allotted 34.80 lakh shares at Rs 550 apiece to anchor investors, it said in a statement on Monday. The anchor investors included investment funds and mutual fund schemes operated by Fidelity, T Rowe Price, JP Morgan, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund and SBI Magnum Mutual Fund. Mutual fund schemes of DSP Blackrock, ICICI Prudential, Kotak Mahindra and Reliance Capital also invested. The IPO will hit the capital markets on Tuesday and close on Thursday. The company has fixed the price band for the IPO between Rs 540 and Rs 550 per share. The firm had file...
Tata Trusts, Khan Academy enter five-year pact to develop free, high quality learning experience in India
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Tata Trusts, Khan Academy enter five-year pact to develop free, high quality learning experience in India

Tata Trusts, and Khan Academy, a Silicon Valley-based not-for-profit education initiative founded by educationist Salman Khan, announced that they were entering into a five-year partnership to leverage the power of technology to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere in the country. The partnership will focus on developing tech-enabled, high quality and localised education resources across India by providing a personalised, mastery-based learning experience. A former hedge fund analyst, Khan, who began the initiative as a teaching platform for his cousins back in the mid-2000s, is now has 30 million registered students and has delivered over 580 million lessons and over four million exercise problems. Speaking to the media, Tata Trusts, Chairman Ratan Tata said: ...
Google Allegedly Planning To End Gmail- Source
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Google Allegedly Planning To End Gmail- Source

It appears that search engine giant Google is slowly killing its hugely popular e-mail service, Gmail. No, this doesn't mean that you are losing your e-mail account, but Google is migrating its e-mail services to ‘Inbox By Gmail’. The company has reportedly started notifying users of its experimental 'Inbox By Gmail' service that the new service has replaced their existing Gmail account.   Inbox was launched in October 2014 with aims to help Gmail users better organize emails and display information such as appointments, flight bookings and package deliveries in a more user-friendly way. The app is available on the Web as well as on Android smartphones and iPhones.
Facebook sets up SME Council in India
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Facebook sets up SME Council in India

Social media giant Facebook, which has over two million Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) on its platform, has set up a SME Council to help small ventures from various industries share feedback and discuss ideas around leveraging technology to grow their enterprise. This is the second SME Council set up by Facebook globally, the first one being in the US. Over 45 million small businesses actively use Facebook Pages to connect to their consumers. "Small businesses are the backbone of India's economy. From kirana stores to restaurants and online clothing sites, these businesses drive economic growth, create new jobs and enrich the lives of people across the country," Facebook India Managing Director Kirthiga Reddy told PTI. Facebook is focussed on helping people connect, i...
Uber plans to raise $2.1 bn for investment in India, China
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Uber plans to raise $2.1 bn for investment in India, China

App-based taxi aggregator Uber is looking to raise USD 2.1 billion in a fundraising round led by Tiger Global and other investors, valuing the company at USD 62.5 billion. The funds raised will be used primarily for investments in India and China, according to people aware of the development. Sources said that next round of investment for India will be announced early next year. US-based Uber in July this year had announced to invest USD 1 billion (about Rs 6,400 crore) in India in nine months to expands operations in the country. Interestingly, Tiger Global is also an investor in Ola, which competes with Uber in India. According to sources, Uber has filed paperwork in Delaware giving details about the fundraising wherein the company said it plans to raise USD 2.1 billion from ...
First-Of-Its-Kind Partnership In India – Buy Smartphone OnePlus X, Straight From The Ola App
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First-Of-Its-Kind Partnership In India – Buy Smartphone OnePlus X, Straight From The Ola App

Ola, India’s most popular mobile app for personal transportation and OnePlus, a fast growing technology startup, today announced a first-of-its-kind partnership in India, giving users an opportunity to buy the latest smartphone OnePlus X, on-demand, straight from the Ola app. For one-day only on December 8, 2015, OnePlus together with OlaCabs and Amazon India is bringing a whole new dimension to your smartphone purchase experience. A first in India, buying a OnePlus X is as handy as hailing for a cab on your app with same-day delivery guarantee (in less than 15 minutes of placing the order) and consumer-friendly payment options. The partnership will take place across seven cities namely Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. Fans wishing to purchase the O...
Khan Academy Launched in Hindi Version
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Khan Academy Launched in Hindi Version

Khan Academy, a US-based non-profit organization and an e-learning website, launched a Hindi version Thursday at the India Habitat Centre. They also published a small press release on it's Khan Academy Blog - Today we’re happy to announce that learners around the world can now access Khan Academy resources in Hindi! If you speak Hindi, you can learn math through our video lessons and practice problems mapped to India’s NCERT curriculum. Wherever you are Mumbai, Jaipur, a village in Haryana, or anywhere else around the globe, we believe you deserve the opportunity to learn at your own pace and in your own language. Khan Academy in Hindi brings us one step closer to our mission of a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere, and we thank our friends at Central Square Foundation for ...
Web Summit, World’s Most Important StartUp Event, Comes to India as SURGE
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Web Summit, World’s Most Important StartUp Event, Comes to India as SURGE

Web Summit, the planet’s largest and most influential tech and startup event, is launching its Indian edition as SURGE 2016. Aimed at the tech and startup communities in India and internationally, SURGE 2016 will be held in Bangalore on February 23-24, 2016. Paddy Cosgrave, CEO of Web Summit, announced the event today along with Vikram Ahuja, founder, Beyond Travel, and outlined how SURGE will act as a catalyst in supporting the startup community in the country and the region. Web Summit has been recognised as staging “the best technology conferences on the planet” (Forbes). Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of Web Summit said: “Web Summit is now the biggest and most influential startup gathering in the world. In recent years, we’ve seen a significant rise in the number of Indian startups att...
Ola joins global alliance to take on Uber
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Ola joins global alliance to take on Uber

India’s largest cab aggregator Ola has joined international peers Didi Kuaidi, Lyft and GrabTaxi to form an alliance against San-Francisco-based Uber. The global alliance enables international travelers to avail cab-hailing services of the four companies through the same app they use in their home country. The partnership would provide ride-sharing coverage for India, China, Southeast Asia and the US, Ola said in a press statement. The arrangement is an extension of an ongoing pact between US-based Lyft and Chinese cab aggregator Didi Kuaidi. Didi Kuaidi had recently participated in a $500 million fund raising round at Ola. Ola, Didi Kuaidi, Lyft and GrabTaxi have collectively raised about $7 billion in external funding. The taxi-hailing business in India is heating up as...