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Venture Catalysts Closes 57 deals in 2018

24Dec By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Venture Catalysts Closes 57 deals in 2018

Venture Catalysts, a startup incubator, closed 57 deals in 2018, helping raise Rs 125 crore for startups in its portfolio, as per data from startup-tracking firm Tracxn. The deals ranged from Rs 3 crore to Rs 13 crore. During the year, its portfolio firms raised Rs 380 crore in total. Founder and president Apoorv Ranjan Sharma stated that the investors were primarily frontier-II towns, which is what Venture Catalysts focuses on. The number of deals it closed in 2018 was more that of its peers like Blume Ventures (30), Lets Venture (12), Orios Venture Partners (11), and Kae Capital and Indian Angel Network (10 each). Venture Catalysts had closed the highest number of investments in 2017 as well. “We are focusing on sectors like FMCG, he...

ePayLater Partners with Cashfree to Bring in Pay Later Options

19Dec By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

ePayLater Partners with Cashfree to Bring in Pay Later Options

Indian digital payments company ePayLater which is based in Mumbai has partnered with another payment company called Cashfree to bring in its innovative payment facility to their merchants. This partnership will bring ePayLater’s credit-based payment solution to almost all the merchants such as Daily Ninja, BigSmall, WheelStreet, EventsHigh, EduCart and Instaspaces using the Cashfree payment gateway. Also, ePaylater is targetting to process Rs.1000 crore in payments within the next 12 months. The company wants the product to be rolled out to more than 5000 merchants on the Cashfree platform by next year. “Offering credit via Buy Now, Pay Later option is one of the most exciting developments in Indian fintech and Cashfree hopes to offer this...

The 5 Latest Cybersecurity Trends for Business Success in 2019

18Dec By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Story

The 5 Latest Cybersecurity Trends for Business Success in 2019

In the world of cybersecurity, there’s a constant arms race between companies and hackers. While businesses increase their security protocols, hackers are innovating new methodologies on how to crack them. For that reason, companies are trying to stay ahead of the game and ensure they employ the latest technologies to thwart potential attacks. Here are the top five cybersecurity trends that companies will be employing in 2019 to not only counter hackers but also increase the efficiency and usability of their IT systems. 1) Employee Training Sessions A little bit goes a long way when it comes to cybersecurity. Generally, hackers are looking to exploit easy targets which sometimes doesn’t even involve them in running elaborate attacks against a company’s IT security protocol. Inst...

Coworking Firm 91springboard to Expand its Capacity Six fold to 1.5 lakh Desks

10Dec By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Coworking Firm 91springboard to Expand its Capacity Six fold to 1.5 lakh Desks

Coworkingspace company called 91springboard is planning to expand its capacity six-fold to 1,50,000 desks in three years from the end of this financial year. The company would openfacilities in more Indian cities. “Currently, we have 20 operational centres and are on track to reach 12,500 desks by the end of thisyear and then 20,000-25,000 desks by March-April 2019. We aim to get 150,000desks by March 2022,” said Varun Chawla, cofounder of 91springboard. It was mentioned that thefirm lately secured funds amounting to $10.2 million from Singapore-basedmarketing technology company FreakOut. The company currently has centres in NewDelhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pune andGoa. “We will be expanding in these cities and following this, next round of cit...

1Dec By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

Top Five Funding of the Week (26th Nov – 1st Dec)

Funding is a very important part of business and without funding, it is quite difficult for startups to grow. Funding provides the base to startups. This week, we saw various funding activities, out of which the maximum funds were raised by an insurance company. The maximum funds raised were $200 million. Let us now have a full view of the important and the top five funding activities of the week. 1) Bright Health Minneapolis-headquartered insurance startup Bright Health has raised funds amounting to $200 million in Series C funding round. The round was led by Tom Valdivia, a former Definity Health executive. The valuation of the company, following the round has reached at $950 million. New investors Declaration Partners and Meritech Capital participated in ...

Paytm’s Parent One97 Communications Crosses Rs 1 lakh crore Valuation Mark

29Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Paytm’s Parent One97 Communications Crosses Rs 1 lakh crore Valuation Mark

The parent company India’s biggest payment services firm Paytm that is One97 Communications has reportedly and successfully crossed the valuation mark of Rs 1 lakh crore in the unofficial market. Talking about the unofficial market, the firm’s value has raced past the market capitalisation of listed blue-chips like IndusInd Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bajaj Finserv, Titan, HDFC Standard Life Insurance and Godrej Consumer. One97 shares changed hands at roughly Rs 18,200 a piece this week, running up nearly 60% in the last six months after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought a stake in the company. “Shares of One97 Communications have jumped from Rs 11,000 to Rs 18,000 in just six months after Warren Buffett’s firm invested,” said Sambhav Aggarwal, director, ARMS Securities,...

San Jose-based GlobalLogic Looks Forward to Active Acquisitions

23Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

San Jose-based GlobalLogic Looks Forward to Active Acquisitions

San Jose-based GlobalLogic, an engineering services company has reported that it will now actively look forward to acquisitions in cybersecurity, retail, medtech and automotive sector. The idea behind this is to grow to a $2 billion business in the next five years. The IT outsourcing firm is on track to clock $650 million in revenue for the current fiscal and is growing at over 24% organically. In the current fiscal, the company recorded 5 percent sequential growth in the first two quarters of the current fiscal. “Organically at 23-25% organic growth, I can achieve the $1 billion mark. I want M&A not for my numbers,” said Shashank Samant, chief executive of GlobalLogic. “At present we are working on three areas where we need to get further advantage: a security company, a company i...

Tech Investor SoftBank Group Invests $450 million in Delhivery

21Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Tech Investor SoftBank Group Invests $450 million in Delhivery

The global technology investor SoftBank Group Corp is in its final stage of investing a huge amount of $450 million in Delhivery, which is India's largest e-commerce-centric logistics company by revenue. This particular deal is expected to value the company at over $1 billion, entering into the unicorn club. Through its Vision Fund, SoftBank is set to invest an estimated $350 million (about Rs 2,500 crore) in fresh capital into the company. Along with this, the Tokyo-headquartered strategic holding investor is expected to undertake secondary transactions, estimated at $100 million, to further bump up its stake in the company. As part of secondary exits, the company’s founders are likely to abolish their ownership substantially. SoftBank will emerge as the single largest shareholde...

BigBasket Aims 40% Revenue from Private Labels Next Fiscal

21Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

BigBasket Aims 40% Revenue from Private Labels Next Fiscal

The online grocery player BigBasket that aims to be a billion-dollar company by the next fiscal year, is expecting 40 percent of its projected revenue to come in from its private labels. The company is expecting to clock Rs 3,500 crore in sales this fiscal year, up from Rs 2,000 crore last year. "Private labels are around 34 per cent of our business now and we plan to scale this to 40 per cent in about a year. The incremental 6 percentage points of revenue will come from non-fruits and vegetables and non-staples," said BigBasket co-founder and chief executive Hari Menon. The Bengaluru-based company is also looking to add a lot of categories to the private labels vertical. BigBasket said that the FMCG sales overall (food and non-food) contributes over 50 per cent of its business...

20Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Xiaomi Gobbles up Selfie Smartphone Brand Meitu

The Chinese smartphone major Xiaomi is recently diversifying into a new range of phones as the Chinese smartphone maker announced impressive growth with its latest financials. With this, the company has announced its plans to take over selfie app maker Meitu’s smartphone business to go after new demographics. This is being done particularly keeping in focus the women, while it lodged impressive 49 percent revenue growth in Q3. Xiaomi posted a net profit of 2.481 billion RMB ($357 million) for the quarter on total sales of 50.846 billion RMB ($7.3 billion). The majority of those phones are sold in China, but the company said that international revenue overall was up by 113 percent year-on-year. Also, the very well-known for its ‘beautification’ selfie apps, Meitu sells smartphones ...

General Motor’s Cruise is Pumped up to Expand in Seattle

20Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

USA

General Motor’s Cruise is Pumped up to Expand in Seattle

The self driving company Cruise that was acquired by General Motors in 2016 is reportedly expanding and growing to Seattle as the company seeks more engineering talent to develop its technology. However, Cruise does not have any plans right now to test its autonomous vehicles in the city. The company is planning to set up offices in Seattle to attract and hire between 100 to 200 engineers by the end of 2019. “To continue growing a team that is diverse and rich in talent, we feel that it’s important to explore talent pools outside of the Bay Area, and Seattle’s vibrant tech community and proximity to our headquarters in San Francisco make it a logical choice,” CEO Kyle Vogt said. Cruise is looking towards and considering a number of locations in the Seattle area. There are no plans to ...

Myntra & Jabong Merge, Lay off 150 Employees

17Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Myntra & Jabong Merge, Lay off 150 Employees

The e-commerce fashion players Myntra and Jabing that have played a major role in the industry are reportedly merging and this has come days after Walmart put the two fashion businesses of the Flipkart Group under direct control of CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy. "Since Myntra’s purchase of Jabong in mid-2016, the two brands have been steadily integrating key business functions and streamlining processes. This has resulted in revenue growth and a significant improvement in the customer experience.As the next step in this process, Myntra and Jabong will now fully integrate all the remaining functions including technology, marketing, category, revenue, finance and creative teams," the company stated. As a part of the deal, Narayanan will continue to lead the team and also the company's independe...