Thursday, December 5

Tag: flipkart

Snapdeal to invest in logistics to speed up delivery
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Snapdeal to invest in logistics to speed up delivery

Reuters: Online marketplace Snapdeal, backed by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp and others, will spend more on logistics and technology to better compete with Flipkart and Amazon's Indian unit, its co-founder said on Monday. Shopping online is becoming more popular in India due to the rising use of cheaper smartphones and e-commerce firms are struggling to cope with the growing demand and make faster deliveries in different parts of the country. The e-commerce market in India is expected to grow to $220 billion in the value of goods sold by 2025, up from an expected $11 billion this year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a recent report. Flush with $500 million from a funding round in August, led by China's Alibaba, SoftBank and Foxconn, Snapdeal is now looking to expand its serv...
Accel Partners sells fractional stake in Flipkart to Qatar Investment Authority for $100 million
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Accel Partners sells fractional stake in Flipkart to Qatar Investment Authority for $100 million

Accel Partners has sold a fractional stake in Flipkart to Qatar Investment Authority for $100 million (about Rs 650 crore), in a deal that values India's biggest online marketplace at $15 billion, according to two people aware of the transaction. Accel, the first venture investor in Flipkart, remains the second-largest shareholder in the e-commerce company behind New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management. Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the Arab nation, was one of five new investors in Flipkart in December 2014 when the online retailer raised $700 million at a valuation of $11 billion. Flipkart, in a recent regulatory filing, posted a loss of about Rs 2,000 crore for the fiscal year ended March 2015. Valuations of Indian internet companies are be...
Rahul Yadav back with e-governance startup; Flipkart’s Bansals play angels
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Rahul Yadav back with e-governance startup; Flipkart’s Bansals play angels

Rahul Yadav, the ousted co-founder of Housing.com, is back with his new startup and he is funded by the biggest names in the Indian internet industry—Bansals of Flipkart. Yadav’s new startup – Intelligent Interfaces – is about helping various government departments use internet and technology tools to save cost and expedite service delivery. “We will get our first business from a government department in two weeks,” Yadav told VCCircle. Yadav confirmed that he got seed funding from Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of Flipkart. He said the company is not taking funding from any others at this point in time, dispelling rumours that founders of a few other big ecommerce companies could support Yadav in his new venture. “We do not require so much money now. We will raise more ...
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...
Flipkart buys stake in MapmyIndia to improve delivery operations
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Flipkart buys stake in MapmyIndia to improve delivery operations

India’s largest e-commerce firm Flipkart has bought a minority stake in digital maps provider MapmyIndia to improve its supply chain efficiency. The companies didn’t disclose the financial details of the deal. Flipkart will license map data and location technologies from MapmyIndia (promoted by CE Info Systems Pvt. Ltd) and deploy location intelligence capabilities across its logistics network to strengthen its delivery operations. Flipkart plans to introduce services such as real-time shipment tracking and theft minimization. “With this strategic investment, we are taking another concrete step toward transforming the supply chain ecosystem in India, making technology and information the driver of our supply chain and logistics solutions,” Flipkart chief operating officer Binn...
Shocking: India’s Biggest Ecommerce Platform Unable To Find a Chief Financial Officer Since February
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Shocking: India’s Biggest Ecommerce Platform Unable To Find a Chief Financial Officer Since February

India’s most respected and loved E-commerce site, Flipkart founded by two college friends who studied together at IIT-Delhi and worked together in Amazon.  It's revenue is estimated to be somewhere between $500 million to $1 billion, to create which it has had to pull in around $200 million in venture funding over four rounds till now. But since February this year, Flipkart been unable to find a Chief Financial Officer after its erstwhile CFO Karandeep Singh resigned unexpectedly. Singh, an experienced professional had joined Flipkart just over a year before his resignation. He was widely regarded as sort of the “grown up” hired to steer Flipkart towards a successful IPO, akin to, say, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. Needless to say Singh’s exit came as a huge shock to entrepreneurs, inve...
Flashdoor Raises Money From Former and Current Flipkart Executives
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Flashdoor Raises Money From Former and Current Flipkart Executives

Bangalore-based on-demand laundry service platform, Flashdoor, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding, led by former Flipkart executive Sujeet Kumar. Flipkart's Chief Business Officer Ankit Nagori and Tracxn Labs also participated in the round. Kumar was head of Flipkart's largest seller and its captive logistics business WS Retail Pvt Ltd, before quitting in May. Ankit Agarwal, co-founder Flashdoor Internet Services, said, "The investors joining the board would be mentors and would be instrumental in guiding the company in marketing, understanding strategy and raising money. The funding is expected to be invested in building core team and upgrading technology. The company would go in for another round of fund raising to support its plans to expand footprint across the ...
Amazon may export delivery lessons from India to cut costs abroad
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Amazon may export delivery lessons from India to cut costs abroad

E-commerce giant Amazon.com is taking lessons learnt from its daily battles with India's choked roads and cramped cities to some of its largest developed markets, exporting a model of cheaper deliveries and reduced warehousing costs. Online shopping is booming in India, where millions of consumers are newly able to access the Internet thanks to cheap smartphones. For Amazon, it is already the largest contributor of new customers outside the United States. But, like local rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal, Amazon has struggled with deliveries in cities where snarl-ups are frequent and road signs unreliable. In response, firms have set up logistics networks and use motorbikes instead of trucks. Flipkart, for one, has tapped Mumbai's dabbawalas, a more than a century-old lunch box distrib...
PayTM Office , battle station of one of India’s biggest e-commerce company!
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PayTM Office , battle station of one of India’s biggest e-commerce company!

Paytm is an Indian e-commerce shopping website launched in 2010, owned by One97 Communications which initially focused on Mobile and DTH Recharging. The company is headquartered in Noida, India. It gradually provided recharging and bill payment of various portals including electricity bills, gas bills, as well as telephone bills. Paytm entered India's e-commerce market in 2014, providing facilities and products similar to businesses such as Flipkart, Amazon.com, Snapdeal. In 2015, it added booking bus travel. (more…)
Why Ecommerce Giants Like Kunal Bahl, Sachin Bansal Are Backing Entrepreneurs As “Super Angel”
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Why Ecommerce Giants Like Kunal Bahl, Sachin Bansal Are Backing Entrepreneurs As “Super Angel”

Saras Agarwal's main agenda at a networking event early this year was to meet Zishaan Hayath, cofounder and chief executive of education technology startup Toppr. The associate vice-president at VenturEast, among India's oldest venture capital firms, wasn't looking to invest in Toppr but discuss startups Hayath had put his money into. "It was a general meet-up from the point of view of deal flow to understand what kind of startups (Hayath) is interested in," Agarwal said. Hayath represents a widening pool of so-called super angels — reputed startup founders who are increasingly becoming the first port of call for entrepreneurs seeking money for their emerging businesses, having been among the earliest to bet on consumer Internet companies such as Ola, Housing, TinyOwl, Grofers and Delhi...
Why these big Corporates like Reliance, Tata, Birla showing interest in startups now
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Why these big Corporates like Reliance, Tata, Birla showing interest in startups now

One of Reliance Industries' offices in suburban Mumbai became unusually busy last week. The Reason: a second batch of 10 startups joined the country's largest private firm's four-month acceleration programme, run in partnership with Microsoft Ventures, to help them scale up operations through mentoring and infrastructure support in exchange of technology and ideas. A month ago, a similar initiative was launched by Aditya Birla Group, albeit at a smaller scale. Big Indian family business houses, some of which were still debating whether it's worth foraying into the digital space till about a year ago, are now busy chalking out and implementing strategies to join the digital economy and get leverage from the ongoing startup boom. If you look at the history of conglomerates in the last ...
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Breaking: 35 Indian companies among the global cashback industry leaders

A new research report released today identifies 35 Indian companies among the global cashback industry leaders. The report analyzes the growth of the industry, its important role in worldwide e-commerce, and the trends and challenges faced by this quickly growing industry. "We identified 35 Indian companies in this worldwide ranking of cashback industry leaders," said Douglas G Hall, lead author of the report. "Cashback companies in India have seen significant growth and more than $4 billion in venture capital investment. India is the most exciting market in the global cashback industry at the moment." Indian companies highlighted in the report include Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, Paytm, Zomato, Mydala, CouponDunia, Yatra and Cashkaro. E-commerce in India is now valued at more than $5...