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Online Vendors Meet Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on AskMe Payment Issue

6Sep By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

INDIA, News

Online Vendors Meet Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on AskMe Payment Issue

Corporate Affairs Ministry has assured Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of taking up the pending payment issue of cash-strapped e-commerce firm AskMe on priority basis. Representatives of All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA) today met Sitharaman on the issue of pending payment from askmebazaar.com. Since the issue raised by AIOVA pertained to Ministry of Corporate affairs, Sitharaman spoke to Corporate Affairs Secretary. "Corporate Affairs (Secretary) assured Sitharaman that he shall take up the issues raised by AIOVA on a priority basis," the commerce and industry ministry said in a tweet. Hit by a cash crunch, e-commerce company AskMe has decided to shut shop, leaving 4,000 staffers jobless.

PropTiger Acquires PropRates, Adds Advanced Data Collation Tool to Offerings

5Sep By AnkitaNo Comments

ACQUISITION

PropTiger Acquires PropRates, Adds Advanced Data Collation Tool to Offerings

Online real estate advisor PropTiger.com announced the acqui-hire of Mumbai-based start-up PropRates, a pioneer in data collation tools which gathers actual real estate transaction data. With this acquisition, PropTiger aims to provide consumers real-time access to price related information on the property market. The latest acquisition comes close on the heels of the company's acquisition of Gurgaon-based 3DPhy earlier in August, which was aimed at extending its lead in 3D visualisation and other technology solutions. Commenting on the development, Dhruv Agarwala, CEO, PropTiger.com and makaan.com, said: "With this acquisition, PropTiger will be able to augment its existing DataLabs offerings. The advanced data collation tool developed by PropRates will enable users to make m...

4Sep By AnkitaNo Comments

INDIA

There Should be One Policy For Retail Business and E-commerce, Says Amitabh Kant

(Pic Source: Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy co-founder Facebook profile) India is the only country where there are different policies for different segments of the retail business and e-commerce. Logically, there should be one policy, said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, while interacting with CEOs at the Valedictory Session of the sixth edition of Massmerize 2016, FICCI’s annual flagship Retail, FMCG and E-Commerce Convention. He said that in today’s globalized world, it has become essential for India to become a part of the global supply chain. For this, India has opened up its economy and liberalized the FDI regime. Now India features as the number one nation in attracting FDI, which has given the country access to latest technology, global best practices and global innovations. Kant ...

Voonik Acquires Styling, Personalization App Dekkoh

3Sep By NitishNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Voonik Acquires Styling, Personalization App Dekkoh

India’s leading personalization focused fashion marketplace Voonik has announced the acquisition of Dekkoh. Over the last few months, the company has acqui-hired Zohraa, Picksilk, Styl, TrialKart and Getsy. Dekkoh was founded by Aditya Chalsani and Varun Mathew, as a fashion discovery platform that allows users to chat one-on-one with their own personal stylist and buy clothing and accessories that suit them. It connects stylist community of more than 200 stylists to consumers seeking fashion advice and also have a rule based chat bot technology. “Voonik is built around personalised fashion, to provide every customer a solution and opportunity to be fashionable every day. Personalization is what has set us miles ahead of competition. Dekkoh platform is doing the same through an engaged...

Didi Acquisition of Uber Was Pre-planned, Will Investigate: China

2Sep By reutersNo Comments

CHINA, News

Didi Acquisition of Uber Was Pre-planned, Will Investigate: China

China's commerce ministry is investigating the planned acquisition by ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing of U.S. rival Uber Technologies Inc's China unit over anti-monopoly concerns, the ministry's spokesman said on Friday. Shen Danyang told reporters the Ministry of Commerce would look to protect fair market competition and consumer interests in the deal, which will create a roughly $35 billion giant dominating China's car-hailing market. A representative for Uber could not be reached immediately for comment. A Didi spokeswoman said: "We are in communication with the authorities." It is unclear how the investigation could affect Didi's planned acquisition and subsequent integration of Uber's China unit, already the top two players in the market. That had raised monopoly concerns as D...

Snapdeal Launches Its Own Cloud Platform Cirrus

1Sep By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

Snapdeal Launches Its Own Cloud Platform Cirrus

Online marketplace Snapdeal on Thursday announced the launch of its private cloud platform, Cirrus, to help the company offer a more frictionless, reliable experience to customers and help save costs. This move will enable Snapdeal to ensure that business growth is augmented with platform speed, security, and stability, it said. The private cloud solution has been built and operationalised in under a year and is timed to handle long-term growth in traffic, Snapdeal said in a statement. The launch follows a sustained increase in online traffic at Snapdeal and will also satiate fast growing demand for crunching big data "to build personalised and relevant experiences for consumers," it added. "Snapdeal was born in the cloud, but public clouds stopped being cost efficient af...

Droom Announces Budget of Rs. 100 Crore For Marketing

1Sep By PriyankaNo Comments

News

Droom Announces Budget of Rs. 100 Crore For Marketing

India's pioneering online automobile transactional marketplace Droom is geared to launch a mega promotional campaign with a budget of Rs. 100 crore. The new campaign is being launched for television, YouTube, print, digital and social media and will also be seen outdoors on billboards and external installations. The entire campaign is designed to drive traffic and increase consumer awareness and to enhance the sense of pride amongst Indian consumers when it comes to buying a pre-owned vehicle. Droom, which has reported more than 700 percent year-on-year revenue, plans to adopt an aggressive performance-linked marketing approach which will see country-wide spread of the advertisements. Automobiles, being a big-ticket item, have a significant gestation period which may last from a mini...

Indian E-commerce Companies Demand Exemption From GST

30Aug By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

INDIA, News

Indian E-commerce Companies Demand Exemption From GST

The rapidly expanding e-commerce companies today made a strong case for keeping them out of the proposed GST net but the state finance ministers appeared in no mood to oblige. At the first meeting of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers held after the Parliament approved the GST Bill, online retailers said they only provide a platform to vendors and customers and do not make money out of sales made. According to representation made at the meeting, companies like Flipkart, Amazon India and Snapdeal are only service providers to the vendors and as such are liable to pay GST only on service income. When panel chairman and West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra questioned the billion dollar valuations some of the so-called online platforms command, the e-retailers s...

29Aug By AnkitaNo Comments

FUNDING

Livspace Raises Rs 100 Cr Series B Funding From Existing Investors

Online home design company Livspace today said it has raised Rs 100 crore from existing investors in a second strategic round (Series B) of funding. The round was led by Bessemer Ventures Partners and saw participation from Jungle Ventures and Helion, Livspace said in a statement here. The funds will be used to launch services across cities -- Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai in 2016 and Pune, Hyderabad in the first half of 2017, it added. This round of funding comes close on the heels of the company's launch of its Home Design Automation Platform. "With this round of funding we will aim to reach revenue of USD 100 million by the end of 2017 and achieve operational profitability across cities," Anuj Srivastava, CEO and Co-founder of Livspace, said. Founded by Srivastava and Ramakant Sharm...

Fintech Firm LoanTap Raises $3 mn From HNIs

29Aug By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Fintech Firm LoanTap Raises $3 mn From HNIs

Fintech platform LoanTap today said it has secured USD 3 million in a first strategic round of funding (Series A) from high net worth individuals (HNIs) Abhishek Pandey and Jaysukh Sapra. LoanTap said nearly 85 per cent of the funding, which was led by Mumbai-based HNIs, will be used for onward lending by the platform, while a part of the remaining capital will also be used to augment its technology and distribution frameworks. Further, LoanTap will be leveraging the raised capital to expand its operations in NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Bangalore, it said. LoanTap has an inhouse NBFC platform delivering flexible EMI-free loan and overdraft products to salaried professionals. Headquartered in Mumbai with the back office in Pune, LoanTap follows an agency-based coll...

28Aug By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

Couponhaat.in Gears up to Raise $2M in Series A Funding

Delhi-based start-up and Indian e-commerce company Couponhaat which provides best coupons and deals for online shoppers, is gearing up to raise around $2 Million in series A funding. The fund raising plan is in sync with its expansion plans and increasing the team size. So far, Couponhaat is fully self-funded. Within just one year of its operation, Couponhaat has emerged as the fresh face of the online coupons and deals industry. Couponhaat offers more than 300,000 coupons to redeem and 7000 live coupons, thousands of product pages and countless deals listed on the site. Over last quarter Couponhaat has raised its graph tremendously and attracted over 2 million hits on the website. The traffic is steadily increasing each month, since the time of its very inception in the month of Apr...

MobiKwik Raises $40 million (Rs 268 Cr) From South Africa Based Net1

27Aug By NitishNo Comments

FUNDING

MobiKwik Raises $40 million (Rs 268 Cr) From South Africa Based Net1

South Africa based Net1 will invest USD 40 million (about Rs 268 crore) in Indian digital payment company, MobiKwik. "Net 1 UEPS Technologies has signed a subscription agreement with One MobiKwik Systems. As part of the strategic partnership, Net1 will invest USD 40 million in MobiKwik," the companies said in a statement. In addition, Net1's virtual card technology will be integrated across all MobiKwik wallets, it added. MobiKwik, which has over 32 million mobile wallet users and one lakh retailers onboard, has Sequoia Capital, Tree Line Asia, American Express, Cisco Investments, GMO Payment Gateway and MediaTek among its investors. Over the next three years, MobiKwik aims to reach 150 million users and 500,000 merchants. In May this year, Mobikwik had raised about Rs 330 crore...