With highs and lows, investments and major redesigns, the second week of November was filled with both good and bad news updates. Flipkart’s valuation was marked down and Ola will be seen collaborating with Microsoft! If you’ve missed the major news of this week, here’s our weekly wrap up!
1. MUTUAL FUND INVESTOR VALIC MARKS DOWN FLIPKART’S VALUATION
Mutual investor fund based in USA, Valic Co, marked down the valuation of India’s biggest ecommerce company Flipkart to $ 7.9 billion from $ 11 billion. Critics claim this move signifies some of the smaller investors of Flipkart are still divided over its previous valuation. However, the markdown comes as a surprise because Flipkart recently raised $ 3 billion from SoftBank, Tencent Holdings, Microsoft and eBay. Despite the continuous influx of money, Flipkart’s valuation has been decreased thrice before by Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments and mutual fund investor T. Rowe Price.
2. HDFC LAUNCHES SMARTUP ZONE IN BENGALURU
One of India’s largest private sector lender banks, HDFC Bank, is launching an investment fund, SmartUp Zone, to support early stage ventures. The fund will have a corpus of about $ 25 million to $30 million and will also provide legal services to the selected startups. The bank is looking to tackle specific pain points of the startup community and harness the potential of the startups and fintech ecosystem using a multi prolonged approach. Through the fund, HDFC Bank aims to invest in about 65 startups across 30 cities in India.
3. PAYTM TO INVEST RS. 5000 CRORES IN PAYMENTS UNIT
India’s largest digital payments platform, Paytm, will be investing close to Rs. 5000 crores in its payments arm over the course of the next three years. Established in 2010, Paytm has already more than Rs. 5,000 crores in its mobile payments sector till date. Founder of Paytm, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, in a recent interview said the company will continue to be the largest investor in digital payments in the country. One97 Communications, Paytm’s parent company, recently posted a record revenue of $ 126 million for the fiscal year 2016 – 2017 and a net worth of Rs. 2,376 crores.
4. OLA AND MICROSOFT TO LAUNCH CONNECTED VEHICLE PLATFORM
On a small visit to India, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the technology giant will be collaborating with homegrown taxi hailing startup Ola. The partnership will allow Ola to leverage Microsoft’s cloud, artificial intelligence and productivity tools to help car manufacturers integrate the platform with vehicle systems, enhance rider experience and for predictive maintenance of the cars. At the India Today Conclave Next 2017, Ola’s founder Bhavish Agarwal along with Nadella outlined the broad contours of the alliance. The platform will be designed to continuously collect, analyze and learn from high volumes of data and user behavior along with enhancing the safety and security features and driver assistance services.
5. INDIAN GOVERNMENT PUSHES FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES
In an attempt to encourage electric vehicles in India, the Indian Government is working on creating a policy that would facilitate and expedite electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing. The Indian Government held talks with both local and foreign companies in an attempt to raise investments to turn India into a manufacturing hub. The government has doubled down its efforts to increase the EV ecosystem in India and make the country a truly electric vehicle nation by 2018. In recent years, there has been a 37.5 % rise in the sale of EVs in India.
6. SNAPCHAT TO BE REDESIGNED POST Q3 REPORTS
Image sharing social media app, Snapchat, will soon undergo a major redesign in an attempt to reach a broader audience. Snap Inc., Snapchat’s parent company earned just over $ 207.9 million in revenue with a loss of $ 0.14 per share in the latest quarter. This California based firm’s earnings dropped by 20% in after hours trading, closing at $ 15.12 and lost $ 443 million while their capital expenditures also rose up to $ 25.9 million. The company plans to integrate premium video and search based content in a manner similar to the social media giant Facebook to open the app to a huge audience of new users. According to Snapchat’s founder, Evan Spiegel, the app is exploring new ways of surfacing its content in a personalized and more relevant way, while still maintaining the exploratory nature of the service.
7. SAMSUNG TROLLS APPLE IN LATEST ADVERTISEMENT
In an advertisement worthy of awards, Korean technology giant Samsung trolled its fiercest rival Apple for always being a step behind the company. Samsung took the viewers on a trip down memory lane beginning in 2007 with the first generation iPhone and criticizing all the major iPhones released since then. The advertisement mocked Apple’s phone running out of storage, not being waterproof, not having a stylus or a headphone jack and the lack of a wireless charging support. At the same time, the ad portrayed Samsung always leading the tech world. This is not the first time Samsung took a dig at Apple and the rivalry between both the technology giants dates back decades.
8. RAJASTHAN GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES STARTUP PROGRAMME ISTART
A dedicated platform for startups called iStart was launched by the Rajasthan Government in a bid to facilitate entrepreneurship and job creation. Managed by Applyifi, iStart will include three major components namely QRate, Challenge For Change and Rajasthan Stack.The programs will be structured with very clear and measurable deliverables to ensure that more startups can succeed. Based on an “access improve access” model, startups will undergo customized group skill building and mentoring programmes and will be provided with a detailed assessment report and Applyifi scorecard to help them strengthen their venture in areas that need improvement.
9. TRIPADVISOR TO GIVE BADGES TO HOTELS WITH ABUSIVE HISTORY
The travel review website, TripAdvisor will now be placing badges against hotels and restaurants that have been identified to be unsafe for women. This move comes after the company faced harsh criticism for deleting a review which highlighted the maltreatment a tourist faced in a Mexican resort. TripAdvisor, which claims around 455 million people use their portal, apologized for deleting the comment saying it was deleted under an older policy that allowed only “family friendly language” on the site.
10. ALIBABA SEEKS GOVERNMENT APPROVAL TO INVEST IN BIGBASKET
The China based ecommerce website, Alibaba.com is seeking the permission of Competition Commission of India (CCI,) to buy stake in the online grocery startup, BigBasket. Alibaba Group Holding’s subsidiary Alibaba.com Singapore ECommerce Pvt., Ltd., will infuse the funds in Supermarket Grocery Supplies Pvt., Ltd., which owns BigBasket. At present, the Indian Internet food retail industry is on track to hit $1 billion in 2017 and may even be valued at $ 1.2 trillion by 2020 and the online grocery market currently accounts for 48% of India’s total retail consumption. This investment by Alibaba will help BigBasket keep the big companies like Flipkart and Amazon at bay.
11. FLIPKART TO LAUNCH ITS OWN SMARTPHONE – CAPTURE+
India’s largest ecommerce platform, Flipkart is all set to launch its own smartphone Capture+ this month. Armed with a dual camera and a Qualcomm SD625 octa core processor, Capture+ will be available for sale from November 15, 2017. The phone also packs a 4GB RAM and runs on stock Android Nougat with support for turbocharging its 3,500mAh battery. Currently, Flipkart owns 70% market share of the online smartphones market in India and is the exclusive launch partner of smartphone brands such as Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo and Oppo. Priced at Rs. 10,999 for the 32 GB model and at Rs. 12,999 for the 64 GB model, the phone will be launched under Flipkart’s ‘Made In India’ private label arm ‘Billion.’
12. ALIBABA RECORDS $16 BILLION SINGLES DAY SALE
China’s biggest ecommerce firm Alibaba launched the ninth edition of its annual Single’s Day sale on 11 November 2017. Surprising people world over, Alibaba’s sales hit a record $ 16 billion by mid morning on Saturday trumping the sale of Black Friday and the Cyber Monday sales combined. Within two hours of the launch, the company generated nearly $ 11.9 billion worth of total Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) and processed closed to 256,000 payment transactions per second. According to a few sources, Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival can even touch the $ 20 billion mark.
13. OLA TO STOP SURGE PRICES DURING THE ODD EVEN RULE IN DELHI
The Delhi Government recently announced plans to restart the odd even car policy in the capital in an attempt to reduce pollution. Taxi aggregator Ola, in consolidation with the government’s decision, announced there will be no surge prices once this rule has been implemented in Delhi. The company also added the base price will also be slashed to Rs. 35 to further help the citizens of the city. According to media reports, the government is also in talks with Uber for the implementation of a similar scheme. The Government is working hard to ensure there is a combined agreement with both Ola and Uber on this issue.
That’s all for this week! Subscribe to our portal to never miss updates from the startup world! If your startup has an exciting announcement coming up, you can even write to us at [email protected]. Catch up with the highlights of the week with our The News This Week section.
