Self-drive car rental start-up Zoomcar has raised an undisclosed amount from Chinese venture capital firm Cyber Carrier CL as an extension of its Series B round, the company said in a statement on December 20. The company had raised $24 million in August in a Series B funding round led by Ford Sm…
Start Up India
How food tech start-ups earn margins through kitchen model
Twigly, FreshMenu, Inner Chef and Faasos are the likely survivors of a meltdown in the food tech space in India. All of these firms have adopted a model in which they control the experience — from cooking to packaging to delivery through their own teams, and not depending on restaurants to run th…
Education technology start-up Byju’s raises funds from World Bank arm IFC
Education technology start-up Byju’s, owned by Think and Learn Pvt. Ltd, has raised an undisclosed amount from World Bank arm International Finance Corp. (IFC), the company said in a statement on December 20. The latest round came close on the heels of Byju’s raising $50 million from the Chan Zuc…
B2B start-ups raise $98 mn across 30 deals so far this year
Earlier this year, three former executives from Flipkart Ltd, India’s most valuable e-commerce firm, launched Udaan, an online marketplace connecting manufacturers, wholesalers, traders and retailers. In November, Udaan.com raised $10 million in Series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners I…
Pan-IIT Alumni India to set up Rs 1k cr fund for start-up ecosystem
Pan-IIT Alumni India, the alumni body of the Indian Institutes of Technology, is working on setting up a Rs.1,000 crore venture capital fund to focus on social impact enterprises and the startup ecosystem. This will be the first such VC fund by the association. The group will raise the fund throu…
Booming Indian start-up industry fails to fill policy void
More than 120 startups have been created by former employees of online shopping portal Flipkart and 36 by ex-employees of its subsidiary Myntra, according to the Tracxn database. The Flipkart economy of 156 startups is a microcosm of the local ecommerce ecosystem that has bloomed in less than 10 …
Online jewellery store VivoCarat.com raises $50K in seed funding
Online jewellery marketplace VivoCarat.com has raised $50,000 in seed funding from a group of individual investors. The company aims to utilise these funds for product development, team building, and marketing. Started in 2016 by Rietsh Oza and Abhijith Shetty, the company offers a range of new-a…
Bengaluru-based start-up Lithium Urban Technology paves way for EV revolution in cab’s market
“Tomorrow’s transportation, today” sounds like an audacious claim coming from any cab company in India, let alone a start-up. But here’s why Lithium Urban Technologies could be excused for using that as its tagline: India got its first electric vehicle in 2001, and 14 years later, Lithium gave th…
B2B start-ups surpass over B2C peers
As startup ecosystem is maturing in India, the number of B2B startups is increasing when compared to B2C startups. Mentors, investors and startup experts observe that the increase in B2B startups is a sign of startups getting more focused and serious, which is a healthy sign. “Many youngsters ven…
Open environments tend to breed the best competitors says Google’s Rajan Anandan
Some of India’s most successful entrepreneurs may be seeking protectionist measures and competitive advantage over foreign rivals operating in the country in the form of local government regulation, but Google’s go-to person in India Rajan Anandan cuts across the popular narrative wit…