Bengaluru-based electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and OS provider Bolt.Earth has sacked around 15-20% of its workforce in a restructuring exercise, according to the startup’s cofounders.

However, multiple sources told Inc42 that the layoffs impacted as much as 35% of the startup’s workforce. Bolt.Earth had around 250 employees prior to the restructuring exercise.

The layoff exercise began last week and the impacted employees were informed about the startup’s decision to sack them in a one-on-one interaction with the higher management, the sources added.

During a call with Inc42, the cofounders, Jyotiranjan Harichandan and Mohit Yadav, said the layoffs were restricted to the startup’s operating system (OS) team. They attributed the decision to the uncertainty surrounding the Centre’s FAME II scheme. 

However, the sources said that the restructuring exercise involved all the verticals and employees from hardware, product, cloud, sales, among other teams were impacted. The startup is offering a severance pay based on the employees’ notice period.

“Our recent workforce reorganisation underscores our commitment to efficiency and profitability. We have fulfilled all severance obligations, providing active support to our team during this transitional period,” cofounder Harichandan said in a written statement while addressing Inc42’s queries. 

Founded in 2017 by Harichandan and Yadav, Bolt.Earth offers charging solutions for businesses, individuals, real estate companies, fleet operators, and the government. It caters to charging requirements ranging from slow to fast charging. The startup’s three broad product categories include operating systems for EVs, charging infrastructure, and fleet management systems.

Interestingly, the restructuring exercise was undertaken almost two months after the startup announced raising $20 Mn in a funding round from Union Square Ventures, Prime Venture Partners, ITIGO Funds, among others. However, sources told Inc42 that the funding round was closed last year.

“This funding round that the company announced in the month of October was closed a year back. Not sure why they announced it this late,” said a person aware of the matter.

Responding to a question on the delay in the announcement of the funding round, the cofounders said it was a “strategic decision”.

Meanwhile, Inc42 has also learnt that the startup is in the middle of raising a $50 Mn funding from its existing investors and has already received commitments of around $30 Mn. However, the cofounders declined to comment on this.

One of the sources said that the restructuring exercise was related to the conditions put forward by the investors for the fresh capital infusion.

It is pertinent to note that startups like Third Wave Coffee and Udaan also laid off employees recently within weeks of them raising funding. 

Bolt.Earth raised $4 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures and Prime Ventures. 

Its parent entity Revos Auto Tech Pte. Ltd reported an operating revenue of 1 Mn Singapore Dollars (SGD) (about INR 6.4 Cr) in FY23, an increase of 617% from SGD 142K (about INR 89 Lakh). However, the startup’s loss surged 209.7% to SGD 12.4 Mn (about INR 78.1 Cr) from SGD 4 Mn (about INR 25.2 Cr) in FY22.

Harichandran said, “Looking ahead, our focus remains on operational streamlining to fortify our position as a market leader, ensuring sustained and profitable growth for the company. Bolt.Earth is dedicated to driving innovation and remains resolute in our commitment to a sustainable future.”

The post Exclusive: EV Charging Infra Provider Bolt.Earth Fires About 20% Of Its Workforce appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Social media platform ShareChat today fired around 200 employees in a second round of layoffs this year to cut costs, sources told Inc42.

The startup confirmed the development with Inc42. In a statement, it said that the “comprehensive restructuring effort”, which resulted in reduction in its team size by about 15%, was aimed at streamlining operations, enhancing productivity, and positioning the company for sustainable growth.

“ShareChat, today undertook a strategic restructuring as part of its annual planning for the year 2024. The decision reflects the company’s commitment to streamlining its cost base and achieving profitability within the next 4-6 quarters,” the statement said. 

However, the startup did not disclose the severance pay that will be paid to the impacted employees.

As per the sources, the employees were informed about the restructuring exercise today in a one-on-one call with the management team. 

The layoff exercise came almost 11 months after ShareChat fired around 500 employees, or about 20% of its workforce.

As per the EPFO portal, the startup credited PF amount for 1,281 employees in November 2023 as compared to 2,346 employees in November 2022.

The retrenchments in January this year came on the back of ShareChat parent Mohalla Tech shutting down its fantasy gaming platform Jeet11 in December 2022, which resulted in 100 employees losing their jobs.

In January this year, two of ShareChat’s cofounders – Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan – also resigned. Following this, they founded a robotics startup General Autonomy and raised $3 Mn seed funding for it last month from venture capital firms India Quotient and Elevation Capital.

Besides, the founder exits and employee layoffs, ShareChat is also struggling to raise capital. As per a TechCrunch report, the startup is in talks to raise a much needed $50 Mn at a valuation under $1.5 Bn. In March last year, the startup touched the peak valuation of $5 Bn after adding Temasek to its captable. As of date, ShareChat has raised a total of $1.7 Bn in funding across multiple rounds and counts the likes of Lightspeed Ventures, Twitter, and Google among its backers. 

ShareChat’s net loss jumped 38.17% to INR 4,064.31 Cr in FY23 from INR 2,941.51 Cr in the previous fiscal year. The bottom line took a hit despite its operating revenue surging 62% to INR 540.21 Cr from INR 332.69 Cr in FY22.

Meanwhile, its total income increased 54.90% to INR 628.85 Cr from INR 405.96 Cr in FY22. Effectively, it spent INR 7.46 to earn every rupee in FY23.

The post Exclusive: ShareChat Fires Nearly 200 Employees In Second Layoff Exercise This Year appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“We have just two months of cash runway,” the top management of Kalaari Capital-backed edtech upskilling startup AlmaBetter told its employees in September and announced pay cuts across the board. 

As per the plan, employees earning above INR 50,000 per month had to take a salary cut of 50% while those making less than INR 50,000 per month had to take a cut of 25%, multiple sources told Inc42.

The startup said that the deducted salary would be paid later either in cash or the employees may get vested ESOPs, they added.

AlmaBetter CEO Shivam Dutta confirmed the pay cuts to Inc42, saying it was a part of the ‘regular salary review process’. However, he denied that the startup has only two month of cash runway.  

“This is part of our regular salary review process to match the salaries to market standards. As part of this process, we had a mix of salary deductions as well as salary increments. ESOPs were also provided to bring more ownership within employees,” Dutta said.

One of the sources cited above said that the pay cuts were necessary to avoid layoffs.

However, the startup undertook a layoff exercise in the very next month. It sacked around 35 employees and, in an email, cited a “financial crunch” as the reason behind it. Inc42 has reviewed the email sent to the employees.

Dutta, however, said that only 22 employees, or about 8% of the total workforce, were laid off.

As per the sources, the layoffs impacted the programme, editing, marketing, and student operations teams, while the entire corporate communications team was sacked. Meanwhile, Dutta claimed that the layoffs were primarily driven by AI-enabled automation on the student operations front.

Commenting on the layoffs, one of the sources said, “This could have been handled in a better way. They could have informed us prior. We understand they don’t have money to pay us, but they could have been professional about this.” 

The startup offered basic pay of two months to compensate for job losses. However, there was a catch. The severance would be paid on March 31, 2024, almost five months after the layoffs, as per an email sent by the startup. Inc42 has reviewed this email also.

“What will the employees do with the severance pay in March? They need the money now to pay their current bills,” one of the sources said.

Rejecting the claims, Dutta said, “Severance has already been paid out to those who have successfully got asset clearance. The last day of submission of assets and the payout of severance has been kept as March 31, 2024.”

Journey Of Pandemic-Era Child AlmaBetter 

Founded by IIT Kharagpur and IIT Delhi graduates Shivam Dutta, Vikash Srivastava, Ravi Kumar Gupta, Arshyan Ahsan, and Alok Anand, AlmaBetter is among the new-age upskilling startups founded at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

At the outset, the edtech offered upskilling courses under domains such as data science and software development to college students and working professionals. Later, it forayed into providing post-graduate programmes/courses in computer science.

In November last year, the startup raised $2.7 Mn in its seed round from Kalaari Capital. The round also saw participation from 15 angel investors, including Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Kumar of Meesho, Rajesh Yabaji of Blackbuck, and Varun Alagh of Mamaearth. 

However, within a few months, the startup found itself grappling with a cash crunch due to its high cash burn (more on this later). Following this, AlmaBetter resorted to layoffs to extend its runway. 

In March this year, Inc42 learnt that the startup laid off around 20 employees, mostly from the growth team. Back then, when Inc42 reached out to AlmaBetter, Dutta said, “… As a part of regular performance evaluation across teams, a few employees were let go due to their underperformance or failure to fully embrace the company’s ethos and values.” 

In a bid to shore up its revenue, the startup launched its post-graduate courses in data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and software development in July. 

What Led To The Latest Crisis?

While AlmaBetter has yet to disclose its financial statements for FY23 with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, its FY22 numbers highlight the growing concerns within the startup. In FY22, AlmaBetter posted a net loss of INR 4.2 Cr on an operating revenue of INR 2.2 Cr. The startup’s expenses stood at INR 7.8 Cr during the year, which means its expenses were almost 3.5X its operating revenue.

Besides, one of the sources said that the startup’s revenue model was also flawed. “For some courses guaranteeing 100% placements, AlmaBetter would receive fees only after the placement of its students was done. What this meant was that the company was not making any money from its students enrolled under those programmes for almost a year,” the source said. 

Despite issues plaguing the startup, it has been spending heavily on marketing and promotions to create brand awareness and generate new business, we have been told. 

According to a source, AlmaBetter spent heavily on marketing a product just to scrap it later. Similarly, the startup spent a lot of money on floating a new undergraduate course a few months ago. However, has now pulled the plug on it, Inc42 has learnt.

While Dutta claimed that the undergraduate courses are still being offered on a B2B basis, no such courses are currently listed on the startup’s website. Instead, we found that the startup is increasing the fees for its certification courses from January 1, 2024, citing inflation and operational expenses.

Amid all these, AlmaBetter’s efforts to raise fresh funding have failed so far as investors are willing to invest only at its seed round’s valuation or a valuation below what the founders are seeking, the sources claimed.

While the startup’s efforts to raise a bridge round have failed so far, existing investor Kalaari Capital is willing to commit a fresh fund if AlmaBetter can onboard a new investor, they said.

However, Dutta, without giving any additional clarification, called the funding-related comments “false information”.

Meanwhile, AlmaBetter is in discussions with other edtech startups for a potential acquisition, as per the sources. However, Dutta dismissed this, too.

“They are doing everything to keep the company afloat,” one of the sources said, explaining the edtech platform’s current condition. 

Meanwhile, Dutta said that AlmaBetter is in the “best shape as compared to other edtech players” and is on the verge of turning profitable by the next quarter. Without disclosing absolute numbers, he said, “FY23 saw 4X YoY growth and FY24 is expected to have 3X YoY growth”.

[Edited by Rai Vinaykumar]

The post Cash Crunch, Pay Cuts, Layoffs – Has AlmaBetter Lost Its Way? appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bengaluru-based edtech startup Simplilearn fired around 200 employees citing their poor performance over the last few days, sources told Inc42.

The layoffs affected employees at various levels, with the sales team being hit the hardest. Other departments, including marketing and operations, were also impacted by the layoffs, the sources said.

The startup began downsizing last week, starting with vice-president-level positions.

While Simplilearn told the employees that they were being sacked based on their performance, some of the impacted employees claimed that it happened abruptly and the startup hadn’t conducted any performance reviews recently.

“These layoffs were unexpected. Although the company cited the reason for this as poor performance, no performance review was conducted earlier. All of it happened suddenly. Now the existing employees are also under high pressure to get more sales,” one of the employees said.

The impacted employees were suddenly called for a one-on-one interaction with the human resources department and informed that they were being laid off, the sources said.

Meanwhile, without confirming the number of the laid off employees, Simplilearn said that performance-based exits do take place. “Our business is going as per the plan, we are hiring on a need basis across teams. Sometimes, performance-based exits do occur,” a company spokesperson told Inc42.

Founded in 2010 by Krishna Kumar, Simplilearn offers online upskilling courses in segments such as cyber security, cloud computing, project management and data science to students and working professionals.

It also offers courses in association with educational institutions and global organisations like IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and KPMG.

In 2021, private equity firm Blackstone acquired a majority stake in the startup for $250 Mn. Last year, Simplilearn raised $45 Mn in a fresh funding round led by venture capital firm GSV Ventures.

Simplilearn’s consolidated net loss surged 26X to INR 149.9 Cr in FY22 from INR 5.6 Cr in the previous fiscal year. Total revenue stood at INR 492.8 Cr as against INR 346 Cr in FY21.

The layoffs come at a time when edtech has been among the hardest-hit sectors due to the ongoing funding winter. Edtech startups have laid off nearly 10,000 employees since the beginning of 2022.

Recently, edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah laid off around 70-120 employees. While reports suggested that the move was part of a cost-cutting exercise, the company claimed that the layoffs were due to performance issues.

The post Exclusive: Blackstone Backed Simplilearn Fires 200 Employees, Blames Poor Performance appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In November 2022, Bengaluru-based early stage venture capital firm Seafund announced its INR 250 Cr Fund II and marked its first close at INR 30 Cr. 

A Category II alternative investment fund (AIF) registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), it targets to raise 60% of the corpus at the second close, likely to be completed by March-April 2024. The second vehicle is expected to reach a final close by the end of 2024.

At the LP (limited partners) level, the VC firm currently has an 80:20 investor ratio, with 80% hailing from India. However, it aims to take the ratio to 75:25 by the final close of Fund II.

Seafund was set up in 2016 by Manoj Kumar Agarwal, Mayuresh Raut and Narendra Bhandari. It is primarily sector-agnostic, and the second fund focusses on startups from various industries but with significant involvement in deeptech play. 

With an average ticket size of INR 2-5 Cr, Seafund II has already made early stage investments in five startups, including Docker Vision, Swapp Design, Simactricals, Evhicle and Red Wing. It aims to expand its portfolio and fund a total of 20 startups, which are building category-defining businesses.

“For instance, we will look more at neobanks under fintech or startups on the fintech infrastructure side. For climate tech, there could be solutions using blockchain or robotics. As for [sustainable] mobility, we are not looking at anyone making an electric vehicle (EV) or assembling and putting together the parts. We are looking for people in core solutions such as fast wireless charging or automated swapping technology. Robotics, semiconductors, drone logistics and cybersecurity are other areas we are exploring,” said Agarwal in a recent interaction with Inc42.

Seafund has made as many as 18 investments, of which 13 came from its first vehicle, a micro fund with a corpus of INR 25 Cr.  

Fund I invested in 13 active startups across sectors such as SaaS, fintech, IoT (hardware), edtech and media tech. Advarisk, Bestdoc, Genrobotics, Clootrack, Inc42, Wigzo, Zippee and others were part of Fund I. Five of them are now gearing up for Series A, but two startups have already secured Series A funding.

Invest Right To Create An Impact: Reveal SEA Fund Founders 

Agarwal emphasised that the three partners got together and brainstormed before they came up with an effective investment thesis that would create an impact. 

“Our initial thought was how to engage with the startup ecosystem, which was growing and seemed to be growing in the right direction. So, the aim was never to give just money but to work with each startup closely,” he said.

During his journey spanning 30 years or more as a corporate executive, entrepreneur and investor, Agarwal also realised that many founders have good ideas. But they are not essentially [successful] entrepreneurs as they are young and do not understand the intricacies of building a business. A thorough understanding of the ground realities is critical to lay the foundation of a successful business.

“You may have the best product. But if you cannot manage [your business] or sell the product, you won’t be able to grow, and you won’t survive. And we thought there were areas where we could help,” he added.

The trio put together a fund structure to pursue their vision and started investing in 2018. Among their initial bets were a host of startups such as Inc42, Wigzo, Clootrack and more. The idea was to fund early stage entities where they could get involved seamlessly, without any friction.

“When you talk to the founders of our portfolio startups, you will realise how closely we work with them. I enjoy talking to them, but that doesn’t mean I should invest. You can’t invest in all of them; you only invest in some startups,” said Agarwal.

Seafund’s Core Investment Thesis

The fund primarily targets pre-seed to seed-level investments in homegrown startups. Its overarching goal is establishing a foundation for follow-on investments and putting nearly 50% of the corpus in follow-on rounds.

“Ideally, 75-80% of these startups would receive follow-on funding. We also aim for a second follow-on in at least 40-50% of the cases. Our second follow-on funding in good startups, can extend up to $2 Mn (INR 16.67 Cr),” said Agarwal.

As Seafund II is looking for startups specialising in core solutions, it will explore API-based offerings and other complex/transformative technologies. This approach would guarantee a cohesive and aligned investment strategy throughout the portfolio, emphasising disruptive technology play, he added.

Essentially, the overarching theme focusses on technology-driven solutions, ranging from medtech to insurtech to climate tech and anything and everything in-between. However, the VC firm does not prioritise segments like consumer tech or pure play D2C startups selling to end customers.

Exits & Future Bets

Seafund II aims to make at least two to three new investments in FY24, with a focus on climate, semiconductors and mobility. The VC firm also eyes follow-on investments in its portfolio companies. 

The VC firm already had one successful exit from Wigzo Technologies.

“We are now planning a few more exits from Fund I, either in March or June next year [2024]. As we continue to raise our second fund, we are seeing a huge interest in the Indian EV landscape even from LPs,” said Agarwal.

He further emphasised that the fund would continue its tech-focussed journey and stand out by creating unique value for startup founders in India.

[Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal]

The post Decoding Seafund’s Investment Thesis, Deeptech Play & Value Creation Goals appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In a major development in the VC (venture capital) space, the US-based hedge Fund – Tiger Global –  will see Scott Shleifer, one of its key figures spearheading Tiger’s private investment, step down from his current role of head of private investing in January of 2024.

According to The Information report, Shleifer, who doled out a plethora of hefty cheques at a record valuation during the tech boom in late 2020, will become a senior advisor, Tiger Global’s cofounder Chase Coleman informed its shareholders on Tuesday.

As part of this transition, the hedge fund will form an investment committee for its private equity investing unit. This unit along with Shleifer, will include the firm’s COO Eric Lane, and partners Evan Feinberg and Griffin Schroeder.

Shleifer, who had joined the hedge fund back in 2002, climbed the hierarchy ladder and became the only other person besides Coleman who had the authority to sign off on private equity investment decisions. 

As part of the transition, Shleifer will move to Florida in his mansion worth $120 Mn. Other KMPs (Key Managerial Personnel)  in the hedge fund work in-person from their New York offices. 

The major shakedown at the top of the hedge fund comes at a time after its investment of a record $19 Bn in the private market in a two-year period starting from 2021. However, as the market saw a correction in late 2022, Tiger saw the valuation of its assets plummet.

The Information further reported that the $12.7 Bn venture fund which launched in October 2021 had a loss of 20% on paper, net of management fees.

Additionally,  the hedge fund has been actively trying to sell its stakes to return some capital to its LPs. In June this year, Tiger Global was only able to raise 45% of the $6 Bn goal for its private tech fund.

Over the course of the period, Tiger Global has been witnessing key exits. Just last year, the US hedge fund saw the exit of John Curtius, the partner who was heading Tiger’s SaaS bets. Prior to that Lee Fixel, who led Tiger’s investment in India, quit in 2019. Fixel is well known for his bets on Flipkart – a deal that earned Tiger hefty returns. Fixel later went on to launch his own VC firm Addition and has already invested in Indian startups such as Delhivery, which went public in 2021. 

In the Indian context, Tiger Global, along with SoftBank, was known for producing unicorns with its handsome cheques. As per an Inc42 report, Tiger has backed 40 out of the 111 Indian unicorns. Some of these unicorns include CRED, Delhivery, BharatPe, Urban Company, and Mensa Brands. 

However, due to the volatile nature of the current market, Tiger has been more focused on seed and Series A stages. In May last year, Tiger participated in a $2.6 Mn seed funding round of Shopflo.

The post Unicorn Maker Tiger Global’s Head Of Private Investment Scott Shleifer To Step Down appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bengaluru-based fintech startup Jodo laid off around 100 employees last week in a cost-cutting exercise on the back of a lower-than-expected business growth, multiple sources told Inc42.

The Tiger Global-backed educational fees management startup held a virtual town hall meeting on November 17 during which its founders informed the employees that Jodo would need to cut down its costs to sustain over the coming months. The founders also said that the startup failed to achieve the business targets for this year, the sources said.

An email sent to the founders of Jodo regarding the layoffs didn’t elicit any response till the time of publishing this story. The article will be updated on receiving a response from the startup.

According to the sources, the founders said during the town hall meeting that the employees who would be impacted by the layoff exercise would receive emails about it. Following the meeting, the employees received the emails and their permissions to access the startup’s email, Slack, among others, were withdrawn within an hour.

The layoffs took place across departments, including engineering, data, customer success, product management, sales. New employees as well as those drawing high salaries were impacted by the retrenchment exercise.

Inc42 has learnt that Jodo is offering a severance pay of 45 days and outplacement support to the impacted employees.

“The startup last year processed fees worth INR 900 Cr and had set an impossible target of INR 9,000 Cr this year. However, Jodo will be ending this calendar year with INR 3,000 Cr worth of fees processed,” one of the sources said.

Multiple other sources also confirmed the steep business target set by the startup.

Founded in 2020 by Atulya Bhat, Raghav Nagarajan and Koustav Dey, Jodo provides a fee management system for educational institutions. It partners with educational institutions and NBFCs to offer flexible fee payment plans, including no-cost instalment plans, to students and parents.

As per its website, the startup has partnered with educational institutions like Presidency University, LPU, and DPS. Overall, it claims to have partnered over 3,000 educational institutes. 

One of the sources said that there has been a gradual shift in customer behaviour post-Covid, which has impacted Jodo’s business. While educational institutions relied heavily on offerings of Jodo during the pandemic, the same is not the case now. Many educational institutes have also moved to different lending tech platforms which charge lower interest than Jodo, the source added.

“One has to understand this is a seasonal business. The business picks up in April, when there’s a new start to the academic season,” another source added.

 

The latest development came more than a year after the startup raised $15 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Tiger Global at a valuation of $90 Mn. Jodo also counts Elevation Capital and Matrix Partners among its backers. 

The startup posted a net loss of INR 8.6 Cr in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22) on an operating revenue of INR 1.67 Cr.

It must be noted that all the founders of Jodo worked with Matrix Partners earlier. 

With the layoffs, Jodo has joined the long list of Indian startups which have fired employees since last year following the onset of the funding winter. According to Inc42’s layoff tracker, Indian startups have laid off nearly 29,000 employees so far since 2022. 

The post Exclusive: Tiger Global-Backed Jodo Sacks 100 Employees As Business Outlook Falters appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Cashing in on the festive fervour, the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) registered a record 12 Lakh transactions between November 6 and November 13, according to the ONDC data accessed by Inc42.

Earlier this year, ONDC highlighted that it was aiming at 1 Lakh daily transactions. Going by the festive season statistics, the network may have very well achieved this target. The ongoing Cricket World Cup, too, seems to have fuelled the network’s transaction growth. 

“The increasing trend of festive shopping moving online has pushed customers to look for the best deals across various platforms and apps. With ONDC Network, consumers now have one more alternative that goes beyond the traditional ecommerce apps. Our record transactions indicate a changing consumer behaviour wherein shoppers are eager to explore options to secure the best deals and discounts,” T Koshy, MD & CEO, ONDC told Inc42 in an emailed statement.

The orders were placed across 600 Indian cities during the week, covering verticals ranging from F&B, grocery, electronics, and fashion to home & kitchen, mobility, and health & wellness.

On Sunday (October 8), when India played a World Cup match against Australia, ONDC hit a record daily transaction peak of 53,000 retail orders per day.

It is also pertinent to mention that the open network witnessed a monthly transaction jump of 500X from a mere 12,281 transactions in January to more than 6,08,307 in September, as per the most recent monthly transaction data received from ONDC. 

The transaction growth seen during the festive season was on the back of incentives that the network offered to buyer-side applications like Paytm, Pincode (owned by PhonePe), Magicpin, and Ola among others. 

The network also revised the incentives/bonuses for sellers. In addition, the range of discounts offered to buyers was also increased.

As reported earlier, ONDC has been offering substantial bonuses of up to INR 35 Lakh per week to buyer-side platforms.

Furthermore, ONDC has increased the weekly limit on discounts available to consumers from 2 to 5 per week. The tier-based incentive system aims to benefit buyer applications for onboarding sellers basis their locations. This was done to enhance the reach of the market beyond urban areas, which have been conventionally drawing large online retail order volumes.

As per the ONDC’s incentive structure for seller-side applications, the network is providing up to INR 6,000 in metros, up to INR 7,500 in Tier II and III cities, and INR 5,000 in all other cities, provided they offer more than 5,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) in the grocery category.

Ecommerce Sales Shone Brightly This Festive Season

According to consulting firm Redseer, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of the country’s ecommerce sector was expected to grow 18%-20% YoY to INR 90,000 Cr during the festive season this year. 

Last week, Amazon India said that over 38,000 sellers achieved their highest-ever single-day sales during the company’s ‘The Great Indian Festival’ that started on October 8.

A rebound in retail consumption, record monthly digital transactions and easing inflation have overall provided tailwinds to the ecommerce sector in India after the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its report, Redseer stated that nearly 140 Mn shoppers were expected to make purchases during this year’s festive season sale.

Walmart-owned Flipkart, which conventionally had the largest share in festive season sales,  clocked a 15-20% increase in its gross merchandise value (GMV) at INR 33,000-INR 36,000 Cr during the festive season sale this year.

Attracting A Huge Seller Base Remains Key

A dominant feature emerging out of online festive season sales in India is the volume of orders coming from beyond metros and Tier I cities and towns. As such, onboarding sellers across the country has become crucial in a bid to tap the markets in the remote regions of the country.

While Amazon said that the marketplace helped nearly 8,000 sellers achieve their highest-ever single-day sales during the Great Indian Festival, Flipkart, on the other hand, announced a 27% increase in its seller count, surpassing 1.4 Mn sellers.

Meesho recently opened its platform to non-GST registered sellers, while Amazon India introduced its multi-channel fulfilment (MCF) service for D2C brands and retailers to help manage customer orders from different channels.

Meanwhile, ONDC paying B2B seller apps up to INR 1,000 for new buyers. This amount is being given to sellers for the first order made by a new or unique buyer with a minimum order value of INR 5,000, including shipping. Sellers can claim this incentive for up to 50 new buyers per month.

The post Exclusive: Festive Sale & Cricket Mania Skyrocket ONDC Order Volume To 12 Lakh During Diwali Week appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Troubled edtech giant BYJU’S laid off nearly 600 employees from the content and marketing teams in October as part of its ongoing restructuring exercise, sources told Inc42. 

The move impacted the content and video team more than the marketing team as the former division was shut entirely, the sources said, adding that teachers and educators who were part of the content production team were also impacted by the move. 

The layoffs were part of the retrenchment exercise being carried out under the leadership of BYJU’S new India CEO Arjun Mohan. The development follows a report about BYJU’S marketing head Atit Mehta, content head Asheesh Sharma, and heads of other verticals exiting the company. 

A detailed questionnaire on the latest developments sent by Inc42 to BYJU’S remained unanswered till the time of publishing this story.

Last month, Inc42 reported that BYJU’S planned to lay off nearly 3,500-4,000 employees. The layoff numbers were only for Think & Learn Private Ltd, the parent company of BYJU’S, and didn’t include its subsidiaries, sources told Inc42 then.

In a statement, a BYJU’S spokesperson had then said, “We are in the final stages of a business restructuring exercise to simplify operating structures, reduce the cost base and better cash flow management. BYJU’S new India CEO, Arjun Mohan, will be completing this process in the next few weeks and will steer a revamped and sustainable operation ahead.”

BYJU’S Many Troubles

The edtech decacorn is currently fighting on multiple fronts and has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

 It was also involved in a legal battle in the US with the lenders of its $1.2 Bn Term Loan B and is currently in talks to restructure the terms of the loan.

Amid the cash crunch, the company is planning to sell Great Learning and Epic for about $800 Mn-$1 Bn. 

According to a Bloomberg report, BYJU’s is in talks with the US-based private equity fund Joffre Capital to sell Epic for $400 Mn.

Meanwhile, sources told Inc42 that cofounder Byju Raveendran is in talks with the US and India-based edtech firms to sell Great Learning for about $400 Mn.

All this comes at a time when there is still no clarity on BYJU’S financial performance in FY22. After multiple delays and missed deadlines, BYJU’S last week released select numbers for its standalone business for FY22.

In a statement, it said Think and Learn Private Ltd reported an EBITDA loss of INR 2,253 Cr in FY22 as against an EBITDA loss of INR 2,406 Cr in FY21. Total income stood at INR 3,569 Cr as against INR 1,552 Cr in FY21. 

But neither did the statement mention the net loss figure for the standalone business nor did it provide any details about the consolidated financials for the year. The edtech firm’s consolidated net loss surged 1,880% to INR 4,588 Cr in FY21.

However, as per the sources, BYJU’S is in the process of filing its consolidated financials for FY22 with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in the next two weeks.

Mohan’s Attempts To Put The House In Order 

Last month, Inc42 reported that Mohan, who took over as the India CEO of BYJU’S in September this year, is looking to turn around the company’s fortunes by bringing down costs.

As part of this exercise, he ordered an immediate hiring freeze and was said to have zeroed in on senior employees and vertical heads for layoffs. The company also fired employees from sales, HR, finance and tech teams in this exercise. 

“There is a rumour going on in the Bengaluru head office that the company will now be brought down to 2015 levels when it comes to the number of employees, with more focus on junior-level positions,” a source told Inc42 earlier.

However, the company would continue to hire business development associates (BDAs) as it looks to shore up its revenue. 

Meanwhile, Mohan was also said to have ordered a pause on further expansion of BYJU’S offline tuition centres, which were started last year, amid high operational costs and a large number of refund and cancellation requests from students.

While the impact of these changes would only be visible in BYJU’S financial statements for FY24, all eyes are on the edtech’s consolidated FY22 numbers for now. 

The post EXCLUSIVE: BYJU’S Sacks 600 Employees From Content, Marketing Teams In Ongoing Restructuring Exercise appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bengaluru-based inter-state electric bus service provider Fresh Bus has raised another INR 7.5 Cr in its second seed funding round from marquee investors like CRED founder and CEO Kunal Shah, TVS Motors MD Sudarshan Venu, and Rivigo CEO and founder Deepak Garg. 

With this, the total funding raised by the startup stands at INR 23.5 Cr. 

Speaking to Inc42, Fresh Bus founder and CEO Sudhakar Reddy Chirra said the startup will use the fresh funds primarily for tech development. Some amount would also be used for expanding its team. 

“Fresh Bus is not just a bus operation but more of a tech plus sustainability business,” Chirra said. “We have a lot of data coming in, we use AI and ML to predict the fare for the routes, and so on.”

With sustainability currently being a key focus for many, Fresh Bus has been able to attract new investors as it brings both carbon emission reduction and tech innovation to the table, he added.

Founded by AbhiBus founder Chirra in 2022, Fresh Bus launched its electric bus operations on the Bengaluru-Tirupati route earlier this year. Currently, the startup has 20 buses, which operate on two routes – Bengaluru-Tirupati and Hyderabad-Vijayawada. 

It is aiming to deploy about 70 buses in total by March 2024 and operate them on eight to ten routes, including Bengaluru-Chennai, Mumbai-Surat, and Delhi-Dehradun. The startup plans to have at least 170 ebuses on Indian roads by December next year.

Fresh Bus claims to have seen substantial traction since the launch of its bus services, posting a turnover of INR 6.5 Cr from April to October this year. 

Chirra also claimed that 1.1 Lakh passengers have already used Fresh Bus’ services and 50% of them turned out to be repeat customers, travelling more than twice. 

Meanwhile, the startup has also set up its own charging stations. It currently has four charging stations and aims to increase this number to at least 20 by the end of next year to support its growing ebus ecosystem. 

With climate change and carbon emissions becoming a major issue, electric buses are steadily gaining more traction and government support. In the ebus market, Fresh Bus’ biggest competitor today is GreenCell Express. 

Earlier this year, GreenCell Express raised debt funding of INR 3,000 Cr from state-owned REC Ltd.

Meanwhile, Fresh Bus secured INR 26 Cr from ixigo in its first seed funding round earlier this year. However, Chirra told Inc42 that the startup didn’t require INR 10 Cr from that and the funding raised in that round should only be considered as INR 16 Cr.

The post Exclusive: ixigo-Backed Fresh Bus Bags Funding From CRED’s Kunal Shah, Others appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Unacademy-owned software-as-a-service platform Graphy has let go of 20-30% of its workforce, or nearly 50 employees, in the past few weeks, multiple sources privy to the development told Inc42. 

Graphy, which offers learning management system services to creators in the edtech space, has been struggling to hit the revenue target, leading to a restructuring within the firm, Inc42 learned from sources. 

However, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the restructuring was undertaken across Graphy’s acquired companies — Spayee and Scenes. 

In a statement sent to Inc42 after publishing the story, an Unacademy representative stated that the job cuts happened on the basis of performance and have nothing to do with layoffs or revenue growth plan.

“We have not done any layoffs, and we remain focussed on enhancing our team’s performance and overall productivity so we can continue to compound our growth”, a Graphy spokesperson said.

“We continue to make significant strides in achieving our goals, and our commitment to our mission is unwavering,” the statement added. 

Meanwhile, the development comes months after the Unacademy CEO took to social media to praise Graphy, saying that the creators were making approximately $3 Mn a month (INR 24 crore) by selling courses on Graphy.

“Graphy is now doing almost INR 25 Cr in monthly GMV (Gross Merchandise Value). That’s 50% of Classplus, which is the market leader with a valuation of $500 Mn. Classplus is definitely overvalued,” Munjal told employees on the company’s internal Slack channel.

In January this year, Graphy CEO Sumit Jain tweeted that the company turned operationally profitable. The firm’s FY22 revenue stood at INR 8.86 Cr against a loss of INR 3.6 Cr. 

In the same month, Unacademy’s upskilling-focussed group company Relevel laid off 40 employees after pivoting to a B2B platform, Uplevel, which was projected as a homegrown competitor to the professional networking site, Linkedln.

At the time, Munjal said that 80% of the Relevel workforce will be absorbed by Unacademy.

Notably, the SoftBank-backed edtech giant has announced multiple retrenchment rounds since last year, impacting more than 2,000 employees across all verticals.

In March 2022, the company fired 125 ‘consultants’ at its PrepLadder vertical and followed it up by laying off another 210 educators as part of its cost restructuring drive.

Graphy Fails To Take Off

The edtech unicorn envisioned Graphy to be a one-stop shop for creators in the edtech business. 

As per sources, Unacademy draws 10% commission from the creators who use its Graphy tool. 

However, just like a few other acquisitions of Unacademy, Graphy, too, started catching flak from educators and content creators for high commission rates, lack of customer support, and data ownership concerns, among other things.

The learning management system-based platforms, in general, have faced challenges due to a slump in demand for edtech tools and a decline in the number of students, the founder of an edtech firm, who did not wish to be named, said.

Notably, Graphy’s closest rival Classplus’ FY23 net loss jumped 57% YoY to INR 256.6 Cr. 

Moving on, the Unacademy boss had earlier expressed bullishness on Graphy in several internal communications in April this year.

He said Graphy recorded annualised gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $28 Mn in FY23. The SaaS platform’s net revenue retention stood at 113%.

It onboarded nearly 7,500 new creators in the last fiscal year, clocking a 2.6X growth over the past year. With 27,000+ total active courses, Graphy saw 6.61 Lakh new transacting users in FY23. 

“Graphy is turning out to be a phenomenal tech business with amazing unit economics,” the CEO said.

The edtech unicorn is keenly concentrating on refining its core business strategies as it prepares to secure additional funding. The company last raised $440 Mn in a Series H round in 2021.

PrepLadder’s Sorry State

Besides Graphy, one of Unacademy’s major bets, PrepLadder, which it acquired for $50 Mn in 2020, is facing lawsuits from former educators fired last year. 

Not just this, several media reports indicate that the test platform has been witnessing a month-on-month decline in revenues since last year. 

PrepLadder’s FY22 financials also paint a grim picture, as the company reported revenues of INR 155 Cr by incurring a net loss of INR 144 Cr. 

Sources said that Unacademy’s Prepladder has seen intense competition from Allen and Physics Wallah this year, piling up challenges for the edtech firm.

Do Unacademy’s Offline Centres Hold The Key To Recovery?

Fortunately, Unacademy’s offline business has continued to flourish, thanks to the company’s early-mover advantage in the offline space and a handsomely paid workforce.

Earlier this year, the Unacademy CEO said that the company was eyeing scaling its offline coaching vertical considerably from 10 centres at the end of December 2022 to 58 offline centres at the end of the current year. 

The startup was also looking at the number of learners at its tuition centres surging 5.5X to 55,000 at the end of 2023 from 10,000 in 2022. 

In an interesting poaching battle, Inc42 had earlier reported that the Munjal-led Unacademy lured the top teachers from Allen Career Institute (in the UPSC/ IIT-JEE/ NEET preparation segments) with paycheques as fat as INR 1 Cr-1.5 Cr a month.

Since then, Unacademy has been scaling its offline business. As per internal projections, the company’s offline centres are expected to generate INR 400 Cr in revenues in 2023, a major jump from INR 53 Cr in 2022. Meanwhile, analysts believe that the company’s projections for its offline business, which contributes more than 50% to Unacademy’s total revenues, are not overestimated.

In FY22, Unacademy saw its consolidated losses widen to INR 2,848 Cr, up 85% YoY. However, consolidated revenue from operations surged more than 80% YoY to INR 719 Cr in FY22.

Employee benefit expenses accounted for 43% (INR 1,618.9 Cr) of the company’s total expenses during the period under in the period under review. 

Meanwhile, Inc42’s queries regarding the filing of Unacademy’s FY23 financial results remained unanswered.

With Uncademy handing out pink slips in bulk since FY22, it remains to be seen if the company’s back-to-back retrenchment strategy to cull losses will help it embrace profitability or just backfire.

Update | October 26, 17:25 IST

The story has been updated to include a statement from Graphy’s spokesperson and the Unacademy group.

The post Exclusive: Unacademy’s Graphy Cuts 20-30% Jobs To Focus On Offline Ops appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Delhi NCR-based social commerce startup CityMall has conducted its second round of layoffs, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Inc42. Nearly 16 months after its first round of layoffs, the company terminated the employment of around 90 team members on October 16.

Employees affected by the layoffs were asked to report to the office earlier than their usual start time and were informed of the layoff by the HR managers. The layoffs impacted nearly all departments within the company. The startup has provided month’s salary as severance pay.

A query mail sent to CityMall yesterday afternoon hasn’t elicited any response, despite multiple reminders. 

Inc42 also found out that while the startup has been conducting layoffs in smaller groups since June of this year, yesterday’s round was the most significant since June 2022, when approximately 191 employees were let go.

As per sources, the layoffs happened as a result of a cost-cutting exercise and on the direction of investors. 

“This layoff was sudden. We were hearing the startup has recently closed a funding round. Still couldn’t wrap my head around this,” a source aware of the development said. 

Earlier in June, the startup had conducted layoffs just three months after securing $75 Mn, marking its largest funding round to date. It is worth noting that the startup conducted an ESOP buyback exercise worth $1.3 Mn in September last year.

Another source highlighted that there has been tension escalating between the company’s management and its cofounders. The source also indicated that there has been be frequent top management changes in the company.

Interestingly, the startup has also changed its corporate office frequently in the past two years. “They have at least changed their corporate office 10 times in the last two years,” the source added. 

Founded in 2019 by Angad Kikla and Naisheel Vardhan, Gurugram-based CityMall is a social commerce startup offering grocery, fresh and packaged FMCG products, and electronics and fashion items. 

The startup primarily targets consumers in Tier III and Tier IV locations. According to the company’s website, its delivery service extends to cities such as Delhi, Gurugram, Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Agra, Allahabad, Meerut, and several other proximate areas. 

To date, CityMall has raised $112 Mn from the likes of Elevation Capital,  Norwest Venture Partners, Luxembourg-based Citius VC, WestBridge Ventures, Jungle Ventures, General Catalysts, and Accel India. 

The post Exclusive: Norwest Backed Social Commerce Startup CityMall Fires 90 Employees appeared first on Inc42 Media.

After quitting as cofounders from ShareChat in January this year, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan have registered a new startup and are looking to make inroads into the robotics sector.

Singh and Ahsan incorporated General Autonomy Private Limited on May 10, 2023 as per Ministry Of Corporate Affairs (MCA) records. The company is registered in Bengaluru with a paid-up capital of INR 1 Lakh.

While General Autonomy’s specific business model is not clear, the company has stated that it will be in the business of “Transport and Storage” in its application to the MCA.

On his LinkedIn profile, Ahsan claims he is ‘Currently driving screws, bolts, nuts and piles,” and his current role is listed as ‘Cofounder of Stealth Startup’. Besides this, Ahsan’s X bio says ‘Robotics enthusiast’.

Interestingly, Ahsan, a material science engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur in 2014, has been working on autonomous navigation since 2012 as per his LinkedIn profile. Further, Singh was part of the robotics club at IIT Kanpur, and graduated the same year as Ahsan. Both went on to cofound ShareChat a year after their graduation from the IIT.

The term ‘general autonomy’ is a concept in robotics that deals with the automation of equipment across use cases but is particularly relevant in the case of industrial equipment.  Given the new company’s name and the business description, it would seem that Ahsan and Singh’s new business is related to automating transport and storage equipment.

Neither cofounder who quit ShareChat responded to Inc42’s calls or questions sent on email about General Autonomy Private Limited.

Globally, there are a number of companies that deal with general autonomy and often offer this technology as a service to startups, warehouses and other parts of the logistics ecosystem.

One example is San Francisco-based Polymath Robotics, which is backed by Y Combinator, Samsara Ventures and others. The startup’s tech enables businesses to add autonomous navigation to any large industrial vehicle.

Founders Starting Afresh In 2023

Singh and Ahsan’s new venture represents the latest example of second-time entrepreneurs looking at new opportunities in 2023 after quitting their previous venture. Founder-level churn and attrition have become commonplace in the past 20 months.

This year alone, the likes of Teachmint cofounder and former CTO Anshuman Kumar and GoMechanic’s Rishabh Karwa look to begin new innings due to headwinds in their previous ventures.

Of course, entrepreneurs moving on from one startup to another is not a new trend by any measure. The past few years have seen examples such as Kunal Shah (Freecharge to CRED) and Jitendra Gupta (Citrus Pay to Jupiter), Anant Goel (Milkbasket to Sorted) and Ankit Bhati (Ola to Amnic) and each of these founders raised funding quite quickly for their new ventures.

As we wrote a few weeks ago, being a seasoned founder is a major advantage when it comes to engaging with investors. The track record of second-time entrepreneurs is helpful for investors in making early bets. In many cases, these startups raise outlier rounds in the seed stages due to the founder’s past work and startup.

It’s also worth noting that the 2022-23 funding winter has also accelerated plans for many founders who were caught on the wrong side of the macroeconomic slowdown. As consumer internet business models struggled to find growth traction, many founders decided to pursue new opportunities.

There’s also a growing realisation that new and emerging technologies in 2023 such as generative AI or robotics are more relevant today from a product-market fit perspective than say a social media platform such as ShareChat.

At the moment, there’s little clarity on the stage of product development or indeed what kind of product or service the new company is working on, but it’s only been five months since the incorporation and we expect more details to emerge soon.

Before quitting ShareChat, Singh was cofounder and CTO, while Ahsan was the COO along with cofounder. The third ShareChat founder Ankush Sachdeva continues to be the CEO at the social media unicorn.

The post Exclusive: After ShareChat Exit, Cofounders Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Pratap Singh Launch Robotics Startup  appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Since the 2019 notice announcing angel tax exemption for startups, 8,066 DPIIT-recognised startups have been granted exemption from angel tax, said the DPIIT in response to an RTI filed by Inc42.

It is worth noting that the DPIIT and CBDT issued a notification on February 19, 2019, saying, “All the startups are allowed to receive angel tax exemption regardless of their share premium values given that the aggregate amount of paid-up share capital and share premium of the startup after issue or proposed issue of shares, if any, does not exceed INR 25 Cr.”

However, for eligibility, startups are required to submit Form 2 as per DPIIT vide Notification No. G.S.R. 127 (E), affirming they weren’t investing in assets like land, buildings, vehicles costing more than INR 10 lakh, or other specific assets, unless utilised for specific business-related activities.

Remarkably, most startups remained silent on this front. As of June 21, 2019, only 944 startups had applied for angel tax exemption, out of which the CBDT exempted 702 startups under this provision.

And, as of February 2021, a mere 8% (equivalent to 3,612 startups) of the recognised 44,000 startups had submitted Form 2 to avail angel tax exemptions.

The RTI response by DPIIT revealed that between February 19, 2019, and September 26, 2023, 10,809 DPIIT-recognised startups applied for the exemption, yet only 8,066 have been green granted exemption.

Currently, according to the Startup India website, India has over 99,380 DPIIT-recognised startups. Thus, the number of angel tax-exempted startups remains stagnant at 8%.

3one4 Capital’s partner, Siddarth Pai, previously told Inc42 that adhering to the guidelines of Form 2 could hamper startups. He highlighted issues, such as restrictions on loans & advances, shares & securities, and capital contributions, which could hinder activities like M&As or the creation of subsidiaries. Pai emphasised the risk, stating a violation could lead to hefty fines, nearly consuming 85-90% of a startup’s capital.

“That’s how tightly they did. And in case you violated, you pay the tax when you represent and pay a fine that is two times your tax, along with interest & penalties. You would end up losing close to 85 to 90% of your money. Who will take that risk?” Pai added.

In its notification on September 26, 2023, the Income Tax department has made changes to Rule 11 UA, introducing diverse valuation methods to offer startups and investors more clarity and adaptability. However, while the notification tackled certain concerns, it didn’t address the primary issue of disputes stemming from projected vs. actual valuations.

The post Exclusive: Over 8K Startups Exempted From Angel Tax So Far appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Delhi NCR-based healthtech startup Zivov is in advanced talks to raise around $5 Mn in its pre-Series A funding round, sources told Inc42. 

“The funding round will be led by an electronics manufacturing company, which is making a strategic investment in the startup,” one of the sources said.

Existing investors, including Titan Capital, are also participating in the funding round. The startup aims to use a part of the fresh funds to manufacture its products in-house.

Zivov intends to utilise the funds for expanding R&D capabilities across hardware and software, entering the international diabetes-tech market and expanding reach across distribution channels, Inc42 has learnt.

Aryan Chauhan, cofounder of Zivov Health, confirmed that the startup is in talks to raise funding but didn’t disclose the name of the investors as the negotiations are ongoing. 

Founded in 2021 by Chauhan and his mother Monika Chauhan, Zivov is a healthtech startup that offers an advanced metabolic health monitoring app and devices, powered with artificial intelligence (AI). 

The startup allows users to keep a track on their glucose with CGM (continuous glucose monitoring) sensors. With a hardware+software approach, Zivov helps users manage and reverse chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension. It also offers consultations with doctors. 

Earlier, Zivov raised $300K in a seed round from Titan Capital, Reddy Futures, Haresh Chawla, and a clutch of angel investors. Zivov competes against deep-pocketed startups such as Nexus Venture Partners-backed Ultrahuman and LeapFrog-backed HealthifyMe. 

UltraHuman has raised around $25 Mn in multiple funding rounds to date and counts Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, and iSeed fund among its backers. On the other hand, HealthifyMe, which was founded over a decade ago, has raised close to $130 Mn in multiple funding rounds. 

While Zivov is a new player in the space, it aims to grab a big share in the market on the back of its affordable CGM sensors.

Currently, Zivov claims to have over 55K users, with more than 10K patients regularly using its CGM sensors. The startup, which has onboarded former Indian cricketer Jhulan Goswamani as its brand ambassador, claims to be on track to reach an ARR of $1 Mn by the end of this year.

The post Exclusive: Healthtech Startup Zivov In Advanced Discussions To Raise $5 Mn Funding appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Zomato-backed SaaS logistics startup Shiprocket is in advanced talks to raise $10 Mn-$12 Mn from  McKinsey & Company in a strategic funding round, sources told Inc42.

The Delhi NCR-based unicorn is raising the funding at its last valuation of $1.2 Bn, the sources said. Post the funding, McKinsey & Co will assist Shiprocket in expanding its business, the source added. 

“The talks are in final stages and Shiprocket will be making an official announcement soon,” one of the sources said.

A detailed questionnaire sent to Shiprocket on the funding round didn’t elicit any response till the time of publishing this story. The article will be updated on receiving a response from the startup.

The development comes almost a year after Shiprocket raised $33.5 Mn in its Series E2 round, which helped the startup enter the coveted unicorn club. The funding round, which was led by Lightrock India, saw participation from Temasek, Bertelsmann, Moore Strategic Ventures, PayPal, and March Capital. 

Prior to that, Shiprocket raised $185 Mn in a round co-led by Zomato, Temasek and Lightrock India. Following this, the logistics startup went on a shopping spree in 2022. It acquired Wigzo in January last year for $25 Mn. After this, it went on to acquire Rocketbox, Glaucus, Pickrr, and Omuni. Pickrr was Shiprocket’s biggest acquisition at $200 Mn. 

However, last month, Inc42 exclusively reported about a restructuring exercise at Omuni. As part of this exercise, about 60-70 employees were laid off. Omuni’s senior management team, including CEO and cofounder Mukul Bafna and CTO Sumeet Chandhok, was also said to have been on their way out of the company.

Shiprocket, which was founded in 2017 by Vishesh Khurana, Akshay Gulati, Saahil Goel and Gautam Kapoor, is an aggregator of third-party logistics companies, It works with 17 courier partners, including Delhivery, FedEx, Aramex, Xpressbees, DTDC, and Shadowfax. 

The startup has raised around $261 Mn in funding to date. 

Shiprocket reported a net loss of INR 93.1 Cr in FY22 as against a profit of INR 12.4 Cr in the previous fiscal year. While its operating revenue rose to INR 611 Cr in FY22 from INR 358 Cr in the previous year, total expense ballooned to INR 727.8 Cr from INR 350.6 Cr in FY21.

The post Exclusive: Zomato-Backed Shiprocket In Final Stages Of Closing $10 Mn Funding From McKinsey appeared first on Inc42 Media.

With generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) in the driver’s seat, content creation is expected to become a child’s play. While the emerging technology has offered a new avenue for users to build tailored content within a span of seconds, the same has opened the gates for non-meaningful content that has flooded the internet. 

It is this problem that Pep aims to tackle with its approach led by curation, categorisation and credibility of content. With this in mind, the startup is building a social-first online marketplace for content enabling customers to explore, purchase, and monetise a diverse range of content and services. 

Founded in early 2023 by IIT alumni Nav Agrawal and Swapnil Upadhyay, Pep offers a one-stop shop platform for users to avail live sessions, one-on-one consultations online, and buy PDFs, videos and audio.

It caters to a wide spectrum of user interests from cooking to DIY crafts and from fashion to health and fitness.

After being in stealth mode for many months, the platform has finally emerged out of the shadows and has raised $2.5 Mn as part of its seed funding from venture capital firm India Quotient. Alongside, marquee angel investors such as Meesho cofounders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, CRED’s Kunal Shah, and Farooq Adam from Fynd also participated in the round. 

The fundraise also saw participation from names such as Parag Bhide (counsel, Trilegal), Sambhav Mehrotra and Sridhar Subramanian (founders, StartupMovers), Ravindra Yadav (data scientist), Sargun Gulati (crypto expert).

An Idea Is Born

For Nav Agrawal, this is not his first entrepreneurial rodeo. Having built two startups previously and exiting them successfully, he has had a taste of the vibrant startup ecosystem and how to navigate it. Incidentally, he conceived the idea of Pep during his stint at his previous startup, the short video platform Clip, which he eventually sold in parts to Meesho and ShareChat. 

While Clip was taking off in the country around 2017 and 2019, Agrawal noticed an interesting pattern on the platform. Users were trying to sell their content to others by sharing their phone numbers on the app. 

Basing this on the premise of curated community-driven content, a marketplace theme as well as ratings and reviews, Pep finally took off the ground early this year. However, life came full circle for Agrawal after his previous backers yet again came together to invest in his new startup, Pep. 

Speaking with Inc42, Agrawal said that users are bombarded with content these days and, as such, content discovery has become a big pain point for customers online. He adds that the platform aims to address this issue by deploying personalised machine learning algorithms to enable the discovery of tailored content at the right prices. 

“With our mobile-only approach, we enable people to sell content in a few clicks and directly monetise their knowledge, and reduce dependency on conventional ad-based income. Using personalised machine learning algorithms, our consumers discover and buy the right set of content at affordable prices with a no-regret mindset,” added Agrawal. 

For him, Pep, as a marketplace, is built on three pillars — trust, discovery and pricing. Having already built two companies from scratch and selling them to big-ticket names, Agrawal is well-versed with the idea of how to build trust and grow at scale.

Agrawal is also expected to leverage his learnings in the content and social space, which he accumulated while building Clip, to come in handy as he builds another content-focussed startup from zero.

The founder’s stint at Meesho (Agrawal worked at the ecommerce unicorn after exiting Clip) has also complemented his knowledge base on how to build a horizontal marketplace at scale, which is what Pep essentially wants to do.

Overall, at the heart of Pep is user-generated content that is stitched around the premise of micro-courses and micro-payments. In response to a question about pricing options, Agrawal adds that the marketplace sells content anywhere from INR 29 all the way up to INR 2,000. 

As Pep prepares for its next stage of growth and scale, the genesis of the startup curiously lay in Agrawal’s previous iteration as a cofounder. 

Speaking on the investment in the startup, India Quotient’s Madhukar Sinha, added, “Very excited to back Nav and Swapnil again to build the Amazon of Digital Goods & Services. With the fast-paced digitisation of the world around us, we see a huge Total Addressable Market (TAM) waiting to be unlocked.”

The platform’s app is currently fully live only on the Google Play Store app with plans to unveil iOS app soon as well. 

Eye On The Horizon

With the seed funding, the startup plans to focus on product development, shore up user growth, branding initiatives and hire more employees. 

Speaking on the product market fit, Agrawal claimed that the customers are ‘loving’ the platform and are doing repeat transactions, without disclosing the traction or user count.

With regard to its monetisation model, the startup follows a pure-play commission model based on the category. These charges range anywhere between 20-50% depending on the category. The distinction is drawn for content that requires raw materials such as gourmet cooking and the quality of the expert.

Meanwhile, Pep has set its eye on scaling up the product and growing the platform manifold in the near future. Agrawal told Inc42 that he expects the platform to notch more than 10 Mn transacting users over the course of the next two to three years. 

At the outset, the 11-member startup will largely be focussed on pitching the platform to its target audience with India at the centre of the operations. It further plans to undertake category expansion over the course of the next six to eight months as it looks to onboard users across multiple segments. 

In the mid-term, Pep cofounders want to scale the platform beyond metro cities to Tier II and Tier III cities and pad up its bottom line. However, Agrawal, in the long term, tells Inc42 that he wants to build a global content marketplace that sells to customers worldwide, especially to the US and Indonesian markets. 

On the perennial debate between scale and profitability, Agrawal believes that Pep, at the outset, would be focused on growth. He, however, added that while the company would not want to be immediately profitable, the economics of the company ought to make sense even at a smaller scale.

The Horizontal Marketplace Opportunity

Despite the tailwinds and more or less a first-mover advantage, there seems to be competition brewing underneath the space. While Pep operates a horizontal marketplace for content, many such vertical marketplaces already exist and are thriving globally. 

A case in point has been OnlyFans which largely caters to adult content users while overseas platforms such as Skillshare and Domestika focus on skill-based content. Speaking on this, Agrawal said that Pep focusses on user generated content while other incumbents in the markets are largely dependent on professionally made content. 

However, competition appears to be intensifying in this space. US-based content marketplace Whop recently bagged $17 Mn as part of its Series A round while digital goods-focussed Gumroads has been slowly making inroads in the space. 

Another headwind could likely be social media juggernauts such as Instagram and Snapchat directly embedding the feature in their app and leverage their existing user base to scale the offering. On this, Pep CEO believes that their platform’s curation methodology and price standardisation work well in their favour. “Micro-courses at micro prices is our key USP,” adds Agrawal. 

At the heart of Pep’s operations is the country’s 46.7 Cr internet-guzzling and content-craving users which have made India an attractive digital economy and a major social media market. 

Fueling this growth has been around 8 Cr content creators which cater to different users. However, barely, 0.2% of the overall content creators in the country are able to monetise their content effectively, as per a report by Kalaari Capital.

It is this two-pronged lever of growth involving both users and creators that Pep wants to leverage and piggyback on to create its niche. But, while many have struggled in the space, it remains to be seen how Pep charts its path forward as serial founders helm its ship.

The post Exclusive: Pep Bags $2.5 Mn Funding From India Quotient To Build Amazon Of Content & Digital Services appeared first on Inc42 Media.

In yet another leadership change at a prominent venture capital (VC) firm in India, Venture Highway (VH) founder Samir Sood has quietly stepped away as partner, with Priya Mohan being elevated to managing partner.

While Venture Highway confirmed the development this week after Inc42’s queries, the transition started in January 2023. Sood will retain his founder position at Venture Highway.

Sood told Inc42 that he’s stepping away from the day-to-day operations and decision making at Venture Highway to spend more time with his family. “I have been doing this for nearly a decade and I thought this is a good time to let the new generation of partners lead Venture Highway. We have a capable team in place to take this forward,” he added.

The Delhi NCR-based firm, which was founded in 2015 by Sood and former WhatsApp chief business officer Neeraj Arora, counts unicorns such as Meesho, CRED, Moglix among others in its portfolio.

The firm’s official communication to limited partners as well as portfolio company founders began in January 2023, and since then Mohan and Arora have been in the process of raising the third fund for VH.

”In addition to the formal announcement to each LP, the leadership has spent time taking the LPs through the process informally and in person as well,” Mohan added.

Changes Ahead Of Third Venture Highway Fund 

Speaking to Inc42 about Sood’s transition, Mohan said, “The transition was planned and thought through. Samir decided to step back into an advisor role in VH (Venture Highway) to support the next generation to take charge and continue building the VH franchise.”

Mohan, who was formerly a ‘Startup Sensei’ at Venture Highway will formally take on the charge of managing director. She said that the firm is moving away from informal designations.

Besides Arora and Mohan, who are both Managing Partners, the firm recently hired Rahul Garg as Partner, who was formerly a Principal at Kalaari Capital and Iron Pillar.

A chartered accountant and Indian School of Business (ISB) graduate, Mohan joined Venture Highway in 2018, when the firm was raising its second institutional fund.

Venture Highway had closed its $78 Mn second fund in January 2020, months before most of the world went into the pandemic lockdown.

Since then, the VC firm has been a key investor for Fampay (Seed & Series A), Airmeet (Series A), BetterPlace (Series B), Meesho (Series E), Cityfurnish (Series A), Wealthy (Series A), Grip Invest (Series A) among several other startups at the seed and pre-seed stage — Ivy Home, Cheq, Mergai, Ripik and others.

Before founding Venture Highway, Sood was the head of corporate development at Google for South Asia & Oceania after his stints at Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco. Arora and Sood were colleagues at Google.

Partners Look For Greener Pastures

The change in leadership comes at a time when several prominent VC firms have seen exits at the top. As Inc42 reported earlier this week, partners and fund managers at VC firms such as Orios Venture Partners, Lightbox, Rebright Partners, Together Fund have stepped down to pursue new opportunities.

In most cases, these experienced fund managers are expected to launch new funds, but some are even launching new startups to capitalise on new market opportunities.

There have also been questions from LPs in relation to fund performance as well as lapses in terms of due diligence and lack of corporate governance at portfolio companies. This has led to many leadership rejigs and partners looking at fresh funds and a new investment thesis.

In this case, Sood said he would be closely advising a few portfolio companies at VH, besides supporting the firm in the thesis and vision development. The founding partner would be relinquishing board seats at portfolio companies, but at the moment, it’s not clear if Mohan or Arora would be replacing him as director on these boards.

However, Mohan added the Venture Highway would not see any change in terms of the investment thesis under the new management and that the firm has recorded the first close of its third fund.

Venture Highway declined to comment on the corpus of the third fund, for which the firm is exclusively raising from foreign LPs, given its cross-border investment focus.

We were told that VH has completed the first close of its third fund and continues to actively invest from this corpus. “We will remain a zero-to-one seed fund investing in category-creating tech companies building in India/US for India and the globe,” the managing partner added.

In 2023, Venture Highway has invested in the seed rounds for Kidovo, Kintsugi and Weekday, all three of which are headquartered in the US, but Mohan declined to comment on the fund’s exits in the past two years.

The post Exclusive: Ahead Of Third Fund, Venture Highway Founder Samir Sood Steps Down From Partner Role  appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Bengaluru-based online gaming startup One World Nation (OWN) has temporarily halted its real money gaming operations, becoming yet another casualty of the GST Council’s decision to levy 28% GST on full face value for real money gaming.

“In light of the recent GST regulations in India, the platform has temporarily halted Real Money Gaming,” a statement on OWN’s website said last month. 

“We went live nearly 15 months ago, launching our NFTs with much love from the community. The idea of a gaming platform around cryptocurrencies felt unique and powerful at the same time,” OWN said.

The startup offered non-fungible tokens (NFT)-based play-to-earn games.

While it moved forward despite the challenging conditions of the crypto market crash and the regulatory uncertainties surrounding crypto as an asset class, OWN said the 28% GST levy made its model unviable.

Under the new GST rule, a substantial 28% tax on all deposit amounts for users in India will be mandated, and this tax is non-refundable and non-adjustable. It will be an outright expense for the end user, be it the gaming platform or the gamer, OWN added.

For OWN, the situation is of significant concern due to the fact that approximately 70% of its revenue is derived from India and nearly half of its user base is also located in the country, it explained.

“While large companies in the RMG space may be able to absorb this cost; for smaller companies like us, the business model is simply not viable. Hence, after a lot of deliberation and heartburn, we came to the difficult decision of suspending all real money gaming activities on the platform temporarily,” OWN said.

As per the statement, the platform was to transition to a free-to-play model from September 1.

On using the platform, Inc42 found that users are able to play games for free but buying and selling of NFTs has been temporarily suspended. 

Founded in February 2022 by Akhil Gupta, Dinesh Goel, Kunal Jadhav, Mayank Shekhar, OWN raised $2 Mn in its seed funding round from Better Capital, Polygon Studios, Cloud Capital and Indigg last year.

Earlier this year, the GST Council gave a major blow to the real money gaming industry with its decision to levy 28% GST on full face value for online gaming companies, with no distinction between games of skill and games of chance.

The move caused an upheaval in the gaming industry, with a number of startups laying off employees. 

Earlier this month, Inc42 reported that Bengaluru-based Gameskraft is discontinuing its fantasy offering, Gamezy Fantasy. Gaming companies such as Quizy and Fantok have also either shut operations entirely or temporarily halted them in response to the changing landscape.

Meanwhile, the likes of unicorn MPL, Kavin Mittal-led Hike, and Spartan Poker sacked employees following the GST Council’s decision.

To add to the woes, online gaming companies are likely staring at tax notices of around 1 Lakh Cr from the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI).

The post GST Woes: Better Capital-Backed OWN Halts Real Money Gaming Ops appeared first on Inc42 Media.

After food, groceries, fashion, and electronics segments, the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is now just a few weeks away from launching an array of financial services, including personal and SMB loans, insurance (car, health and marine), and mutual funds, on the network.

Top industry sources privy to the development told Inc42 that the open network, which has been in the process of onboarding various players in the financial services domain since August, is all set to go live with the aforementioned financial services on the network via buyer applications that are registered with Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (IRDAI), Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

Last week, on September 22, ONDC launched the ‘ONDC Network Gift Card’ in partnership with Yes Bank and OmniCard, the two issuers of the card.

The gift card is powered by the RuPay Network and can be loaded with a maximum amount of INR 10,000, enabling cardholders to shop using any ONDC-enabled buyer application.

Prior to this, fintech unicorn Razorpay joined the network in April 2023 to streamline payment processes for ONDC’s network participants, including buyers, sellers, and logistic partners.

Moving on, an ONDC spokesperson confirmed the development to Inc42 and stated that the open protocol started integrating with various fintech companies after the draft specifications for financial services were released in August.

Inc42 was the first publication to report on ONDC’s fintech foray.

“In credit, ONDC is starting with personal loans and GST-based loans to individuals and sole proprietors, respectively. The API draft specifications for the same were released in early August for market feedback, post which the integration process was initiated with interested participants. More than 65 entities had expressed their interest in joining the network, either as buyer applications, seller applications (lending institutions) or as technology service providers,” the ONDC spokesperson told us.

The spokesperson added that more than 20 entities have initiated their integration journey. Some names that have initiated integration directly or through technology service providers are Tata Digital, IndiaLends, Easy Pay, DMI Finance, Aditya Birla Finance and Karnataka Bank.

The network will soon start offering auto, health and marine insurance as well, the spokesperson added.

When it comes to investments, the open network is currently planning to go live with mutual funds. Currently, investment routes like stocks, live trading, investments in bonds, etc. have been kept out of the ambit of fintech products on the ONDC network.

“In investments, ONDC will be starting with mutual fund investments on the network and the API specifications for both insurance and investments will be released in the coming weeks. For mutual fund investments, ONDC is working with MFU (MF Utilities India Pvt Ltd) to onboard the asset management companies as seller applications,” said ONDC in an official statement shared with Inc42.

The open protocol also recently launched an “ONDC network gift card” for corporate gifting and employee engagement.

“The gift card is powered by the RuPay network and can be loaded with a maximum amount of INR 10,000. Yes Bank and OmniCard have gone live as the first two issuers of the card, while several other banks and fintech platforms with RBI-assigned pre-paid licences are also preparing to offer the card. A consumer gift card offering was also launched last month with Spice Money as the buyer application and Vistaar (Earnest Data Analytics Private Ltd) as the seller application to facilitate consumer purchases of gift cards of 100+ brands,” the ONDC’s spokesperson informed us.

Meanwhile, ONDC’s working committee of fintech experts comprises names like Ravi Prakash, the head of architecture and technology ecosystem at FIDE; Pramod Verma, the former chief architect of Aadhaar and the cofounder of FIDE; Hrushikesh Mehta, the senior vice-president, financial services, ONDC; Antriksh Parmar, product manager, ONDC; Mohit Monga, VP products, ONDC, and Ashish Desai, financial services advisor, ONDC.

What’s In The ONDC Fintech Cart?

According to ONDC’s financial services specifications on its GitHub page, the open protocol will tap the credit, investments and insurance sectors by bringing financial services institutions and fintech companies onto the open network as buyer and seller applications. 

The buyer and seller side applications will have to be compliant with the RBI’s digital lending guidelines. These players should also be with IRDAI, AMFI, and SEBI, depending on the products they have on offer. 

According to the draft specifications for financial services, ONDC aims to overcome the barriers individuals face while applying for loans or buying insurance or mutual funds.

The protocol would enable the customer to search for any financial product from any company on a single buyer application through various search options — for instance: bank name, ratings, financial product, etc. — and submit an application form once they choose to buy a product.

In the process, consumers will have to consent before sharing their financial transaction history and KYC details with the seller to secure a loan, insurance or make mutual fund investments. 

In the case of invoice-based loans, proprietors will be required to share GSTIN and invoice details with the buyer application, which will be shared with various seller apps (lenders) to enable the processing of loans.

The sellers on the ONDC will use the information received from the buyer to generate final quotes on the loan.

The loan offers and the critical information will then be made available on the buyer application from which a borrower may choose the type of loan to be secured. This is followed by the signing of an e-agreement, disbursal of the loan amount within a limited time period, and sharing of loan documents via an email/link on the buyer app.

Why ONDC’s Fintech Move Makes Sense?

ONDC’s foray into financial services aligns perfectly with the evolving fintech landscape, where regulatory scrutiny is intensifying, and millions of users are opting for digital interfaces over traditional in-person financial transactions.

Further, the open network aims to leverage India’s digital push by giving broader access of a larger customer pool to lenders and insurers. Through this move, ONDC also wants to cater to the underserved, untapped and unsecured credit markets.

According to ONDC, there was a $25 Tn credit gap between seekers and lenders in the SMB lending market in FY22.

Further, the ONDC aims to tap the rural middle-class segment for personal loans segment. As per the platform, there is a $1.2 Tn credit opportunity in this area by 2030. 

From the consumer’s perspective, ONDC plans to replicate the ecommerce model within fintech, offering access to a wide array of products without the bias of margins, advertisements, or commissions.

It also aims to use public digital infrastructure to overcome the challenges of manual banking and provide small-ticket, custom-size financial products to consumers.

When it comes to lenders, the open protocol will not only give wider access to underpenetrated markets but also an opportunity to expand their businesses to digital commerce with the available data.

Notably, the financial institutions that are backing ONDC are SBI, HDFC, ICICI, Axis, NABARD, etc.

ONDC’s Key Challenge

At the core of ONDC’s financial services play remains the crucial data transfer of customers with buyer applications and many seller applications. 

Even as the open protocol has substantiated that all the network participants must comply with industry regulations, it remains to be seen if the government-backed network will not fall prey to unethical practices that have plagued the fintech industry lately.

At the same time, the network will have to work on minimising the occurrences of misselling and cross-selling of financial products, which has remained a concern for borrowers.

While the open protocol is built on standardised digital infrastructure and provides a level playing field for all players, a significant portion of consumers could still prefer trusted channels or sources to share sensitive personal and financial information. Addressing this consumer trust challenge will be imperative for ONDC in the coming days.

The post Exclusive: ONDC’s Fintech Fiesta — Loans, Insurance, Mutual Funds To Go Live Soon! appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure provider Bolt.Earth is in talks with investors to raise $20 Mn in its Series B round at a valuation of $100 Mn, sources told Inc42. 

The funding round will be led by an EV-focussed venture capital fund and will also see participation from the startup’s existing investor Prime Venture Partners, the sources said. The talks are in final stages and the round would value the startup at about 4X its last valuation, they added. 

“The fundraise is likely to close in a week or so,” one of the sources said. Another source said some of the angel investors exited the startup via a secondary sale share earlier this year, making handsome returns on their investments. 

A Bolt.Earth spokesperson declined to comment on the queries sent by Inc42 on the fundraise. 

Bolt.Earth, earlier known as REVOS, last raised $4 Mn from Union Square Ventures and Prime Venture Partners in 2021 at an undisclosed valuation.

Bolt.Earth Races Past Its Rivals

Besides providing EV charging infrastructure, Bolt.Earth, founded in 2017 by Jyotiranjan Harichandan and Mohit Yadav, also offers an operating system (OS) which, the startup claims, helps EV run smoothly and provides a seamless experience. The OS offers features like real-time updates, remote monitoring, and software support.

The startup, which competes with the likes of Tata Power, Ather Energy, and ChargePoint, seems to have marched ahead of its rivals in terms of setting up an EV charging network.

In a release last month, Bolt.Earth said its customers include businesses, real estate operators, individuals and government entities, among others. The startup claims to have installed over 30,000 charging points across more than 1,000 cities in India, while its OS is installed in more than 20,000 EVs in the country.

“Our network has dispensed more than 1,000MWh of energy, and equipped more than 50,000  users with smart, safe, and simple engineered devices that cater to EV charging needs. We currently partner with eight 8 of India’s top 10 two-wheeler EV OEMs,” the release said. 

Bolt.Earth partners with OEMs and EV dealers, who offer bundled services with the startup’s charging solutions.

The startup also has partnerships with public sector companies like Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Delhi Metro Corporation, Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation, and Indian Oil Corporation, private companies like Cyient and LTI Mindtree, and real estate developers like Prestige, Sobha, and Divyasree. 

These partnerships seem to have played a major role in making the startup the “largest electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure solution provider” in the country. 

India’s EV Boom

The development comes at a time when EV adoption in the country is on the rise due to rising awareness about tackling climate change and the government’s efforts to promote EVs to reduce reliance on fuel imports.

The Centre has launched schemes like FAME-II to promote EVs and production-linked incentive schemes to boost domestic manufacturing of EVs, EV components and batteries. Besides, various state governments have also launched EV policies to increase the share of EVs in total vehicles.

Consequently, the number of EV makers and their products have increased dramatically over the last few years, with EV registrations in India surging 700% since 2020. This has resulted in the development of an entire EV ecosystem, including charging infrastructure providers, battery tech startups and aggregators, in the country.

The rise of the EV ecosystem has also attracted investors and the sector has emerged as a hot favourite for PE and VC firms and others. Earlier this month, IPO-bound Ola Electric signed an agreement to raise $140 Mn in a funding round led by Temasek. Ola’s rival Ather Energy also raised INR 900 Cr from existing investors Hero MotoCorp and GIC.

Among other major funding rounds in the EV ecosystem, mobility service provider BluSmart raised $37 Mn in May this year and charging infrastructure provider Charge Zone raised $54 Mn. 

Even as the sector is flush with funds right now and competition is intensifying, with a number of automakers as well as startups building EV capabilities, the EV ecosystem would require huge investments over the coming years. India is currently home to 3 Mn EVs and the sales of EVs are projected to increase to 10 Mn by 2030. This would not only require EV manufacturers to make investments but also huge amounts of capital would have to be deployed to proportionally increase the EV charging infrastructure.

As per a report by government think tank NITI Aayog, an investment worth $267 Bn will be required in EVs, battery infrastructure, and charging infrastructure to make a full transition to EVs.

The post Exclusive: EV Infra Provider Bolt.Earth In Talks To Raise $20 Mn, Eyes $100 Mn Valuation appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Following the GST Council’s decision to levy 28% GST on real money gaming and tax troubles with the GST Department, Bengaluru-based Gameskraft has decided to discontinue its fantasy offering, Gamezy Fantasy.

The gaming company is also restructuring its Gamezy super app and moving users of games other than fantasy to separate apps.

“Gamezy Fantasy will not be available from 18th September onwards,” a notice on the Gamezy app says.

Gamezy’s fantasy offering allows users to create fantasy cricket teams and participate in tournaments to win prizes.

Gameskraft is also asking the users of other games, Rummy and Ludo, which were available on the Gamezy app, to move to separate individual apps RummyPrime and Ludo Culture, respectively.

While this suggests that Gameskraft might be shutting down the Gamezy app, a company spokesperson told Inc42 it is temporarily deprioritising the Gamezy super app.

“Over the last couple of years, the Gamezy super app has provided our players a variety of different games… However, both prevailing industry trends and our internal insights have underscored the need for deep category specific experiences to provide a wholesome immersive gameplay to our players. Given the vision with regards to our portfolio, we have made a strategic decision to reassess and temporarily deprioritise our Gamezy super app” the spokesperson told Inc42 in a statement.

“We are focussing our efforts on the development and promotion of dedicated single apps, like our newly launched RummyPrime, LudoCulture and other initiatives. This focus allows us to concentrate on our core competencies and channel greater resources towards delivering unparalleled user experiences,” the statement added.

The company said that the shift will not have any “negative impact” on its workforce planning and “talent deployment”.

The development comes close on the heels of the Supreme Court (SC) staying a Karnataka High Court’s order, which quashed an INR 21,000 Cr tax evasion notice issued by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) to Gameskraft.

The DGGI issued the show-cause notice to Gameskraft in September last year, alleging that the online gaming startup failed to pay INR 21,000 Cr in GST, the biggest such claim in the history of indirect taxation. The notice was for the period between 2017 and June 30, 2022.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s decision has reportedly paved the way for the tax department to send such show-cause notices to about 40 online gaming companies.

Gamezy’s move also comes at a time when the gaming industry has been hit hard by the GST Council’s decision to levy 28% GST on full face value for real money gaming.

However, Gameskraft in its statement said its move is not related to the recent amendments to the GST laws.

Soon after the announcement of the GST Council’s decision, gaming unicorn MPL laid off around 350 employees. Kavin Mittal-led web3 gaming startup Hike followed suit, slashing its workforce by 25%. The company attributed the layoffs to the government’s move to impose a 28% GST, due to which it was staring at a 400% increase in tax burden. 

Last month, Spartan Poker too laid off 125 employees, or 40% of its total workforce. Besides these, real gaming companies Quizy and Fantok have shut or halted their operations respectively. 

The post Exclusive: Amid Tax Troubles, GamesKraft Pulls The Plug On Gamezy Fantasy appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The government has launched Skill India Digital (SID) platform to make skill development more innovative, accessible, and personalised with a focus on digital technology and Industry 4.0 skills.

The platform, which is at the intersection of the Centre’s ‘Digital India’ and ‘Skill India’ programmes, was inaugurated by Union Minister for Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan. Minister of State For Skill Development, Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar was also present at the launch event.

The SID is a comprehensive digital platform that will provide industry relevant skill development courses, job opportunities, and entrepreneurship support. It will act as a comprehensive information gateway for all government skilling and entrepreneurship initiatives.

Commenting on the initiative, Pradhan said, “The consensus on India’s advocacy for global digital public infrastructure as well as for addressing skills gaps was the centrepiece of India’s successful G20 Presidency.”

Pradhan called the launch of the open-source platform another step by India towards creating digital public infrastructure. 

It must be highlighted that the Indian government used its Presidency of the G20 to promote and showcase its digital goods, created under the umbrella of the India Stack. During the G20 Summit held in Delhi, the government left no stone unturned to highlight and showcase the digital goods which have given a big boost to the country’s digital economy.

The SID platform has introduced the concept of digital CV via personalised QR codes. Recruiters can access the CVs of potential candidates by just scanning these codes, the government said in a statement. 

Further, the platform encompasses all the training programmes rolled out by the central and the state governments. Through this, the Indian government is aiming to create a unified and centralised hub for skill development initiatives. 

Speaking on the significance of the platform, Chandrasekhar said such initiatives by the government will generate employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for the Indian youth. As the world is highly tech-driven since the COVID-19 pandemic, the SID will create a future ready workforce for India. 

The Indian government has been actively advocating for digitisation and imparting digital skills to the youth for a while now. In August, it approved the expansion of the Digital India initiative and earmarked a total outlay of INR 14,903 Cr for the scheme. Making the announcement, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the move will boost the domestic digital economy, drive digital access to services and support the country’s IT and electronics ecosystem.

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the country’s digital economy is well poised to grow to $1 Tn by 2025. Addressing the BRICS Business Forum virtually, he said that digitisation has been one of key pillars for India to recover from the effects of the pandemic on the workforce.

The post Govt Launches Skill India Digital To Bring All Skilling Initiatives On One Platform appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Revenue-based financing platform Velocity laid off around 14% of its workforce earlier this week, sources told Inc42.

The layoffs impacted employees from across verticals, the sources said. The Valar Ventures-backed startup is offering the impacted employees a two-month salary as severance pay.

Confirming the development, Abhiroop Medhekar, cofounder and CEO of Velocity, told Inc42 in a written statement, “Getting to profitability is an important priority for us and this restructuring is a crucial step in that direction. We’ve carefully restructured our organisation to avoid redundancies. We’ve also streamlined and automated key parts of our workflows, unlocking substantial efficiency gains.” 

“While this process was not without its challenges, it allows us to set a strong foundation for sustainable future growth. We’ve therefore had to make the difficult decision of reducing our team size by 22 individuals, which accounts for less than 14% of our total headcount,” he added.

However, as per the sources Inc42 spoke to, the number of employees laid off could be well above 20% of Velocity’s workforce. Prior to the layoff, Velocity had a headcount of around 150-160 employees. 

The sources attributed the layoffs to a cost-cutting exercise to increase the startup’s runway. However, Medhekar rejected this, saying most of the $20 Mn funding Velocity raised a couple of years ago remains untouched. 

Velocity reported a standalone net loss of INR 7.9 Cr in FY22, a 32X jump from INR 24 Lakh in FY21. Total revenue rose 2.3X to INR 5 Cr from INR 2.2 Cr in FY21. 

Founded in 2020 by Medhekar, Atul Khichariya, and Saurav Swaroop, Velocity offers revenue-based financing to Indian D2C and ecommerce platforms. Besides this, the startup also offers these businesses credit cards and payment solutions. 

According to Medhekar, the startup has made over 1,500 deals to date. Apparel and fashion brands Off Duty, Sujatra, and The Ayurveda Co. are among the startups Velocity has financed this year.

Velocity raised $20 Mn in its Series A funding round from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures in 2021. Presight Capital, Utsav Somani’s iSeed, Maninder Gulati (OYO), Zac Prince (BlockFi) and Philippe De Mota (Hedosophia) also participated in the round. Before this, the startup bagged $10 Mn in its seed funding round. 

Velocity competes with the likes of Recur Club, Klub, and GetVantage. 

The ongoing funding winter amid macroeconomic headwinds has forced startups and global tech giants to resort to layoffs to cut costs. According to Inc42’s layoff tracker, Indian startups have laid off over 28,000 employees since last year. 

The post Exclusive: Revenue Based Financing Platform Velocity Lays Off Around 14% Workforce appeared first on Inc42 Media.