A closer look at all the top developments in the startup space on Thursday:

1. Flipkart Group invests Rs 260 crore for a stake in Arvind Fashions’ arm

E-commerce platform Flipkart has invested Rs 260 crore to pick a minority stake in Arvind Fashions' recently formed subsidiary Arvind Youth Brands, which owns Flying Machine.

Arvind Fashions said Flying Machine has been retailing on the group's platforms—Flipkart and Myntra—for more than six years. “Through this investment, the Flipkart group and Arvind Fashions will work collaboratively to identify opportunities and synergies to innovate and develop products with strong value propositions at attractive price points,” the company added.

The transaction is subject to conditions. Metta Capital Advisors acted as the financial advisors to AFL for this transaction.

2. Cars24 Lending arm raises Rs 10 crore in debt funding

Cars24 Financial Services, the lending subsidiary of Cars24, which is an online platform for selling used cars, has raised debt funding of Rs 10 crore from Vivriti Capital, mainly for onward lending to its customers looking to pick up used cars.

According to an internal survey, Cars24 found out that 41 percent of the consumer’s intention to purchase a private car after the lockdown has gone up. In such a scenario easy financing options will help more people get a private mode of transport.

Cars24 will use the funds raised to lend to small dealers and consumers across 50 cities where it is operational.

3. Uttar Pradesh govt gives nod to ‘Startup Policy 2020'

The Yogi Adityanath cabinet gave its nod to the Uttar Pradesh Startup Policy 2020, a statement issued by the state government said.

The startup policy aims at bringing the state among the top three in startups hubs in the country by setting up 100 incubators in the state and at least one in every district. The project aims at developing an ecosystem to set up at least 10,000 startups.

The state government said the policy would help in turning its youth from job seekers to job providers.

4. Facebook slammed over ‘significant setbacks’ in its own civil rights audit

Facebook has been criticised by civil rights experts in a report detailing the findings of a two-year audit of the social media giant’s policies.

In the 89-page report, published Wednesday, auditors wrote that some “vexing and heartbreaking decisions” made by Facebook were “significant setbacks for civil rights.”

They said that though the company has made progress since 2018 when the review was launched, it has also made “painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences.”

“In our view Facebook has made notable progress in some areas, but it has not yet devoted enough resources or moved with sufficient speed to tackle the multitude of civil rights challenges that are before it,” the auditors wrote.

5. Nexus-backed Rancher acquired by SUSE

Open source company SUSE has acquired Rancher Labs, a privately-held open source firm, which provides the market-leading Kubernetes Management platform.

SUSE said its acquisition of Rancher, which offers a Kubernetes Management platform, will create an organisation dedicated to powering digital transformation with open source and cloud native solutions.

The deal is likely to close before the end of October, subject to customary closing conditions.

First Published:Jul 9, 2020 8:36 PM IST