IPO-bound Oyo gets in-principle listing approval from BSE, NSE

Oravel Stays Ltd, the parent company of travel-tech firm Oyo, has received in-principle approval from BSE and NSE to list on the respective bourses, sources said. Oyo has filed preliminary documents for a Rs 8,430 crore initial public offering (IPO). The offering will consist of a fresh issue of shares of up to Rs 7,000 crore and an offer-for-sale of as much as Rs 1,430 crore.

As per documents reviewed by PTI, the company recently received the go-ahead for listing from the National Stock Exchange and BSE. The company had filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in September last year and has been in the process of responding to the questions and clarifications sought by the regulators.

Sources told PTI that the Sebi observations are reaching the final stage and the last rounds of observations are expected in about 10 days.

According to sources, Oyo's founder Ritesh Agarwal, who holds 33% stake in the company directly and through his holding company, is not planning to dilute any stake during the IPO process, while Softbank Vision Fund, Oyo's largest investor which holds 46% stake in the company, plans to dilute around 2% of his holding.

Ola working on electric car concept; launch likely by 2023, says sources

Ola Electric CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on Tuesday posted an image of an EV on Twitter that looks like the design concept for the upcoming Ola electric car.

"Can you guys keep a secret?" Bhavish Aggarwal wrote on Twitter while teasing the design.

According to sources, the company is gearing up to launch its electric car by 2023. The firm said it's design and R&D teams are working on the electric car concept This comes a day after Aggarwal replied to a photograph posted by a Twitter user featuring an electric Tata Nexon and Ola S1 Pro electric scooter, saying, “Next car replacement should be the Ola electric car".

Earlier, Ola had launched its two e-scooters - S1 and S1 Pro - in August 2021,

Ola Electric on Monday raised over $200 million (about Rs 1,490.5 crore) from Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss and others, valuing the electric vehicle maker at $5 billion.

Sequoia Surge picks 20 startups for its sixth cohort; raise $60 million from investors

Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program in India and Southeast Asia - Surge today launched its sixth cohort with 20 early-stage startups who have raised $60 million from Surge and its co-investors. Surge has evaluated 10,000 companies over the last three years. With the sixth cohort, the Surge community now includes 246 founders from 112 startups across more than 15 sectors.

Also Read: As shares crash, memes on startup giants hit upper circuit

45 companies from the first four cohorts comprising 69 companies have raised follow-on funding. The sixth edition kicks off on 27 January, where founders will go through a 16-week bootcamp led by the VC firm. These startups can raise anything between $1-$2 million of seed capital during the program.

The early-stage companies in Surge 06 come from a diverse landscape, diving deep into tech-driven solutions across several markets and industries. The cohort includes two startups from Bangladesh, as well as its first companies from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. 13 out of the 20 companies are also building solutions for an audience beyond their home markets.

Mensa Brands forays into home gardening space with acquisition of TrustBasket

Roll-up e-commerce unicorn Mensa Brands has acquired TrustBasket after investing an undisclosed sum in the online gardening solutions brand.

TrustBasket offers a range of gardening solutions catering to different consumer segments - from gardening kits for hobbyists to compost makers and specialized soils for professionals. Since its inception, the startup has served over 1.2 million customers, the company said in a statement.

"As a unique, consumer-centric brand, TrustBasket is an exciting new addition to our digital-first portfolio of brands and marks our first investment in the home gardening space. We have charted out a 5-year strategic plan for the brand," said Ananth Narayanan, founder, and CEO of Mensa Brands. This is the third acquisition Mensa has made in 2022 after leather brand Estalon and aromatherapy D2C brand Florona.

MODIFI acquires Seawise Capital trade finance and SaaS business in India

Global fintech company, MODIFI has acquired Seawise Capital’s trade finance and SaaS business in India. While the acquisition details have not been divulged, the transaction relates to the future business of the Seawise portfolio. A digital trade finance platform for SMEs, MODIFI spans three major trading regions of Europe, Asia, and North America - a cluster that encompasses approximately 80% of global imports and exports.

It provides SMEs with simple digital solutions to finance and manage their trades, protect them from counterparty risk, and easily track their shipments. "Over the past 18 months, our business here has grown more than 2100%, making India our largest single market. Our strong presence in the region and an experienced local team will ensure a smooth transition and excellent customer service," says MODIFI CEO and co-founder Nelson Holzner.

Seawise Capital addresses the $2 trillion trade finance gap and provides digital working capital solutions to Indian SMEs, who are exporting goods to the UK, Europe, and the US. It also provides customers with a SaaS product to track their shipments, get paid faster, and reduce risk in international trade.

Creator economy startup AppX acquires Superpage

Online solutions provider to creators AppX has acquired website building platform super.page for an undisclosed amount. According to the company, the buyout will help creators kick off their online businesses in less than 10 minutes. Besides, the creators can also build their mobile applications after launching their websites on Superpage.

Also Read: Rising interest rates and economic growth can go hand in hand: Uday Kotak

Superpage founders Vyshnavi Mudumby and Srivatsa Mudumby will be joining AppX after the acquisition and spearheading across the company's growth, product, and technology divisions. The deal comes after AppX raised $1.3 million in a round led by YCombinator. The company also plans to create products for creators to host and sell on their superpages, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), seminars, courses, podcasts and newsletters.

Industry leaders spell their 2022 startup outlook

2021 saw India's Startups come of age. New-age companies like Zomato, Nykaa, Paytm, and many more took Dalal Street by storm, however, as new-age tech stocks crash below IPO price, will funding dry up for startups?

SoftBank's Munish Varma told CNBC-TV18 that "as the world evolves, from the perspective of startups which are using technology to make an industry more efficient, funding is available as long as it a sound business model with a somewhat proven unit economics."

Adding to that, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, vice president of Info Edge said, "Late-stage investors who find options in the US much cheaper could end up taking money away from India. Investors will get a bit more selective and discerning. Startups will have to work harder and smarter to increase value and get more funding."

On Startups Uday Kotak, MD & CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank said, “I believe that the startup ecosystem is broadly robust and deep. What we need to ensure is that as this system evolves, we avoid irrationality. We don't take decisions that don't make sense or common sense and ultimately, a firm must produce cash flows, even if they are in the future. We must encourage entrepreneurship because change is inevitable. Companies must be able to have a strong business model.”

However, after the year of unicorns, which saw over $34 billion in funding and creation of 40+ billion-dollar #startups, what's the road ahead for the Indian #startup ecosystem?

Responding to this, Varma said, "The pandemic-led shift in digitisation and consumer behaviour in shopping, fintech, healthtech and edtech is here to stay." Varma added that "opportunities for startups will keep increasing."

Social commerce platform Trell concludes ESOP buyback worth Rs 12 crore

Social commerce startup Trell has concluded an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback worth Rs 12 crore. The initiative demonstrates the company's dedication to the concept of inclusive growth, in which every employee feels valued and motivated to excel in their area of expertise and empower them to play an important role in the company’s shared future, Trell said in a statement.

The team has grown from 50 to more than 700 members since the pandemic began, witnessed growth and scale on its influencer-led social commerce platform in 2021. The company claims to have over 60 million monthly active users (MAUs) and content in multiple categories across 12 languages. The platform has raised over $62 million in venture capital from investors including Mirae Asset Ventures, H&M Group, Samsung Ventures, LB Investments and others.

Agritech startup AgroStar launches personal accident insurance cover for farmers

Agritech startup AgroStar has launched a personal accident insurance programme for farmers in collaboration with two companies. The insurance programme 'Kisan Raksha Kavach' has been introduced on the AgroStar App to provide financial protection to the farmers against uncertainties of accidental death and disability resulting from an accident, it said in a statement.

Also Read: Over 2,250 startups added in 2021, raised $24.1 bn in 2021: Nasscom-Zinnov report

As per the terms of the programme, a farmer who purchases agri inputs from the AgroStar App will get a benefit of personal accident insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh free of cost, it said. This group insurance programme is launched in a collaboration with Care Health Insurance and GramCover. In December last year, AgroStar raised $70 million in its Series D funding round led by Evolvence, global asset manager Schroders Capital, Hero Enterprise, and UK’s development finance institution CDC.

Flipkart signs pact with FITT for joint research in social commerce

Walmart-owned Flipkart has inked an agreement with Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer to collaborate in the areas of social commerce, product recommendation to resellers and consumer product exploration journey. Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) is a part of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-D).

As part of the memorandum of understanding, Flipkart will offer research grants and market insights to FITT to develop hands-on prototypes and publish research papers in collaboration with the teams at the e-commerce firm in the areas of social commerce, product recommendation to resellers and the consumer product exploration journey, a statement said.

This will provide IIT academia involved in the partnership an opportunity to work closely with Flipkart on research projects aimed at solving relevant technical challenges in the e-commerce domain, it added. Flipkart and FITT will also jointly undertake a number of other initiatives, including organising seminars, offering conference travel grants and internship and mentorship opportunities, the statement said.

These collaborations aim to create industry-focused applied research on some of the most compelling problem statements of online commerce that can make e-commerce accessible to more consumers and sellers alike, it added. According to a report by Recogn in November 2021, India is likely to have 228 million native consumers through social commerce by the end of 2022, a 45 percent rise from the 2021 user base.

Travel-tech startup Mystifly launches Mystifly Universe

Travel-tech startup Mystifly has launched a new product - Mystifly Universe, a global flight data API. The new product is aimed at bringing data-driven certainty to unlock new revenue opportunities while reducing operational costs, the company said in a statement.

Mystifly Universe is designed to offer a continuous stream of shopping results from Mystifly’s airfare marketplace and actively process close to 300 itinerary options per shopping query. Mystifly’s global customer base gives it an edge for the availability of real-time data sets covering both low-cost and full-service carriers spanning over 100 Points of Sales. The data includes a mix of published, web and private fare content, the firm added.

"Airlines, global and local OTA’s, Tour operators and other travel intermediaries who want to improve their sales simplify distribution and optimise revenue will see interest in Mystifly's crowd-sourced data that Universe as a platform offers," said Rajeev Kumar, founder, and CEO, Mystifly.

Ruptok Fintech disbursed Rs 100 crore worth loan against gold; intends to disburse Rs 1,000 crore loans annually

Ruptok Fintech has strengthened its market position in the GoldTech industry by disbursing over Rs 100 crore loan against gold in the last 18 months. The fintech startup now intends to achieve a Rs 1,000 crore annual disbursement run rate in the next financial year. The company also aims to intensify its presence in India and expand its workforce, it said in a statement.

"The gold tech industry is rapidly penetrating, which has led to significant demand in loans against gold. Ruptok witnessed unprecedented growth in the past year. Not only have we raised capital from various investors to expand our business operations to new regions, but we have also built significant partnerships.

Two of them is with Xiaomi and TVS Credit for catering gold loans to their customers. This strategic approach has expedited the exponential growth of the brand. We have aggressive plans to venture into new cities and strike new strategic partnerships,” said Ankur Gupta, Founder and CEO, Ruptok Fintech.

Ruptok Fintech has strategic alliance with Eclear Leasing & Finance and MAG Finserve Company Limited for co-lending business. Through this partnership, the company intends to offer a seamless experience and a higher loan to value (LTV) for gold loan borrowers at competitive interest rates.

LeadSquared onboards Mi Credit to enable Process Efficiency

Sales and marketing automation solutions startup LeadSquared has partnered with Mi Credit, a personal loan app, to enable its process efficiency and accelerate loan disbursals. With this partnership with Mi Credit, LeadSquared will help craft more efficient loan journeys, the company said in a statement. Currently, Mi Credit caters to its customers through a combination of personal loans and gold loans.

As a sales efficiency partner to over 1500 brands globally, LeadSquared streamlines sales and marketing processes to help businesses maximize their pipeline velocity. It claims to have registered 100% growth Y-o-Y since 2018.

FuelBuddy partners with Datoms to provide seamless end to end fuel delivery

Fuel delivery startup FuelBuddy has partnered with Datoms, a provider of genset remote monitoring solutions to build a complete ecosystem for fuel delivery.

It will enable the customers to monitor and control generators remotely, predict and prevent generator failures and prevent fuel theft and pilferage. With this partnership, the customers of FuelBuddy will automatically be alerted to order fuel in case of low fuel levels, the company said in a statement.

Recently, FuelBuddy had also acquired an on-demand fuel delivery startup MyPetrolPump, a venture owned by ANB Fuels for a cash and stock consideration.

RateGain, Razorpay, and Zoho are the Top SaaS Companies in India: Wizikey Report

Software-as-a-Service continued to thrive in India, with 26.45 percent YoY growth. As per the Wizikey report, RateGain, Razorpay, Zoho, ShipRocket, Freshworks, Innovacer, BharatPe, Gupshup, Zeta, and Capillary Technologies emerged as the top 10 SaaS companies of December 2021. Others on the list included Innovacer (6), BharatPe (7), Gupshup (8), Zeta (9), and Capillary Technologies (10).

"The SaaS landscape in India looks very promising, garnering attention from all mediums. This industry is sure to grow with millennials and their love for apps, social media, and mobility. The rise in demand for cloud-based applications and platforms, lowering the cost of the cloud technologies, increase in adoption of agile SaaS platforms and subscription models are the factors contributing to this growth,” said Anshul Sushil, Co-founder and CEO of Wizikey.

GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY & STARTUP NEWS

SHEIN revives plan for New York listing in 2022, sources tell Reuters

Chinese fashion retailer SHEIN is reviving plans to list in New York this year and its founder is considering a citizenship change to bypass proposed tougher rules for offshore IPOs in China, sources told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how much the company was looking to raise from its New York debut.

The initial public offering (IPO), if finalised, would be the first major equity deal by a Chinese company in the United States since regulators in the world's second-largest economy stepped in to tighten oversight of such listings in July.

SHEIN, founded by Chinese entrepreneur Chris Xu in 2008, first started preparing for a US IPO about two years ago, but shelved the plan partly due to unpredictable markets amid rising US-China tensions, the sources said. The sources said SHEIN founder Xu was eyeing Singapore citizenship partly to bypass China's new and tougher rules on overseas listings. The change in citizenship, if applied for and successful, would ease the path to an offshore IPO, they said.

SHEIN ships to 150 countries and territories from its many global warehouses, according to its website. It made around 100 billion yuan ($15.7 billion) in revenue in 2021, taking advantage of the pandemic that shifted global consumption online, said one of the sources and another person with knowledge of the matter. Its valuation was around $50 billion in early 2021, they said. The valuation is estimated to have as much as doubled in the past year, one of the first two sources said.

The company, whose investors include Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital and Tiger Global, was valued at $15 billion in its last funding round in August 2020, according to CB Insights data. According to Coresight Research, SHEIN's estimated sales in 2020 jumped 250% over the preceding year to $10 billion, with over 2,000 items added on its website weekly. SHEIN has hired Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to work on the IPO, said the source with knowledge of the company's valuation, and another person familiar with the matter.

SoftBank-backed Creditas reaches $4.8 Bn valuation in new funding round

SoftBank-backed financial technology firm Creditas, which operates a digital platform offering consumer loans, has reached a valuation of $4.8 billion in new funding round, chief executive and founder Sergio Furio told Reuters in an interview.

Furio said Creditas decided to raise more capital to safeguard its growth this year and next year, as uncertainty mounts for tech companies amid concerns that the US Federal Reserve will become aggressive in controlling inflation.

Creditas has raised $260 million in its sixth funding round to expand its collateralized loan business in Brazil and Mexico. Founded in 2012 by Furio, a Spanish former consultant, the fintech has specialized in loans secured by assets like homes, autos and salaries, credit lines shunned by Brazil's biggest lenders.

Fidelity Management & Research LLC joined as the key investor of this round, along with Spanish fintech fund Actyus and Greentrail Capital. Existing investors such as SoftBank Vision Fund 1 and Wellington Management also invested. Furio added Creditas plans to use the proceeds mainly to expand its current portfolio of products.

China's Tencent fires 70 staff, blacklists 13 firms in anti-graft campaign

Tencent Holdings, China's biggest social media and video games company has fired nearly 70 staff over bribery and embezzlement incidents last year and named 13 companies it had blacklisted from future contracts. Tencent said in a social media post that it had also reported more than 10 people to authorities over their actions.

As the Chinese government has intensified a crackdown on corruption in recent years, tech companies have doubled down on their own investigations into irregularities as their valuations and profiles have soared following the country's tech boom. Tencent started its anti-graft campaign in 2019 and has been regularly reporting the results of its probes.

Abu Dhabi's Chimera closes second venture capital fund at $10 billion

Abu Dhabi investment firm Chimera Capital has closed its second venture capital (VC) fund at $10 billion, as it looks to find multi-million dollar opportunities in "growth-stage" companies, as per Reuters. The new fund, Alpha Wave Ventures II, will focus on financial tech, artificial intelligence, life sciences, consumer internet and business to business sectors. Chimera said.

The $10 billion fund is co-managed with US alternative asset manager Alpha Wave Global, formerly known as Falcon Edge Capital. Limited partners in the VC fund are all local and regional investors, Karim Radwan, Chimera Capital's chief investment officer, said, declining to name them.

He said the fund will invest between tens of millions and up to $100 million in growth-stage companies, typically between series A and pre-initial public offering (IPO). Alpha Wave Ventures II will aim for a return between three and five times, with companies lower in that range the closer they are to an initial public offering, Radwan said.

Three US states, D.C. sue Google over location-tracking

Texas, Indiana, Washington State and the District of Columbia sued Google over what they called deceptive location-tracking practices that invade users’ privacy, Reuters reported.

"Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access," Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine's office said in a statement. Yet Google "continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data," the statement said, calling the practice "a clear violation of consumers’ privacy."

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the "attorneys general are bringing a case based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings. We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleged Google misled consumers by continuing to track their location even when users sought to prevent it.

Google has a "Location History" setting and informs users if they turn it off "the places you go are no longer stored," Texas said. Google "continues to track users’ location through other settings and methods that it fails to adequately disclose," it added.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in 2020, Google made nearly $150 billion from advertising. "Location data is key to Google’s advertising business. Consequently, it has a financial incentive to dissuade users from withholding access to that data," Ferguson's office said in a statement Monday.

Buy now, pay later firms Zip, Sezzle confirm merger talks

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Sezzle Inc is in talks to be acquired by larger Australian rival Zip, Reuters reported. The companies said in separate statements that talks were at an early stage and there was no certainty that a deal would materialise.

US-based Sezzle has a market capitalisation of almost A$425 million ($303.5 million), while Zip is valued at A$1.94 billion. Zip has been actively deal-making over the last year to build scale to compete with rivals including Klarna and Block’s Afterpay.

Facebook parent Meta says its new AI supercomputer will be world's fastest

Facebook parent Meta Platforms said its research team has built a new artificial intelligence supercomputer that it thinks will be the fastest in the world when completed in mid-2022. Meta said in a blog post that its new AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) would help the company build better AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, work across hundreds of languages, and analyze text, images and video together to determine if the content was harmful.

"This research will not only help keep people safe on our services today but also in the future, as we build for the metaverse," the company said in a blog post. The social media company changed its name in October to Meta to reflect its focus on the metaverse, which it thinks will be the successor to the mobile internet.

"The experiences we're building for the metaverse require enormous compute power (quintillions of operations/second!) and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more," Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

Meta said it believed the RSC was currently among the fastest AI supercomputers running. A Meta spokesperson said the company had partnered with teams from Nvidia, Pure Storage and Penguin Computing to build the supercomputer.

Twitter's upcoming feature could share tweets with up to 150 select users

Micro-blogging site Twitter is reportedly developing a feature that will allow users to curate a list of people -- up to 150 users -- to send certain tweets out to. If this sounds familiar, it is because Instagram's Close Friends feature lets you do the same thing; but in Twitter's case, you will be limiting your tweets to your "Flock," The Verge reported.

Twitter first gave us a glimpse of the feature last July, which it called "Trusted Friends" at the time. Since then, mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi has been keeping track of Twitter's progress. According to the report, Twitter seems to be working on a page that shows more information on Flock, which explains you can add up to 150 members.

Only these users can view or reply to tweets sent out to your Flock. And in case you decide you do not want someone in your Flock anymore, Twitter notes you can remove people from your list at any time, and they won't get a notification. If you are in someone's Flock and they send out a tweet, Paluzzi notices a label that may appear beneath that tweet.

To send a tweet to your Flock, it looks like Twitter will display an audience option before you send it out, letting you choose between all of Twitter and your selected users.

(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)