It's coming of age at India Inc.: Tata Sons has acquired a 64% stake in online grocery seller BigBasket, buying out majority stake of Chinese Investor Alibaba. With this deal, Tata is now in direct competition with Amazon, Flipkart and Reliance’s grocery service. The temperature is soaring in E-commerce biz.
For all the Shark Tank and Cryptocurrency fans out there: Mark Cuban, US Billionaire, has invested in Indian blockchain company, Polygon. This company’s cryptocurrency recently crossed the market capitalization of $14B.
Riding on the Atmanirbhar wave: Twitter’s local rival Koo, has raised $30M in series B funding led by Tiger Global. Many top ministers as well as government departments have joined the platform and are regularly sharing updates on it. What’s interesting to note is that it is the only social media website which has complied with the new IT intermediary rules of Indian government.
Another Unicorn? Amazon-backed Indian digital insurance company Acko, is planning to raise upto $200M. If the funding comes through, it will enter the Unicorn Club in India. It is also considering going public by year end. As of last year, Acko claimed to have provided 650 Mn policies to 60 Mn unique customers to date.
Groww, a 5-year-old startup has acquired the mutual fund business of Indiabulls AMC which has been in business for over a decade for only INR 175 Crores.
At Startups vs. Covid this month: Swiggy prioritising essential deliveries through it’s hyperlocal delivery vertical, Genie. Ola and Flipkart have partnered with GiveIndia foundation and state government respectively to provide free oxygen concentrators and related supplies.
We’re going international: Homegrown digital payments giant Paytm is likely to get about 7% stake in QR code-based payments business PayPay Japan. PayPay is run by a joint venture between SoftBank and Yahoo Japan, with Paytm as the technology partner.
This article is a part of the May'21 edition of our Startup Newsletter. Here's the complete publication:
