#FoodKart; MyGate raises $56mn
Alexa will pay your bills..and more!
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Restaurant associations asks Zomato to amend Gold, reduce discounts
The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) and the Federation of Hotels and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) said they were putting out guidelines that the Gurugram-based restaurant aggregator needed to follow, and one of these is to reduce discounts even further, because "discounts funded by restaurants are not acceptable." [via]
On the other hand, Zomato Gold continues to grow - from both demand and supply side.
MyGate raises $56 million - led by Tencent, Tiger and others
MyGate claims to process over 60,000 requests per minute and facilitates over 45 million check-in requests every month.
In fiscal year ended 2019, MyGate’s revenue jumped more than three-fold to nearly Rs 7 crore [via]
MyGate has a great product - but would be interesting to see how the revenue kicks in (at $1mn revenue, $56mn fund raise is..way cooool).
Cars24 has raised $100mn in Series D
Online used car marketplace Cars24 has closed a $100 million (about Rs 714 crore) equity financing round from a clutch of new and existing investors, including Unbound, the London-based investment firm founded by Bharti Airtel scion Shravin Mittal. [via]
Cars24 has also received NBFC license this year.
#Foodkart: Flipkart Jumps Into Online Food Retail; Will Spend Rs 2500 Crore
Flipkart hopes to catch up with rival Amazon in the food and grocery business by floating a separate venture, Flipkart Farmermart Pvt Ltd.
Through Flipkart Farmermart, the e-commerce company will operate a full-fledged food retail business, including its own private label, a grocery supply chain and even open stores.
Plus, Walmart has pledged support of funds to the extent of Rs 2,500 crore for this purpose, reports MoneyControl.
Amazon Pay users can now pay bills through Alexa; But will you?
This new feature supports payment of bills across categories such as electricity, water, post-paid, cooking gas, broadband, DTH and more. Users of Amazon Echo, Fire TV Stick and other devices with Alexa built-in can use this feature.
Globally, Amazon hasn’t managed to make people buy products through Alexa - but maybe bill-payment is a great use-case to start with, though the friction remains.
What’s your take? Will you use this integration?
In India, News is bigger than entertainment business. Atleast online.
What’s driving this growth?
Video news.
The largest TV News Networks are also among the largest Digital Video players in India (data via Comscore).
Huawei is willing to sign a “no backdoor” agreement with India
After being shunned by a slew of countries out of fears its equipment may facilitate Chinese government spying, telecom giant Huawei, represented by CEO Jay Chen said on Monday that the company is willing to sign up to a “no backdoor” agreement with India.
“If [the Indian] government wants, we are open to having the source codes in an escrow account,” Chen said, adding that the company was also willing to manufacture more of its telecoms gear locally [via]
5G is a great opportunity and US’ fear that China is taking a leap pretty much shows up with bans on Chinese products.
Huawei has to win India’s 5G opportunity at any cost - Xi or not.
Quote of the day:
I am an accidental investor.
I entered the startup investor partly by accident. During the years that I was with the Tata group, I always looked at the startups as a sector that is exciting but somewhat untouchable because somewhere or other there will be conflict of interest with Tata Group [Ratan Tata]
Discovery of the day:
All India radio and FM rainbow have now enabled access to 43 radio channels across India in various languages online (through internet)
No headphones required !
Check it out.
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