Top expansions by companies in June
While news of investment slowdown, employee layoffs and rescinded job offers continue to hover over the ecosystem, the month of June also witnessed some positive developments, with many startups and companies expanding their operations globally. In the beginning of the month, LinkedIn opened its new developmental centre at Bengaluru, Snapdeal established its data sciences centre at California, Freshdesk opened offices in Berlin, Romilus Capital entered the India market and new incubator centres were opened in Delhi and Gurgaon.
Apart from these, the key expansions of this month were:
BookMyShow launches in Indonesia
Mumbai-based event ticketing company BookMyShow launched a localised version of its platform in Indonesia. Sudhir Syal, Co-founders of BookMyShow, told TechinAsia that the ratio of screens per capita is one of the lowest in Indonesia, with only 0.2 screens per 1,000 people, while India has over one to two screens per 1,000 people.
The report further stated that Sudhir sees much room for improvement in the way movie tickets are bought in Indonesia. He stated that currently only five percent of the movie goers buy their tickets online, while India has a base of 30 percent of online ticket buyers. “Taking that five to a 30 percent is a great opportunity,” Sudhir was quoted.
GreyOrange forays into the Middle East
The Gurgaon-based robotics firm GreyOrange, which already has operations in Singapore, Japan and China, announced its expansion plans into the Middle-Eastern market. Samay Kohli, CEO and Co-founder GreyOrange, told in a press release that Middle East is an important market and shows great potential, thanks to the emerging and growing e-commerce presence in the space.
He said that the industry is poised to grow at close to 300 percent CAGR in the next five years, and GreyOrange is confident of replicating the company's growth in the Middle Eastern markets.
Amazon Web Services Cloud intensifies global expansion with Mumbai
The cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch in its sixth Asia Pacific region – Mumbai on Tuesday. This launch increases the platform's presence to 35 availability zones across 13 technology infrastructure regions. With this expansion, both Indian and global companies, startups, government organisations and enterprises can use the AWS cloud to run their tech applications from the infrastructure available in Mumbai.
AHA taxi launches its services in over 20 locations across India
AHA Taxis, the online aggregator for outstation travel announced the launch of its service in over 20 locations in India, some of these locations include Shirdi, Pune, Mumbai, Jaipur, Alwar, Pushkar, Bhopal, Ujjain, Indore, Srisailam, Tirupati, Hyderabad, Vizag, Vijayawada, Bengaluru, Ooty, Mangalore, Mysore and Coorg. The expansion, is in lines with AHA’s plans to broaden its network.
While the global tech companies are looking at the Indian market, thanks to its huge population, growing middle class and deeper smartphone penetration – Indian startups are looking at the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian Markets. Understandably so, as these markets are very similar to India in terms of demography, growing middle class, smartphone penetration and user base.
Most Indian startup founders look at these markets as their testing ground for the global markets. Healthtech company Practo started its expansions with Southeast Asia and Middle Eastern markets and then moved to Latin America.
