Powering asset management with AI; Rario shuts down cricket NFT marketplace

Hello,

More top management shuffles in the startup world. 

Edtech unicorn LEAD appointed Arpit Jain as the CFO and Arvind Singhal as the Chief Growth Officer to strengthen its leadership team. 

While Singhal will help develop and implement its growth strategy to serve more schools and students across India, Jain will spearhead the finance and legal functions of the group.

Zepto, too, elevated Nikhil Mittal—the first employee of the three-year-old startup—to CTO as the quick commerce unicorn looks to expand its tech workforce in the DevOps, quality assurance, cloud, and infrastructure teams. 

Meanwhile, SoftBank offloaded an additional 2% holding in One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, for Rs 950 crore. 

Elsewhere, Nodwin Gaming, a subsidiary of Nazara Technologies, is acquiring Comic Con India at a valuation of Rs 55 crore through a combination of cash and share swap. 

Also, InCred Financial Services’ loan book grew 55% year-on-year (YoY) to reach Rs 8,013 crore till December 2023, the company said as it reported its annual earnings. Its profit before tax grew 131% to Rs 298 crore in April-December 2023, compared with Rs 129 crore earned in the same period a year ago.

Lastly, ever wondered why some hiring managers ghost you after a job interview? 

We know you want answers, and here’s why!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Powering asset management with AI
• Rario shuts down cricket NFT marketplace
• Uplifting women in rural Maharashtra

Here’s your trivia for today: In a quest to replace rubber, James Wright accidentally invented what common toy?

Startup

Powering asset management with AI

US- and Bengaluru-based Kshana.ai is an AI-driven asset management venture targeting asset and wealth management companies, fund managers, and analysts. It uses Natural Language Processing to extract insight from structured and unstructured sources.

“The goal is to disrupt market-facing research at institutional investment platforms like hedge funds, mutual funds, family offices, PE, and wealth management," says Founder and CEO Krishna Chaitanya R.

Financial analytics:

• Kshana can interact with company filings, earnings call transcripts, broker research, and various other publicly unstructured commercial data, extracting the information one may need.
• Its co-pilot tailored for asset managers allows users to search and offer recommendations, personalised insights, and conversations to gain context-specific insights about any financial asset.
• The startup is looking to partner with alternative data platforms, which sell web-crawled data, expert networks, consumer spending data, business performance data, satellite imagery, and social media trends to hedge funds.

Funding Alert

Startup: Vivifi Finance

Amount: $74M

Round: Series B

Startup: AiDash

Amount: $50M

Round: Series C

Startup: Ecofy

Amount: $10.8M

Round: Equity

Web3

Rario shuts down cricket NFT marketplace

Cricket NFT platform Rario said it will shut down its existing marketplace effective January 29. The company has put in place new management to steer Rario in the right direction and plans to launch a new platform by March.

Headwinds:

• Rario cited headwinds in regulation in the Web3 space and the crashes in the NFT space as some of its primary reasons for shutting down its current venture.
• The cards that users hold at the moment will not be transferable to its new platform. "But for loyal Rario users, we will be providing additional perks and benefits on the upcoming gaming platform," it said.
• Rario would also look at ways it could compensate users currently holding its existing NFTs. Traders on its official Telegram channel urged the platform to either buy back their holdings or return their investment in rupees.

Women Empowerment

Uplifting women in rural Maharashtra

For over two decades now, Sunanda Pawar has been visiting women in rural Maharashtra to motivate them to become financially independent, and also emphasises the importance of maintaining good health and hygiene, inspiring them to take charge of their well-being.

All for women:

• Pawar started Sharda Mahila Sangh, a SHG consisting of 15,000 women in Baramati, to inform them about the different state government schemes available for women.
• She also started Bhimthadi Jatra, a cultural carnival, to provide women entrepreneurs with a platform to showcase their products like artefacts, jewellery, bangles, homemade food items, and more.
• She launched a six-month-long police training programme in 2016 to help rural girls in Maharashtra for free, and encompasses theoretical and practical training.

News & updates

• Layoffs: eBay is cutting 1,000 jobs—a reduction of about 9% of its workforce. CEO Jamie Iannone pointed to its expenses and headcount eclipsing the growth of its business in the memo shared on the company website.
• New EV: Apple Inc, reaching a make-or-break point in its decade-old effort to build a car, has pivoted to a less ambitious design with the intent of finally bringing an electric vehicle to market. After previously envisioning a truly driverless car, it is now working on an EV with more limited features, now set to launch in 2028.
• Restructuring: SAP aims to carry out voluntary buyouts or enable job changes for 8,000 employees as part of a restructuring programme for 2024 as it looks to accelerate growth, partly through AI, and pushes to become cloud-centric. The German software company said its headcount should remain the same at year-end.

In a quest to replace rubber, James Wright accidentally invented what common toy?

Answer: Silly putty.

We would love to hear from you! To let us know what you liked and disliked about our newsletter, please mail [email protected]. 

If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here. For past editions of the YourStory Buzz, you can check our Daily Capsule page here.