Ola expands operations in Australia; Milkbasket, NewsDog raise funds; EarlySalary acquires CashCare

Bengaluru-based ride sharing company Ola said it is expanding into the Australian cities of Brisbane, Canberra and Gold Coast. The company had launched operations in Australia at the beginning of this year. With these three cities, Ola is now operational in six major metro cities of Australia.

Milkbasket has raised $7 million Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital. The round also saw participation from Singapore-based BeeNext and existing investors, Blume Ventures and Unilever Ventures. This is the second fund raise for the company this year. Earlier in January, it had raised a pre-series A funding of $3 million led by Unilever Ventures.

NBFC Lendingkart Finance Ltd said it has facilitated loans across 1,000 cities in India, disbursing more than 25,000 loans across 26 diverse sectors. In a statement, the company said it has received requests from more than 650,000 MSMEs till date, and has evaluated over 150,000 requests to validate the creditworthiness of applicants.

NewsDog, an India-focused news and entertainment platform, announced it has completed its Series C funding round, raising $50 million, led by global internet company Tencent, followed by DHVC, Legend Capital and Dotc United Group. NewsDog enables personalised content feed for users, matching their preferences. The company plans to use the money raised to pursue its vision of empowering individuals and professional content creators.

Pune-based EarlySalary has acquired lending platform CashCare. With this acquisition, EarlySalary has introduced a new feature of ‘Checkout Finance’ with the intent of allowing its users to shop now and pay later. As part of the acquisition, Vikas Sekhri, the CEO of CashCare, will be the Head of Strategy at EarlySalary, and Suraj Mundada, the CTO of CashCare will be the Chief Architect.

YES Bank in association with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has released a study that says an ‘open data ecosystem’ can grow India’s GDP by $22 billion by 2020. It could impact critical sectors like agriculture and double farmer income by reducing wastage and system inefficiencies. MeiTY says increased data transparency will drive growth and improve governance across key industry sectors in the time to come.

Paytm Payments Bank announced a new initiative - ‘Paytm AshaKiran’ to empower women. With this programme, Paytm Payments Bank aims to educate women about financial services and create new employment opportunities across smaller towns and cities in India’s formal banking systems.

Adobe has recently attempted to diversify into verticals like digital advertising and cloud-based commerce. The last vertical falls under the Experience Cloud, a suite of digital services that offers analytics and advertising tools. In a bid to build this segment further, the company announced a definitive agreement to acquire Magento Commerce, a market-leading commerce platform, for $1.68 billion in cash, subject to customary purchase price adjustments.

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