Google Tez is now Google Pay; Instamojo expands product portfolio

Premium post-purchase customer engagement platform Narvar on Tuesday announced a $30 million Series-C financing round led by Accel, which also led Narvar’s Series A round. In conjunction with the financing, Ryan Sweeney, partner at Accel, will join Narvar’s board. Existing investors including Battery Ventures participated in the round. The new investors Salesforce Ventures and Scale Venture Partners also participated. With this new round of funding, Narvar will ramp up product innovation and R&D efforts and employee base.

Google on Tuesday announced that it has rebranded Google Tez to Google Pay. Stating the reason behind the rebranding, Caesar Sengupta, General Manager, Payments and Next Billion Users Initiative, in an official blog post said that the company plans to unify all of Google’s payment offerings globally. Launched last September, Google’s Indian digital payments app Tez sees more than 22 million people and businesses using it every month.

Amazon’s Udaan programme – launched in 2015 – which provides assisted online shopping, has been rebranded as ‘Amazon Easy’. The India-specific innovation is mainly targeting customers from Tier-II and III towns, who make up the majority of the retail customer base. Udaan is already present in more than 14,000 stores in 21 states with large network partners like Storeking, Vakrangee, as well as smaller partners and individual entrepreneurs.

MSME digital payment service provider, Instamojo on Tuesday announced the diversification of its product portfolio by introducing logistics and credit to customers on its platform through the launch of its two new flagship products – MojoXpress and MojoCapital. The extended product portfolio will help Instamojo merchants leverage its lending and logistics capabilities on the platform, unlike earlier where merchants had to rely on multiple vendors to provide these services to their customers.

Amazon India is reportedly set to acquire ‘all-in-one’ app Tapzo for an undisclosed amount. Sources close to the development told YourStory that talks are at an advanced stage, and a deal would be announced soon. Earlier today, The Economic Times had reported the deal size to be between $40 and $45 million. The report also said that Tapzo’s co-founders Vishal Pal and Ankur Singla are expected to get cash along with some shares in Amazon.

At the fourth ‘Google for India’ event, the internet search giant unveiled Project Navlekha — its new initiative to bring India’s 135,000 Indic language publications online in a hassle-free manner. Navlekha, which means ‘a new way to write’ in Sanksrit, will allow local publishers who do not have websites to make their offline content fit for online publishing in less than a minute. They can simply scan documents or PDFs and create instant web pages on the platform. No expert digital knowledge is required in the process, claims Google.

myUpchar, the Indian language health information platform has raised $5 million Series A funding. The round is led by Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network and Shunwei Capital. This funding will help myUpChar further develop its product and technology offering. The team intends to strengthen its video, voice, and virtual reality interface. It is also looking to develop newer interfaces, which make large-scale remote provision of health services. 

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