Zomato enters B2B space with TongueStun buy; Amazon hits $1 T market cap

Delhi-NCR based foodtech startup Zomato has now acquired TongueStun, a Bengaluru-based online caterer and office canteen aggregator. Media reports suggest that the cash and stock deal was valued at $18 million. With this acquisition, Zomato makes its entry to the B2B segment. TongueStun will now be incorporated into the Zomato app and Zomato will be using its network to help restaurant partners to cater to a larger corporate market. 

A month after Apple Inc scaled the $1 trillion market cap summit, retail-to-technology behemoth Amazon has followed suit. The Seattle-based company’s valuation surpassed $1 trillion on Tuesday with its stock rising 1.9 percent. However, it soon tapered off, and Amazon ended the day with a $995 billion valuation. Analysts reckon Amazon’s diversified portfolio to be its biggest growth driver.

Lighthouse India Fund III, an affiliate of Lighthouse Advisors, on Wednesday announced that it has invested Rs 113 crore to acquire a secondary stake in Nykaa, the Mumbai-based beauty ecommerce platform. With this investment, existing investor TVS Shriram Growth Fund has exited the company. Nykaa is now looking to expand its portfolio with the launch of exclusive brand partnerships and increasing its offline footprint to 90 stores in India by 2020.

ThinCI, an artificial intelligence (AI) hardware startup based in California, US, with offices in the UK and Hyderabad, India, has raised $65 million in Series C round of funding. The investment round was led by returning investor and Japanese automative component giant Denso and its subsidiary NSITEXE Inc, and Temasek. The funding raised will be used by ThinCI to primarily expand its employee strength in India from the current 150 to 300 in the next one year.

The explosive growth of smartphones in India has led to overall growth in the consumption of digital content. The ripple effect is now being felt in the world of publishing too. Additionally, the rise of reading apps and online publishing platforms has made India’s regional literature more far-reaching. YourStory lists down the best reading apps in India right now.

In the last few years, many startups have tried to fix and bring sanity to the corporate commute space, which is estimated to be worth $2.5 billion today. Bengaluru-based Routematic is both a transportation software provider and a fleet aggregator for business enterprises. The company claims it is already servicing over 50,000 rides a month through 550 vehicles (350 in Pune and 200 in Bengaluru).

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