Guess what isn't a one-night stand, how fuel prices are squeezing delivery staff, and meet two more TECH30 startups

Starting a business may be tough, but building and sustaining it is tougher. While it is natural to celebrate investor validation and the growth that funding enables, it doesn’t necessarily define success. MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra, Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Thyrocare’s Arokiaswamy Velumani and BookMyShow’s Ashish Hemrajani share their learnings of what it takes to build, grow and sustain a business.

Rising fuel prices may have hit the middle class hard - but the worst affected are delivery executives and cab drivers, as they see their earnings get eaten away. Read to see how rising fuel prices coupled with falling incentives are affecting the delivery fleets of Swiggy and Zomato, and the driver partners of Ola and Uber.

The D-day for India’s digital payment economy is here. The deadline for electronic payments companies to submit a report to the Reserve Bank of India on storing payments data pertaining to Indian users within the country has passed, and as there are fears of action by the central bank and even revoking of licences, multiple sources and industry analysts say this will not happen with immediate effect.

Bengaluru-based security management solution for gated premises myGate announced it has raised Rs 65 crore in Series A funding led by existing investor Prime Venture Partners. The company said other investors in the round included friends and family keen to invest in the startup. It plans to use a majority of the funds to expand its offerings to more than 10 cities, and scaling to 2.9 million users by the end of 2019.

OYO Hotels announced the launch of its operations in the United Arab Emirates on a manchise model. The properties will be leased with full inventory control, similar to other markets like India and China. With over 10 franchised and operated hotels, and over 1,100 rooms in Dubai, Sharjah and Fujairah, OYO Hotels is ready with its full-stack technology-led hospitality model to hoteliers across the country, with room rates starting 150 dirhams.

Gone are the days when everyone would rush to the local markets to finish their Dussehra and Diwali shopping! Now, you go online from your phones, tablets, laptops and PCs, and click on the the best offers on festive sales like Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Days’ and Amazon’s ‘The Great Indian Festival’. RedSeer Consultancy states that the e-tailing industry generated a whopping $2.3 billion sales over just five days of sales.

With online services and offline merchant network now accepting UPI payments, Paytm hopes to get at least 100 million UPI users by the end of December 2018. The payments giant claims to have invested Rs 200 crore in a new festive marketing campaign to increase awareness around its convenience and enable more users to adopt Paytm UPI for instant money transfers.

Large workforces demand individual attention, which human resources fail to offer. So, six consultants – Ramesh Srinivas, Ravi Bhamidipati, Sudha Bhamidipati, Suneel Aiyer, Anant Sood, and Sivaramakrishnan – started testing an AI-led product that could predict employee behaviour and help organisations guard against low productivity, and in fact, improve it. The result, Worxogo which tracks employees’ behaviour patterns and sends them daily “nudges” to improve performance.

A graduate from Bengaluru’s R.V. College of Engineering, Nivedha R.M. took up the challenge of waste segregation, but not at the source of its generation like it is currently dealt with. The founder of TrashCon, she has designed a waste segregating machine that can process municipal waste in bulk after it is collected, and segregate wet waste from dry. The USP of the machine – “Come what may, the machine will shred it!”

Now get the Daily Capsule in your inbox. Subscribe to our newsletter today!