Walmart partners with PhonePe; HomeLane, Fingerlix raise funds

Wednesday February 27, 2019 , 2 min Read

Walmart and PhonePe entered into a partnership to launch PhonePe as a payment option at Walmart India’s 23 Best Price Modern Wholesale ‘B2B Cash & Carry’ stores. This will allow registered members of Walmart India’s ‘Best Price’ stores to leverage different payment options on the PhonePe app, including UPI, PhonePe wallet, third-party wallet, credit and debit card.

Homelane raises funds

Interior design startup HomeLane has raised Rs 33 crore from JSW Ventures, Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital. The company was founded by Rama Harinath (CMO), Prabhu Venkatesh (COO), Vivek Parashuram (CDO) and Srini Battula (CTO), along with Srikanth, and is an online provider of home fit-out solutions. With this fundraise, HomeLane will be looking to boost its technology and brand strengthening as well as for expansion of HomeLane experience centres in existing and new markets.

Fingerlix raises funding from Swiggy parent company

Swiggy's parent company, Bundl Technologies, has invested in ready-to-cook food startup Fingerlix. According to the company's RoC filings, Bundl Technologies has made an investment of Rs 31.2 crore in the startup. Mumbai-based Fingerlix was founded by Shripad Nadkarni, Shree Bharambe, Varun Khanna and Abhijit Berde in 2016. The startup serves freshly-cooked and chilled food prepared in its state-of-the-art kitchen.

Vikas Arora of IBM talks AI and security tools

There are two prominent schools of thought when it comes to AI. One believes the emerging tech could “create an immortal dictator” while the other thinks that AI will make humans smarter. In a conversation with Yourstory, Vikas Arora, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software Leader, IBM India/South Asia, says it is an absolute necessity to have cognitive or AI security tools to keep pace with the advancing threats.

Indian companies and their tryst with voice-based services

After AI and AR, voice is going to be the next big thing. Now keen to tap on this growing opportunity, several Indian companies are building a host of voice-led B2C services and exploring how to make them work in Indian languages too. Take for instance the Gnie app, which via a voice message tells its user (a Bengaluru-based shopkeeper) what has been sold at his store on a given day, or even the best-selling product for the day or week.