When Tanmay Bhat got tipped £500 for playing online carrom

Good morning!

Recently, influencer Tanmay Bhat was tipped £500 by Rebecca McMullan on YouTube’s ‘Superchat’ feature, which allows a user’s message to be displayed prominently on a live chat screen. 

This happened at the live YouTube launch of skill-based, social real-money gaming startup GetMega. For the record, 500 pounds translates to over 50,000 in INR, which makes it one of the largest amounts paid to a YouTube Influencer through the superchat feature. 

Bhat was inviting fans to take part in an online carrom game on GetMega, a platform worth making a noise about. Founded two years ago by serial entrepreneurs Mayank Kumar and Lokesh Jangid, GetMega has until now been operating in stealth mode as the team focussed on building a global product from India.

They envisioned a gaming platform that could blitz-scale to one billion users over five years. GetMega creates real-life social experiences via audio and video chat, and also works towards instilling trust in the system, otherwise lacking on most real-money gaming platforms. 

It leverages social and messaging platforms like YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram for distribution by building contextual integrations, where individuals can also do micro-transactions (Rs 1 to Rs 100). Read more. 

The Interview

Building and running applications on container technology is quickly becoming the mainstay for businesses, given it has the ability to reduce costs, increase productivity, and bring greater stability, among other benefits. 

Elaborating on the technology during a masterclass at YourStory MediaFuture of Work 2021 Summit, Ranganath Sadasiva, CTO, Hybrid IT at Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE), said, “When you are talking about a world filled with apps and cloud-enabled, container technology is the right kind to invest in, and customers are moving towards that.” 

Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap

In May 2015, Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal decided to take a plunge into entrepreneurship. They looked at addressing the hyperlocal sector in the fashion industry and founded Meesho– a social commerce platform that empowers individuals, primarily women, to start an online business without any capital. 

To date, Meesho has enabled over 20 million customers and more than 10 million entrepreneurs to sell on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram by empowering them with products, logistics, and payment tools. However, the Facebook-backed startup has had to go through three pivots along the way, before finalising its current model. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

How SaaS startup Appy Pie helps SMBs build apps 

As a tech enthusiast, Abhinav Girdhar was always intrigued by the ability of technology to drive business growth. However, he couldn’t help notice that some of the most brilliant ideas would never see the light of the day due to their limited access to technology. This got him to start Appy Pie.  

Launched in 2015, the Noida-based startup is a no-code tech solutions provider for businesses of all sizes, scales, and scopes. The bootstrapped company democratises application development by empowering these businesses to build digital products without knowing coding. Read more.

News & Updates

• Existing investors and individuals have bought Shunwei Capital's minority stake in Bombinate Technologies Pvt Ltd, the parent company of Vokaland Koo App. They include former Indian cricketer Javagal Srinath, BookMyShowFounder Ashish Hemrajani, Udaan Co-founder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and ZerodhaCo-founder Nikhil Kamath.

• According to the Hurun India Wealth Report, India has 4.12-lakh millionaire households. With 56,000 dollar-millionaire households, Maharashtra leads the country in wealth creation followed by Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Gujarat.

• Gaming firm Nazara Technologies has raised a little over Rs 261 crore from anchor investors ahead of its initial public offer. The company's IPO committee has decided to allocate 23,73,395 shares to 43 anchor investors at Rs 1,101 per piece.

• As per data published by the NPCI, with 656.92 million remittance transactions, SBI was the top remitter on the UPI platform in February, while Paytm Payments Bank led the chart in the beneficiary segment.

• Global digital trade finance company for SMEs MODIFI has announced a new $60 million debt facility with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), bringing its total capital raised to $111 million. The company said it will help in addressing the increasing demand in India and other existing markets, as well as fuel MODIFI’s continued growth in new geographies.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“India is running well-optimised games at a great scale; businesses are taking notice of this; venture capitalists are also investing in gaming companies and believing in the kind of games that are being made in India.”

— Arvind Neelakantan, Evangelist- India/ASEAN, Epic Games

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