Startup news and updates: daily roundup (Jan 19, 2022)

GoKwik onboards Amazon’s Kunal Tiwari as Chief Product Officer

Ecommerce enablement platform GoKwik has announced that it has onboarded Kunal Tiwari as its Chief Product Officer. Under the new role, Kunal is expected to spearhead GoKwik’s overall product strategy, execution and innovation. The company further aims to expand its product portfolio and further strengthen its existing product suite to offer best-in-class support to Direct 2 Consumer (D2C) brands. 

Kunal is a seasoned product and science leader with 15+ years of experience across banking, insurance, and ecommerce industries. In his last role at Amazon, Kunal led multiple product portfolios, which ensured the safety and compliance of Amazon’s catalogue across 20+ marketplaces. Previously, he has led strategic science and product initiatives for BlackRock, AXA-XL, and Bank of America. A mechanical engineering graduate from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, Kunal is also part of IIM-Bangalore’s advisory board for Data Centre and Analytics Lab. 

Talking about his new role, Kunal said "Today, millions of customers are embracing thousands of D2C brands and this market is poised to be a $100B opportunity by 2025. GoKwik, with its product suite and crystal clear vision, is well-positioned to take the industry forward and democratise this opportunity for the D2C brands. Personally, this is an interesting challenge and opportunity to blend data, tech, and science solutions from two completely different product stacks: fintech and ecommerce. I look forward to working with the GoKwik leadership team and scaling the company to new heights.” 

Prodapt acquires Silicon Valley-based Synophic Worldwide

Prodapt, Chennai-based consulting, technology and managed transformational services provider to the connectedness vertical, announced that it acquired Synophic Worldwide, a global company providing network transformational and managed services to Digital Service Providers (DSPs), ISVs, product and platform companies. Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Prodapt on the transaction.

With Synophic’s acquisition, Prodapt strengthens its network services portfolio and enables Prodapt to offer end-to-end services around network transformation, network orchestration, and automation to network-managed services. 

Founded in 2009, Synophic leading partner for OEMs/NEMs, ISVs, and Enterprises for their technical depth and matured managed services execution in the network design, engineering, and NOC services. This acquisition further expands Prodapt’s presence in the US/LATAM regions and provides an entry into the APAC markets including Japan, Philippines, and Australia.

Synophic is Prodapt’s third acquisition this financial year. Prodapt earlier announced the acquisitions of Innovative Logic and SLR Dynamics.

Khatabook records over Rs 1.8T in monthly transactions across its platforms

Fintech startup KhataBook announced that it has recorded over Rs 1.8 trillion monthly transactions across its platform – Khatabook, Cashbook, and BizAnalyst. Founded in January 2019, Khatabook today has over 10 million monthly active merchant users, managing more than 344 million customers on its platforms. 

Acquired in March 2021, Biz Analyst by Khatabook has touched 1,00,000 paying customers in 2021. Biz Analyst is positioned to provide end-to-end real-time business intelligence and decision-making capabilities to SMEs, including business insights based on the app’s integration with tally software of SMEs.  

Cashbook by Khatabook, an expense management tool, claims to have crossed 1.8 million+ installs in 2021. Available in 15 languages, Cashbook is an exclusive android app for those who want to leverage only the expense management functionality.

At present, Khatabook is available in 13 regional languages and close to 25 percent of users on Khatabook are using the app in their preferred regional language. Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat were the top 5 user base growth states for Khatabook in 2021.  

Consumer electronics veteran Prasoon Kumar joins Arzooo as Vice President - Strategy

Prasoon Kumar has joined the Arzooo team as Vice President - Strategy with two decades long expertise in white goods industry. In the new position, Prasoon will be spearheading Arzooo’s growth strategy setting the mid and long term agenda.

At Arzooo, Prasoon’s charter will be to drive Arzooo’s expansion and reach into the breadth and width of the country with mid to long term strategy and bringing strategic partnerships on its mission to power offline retail with technology and financial capability and making them competitive and scalable. 

Previously, Prasoon has been at the forefront of leading distribution, sales and channel strategy for some of India’s largest whitegoods brands. Backed by 20+ years of cumulative experience in channel sales, and revenue management, Prasoon has managed sales challenges and visions of industry leading brands. Before his Voltas-Beko tenure, he has worked as the sales head for Godrej and played crucial role in expanding presence for Haier India. He worked with LG India in its founding days and has played his part in establishing LG as the market leader in India’s consumer durable market.

DotPe witnesses 100 pc growth

Google-backed online business solutions providers DotPe has seen a 100 percent surge during the second wave. With the third wave looming large, DotPe is witnessing a 100 percent growth, since there is a growing need for merchants in India to join the digital bandwagon, including for the fence-sitters.

Launched in 2020, DotPe claims to have already empowered more than 7.5 million merchants across 25,000 locations with digital adoption across functions such as creating a webstore, online delivery and payment, store management, and providing the requisite marketing management tools, among other digital transformations.

To cater to the growing demand of online deliveries, the company expanded its partnerships with local businesses and delivery channels to help retail merchants fulfill their last-mile order commitments, hyper-local or pan-India. DotPe’s collaborations with payment vendors such as PhonePe, GooglePay, and Paytm allowed merchants to create several routes for demand generation at the same time.