Startup news and updates: daily roundup (Feb 22, 2022)

Edtech startup Great Learning acquires recruitment platform Superset

Educational platform Great Learning , which BYJU'S bought in 2021, acquired Superset, a talent recruitment automation platform, adding to its higher and professional education offerings portfolio, the company stated in an official release on Tuesday. 

Founded in 2017 by Naman Agrawal and Pranjal Goswami,  Superset provides digital solutions for campus placements and corporate recruitment. It has  automated placements for over 500 colleges/universities, while providing access to placement opportunities to over 27 lakh students from 15,500 colleges.

“The complementary strengths will not only prepare India’s vibrant workforce to keep pace in the competitive global economy but also provide greater accessibility to job opportunities,” the company said.

Naman and Pranjal will operate Superset after the acquisition, as they expand Superset’s offerings to more students and recruiters. 

Synechron launches PayTech Accelerator Program

Synechron Inc., a global digital transformation consulting firm, launched a PayTech Accelerator Program to help banks and other financial services institutions to facilitate innovative solutions for the payments ecosystem. 

This is Synechron's ninth accelerator program since September 2016. 

The new PayTech Accelerator Program offers five real-world tools and solutions. These solutions will allow banks to build and increase their share of the Buy Now Pay Later lending markets, simultaneously test and validate for compliance with global financial messaging standards, and monitor real-time cybercrime threats. 

Sandeep Kumar, Managing Director, Head of Synechron’s PayTech Accelerator Program said, “The payments industry is in the middle of a massive transformation. We are excited to debut our newest Accelerator Program utilising our payments industry knowledge and technical depth in emerging technologies.” 

All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) launches ‘Ayush Start-up Challenge’ to encourage early startups and individuals in India

All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) has launched the 'Ayush Start-up Challenge' in association with Startup India to encourage early-stage startups and individuals working on innovations in the Ayurveda sector and alternative healing.

“To fully realise the potential of the Ayush science, we need a thriving ecosystem with players operating across the entire value chain. The present initiative aims to not just identify promising startups and reward them, but also provide them incubation support through guidance and skill development, which will go a long way in helping these startups realise their next phase of growth,” said Tanuja Manoj Nesari, Director, AIIA.  

The startups can participate in three categories- Ayush Food Innovations, Ayush Bio-instrumentation (Hardware solutions) and Ayush IT Solutions (Software solutions). There will be two winners in each of the three categories with a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh for the winner and Rs. 50,000/- for the runner-up. 

Both early-stage startups as well as groups of individuals are eligible to enroll. However, if selected they would need to register a legal entity before the cash prize is disbursed to them.  

The winners of ‘Ayush Start-up Challenge’ will receive both a cash prize and incubation support from AIIA.

Teachmint aims to digitise 10,000+ schools with ‘TeachBharat’

Teachmint, an education infrastructure startup, launched ‘TeachBharat’, a program through which it will digitise more than 10,000 schools in India for free. 

Under TeachBharat, Teachmint will enable end-to-end digitisation of the identified schools through its ‘Teachmint For Institute’ platform, integrating live classes with class recordings, automating attendance and evaluation among other things.  

The schools will be able to digitise their operations and ensure their students have continuous access to teachers and learning content at all times. The hybrid setup in institutions will provide maximum impact through a combination of virtual and physical classes. 

Teachmint has already partnered with Punjab and Karnataka to support about 1000 government schools. It further aims to partner with NGOs, social welfare institutions and corporates.  

Myntra introduces its Style Squad; emerging creators handpicked to be the faces of Myntra's social commerce

Fashion ecommerce company Myntra on Tuesday launched Style Squad, an army of high performing content creators or influencers, who will exclusively collaborate with Myntra and its brand partners to become the faces of Myntra’s Social Commerce proposition, in particular, Myntra Studio and M Live.

The Style Squad will include the top 10 percent of the thousands of creators it has worked with in the recent past via Myntra Studio and M Live. These creators will look to build platform affinity by driving their fan base to Myntra, becoming its digital ambassadors, while scaling awareness for Myntra on their social channels. 

Some of the popular creators on the Style Squad include Abhinav Mathur, Ishita Khanna, Asmita Kaushik, Samidha Singh, Pradaini Surva, and winner of Myntra Fashion Superstar’s Season 3, Queen Andro, among others.

Achint Setia, Head of Marketing and Social Commerce, Myntra, said, "Influencer-led engagement is key to Myntra’s marketing strategy, and we shall continue to make the right spends to enable this vision.”

The current engagement rates of the enterprise’s key creators are upwards of 1.5X of the platform average and this is expected to grow by 4-5x in the next 2 years, the company said.