Startup news and updates: daily roundup (Feb 17, 2022)
YourStory presents daily news roundups from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Thursday, February 17, 2022.
Kotak Mahindra Bank, Ezetap partner to provide integrated PoS solutions for merchants
Kotak Mahindra Bank today said it has partnered with fintech startup to provide integrated Point of Sale (PoS) solutions across 4,000 locations in India. The initiative is aimed at strengthening the bank’s presence in the digital payments market space.
Through this association, Ezetap's integrated and customised Point of Sale (PoS) solutions is expected to benefit scores of KMBL’s merchants in retail business spread across the country.
It will also give retail customers a way to pay through cards and digital modes across all touchpoints in the purchase journey — whether at the counter in-store or paying on delivery. KMBL's enterprise and government customers will be able to access the benefits of Ezetap’s deep-tech integration and customised solutions.
This partnership will enable KMBL to scale up its PoS product base across merchant segments, including retail enterprises and government customers, which service lakhs of customers on a daily basis.
Microsoft India announces winners for second season of Cloud Champions 11 programme
Microsoft India today announced the winners of the second edition of Cloud Champions 11, an engagement programme that strengthens Microsoft’s commitment to partners in India. In its second year, Microsoft recognised 11 Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) for accelerating cloud growth for SMB customers between September and December 2021.
The programme also recognised two indirect providers who have a direct relationship with Microsoft to provide customer support, pricing, and billing. It saw participation from nearly 700 partner organisations across 71 cities in India, of which half were from Tier II and III cities.
The programme evaluated participants basis their cloud business growth across Microsoft Azure, Modern Work, Security and Business Applications. It engaged on multiple levels with the partner organisations with training, masterclasses, peer learning, fun engagement sessions, sales training, and rewards and recognition for the sales teams.
Triller drives 150M+ reach in India with Triller Iconz competition
AI-powered open garden technology platform for creators Triller launched a talent competition called Triller Iconz, which aims at giving the next generation of digital stars a launchpad for success and continued support on their journey to stardom.
The effort recognises creators making a difference with their undeniable talent and claims to have driven a reach of over 150 million during its month-long campaign.
Hours of user-generated content was produced during the contest, with creators competing in different categories, from dance, music, lifestyle, comedy, and “you do you.”
Fifteen finalists got a chance to be mentored by celebrities Siddharth Nigam and Ashnoor Kaur for the title, and five winners were voted as Triller Iconz. The winners from each category were: Rohan Rajput (Comedy), Navneet Kaur (Lifestyle), Ajay Rana (Dance), Goldy Dhillon (“You Do You”), and Aditi Minglani (Music).
The top 45 creators got the chance to participate in the upcoming Triller IPs and Live Hosting Sessions.
Mosaic Wellness onboards ex InMobi Vice President Abhinav Mohan as Chief Business Officer
, a health and wellness startup running digital health clinic platforms, and Bodywise, has appointed Abhinav Mohan as its Chief Business Officer, who will head all categories and brand marketing and work closely with Co-Founder and CEO Revant Bhate.
Abhinav Mohan, Chief Business Officer, Mosaic Wellness
With over a decade of experience in building and scaling technology businesses, Abhinav previously worked as the VP and GM of Monetisation at Glance (part of InMobi Group). He also worked on consumer insights, performance marketing, and innovative data solutions across both adtech and mar-tech.
Abhinav said, “Having spent the last few years in the consumer tech world, I have witnessed the transformative power of technology on consumer businesses. It’s super exciting to see how Mosaic Wellness, with its technology-first approach, has been able to scale its digital health platform through consultations, and I’m looking forward to helping them disrupt the health and wellness industry.”
DE-CIX India, Yotta infrastructure join hands to provide internet peering and interconnection services
DE-CIX India, carrier and data centre neutral Internet Exchange (IX) operator, established a new point-of-presence (PoP) at Yotta's Uptime Institute Tier IV certified facility – Yotta NM1 in Panvel.
With this partnership, enterprises, content providers, cloud providers, and ISPs hosted at Yotta data centre and/or at their own captive data centres in western India can take advantage of expanded high-speed interconnection capabilities to the rest of the world.
DE-CIX's presence at Yotta NM1 will provide enhanced network performance, low latency, direct one-hop cloud connectivity, and Internet peering services to the majority of the ISPs across India and the world. It will also address low-latency edge requirements and ensure seamless content delivery to the last mile through a robust footprint of network nodes spread across the country.
With DE-CIX's multi-service interconnection platform at Yotta, these customers can access a range of services, including connectivity to hundreds of local carriers, Internet service providers (ISPs), and content and application providers, without having to establish direct, separate connections with each network.
UniFarm launches IDO launchpad; introduces its first IDO with BattleVerse
UniFarm announces its IDO Launchpad, UNIFARM Launch, to provide UniFarm stakers with new investment opportunities. The launchpad intends to drive innovations within the industry by constructing a bridge between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 services, while enabling new projects to create a mark for themselves at the time of their launch and making the process of identifying good projects easy for the users.
Identifying the increasing demand for new investment opportunities, UNIFARM Launch - the IDO Launchpad for UniFarm — is coming up with its first IDO with BattleVerse, a free peer-to-peer online game powered by DeFi x NFT and blockchain technology to list IDO and CEX.
UniFarm stakers can join BattleVerse as early investors for all exciting IDO launches the project plans to introduce.
Upstox onboards three senior executives to strengthen leadership team
Investment platform today announced the addition of three senior executives to its leadership team. The company has appointed Harish Narayanan as Chief Growth Officer, Jayant Chauhan as Senior Vice President – Finance, and Saurabh Agarwal as Vice President - New Initiatives.
With this hiring, Upstox aims to extend operations and move closer to its broader goal of encouraging more equity participation in India.
Recently, the company had revamped its platform, which includes several new features and an intuitive design to make investing simple, stable, seamless, and secure.
Ravi Kumar, Co-founder and CEO, Upstox, said, “It gives us great pleasure to welcome Harish, Saurabh, and Jayant to Upstox's leadership team. They bring with them immense experience and expertise. I'm confident that with them onboard, we will succeed in our endeavour to take Upstox's products and services to the next level and fulfil our drive of encouraging equity participation across the nation.”
Edited by Suman Singh
