Startup news and updates: daily roundup (March 16, 2022)

Rivigo appoints McKinsey’s Prabhav Sharma as CEO of FTL business

Technology backed trucking company Rivigo has announced the appointment of Prabhav Sharma, former partner at McKinsey Asia, as the Chief Executive Officer of its Full Truck Load (FTL) business. 

An IIT Mumbai and IIM Lucknow alumnus, Prabhav led the digital consulting practice for McKinsey Asia. He brings 15 years of experience and has previously led the supply chain and logistics practice globally for the energy and materials sector. He has also pioneered the development of technology-led solutions to solve for network optimisation, end-to-end supply chain optimisation and other problem statements.

In his new role, Prabhav will be responsible for leading the asset-light relay-as-a-service approach at Rivigo and implementing it at scale. 

Scaler strengthens leadership team

Bengaluru-based edtech company Scaler has announced two new appointments to its leadership team for its people and culture practice, as well as the data analytics unit. The upskilling platform backed by Lightrock India and Tiger Global has announced the appointment of Akshay Raje as the head of people and culture and Kashif Kudalkar as the head of data and analytics.

Prior to this, Akshay Raje, served as the team lead for product at WordLift.io, an AI tool for WordPress. He started his journey with Asian Paints, followed by CitiGroup and has worked in a central HR role at Ernst and Young. He will be responsible for attracting new talent and talent retention in his new role at Scaler.

Kashif Kudalkar served as general manager and head of marketing and consumer analytics at Times Professional learning, a division of BCCL before joining Scaler. He has previously worked with Eureka Forbes and will be responsible for setting up a data-driven ecosystem in the company.

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SoftPOS will revolutionise digital payments: Cashfree Payments and Digital Fifth report 

According to a report published by payment and API banking solutions company Cashfree Payments and fintech consulting firm Digital Fifth, app or SDK-based Point-of-Sale (POS) or softPOS can act as a game-changer to foster digital payments with increasing internet and smartphone penetration in semi-urban and rural India.

The report highlights that softPOS can be easily adopted by small and medium businesses via an app download onto an NFC enabled device, converting it into a POS terminal without the need for additional hardware like a card reader. This enables easy acceptance of card, UPI, QR codes and others for merchants, using their existing smartphones.

The report dives into the evolution of the POS terminal, changing the payments landscape with UPI’s entry and the potential of softPOS in levelling the playing field.

Ecommerce rollup company Evenflow partners with Eunimart

Ecommerce roll-up company Evenflow has entered into a strategic partnership with ecommerce enabler Eunimart to help its portfolio of brands scale to international markets.

Evenflow has a portfolio of seven Indian brands across categories including home and kitchen, sports and fitness, garden and outdoors among others. Founded by former Uber executives Utsav Agarwal and Pulkit Chhabra in 2021, Evenflow acquires brands valued at $200,000 to $2 million which sell on online marketplaces.

Eunimart helps brands with international expansion, offering logistics and supply chain networks and global warehousing partnerships. It helps brands sell across over 25 sales channels including Amazon, Flipkart, Shopify and others, across 100 countries, providing them with extensive data and insights.

Cygnet Infotech acquires majority stake in Glib.ai

Ahmedabad-headquartered Cygnet Infotech has acquired a majority stake in Ahmedabad-based document analysis platform, Glib.ai. Glib.ai uses its AI and ML-based platform to extract data from documents, processes them for position, context and structure, helping businesses achieve last-mile automation. This helps businesses reduce resource costs and turnaround time.

Glib-ai’s product will be offered with Cygnet Infotech’s proprietary Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, helping its clients leverage the AI capabilities of the company. Cygnet works with customers across India, North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Post the acquisition, the founders of Glib.ai, Dr Mohit Shah and Purav Parekh will continue to help the operations of the company.

Adda247 appoints new CMO

InfoEdge-backed test preparation platform for government and defence examinations, Adda247, has announced the appointment of Rahul Pandey as the new Chief Marketing Officer. In his new role, Rahul Pandey will be responsible for designing, developing and implementing overarching business marketing strategy at the company, said a statement.

Rahul Pandey previously served as vice president of marketing at IncNut Digital. He has worked with brands like Flipkart and Amazon in his previous stint and led Flipkart’s digital marketing unit for nearly seven years in a career spanning 16 years.

JustMyRoots launches same-day intercity food delivery

Intercity food delivery service provider JustMyRoots has announced same-day intercity delivery of perishable food items. In the pilot phase, customers in Mumbai and Delhi will be able to order select dishes from select restaurants in Kolkata, Pune, Indore, Amritsar, Jaipur, Agra, Lucknow, as well as Mumbai and Delhi. The company guarantees delivery of freshly cooked food within 13 hours.

Founded in 2020, JustMyRoots currently offers delivery of perishable food as well as sweets, bakery products, seafood, spices, fruits and vegetables across 25 cities. It also delivers unique and authentic cooked meals particular to a region across the country in packaging that keeps the food fresh for more than 26 hours.

15-year-old student of WhiteHatJr from Tamil Nadu creates agriculture app

A student of WhiteHatJr, 15-year-old Aravind from Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu has developed an app called Golden Crop, to help farmers with information on various aspects of agriculture for better yields. The app recommends crops for better yield in a given month, leveraging geolocation, helps identify the type of soil in the farmlands and monitor local climatic conditions in the area.

The app also provides specific details including the number of days required to harvest a crop, the market price of a crop and other details. It also connects farmers to local soil testing laboratories.

The app started as a coding project at WhiteHat Jr and was tweaked into a problem-solving app by Aravind. He continues to update the app based on feedback from farmers using the service.