Startup news and updates: daily roundup (April 28, 2022)
YourStory presents daily news roundups from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Thursday, April 28, 2022.
Former SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar joins Indifi Technologies' advisory board
MSME lending platform has appointed former State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Rajnish Kumar as an advisor, who will engage with the startup to provide growth strategy and guidance in the financial services sector.
At present, Rajnish Kumar sits on the boards of HSBC Asia Pacific, L&T Infotech, Hero MotoCorp, and BharatPe.
Commenting on his appointment to Indifi’s Advisory Board, Rajnish Kumar said,
“Indifi's ecosystem-based approach to lending has leveraged the opportune intersection of digital platforms used by MSMEs and advancement in data and tech. Not only has it been successful in undercutting the roadblocks of MSME access to finance, but has also enabled credit efficiency for its lending partners."
Founded in 2015, the Gurugram-based online lending platform solves the credit needs of the underserved, credit-worthy businesses through an ecosystem-based and verticalised approach to digitised lending.
The startup has been successful in making the loan process digital for both lenders and MSMEs by minimising risk, reducing paperwork, and associated costs while providing a simple and hassle-free experience. It has disbursed over 43,000 loans across 400 cities.
Rajnish Kumar
Zypp Electric appoints Sameer Baweja as Senior VP to head Technology
Electric vehicle-as-a-service platform has appointed Sameer Baweja as its Senior Vice President to lead its Technology and Products vertical. Sameer will help strategise Zypp’s upcoming operations and technological innovation to build last-mile EV solutions in 30 Indian cities.
Akash Gupta, Co-founder and CEO, Zypp Electric, said, “As a Senior Vice President of Technology and Product, Sameer will leverage this platform to build world-class tech features at Zypp Electric of fleet management, EV led delivery and rental services, and help us achieve our #MissionZeroEmission across India.”
An industry veteran with over 22 years of experience, Sameer — the former Head of Product Engineering at Ameyo — brings in product building experience in SaaS-based B2B and B2C domains. It has played a pivotal role in elevating the product strategy of some of the Fortune 500 companies.
Akash Gupta and Rashi Agarwal
NimbusPost forays into the Indonesian logistic space; appoints Adithyan Asokan as country head
Gurugram-based shipping aggregator is expanding its business in Indonesia to cater to the shipping needs of online brands across one million serviceable destination pairs in the country.
The company has also appointed Adithyan Asokan as the country head for NimbusPost Indonesia. With an experience of nearly a decade in Southeast Asia across startups and unicorns, Asokan understands market intricacies and will help NimbusPost to function in the country and resolve the issues at hand.
Yash Jain, Co-founder and CEO, NimbusPost, said, “In a bid to expand our foothold across the world, we’ve started operations in the Southeast Asia region. We’re actively hiring professionals to expand our team across different functions. As far as our business goals are concerned, we see huge business potential in the Indonesian market, and the logistics requirements are bound to follow the suit."
He added, "By entering the Indonesian market, we aim to resolve the shipping needs of all-sized ecommerce businesses. As the existing logistics solutions in the country fail to provide technically-advanced features and advantages to online businesses, NimbusPost intends to bridge this gap with its automated tech-based aggregator platform.”
IndiaMART, Tazapay partner to facilitate cross-border transactions for Indian exporters
B2B platform and fintech startup Tazapay have partnered to facilitate cross-border transactions for Indian exporters in India by providing a customised seamless payment solution for B2B trades.
The partnership will help the B2B exporters get coverage in key economic markets, including Southeast Asia, the US, the UK, the EU, and others. On top of offering local payment methods such as local bank transfers, credit cards, and QR code payments — similar to UPI — for buyers and sellers alike, merchants can deal with international clients like a local while enjoying competitive platform fees and the best FX rates.
The partnership will ensure all transactions meet international trade compliance requirements, including the issuance of Foreign Inwards Remittance Advice (FIRA) where required.
It will also further strengthen IndiaMART's Verified Export Services (IVE), launched in 2020 to enable its merchants to expand their business globally, by tapping into the pool of more than 10 million foreign buyers every month coming from over 100 countries.
“We have around 50,000 sellers on our platform who are export-oriented. So, we looked for a partner with a customer-friendly track record that can handle cross-border payments seamlessly. Now, these exporters registered on our marketplace will also be able to make and track payments for their export business,” said Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, IndiaMART.
BYJU’S Education for All, Bharat Edtech partner to provide digital learning opportunities to disadvantaged children
To bridge the digital divide in education and mitigate learning loss among underserved communities in India, Education for All has partnered with Bharat EdTech Initiative (BEI). It aims to will empower over one million students across India by 2025.
BYJU’S and BEI will bring at-home, effective, equitable, and accessible learning to students across classes I through XII. Additionally, with the pandemic disrupting access to education, especially for girls around the country, the collaboration will also focus on ensuring equitable access to learning opportunities for girl students.
Rathish Balakrishnan, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Sattva Consulting, said, “Bharat EdTech Initiative was launched during the pandemic as a collective effort to bridge the learning loss for students, especially those from low-income households. Over the last eight months, we have successfully onboarded 117,000 students across 10 states to our partners’ edtech platforms, one of them being BYJU’S. We are confident that with our shared interest, we will be able to impact over one million students by 2025.”
BYJU’S flagship social impact initiative Education for All was launched in 2020 to bring about a positive systemic change to the education ecosystem. With a mission to empower 10 million underprivileged children by 2025, the initiative has already impacted 3.4 million children, of which 50 percent are girl students, in the remotest corners of the country through 120+ NGOs across 26+ states and 340+ districts.
Vedantu introduces Ai LIVE technology, LIVE interactive classes
on Thursday launched an Augmented Interactive (Ai) LIVE technology to revolutionise education for millions of students by making quality education accessible and affordable.
Ai LIVE interactive classes — priced at Rs 5,000 per year — are available from classes VI to XII curriculum for CBSE, ICSE and Maharashtra Boards, and competitive exams such as JEE, NEET, NTSE, and more.
The Ai LIVE classes follow the 'multi teacher model' in live classes. The approach allows a master teacher to hold pre-created interactive teaching sessions while class teachers, who are live in the class, ensure every student’s query is answered and their doubts resolved in real-time.
Vamsi Krishna, CEO and Co-founder, Vedantu, said, “At Vedantu, we believe this is the true promise of edtech, where we combine the best of teaching with the most disruptive technology to create such a massive impact at scale. We have used all our learnings through concept teaching in millions of LIVE classes and asynchronously captured all the core concept teaching. This helped us to bring the prices down exponentially to an unbelievable Rs 10 an hour.”
Edited by Kanishk Singh
