Startup news and updates: daily roundup (November 1, 2022)

Zaggle, NPCI partner to launch multiple credit cards

SaaS fintech company Zaggle has partnered with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to issue contactless credit cards on the RuPay network. 

Zaggle and NPCI, along with partner banks, would use this platform to launch multiple credit cards to address the ever-growing demand of corporates, SMEs, and consumers. The cards would be enabled for international and domestic transactions, and users would be able to use them for contactless transactions. 

Zaggle intends to combine credit cards as payment solutions to its spend management software, providing businesses with a holistic value proposition. The cards and software would be available as tightly integrated solutions for customers to address their unique requirements.  

Wow! Momo elevates CMO Muralikrishnan as co-founder

Wow! Momo has elevated CMO Muralikrishnan as its co-founder. With this development, Murali has become a part of the company's board.

Murali has been associated with Wow! Momo since inception. However, he officially joined the founders in 2018. He began by leading the store-level growth hacking to brand development and was later named the group’s CMO.

Murali has been a key pillar in building the delivery and omnichannel verticals of the brand. He also set up the entire martech stack, a strong communication platform, intra-tech initiatives and an in-house 360-degree marcom suite.

He has also been instrumental in launching the FMCG vertical and other QSR brands Wow! China and Wow! Chicken.

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Fintech startup Decentro raises $4.7M in Series A funding round

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Unicommerce appoints Anurag Mittal as CFO

Unicommerce has appointed Anurag Mittal as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and will oversee the company's financial operations, including financial planning and analysis, investor relations, fundraising, taxation, risk management, and treasury operations. 

Anurag joins Unicommerce from WOW Skin Science, where he was the CFO. With over 18 years of experience across companies like Deloitte, PWC, Paytm, and Snapdeal, Anurag has expertise in business and strategic finance, financial planning and analysis, business acquisitions, fundraising, investor relations, finance operations, and taxation, among others. 

Swiss Beauty onboards Saahil Nayar as COO of India and international business

Swiss Beauty has appointed Saahil Nayar as the COO, India, and International Business, starting October 2022.

With over 15 years of industry experience, Saahil will be responsible for conceptualising and driving Swiss Beauty’s strategic roadmap by accelerating its digital footprint while strengthening its retail wing.

Swiss Beauty aims to establish itself as an omnichannel business, leveraging digital commerce as a strategic growth driver, along with its expansive retail network. Onboarding Saahil is a strategic move aligned with the brand’s mission of expanding its executive leadership team, the startup said in a statement.

Daalchini Technologies announces first ESOP buyback plan

Retail tech startup Daalchini Technologies announced its first-ever ESOP (Employee Stock Option Programme) liquidation plan worth about Rs 1 crore, allotted to its current and former employees.

Nearly 21 current and former employees have benefited from the ESOP initiative across hierarchies, from VPs to hub managers. Daalchini’s team members with vested options are eligible to take part in the repurchase and liquidate almost 100% of their vested shares if their options are vested as of April 2022.

SaveIN, toothsi partner to offer Care Now, Pay Later offering 

Fintech platform for healthcare SaveIN and dental care brand toothsi have partnered to offer a Care Now, Pay Later offering. 

Through this partnership, SaveIN will enable toothsi to offer instant, zero-cost EMIs to its customers across the country in a fully digital process.

toothsi has facilitated smile makeovers for over 150,000 customers across India, empowering them with access to at-home, new-age teeth straightening with invisible, 3D-printed clear aligner technology. The company merged with skinnsi brands to launch makeO to provide at-home smile and skin makeover services in India.

Otipy appoints Rohit Sood as Chief Business Officer

Agritech startup Otipy appointed Rohit Sood as its Chief Business Officer to drive the next phase of business expansion in existing and new markets in India.  

Rohit will be a key part of the senior leadership team at Otipy. He will be responsible for defining and executing the right strategy for the company's business development activities, along with collaborating with the top management to develop a growth strategy and business plan.

Rohit is a senior retail and ecommerce leader having over 16 years of experience in setting up and scaling businesses at companies like SPAR, Carrefour, Snapdeal, Paytm Mall, and JioMart.

Rohit comes with a rich understanding of consumer behaviour in grocery shopping and operating this business at scale. Previously, he was the Growth Marketing Head for JioMart at Reliance Retail, where he was responsible for demand generation for the JioMart B2C platform.

PMRDA collaborates with Google Cloud to build transit management system

PMPML (Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd)—the public transport bus service provider for the twin cities of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, and PMRDA (Planning and Development Authority for the Pune Metro Region)—has collaborated with Google Cloud to build a transit management system and feed system to track buses live on Google Maps.

PMPML operates 371 routes, including 117 Rainbow BRT routes, which ply on the seven bus rapid transit corridors, and this technology will enable commuters to easily find buses in real-time.

The collaboration will help ingest real-time data from all applicable buses from the OBU (on-board unit) system installed on the PMPML buses, and validate the data for GTFS field values. The data will get fed to the Google Maps Partner Dashboard for a complete GTFS validation. Once published on Google Maps, the Live Transit Updates service will allow commuters to track buses in real-time.

Spice Story partners with Jayanti Herbs and Spice for offline expansion

Spice Story has partnered with Jayanti Herbs and Spice for its offline expansion. The Mumbai-based company is looking to expand its offline presence in over 15,000 stores by March 2023.

Through this partnership, Spice Story will leverage Jayanti Herbs and Spice’s 23,000-strong distribution channel of multi-brand modern format retail stores ( both national and regional chains, along with standalone modern retail stores).

At present, Spice Story products are available in about 1,200 stores and should reach its customers via 5,000 physical touch-points by end of this year.

(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)