Startup news and updates: daily roundup (November 7, 2022)
YourStory presents daily news roundups from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Monday, November 7, 2022.
Multi-brand ecommerce platform D2C Ecommerce acquires Luxura Sciences
Multi-brand ecommerce company D2C Ecommerce has acquired , a personal care brand.
Through this acquisition, the platform will expand in the personal care and beauty segment, strengthen Luxura Sciences' product offerings by investing in newer categories, and foray into global markets, including the US, UK, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe.
Founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneur Mohd. Suaid Ahmed, Luxura has over 100 personal care products listed across ecommerce platforms like , , , and . It will now also be available on D2C Ecommerce.
With this acquisition, Suaid will now be part of the core team at D2C Ecommerce and will be actively involved in expanding the product range and scaling up the company's operations in India and globally.
Commenting on the deal, Manish Gupta, Founder and CEO, D2C Ecommerce, said, “This partnership gives us an opportunity of entering into fast growing personal care and beauty segment. Consumers are increasingly preferring new-age natural personal products. With Luxura Sciences research-based products, we are confident of catering to various consumer needs in the beauty segment and scaling the business to newer heights by leveraging our existing capabilities.”
Zomato Intercity head Siddharth Jhawar quits
's intercity vertical head Siddharth Jhawar has quit the company just four months after the cross-city delivery was launched.
Siddharth, who was a VP at Zomato for about two years, will now be leading adtech company Moloco's India operations. "It's time for a new adventure - excited to build Moloco in India from scratch!" he said in a tweet. Recently, California-based startup Moloco has raised close to $200 million in total from investors, including Tiger Global Management.
"Zomato gives opportunities that are extraordinary. No mountain can be too high to climb, and your past credentials don't limit the size of your opportunity. I got mine to build a new business from scratch - it was so much fun, especially because of the people around me," he wrote in a LinkedIn post.
The food delivery service's intercity vertical was piloted in Gurugram in August and is now expanded to other cities such as Bengaluru and Mumbai.
Meanwhile, Blinkit's director of category is set to take over as the intercity vertical head, as per media reports.
Kochi Open Mobility Network expands statewide; to be powered by ONDC
Kochi Open Mobility Network (KOMN), the pilot initiative by the Kerala government's transport department, will expand its network to the entire state through its integration with . This is a part of the larger initiative to bring diverse aspects of commerce, including mobility, as part of the open network.
The project is implemented under the aegis of the Kochi Metropolitan Transport Authority (KMTA), with the support of the FIDE (erstwhile Beckn) Foundation.
With the development, users can buy mobility besides grocery items and F&B on the network, providing single-window access to goods and services.
Since its launch in 2021, KOMN has combined several taxi associations and Kochi metro booking systems into an integrated solution on one network, using the open-source Beckn Protocols — also an underlying protocol of ONDC.
KOMN integration on the ONDC network will enable digital discoverability for all transport operators and their services through any digital platform. This is unlike the current situation, wherein each digital platform operates as a walled garden, allowing interaction only between service providers and users part of that particular platform.
“With the support of the Transport Department, the Government of Kerala will eventually enable access to various mobility services. This will then give the people of Kerala more choices of transport, and at the same time, the service providers will benefit from the easy and wide discoverability of their services. This is a journey we have just embarked upon and will become a catalyst for the expansion of open mobility networks across India,” said T Koshy, MD and CEO, ONDC.
EV charging aggregator Charzer partners with Nirman Developers
, an EV charging station aggregation platform, has partnered with Nirman Developers to install EV charging stations across all its residential and commercial properties in Pune.
Besides installing stations, will also maintain the charging stations through regular servicing. Through the app, users can book a slot for charging and make payments.
Sandeep Maheshwari, Partner, Nirman Developers, said, “ In the past year, there has been a sudden increase in the number of EV vehicles. The flat owners are installing their own chargers, which leads to a higher capex cost and a higher MSEB (Maharashtra State Electricity Board) tariff from their electric meter. After the recent change of MSEB offering reduced tariffs for EV charging from a dedicated common meter, we were searching for a suitable solution. We decided to partner with them to install EV chargers at our project Nirman Altius at Kharadi and Nirman Vishnubaug at Model Colony in Pune.”
Founded by Dheeraj Reddy, Sameer Ranjan Jaiswal, and Yugraj Shukla, Charzer claims to have installed over 2,000 charging stations and has more than 40,000 users. It is also a marketplace, where any individual or network can host their charging stations and start earning revenue.
RupeeRedee plans to disburse Rs 500 Cr loans in FY22
Digital lending startup has disbursed Rs 251 crore loans in 2020-21, clocking a 4X growth in customer acquisition and plans to up the number in 2022.
In a statement, the company said it has disbursed over a million loans in the last three years and plans to disburse 10,000 loans per day by the end of March 2023.
Sharing its plans, RupeeRedee also announced that it would double the team size in the next four months and have 100 employees by the end of the year. The addition to its existing team will majorly be in the engineering, operations, and marketing departments to maintain the company’s internal innovation index, partnership opportunities, and new product launches.
RupeeRedee, which operates under its Captive NBFC FincFriends Private Limited, facilitates short-term personal loans coupled with digital lending services. It claims to have deployed various forms of underwriting, including alternate data sources, not restricted to credit score-based underwriting.
The startup is considering raising $5-10 million in debt funding or issuing bonds’ to impel technological expansions, accelerate sales and marketing efforts, and prepare itself for global scale, it said.
iGowise Mobility to launch e-Bike Trigo BX4
Bengaluru-based Electric Vehicle (EV) startup Mobility said it will launch its new SUV e-bike, the two-wheeler EVTrigo BX4, for the Indian market by January 26, 2023. Targeting urban Indian families, the upcoming e-bike will be available in three different variants with the same battery size and range. The base price for Trigo BX4 is expected to be between Rs 1.1 lakh and Rs 1.2 lakh.
Sravan Appana, CEO of iGowise Mobility, said, “As a country, we are progressing towards a greener and cleaner future, but we continue to ignore the myriad of challenges two-wheeler users face on the ground today. Safety and Comfort of two-wheelers is a must for people to embrace sustainable mobility.”
Edited by Suman Singh
