Startup news and updates: daily roundup (December 21, 2022)

Wholsum Foods partners with Akshaya Patra Foundation

Wholsum Foods Pvt Ltd, the parent of millet-based children’s food brand Slurrp Farm, has partnered with Akshaya Patra Foundation for a ‘Food For All Children’ programme aimed at enabling children from all income backgrounds to benefit from nutrient-dense supergrains like millets and lentils.

Through the partnership, Wholsum Foods plans to annually contribute 1% of the company’s topline towards the use of millets in all of Akshaya Patra’s mid-meal schemes for children.

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Crayon Motors partners with EzeTap 

Crayon Motors, an Indian manufacturer of e-mobility solutions, has announced its collaboration with Ezetap by Razorpay to offer a smart payment solution for Crayon Motors retailers to accept any mode of payment from their customers. The financing option will be available to Crayon Motors’ dealers pan India.

Through this partnership, Crayon Motors will offer both retailers and consumers in-store payment solutions such as brand EMI, buy now pay later (BNPL), and cardless EMIs. Customers can get cash back and instant discounts at the POS in addition to financing.

3SC Solutions appoints Ozlem Ongun as Director—Middle East and Africa

Supply chain solutions company 3SC Solutions has appointed Ozlem Ongun as Director—Middle East and Africa.

Ozlem comes with a deep understanding of supply chain practices both globally and regionally. She has been working as a sales management, business development, and partner management expert since 1999 at brands like IBM, Motorola, Gartner, and DemandTex Consulting Group.

She has conducted business engagements with many top retailers and manufacturers in Turkey and the Middle East, working primarily with C-Level enterprises. She has also gained retail industry experience at Best Buy, where she managed the country-level entry of a global brand into the Turkish Market.

Sanfe appoints Amar Wadhwa as Board member

Sanfe, a D2C brand that addresses women’s grooming needs, has appointed Amar Wadhwa as its board member.

Amar comes with an experience of over 25+ years in brand strategy, advertising, consulting, media, and research. For the last 13 years, he has been running his own consulting company—CrystalEyes—which has worked with brands like Whirlpool, Daikin, Mercedes, Maruti, Michelin, Tech Mahindra, Carlsberg, and Sun Pharma, among many others. He has also worked with startups such as Infra.Market, Cashify, Mooving, Lectrix etc.

In his role, Amar will lead them on future growth strategy, new product development, team, and culture deployment, and sharpening Sanfe's marketing effort.

Prior to setting up CrystalEyes, he was working with organisations such as Accenture, IMRB, Publicis, and Leo Burnett. In his last role, Amar was the National Strategy Planning Director at Cheil (Samsung Group) for Southwest Asia and was responsible for the communication strategy that catapulted Samsung Mobiles from 2.5% to 15% market share in under two years.

Dr Ram Charan joins advisory board of Ratan Tata-backed Repos Energy

Business consultant, author, speaker and celebrated management expert Ram Charan has joined the advisory board of Repos, a Ratan Tata-backed doorstep fuel delivery startup. 

Dr Charan will advise the company on strategic direction, execution, global expansion, and corporate governance. He will counsel founders Chetan and Aditi Walunj and co-founder Aparajit Subramaniam as they create an ecosystem that facilitates the delivery of all forms of energy to the doorstep of end consumers.

He comes with over 40 years of distinguished service as a consultant to global organisations like Toyota, GE, Bank of America, Honeywell, Aditya Birla Group, Novartis, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo), and Matrix.

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WhatsApp banned over 3.7M accounts in November

In the month of November, 3,716,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned, said WhatsApp in its ‘User Safety Report’ for the month of November. Around 990,000 accounts were proactively banned before any reports from users. 

“Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. As captured in the latest monthly report, WhatsApp banned over 3.7 million accounts in the month of November,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson.

“This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform,” added the spokesperson.

Insurance Samadhan crosses insurance claim settlements worth Rs 80 Cr 

Insurance Samadhan, an insurance redressal platform, has announced the resolution of 14,500 grievances with a claim size of Rs 80 crore since its inception.

“It is our brand ideology to reform the insurance redressal landscape in India by providing convenient resolution of claim-oriented grievances to our customers," said Deepak Bhuvneshwari Uniyal, Co-founder and CEO of Insurance Samadhan. "Motivated by the recent accomplishment, Insurance Samadhan looks forward to serving more policyholders in prolific ways.”

Insurance Samadhan wants to build an ecosystem where any insurance policyholder can feel confident that there are platforms available that would service and resolve their claim-related grievances efficiently. It is planning to expand its enterprise in the Middle East and Africa in the next few quarters.

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