Dunzo's dark times continue; DynamoFL raises $15.1M in Series A round

Hello,

Is the future electric?

It would seem so if you look at Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) maker VinFast's scintillating market debut. The company's shares soared after its recent US trading debut, taking its market value past some of the world’s largest automakers, including Ford, GM, BMW, and Volkswagen. 

However, industry watchers are being cautiously optimistic. Several EV makers that saw major stock market debuts have since seen their shares plummet in the past few years.

Closer home, Mahindra & Mahindra expects EV production at its upcoming plant in Chakan, Maharashtra, to hit a peak production mark of two lakh units per annum between 2027 and 2029. The company estimates EVs will account for 30% of the overall volumes by 2030.

In other news, Indian Bank has set up 10 startup cells across different centres in the country to serve its specialised banking requirements. It has set up cells in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kanpur, and Mumbai.

ICYMI: The rich are as worried about finances as the rest of us, apparently.

In a survey of over 1,000 objectively wealthy Americans—defined in this case as making at least $175,000 a year—about a quarter told Bloomberg they were either “very poor,” “poor,” or “getting by but things are tight.” 

In fact, only half described themselves as just “comfortable.”

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Dunzo's dark times continue
• DynamoFL raises $15.1M in Series A round
• Ledure carving a space in lighting industry

Here’s your trivia for today: Before being known as PayPal, the payments company went by what name?

Ecommerce

Dunzo's dark times continue

Employee issues at Dunzo's dark stores escalated after three more units in Bengaluru went offline on Wednesday as staff refused to work until their July salaries are paid, two sources close to the development said on condition of anonymity.  

YourStory reported on Tuesday that Dunzo's dark stores in Koramangala and ITI Layout had gone offline temporarily following employee issues.

Closed for business:

• Dunzo's dark stores in Indiranagar, Richmond Town, and HSR Layout temporarily stopped servicing customers on Wednesday, taking the total number of stores currently offline in Bengaluru to five. 
• The company’s management has not yet given a date by when salaries will be paid but has verbally promised to pay them soon, a source added.
• While its consumer app shows the Richmond Town store as temporarily unavailable as of Wednesday afternoon, orders from the Indiranagar and HSR Layout stores are being fulfilled by partner store MK Retail.

Funding

DynamoFL raises $15.1M in Series A round

DynamoFL, the San Francisco-headquartered software startup focused on large language models (LLM), has raised $15.1 million in a Series A funding round, as it looks to scale up its team of machine learning scientists and privacy experts in India. The funding round was co-led by Nexus Venture Partners and Canapi Ventures. 

Key Takeaways:

• It also saw participation from Formus Capital, Soma Capital, and angel investors. Prior to this round, DynamoFL had raised $4.2 million in a seed round last year.
• Founded in 2021 by two MIT graduates Vaikkunth Mugunthan and Christian Lau, DynamoFL claims its flagship technology allows customers to safely train LLM on sensitive internal data.
• Its end-to-end suite—Privacy Evaluation Suite, Differential Privacy, and Federated Learning modules—helps organisations implement enterprise-grade, private, and secure in-house generative AI (GenAI) solutions at lower costs.

SMB

Ledure carving a space in lighting industry

Seeing an increasing demand for LED lights in India, Ledure Lighting Ltd., a Delhi-based lighting solutions provider, made a strategic move to start its own brand in 2015. 

The journey began with Ankit Gupta initiating the OEM business in 2011. He was later joined by his friends Vaibhav Bansal and Umang Aggarwal. Subsequently, the collective decision to establish their own brand took shape, leading to Pranav Aggarwal's joining Ledure Lightings. 

Lights on:

• Initially functioning as an OEM for Havells and Surya Roshni, it shifted gears by discontinuing its OEM operations in 2014. 
• Catering to residential, commercial, and industrial uses, Ledure’s revenue stood at Rs 162 crore in FY23. It plans to launch an innovative product line next financial year—LED light with an in-built air purifier.
• Beginning with a modest 2000-square-foot facility and a team of 10 people in 2015, Ledure has expanded its operations to a 60,000-square-foot area, with a central unit in Noida and four additional depots across Kolkata, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Patna.

News & updates

• Big win: Coinbase Global said it secured approval to offer cryptocurrency futures to US retail customers, scoring a major regulatory win even as it battles a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
• Recession: The Dutch economy has entered a recession as it shrank 0.3% on a quarterly basis in the second quarter, a first estimate published by Statistics Netherlands on Wednesday showed.
• No deal: Intel has officially terminated its acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, the Israeli chipmaking company it announced its intention to buy for $5.4 billion in February 2022.

Before being known as PayPal, the company went by what name?

Answer: Confinity. 

Founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, payment platform PayPal began its journey as a Palm Pilot cryptography company called Confinity—named after a combination of the words "confidence" and "infinity."

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