Startup news and updates: daily roundup (August 9, 2023)
YourStory presents the daily news roundup from the Indian startup ecosystem and beyond. Here's the roundup for Wednesday, August 9, 2023.
Funding news
All Is Well raised $250K from Bharat Founders Fund, a group of angel investors
All Is Well, an AI-enabled integrated fitness tech platform, raised $250,000 from Bharat Founders Fund and a group of prominent angel investors, including Shantanu Deshpande (Founder and CEO, ), Abhishek Banerjee (Bollywood actor and entrepreneur), Pradeep Parameswaran (RGM APAC, Uber Mobility), Vijay Aggarwal (ex-CTO, and ), Aarti Gill (Co-founder, ), Sumit Jain (CEO, Graphy, and Co-founder, ), and others.
The company will use the funds to encompass new sports and integrate wearable technology into its existing AI-based digital product, further elevating its capabilities.
It will also file international patents for some of its IPs in the coming months, including All Is Well Fitness Score (AFS)—an intuitive 3D fitness score, like a CIBIL score, for comparing and tracking overall sport-specific fitness.
Founded in October 2022 by Vaibhav Tandon and Aparna Popat, All Is Well aims to address the underperformance of four million competitive sportspeople in India due to fitness issues, injuries, stress, and coaches lacking sport-science expertise.
The app provides AI-driven insights and personalised physical, nutrition, and mental training techniques, used by top cricketers and Olympic medalists.
D2C Wellness startup What’s Up Wellness raises seed funding of Rs 14.4 Cr
, a Gurugram-headquartered digital-first wellness brand, has secured Rs 14.40 Cr in a seed funding round led by Unilever Ventures, the venture capital arm of FMCG major Unilever.
The round also saw participation from a few of What’s Up Wellness’ existing angel investors.
The startup will use the funds to ramp up its team, furthering growth and scaling efforts, and most importantly, the development of an array of new products aimed at solving all the major pain points faced by users with respect to their wellness needs.
Founded by Sayantani Mandal and Vaibhav Makhija in May 2021, What's Up Wellness offers various types of gummy supplements. To date, the company has served more than 2.5 lakh users and sold more than four lakh packs of gummies across India.
Other news
ONDC clocks the first network payment transaction via Nodepay using NBBL
Plotch.ai announced that its payment solution Nodepay for network payments has gone live.
Through Nodepay, a buyer or seller app can pay another network participant in ONDC seamlessly through a payment switch. Also, Nodepay will give detailed reconciliation to network participants so they can validate the payments easily.
Later, Nodepay will also enable payments to sellers, which will help build trust from smaller merchants and retailers as they will receive payments in almost real-time. It will support payments in multiple domains of ONDC, including retail, logistics, fintech, and mobility.
Dallas Venture Capital (DVC) strengthens its advisory team with multiple appointments
(DVC), a cross-border venture capital firm, announced key additions to its team of advisors.
The team will play a pivotal role in expanding the company's value propositions at a global scale, focusing mainly on early and growth-stage companies in cloud infrastructure, AI/ML, mobile, XR, and other emerging technologies.
The team of advisors includes Dr Ambica Rajagopal (a pioneer in Applied AI, Analytics, and Data Science), Rama Vedashree (who has over 35 years of experience in the technology space), and Jayant Patwardhan, (with over 34 years of expertise in technology and management space, including 25 years in the financial services industry).
Protean partnered with PayNearby to democratise credit through ONDC
Protean eGov Technologies has partnered with to make credit services more accessible and affordable for Indians leveraging the ONDC network.
In this partnership, Protean will serve as an ONDC technology service provider that facilitates the availability of credit for last-mile borrowers across the country through PayNearby’s distribution-as-a-service (DaaS) network.
By making this service available through more than 12 lakh active PayNearby outlets, the partnership aims to broad-base credit access for India and Bharat. Smart data modelling and Account Aggregators (AA) will ensure credit extension to new-to-credit underserved citizens, driving breakthroughs in the way India and Bharat lend.
Protean will also aggregate multiple loan service providers (LSPs) onto a single platform, thereby giving citizens and businesses the convenience of choice and affordability.
Okta enters Indian market with new offices, innovation centre
Independent identity provider has opened a new office in India to drive secure digital transformation across Asia-Pacific and customer support.
The new office will enable Okta to work closely with Indian policymakers and educational institutions to deliver better customer value and play a bigger role in developing cybersecurity talent in the country.
Okta will also be partaking in more large deployments, and developing integrations that are more tailored to Indian enterprises’ needs.
Okta has already made early inroads into the country through its VC arm Okta Ventures, which invested in Bureau ID—an AI-powered identity decisioning platform provider. Bureau ID counts Indian household names like Bajaj Finserv, IIFL, Rapido, Kreditbee, Mahindra Finance, and SBM Bank as customers.
ChistaDATA appoints Mukund Seetharaman as COO
has appointed Mukund Seetharaman as its Chief Operating Officer (COO). Seetharaman's leadership will be instrumental in propelling ChistaDATA's growth and solidifying its position as a pioneer in real-time analytics.
With over 25 years of industry experience in managing businesses across global markets, Seetharaman will be responsible for leading the company’s strategic initiatives, driving its global sales operations, and establishing critical partnerships. His expertise in leading global teams, securing significant deals in the cloud domain, and scaling practices into prosperous ventures uniquely positions him to contribute significantly to ChistaDATA's growth and success.
PureLink GmbH partners with Alphatec
Germany-based has partnered with Alphatec in India to offer cutting-edge AV solutions, catering to the increasing demand for versatile connectivity options in modern workspaces and hybrid working environments.
Founded in 2006, PureLink GmbH develops, manufactures, and markets a wide range of AV solutions. Its portfolio includes cutting-edge solutions for video conferencing, modern workspace connectivity, and USB-C technology.
The company serves customers in more than 85 countries, with a product range encompassing 3,000 SKUs of ProAV products, including the PureInstall series for ProAV and IT connectivity, FiberX for active optical cables, PureTools for ProAV signal management, Vuelogic for workspace and video collaboration, and Mediahub for workspace connectivity.
WhatsApp new feature- screen sharing
WhatsApp announces screen sharing feature for video calls
WhatsApp users can now share their screens during a video call, Mark Zuckerberg announced.
Screen sharing allows users to share a live view of their screen during a call, whether they are sharing documents for work, browsing photos with family, planning a holiday or shopping online with friends, or just helping grandparents with technical support. Users can initiate screen sharing by clicking the share icon and choosing to share a specific application or the entire screen.
For a wider and more immersive viewing and sharing experience on your phone, users can now enjoy video calls in landscape mode.
Flipkart launches first grocery fulfilment centre in Ludhiana
today inaugurated its first grocery fulfilment centre in Ludhiana, Punjab. The new fulfilment centre will further expand Flipkart’s supply chain network and enable doorstep delivery of groceries across Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.
The centre will create nearly 800 direct and indirect job opportunities and enable pan-India market access to thousands of local sellers, MSMEs, and small farmers in the region.
The centre will offer customers a wide variety of regional products across several categories, including household supplies, staples, tea, snacks and beverages, confectionery, personal care, local products, and more.
It will cater to the grocery needs of more than 600 pin codes across several cities and towns, including Amritsar, Ambala, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Mandi, Shimla, and many more.
RealX announces the completion of its first commercial transaction
, a platform for fractional ownership of properties held as digital asset tokens, completed its first commercial transaction that recorded property co-ownership on blockchain and token holders issued property tokens after the due registration process of a property.
The current product is an extension of the previous one, but with blockchain benefits, smaller investments and easier transferability and customer control. It now offers blockchain-based Property Tokens (NFTs), which will give the holders of the tokens direct and proportionate beneficial ownership of the property. The property tokens will represent a proportionate direct 'Right to Registered Co-Ownership' (RRO).
ASCI broadens the definition of celebrities in its code
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has updated the definition of celebrities in its code to include social media influencers having a following of 500,000 or more.
The ASCI Code has a specific guideline for celebrities which requires advertisements featuring celebrities to not violate the ASCI Code, and for celebrities to be familiar with the code in letter and spirit. Testimonials of celebrities must reflect their genuine, recent opinion and must be based on adequate information or experience about the product or service being advertised.
The guidelines mandate that celebrities conduct due diligence to ensure that claims featured in the advertisements can be objectively verified and substantiated. Celebrities, when called upon, need to produce evidence of due diligence. Alternatively, the advertiser should have developed the advertisement following ASCI’s advertising advice.
Edited by Suman Singh
