Flipkart is wooing GenZ shoppers; Slice merges with North East Small Finance Bank

It’s time for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023!

Disney Star, which has exclusive broadcast and media rights for linear and digital platforms for the tournament, has roped in a record number of sponsors and advertisers. Will the World Cup 2023 help the company’s OTT platform Disney+Hotstar onboard more subscribers?

ICYMI: The World Cup 2023 is expected to boost several sectors in India. 

In other news, Alternative asset management firm Rockstud Capital and micro VC fund Artha Venture Fund have made a partial exit from Everest Fleet, a fleet management service provider to Uber India.

Uber invested $20 million in Everest Fleet in June this year, marking its first inorganic investment in India. Everest Fleet had said the funding would enable it to transition from a CNG-dominated fleet to one with both CNG and electric vehicles over the next five years. Uber plans on having 10,000 EVs in its fleet by 2026.

Oh, and here’s an infographic showing the world’s top exporters by country. No prizes for guessing that China tops the list. The country has been the largest exporter of goods in the world since 2009.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Flipkart is wooing GenZ shoppers 
• Slice’s new turnaround plan
• Sky’s the limit for India’s drone startups 

Here’s your trivia for today: Just-in-time manufacturing was pioneered by what Japanese automaker in the 1960s?

Ecommerce 

Flipkart is wooing GenZ shoppers

GenZ is the new target for fashion retailers. While Reliance Retail launched its first YOUSTA store in Hyderabad in August apart from retailing on its ecommerce app AJIO, ecommerce major Flipkart announced the launch of its app-in-app platform Spoyl.

In trend:

• Gen Z shoppers make up nearly a third of the online shopper base in India, according to a recent report by Bain & Company and ABFRL backed house of brands, TMRW.
• SPOYL, an app-in-app platform, crawls through close to 6,000 points of information–across social media handles, fashion portals, Pinterest, and others–to draw inspiration for new designs and products.
• While Flipkart did not comment on the exact number of people running SPOYL, the offering has a separate team with roles across business, tech, design, and others. 

<Funding Alert>

Startup: Bizongo

Amount: $50M

Round: Series E

Startup: DPDzero

Amount: $3.25M

Round: Seed

Startup: Cube Club 

Amount: $1.1M

Round: Seed

Fintech

Slice to merge with North East Small Finance Bank

Fintech unicorn Slice has received approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to merge with Guwahati-headquartered North East Small Finance Bank (NESFB), in which it had earlier held a 5% stake. 

This comes at a time when Slice is looking to pin a turnaround in its business post-RBI diktat preventing non-banks from offering credit lines via prepaid instruments such wallets and cards. 

Hit or miss:

• Rural focused-NESFB, which has 208 branches across the seven North East states along with West Bengal, will allow Slice to push its product offerings, including loans and co-branded credit cards, beyond its Tier 1 demography.
• The fintech startup recently terminated its partnership with SBM India to relaunch/power its own UPI-linked wallet, ‘Slice Mini’. 
• The fintech unicorn, which counts Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Blume Ventures, and EMVC among its backers, was last valued at about $1.5 billion. 

TechSparks 

Sky’s the limit for India’s drone startups 

Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder and CEO of Garuda Aerospace, believes drones can disrupt several multibillion-dollar segments and industries.

Progressive government policies and initiatives such as the Production Linked Incentive scheme have turbocharged the sector, Jayaprakash noted, during a discussion with Sai Kumar, Co-founder and CMO of Marut Drones, at TechSparks 2023

Rising:

• Government initiatives such as loans and subsidies for drones, alongside investment and support from major industry players like Adani and Reliance, indicate a promising trajectory for the drone industry, benefitting startups like Garuda and Marut.
• Drones have also found application in healthcare, project monitoring, industry 4.0, and logistics, evolving into a drone-as-a-service model within the sector.
• Jayaprakash emphasised the importance of strategic alliances and partnerships between fintech, AI, and drone companies to harness the immense potential of drone tech and position India as the global drone capital by 2030.

News & updates

• Google: Alphabet's Google on Wednesday launched Pixel 8 smartphones and a new smartwatch that integrates its artificial intelligence (AI) technology more deeply into the company's key consumer gadgets. The company has beefed up the Pixel line up with its latest mobile processor, Tensor G3, which brings several machine learning and generative AI models natively on the device.
• Rising costs:  To own a car in Singapore, a buyer must bid for a certificate that now costs $106,000, equivalent to four Toyota Camry Hybrids in the U.S., as a post-pandemic recovery has driven up the cost of the city-state's vehicle quota system to all-time highs.
• World Cup: The 2030 FIFA World Cup will be hosted by Morocco, Spain, and Portugal, the world governing body of soccer announced Wednesday, with the three opening matches to be played in South America.

Just-in-time manufacturing was pioneered by what Japanese automaker in the 1960s?

Answer: Toyota 

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