Startup news and updates: Daily roundup (October 6, 2023)

Amazon India creates more than 100,000 seasonal job opportunities ahead of its Great Indian Festival

AmazonIndia announced that it has created more than 100,000 seasonal job opportunities across its operations network, for the Indian festive season. These opportunities include direct and indirect jobs across India in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, among others. 

Ahead of Amazon’s ‘Great Indian Festival’ starting on October 8, 2023, the company has boarded the majority of the new hires into its existing network, where they will pick, pack, ship, and deliver customer orders. This initiative is designed to enhance the overall customer experience as Amazon expands its presence throughout the country.

Amazon India has also signed an MoU with India Post and collaborated with Indian Railways to enhance delivery efficiency.

SBI Foundation and Villgro collaborate to support entrepreneurship, climate resilience in agriculture

SBI Foundation, through its flagship initiative SBIF LEAP (Livelihood and Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program), has introduced the Innovators for Bharat initiative. This initiative aims to support impactful incubators that assist startups in addressing crucial developmental challenges in India. 

Recently, the SBI Foundationpartnered with Villgro, a prominent social enterprise incubator, for the programme titled 'Innovators For Bharat: Climate Resilient Agricultural Livelihoods'. The objective of this initiative is to offer incubation support to 15 promising startups, with a focus on positively influencing agricultural livelihoods, mitigating agriculture's climate impact, and enhancing climate resilience for smallholder farmers.

The programme aims to boost sustainable growth for agriculture startups by offering them equity seed funding, grant capital, and incubation support. This includes mentoring for business scaling, field pilot opportunities, rural distribution network access, and technical assistance for carbon projects. 

The programme is open for startups in the early MVP stage or more mature enterprises in the growth stage.

Navi MF gains over one million customers since launch on Navi App

Navi Mutual Fund today announced that it had crossed the milestone of acquiring 1 million customers on the Navi App in July 2023. This milestone was reached within a short span of 9 months since the launch of mutual fund investments on the Navi App in November 2022. 

It gained 500k+ customers in August and September 2023, with a 78% growth in Assets Under Management (AUM) during the same period. 

Co-founded by Sachin Bansal and Ankit Agarwal, Navi is a customer-centric financial firm based in Bangalore. Employing a mobile-first approach and strong in-house technology, Navi offers services in lending, insurance, and asset management, ensuring complete control over the customer experience.

Truecaller acquires fraud detection service TrustCheckr

Truecaller, the leading global communications platform, has acquired Bengaluru-based Unoideo Technologies Pvt Ltd, the developer of TrustCheckr. TrustCheckr is a service that assist businesses in verifying customer information and detecting fraud risks through a SaaS platform utilizing phone numbers and digital signals.

The current offerings of TrustCheckr have generated interest across diverse industries, such as banks, fintech firms, and various financial institutions. The company in its press release stated the acquisition will notably support Truecaller's recently launched risk intelligence tool for enterprise.

MathWorks and Altigreen partner to transform last-mile delivery in India with sustainable electric 3Ws

Indian EV pioneer Altigreen Propulsion Labs has collaborated with MathWorks to accelerate the development of their flagship electric three-wheeler, NEEV. Addressing India's 6 million+ petrol and diesel three-wheelers issue, Altigreen's "Made in India, made for India" electric three-wheelers are competitively priced, targeting small businesses and fleet operators.

Altigreen joined MathWorks Startup Program, accessing MATLAB, Simulink, and 120+ vertical applications to build and scale their prototypes cost-effectively. They graduated from the program and now use Model-Based Design, leveraging real-world test data for iterative design and reducing development time.

Shobhit Shrivastava joins CARS24 as senior director of engineering

Autotech firm Cars24 today has announced the appointment of Shobhit Shrivastava as the Senior Director of Engineering. In this new role, Shobhit will lead the engineering team, overseeing the AU tech initiative and fostering collaboration with business, growth, and product teams.

With nearly two decades of experience, Shobhit boasts a successful track record of unifying diverse data sources into cohesive platforms and collaborating across domains to elevate user experiences. He has served at global organisations such as Amazon, Autodesk, Smarsh, Autonomy, and Dassault Systèmes.

CARS24 has also inaugurated its second Research and Development Centre (R&D) in Bengaluru today.

Marut Singh, Chief Technology Officer at CARS24, commented, "Our second R&D centre underscores our strong commitment to advancing the global pre-owned car market. This centre plays a pivotal role in achieving our growth objectives.”

(The copy will be updated with news throughout the day)