How AI/ML can help with sales; Better snacking with traditional superfoods

Hello,

Seasons change, but the IPO season is around the year. 

Next to list on the Indian bourses is AI startup Fractal Analysis, which is considering filing its papers by November this year to raise $500 million. According to Bloomberg, Fractal may seek a valuation of at least $3.5 billion in the share sale, and the listing could take place as soon as the first quarter of 2025.

In fact, November may also see Swiggy’s market debut. 

Speaking of IPOs, six domestic investment banks are under SEBI investigation for charging companies fees equivalent to 15% of the funds raised via IPO to help them list on the Indian stock markets. That's much higher than the standard fees of 1-3% in India.

Meanwhile, neobank Jupiter is in discussions to buy a 5% to 9.9% stake in SBM India, a subsidiary of the State Bank of Mauritius.

Now, imagine being so good at your job that you end up playing that role on the screen! That’s the reality for South Korean Olympic shooter Kim Yeji. 

After becoming an internet sensation during the Paris Olympics for her cool demeanour during a serious shooting competition, Yeji has landed her first acting job…as an assassin!

Oh, are you ready for TechSparks 2024? Because our speakers surely are!

YourStory’s annual flagship three-day event starts tomorrow in Bengaluru, and we are excited to unveil our coveted speaker lineup—you definitely don’t want to miss it!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Making sales effective using AI/ML
• Better snacking with traditional superfoods

Here’s your trivia for today: Which is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia?

Startup

Making sales effective using AI/ML

Vymo's strength lies in being a mobile-first SaaS platform, which helps sales teams on the go. It is built to support the entire sales lifecycle, from prospecting to renewals and provides targeted solutions for hiring, onboarding, sales management, and performance tracking. 

Key takeaways:

• The company began its journey in Bengaluru as a lead management tool for sellers and initially serviced across verticals. Its AI and ML tools help build playbooks for sales teams, providing intelligent insight through nudges. 
• The SaaS startup has over 350,000 users across more than 70 financial institutions. Its operations span India, Asia, and the US.
• Vymo has raised over $45 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Emergence Capital, and Bertelsmann India Investments. The capital has supported Vymo's expansion efforts, product development, and market penetration.

Funding Alert

Startup: M2P Fintech

Amount: Rs 850 Cr

Round: Series D

Startup: Nurix AI

Amount: $27.5M

Round: Seed-Series A

Startup: Atlys

Amount: $20M

Round: Series B

Woman Entrepreneur

Better snacking with traditional superfoods

After moving back to her hometown of Malda, West Bengal, during the pandemic, Divya Arora Musaddi quit her job to start Heka Bites, a snack brand, in December 2021.

“I travelled through different regions to find out what type of products people prefer. For example, jowar, makhana and others were age-old crops rooted to cultures, and we were forgetting them,” she says. 

Health first:

• Heka Bites offers 20 SKUs that include snacks, trail mixes, and nut mixes. There are also raw and unprocessed seeds and nuts like pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, and makhana.
• The venture started with three women employees and has now grown to an all-women team of 35, employed through a chain of referrals.
• Heka Bites uses a mix of performance marketing and awareness campaigns to popularise the brand to its target audience, which comprises mainly young working professionals and women looking for healthier snacking alternatives for their children.

News & updates

• UPI: India is in talks with countries in Africa and South America to help them build a digital payments system using UPI as a blueprint and expects two launches by early 2027. NPCI International Payments Ltd is in talks with “several countries” and is closing in on an agreement with one of them.
• Store: GitHub will soon allow enterprise cloud customers to store their code data in the EU, as part of a growing push in the tech world to meet regulatory requirements and customer expectations around data protection, particularly where sensitive information might be at play.
• Stance: JPMorgan is bullish on India and Japan within Asia but is also keen to allocate resources towards Southeast Asia, which is benefiting from the China Plus One strategy. JPMorgan expects its commercial banking business to grow as much as 30% in India over the next few years.

Which is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia?

Answer: Laos. It is surrounded by Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

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