Online payment startups’ plans for growth; AI-powered health assistant

Hello,

There's a starman waiting in the sky…

Two crew members of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission—Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis—stepped out of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule Resilience to perform a spacewalk. 

The event marks a historic first for SpaceX and private space missions, where civilians, not astronauts, performed this unmatched feat.

ICYMI: Spacetech startup Pixxel recently bagged a historic NASA contract—a first for an Indian startup. 

The ambitions of India’s space sector are as big as the universe itself, and at the 15th edition of YourStory TechSparks 2024, ISRO Chairman Dr Sreedhara Panicker Somanath will unpack what’s bubbling in the domestic spacetech world. 

Back on Earth, humans and their companies are gearing up for the festive season. 

Meta is enhancing WhatsApp Business with new features like Meta Verified and customised messages, aiming to boost the engagement of small businesses with their customers. 

Amazon India, on the other hand, created over 1.10 lakh seasonal job opportunities across major Indian cities, with its workforce comprising thousands of women and nearly 1,900 persons with disabilities.

Oh, and how could we miss another Taylor Swift historic record?

The Fortnight singer took home seven trophies at MTV's Video Music Awards, tying her with Queen Beyonce for the most lifetime honours in the 40-year history of the video accolades.

And we were dancing, dancing, like we’re made of starlight!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Online payment startups’ plans for growth
• AI-powered health assistant
• Supporting women’s hormonal health

Here’s your trivia for today: Which fish attacks its prey with a stream of spit?

Fintech

Online payment startups’ plans for growth

A new trend is emerging among digital payment startups and payment companies—one that looks beyond the digital space into offline markets.

As physical retailers increasingly demand integrated payment solutions, companies like Razorpay and Infibeam Avenues, are responding by introducing hardware such as POS devices and soundboxes. The goal is to capture a larger share of the offline market, competing not only with established players but also with newer entrants. 

Charting growth plans:

• Retailers typically use two types of payment processing hardware: card machines, primarily provided by banks, and soundboxes—devices that provide audible transaction confirmations. Soundboxes have become a popular payment solution, particularly for small merchants.
• This offline push by payment firms is largely driven by growing demand from retailers looking to digitise their payment systems and offer additional services like EMIs and buy now pay later (BNPL).
• Beyond the offline market, some companies, including Razorpay and Cashfree Payments, are also looking to access international markets for additional revenues.

Funding Alert

Startup: Centricity

Amount: $20M

Round: Seed

Startup: Dharaksha Ecosolutions

Amount: Rs 24.8 Cr

Round: Seed

Startup: Apptile

Amount: $1.2M

Round: Additional

Startup

AI-powered health assistant

Several parts of India still lack quality healthcare and medical services. This disparity, according to entrepreneur Anuruddh Mishra, highlights the potential for technology to bridge the gap. 

Recognising the widespread gap in the healthcare system, Mishra started August AI in 2022. It is a health assistant chatbot that offers expert medical insights personalised to every user based on their health profile and history.

Accessible healthcare:

• August AI’s chatbot can be accessed by users by scanning the QR code or on their website. Once the chat opens on WhatsApp, users can ask health questions directly.
• Accuracy is crucial when it comes to healthcare, a challenge that August AI addresses through ensemble refinement—a method where multiple models or reasoning approaches are combined to improve accuracy or prediction outcomes to generate high quality outputs for health-related queries. 
• Besides a health assistant to general users, the startup follows a B2B model by catering to a major hospital chain operating out of Bengaluru, along with other prominent hospitals, telemed companies, and other institutions in the healthcare industry.

Woman Entrepreneur

Supporting women’s hormonal health

Paridhi Maheshwari grew up seeing her father, Ashish Maheshwari, build Balaxi, a pharmaceutical company, and conversations at home invariably centred around products and markets. 

Her experience in pharma and healthcare, learnings from her MBA programme, and her lessons from her journey with fitness, PCOS, and hormone health, led to Aurelle Health, a D2C nutraceuticals brand focused on women’s hormonal health.

Holistic health:

• Aurelle Health offers supplements to address four diverse issues: Grateful Gut, a PCOS probiotic; Tone it Down for weight management; Clear Canvas—a combination of vitamin C, Zinc, and Magnesium for skin health; and Main and Maintain—a supplement focused on tackling PCOS-related hair fall at its roots.
• The brand is also building an online community, where it has collaborated with doctors and nutritionists to offer advice on nutrition and lifestyle to help address PCOS and hormone health.
• Aurelle Health’s target audience is women of reproductive age—between the ages of 14 and 50 years. It was launched in August this year on its website.

News & updates

• Inflation: India's August retail inflation remained below the RBI’s target of 4% for the second consecutive month, but vegetable prices continued to soar, dampening hopes of a dovish stance in the next monetary policy meeting. Annual retail inflation was at 3.65% in August, higher than the revised 3.60% in July.
• Listing: The IPO of Bajaj Housing Finance Ltd was oversubscribed by over 60 times. It sought to raise $781 million in the nation’s biggest public offering of 2024 and attracted bids for about $39 billion on the last day of the sale on Wednesday. That’s more than 1% of India’s GDP for FY2024.
• AI boom: OpenAI is reportedly in talks with investors to raise $6.5 billion at a $150 billion pre-money valuation, according to Bloomberg. The new valuation is significantly higher than OpenAI’s previously reported valuation from earlier this year, $86 billion, and far higher than any other AI startup today.  

Which fish attacks its prey with a stream of spit?

Answer: Archerfish. Known as “spitting sharpshooters,” the archerfish can shoot down insects up to five feet (1.5 m) above the water by spitting a jet of water from its mouth.

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