BUSINESS
SoftBank's Rajeev Misra to step aside from main roles to build and run a new fund
Misra's move to step away from main roles at SoftBank comes six months after the Japanese conglomerate's chief operating officer Marcelo Claure resigned due to disputes over compensation. More importantly, it comes at a time when many of the Japanese investment conglomerate's bets turned sour with technology valuations plunging across the globe over the last six months.
BUSINESS
Allen sues 20 former educators for 'breach of contract'
More than 40 educators who had quit to join Unacademy were sent notices by Allen, asking them to appear before an internal committee to review the "breach of the agreement", sources have told Moneycontrol
BUSINESS
Prosus-backed Good Glamm Group restructures business; to expand global ops
The consolidation will help the company to focus on structural synergies and will also drive 'cross-division revenue synergies,' The Good Glamm Group said. The consolidation is a move towards integrating its 11 acquisitions, the company said.
BUSINESS
Indian tech startups have potential to reach $200 billion revenue in next five years: Chiratae's Sethi
Sethi's comments come at a time when investors are getting more cautious about the revenue growth of startups and are advising their portfolio companies to conserve cash and focus on profitability
BUSINESS
Shattered Dreams, Humiliation, Fight For Survival: How laid-off startup employees are coping
Moneycontrol spoke to 15 people who were laid off in the past six months to understand their hopes and fears as they navigate the new normal. All the names of the laid-off employees have been changed in the story to protect their identities.
BUSINESS
Byju’s’ FY21 results may take few more weeks, Deloitte yet to sign off on them
The delay in filing comes at a time when the company has been firing people, with reports saying that India’s biggest education company is struggling with funds
BUSINESS
PE-VC funding rose 11% to $26.5 bn in first half of 2022: Venture Intelligence data
Industry players say funding slowdown impact will show up with a lag in the next couple of quarters; Inflation and mid-term elections in the US to determine the course of startup funding
BUSINESS
Early-stage VC investments in Q1FY23 up 30% on year even as growth-stage investments come under pressure
However, late-stage investments fell over 11% to $9.1 billion during the first quarter of 2022-23 from $10.3 billion a year earlier, according to data compiled by analytics firm Tracxn Technologies.
BUSINESS
Vedantu joins Byju's, Unacademy, PhysicsWallah to open offline centre
Vedantu joins a growing list of edtech unicorns to open offline tuition cetres. SoftBank-backed Unacademy, Byju's and Physicswallah have opened offline tuition classes across the country in a bid to capitalise on rising demand for offline coaching with the pandemic situation normalising.
BUSINESS
Swiggy to buy back ESOPs worth $23 million to incentivise 900 employees
Swiggy, which had raised $700 million in January this year, at a valuation of over $10 billion, had rolled out a two-year ESOP liquidity program worth $35-40 million in October last year.
BUSINESS
Exclusive: Deep cuts at Byju's: Over 2,500 employees laid off across Byju’s, Whitehat Junior and Toppr
Byju's has laid off full-time and contractual employees from Toppr, WhiteHat Jr, and its core team across sales and marketing, operations, content and design teams
BUSINESS
Profitability first, then IPO, so you don’t have to sell your story much to the public: Meesho’s Vidit Aatrey
Aatrey’s comments come at a time when high-growth tech companies, which got listed on the bourses last year, including unicorns such as Paytm, Zomato, and PolicyBazaar, among others have been dumped by public market investors as these firms have never managed to show a company-level profit.
BUSINESS
Tiger Global’s Series A bets in India up 3x as early-stage funding gathers momentum
The New York-based hedge fund company has participated in Series A rounds of 10 companies totalling $402.3 million in the first six months of 2022, against three companies for a total of $75.7 million in the whole of 2021, according to data by Tracxn Technologies.
BUSINESS
Byju’s-owned WhiteHat Jr lays off 280-300 employees
Sources have also told Moneycontrol that employees from the sales and marketing team are largely impacted by this round of layoffs.
BUSINESS
Share problems with your board; never hide issues with investors, Dream11’s Harsh Jain tells startups
Jain’s comments come at a time when a few startup founders in India and Southeast Asia including founders of some of the region’s largest unicorns, have had skirmishes with their board members, owing to multiple issues right from sexual harassment claims to accounting irregularities.
BUSINESS
Tiger Global leads $25 million Series A round in Battery Smart
Battery Smart's fundraise comes a month after NITI Aayog published a draft policy for battery swapping, suggesting that swapping infrastructure and EV financing would continue to get government attention
BUSINESS
PhonePe's FY21 loss little changed even as revenues soar 85%
PhonePe reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 1,728 crore for FY21, against a consolidated loss of Rs 1,771 crore a year earlier.
BUSINESS
Edtech unicorn Vedantu's loss widens four times in FY21 as employee expenses soar
The edtech company, which got valued at over a billion dollars in September last year, reported a fourfold increase in expenses to Rs 744 crore for FY21 from Rs 186 crore a year earlier, as employee benefit expenses rose to Rs 408 crore in FY21 from Rs 88 crore in FY20
BUSINESS
Poaching and coaching in Kota: Race for $500 million education hub heats up
As the pandemic recedes, competition between education companies in Kota is a lot more fierce than among the students as edtech startups look to hire teachers for their offline enterprises.
BUSINESS
Sequoia extends Surge’s seed funding range to as much as $3 million
Sequoia Capital India’s move of extending its seed funding ceiling suggests a rising appetite for early-stage startups in India. It also comes at a time when many global VC firms, including Sequoia, have raised their largest-ever funds for Indian startups and with funding at later stages slowing down more than in early stages, competition among VCs will be fierce at early-stage rounds, given that they have a lot of dry powder.
BUSINESS
Ola, Razorpay backer Matrix Partners to raise $450 mn in new India-focused fund
VC firms have seen their Indian tech portfolio companies growing exponentially in terms of valuation over the last decade, thanks to the acceleration of digital adoption and rising consumer incomes.
BUSINESS
Sales automation firm LeadSquared joins unicorn club with $153 million funding from WestBridge
The company becomes India's 103rd unicorn, follows PhysicsWallah and Purplle to become the third startup to be valued at a billion dollars or more in June
BUSINESS
Dailyhunt taps into Middle East’s $5 billion news aggregation market, expands operations to six new countries
VerSe Innovation, which runs Dailyhunt, has appointed media veteran Shekhar Iyer as its Director and General Manager for Middle East and North Africa
BUSINESS
Zilingo's shareholders await board's decision as meeting ends inconclusive
The Board did not conduct any voting today on any of the proposals, and the directors said that the Board will meet again after considering the management buyout offer and liquidation of the company.
