Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Sharechat acquires Elanic to enter the growing social commerce space

  • Indian social media startup Sharechat has acquired Elanic, which is a social marketplace for people to buy and sell fashion products.
  • As a part of the acquisition, the Elanic team will be joining Sharechat and the founders will be taking leadership roles at Indian social media startup.
  • With this acquisition, Sharechat will be looking to enter the Indian social commerce space, which has the potential to be a $100 billion market.
  • The rise of first-time internet users coming from the rural and tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India have been driving the Indian social commerce market.
  • Sharechat is looking to cash in on the opportunity by leveraging its base of 60 million users and coupling it with the insights and expertise of Elanic, which has been working in the social commerce space and already has more than 50,000 sellers and offers over 1 million types of products.
  • However, Sharechat will have to compete with already established players like Meesho, Glowroad and Shop101.
  • The news comes just weeks after Sharechat launched its fantasy gaming platform called Jeet11.
  • Founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan, and Bhanu Singh in 2015, Sharechat is a social media platform that enables the users to discover and share content in 15 Indian languages.
  • Sharechat has already raised more than $200 million from investors like Twitter, Shunwei Capital and SAIF Partners.

Amazon is expected to foray into the Indian food delivery market

  • According to a recent Techcrunch report, Amazon is gearing up to enter the Indian food delivery market.
  • If the report is to be believed, we can expect Amazon to launch its food delivery business in the coming weeks.
  • This service could be a part of Amazon Prime Now or Amazon Fresh, which is Amazon’s online grocery delivery platform.
  • There has been a buzz in the media about Amazon launching its food delivery service for a while.
  • According to the sources quoted in the Techcrunch report, Amazon has already been doing trial runs of its delivery service in Bangalore, in partnership with select restaurants.
  • This is big news for the Indian food delivery market, as it comes at a time when Zomato has recently acquired Uber Eats and the online food delivery market is dominated by Swiggy and Zomato.
  • Just as both the foodtech unicorns might have been looking to cut back on discounts and started to focus on profitability, here comes Amazon.
  • Since Indian buyers are highly price-sensitive and have the tendency to switch platforms. We can again expect deep discounting on the part of the foodtech startup in a bid to keep their customers.
  • While both Zomato and Swiggy combined have raised more than $2.5 billion and they can probably continue to afford to give discounts to their users, how long will the investors continue to pour in money without any prospect of these companies becoming profitable?

Drivezy looks toward Japan and the US to raise its IPO

  • Self-drive car rental startup Drivezy is looking towards Japan and the US as it considers launching its IPO.
  • Ankur Sengupta, who is heading Drivezy’s business development, had told the Mint that the reason the company is considering going public in Japan or the US is mainly because all of its investors are from these countries.
  • He also added that Indian laws do not allow for loss-making companies to go public in the country.
  • Indian startups rarely go for an IPO and then these startups skipping India and choosing foreign markets might not bode well for the Indian markets.
  • However, this is not new, considering prominent Indian companies like MakeMyTrip and SaaS-based startup Kaleyra, have chosen Nasdaq and NYSE for their IPOs.
  • As Indian startups like OYO, Paytm, Ola, Freshworks and Urban Ladder look to raise their IPOs, the government might want to provide incentives to these startups so they can start considering India as a lucrative option.
  • Founded by Ashwarya Singh, Vasant Verma, Abhishek Mahajan, Hemant Kumar Sah, and Amit Sahu in 2015, Drivezy has a fleet of 4,000 cars and 15,000 bikes operating across 11 Indian cities.

OYO’s Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal becomes the World’s Second Youngest Self Made Billionaire

  • According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, with an estimated wealth of $1.1 billion, Ritesh Agarwal becomes the World’s second youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 26.
  • He shares the title with Kylie Jenner, who is younger than Ritesh by four years and has an estimated wealth of $1.1 billion as well. She is a famous TV personality and the founder and owner of Kylie Cosmetics.
  • While OYO has been going through troubled times, Ritesh continues to be an inspiration for Indian entrepreneurs who dream of making it big.
  • In spite of OYO’s mounting losses, rampant firings, and allegations of malpractices, Ritesh received the much needed morale boost when US President Donald Trump praised the young entrepreneur, when he met him on his latest trip to India.

PayPal is expected to launch UPI-based payments service in India

  • After operating in India for over two years, global digital payments platform PayPal is set to launch UPI-based payments service in India, according to a report by Business Standard.
  • At the moment, PayPal is only providing P2M (peer to merchant) transactions in India.
  • With the launch of this service, PayPal will also be expanding into P2P (Peer to Peer) transactions.
  • However, Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe already dominating the UPI-based payments space here in India, and so PayPal is going to be fighting an uphill battle.
  • What is more, PayPal will be facing stiff competition from another late entrant in the UPI-based payments market, Reliance Jio.
  • If PayPal launches its UPI-based payments service, we can expect it to partner with more Indian platforms to expand its presence by offering the customers the option of paying with PayPal.
  • Now I’m not saying that there isn’t room for growth in this market – like I said earlier in this video, India is going through a transition right now, and people from tier 2 and tier 3 towns get online for the first time every single day. However, in order to win these new internet users over.
  • PayPal will need to offer incentives that are more attractive that what is already on offer from its competitors.
  • It will have to find innovative ways to change the consumer behavior.

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