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Scaler acquires online learning platform AppliedRoots for $50 million
Upskilling startups Scaler, has acquired an online learning platform AppliedRoots for $50 million to strengthen its Data Science, AI and ML offering. This is the third acquisition by the edstartup after the buyout of Coding Minutes and Coding Elements last year.
Post the deal, all the six co-founders will join Scaler and lead varied projects. A vast majority of the team of AppliedRoots will work with the Scaler DS and ML business vertical.
Some team members will also be building on the content vertical – Scaler Topics – a technopedia and curated interactive space for aspiring software professionals to learn and master the right tech skills. The AppliedRoots team will also be spearheading some new initiatives and programs that are planned for later in the year, the firm said in a statement.
The move comes after Scaler raised Series B funding of $55 million from Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global, and Lightrock India. The company claims to have seen significant growth over the last few years and currently has over 1000 employees, 1000 mentors and teaching assistants, and a learner base of more than 15,000 software engineers on its platform.
Digital banking startup Jupiter clocks ESOP transactions worth $4 million
Digital banking and financial services startup Jupiter has facilitated Employee Stock Options (ESOPs) for 21 of its employees former and current employees. The two liquidity transactions for the same have totaled up to approximately $4 million.
The liquidity events come in less than two months after the company announced the closure of its $86 million Series C funding round, which was led by a variety of marquee investors such as Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, US-based venture fund QED Investors along with its existing backer Matrix Partners India.
Jupiter, which was in stealth mode till October 2021, has onboarded nearly 8,00,000 users since its inception in 2019 and has partnered with the Federal Bank to provide bank accounts to its customers.
Solv ties-up with Shopmatic to help digitize MSMEs
Solv, a B2B marketplace for small business, has partnered with international ecommerce enabler Shopmatic to help MSMEs in India derive the best value by digitizing their sourcing and distribution workflows.
Shopmatic merchants running kirana shops, food stores, super-markets, restaurants, catering businesses, bakeries, cafes and selling home care and personal care products, will now be able to source supplies from thousands of trusted suppliers on Solv’s platform, the firm said.
In the first phase of the launch, Solv will be offering its services to MSMEs on Shopmatic’s platform in FMCG & HoReCa categories across 6 cities in India, in addition to extending the on-demand Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) financing service to this base, it added.
With this partnership, over 150,000 verified MSMEs on the Solv marketplace, will leverage Shopmatic’s expertise to expand their digital footprint to retail customers via Webstores, Social Selling, Chat Selling, Marketplace Selling available on the Shopmatic platform.
Teradata partners with Conneqt to expand reach
Teradata, a multi-cloud data platform for enterprise analytics, has announced a partnership with digital IT and business process management firm Conneqt to help companies accelerate their digital transformation journey.
Through this collaboration, Conneqt can resell Teradata services, handle pre-sales, sales and post-sales implementation tasks with Teradata’s support, the company said in a statement.
The joint capabilities of Teradata and Conneqt address a growing need for customer lifecycle solutions in India to manage business processes with increased agility resulting in enhanced enterprise outcomes, the firm added.
Daimler Truck launches global innovation centre in Bengaluru
German commercial vehicle maker Daimler Truck has announced the launch of its global innovation centre in Bengaluru. The Daimler Truck Innovation Center India (DTICI) aims at tapping into India’s engineering and IT talent to develop innovative products both locally and globally, it said in a statement.
DTICI, which is the largest such facility of the company outside Germany, will serve as the backbone for all innovations and technology developments for Daimler Truck globally, including Mercedes-Benz Trucks, Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Fuso, Bharat Benz, and EvoBus GmbH, it said.
DTICI will focus on research, product engineering and IT capabilities to empower all business units and brands of Daimler Truck worldwide, the company stated.
H&M Home comes to India, debuts with home decor section
H&M HOME has launched in India on March 3with their Spring 2022 collection. It will be available in both online and offline modes in India. Furthermore, the H&M HOME range will soon be offered in a shop-in-shop concept. It has launched in India with concepts which are divided into the different rooms of the home: living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and kid’s room.
“We are very excited to finally launch in India. At H&M HOME, we are driven by our desire to make great design available to everyone in a sustainable way and offer products that enable people to be inspired and to express their own personal style in their homes. We simply can’t wait to introduce Indian interior lovers to the world of H&M HOME”, says Evelina Kravaev-Söderberg, Head of Design and Creative, H&M HOME.
GARI lists on cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX
Chingari’s social crypto token GARI has announced its listing on cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX. With this, Gari will allow over 75 lakh users with another avenue to access one of the largest projects on the Solana blockchain, the company stated.
“This has come as a giant leap towards our goal of financially empowering creators on our short video app, Chingari, who have largely been ignored by the global short app platforms,” said Sumit Ghosh, CEO and co-founder Chingari.
India’s health food market to touch $30 billion in size by 2026: Avendus Capital Report
India’s health food market will be $30 billion in market size in the next 5 years. The country is the fastest growing health food market expanding at 20 percent CAGR, which is 3x the global average and 1.5x India’s total packaged F&B sector, as per a report by Avendus Capital.
According to the study, there will be a 2x increase in per capita spending in health food by 2026 as India is experiencing a wave of health-conscious consumers influencing a structural shift in food preferences and purchase decisions towards healthy alternatives.
“At Avendus, we are very bullish about the prospects and the value creation opportunity for the health food space in India. The last decade saw the emergence of many health food brands that raised PE/VC funding. With such brands reaching adequate scale and demonstrating brand strength, we expect to see increased transaction activity and consolidation over the next 10 years,” said Abha Agarwal, executive director and co-head, consumer, financial institutions group (FIG) & business services, Avendus Capital.
Future of Work Technologies Market to reach $2.2 billion by 2025: Nasscom-Microsoft Report
The Future of Work Technologies Market is set to double in next four years to reach $2.2 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 19 percent, according to a report by Nasscom launched in partnership with Microsoft.
India’s future of work tech solutions market currently stands at $1.1 billion and has attracted $115 million in funding over the last 2 years, the findings showed. The spending in the sector has increased 57% YoY in 2021 with 1.6X rise in HR systems deployed by organizations, it added.
A majority of organisations have leveraged such solutions in the shift to remote work amid the pandemic. 92 percent of organizations believe future of work technology solutions have played a critical role in organisational resilience during the pandemic, according to the report. These tech solutions also enabled remote working for over 90 percent of workforce in tech industry in India within 2-3 weeks of second wave.
The findings in the report titled, “Technology Reshaping the Future of Work: India Perspective,” also highlighted that while 70 percent of organizations in tech industry in India have adopted a hybrid work model, 93 percent may do it even beyond the pandemic.
Paytm and Flipkart, the most talked-about consumer internet brands: Wizikey Report
Paytm and Flipkart are the most talked-about internet brands in India in 2022, as per a report by Wizikey. Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led fintech company Paytm which listed last year and has lost 60 percent of its valuation since then, got everyone’s attention and took the first spot.
The announcement of becoming the official acquiring partner for the government’s e-RUPI vouchers initiative, coupled with its partnership with Twitter to ramp up the support for its ‘Tips’ feature in India, also contributed.
Meanwhile, e-commerce giant Flipkart ranked second as it made quite buzz for its offers, discounts, especially drop in iPhone prices made quite a flash. Besides, Flipkart’s announcement of 45-minute grocery delivery was widely talked about, the report highlighted.
The payment gateway company BharatPe took the third spot after it grabbed the headlines due to Ashneer Grover (the former Managing Director of the company) recent controversies and the internal probe.
CRED occupied the fourth place, especially for reports about the company eyeing to raise $300 million at an aggressive valuation of over $6 billion. In the fifth rank is Zomato. The food tech company was in the limelight for its stocks and buzz around Zomato Financial Services Ltd.
Vikrant Gupta joins unicorn apna.co as Head of People
Jobs and professional networking platforms apna has announced the appointment of industry veteran Vikrant Gupta as its Head of People. In this role, Gupta will be providing strategic guidance, enablement, thought leadership, and operational rigour to the human resources and talent acquisition agenda at apna.
He will also help uphold the diversity and inclusion goals, assisting the brand in becoming a global employer partner as the platform scales further, the firm said in a statement.
Gupta will be working closely with Chief Business Officer, Manas Singh in driving the People function at the organization. His appointment is in line with apna’s efforts to build a world-class leadership team to accelerate business growth.
The company has also recently appointed Shantanu Preetam as Chief Technology Officer, Ronak Shah as the Head of Data Strategy, and Suresh Khemka as the Head of Platform Engineering and Infrastructure.
GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY & STARTUP NEWS
Amazon to shut its bookstores and other shops as its grocery chain expands
Amazon is planning to close all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-ups and shops carrying toys and home goods in the United States and United Kingdom, ending some of its longest-running retail experiments.
The news, which Reuters was first to report, marks a turning point for a company that began as an online bookseller and helped drive established rivals such as Borders to bankruptcy. Amazon said it would focus more on its grocery markets and a department store concept going forward.
Amazon will close its 4-star, pop-up and bookstore locations on various dates and notify customers via signage. Workers will receive severance or can receive help finding jobs at any company stores nearby, such as more than a dozen Amazon Fresh grocery locations it has announced, the retailer said.
Google tells employees in Bay Area and other US locations to return to offices in April
Google said it will end the voluntary work-from-home period and start having employees in the Bay Area and several other US locations return to the office starting the week of April 4.
“It’s been a long and challenging two years since the vast majority of our people started working from home,” wrote John Casey, Google’s vice president of global benefits in an email to employees that was viewed by CNBC.
“But the advances in prevention and treatment, the steady decline in cases that we continue to see, and the improved safety measures we have implemented across our Bay Area sites now mean we can officially begin the transition to the hybrid work week.” Casey said other offices in the U.S. and elsewhere will begin to return based on local conditions.
China’s Tencent to reduce transaction fees on WeChat payments for SMEs
Chinese social media giant Tencent Holdings will reduce transaction fees for small and medium-sized merchants using its WeChat payments system by 10 percent, Reuters reported. The reductions will apply beginning September1, 2021, and extend up to September 30, 2024, the company said.
In order to qualify for the reduction, merchants must meet classification standards for small and medium-sized businesses by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The company will also reduce fees on money withdrawals from users’ bank accounts, according to the statement.
Twitter expands crowdsourced fact check experiment ‘Birdwatch’
Twitter is expanding its crowdsourced fact-checking program by making notes on potentially misleading tweets visible to more people on Twitter, the company said in a blog post.
The social networking site launched the project called Birdwatch last year as a novel experiment that asked Twitter users to identify misleading tweets and write notes to provide information debunking the content, which would then be appended to the original tweet.
Like other social media platforms, Twitter has long been under pressure to do more to prevent false content from spreading among its 217 million daily users. The notes written by the 10,000 contributors in the Birdwatch pilot program have been kept on a separate website.
Now, a small group of randomized users on Twitter in the United States will be able to see Birdwatch notes directly on tweets and can rate the helpfulness of the information, Twitter said. Over time, Twitter said it aims to expand Birdwatch to additional users in more countries.
Ukraine to unveil NFTs to support military as crypto funding push continues
Ukraine will unveil plans for NFTs to support its armed forces, its vice-prime minister said, the latest move in Kyiv’s efforts to raise funds in crypto assets after Russia invaded the country last week.
“We will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon,” Mykhailo Fedorov said in a tweet, without giving any further details of the project. “Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the aggression.” Fedorov, also Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, has spearheaded Kyiv’s push to raise funds in cryptoassets.
Ukraine last week posted appeals on social media for donations of bitcoin and other digital tokens to support the country. As of Wednesday, it had raised crypto worth almost $43 million in around almost 67,000 donations, according to blockchain researcher Elliptic, according to a Reuters report.
UK asks Meta, Tik Tok to prevent access to RT
Britain’s culture minister said she had asked social media company Tik Tok and Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms if they could prevent access to Russian state-owned television network RT in Britain. Meta said on Monday it would restrict access to Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik on its platforms across the European Union.
Britain’s media regulator Ofcom said it was considering whether RT should retain its licence in the country, after it stepped up investigations into a channel the government has accused of being a tool of a Kremlin disinformation campaign.
In response, RT said it had long stopped expecting any legitimacy or reason in Britain’s attempts to curtail media freedoms. “Now it seems it has forgotten Brexit and is seeking to force influence over the rest of Europe too,” Anna Belkina, RT’s deputy editor in chief, told Reuters.
Amazon CEO pledges logistics, cybersecurity support for Ukraine
Amazon is using its logistics capability to get supplies to those in need and cybersecurity expertise to help governments and companies as part of its support for Ukraine, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said on Twitter.
“Amazon stands with the people of Ukraine, and will continue to help,” Jassy said, following Russia’s invasion that Moscow has called a “special operation.” Amazon, which earlier this week pledged to donate up to $10 million for humanitarian efforts, is the latest company to mobilize in offering aid.
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