Spinny completes ESOP buyback worth $12 million

Spinny, a pre-owned car retailing platform, announced the completion of a $12 million (approximately Rs 90 crore) ESOP buyback for its current and former employees on Tuesday. Spinny, which recently added former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar as a strategic investor, has facilitated the first ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) buyback. ESOP is an employee benefit plan that gives workers ownership interest in the company. “It is imperative to nurture a working culture that inspires each and every team member to do the best work and have a say in all internal…

Jumbotail raises $85 million in Series C round

Jumbotail, a business-to-business e-commerce startup that distributes groceries to mom-and-pop retailers, stated that it has secured a Series C investment of $85 million. The funding was led by Artal Asia Pte. Ltd., an affiliate of Invus, a global equity investment firm with over $10 billion of evergreen capital under management. The round was also attended by Ajax Capital, the family office of renowned FMCG entrepreneur Ajay Gupta. This Series C round included both primary and secondary investments, with early investors Nexus Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital participating in the secondary…

Mumbai Teens’ Startup Raises 100 Million

Zepto, a two-teenager-founded immediate grocery delivery business, has secured $100 million in a fundraising round led by Y Combinator, bringing its valuation to $570 million just five months after launching services in India’s brisk quick commerce industry. The startup’s latest fundraising comes 45 days after a prior capital round of $60 million at a valuation of $225 million, according to Aadit Palicha, co-founder and CEO, in an interview. In addition to Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, the current round included investments from new and previous backers such as Glade Brook Capital…

Autonomous technology startup bags funding from various companies

Flo Mobility, a vision-based autonomous technology company, has raised $400,000 in funding from DevX Venture Fund, Venture Garage Angels, Blume Founders Fund, and other prominent angel investors. Manesh Jain and Mohan Kumar founded Flo Mobility in 2019 with the goal of creating a platform that can bring autonomous capabilities to vehicles across industries and form factors. The startup claims to be deploying its stack on a variety of vehicles, including electric scooters, delivery bots, agri-weeders, surveillance bots, golf carts, and lawnmowers. Flo Mobility intends to use the funds raised to…

Woman complains she was virtually groped on Meta’s Horizon Worlds

Several weeks after the release of Meta’s Horizon Worlds, reports surfaced of a female beta tester alleging that she was groped on the virtual reality (VR) platform. The beta tester allegedly told Meta that she was groped by a stranger on Horizon Worlds, and that other people agreed with her. She also shared her experience on Facebook in the Horizon Worlds beta testing group. “Sexual harassment is no joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense,” The Verge quoted the…

Edtech startup Masai School acquires data analytics firm Prepleaf for $1 million

Masai School, an edtech and skilling startup based in Delhi, has paid $1 million for Prepleaf, an end-to-end placement preparation company specialising in Data Analytics. Prepleaf, founded in 2017 by IIT Kanpur alumni Ankit Agrawal, Amit Saharan, and Aman Singhal, provides 5-month Data Analytics courses. Masai will now offer courses in Data and Business Analytics in addition to Web Development and UI/UX Design, aiming to become India’s one-stop destination for outcome-based education, according to founder and CEO Prateek Shukla. The acquisition comes after the company announced an undisclosed funding round in October from Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and CRED founder Kunal Shah, as well as a Series A round earlier this year led…

Meta, CBSE partnership to enable 10 mn students embrace immersive tech

Meta (formerly Facebook) will expand its partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide a curriculum on digital safety and online well-being, as well as augmented reality (AR), to over 10 million students and 1 million educators in the country over the next three years. Furthermore, in accordance with the government’s vision of universalizing education, Meta and CBSE will democratise the high school curriculum by providing students with online access to quality educational content via modules that will be made available on CBSE’s website. Meta founder and…

MIT Quantum covid sensor: Faster & cheaper detection

A novel approach to testing for the presence of the virus that causes Covid-19 may result in tests that are faster, less expensive, and potentially less prone to mistakes than current detection methods. Though the work, which is based on quantum effects, is still theoretical, the researchers believe that these detectors could be adapted to detect virtually any virus. Changhao Li, an MIT doctoral student, Paola Cappellaro, a professor of nuclear science and engineering and physics, and Rouholla Soleyman and Mohammad Kohandel of the University of Waterloo describe the new…

OfBusiness raises $325 Mn at around $5 Bn valuation

OfBusiness, a platform for industrial goods and services procurement, has raised $325 million in a Series G round led by Alpha Wave Ventures II, Tiger Global Management, and Softbank Vision Fund 2. Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners India, Zodius Technologies, Pantherea Growth Fund, and Marshall Wace are also investors in the company. The current round also includes a secondary sale for $140 million. According to OfBusiness, the new funds were raised at a valuation of around $5 billion. In the last eight months, the Gurugram-based company’s valuation has increased by…

Ransomware attack on Kronos impacts paychecks of several companies

Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), a major technology firm that provides human resource management solutions to other companies, was hit by a critical ransomware attack. The cyber attack has rendered several of the firm’s clients unable to access their payroll systems, and the situation could last for weeks. In a blog post, the company informed its clients and communities that the cyber attack had disrupted the Kronos Private Cloud. Kronos Private Cloud houses a number of the company’s solutions, such as UKG Workforce Central, UKGTeleStaff, Healthcare Extensions, and Banking Scheduling Solutions….