Start-Ups

PlanetSpark, a K-12 player in the communication skills learning category, is looking to hire 10,000+ English teachers in 2022. On the platform, the company already has over 2,100 teachers. The company raised $13.5 million in a Series-B round led by Prime Venture Partners and entrepreneurs like Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Dr. Ashish Gupta, Gokul Rajaram, and Shirish Nandkarni in December of last year. The company intends to aggressively capture market share in the $82-billion global communication skills market with the new round of funding. The newly recruited 10,000 teachers will…

CredAvenue, a debt marketplace, announced on Monday that it has purchased a 75.1 percent stake in Spocto, a digital collections company, to expand its product offerings. CredAvenue will benefit from the acquisition by adding digital collection solutions for lenders, as well as reducing risk and fraud on its platform. It will also aid in improving collection efficiency, according to the company. “Adding digital collection capabilities will significantly add value to lending partners on the platform. This deal is a forward integration that completes the product suites for the entire lifecycle….

To kick-start its product strategy in India, Revolut India, the Indian registered entity of London-based fintech player Revolut, has acquired international money transfers company Arvog Forex. While Revolut India did not disclose the purchase price, a source familiar with the transaction estimated it to be around $4.5 million.Revolut will work with the Mumbai-based forex firm to obtain a forex licence and begin offering remittance and forex services to Indian customers. The company entered the Indian market in April 2021 to make most of the deepening of digital financial services in…

Wakefit is one of the few growth-stage startups that have managed to cross Rs 400 crore revenue mark within 5 years of its inception. The sleep solution cum furniture company has registered 2.07X growth in its operating revenue to Rs 408.59 crore in the last fiscal year from Rs 197.44 crore in FY20, Wakefit’s annual financial statements show. Wakefit has made 94.74% of its income through the sale of manufactured mattresses, pillows and accessories which shot up 2.07X to Rs 387.1 crore in FY21 from Rs 187.16 crore in the preceding…

Secunderabad-based CRM Runo, a startup that provides call management CRM solutions, has raised $500,000 in a pre-Seed funding round led by Unicorn India Ventures. Runo, founded in 2018 by Rajsekhar Pattnaik and P.V. Vamsi, offers a full-featured Customer Relationship Management suite in a mobile app, with products ranging from Call Management to Sales CRM, Collection CRM, and POS CRM. The features can be customised according to the industry sector and the specific services offered by each business, according to the startup. Every interaction and every prospect can be tracked until…

Nazara Technologies, a digital gaming and sports platform, reported a 17 percent drop in consolidated profit after tax to Rs 14.8 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2021 on Friday. In the previous fiscal quarter, the company had a profit after tax of Rs 17.9 crore. Its consolidated revenue from operations increased 42.48 percent to Rs 185.8 crore in October-December 2021, compared to Rs 130.4 crore the previous year. The company’s consolidated PAT increased by more than fourfold to Rs 42.8 crore for the nine months ended December…

TheMathCompany, a data analytics and data engineering firm, has approved the buyback of shares for existing shareholders, including the firm’s co-founders. According to TheMathCompany’s regulatory filings with the MCA, all existing shareholders who will participate in the buyback will receive an issue price of Rs 155.32 per share, aggregating up to 93.2 crore or $12.5 million for 60 lakh equity shares and constituting 24.82 percent of the total equity up and free reserve of the company. According to the filings, the buyback is open to all current shareholders on a…

Nextspeed Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates fintech platform Swipe, on Friday said it has scooped up $2 million (around Rs 15 crore) as a part of its seed funding led by Y Combinator. The round also saw participation from a host of investors including Cred Founder Kunal Shah, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, Locus Ventures, Duro Ventures, K3 Diversity Ventures, Lish Lee Jung, among others. The startup said that it plans to use the fresh funds to touch over India’s one million businesses by the end of 2022. It also…

As new-age companies, flush with money, continue to hire, many of them are looking for senior talent outside of India. Expansion into new geographies, especially for companies with a strong product-market fit, as well as a search for more developed skills in emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, according to headhunters, are the driving forces behind this hiring. Hiring is primarily taking place in areas such as technology, product, design, and data science, where there is a talent shortage in India. Classplus, an edtech firm, is looking…