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Start-Ups

Impact Of COVID-19 On Startup Funding: How To Raise Capital During a Crisis?

The COVID-19 pandemic will have a far-reaching and long-lasting impact on the global economy. Even though lockdown restricts have now been eased in several countries, financial markets are likely to take a long time to recover from the covid-19-triggered crisis. As reported by the International Monetary Fund, this is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, projecting a humongous loss worth $9 trillion in global gross domestic product over the next 2-years. These are challenging times for businesses, even more so for startups that operate with razor-thin margins. Besides…

4 Ways Startups Can Prepare to Survive Economic Tumult !!

The world is in a state of unprecedented tumult. Businesses and governments around the globe have been shaken to their cores by the Covid-19. This crisis has forced companies to ask their employees to work from home for their safety and improved productivity. 1. Flexibility for the way people work Around the world, the majority of large corporations still operate on inflexible, conservative management structures that care more about how long people are in the office than how productive they can be. The fear of being wrong or arriving late,…

Ninjacart Helps the Needy With Subsidized Fresh Produce !!

Ninjacart, a Bengaluru-based fresh produce supply chain start-up, has provisioned essential fruits and vegetables to orphanages, old-age homes and slum areas, at subsidized rates, in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak-enforced lockdown in India. In order to service the slum areas and orphanages, the company said it is willing to partner with non-governmental organizations and similar institutions across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Pune and Ahmedabad. “Ninjacart has always strived towards changing the way fruits and vegetables reach our plates, along with enhancing the income of farmers, convenience of retailers…

PoS Startup Innoviti Chases Profitability After Raising Series C !!

Bengaluru-based digital payments solutions startup Innoviti has raised an undisclosed amount in Series C funding from Netherlands-based FMO-Entrepreneurial Development Bank, along with existing investor US-based Bessemer Venture Partners. Rajeev Agrawal, CEO of Innoviti Payments, told Moneycontrol that this may be  company’s last funding round as it plans to generate cash from its books within 6-8 months. He also said that the company may only consider another fundraise if there’s an opportunity for acquisition or inorganic growth. The latest round is said to be all primary capital and had no secondary…

Voice assistant to help you shop on Flipkart !!

Homegrown retailer Flipkart on Tuesday introduced voice assistant capability on its platform to make consumer’s e-commerce journey simpler and more natural. Introduced in Flipkart’s grocery store Supermart, the voice assistant will enable consumers to discover and buy products easily using voice commands in multiple languages, starting with Hindi and English, said the company. “The technology team at Flipkart travelled across the country to understand the various contours of building a voice capability and fine-tuned it to identify and respond to the different variations in Indian languages,” Jeyandran Venugopal, Chief Product…

L&T Heavy Engineering delivers 1,250 MT-Cryostat to French Nuclear Fusion Project Amid Lockdown !!

L&T Heavy Engineering has announced that its 1,250 MT-Cryostat base, the single largest section of the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor, was successfully lifted and placed into a reactor building in France, accomplishing a major milestone in the nuclear engineering world. Assembly tools of cryostat were delivered during the lockdown by Larsen & Toubro. The cryostat forms the vacuum-tight container surrounding the reactor vacuum vessel and the superconducting magnets and acts essentially as a very large refrigerator. The reactor base, the single largest and heaviest Tokamak component of the world’s largest…

Startups Can Now Offer ESOPs For Up To 10 Years Under New MCA Definition !!

The ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), on Friday (June 5), announced that the  Companies (Share Capital and Debenture) Amendment Rules of 2020, under which the government has Extended the employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), changed definition of startups and also made some regulatory changes in share capital requirement. Under the latest amendment the ministry of corporate affairs has also notified that startups can now offer sweat equity of up to 15% of their paid-up share capital. Besides this, the ministry has decided to change the definition of startups to be…

Emerging tech from India for the post-pandemic world !!

When oil prices turned absurdly negative in April, it was panic stations at oil and gas supermajors. Europe debated an accelerated shift to renewable energy. Oil rigs in the US turned off their taps as demand plummeted with the global economy’s pause to tackle coronavirus. But the very week when oil prices tanked, a subsea oil company in Houston signed a major deal to deploy an industrial Artificial Intelligence (AI) product from Flutura, a startup in Bengaluru. It turns out for improving a myriad operational efficiencies to reduce costs with…

BHIM Website Exposes Personal Details Of 7.26 Mn Indians !!!

According to a report by Israeli cybersecurity platform vpnMentor, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) developed payments platform BHIM has suffered a data breach which has compromised personal data of more than 7.26 Mn users, including Aadhaar card details, caste certificates, residence proof, bank records, professional records, certificates, PAN card details, along with financial proofs such as screenshots taken within financial and banking apps. However, NPCI told Inc42 that no data has been compromised at BHIM app and requested everyone to not fall prey to such speculations. Further, it said that NPCI follows a high…

Robots help some firms, even while workers across industries struggle !!

Overall, adding robots to manufacturing reduces jobs —by more than three per robot,in fact. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor reveals an important pattern: Firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly. The study, by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, examines the introduction of robots to French manufacturing in recent decades, illuminating the business dynamics and labor implications in granular detail. “When you look at use of…