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…
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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…
Read MoreL&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…
Read MoreStartups 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…
Read MoreEmerging 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…
Read MoreBHIM 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…
Read MoreRobots 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…
Read MoreMedical Devices Startups Look To Ride Healthtech Wave As Regulatory Barriers Lower !!
With the shifting market in dynamics caused by Covid-19 pandemic, pretty much everything is in overhaul mode. Within the burgeoning health tech ecosystem, the medical devices market is also witnessing a dramatic shift as policies are being changed to accommodate the high demand. But at the same time, it also becomes crucial for medical device manufacturers, hospitals, research institutions and regulators to validate medical devices thoroughly for safety, reliability and quality, thereby following stringent testing protocols, safety measures and ethical approval processes. So the industry is currently balancing the seemingly…
Read MoreStartups turn to venture debt funds instead of diluting equity !!
The Covid-19-forced lockdown and the resultant sluggishness in the economy have spurred startup entrepreneurs to fortify their capital structure & streamline finances. With equity funding becoming dearer, venture debt is becoming the go-to option. “Between March & May, some 180 startups approached us for funding – and a good number of them are companies in growth stage,” said Ishpreet Singh Gandhi, founder of Stride Ventures, a venture debt asset manager. Most venture debt fund managers have witnessed “a tidal wave of funding requests” in the past two months. Stride closed four deals…
Read MoreAPI startup Postman in talks with Insight Partners to raise new funds at $2 billion !!
Software as a Service (SaaS) company Postman is in advanced talks with New York-based investment fund Insight Partners to raise around $150 million at a valuation of $2 billion, two people in the know of the deal details said. Postman is a collaboration platform for managing, developing and testing application programme interfaces (APIs). APIs are a set of tools for building applications used by software developers. Postman, among the buzziest Indian SaaS companies, was valued at $350 million just a year ago, and if the deal goes through it will be one of the biggest…
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