Punit Soni, after a protracted period of speculation, has finally quit Flipkart. He’s sent a farewell mail to senior management to this effect, and Friday will be his last day at work. An OfficeChai source has seen a copy of the email.
WebEnage’s success shows Indian B2B startups are slowly coming of age. They’re making inroads into international markets, and away from the attention and the hype, building some solid businesses.
After American ecommerce giant made its India debut in 2013, and Chinese giant Alibaba made strategic investments in the country before announcing to open operations in India, now it’s Japanese ecommerce biggie Rakuten that has its eyes set on India.
The Indian startup ecosystem is normally a friendly place. People offer each other tips, share insights and generally have each other’s backs and the whole startup fraternity seems to be one big back-slapping family. But when there’s intense competition and big money at stake, the niceness is sometimes cast aside and bitter rivalries surface. And even as some of these are pushed under the carpet, sometimes the founders decide to make it public.
Here are the top 11 times when the things got a bit heated in the Indian startup ecosystem.
Close on the heels of the Karnataka government implementing a policy that would regulate cab fares, the Maharashtra government has followed suit. The new rules shall put caps on the number of taxi aggregator vehicles allowed on roads and will also seek to rein in higher peak-hour fares.
Doordarshan has started broadcasting free TV to mobile phone in 16 cities. Mobile TV can be received in and around these cities usingdongles on smartphones, tablets, and TV sets.
Two days after the Karnataka Road Transport Office issued a directive to commutech companies against applying surge pricing, Uber and Ola seem to be defying the rules and continuing with higher prices.
It’s been a tough few months for Indian startups, but the bigger ones that been thought to be largely doing well. In a sign that even vaunted, highly funded startups are struggling, InMobi has become the latest company to let go of employees. It has fired 100 people from its headcount of around 1000 in Bangalore.
Facebook has just made a huge play in the Indian home services space by launching Facebook services. It’s created a separate section, Facebook Services, where it promises to “find local businesses with the best Facebook reviews and ratings.”