Sachin Bansal is a soft-spoken man. His words are usually measured, and his tone is usually conciliatory. But when Economic Times published reports claiming Flipkart might’ve been in sale talks with Amazon, the Flipkart cofounder was in no mood to play the nice guy. Tweeting right back at ET, he came up with this zinger.
While biggies like Flipkart and Snapdeal are figuring out where their next round of funding is coming from and looking at the very real possibility of down rounds, a relatively unknown player is the space is all set to get money from public markets. Infibeam, founded in 2007 by Cornell and MIT Sloan alumnus Vishal Mehta, is all set to IPO on 21st March from which it hopes to raise Rs. 450 crore.
Freshersworld is somewhat of an anomaly in today’s fast-paced startup ecosystem. For starters, it’s barely a startup, having started off way back in 2006. Also, it hasn’t yet joined the funding rat race, and remains proudly bootstrapped to this day. And most importantly, unlike other vaunted, well-publicized startups, it’s profitable – it had revenues of Rs. 19 crore last year.
It was a cold December night in 2004, and like millions of Indians, a young Ayush Bisaria watched David Blaine perform his bag of tricks on AXN. Blaine would approach people on the streets, and blow them away by makings cards disappear, showing superhuman strength, and for one dramatic trick, levitating spookily above the ground. Bisaria was mesmerized.
After selling hotel rooms, buses, and even gold loans on its platform, Paytm is now going to be offering movie tickets for sale. The company has tied up with PVR, INOX and multiple other cinema houses to sell movie tickets.
Over 80 bike taxis on the Uber platform have been seized after the company hasn’t complied with Karnataka government’s orders which declared them to be illegal. Uber continues to operates its bike taxis in the city, while Ola, Ridingo and Hey Bob have stopped services.
The Karnataka government has come out with a policy that aims to regulate the vehicle aggregators in the state, but Uber doesn’t agree with all its proposals.
Mu Sigma CEO Dhiraj Rajaram has been sued in the US for misleading an early investor about the prospects of the company. Patrick G. Ryan, who at one point held 17.5% of shares in Mu Sigma, claims that Rajaram cheated him of millions of dollars by downplaying Mu Sigma’s growth prospects, which caused him to sell back his stake for an amount much less than they were worth.
Indian starups, having made their marks on their home turf, are now slowing eyeing foreign lands. After Practo had expanded into Indonesia and Singapore, and Oyo had opened its first international hotel in Kuala Lampur, Rebus is now planning to expand to as many as four countries in South and South East Asia.