India’s crowded wallet space has a big new entrant. After many months of speculation, Flipkart has finally come up with its own digital wallet. Dubbed Flipkart Money, the wallet is being powered by FX Mart, a Punjab-based company that Flipkart had acquired last year.
It’s the flavour of the season. Companies are rushing a grab a foothold in small town India, and are adapting their English interfaces to suit the average Indian consumer. After Snapdeal and Quikr had gone desi and made their apps available in local languages, e-commerce platform has now added a Hindi interface to its seller app to increase its appeal in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
There are 2 men on the list who are decades younger than everyone else. They didn’t inherit their wealth, or have famous surnames. They got there because they started a company and it happened to do really well, really quickly. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are the youngest people on India’s billionaire list, and Binny, at 33, pips Sachin by a few months to be India’s youngest billionaire.
The Bangalorean commuter just got another option to try and beat the city’s legendary traffic jams. Uber, having recently launched its Uber Pool service in Bangalore, is now launching bike taxis in the city. While bike taxis already run in Gurgaon by companies like Baxi, this will be a first for Bangalore.
The grocery delivery model in India is tottering. Days after Flipkart had announced that it’s shutting down Nearby, its grocery delivery arm, it is now being reported that Ola is on the verge of shutting down its own grocery delivery service, Ola store. Ola Store operated in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon.
There’s another weird 4 letter word in the Indian fashion retail space. After Aditya Birla had launched Abof (short for Aditya Birla House of Fashion) as its fashion e-retail arm, Reliance Industry has announced that it’s making an entry into the space with AJIO.com.
If you’re a corporate employee that’s been counting on withdrawing your Employee Provident Fund account prematurely, you might need to think again. The Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, has recently made amendments in the Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme, 1952, that make it harder for employees to prematurely withdraw from their EPF accounts.
The Snapdeal protests, which broke out at Snapdeal’s Sarita Vihar office 2 days ago, have just gotten messier. After the agitating employees had approached the CM Arvind Kejriwal’s office, the Delhi government has directed the Labour Department to look into the matter. Snapdeal has requested for a 2 day period to explain its stand to the Labour department.
Protests at Snapdeal’s office have intensified as management and the fired employees have been unable to reach a compromise.