Realty portal Housing.com had been struggling with mounting losses when CEO Rahul Yadav was let go, documents filed by the company reveal. In FY 2014-2015, Housing recorded a loss of Rs. 279 crore. Its revenue in the same period was Rs. 12 crore. In comparison, competitor CommonFloor had revenues of Rs. 45 crore.
Freecharge founder Kunal Shah has been appointed as the Chairman of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). IAMAI is a not-for-profit industry body with a mandate is to expand and enhance the online and mobile value added services sectors.
The carpooling wave, partly spurred on by the Delhi government’s Odd-Even plan, is taking foot across the country. After starting off in Delhi, Uber has now launched UberCommute in Bangalore. Under this service, ordinary drivers will be able to offer their cars for pooling with people going their route.
Grocery delivery app Grofers’ ambitious expansion plans have hit a roadblock. After the company recently raised $120 million which saw its valuation rise threefold in less than a year, the company has decided to scale back its operations. It has shut down in operations in 9 Indian Tier 2 cities, including Ludhiana, Bhopal, Kochi, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam.
Quikr, which is rapidly expanding from its initial model of being a goods exchange marketplace, is now looking to enter the home services market in a big way. The company has readied a Rs. 250 crore war-chest to fulfil its plans.
Zomato saw its food ordering service Zomato Order crash on New Years Eve. Zomato was inundated with orders from hungry revelers on 31st December, seeing record levels of orders on the site.
Rahul Yadav has found another high profile backer for his new startup Intelligent Interfaces – it’s Indian cricket legend Yuvraj Singh. “Proud to back Rahul Yadav and Intelligent Interfaces (ii) in helping the Government govern 100x better with the help of technology. Get ready for the (r)evolution!”, posted Yuvraj on Facebook.
India’s startup community has joined the ongoing clamour against Facebook’s Free Basics program. A total of 9 influential startup founders have written to TRAI voicing their concerns about Facebook’s move. These include CEO of Indian unicorn startups Flipkart, Paytm and Zomato.
Carpooling is the flavour of the season. The established players in the cab hailing market Uber and Ola have launched their own versions, and a slew of carpooling apps have come up. Now the oldest cab-hailing service has jumped on the carpool bandwagon. Meru has launched its own ridesharing service. The pilot version of the project will be kicked off in Delhi-NCR.