UPI services have already taken away significant market share from debit cards and credit cards for online and offline transactions. Now they seem to be eyeing the final bastion where debit cards still rule — cash. PhonePe has announced that it’s launched a service called PhonePe ATM, which will allow neighborhood stores to act as ATMs for customers. Customers in need of cash will be able to withdraw cash from stores, much as how they withdraw cash…

Uber might have bowed out of food delivery in one of its largest markets, but the company’s shareholders seem to have celebrated the move. Uber’s stock rose 7.03 percent the day after it announced that it had sold off its Uber Eats business in India to Zomato. Through the all-stock deal, Zomato had paid nearly Rs. 2500 crore for Uber Eats, and in turn, Uber had received a 10 percent stake in Zomato. After the…

Sachin Bansal had changed India’s e-commerce space with Flipkart. Now he seems to want to change India’s financial services sector — and he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is. Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has said that he will deploy all the proceeds from his Flipkart sale into his financial services Navi Technologies. “I am putting almost all of mine (money) — that is going to happen in the next few days or weeks,…

And then there were two. Zomato has acquired Uber Eats India for $350 million (Rs. 2500 crore) in an all-stock deal. In return, Uber gets a 10 percent stake in Zomato. This means that India’s food delivery marketplace, which until now had been a three-way between Swiggy, Uber Eats, and Zomato, now only has Zomato and Swiggy slugging it out for top spot. “We are proud to have pioneered restaurant discovery and to have created…

Ikea might have only set up one of its signature stores since launching in India in 2018, but it’s reaching out in other cities through a channel that’s common in India — e-commerce. Ikea has set up an online store in Pune, the company announced in a press release. Pune is the third market in India after Mumbai and Hyderabad where Ikea will deliver products through orders made online. Ikea had earlier set up a large…

Oyo’s troubles have extended from its home market of India to its biggest market of China. Oyo has fired 2000 employees from its China operations, a report in Chinese publication Global Times has claimed. “We have cut nearly 2,000 employees in different sectors ranging from accounting to customer service across the country,” an employee said. “It seems to me that most of the cut jobs are in the operations sector.”  At 2000, the number of affected employees…

Ripples from Oyo’s recent layoffs are already making an impact on Oyo’s hotels across the country. Some Oyo partner hotels say that they’re having trouble getting in touch with Oyo representatives. Hoteliers told ET that they were unable to contact representatives who were doing business with them. “For the past two-three days I’m trying to contact the business development people but they are not picking up our phones,” said Mohammad Ansar, an Oyo partner who…

Jeff Bezos’ charm offensive in India isn’t quite going as planned, as far as government officials are concerned. “They may have put in a billion dollars, but then if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year then they jolly well have to finance that billion dollars,” India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said at a conference today. “So it’s not as if they are doing a great favor to India…

Oyo’s long-rumoured layoffs are finally official. Oyo CEO Ritesh Agarwal has written to his employees announcing that Oyo would be cutting staff in India across business functions and geographies. “One of the implications of the new strategic objectives for 2020, is that, like the leadership team, we will reorganize more teams across businesses and functions. And this means that, unfortunately, some roles at Oyo will become redundant as we further drive tech-enabled synergy, enhanced efficiency…

When you’re moving fast and breaking things, it seems that it’s not always possible to pay attention to typos. Paytm today splurged on a front-page campaign in major newspapers promoting its new QR code, which would allow merchants to receive payments at no charge. While the campaign presumably found a lot of eyeballs, there was a problem — two newspapers directed users to the wrong URL to sign up. The Malayala Manorama ad directed people to…