Startups have become increasingly  popular in India over the last few years, and the media has had a part to play — there are endless blogs covering startups, there are more startup conferences than one can count, and even traditional media has woken up to the world of entrepreneurship. But the Indian government has probably taken the step that’ll make startups more mainstream than ever before — it’s gone ahead and launched a show…

Hindsight is 20/20 at the best of times, but it can particularly pinch when you’re a Venture Capitalist and have turned down the investment opportunity of a lifetime. GOQii founder Vishal Gondal has revealed that all the way back in 2011, he’d turned down the opportunity to invest in Oyo Rooms. Back then, Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal was a precocious 17-year-old who was looking to raise money for his startup. He had offered Gondal a…

As far as startup stories go, there are few more compelling than this one.  Oyo Rooms says it is now the third largest hotel chain in the world with 850,000 rooms. The only chains larger than it are Marriott, which has 1,317,000 rooms, followed by Hilton which has 922,000 rooms. The names ahead of Oyo are both venerable names in the hotel industry — Marriott was founded 92 years ago in 1927, while Hilton was…

Paytm is the closest India has to an all-in-one super app, but it’s now said its adding another vertical to its already-extensive portfolio. Paytm has said it plans to expand into the education services sector by “building and facilitating everything that is needed by students, parents and government job aspirants”. According to a press release, Paytm will do so by “partnering with private and government institutions to offer a full bouquet of services across payments, commerce, financial…

The current government has made a bit of a reputation for itself for being pro-startup — it had announced the Startup India scheme in 2017, under which it gave away loans and tried to create an environment for startups to thrive. This year’s budget appears to have continued the government’s push towards promoting startups, with a slew of measures to encourage entrepreneurship in the country. The most prominent announcement was the plan to create a channel…

Indian ride hailing company Ola is officially saying Namaste London. Ola has obtained a license to operate taxi services in London, the company has confirmed. This means that Ola will soon be able to launch its mobility services in England’s capital, one of the biggest markets of ride-hailing services in the world. Ola had first announced its intention to launch in the UK in August 2018 and started off services in South Wales. Ola has…

In 2019, India isn’t just creating lots of startup unicorns — it’s also creating unicorns within unicorns. Ola Electric, Ola’s electric vehicles arm, has become India’s latest unicorn startup following a $250 million funding from Softbank. The investment valued Ola Electric at exactly $1 billion (Rs. 7000 crore), and also makes Softbank the largest investor in ANI Technologies. ANI Technologies, Ola’s parent company, runs cab-hailing arm Ola, its financial arm Ola Money, Ola’s cab leasing…

Grofers had started off in 2013 trying to disrupt the little kirana shop — it delivered groceries directly into people’s homes, helping them avoid visits to physical stores. But just six years later, it’s embracing the very stores that it had tried to disrupt. Grofers is working on converting about 200 brick-and-mortar stores into its own branded outlets over the next few months. “We have converted several grocery stores into our own branded offline stores,…

Conflicting reports are emerging about how Oyo is faring across the great wall of China. A few days ago, the company had claimed that it had become the biggest hotel chain in China. Oyo had said that it was now present in 337 cities in the country, and had 500,000 rooms available. Oyo claimed that it had “surpassed the scale of traditional and established hotel chain brands in the country, such as Home Inn, Hanting…