If normal startup pitches make you nervous, imagine pitching your startup to the US President.
That’s what happened on August 4, when President Barack Obama hosted the first-ever White House Demo Day focused on inclusive entrepreneurship.
Here is a roundup of some of the traditional businesses that are feeling the pinch of the mushrooming startups that threaten to affect them and eventually even displace them. What remains to be seen is whether the traditional businesses will adapt to this change, reinvent themselves and join in the wave on a “If you can’t beat them, join them” philosophy, or wait it out, let the wave pass, for the VC funded startups to bust as the red bottomlines begin to show, and emerge as the classics.
FabFurnish.com has fired at least 50 employees, or about a fourth of its workforce. It is vacating warehouses as part of a business restructuring. The online furniture seller is changing its model and laying off employees at various levels. The company said it has “undertaken a resource optimisation exercise” and is “hiring a talent pool ideal for our new business positioning”.
Barely a couple of days after hotel aggregator Oyo Rooms raised $100 million from Softbank, fierce rival ZO has raised $30 million from existing investors, Tiger Global Ventures and Orios venture partners.
India is set to produce at least a dozen of billionaires and list of millionaires by 2020, thanks to the glory of country’s startup scene particularly in e-commerce, financial service and other tech driven sectors, an Assocham study reported.
TruckSuvidha is a web portal catering exclusively to the trucking and transportation industry. It aims to connect transporters, truck drivers, customers and allied entities. Brokers, transporters, logistic and delivery heads can use their service online by registering themselves on the website.
After PwC (Price Waterhouse Coopers), the Hay Group is now planning to incubate startups in India, according to media reports. The US-based global consultancy firmplans to incubate 100 startups, mentoring them without directly investing money. It would help selected startups deal with all the challenges they face, from fundraising to firming up their growth strategy to attracting suitable talent, all without charging any fees.
Hundreds of delivery workers of working Flipkart and its subsidiary Myntra have gone on strike in Mumbai demanding toilet facilities at delivery hubs, proper working hours, extra allowances for overtime, a six-day week, uniforms and proper work schedules. Reports state that workers claimed 10,000 packages are pending for delivery due to the strike.
If on one hand food tech is booming, on the other, finding a date online has never been easier. Gone are the days when looking up a date meant lounging around on seedy chat rooms or using American dating sites with a handful of legit users from India. Finding genuine people with real identities was another concern.
QuackQuack is one such offering that aims to make online dating normal, sane and effective for Indians.
Pepperfry, one of the leading online furniture retailer companies in India, raised a whooping USD 100 million as their fourth round of investment from Goldman Sachs, Zodius Technology Fund, and their existing investors Bertelsmann India Investments and Norwest Venture Partners.