Indian startups are beginning to rein in their losses, which had been spiraling out of control for the longest time. Paytm has narrowed its losses by 37% to Rs. 2,597 crore for the financial year ended March 31 2020. The company posted revenues of Rs. 3,629 crore, which was 1.4 percent higher than last year. “Optimizing expenses resulted in a 40% reduction in losses compared to last year,” a Paytm spokesperson said. “The company has expanded its financial services…

The coronavirus hasn’t come as good news for most companies — theatres, ride hailing startups, and events companies are all suffering. But the virus has brought with it unexpected success to those who happened to be in the right place in the right time. Zoom has reported a 355% increase in quarterly revenues compared to the same period last year. Zoom reported revenues of $663.5 million (Rs. 5000 crore) for the March-June period. Zoom had approximately…

The coronavirus lockdown has devastated several different kinds of businesses — the hospitality sector, theatres, and events companies have all been hard hit. But not everyone’s complaining. Ed-tech startup Unacademy has entered the unicorn club after raising $150 million from the Softbank Group. The deal values Unacademy at $1.45 billion. Existing investors Facebook, General Atlantic, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, and Blume Ventures also participated in this funding round. “Learning from the best experts to achieve…

It’s 2020, and keeping up with how other things have been this year, tech demos aren’t quite the same either. Elon Musk today showed off the progress of his brain interface startup Neuralink using three live pigs. Musk first showed off a normal pig, then a pig which had had Neuralink’s chip embedded in its brain for over 2 months, and a third pig, which had a Neuralink implant for a while which was subsequently…

The heightened border tensions between India and China are now very clearly spilling over into India’s startup ecosystem. China’s Alibaba Group has put on hold plans to invest in Indian companies, two sources aware of the plans told Reuters. Alibaba will not put in fresh funds to expand its investments in the country for at least six months, the sources reportedly said. However, there are no plans to reduce its stakes or exit investments, they added. “Alibaba and a few…

At at time when China’s businesses in India are under the scanner following the Ladakh standoff, China’s Ant Financial has indicated that Chinese companies with financial stakes in Indian startups too can wield considerable influence over them. China’s Ant Group, which was a subsidiary of Alibaba’s, has said said in its IPO prospectus that is has ” “significant influence” over One97 Communications Ltd, which is the parent company of Paytm. “Our major associates include One97 Communications Ltd that operates…

Amazon and Flipkart had thus far been reconciling themselves with a massive Indian player having joined the e-commerce fray — JioMart, it is becoming increasingly apparent, will take both companies head on. But Amazon and Flipkart might have another huge Indian player to contend with. The Tata group is poised to launch a “super app” by December or early next year, FT reported. The super app will provide food and grocery ordering, fashion and lifestyle, consumer durables,…

Yet another startup is finding out that signing on high-profile celebrities as brand ambassadors is a sword that can cut both ways. “Uninstall PhonePe” is currently trending on Twitter with hundreds of users demanding that the company dissociate itself from Aamir Khan and Alia Bhat, its brand ambassadors. The trend Uninstall PhonePay (curiously with the spelling of Pe misspelled) currently has nearly 80,000 tweets on Twitter, and is trending at number 3 nationwide. PhonePe had…

There is now data available on how the coronavirus is now impacting India’s food business. Food delivery volumes are now back up to 75-80 percent of pre-Covid levels, while restaurants are operating at 8-10 percent of pre-Covid levels, Zomato has said in a report. “Over the last few days, we reached out to thousands of restaurants and customers across various cities in India to understand the current state and future outlook of the industry,” Zomato…