I am not even remotely involved with the Indian startup ecosystem. But unfortunately, I read a lot and try to make sense of it in equal measures. And from whatever I have been reading and observing regarding the Indian startup story, especially in the last 12 months, I feel something is not right. Let me cut to the chase right away. Here’s what I think:
After Uber had approached the Delhi High Court accusing the company of making fake bookings on its app to sabotage its business, Jugnoo has followed suit with similar claims of its own.
Jugnoo is a Chandigarh-based auto aggregator that competes directly with Ola, which also has its own auto booking service. It alleges that Ola employees have been creating fake accounts over the last 10 days to book and make cancellations on Jugnoo’s app leading to loss of revenue for the company and also affecting the income of auto-rickshaw drivers.
Last night, a prominent media house had reported that local services provider LocalOye was on the verge of shutting down. Today morning, LocalOye founder Aditya Rao posted a heartfelt 15-tweet tweetstorm talking about the report and the problems at his company. In an unusually honest and brutal assessment of his company, Rao admits that while Localoye is “wasn’t in the best of situations”, it will live to fight another day.
You know the time for green initiatives has truly taken off when the country’s prime minister lends his support to one.
In a major win for the environment, and Ola cabs, electricity powered E-rikshaws will now be available to book on commutech player Ola’s app in the Delhi NCR region.
Paytm’s tie up with Flipkart’s delivery arm is a pointer towards what the company’s priorities are going forward.
Infibeam is all set and running on India’s stock markets. After its much talked about IPO that concluded last week, the company started trading on the National Stock Exchange on Monday, and got off to a steady start.
I’d spent the last few weeks desperately trying to save my startup and failed. My co-founder had told me point blank that he had no faith in my ability to be the CEO of the company. I’d studied at the best engineering college in the country, worked at the best management consulting firm in the world. I took risks and tried to build a real business that built real technologies to help real factory. I even had paying customers. And still, I’d failed.
After the government issued a directive against discounts by ecommerce marketplaces, the Karnataka government has now ruled against surge pricing on cabs that commutech apps like Uber and Ola regularly employ at the pretext of offsetting high demands.
Vineet Singh, who was the former business head of 99Acres.com, had invested an undisclosed sum in Housing.com. 99Acres is one of the chief competitors of Housing in India’s crowded online realty market.