After American ecommerce giant made its India debut in 2013, and Chinese giant Alibaba made strategic investments in the country before announcing to open operations in India, now it’s Japanese ecommerce biggie Rakuten that has its eyes set on India.
The Indian startup ecosystem is normally a friendly place. People offer each other tips, share insights and generally have each other’s backs and the whole startup fraternity seems to be one big back-slapping family. But when there’s intense competition and big money at stake, the niceness is sometimes cast aside and bitter rivalries surface. And even as some of these are pushed under the carpet, sometimes the founders decide to make it public.
Here are the top 11 times when the things got a bit heated in the Indian startup ecosystem.
Close on the heels of the Karnataka government implementing a policy that would regulate cab fares, the Maharashtra government has followed suit. The new rules shall put caps on the number of taxi aggregator vehicles allowed on roads and will also seek to rein in higher peak-hour fares.
Two days after the Karnataka Road Transport Office issued a directive to commutech companies against applying surge pricing, Uber and Ola seem to be defying the rules and continuing with higher prices.
Wearable devices startup GOQii has named former Google executive Amit Singhal on its board. Singhal, who is also an angel investor in GOQii, resigned as head of Google’s flagship search business in February after spending over 15 years in the company.
It’s been a tough few months for Indian startups, but the bigger ones that been thought to be largely doing well. In a sign that even vaunted, highly funded startups are struggling, InMobi has become the latest company to let go of employees. It has fired 100 people from its headcount of around 1000 in Bangalore.
Facebook has just made a huge play in the Indian home services space by launching Facebook services. It’s created a separate section, Facebook Services, where it promises to “find local businesses with the best Facebook reviews and ratings.”
The Future Group has just acquired FabFurnish.com, which was one of India’s first home and furnishing online stores.
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: