If chat was thought to be a must-have feature in apps until a few years ago, it’s now the turn of video. Paytm is looking to create original content and develop an video streaming arm, ET reports. Paytm will soon launch an over-the-top (OTT) content service, and has already started hiring people to run it. “Paytm has been looking at this space (video service) for some time but it is only now that the plans to set…

After exiting Flipkart with Rs. 7,000 crore in the bank, Sachin Bansal has already taken his next ride. Sachin Bansal has invested Rs. 150 crore ($21 million) in Ola as a part of its latest funding round. Bansal has purchased 70,588 ‘Series J’ preference shares at a value of Rs 21,250 per share, as per documents filed by Ola with the Registrar of Companies. The investment values Ola at $5.7 billion and makes it India’s second…

India’s Uber and Ola drivers have been going on strike for a while now, but this might be that first time that its restaurants are going on strike. The Gujarat Hotel and Restaurant Association has declared that they will not accept orders on Swiggy in Ahmedabad starting from Friday. The association is unhappy with the 22 percent commission that Swiggy charges on its orders, and are demanding that Swiggy fix what they call are “unreasonable…

Thus far, Ola had been saying that it will look to own all aspects of India’s mobility experience, but it could have its sights set even higher. Ola could acquire medicine delivery startup Myra medicines and enter the medicine delivery space, sources told Mint. Myra had been founded in 2013 by Anirudh Coontoor and Faizan Aziz, and delivers medicines to users who order them on its platform. “This is part of Ola’s strategy where they want to get…

It’s always nice when a multi-billion dollar corporation says Hi to its users, but the effect is somewhat lost when it follows it up with a “ghvkjfjg”. A bug in Paytm’s systems appears to have sent a notification saying “Hey ghvkjfjg” to many of the people who’d had its app installed. Users were surprised when they received the notification, which appeared like a normal Paytm notification from Paytm on their phones, but with the strange text…

Post their exits from Flipkart, both Bansals now seem to be fully prepared for their new stints as Venture Capitalists. 021 Capital, in which Binny Bansal is the largest investor, has closed a round of $32 million (Rs. 222 crore) in funding. o21 Capital (read as Zero to One Capital) was launched in 2017, and is run by Sailesh Tulshan, who’s Binny Bansal’s financial advisor. The fundraise has come from investors like Wipro chairman’s Azim Premji…

For a product that was launched just around a year ago, Zomato Gold sure seems to have come a long way.  Zomato has said that Zomato Gold now has 7 lakh paying subscribers. Zomato says it has 6,000 restaurants signed up on Zomato Gold, and this number is up from 4,000 in October. At that time, Gold had 6 lakh subscribers. Zomato Gold had been launched in December 2017, and offered its subscribers either a free…

The fractious relationship between India’s traditional businesses and the tech platforms they now operate on is now coming apart at the seams. After cab drivers had carried  strikes again Uber and Ola, and small hotels had protested the policies of Oyo and MakeMyTrip, 500 of India’s small restaurants have come together to speak out against what they claim are the anti-competitive policies of food delivery companies like Zomato and Swiggy. They’ve signed an online petition which…