Practo has said that it is tying up with taxi hailing app Uber to ferry patients to their doctors. Across India, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore, those who book an appointment on Practo’s mobile application will be able to view the closest Uber available along with the appointment reminder alert.
In a continuation of the winter wave of startups layoffs, Bangalore based hyperlocal services provider LocalOye has laid off 60 employees.
Online deals site CashKaro has raised Rs. 25 crore from Kalaari Capital in its Series A funding. CashKaro was launched in August 2013 with a funding of $750,000 from a group of UK-based investors who worked as senior executives in companies such as Paypal, Investec and Goldman Sachs.
Ola cabs, India’s largest cab hailing service has launched a dedicated mobile app, Ola Money. “Do more with Ola money for a fast, seamless shopping experience”, the app claims, “because shopping online isn’t exactly a fun thing to do.” It identifies Paytm, backed by Alibaba group and FreeCharge, owned by Snapdeal, as competitors.
I thought I would make millions through my startup, but I failed miserably. I’d read shiny stories of Flipkart and Zomato, but nobody told me that 90% startups fail within two years of starting up, I failed in the first year. Sometimes I feel being cheated but the fault was mine, I believed one side of the story.
Although there is huge outrage of start-ups retrenching employees, actual facts and figures behind these lays offs and shutdowns are not what meets the eye. Dearth of investments may not be the identified cause. Yes, the cheque sizes or amounts being invested in start-ups may be declining but the overall funding story is quite different.
Signaling consolidation in car trading portals, CarTrade has acquired competitor Carwale in a largely cash arrangement. “Both platforms will operate independently. CarWale will focus on being the new car brand, while CarTrade will be the used-car brand,” said Vinay Sanghi, founder of CarTrade.
Oyo Rooms and Zo Rooms had barely time to recover from the blow of being taken off hotel room aggregators MakeMyTrip and Ibibo, and there’s more bad news. In direct competition to their business model, MakeMyTrip has launched its own budget brand, Value+, which will offer rooms from Rs 900 to Rs 2,000 per night.
Flipkart’s homegrown rival Snapdeal has also launched a lighter version of its mobile site. Rather unimaginatively called Snap-Lite, the site claims to be 85% faster, and works across all mobile browsers. Flipkart’s new site, on the other hand, works only with Chrome.