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…

When you’ve earned yourself a fortune, you can be sure that the taxman isn’t too far behind. Sachin Bansal has reportedly paid a whopping Rs. 699 crore as advance tax for the first quarter of 2018-19. This includes tax for his capital tax gains from the sale of his Flipkart stake to Walmart. Bansal, who’d held a near 5% take in Flipkart until early this year, netted himself an approximate $1 billion (Rs. 7,000 crore)…

Oyo’s been providing hospitality services to its guests for the last few years; its investors are now returning the favour to its employees. An Oyo investor will buy back shares worth Rs. 50 crore from its employees, thus proving them with ready cash in exchange for the equity they held in the startup. Around 250 employees who hold ESOPs in Oyo are likely to benefit from the buyback. Oyo declined to name the investor who’d…

As India’s economy is growing, so are the salaries of its top CEOs. As many as 124 Indian CEOs receive million-dollar salaries (Rs. 7 crore), a study conducted by TOI reports. This number is up from 120 last year, and has been steadily increasing over the years — in 2016, 119 CEOs received million-dollar payouts, while the number was just 100 in 2015.   The study was conducted among the top 200 listed firms in…

For years, Indian startups were thought to be the poorer cousins of listed companies — IPOs were tracked by business papers, breathlessly discussed in the news, and eagerly participated in by investors, but startups got a fraction of the coverage. That could likely soon change, because in 2018, Indian startups have raised more money than Indian companies through IPOs. Indian startups raised a total of $6.55 billion (around Rs 44,940 crore) in venture capital (VC)…

Flipkart is now officially looking to plug the biggest hole in its portfolio, and become a more comprehensive match to arch-rival Amazon India. Flipkart is looking to get into video streaming, CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said in an interview. “Our customer segment today is heavily skewed towards 18-35 age group, and that audience watches a lot of video, both in terms of time spent, frequency, and it is disproportionately high,” he said. “Do we want to have a…

India’s most anticipated startup investor has officially entered the game. Sachin Bansal, who’d earned an estimated Rs. 7,000 crore after Flipkart was acquired by Walmart earlier this year, has set up a new venture called BAC Acquisitions. The new venture will reportedly act as a holding company to make investments in early and mid stage startups, and will launch new businesses as well. Bansal will use the new company to deploy his Flipkart fortune into…