Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma might say that Paytm is preparing for an IPO in two years, but a large section of his senior leadership won’t be around for the ride. Five senior Paytm executives have quit the company in quick succession last month, raising concerns around a possible leadership vacuum at India’s most valuable startup. Paytm Senior Vice President Deepak Abbott had put down his papers last month, and was followed by Nitin Misra,…

After years of speculation, it’s finally confirmed — Flipkart is throwing its hat in the video streaming ring. Flipkart will produce original video content under Flipkart Video Originals for its own video streaming service, the company said in a statement. These videos will be mobile-first and interactive, and their duration will range from 10 to 25 minutes. Flipkart’s original content portfolio will comprise short stories, non-fiction shows, and entertainment shows featuring Bollywood celebrities. Flipkart’s first original series…

India’s startups aren’t making any money, but they all seem to clear on one thing — to enter as many new verticals as possible. Flipkart has registered a new company called Flipkart Farmermart Pvt Ltd to enter India’s food retail space, Moneycontrol reported. Through the company, Flipkart will operate a full-fledged food retail business, including its own private label, a grocery supply chain, and could also open stores. Flipkart has reportedly decided to invest Rs. 2500…

Milk delivery startup Doodhwala appears to have found out that the milk of investor kindness eventually does run dry. Doodhwala today informed its customers that it was halting operations, and redirected them to the Fresh to Home app. “Dear customer, we regret to inform you that we will be discontinuing services due to unforeseen circumstances,” an email and a note by the company said. “You can easily transfer your active subscriptions and wallet balance to the…

Customers take different approaches to not being given the service that they’d expect from companies. Some people complain to customer service. Others escalate to senior management. And if things still don’t work out, some take to social media to air their grievances. But an irate Oyo Rooms customer seems to have gone the extra mile to make themselves heard — they’ve created a whole website to document their experience. An Oyo Rooms customer has created…

If you catch the attention of the right people, you can make even the biggest companies change their policies. In 2017, Zomato had been hacked, and details of 17 million users had been made available online. It had then emerged that the hack had been the work of a single hacker, who went by the name of “nclay”. But his motivations for the hack were unusual — instead of holding Zomato to ransom for millions,…

It’s getting hard to keep up with Oyo’s product launches these days. After launching long-term home rentals, coworking space brands, Townhouses, cloud kitchens, and even a coffee shop, Oyo Rooms is now getting into the weddings business. Oyo will launch a chain of offline stores which will sell wedding products, and these experiential stores will help customers simulate wedding scenarios. Oyo will open these stores both in metros and non-metros, and the stores in bigger…

Paytm might have lost the top spot in the UPI payments race, but it hasn’t diminished CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s bravado. Paytm CEO has said that despite giving rewards and cashbacks, companies like Google and Walmart won’t emerge on top when the dust settles on India’s payments space. “Rivals are spending huge amounts of money, but none of them have dented our market share,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The big giants with…

Even as Softbank’s biggest real estate bet unraveled spectacularly this month — WeWork had to shelve its IPO after it was unable to attract a fraction of the $47 billion valuation it had sought — it still seems keen on propping up its other investments in the space. Softbank and Oyo Rooms have jointly acquired an 80 percent stake in Japanese rental apartment operator MDI. Nikkei Asian Review reported that the acquisition cost $100 million (Rs….