Food tech companies have made getting meals delivered easy and hassle-free, but they’re paying through the nose to get it done. Zomato has said that it loses Rs. 25 on average on each delivery it makes. That means that Zomato pays its fleet an additional Rs. 25 over and above any delivery fee it charges its customers. Zomato goes on to say that its last-mile cost for delivery is currently Rs. 65, which would imply that…

Zomato’s making more money than before, but it’s also spending a lot more money to do so. Zomato has said that it earned revenues of $206 million (Rs. 1552 crore) for FY2019. Compared to its revenues of $68 million last year, this is a healthy threefold rise. But the corresponding costs column wouldn’t bring as much cheer — in order to earn three times more revenues, Zomato’s costs rose sixfold, increasing from $80 million last year to…

Reliance Jio has, in the past, called itself India’s biggest startup. True to its billing, it’s now acquiring smaller startups. Jio has acquired a majority stake in conversational AI startup Haptik. The total transaction size, including the primary capital investment, is Rs. 700 crore (~100 million USD), with Rs. 230 crore as the consideration for the initial business transfer from Haptik to Jio. On a fully diluted basis, Reliance will now own 87% of the…

After doing everything from payments, mobile recharges, e-commerce, flight, bus and train tickets, gold sales, movie bookings, and even sales of gold, Paytm is now looking to become a stock broker. “We are thrilled to announce that Paytm Money has received approval from securities & capital market regulator SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India) to start our next offering — Stock Broking,” Paytm said in a blogpost. “In addition to this, we are also excited to…

Oyo has previously said that it wants to be the world’s largest hotel chain; it’s now received an investment from the what’s currently the world’s largest hotel chain. Airbnb has invested between $150 and $200 million (Rs. 1050 – Rs. 1400 crore) into Oyo Rooms as a part of its Series E funding round. The investment follows a record $1 billion fund-raise from Ola last year, which had included investors like Softbank, Sequoia Capital and…

From starting off in 2011 selling fresh produce, BigBasket has become India’s freshest unicorn. BigBasket is now valued at more than $1.2 billion (Rs. 8,400 crore) after raising $150 million in its latest round of funding. Existing investor Alibaba put in $50 million, U.K. government-owned CDC Group put in $40 million, and South Korea’s Mirae Asset Global Investments invested $59.9 million in the round. The latest fund raise means that Big Basket has become India’s second unicorn of 2019 after…

Life appears to have come a full circle for Sonia Dhawan. Five months after being arrested from the Paytm office and being thrown in jail, the Paytm Vice President has rejoined her company. Dhawan had been granted bail last week by the Allahabad High Court, and has immediately joined her former employer. This is a bit of an unexpected development, given how Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma had earlier hintd that a gang led by…

The 2019 Lok Sabha elections are nearly upon us, and the campaigning is also exactly what you’d expect in the tech-savvy, connected world of 2019. The BJP has said it will run raths in New Delhi as a part of its election campaign. Now raths aren’t new in electioneering — they were widely used by major Indian parties in 2014. But these raths being run by the BJP are Digital Raths. They will have Wifi hotspots, through which…

In 2007, Flipkart was a newly-formed startup looking for funding. Twelve years and a $21 billion acquisition later, it’s funding other startups. In what is the first such move by an e-commerce company in India, Flipkart has set up an internal fund to invest in early-stage startups. The fund will invest $2-3 million (Rs. 14-21 crore) in startups in sectors across financial technology, supply chain, SaaD and other areas. The fund is estimated to be $60-100…

Last night, Karnataka’s transport department sent out a bit of a shocker — it announced that it had banned Ola for six months. Ola had been running bike taxis in Bangalore even though they were illegal, and after several warnings, the transport department decided to suspend Ola’s aggregator license altogether. This meant that Ola would not only be not able to run its bikes in the state, but its cabs and autos were banned as…