Ripples from Oyo’s recent layoffs are already making an impact on Oyo’s hotels across the country. Some Oyo partner hotels say that they’re having trouble getting in touch with Oyo representatives. Hoteliers told ET that they were unable to contact representatives who were doing business with them. “For the past two-three days I’m trying to contact the business development people but they are not picking up our phones,” said Mohammad Ansar, an Oyo partner who…

Jeff Bezos’ charm offensive in India isn’t quite going as planned, as far as government officials are concerned. “They may have put in a billion dollars, but then if they make a loss of a billion dollars every year then they jolly well have to finance that billion dollars,” India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said at a conference today. “So it’s not as if they are doing a great favor to India…

Oyo’s long-rumoured layoffs are finally official. Oyo CEO Ritesh Agarwal has written to his employees announcing that Oyo would be cutting staff in India across business functions and geographies. “One of the implications of the new strategic objectives for 2020, is that, like the leadership team, we will reorganize more teams across businesses and functions. And this means that, unfortunately, some roles at Oyo will become redundant as we further drive tech-enabled synergy, enhanced efficiency…

When you’re moving fast and breaking things, it seems that it’s not always possible to pay attention to typos. Paytm today splurged on a front-page campaign in major newspapers promoting its new QR code, which would allow merchants to receive payments at no charge. While the campaign presumably found a lot of eyeballs, there was a problem — two newspapers directed users to the wrong URL to sign up. The Malayala Manorama ad directed people to…

Oyo Rooms has found itself smack in the middle of another controversy.  The Income Tax authorities have conducted a “recovery survey” at the company’s Golf Course Road office in Gurgaon. The laptops and phones of some employees were seized during the survey. Oyo’s India operations team works out of this office in Gurgaon. “A recovery survey was conducted at the company’s Gurgaon office on Friday and it continued all through Friday evening. A recovery survey…

Zomato has built up its arsenal as it continues its to grind it out with Swiggy for dominance over India’s food tech space. Zomato has raised $150 million (Rs. 1,050 crore) from Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial in a latest round of funding announced today. The fundraise values Zomato at $3 billion pre-money, which means its post money valuation is $3.15 million. Last year, Zomato had been valued at $2.18 billion, and its latest valuation brings it…

For a company that wasn’t even worth $1 billion until 20 months ago, Byju’s is having a dream run.  Byju’s is now worth $8 billion (Rs. 56,000 crore) after a $200 million fund raise from Tiger Global. This round makes Byju’s India’s third most valuable startup behind Paytm, which is valued at $15 billion, and Oyo Rooms, which is valued at $10 billion. The fund raise has also catapulted Byju’s ahead of Ola, which is currently valued…

Apple is the most valuable company in the world, and is widely thought to be the most successful tech company of a generation. But one can truly appreciate how dominant it really is when a single product from its stable — which isn’t even its flagship — makes more money than entire tech companies. Apple’s Airpods made more money in 2019 than Twitter, Snapchat, Shopify and Spotify combined. In 2019, Apple made $12 billion (Rs….

Both India and Israel have seen a lot of success in each country’s startup ecosystem, at home and on the global level. But what makes this interesting is that each country has a very different approach to nurturing their respective country’s startups.  While India is ranked 52nd on the Global Innovation Index (GII), Israel is ranked 10th and there are fundamental differences in how each country’s ecosystem operates. Startup infrastructure  India – In India, there…