Oyo might now be worth $5 billion, valued more than the Taj Group, and the toast of India’s startup ecosystem, but not everyone’s pleased with its meteoric rise. India’s budget hotels are coming together to consider legal action against Oyo’s predatory pricing, ET reports. “Oyo has disrupted the entire market drastically,” said Budget Hotel Association of Mumbai president Ashraf Ali. “Rooms that we used to sell for Rs 2,000-2,500 are now being sold for Rs…

The jury might be out on how much India’s startups have benefited from Startup India, but the government sure seems to have learnt a thing or two from India’s startups. PM Modi’s Narendra Modi app, which has over 5 million installs and an overall rating of 4.6, is using referral codes to growth hack its way towards collecting donations for the party. Anyone making a micro-donation through the app — a sum between Rs. 5 and…

India’s stock markets haven’t been having the best time of late — the Nifty had touched a lifetime high of 11,700 in September, before crashing nearly 15% in the following months, and sectors like NBFCs and banks have also bled. But amidst all this, an unlisted stock has been doing pretty well for itself. The value of Paytm’s parent company One97’s shares have risen 60% in the unofficial stock markets, brokers have told ET. “Shares…

Five years after it entered India, Amazon appears to have finally gnawed past Flipkart’s first-mover advantage. Amazon has just beaten Flipkart for the first time in terms of gross sales or GMV, a Barclays report has said. Amazon generated $7.5 billion in gross sales in the year ended March compared with $6.2 billion generated by Flipkart. This number, however, doesn’t include sales from Flipkart’s fashion subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong.  In terms of revenue, however, Flipkart…

The guard is changing at WhatsApp, and it’s changing quickly. After WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton had left the company last year, followed by fellow co-founder Jan Koum in 2018, yet another high-profile WhatsApp executive has put in his papers. Neeraj Arora, who’d joined WhatsApp nearly seven years ago and become one of its earliest employees, has now quit the company.  “It is time to move on, but I cannot be more proud of how WhatsApp…

After what’s felt like an eternity in gathering insights, loads of social media polls, and months of teasers, it’s finally emerged what FreeCharge founder Kunal Shah’s new startup will really do. Shah’s latest startup Cred, which he’d unveiled last month, will reward people each time they pay their credit card bills. Cred will let users pay their credit card bills through its platform, and reward them for timely payments with offers and discounts on shopping, health…