News Roundup: 8 Indian Startup News That You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [4 -9 Dec]

We bring you the weekly dose of important Indian startup news of the week.

One of the most interesting Indian startup news of the week was, PhonePe reporting, that it has processed over 1 Mn daily transactions worth over $15.4 Mn (INR 100 Cr) every day in November. Also, the app has achieved a total Payments Volume (TPV) annual run rate of $6.1 Bn (INR 40K Cr) within 14 months of its launch. The company is targeting to double this metric by March 2018.

Another important story of the week was Amazon Wholesale India, reporting $1.08 Bn (INR 7000 Cr) worth sales in FY 16-17. Interestingly, Amazon India has credited this success to current ecommerce FDI guidelines.

Important Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

Paytm Infuses Funds Into Payments Bank And Paytm Mall

Paytm Payments Bank planning to expand its offline distribution network by allowing trusted local partners to act as potential cash-in and cash-out points. For the same, it has committed to invest $466.5 Mn (Rs 3000 crore) in the next three years. The announcement came in just a week after launching the banking process formally and announcing an investment of $500 Mn in KYC (Know Your Customer) operations. Making it an important Indian startup news for the week.

In another development, Paytm also indicated its sights on becoming a leading ecommerce player in the country with its unit Paytm Mall. It was announced that the company will infuse $2.5 Bn into the ecommerce unitin the period of next five years and is eyeing the top spot that is currently being fought over between Flipkart and Amazon.

Google Launches New India Specific Products

Underlining its intention to woo the world’s second-largest Internet economy, the tech giant will roll out the latest version of its payments app Tez in coming months. The new version will allow users to make payments of utility bills directly through the app. The company unveiled a couple of more India centric products such as Android Oreo – a new smartphone experience for entry-level devices, Google Go-a new search app and a new “two-wheeler mode” in Google Maps for India.

Scoopwhoop Is ‘NOT’ Scaling Down News Operations

Kalaari Capital and Bharti SoftBank backed digital media startup Scoopwhoop has denied reports regarding company scaling down its news operations amid investor instructions. As per CEO Sattvik Mishra, ScoopWhoop is not scraping news operations and is rather reinventing and focussing on new content categories.

UPI Transactions Saw 38% Hike In November 2017

According to the data released by NPCI (National Payments Corporation Of India), the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) hit a record high of 105 Mn transactions last month. The jump is mainly because of the better adoption UPI based digital payments solutions by consumers as well as the entry of global technology players like Google and Paypal.

Ola Launches Yet Another ‘Green Initiative’ Ola Pedal

After launching 600 Ola bicycles in the campus of IIT Kanpur at various docking stations on pilot basis, the cab aggregator has formally launched Ola Pedal. As the name suggests, it is a bicycle sharing service and will come in handy for short journeys allowing users to complete the final leg of their journey within the large college and office campuses.

India Opposes Any Negotiations On Ecommerce At WTO

One week ahead of WTO ministerial meet, India cleared its stand on cross border digital trading. A formal document was submitted to the organisation stating that India will participate in cross border trading as per the WTO norms adopted in 1998 and believes that it may not be wise enough to begin talks since many countries don’t fully understand the implications of negotiating binding rules.

Find the complete list of all the startup news from last week →