India’s homegrown cab hailing company Ola (operated by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd) has scooped up $36 million (Rs 231 crore) in the fresh round of funding. This is according to Ola’s latest filing with the registrar of companies. According to the filing, ANI Technologies raised the fund from the New York based hedge fund company Tekne Capital Management on June 7. The filing further stated that the cab hailing major has allotted preference shares to two investment arms of Tekne Capital. It has allotted 1.23 lakh shares to Tekne Private Ventures III LP for Rs 167.15 crore. Besides, it has…
Author: Girish Shetti
Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank has made undisclosed amount of investment in Flipkart. Sources claim that the investment is close $ 2.5 billion, which would make SoftBank one of the largest shareholders in the Bengaluru based E commerce company. This is also the largest ever investment in an Indian tech startup company till date. Softbank has made the investment through its SoftBank Vision Fund, a dedicated $100 billion investment fund that was set up earlier this year to invest in world’s emerging tech companies. The investment fund is widely hailed as the world’s largest technology investment fund. Flipkart obviously has welcomed…
Milk delivery start up Doodhwala, operated by Bengaluru based Banger Tech Pvt. Ltd, has secured undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding. The funding was made by Tom Varkey, a partner in American hedge fund company Stonehill Capital. A press release statement said that Doodhwala will use the much needed capital infusion in upgrading technology, market expansion and increasing the staff headcount. The statement further said that the startup is looking to raise Series A funding pretty soon, but did not provide any fixed timeline for the same. Established in 2015 by Ebrahim Akbari and Aakash Agarwal, Doodhwala is an app…
Snapdeal-Flipkart Deal has collapsed as the former’s co-founders want to pursue an independent path. The move will come as huge setback for Softbank. Snapdeal has officially called off the acquisition deal with Flipkart, according to an official statement released by the Gurgaon based e commerce company on Monday. The statement specifically stated that Snapdeal will now pursue an independent path, potentially implying that the company will not consider any more accusation offers. The news of the deal falling apart comes barely after four days Jasper Infotech, the parent company of Snapdeal, agreed to sell its e-commerce business to Flipkart for…
In an interesting turn of events, the much hyped-up Snapdeal – Flipkart deal may most likely be called off as former’s co-founders and shareholders continue to disagree on terms and conditions of the sale proceedings. The report comes barely four days after Snapdeal’s management agreed to sell its e-commerce business to its Bengaluru based arch rival for nearly $900 million. The sniff about the apparent problem became evident after a crucial meeting scheduled to take place on Monday & Tuesday was abruptly cancelled. The all-important meeting in Bengaluru was supposed to officially close the transaction, with Snapdeal and Flipkart’s representatives…
Digital payment startup Paytm will enter into gaming business through a joint venture with Hong Kong based firm AGTECH Media. India’s largest digital payment startup Paytm is all set to enter into gaming business through a joint venture (JV) firm. The company has agreed to form a JV along with Hong Kong based AGTECH Media to setup a new gaming company. This was revealed by AGTECH Media’s regulatory filing in the Hong Kong stock exchange. According to the regulatory filing, AGTECH Media will hold 45% stake in the JV while the rest will be owned by Paytm. The filing further…
In a bid to give push to its cloud business, Microsoft is considering to invest $50 100 million in Indian ride hailing company Ola. Microsoft Corp. is considering investment of $50-100 million (Rs320-640 crore) for a minority stake in ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd – the parent company of Indian riding hailing company Ola – according to two people familiar with the matter. If this investment does take place, then Ola will have to apparently migrate its cloud services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft’s Azure platform. Interestingly, Microsoft used the same strategy in the case of Flipkart. It invested…
Snapdeal’s founders prefer infibeam for selling company’s stake. Sale out to infibeam will appreantly help both founder’s to keep their stake intact in the company. Flipkart’s planned takeover of Snapdeal has hit a roadblock as latter’s co-founders are reportedly mulling over selling the stake to infibeam. Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal’s decision to go along with the Ahmedabad based e commerce firm is apparently driven by self interest. Sources close to the development claim that sale to infibeam will help both founders to keep their stake intact, while sale to Flipkart will lead to complete dilution of their stake. However,…
The food tech startup MonkeyBox Food Tech Pvt. Ltd has raised undisclosed amount from Blume Ventures and other small investors as part of its pre- Series A round. This is the second time that Blume Ventures has reasserted its faith in MonkeyBox. Last year in November, it along with other investors had led the seed funding round in the Bengaluru based food tech startup. MonkeyBox, which provides notorious tiffins to school students across Bengaluru, will use the fresh capital infusion to expand its business to other parts of the city. Currently, the startup offers service only in Bengaluru city. However,…
The helpdesk Saas software maker Freshworks (earlier known as Freshdesk) on Thursday acquired Joe Hukum – a platform that helps enterprises to build their own chat bots. However, details of the accusation have not been made public. Joe Hukum has already gone public about the acquisition on its official website. After this acquisition, Joe Hukum will dedicate all its energy in building chat bots for Freshworks that would align with its existing products. Freshworks is one of the few Indian startups that has been highly active in M&A (merger and acquisition) space. The latest acquisition is its eights acquisition in…
Reports are rife in media that Chinese e commerce juggernaut Alibaba is vying for a minority stake in Bengaluru based online grocer player Bigbasket. Alibaba will invest in the online grocery player through its Indian e commerce subsidiary Paytmall. The Chinese e commerce behemoth owns nearly 50 percent stake in Paytmall. According to reports, Paytmall is looking to invest nearly $200 million in Bigbasket, which would propel latter’s valuation to $900 million. The due diligence of this deal is said to have been already started. This investment will apparently offer Paytmall a formidable presence in the online grocery space and…
E commerce major Flipkart has made a renewed and probably a last ditch effort to acquire Snapdeal by increasing its bidding offer, according to two sources close to the development. The exact offer made by Flipkart is still not known, but several media reports are quoting the latest offer to be between $850 to $900 million dollars. The reports also claim that the latest offer is only meant for Snapdeal and its marketplace management unit Unicommerce and not for the subsidiaries like Freerecharge and Vulcan. The most recent offer comes after Snapdeal earlier rejected two bidding offers by Flipkart, with…