Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal is in talks to raise capital for his new startup, Indian fintech Navi.
Bansal is talking to investors to raise at a valuation of around $2 billion, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup Navi has been largely self-funded up to now — Bansal owns 97% of the company — and this would be its first large outside fundraise since it was founded in 2018.
After a particularly rough 2023 in which overall startup funding fell 73% in the country, this could be a signal that growth stage funding rounds are back on the table.
Even if this might become Navi’s first external raise, that doesn’t mean Bansal has not been talking to interested parties.
The Indian government has finally resolved a years-long cybersecurity issue that exposed reams of sensitive data about its citizens.
At fault was the Indian government’s cloud service, dubbed S3WaaS, which is billed as a “secure and scalable” system for building and hosting Indian government websites.
With evidence of ongoing exposures of private data, Majumder asked TechCrunch for help getting the remaining data secured.
Majumder said that some citizens’ sensitive data began spilling online long after he first disclosed the misconfiguration in 2022.
The exposed data, Majumder said, potentially puts citizens at risk of identity thefts and scams.
Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is investing $80 million in Perfios, an Indian fintech that provides real-time credit underwriting solutions to banks and other financial institutions.
The new investment values Perfios at a valuation of over $1 billion.
Bengaluru-based Perfios provides real-time data aggregation and analysis tools to financial institutions, enabling them to streamline their customer journeys and make more informed decisions.
Perfios said it delivers 8.2 billion data points to banks and other financial institutions every year to facilitate faster decisioning, and processes 1.7 billion transactions a year with an AUM of $36 billion.
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of Canada’s largest pension funds, has ramped up its interest in India in recent years.
Baron Capital, an investor in Indian food delivery startup Swiggy, has increased the value of its stake in the Indian firm, implying a valuation of $12.16 billion, surpassing the $10.7 billion post-money valuation at which Swiggy secured funding in early 2022.
The valuation uptick at the end of December is a noteworthy development for Swiggy and, more broadly, the Indian startup ecosystem.
This is particularly significant given that Swiggy’s valuation had previously been marked down to a low of $5.5 billion.
Swiggy commands roughly 45% market share in the Indian food delivery sector and is “well positioned to benefit from structural growth in online food delivery in India,” Baron Capital wrote in a separate filing.
Swiggy, which is also a key player in the instant-grocery delivery space in India, is increasingly broadening its offerings.
India’s smartwatch market in flux as unknown brands challenge heavyweights The world's biggest smartwatch market has seen a deluge of new devices in the past few monthsIndia’s smartwatch market has transformed, seemingly overnight.
Hong Kong-based market analyst firm Counterpoint Research has observed the number of unknown brands in the Indian smartwatch market has grown from 78 in 2021 to 128 in 2023.
Declining pricesThe growth of unknown brands in the Indian smartwatch market has not yet significantly impacted all the local firms dominating the market.
Last year, smartwatch brands boAt and Noise entered the smart ring market in India to diversify their product catalog.
That said, market analysts like IDC’s Sharma predicts the Indian smartwatch market will see only single-digit growth this year due to stiff competition from unknown brands and dropping ASPs.
India’s federal election commission has fixed flaws on its website that exposed data related to citizens’ requests for information related to their voting eligibility status, local political candidates and parties, and technical details about electronic voting machines.
The bugs allowed access to the RTI requests, download transaction receipts, and responses shared by the officials without properly authenticating user logins.
Some of the exposed data included the RTI filing date, the questions asked, the applicant’s name and mailing address, the applicant’s poverty line status, and RTI responses.
The bugs were fixed earlier this week following CERT-In’s intervention.
The Election Commission of India did not respond to a request for comment.
Indian firms whose apps were delisted by Google last week have begrudgingly started to comply with Play Store billing rules to get their apps back on the store.
A lot of protesting developers have opted for a consumption-only model for now, while others have opted for the Google Play billing.
And what about alternate app stores like the recently launched Indus app store from PhonePe?” Janakiraman told the publication.
Google also noted that the company has given developers three years to comply with Play Store rules.
Firms seeking regulatory actionThe firms that are protesting against Google’s move are looking for regulatory intervention.
Camshaft disclosed in court filings this week that some $533 million it managed for Byju’s Alpha, a U.S. unit of Indian edtech group Byju’s, was transferred to another 100% and U.S.-based subsidiary of Byju’s, thereby refuting allegations that the Indian firm used the wealth manager’s services to misappropriate money.
In the court filings, Camshaft said the capital was transferred to Inspilearn LLC, a Delaware-based subsidiary of Byju’s.
Camshaft also clarified that Byju’s or any of its entities are not limited partners in the hedge fund.
Camshaft Capital attracted media attention last year after lenders of Byju’s questioned the legitimacy of the wealth advisor as they claimed the $533 million was a collateral for a $1.2 billion they had lent to the Indian startup.
A select few estranged investors in Byju’s later used the allegation to discredit Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran’s credibility.
Google said on Friday it will start removing apps from its Play Store in India if developers fail to comply with its payment policy, taking a definitive stand weeks after the top Indian court granted the Android-maker with relief.
Without naming them, Google said 10 companies in India, including “many well-established ones,” have not paid Google Play’s fee despite being provided with three years to prepare.
“After giving these developers more than three years to prepare, including three weeks after the Supreme Court’s order, we are taking necessary steps to ensure our policies are applied consistently across the ecosystem, as we do for any form of policy violation globally,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“Enforcement of our policy, when necessary, can include removal of non-compliant apps from Google Play.”This is a developing story.
More to come.
India has approved allocating up to $15.2 billion (1.26 trillion Indian rupees) to build three new semiconductor plants, including its first semiconductor fab facility — part of the country’s big bid to take on China, Taiwan and other countries in the chip race.
On Thursday, the Indian cabinet approved the country’s first semiconductor fab facility set up by the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group and Taiwan’s Power Chip, which will be established in the Dholera region of Gujarat.
The Indian IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters at a media briefing in New Delhi that the construction work for the semiconductor fab will start within 100 days.
“A typical semiconductor fab, construction is a three-four-year time frame.
This will be the country’s third semiconductor unit and will be able to produce 48 million chips per day.
