BookMeIn, an online marketplace for booking hyperlocal services, has raised $377,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) in angel funding from Ajmera Group of Companies, BookMeln co-founder Siddharth Dalal told Techcircle.in.

BookMeIn, run by Aadya Webservices Pvt Ltd, will use the money to add more categories to its product portfolio and for geographical expansion.

The development was first reported by The Economic Times, citing Dalal.

The startup, which allows customers to book appointments for services related to health and wellness, beauty and fitness and spiritual healing, is currently operational in Mumbai.

It claims to process 150 orders a day.

BookMeIn was started by Siddharth, Ekta Dalal, Nidhi Chandel and Chaitanya Chandel in 2014. Dalal, who handles operations, marketing and investor relationship at the startup, is a management graduate from the University of Wales. He has over a decade of experience in sales and marketing, having worked with Robosoft Solutions, Team Computers and TRU group. Ekta worked at Business Today and Delhi Press before, while Nidhi, an alumnus of Mumbai University, worked at an IT company. Chaitanya is an ex-Indian Navy serviceman.

Companies operating local services on a marketplace model have been attracting a lot of investor attention. Flatpebble, an online marketplace for pre-packed services from photographers, videographers and stylists, announced last week that it has secured $600,000 in seed funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN).

Other companies that raised funding include Fixy (VentureNursery), UrbanClap (Accel & Saif Partners), LocalOye (Tiger Global and Lightspeed), Qyk (Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Abhishek Goyal, co-founder, Tracxn.com; and Delhivery co-founder Sahil Barua), Near.in (led by Anupam Mittal, CEO of People Group, and Manish Vij of Smile Vun Group), FindYahan (led by Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India), TaskBob (Orios Venture Partners & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Ventures).

The 47-year-old Ajmera Group is a realty firm. The company has presence in and around Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot and Bangalore, in addition to an international project in Bahrain.

Rocket Internet-incubated Indian fashion and lifestyle venture Jabong has become the top money losing initiative for the German emerging markets and Europe focused internet company.

Jabong’s operating loss margin rose far ahead of Southeast Asian lifestyle e-commerce firm Lazada and Latin American e-commerce marketplace Linio in the first quarter of 2015, making it the most operating loss making property among Rocket Internet’s top ventures.

Last year, in the same quarter Lazada sported the biggest EBITDA (earnings before interest tax and depreciation and amortisation) loss margin with Jabong and Linio being neck to neck, as per data shared by Rocket Internet (see graph).

Jabong also happens to be only the second key venture of Rocket Internet besides home24, that saw deterioration in operating margins compared with Q1 2014.

Meanwhile, Jabong has also been trailing other global ‘proven winners’ of Rocket Internet in terms of growth of net revenues or the actual revenue booked by the companies (gross merchandise value or GMV also captures sales from third-party sellers where Jabong only gets a listing fee). It was also the only top venture sporting under 50 per cent revenue growth in Q1, besides Brazilian lifestyle e-tailer Dafiti.

Jabong in numbers

Jabong, which competes with Flipkart-controlled Myntra among others in the lifestyle e-commerce space in India, also saw its operating loss margin rise compared with its full calendar year 2014 numbers. It had EBITDA loss margin of (-) 56 per cent last year, an improvement from 2013 when it posted (-) 68.5 per cent.

This possibly signals how the firm is trying to push its sales faster with more discounting. This could also possibly reflect net revenues are failing to keep pace with operating expenses.

Operating or EBITDA losses capture what a firm loses from its operations or day-to-day business activity factoring out other aspects like interest on loans (including working capital) and depreciation or accounting for loss of value of assets through wear and tear. EBITDA margin refers to EBITDA as a percentage of revenues.

Notably, Jabong’s third party marketplace sales growth has been faster than what it books on its direct sales to consumers. This is a continuation of a previous trend (click here ) where GMV (and transactions) growth has been higher than that of net revenues (or value of orders served directly).

Also the average selling price of third-party vendors appears to be around 15 per cent higher than that of what Jabong direct e-tails to the customers. The average transaction value (including what it sells directly and products sold by other merchants) in Q1 stood at Rs 1,690 compared with a tad over Rs 1,500 in Q1 2014 and for full calendar year 2014. In the same period, average basket value of products sold directly by Jabong has risen marginally to around Rs 1,423.

Third party vendors now represent around one in three transactions on Jabong every day.

Meanwhile, Jabong was valued at around $480 million as of last December in its last funding round, according to Rocket Internet’s annual report. This means the firm was valued at around Rs 3,050 crore or 2.3 times its GMV for the year.

Phaneesh Murthy

IT industry veteran Phaneesh Murthy-led P M Health & Life Care Private Limited, that is trying to create a ‘health exchange’ to bring clinics, hospitals, diagnostic centres and doctors together on one platform, is in talks to raise $10-12 million in Series A round of funding before December this year, Murthy told reporters in Bangalore on Monday.

In March, at the time of the launch of the company in March, Murthy had planned to raise $5 million from strategic investors. However, he has now changed those plans and brought in that money from friends and family, he said.

A former board member of Infosys who later served as CEO of IGATE, Murthy’s stellar career in both these companies abruptly ended following scandalous affairs.

Early this year Capgemini said it will acquire IGATE from its founders and PE backer Apax Partners.

After settling legal wrangling over an affair with a subordinate that cost him his job at IGATE, Murthy is now building his third innings with the Bangalore-headquartered venture.

As a first step towards his ambitious plan of health exchange, which Murthy said would take 5-8 years for completion, the company launched Zigy Health Vault, a patient-controlled electronic health record system and Zigy.com, a marketplace to connect chemists and druggists with consumers.

The chemists and druggists online marketplace will initially serve customers in five metropolitan cities—Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi. The product portfolio on the marketplace will include allopathic, homeopathic, ayurvedic and other wellness products and services. The operations will be extended to 50 cities within 18 months. Over a period of time, Zigy.com will be servicing rural India as well.

Hemant Bhardwaj, CEO, managing director & co-founder of the firm said the company targets to achieve one million transactions within the first 12 months of operations.

One venture which is in the similar space as Zigy.com is 1mg.com(formerly HealthKartPlus). Gurgaon-based Bright Lifecare Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates online drug marketplace 1mg.com, recently acquired homeopathy medicines platform homeobuy.com.

1mg raised $6 million from Sequoia Capital, Kae Capital, Intel Capital, Omidyar Network and MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra, early this year.

Izofy, an online marketplace that connects users with astrologers, numerologists, tarot readers, vaastu consultants and healers, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Prime Capital Markets Ltd.

Kolkata-based iZodiaque Numerology Services Pvt Ltd, the company which owns and operates Izofy, will use the money for product development, improving technology and to build a marketing strategy for increasing customers, as per a press statement.

On the Izofy platform, users can post their problems and experts would pitch in with solutions depending on the user’s budget. Co-founder Rohit Singhania claims that Izofy receives about 200 monthly queries and that it has on-boarded 50 active experts.

The company has a rating mechanism to help users decide which expert to choose, the statement said.  Izofy also offers a match maker service – using western zodiac, Indian Vedic astrology and numerology – to suggest compatibility among couples.

Izofy competes with more established players such as Astrospeak, Astrosage and Ganeshaspeaks.com for a chunk of the occult sciences market, which is said to be worth $2 billion in India and the US alone.

The startup was founded by former banker Singhania along with Anirudh Singhania and Namit Rai Surana. Singhania has worked at Hewlett Packard, Kotak Mahindra and Axis Bank prior to launching Izofy.

Singhania has worked in the software industry for about 18 years across tech platforms and companies.

Surana is a product manager with Facebook in San Francisco.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said on Monday that it has “clearly and unambiguously opposed zero-rated plans of any type” in response to the Department of Telecom’s (DoT) paper on net neutrality.

The IAMAI said that such “plans will ultimately harm Internet content and service providers by limiting competition among them, and, by extension, limit consumer choice”.

Zero rating is essentially a practice in which users can access specific websites or apps free of charge, while carriers recoup data costs through deals with app developers. Such plans are seen as violating the fundamental principle of net neutrality.

There are currently no laws governing net neutrality in India.

IAMAI said that it has also reacted strongly against the proposal to license domestic and national VoIP, as suggested in the DoT paper. The association contends that such a regime would be detrimental to consumer interests and will curtail innovation.

The government had invited public comments from citizens on the DoT panel’s recommendations. The last date for submission was August 20.

Quoting emails exchanged between Google and IAMAI, Medianama had reported last week that Google and Facebook had tried to prevent IAMAI from taking an anti-zero rating stand in its submission.

Bangalore-based Qyk Inc, which runs mobile marketplace for local services Qyk, has raised $1 million in pre-Series A funding led by Delhi-based GrowX Ventures, an early-stage investment firm.

Qyk’s existing seed investors such as Tracxn Labs, Powai Lake Ventures, and Sahil Barua (co-founder of Delhivery) also participated in this round, as per a press statement.

“We are delighted to have GrowX as an investor. They believe in our vision of building a frictionless and efficient marketplace for local services,” Deepak Singhal, CEO of Qyk, said.

Qyk is a mobile platform that enables customers to hire service providers and professionals near their area. This includes those offering services such as wedding photography or language training besides CAs, interior designers and tax consultants. It also enables customers to compare and get competitive quotes.

The company was founded in October 2014 by IIT-ians Singhal, Sangharsh Boudhh, Shobhit Singhal and Anubhav Sahoo. Sahoo earlier worked at 24/7 Inc, while Singhal was previously associated with JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Practo.

Boudhh worked at Avaya India, Webaroo Technology and Olacabs prior to founding the startup. Singhal was with Nomura, UrbanTouch, FashionAndYou and InMobi.

“The traditional approach to finding service providers via listings is painful and broken, and leaves both the consumer and the service provider dissatisfied. Qyk is here to change that and dramatically improve the experience of finding any kind of professional help. We’ve already seen this model see huge success in the US with Thumbtack, and believe that the Qyk team will be the one to make this succeed in India,” said Ashish Taneja, MD, GrowX Ventures.

In March this year, the startup had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from a group of investors, including Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Abhishek Goyal, co-founder, Tracxn.com; and Delhivery’s Barua.

“Having worked earlier with Deepak and the founding team, I am confident of their capabilities in building a scalable business while keeping the pulse of the customer at heart. Looking at their growth and product-oriented positioning in the market, I believe they will be looking at break-away growth and establishing themselves as the market-leader soon,” Goyal said.

Since starting operations five months ago in Bangalore, Qyk claims to have added 10,000 professionals across 100 categories on its platform. Qyk has a 70-member strong team today and expects to scale headcount to over 200 in a year. In addition to Bangalore, it offers services in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata.

GrowX has already invested in over 15 companies since inception two-and-a-half years ago. Its portfolio companies include AdSparx (video ad tech platform), FortunePay (e-payments processing), ShepHertz (cloud platform for app developers), and Zolijns Designs (furniture and furnishings) in India; Mad Street (artificial intelligence and computer vision technology) and Quandl in Canada, among others.

Companies operating local services on a marketplace model have been attracting a lot of investor attention. On Monday, BookMeIn, an online marketplace for booking hyperlocal services, said it raised $377,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) in angel funding from Ajmera Group of Companies.

Other companies that raised funding include Flatpebble (IAN), Fixy (VentureNursery), UrbanClap (Accel & Saif Partners), LocalOye (Tiger Global and Lightspeed), Qyk (Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Abhishek Goyal, co-founder, Tracxn.com; and Delhivery co-founder Sahil Barua), Near.in (led by Anupam Mittal, CEO of People Group, and Manish Vij of Smile Vun Group), FindYahan (led by Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India), TaskBob (Orios Venture Partners & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Ventures).

Tanuj Mendiratta

The CEOs of Appiterate and AdIQuity, startups that were acquired by Flipkart earlier this year, have moved on from the country’s larger e-commerce player.

Livemint, which first reported the development quoting sources familiar with the matter, said that Appiterate co-founder Tanuj Mendiratta and AdlQuity founder Anurag Dud have exited Flipkart.

A spokesperson for Flipkart did not respond to a Techcircle.in email till the time of writing this report. Queries sent to Mendiratta and Dud were also unanswered. We will update this space when we hear from them.

Flipkart had acquired analytics and A/B testing platform Appiterate (run by Delhi and San Francisco-based DSYN Technologies Pvt Ltd) in April while mobile advertising network AdIQuity (operated by Bangalore-based AdIQuity Technologies Pvt Ltd) was bought in March.

Anurag Dud

The Livemint report said that other employees of Appiterate and AdIQuity continue to work for Flipkart.

Flipkart has seen few senior level exits in the recent past while it continues to hunt for seasoned professionals for top positions. Recently, Ravi Vora, former marketing head who was serving as chief executive officer of Flipkart’s Strategic Brands Group, moved on from the company.

Prior to that, Amod Malviya, chief technology officer of Flipkart, quit his full-time position to be a part of the company’s newly created advisory board. Sameer Nigam, who headed engineering, also resigned from the Bangalore-based Flipkart.

Meanwhile, Flipkart hired two Silicon Valley expatriates, namely Eric Lange (former vice president of Yahoo’s analytics wing) and Dan Rawson (ex- general manager at Amazon’s fulfilment business). In March, Google’s former product management executive Punit Soni joined Flipkart as chief product officer.

Flipkart-owned lifestyle e-commerce venture Myntra Designs Pvt Ltd, a company co-founded by Mukesh Bansal, appointed former Google executive Ambarish Kenghe as its senior vice president and product head.

Flipkart also appointed IT industry veteran Ravi Garikipati in a newly created position – entrepreneur in residence. In April, it roped in Hari Vasudev (Yahoo), Anand KV (Hathway) and Manish Maheshwari (txtWeb), to spearhead supply chain, customer experience and seller ecosystem verticals, respectively. Earlier, the firm had named Saikiran Krishnamurthy from McKinsey as the chief operating officer (COO) of its commerce division.

The organisation also re-jigged its top team with Sachin Bansal now looking after new initiatives and strategy. Binny Bansal is heading supply chain and logistics while Mukesh Bansal has been heading the day-to-day operations.

Appiterate was founded in January 2013 by Mendiratta, along with Anuj Bhargva (chief creative officer), Mayank Kumar (CTO) and Varun Sharma (COO). An MBA from IIM Calcutta, Mendiratta earlier founded a marketplace for bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) and guesthouses. Bhargva holds a master’s degree in graphic design and had previously run a design studio focusing on the mobile and digital space.

AdIQuity, which initially started with the now-defunct local search engine Guruji.com back in 2006, enables mobile app developers and publishers to earn revenues by leveraging their mobile inventory. It also helps ad agencies, ad networks and other media buyers acquire global mobile traffic.

The company also has features like Geo Sense, which enables mobile advertisers to select and target location-specific audience. The company tied up with Art Of Click, a Singapore-based mobile ad network, to accelerate growth in the Asia-Pacific region two years ago.

It had raised $7 million from Sequoia Capital in 2006, followed by $8 million from Sandstone Capital in 2007 (when Guruji.com was still functioning).

Raj Iyer, CEO of custommadeit

Pune-based Truelytics eComm Pvt Ltd, which runs an online platform for customised personal and home-related merchandise under icustommadeit.com, has raised $250,000 (Rs 1.7 crore) in its third round of angel funding from a bunch of new investors.

Aditya Pethe, MD of Waman Hari Pethe Jewellers; Eaton India’s indirect tax head Vidisha Vaidya; Ravi Kant Sharma, quality lead of Chevron India; Aparna Pittie and the unnamed director of a top accounting firm put money in this round, as per a press statement.

icustommadeit plans to use the funding to primarily advance its technology platform, offer a better user interface, pursue brand building and initiate an international marketing strategy. It will also use the money to hire new staffers.

“We want to dispel the myth that custom made is expensive. While we are actively trying to change the perception, our focus is on the 3 Ps – passion, product & people. We aim to revolutionise the way people buy in the country,” said Raj Iyer, director and CMD of icustommadeit.

icustommadeit.com is an online marketplace that connects individuals seeking bespoke creations with professional creators. The company was founded by Iyer and Kundan Dhake in May 2013. It claims to have a range of over 12,000 products across 33 categories.

The company competes with the likes of Zazzle, Printful and other web-based properties for a slice of the online market for customised merchandise.

Till date, icustommadeit has raised $650,000 in funding.

In June, the company secured $250,000 in its second round of angel funding from television serial scriptwriter Virendra Shahney and cardiologist Paresh Doshi.

Prior to that, it had raised $150,000 from Salma Chugh, MD of Vertex Group.

US-based Coursera Inc, an education technology company that partners with universities to offer courses online, has secured $49.5 million in the first closing of Series C funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Times Internet (TIL) and others investors.

Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) also participated in this round, as per a press statement.

The investment by TIL is part of a larger partnership under which it will provide marketing, advertising and strategic support to build awareness about Coursera in India, the statement said.

“Coursera is the gold standard for the emerging wave of education technology companies. We are excited to bring Times Internet’s growth capabilities behind such a strong product, and bring high quality, affordable digital education to millions of Indians,” Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet, said. TIL is a subsidiary of Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL), which also runs The Times of India, The Economic Times and other media properties.

About three-quarters of Coursera’s learners are outside the US. Emerging economies are its fastest growing markets.

“Coursera has made tremendous progress over the last year and is meeting a major, global market need with its multi-course specialisations in key workforce sectors. We are excited to support the growth of this high-impact enterprise, which is transforming lives through access to the world’s best educational institutions,” said Scott Sandell, managing general partner at NEA and member of Coursera’s board of directors.

Coursera expects the second closing of this latest round funding round in the next few months. This will take the total Series C funding to $60 million.

Puneet Singh Jaggi & Anmol Singh Jaggi, founders, Ezysolare.com

Ahmedabad-based Gosolar Ventures Pvt Ltd, a company which runs online solar products and services marketplace startup ezysolare.com, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Infuse Ventures, according to a press release.

It will use the funding to further develop technology and expand business in the country.

Founded in April 2015 by brothers Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi, ezysolare.com provides an online platform for engineering and procurement for the equipment used to build solar power projects, thus connecting solar installers with the manufacturers of solar equipments. To begin with, it is concentrating on rooftop solar market.

Anmol, a BTech in applied petroleum engineering from University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun, is also a director of Gensol Consultants Pvt Ltd which provides consultancy for clean development mechanism (CDM) & renewable energy projects. Puneet, who was till recently with Gensol, is an IIT Roorkee alumnus.

“Even by conservative estimates, the country has over 1,000 solar installers today, implementing over Rs 1,500 crore worth of solar rooftop projects annually, who can use ezysolare’s services, and the market is fast expanding,” Amber Maheshwari, vice president of Infuse Ventures, said.

The company claims to have over 45 suppliers and 500 products listed and expects to touch Rs 35,000 crore in value of transactions facilitated annually in the next couple of years in line with the government’s target of 40 GW of solar rooftop by 2022.

“There is already a plethora of online marketplaces in India. None of them, however, integrate system design & engineering guidance as a part of the buying journey like we do at our online solar marketplace. The support comes from experts on call and online design services,” said Puneet.

Infuse Ventures is backed by IIM Ahmedabad’s CIIE, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Technology Development Board, IFC, BP, Godrej Industries, ICICI Bank, SIDBI, Bank of India and Union Bank. It supports seed- and early-stage enterprises developing new business models across the renewable energy, resource efficiency, waste, water and other sustainability-related areas.

In the energy sector, it has made a number of investments including companies like GIBSS, which provides energy efficient and environmentally responsible technologies; Glowship.com, an online marketplace platform for energy and environment related products and energy management solution firm Ecolibrium Energy.

Personalised fashion e-commerce aggregator Voonik, run by Voonik Technologies Pvt Ltd, has acqui-hired TrialKart, a mobile platform that provides virtual dressing room experience. The TrialKart site now redirects to Voonik and its independent app is no longer accessible.

Acqui-hire refers to the buy-out of a company primarily for the skills and expertise of its staff, rather than for its products or services.

“By acqui-hiring TrialKart, we will now be able to offer their virtual dressing room solution to our customers as well as enlist the expertise of their team to create the ‘image intelligence division’ to boost the backend infrastructure for Voonik,” said Sujayath Ali, co-founder and CEO of Voonik.

Before it was pulled down, the TrialKart mobile app enabled users to choose any listed product and click on the ‘Try’ option to visualise how the piece of clothing or accessory would look on them. They can also zoom in, readjust and reorient the product to get a holistic picture.

“We are excited to be a part of the Voonik family and are looking forward to innovating further to bring about greater disruption in the fashion e-retail space in India. Voonik has made tremendous headway by offering the most personalised and compelling shopping experience,” said Harsha M, founder of TrialKart.

TrialKart was launched in February 2015 by Harsha, Jayalakshmi Manohar and Vipul Divyanshu.

Bengaluru-based Voonik claims to have nearly 2.5 million app downloads to date. In June this year, it had raised $5 million from Sequoia Capital and existing investor Seedfund in a Series A round of funding.

It offers multiple e-stores on a single platform and lets consumers shop in a single checkout. Besides a web version it also offers an app where users can mix and match from styles and stock keeping units across other fashion e-tailers like Jabong, Fashionara and Zovi.

Other players in the online retailing space, such as Flipkart and Myntra, are also launching their image recognition features. Flipkart had recently enabled its image search feature, while Myntra is collaborating with an artificial intelligence startup called Madstreetden.

Some like eyewear e-tailer Lenskart has been offering virtual trial of glasses for years.

Bengaluru might be the home of Flipkart and Amazon India, but Delhi-National Capital Region is the leader among Indian cities as the hotbed of e-commerce startup activity. Delhi-NCR, which already hosts some of the largest e-commerce companies like Snapdeal, Paytm and Grofers, has seen 52 e-commerce startups raising capital since 2011.

Bengaluru, also known as the tech capital of India, however, led the pack with more online and digital startups being funded than any other city in the country.

Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR have also emerged as huge breeding grounds for startups providing web-based services across a spectrum of industries from finance to healthcare, logistics, cab-aggregation, food & grocery delivery and real estate.

Tech funding & geographical distribution

* Data on # of companies that have raised angel/seed or venture capital financing since 2011, until August 24, 2015.

To understand and analyse the startup landscape better, deep-dive into the data provided by VCCEdge platform. Write to us at sales@vccedge.com to know how we can assist you with your data needs.

Mumbai-based startup Belita Retail Pvt Ltd, which runs an on-demand home beauty services marketplace Belita has raised $375,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) in angel funding through LetsVenture and Lead Angels.

The round was led by early stage VC firm India Quotient and Supreet Singh, CEO – Altor Executive Search, with few other investors from LetsVenture and Lead Angels participating in the fundraise.

The money will be used for scaling up the team, enhancing technology, strengthening operations and expanding to new cities.

“The Belita team has got complete control on their model. With passion and experience of the founders, we believe Belita is set to continue with leadership position within this industry,” said investor Supreet Singh.

The Mumbai based company essentially aggregates beauticians and trains them to serve the customer better. Currently, it has nearly 50 beauticians on board.

“Belita has the potential and capability to grow into a multi-city service. The slow, organic growth would not help fulfil our vision. This angel round would help us grow faster by building a bigger team, better tech, and expanding to new locations and cities,” said co-founder Akshay Jain.

The company was founded in September 2011 by Garima Jain, an alumnus of Indian School of Business with her husband and serial entrepreneur Akshay Jain, an IIT alumnus.

The on-demand services is seeing a lot of investor interest with another beauty services related venture The Home Salon raising seed investment from angels-backed startup accelerator VentureNursery.

There are several other ventures focusing on home related services that have raised funding over the recent past. These include Gurgaon-based UrbanClap that raised $10 million from Accel and Saif Partners; LocalOye (Tiger Global and Lightspeed), Qyk (Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Near.in (led by Anupam Mittal, CEO of People Group, and Manish Vij of Smile Vun Group), FindYahan (led by Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India), TaskBob (Orios Venture Partners & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Venture).

Digital Food Talk Pvt Ltd, which runs an online community for foodies Food Talk India and a mobile app Food Talk Plus, has raised $500,000 (Rs 3.3 crore) from an unnamed private investor, it said on Wednesday.

The company intends to use the money to scale up its hyper-local dish discovery mobile app.

Food Talk India was founded in 2013 by Shuchir Suri and Anjali Batra and started as an invite-only forum on Facebook. Currently, it claims to have over 50,000 members and an online audience of 400,000 on all major media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Viber. On the invite-only social community, members on the forum get to share their food experiences and recommendations in real-time.

The company had recently hired Himanshu Vaishnav of Airocorp as the chief technology officer.

“We have bootstrapped and worked on creating this product for the last year after extensively studying our audience and demographic. This investment will help us launch the Food Talk Plus mobile application in a big way, by strengthening our core with an in-house tech team and creation of a comprehensive marketing plan,” said Suri.

Before starting the venture Suri spent nearly three years with ads and media giant WPP owned venture Encompass in India.

The firm had recently signed a deal with Star World and Star World HD as the exclusive digital partner for the MasterChef Australia season 7 series in India. Star World and Star World HD are part of global entertainment media house 21st Century Fox controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is also the promoter of News Corp, the owner of this news website.

The Rutogo team will now be a part of Ixigo

Online travel search engine ixigo.com has strengthened its presence in the online taxi aggregation space by acquiring Square Hoot Hikes Pvt Ltd, the company behind inter-city cabs marketplace Rutogo, for an undisclosed amount.

The Rutogo team will join Delhi-based Le Travenues Technology Pvt Ltd (which runs ixigo) and scale the latter’s cab aggregation app by building a marketplace for inter-city taxi owners and vendors, as per a press statement.

“Rutogo’s team is passionate about the tourist taxis segment and they had made considerable progress in building a marketplace with nearly 100 taxi vendors across India within a few months of operation. This acquisition fits well with our overall strategy of providing comprehensive choice across intra-city and inter-city taxi booking options,” said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder & CEO of ixigo.

“We will be launching outstation taxis in the coming weeks, and will also be opening up the cabs marketplace and partner with other booking apps in the inter-city taxis space shortly,” said Bajpai.

Venus Dhuria, co-founder of Rutogo, said that the market potential for app-based taxi booking is estimated to be around $9 billion, majority of which is driven by inter-city cab bookings.

In April, ixigo had launched ‘ixigo cabs’, an app which searches through more than 250 offline taxi/auto providers and online cab aggregators for inter-city travel. ixigo claims that the app has been downloaded over 100,000 times, making it the fastest growing app within the company’s portfolio.

Inter-city travel seems to be on the radar of several cab hailing providers. In May, Uber Technologies Inc, which runs a global cab hailing app, launched inter-city service between Mumbai and Pune. Notably, one of its two top competitors in India, Ola, had vacated the inter-city cab space earlier. Meru, however, offers both intra and inter-city cabs.

This is ixigo’s second acquisition this month; it had acquired the intellectual property assets of Desi Backpacking Travelers Pvt Ltd, which runs budget traveler-focused online community IndianBackpacker.com, for an undisclosed amount.

Founded by Rajnish Kumar and Bajpai in 2007, ixigo provides search, aggregation and curated travel content across hundreds of travel sites, allowing travellers to access relevant travel information.

Recently, domestic handset manufacturer Micromax made an undisclosed investment in ixigo. In 2011, the company had raised $18.5 million in funding from SAIF Partners and NASDAQ-listed OTA MakeMyTrip. It competes with players such as Wego, Kayak, and Skyscanner.

Punit Soni, Chief Product Officer, Flipkart

These are interesting times for the country’s largest e-tailer Flipkart.

It was broadly expected that Flipkart would junk its web presence and go mobile-only for transactions by September. While the company continues to showcase its mobile-first approach, all indications are that the app-only strategy has been put on the backburner for the time being.

Meanwhile, the Bangalore-based Flipkart continues to improve the mobile shopping experience through initiatives such as ‘Ping,’ a recently launched feature that allows users to share product images and chat while shopping on mobile.

Flipkart has been strengthening its upper deck. At the same time, it continues to see senior level exits. This week Techcircle.in reported the departure of Ravi Vora (CEO of Flipkart’s strategic brands group), Appiterate co-founder Tanuj Mendiratta and AdlQuity founder Anurag Dud (both firms were acquired by Flipkart earlier this year) from the company.

“Acqui-hires should be done more thoughtfully… if people leave within a few months after being acqui-hired then that’s not a good thing,” Flipkart’s chief product officer Punit Soni said in a recent interaction.

Soni, a new addition to Flipkart’s leadership team, was a senior product management executive at Google and Motorola earlier. In his previous roles, Soni was involved in the development of products such as Google News, Google Books, Google Plus, Google Mobile, Moto X, Moto G and Moto E.

Soni is also an angel investor; he has made a personal investment in payment gateway company RazorPay.

Speaking to Techcircle.in on the sidelines of a recent media conference, Soni shared his perspective on acquisitions, team building and other aspects. Edited excerpts…

There’s been a lot of talk about Flipkart and its supposed plan to kill the desktop version in favour of mobile-only usage…What timeline are we are looking at?

I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself. There is no specific timeline for it.

Flipkart has seen a spate of senior exits in the recent past. The CEOs of Appiterate and AdIQuity, firms that were acqui-hired recently, quit within six months…Is that a matter of concern?

I think acqui-hires should be done more thoughtfully. We should figure out if there is a strategic synergy when we acqui-hire. The Indian startup ecosystem is very hot right now, so there is actually reason for people to believe that they can join someplace easily…. We need to ensure that we build an ecosystem that allows people’s entrepreneurial instincts to flourish. Products like Ping were developed by a bunch of engineers who believed that this is the direction they wanted to go in. If you have the freedom to build cool stuff that you want to build, you will stay. It’s good for us, as we have to be entrepreneurial, agile and on the edge all the time. A lot of companies will randomly acquire companies and many executives who come on board through this route may not be really interested in continuing with the acquirer. I would not be interested in acqui-hires like that. I would closely look at the motive of people who would come on board before cutting such deals.

So, would you term the acquisitions of Appiterate and AdIQuity as mistakes that could have been avoided?

I do not want to comment on specific acqui-hires. All I can say is that if people leave within a few months after being acqui-hired, then that’s not a good thing. It’s definitely not something to be proud of. I would not want that to repeat

So, will there be a change in Flipkart’s overall gameplan towards acquisitions going forward?

We are always on the lookout for strong companies to partner with. We do strategic acquisitions and acqui-hires. In terms of our product strategy, we are a deeply home-grown company. Most of our infrastructure is built in-house. One of the big thing that I noticed after coming back from US was how much of Flipkart’s infrastructure was built internally, right from machine learning to data models. It’s not the kind of thing that companies in India have built before.

What are the gaps in Flipkart’s product portfolio that could be filled through inorganic growth activity?

Strategic gaps? Perhaps there are some, but not many. For infrastructure we are always scouting for talent. Infrastructure, big data, machine learning, mobile development, front end and back end – that’s our focus. So, if you see a bunch of people doing cool stuff but do not want their startup anymore, let me know and we will acquire.

In terms of hiring per se, will Flipkart go for big-ticket names?

We are seeing an increasing influx of talent from all over the world now. I recently announced the appointment of Eric Lange (a Yahoo veteran) as vice president of product management. We have a pipeline of really amazing people from all over the world who will join us. Probably in the next few weeks, I’ll make a couple of announcements. We are eyeing the best global talent. These are both Indians and non-Indians. A fundamental shift is that non-Indians are showing keen interest. And nothing makes a company more global than this. I think the trend also speaks volumes about the maturity of the country’s startup ecosystem.

How has the hiring process changed at Flipkart?

I am very opportunistic that way. If I find talented people, I create a role for them. Sometimes, I have a role and then I go after people. People are hired for a plan. However, if there are six VPs, four senior VPs and three directors at a senior level, then you are doing it wrong. You have to ask what your strategy is, find where the gaps are and then go out and get the best talent.

Eazy Coach, which connects students with admission coaches through an online marketplace, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from entrepreneur and angel investor Ravi Agarwal.

Kolkata-based Eazy Coach Educational Solutions Pvt Ltd, the company behind Eazy Coach, will use the money to launch a mobile app and to expand the range of its services, Om Agarwal, the startup’s 22-year old founder, told Techcircle.in. The company was registered in 2013 but operations began this year.

“Being a law student, the first thing I did was to register the company, along with other formalities. However, due to my commitment towards law school, I couldn’t really get past the ‘research phase’. Now, I have gone all-in and have started executing,” said Agarwal.

Eazy Coach runs a peer-to-peer marketplace to help aspirants get admissions-related advice for colleges. It helps students to prepare for specific exams in foreign universities. The startup also connects students with corporates for educational loans.

India’s total education sector market is pegged over $60 billion. Of this, approximately 50 per cent is spent on higher education, 40 per cent in K12 sector and 10 per cent in coaching, skilling and other non-formal areas.

According to Ken Research, India’s e-learning market is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 18 per cent to touch $1.29 billion (Rs 7,869 crore) by FY18.

Other recent investments in the education sector includes Bangalore-based Suphalaam Technologies Pvt Ltd, owner of online education marketplace CAKART.in, which had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Sunil Maheshwari and other unnamed investors.

Chennai-based Edsix Brain Lab Pvt Ltd, which runs a gamified skill assessment and enhancement platform for K-12 students, had also raised an undisclosed amount in a second round of angel funding from Sprout Angels LLP.

Info Edge (India) Ltd, which runs a slew of internet properties such as Naukri, 99acres, Jeevansathi and Shiksha among others invested an additional Rs 25 crore ($4 million) in Applect Learning Systems Pvt Ltd, which operates the online education and assessment venture Meritnation.

Recently, Liga Edutech Pvt Ltd, a Bengaluru-based co-scholastic assessment platform for schools,  acquired another startup in the field Learning Outcomes Solutions Pvt Ltd (Learning Outcomes) for close to Rs 6 crore (around $950,000).

Online marketplace Snapdeal has appointed former Adobe executive Rajiv Mangla as chief technology officer, as per a press statement.

The CTO office at Snapdeal, which is run by Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, was vacant since February after incumbent Amitabh Misra quit the company to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.

“We are building the strongest technology team at Snapdeal to create future ready and innovative technology infrastructure. At Snapdeal, we believe that our business exists to serve our users and strongly feel that creating a frictionless buying and selling experience is key to our success. We are delighted to have Rajiv onboard and wish him a great journey ahead with the Snapdeal family,” said Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal.

Mangla, an IIT-Bombay graduate in computer science engineering, has worked with Adobe Systems for over a decade. In his most recent role, Mangla served as Adobe’s vice president of engineering and digital marketing. The statement said that he was responsible for Adobe’s foray into enterprise and digital marketing businesses.

“Snapdeal’s digital commerce ecosystem provides innumerable opportunities for high tech innovations at internet speed and scale, which makes it an irresistible challenge. I would like to make technology work hard to create a trusted and easy-to-use marketplace,” said Mangla.
Snapdeal and Flipkart have been strengthening their top deck as they brace for hyper competition in the Indian e-commerce space.
Snapdeal, which recently raised $500 million (Rs 3,250 crore) in fresh funding, has made several senior level hires in the last 3-4 months.

It appointed Bharti Airtel’s former chief marketing officer Govind Rajan as its new chief strategy officer. Former Bharti Airtel senior executive Anand Chandrasekaran was roped in as chief product officer. The company also hired former Procter & Gamble (P&G) executive Amit Choudhary as its senior vice president – corporate finance. It appointed Gaurav Gupta as VP of engineering. Prior to that, Snapdeal brought in Jeyandran Venugopal from Yahoo as technology advisor and Bhuvan Gupta as VP of engineering. Snapdeal also hired Vivek Patankar as senior vice president – finance from Unilever.

Meanwhile, former CTO Misra has founded a new startup, Bona Vita Technologies Pvt Ltd which aims to build differentiated products in the travel industry. Bona Vita has already secured $5 million in funding from the country’s top online travel agency MakeMyTrip Ltd.

Uber Technologies Inc’s China arm has closed its $1 billion fundraising round early, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, with investors still hopeful for the U.S.-based ride service despite strong domestic competition.

Investors in Uber’s Chinese unit include Internet giant Baidu Inc, China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd and China Life Insurance Co Ltd, among others, said one of the people, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. (Reuters)

Apple to make (iPhone 6S?) announcement on September 9: The invitations have arrived. Apple will hold a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday, September 9, at which it is widely expected to debut its new generation of iPhones.

The new iPhone 6S (or whatever it will be called) is expected to feature several enhancements including a “force touch” display that will reveal extra menu settings when you press down hard enough on the screen. That feature first debuted on the Apple Watch. (CNN Money)

Facebook has a billion users in a single day, says Mark Zuckerberg: For the first time over a billion people used Facebook on a single day, according to company founder Mark Zuckerberg. The “milestone” was reached on Monday, when “1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family”, he said in a post. Facebook has nearly 1.5 billion users who log in at least once a month, but this was the most in a single day. (BBC)

Facebook introduces new tools to crack down on video copyright violations: Facebook has been under fire lately from top Web video creators who have called out the social networking giant for failing to prevent people from posting their videos without permission. Now, Facebook is trying to make it easier for some of these creators to protect their content, particularly when videos go viral.

According to a new blog post, Facebook is working with a select group of creators on this initiative, including the multi-channel network Fullscreen (which has been particularly critical of Facebook on this issue), the viral video specialist company Jukin Media, and Zefr, which helps marketers track videos online. (The Wall Street Journal)

YouTube launches live-streaming video game service: It’s official: YouTube Gaming, a website and app for live-streaming video games, launched to the public Wednesday after months of beta testing.

The site, available at gaming.youtube.com, hosts dedicated pages for more than 25,000 video games. Users can find fellow gamers live-streaming their sessions as well as videos and other content related to their favorite titles. Gamers can also upload their own gameplay live-streams to the service. (NBC News)

Pentagon teams up with Apple, Boeing to develop wearable tech: The Pentagon is teaming up with Apple, Boeing, Harvard and others to develop high-tech sensory gear flexible enough to be worn by people or molded onto the outside of a jet.

The rapid development of new technologies is forcing the Pentagon to seek partnerships with the private sector rather than developing its technology itself, defense officials say. (Reuters)

Instagram Goes Rectangular: Instagram has a radical new look: On Thursday, the Facebook Inc.-owned mobile app introduced portrait and landscape orientation, allowing social shutterbugs to avoid cropping out gathered friends or that perfect pair of shoes.

The app will continue to let users post images and video in its traditional square format. However, the additional options could help Instagram appeal to serious photographers and maintain its dominance in the increasingly crowded photo-sharing app space. (The Wall Street Journal)

BetterButter is a social discovery platform for recipes

BetterButter Internet Pvt Ltd, which runs online recipe sharing portal BetterButter.in, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by Delhi-based Growx Ventures, an early-stage investment firm.

Singapore-based M&S Partners and angel investor Manish Singhal also put money in this round, as per a press statement.

Founded in March by Sukhmani Bedi and Niyaz Laiq, New Delhi-based BetterButter is a social discovery platform for recipes. It allows users to share recipes and discover new ones from celebrity chefs and other users. Sukhmani has worked with IMF, Deloitte, and Phillips while Laiq was associated with Hermes PE in London/ Singapore and Lok Capital in Delhi.

“Indians are voracious consumers of recipes on the internet, and we believe that there is potential to create a new kind of food and kitchen-centric platform in India with tens of millions of monthly, highly-engaged users. Niyaz and Sukhmani have the right vision and skills to make this happen,” said Ashish Taneja, MD at Growx ventures.

BetterButter is expected to use the money raised to expand operations and augment its technology platform. As a part of the transaction, Singhal will join the board of BetterButter.

“Our goal is to make BetterButter synonymous with cooking at home in India. We are delighted to have great investors who share this vision with us,” said Sukhmani and Laiq.

Recipe sharing is typically an informal affair in the Indian context. Tech-savvy individuals use Facebook groups and YouTube channels to share and procure new recipes.

Cucumbertown, which was recently acquired by Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Cookpad for an undisclosed amount, is another organised player in this space. Cucumbertown started off as a recipe sharing platform. Today, it also allows users in over 160 countries to customise their blogs with kitchen and food-related themes. Going forward, BetterButter aims to become the de-facto platform for ‘all things kitchen’, the company said.

Growx invests in ideation stage, prototype, proof-of-stage and early revenues startups. Growx has already put money in over 15 companies since inception two-and-a-half years ago. Its portfolio companies include AdSparx (video ad tech platform), FortunePay (e-payments processing), ShepHertz (cloud platform for app developers), and Zolijns Designs (furniture and furnishings) in India; Mad Street (artificial intelligence and computer vision technology) and Quandl in Canada, among others.

Growx last invested in Bangalore-based Qyk Inc, which runs a mobile marketplace for local services.