Startup Digest: Delhivery IPO likely to open on May 11, Good Glamm Group to acquire Raymond Consumer Care, IIFL Finance and Open to launch neobank jointly

Sources also said the Raymond Group and promoters will hold a minority stake in the Good Glamm Group. The venture is also in talks to raise $250 million at a valuation of $2 billion. The Good Glamm Group has been aggressively acquiring brands such as PopXO, Baby Chakra, Mom’s Co, ScoopWhoop, MissMalini Entertainment, Sirona and St Botanica, over the last 18 months.

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This will be Good Glamm Group’s second acquisition in the offline beauty space following its acquisition of Organic Harvest in January this year. This acquisition will also provide the Good Glamm Group a huge offline presence as the Raymond Group has around 6 lakh points of sale. While the Good Glaam Group declined to comment on the acquisition, Raymond spokesperson said - that to enhance shareholder value we keep evaluating all options available to us.

Interior design tech startup, Flipspaces has acquired Renomania, a platform for end customers to comprehensively discover and engage with Architects, Interior Designers and Brands. The acquisition is a 100% sale of the platform’s assets, database and all technology and related IP, the firm said in a statement.

"The technology from Renomania gives a push to further evolve Flipspaces design tech stack to provide a platform characteristic to our design and build vertical where we can partner with interior designers and architects to create a global consumer-facing interior design and product supply platform,” said Kunal Sharma, founder and CEO, Flipspaces.

NBFC company IIFL Finance and fintech unicorn Open has announced a joint venture to launch a neobank that will cater to the banking and credit requirements of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSMEs). The initial capital of the joint venture company will be Rs 120 crore. The JV composition between IIFL Finance and Open is 51:49. The name of the joint venture would be IIFL Open Fintech Private Ltd.

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The move comes just two days after Open turned unicorn as IIFL led a $50 million series D funding along with existing investors Temasek, Tiger Global and 3one4 Capital. The venture is expected to be a profitable fintech in the first year itself, with the 10 lakh customer mark likely to be reached within a year’s time, and a $2 billion lending book likely to be created in two years, said a statement.

Through this JV, Open would get a recurring annual SAAS fee per customer for offering technology services to the JV. Additionally, they would also be able to leverage the lending book and infrastructure of IIFL Finance to offer innovative lending solutions to the merchants on their platform.

Amid tussles between Zilingo cofounder and CEO Ankiti Bose and its board, cofounder Dhruv Kapoor has written to the company’s employees, addressing allegations of sexual harassment and toxic work culture surrounding the startup. In an email to Zilingo employees, Kapoor has said that the company has no tolerance for any form of harassment and that the actions of some people were hurting its reputation.

He also added that it was troubling to see some people act against the interest of the company and due process is always followed in action taken to deal with workplace issues. It was sad to hear allegations that harassment complaints were suppressed, the Zilingo co-founder added.

"Unfortunately, over the last few days, there have been some things said in the media that don't reflect either the kind of company that we have wanted to build, nor the kind of culture that I've seen around me in my time here," Kapoor wrote.

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Zilingo suspended Bose on March 31 after alleged discrepancies were discovered in the company’s accounting during a due-diligence process for a new funding round. Bose has lawyered up and disputed allegations of wrongdoing.

E-commerce giant Amazon expects cumulative exports from its platform in India to reach $20 billion by 2025, a senior company official said. In January 2020, the company had set a target to facilitate export worth $10 billion by 2025.

"In January 2020, we had taken a pledge to enable $10 billion in cumulative exports from India by 2025 with our global Selling program. Excited by the momentum in businesses joining the global selling program and by the growing demand for Made in India products across the world, I am super excited to announce that we are doubling down and raising our pledge to enable $20 billion in cumulative exports by 2025," Amazon senior vice president for India and emerging markets Amit Agarwal said.

"The government had set an ambitious target of achieving $400 billion in annual merchandise exports and for the first time in history, India has breached this target. India's merchandise exports touched a record $418 billion in 2021-22. The government's unwavering commitment towards exports has been very encouraging," Agarwal said. Amazon has launched the e-commerce export programme Global Selling in 2015, which has over 1 lakh exporters.

HempStreet, research to retail venture in the medicinal cannabis sector, has announced a partnership with European bio-pharma and phytocannabinoid company MGC Pharma.

Through this partnership, and through HempStreet’s extensive distribution reach and key institutional partnerships, Indian patients will now have access to these medicines, starting with CimetrA, which had an immediate need as there are currently over 15 million individuals (approximately 30 percent of all COVID-19 recoverees in India) said to be experiencing some form of post- or long-COVID- 19 related symptoms, the firm said in a statement.

The partnership will also accelerate HempStreet's upcoming venture – transdermal delivery technology for cannabinoids – to launch in the markets beyond Asia with the help of MGC Pharma's widespread distribution network in Australia, the UK, Brazil, and Ireland.

Creduce, a service provider in the field of climate change and carbon asset management, has launched a sustainability blockchain token KICHEE. The launch date of the token is May 31 and the pre-launch sale will start from May 10 onwards. It will be listed on Binance, Wazirx, Coinswitch, Coinbase, Opensea and Coindcx.

The company said it aims to enable individuals and businesses to smoothly adopt a carbon-neutral investment using the KICHEE token. “One KICHEE token will be 1/10th of a sustainability credit and there will be 1 crore KICHEE tokens to be minted and listed," Crreduce said in its statement.

ONMO, the D2C social esports mobile gaming platform from OnMobile, has announced enabling transactions through Bitcoin for players globally.

While ONMO users in India can play using real money, users in other parts of the globe will now have the choice of using Bitcoins to pay entry fees for 1-on-1 battles and daily multiplayer tournaments and play a wide variety of games on the platform, the firm said in a statement.

It added that Bitcoin payments offer cross-game and cross-region compatibility coupled with streamlined payments. The platform will facilitate more cryptocurrency payment options in the future providing its global users with the best game experience and empower them to wager against each other.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Didi after its tarnished initial public offering, adding further pressure on the Chinese ride-hailing giant, CNBC reported. Didi said in its annual report, that it was contacted by the SEC after the company went public. The SEC “made inquiries in relation to the offering,” Didi said.

"We are cooperating with the investigation, subject to strict compliance with applicable PRC laws and regulations. We cannot predict the timing, outcome or consequences of such an investigation."

Didi went public in the United States last June, raising more than $4 billion. Shortly after, Chinese regulators opened up a cybersecurity probe into the company. Didi’s app was also removed from app stores in China.

Elon Musk said that Twitter might charge a "slight" fee for commercial and government users, part of the billionaire entrepreneur's push to grow revenue which has lagged behind larger rivals like Meta Platforms’ Facebook.

"Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users," Musk said in a tweet. "Some revenue is better than none!" he added in another tweet.

Last week, Reuters reported that Musk told banks he would develop new ways to monetize tweets and crackdown on executive pay to slash costs at the social media platform company.

Germany's cartel office said that Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, has "paramount significance for competition across markets", a classification that gives the regulator more leeway to curb digital companies' market power.

Under legislation introduced by German lawmakers in early 2021, the cartel office can ban what it deems to be anti-competitive activities, Reuters reported.

Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, operates a strong, ad-supported social media ecosystem that continues to expand and is used by a large portion of the population in Germany, the cartel office said in a statement.

It said the new classification would form the basis for a more rapid conclusion of ongoing antitrust proceedings against Meta. A spokesperson for Meta said that the US-based company would comply with the cartel office's decision on the classification.

Uber has reported surging revenue during the first quarter as the rideshare company said it’s recovering from its coronavirus lows and wouldn’t have to put up “significant” investments to keep drivers on the platform, CNBC reported.

But it also reported a $5.9 billion loss during the period that was largely attributed to the revaluation of equity investments. Shares were down more than 8 percent after markets opened.

For the second quarter, Uber anticipates gross bookings of between $28.5 billion and $29.5 billion. In addition, it expects adjusted EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, of between $240 million and $270 million.

Uber said it expects to generate “meaningful positive cash flows” for full-year 2022, which would mark a first for the company. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement that April mobility gross bookings exceeded 2019 levels across all regions and use cases.

Animation app immi launched in Apple's App Store after securing investments from billionaire Mark Cuban, singer Pitbull and Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media, the latest in a spate of celebrity investments in companies focused on the metaverse and non-fungible tokens.

The app, which creates animations that can be used on social media or in the metaverse, will allow select owners of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club and My Pet Hooligan NFTs to animate these characters, as per a Reuters report.

The company's seed round of fundraising valued immi at $50 million, a spokesperson said. Other investors include Tony Robbins, Zoom founder Eric Yuan and musician Steve Aoki.