Startup Digest: Good Glamm Group acquires MissMalini Entertainment, UpGrad aims to list in the next 24 months, & Musk named Time Person of the Year for 2021

Following this acquisition, Mumbai based MissMalini Entertainment will continue to function independently while bringing its expertise to the Good Glamm Group. MissMalini Founder Malini Agarwal and Co-founders Nowshad Rizwanullah (also CEO) and Mike Melli (also CRO) will continue to lead the company. They will work closely with Good Glamm Group Founder & CEO, Darpan Sanghvi and co-founders Priyanka Gill and Naiyya Saggi.

The Good Glamm Group’s commerce and content stack coupled with MissMalini’s celebrity, influencer and content strengths will further turbocharge the group’s D2C capabilities.

With this acquisition, the Good Glamm Group now boasts a bouquet of India’s largest digital media brands including POPxo, ScoopWhoop, BabyChakra and now MissMalini Entertainment. The Good Glamm Group’s media division now generates over 3.5 billion monthly impressions and has over 150 million unique users placing the Group’s digital reach amongst the largest for any e-commerce or digital media company in India.

E-commerce roll-up unicorn Mensa Brands has acquired a digital-first fashion brand LilPicks in the kids wear segment.

With a strategic roadmap towards becoming India’s largest kids apparel brand, coupled with Mensa’s expertise, LilPicks is looking at achieving a gross turnover of Rs 500 crores within the next 4 years, the company said in a statement.

Founded in 2017, LilPicks said it is growing at 3X of last year’s sales.

So far, the six-month-old Mensa Brands has acquired 14 brands including categories such as designer sarees, jewellery, men’s wear, smart devices and personal care. Most of these brands are growing 100 percent year-on-year since the time of acquisition, the roll-up firm said.

Edtech unicorn UpGrad is looking at an initial public offering (IPO) over the next 18-24 months, according to an ET report.

The company has no immediate plans to raise capital even as it is seeing inbound interest from funds, Ronnie Screwvala, chairman and cofounder of UpGrad, told ET. However, sources said the company was stitching up a larger round of $300-$350 million, likely valuing the firm at around $3-$3.5 billion.

The company is currently clocking an annualised revenue run rate of $250 million and that is expected to reach $500 million by FY23, which is when it will look to list, the report added.

Home services marketplace Urban Company has recorded a 33 percent jump in firm valuation to $2.8 billion in the employee stock sale programme concluded recently.

The company raised Series F funding of $255 million in June, led by Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, with participation from Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview, at a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Urban Company shared that it has concluded the sale of ESOPs (employee stock ownership plan), worth $7.3 million (Rs 54.6 crore) that were allocated to 770 employees comprising shares of around 390 former employees.  The ESOPs sold in this transaction have largely been purchased by existing institutional investors of the company.

With this round, the company said that it has facilitated approximately $13.21 million (about Rs 100 crore) worth of liquidity for its employees and ex-employees in four ESOP sale programmes.  In the past seven years, Urban Company said that it has issued ESOPs to 940 current and ex-employees.

"A total of 550 of these 940 individuals have vested ESOPs, and were eligible to participate in this secondary sale programme. Employees and ex-employees could sell up to 100 per cent of their vested ESOPs as part of this sale programme," the statement said.

In FY20, Urban Company’s consolidated loss widened to Rs 155.17 crore from Rs 78.48 crore in FY19. Revenue doubled from Rs 132.04 crore in FY19 to Rs 263.07 crore in FY20, according to regulatory filings filed by the company.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a plea by gig workers challenging "violation of fundamental right to social security" by aggregator applications such as Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, and Uber.

A bench comprising Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice BR Gavai issued notice to Zomato, Swiggy, Ola and Uber, seeking their reply on the plea filed by the "Indian Federation Of App Based Transport Workers (IFAT)".

The plea by IFAT claims an employer-employee relationship between workers and platforms. "Big platforms refer to them as independent contractors," it said. The plea highlights that Uber drivers in the UK and the US have been held to be workers while the company is called an employer.

The trade union of gig workers had moved SC alleging violation of fundamental right to social security by Ola, Uber, Zomato, and Swiggy, and also accused them of exploitation through forced labour.

The plea alleges that these companies violated rights by refusing to recognise them as "workers" under social security laws.

IFAT, in its plea, has sought recognition of gig workers as "unorganized workers" under Unorganised Workers Social Security Act and cash transfers of Rs 1175 per day from the companies till the pandemic subsides.

The court will hear the case in January 2022.

Online grocery delivery platform Grofers on Monday said it is rebranding itself as ''Blinkit'' to reflect its pivot to quick commerce.

The Zomato and SoftBank-backed company had started its quick commerce service with a 10-minute delivery promise a few months ago.

"A few months ago, we started on a journey to build the future of commerce with 10 minute delivery of most of the stuff our customers need in their daily lives... We learnt a lot as Grofers, and all our learnings, our team, and our infrastructure is being repurposed to pivot to something with staggering product-market fit - quick commerce," Blinkit said in a blogpost.

The blogpost added that the company is already processing over a million orders a week, across 12 cities in India under the service.

"Today, we are surging ahead as a new company, and we have a new mission statement - ''instant commerce indistinguishable from magic''. And we will no longer be doing this as Grofers - we will be doing it as Blinkit," the blogpost noted.

Last month, Grofers had said it planned to open 150 dark stores by December, taking the total count to 350, for quick commerce to deliver orders in about 10 minutes. At that time, Grofers had said it had a 3 million monthly order run rate and had logged growth of 3.5 times in the last two months, while gaining one million quick commerce users.

According to a RedSeer report, the quick commerce sector in India is expected to grow to $5 billion by 2025 from the current $0.3 billion.

Used car e-commerce firm CarDekho is pulling the plug on its supply-side business from 82 smaller cities, Entrackr reported.

The move comes after the company had shut down over 20 ‘Gaadi by CarDekho’ stores in Delhi (NCR), Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru in September.

According to an internal note sent by Cars24’s co-founders to its employees, the company has decided to focus on the top 100 cities countrywide. “As a part of our strategic review, we have decided to discontinue our ‘supply side’ business activities outside of the top 100 cities in India,” said the note.

The company added that this is not a cost-cutting exercise and demand-focused or sell-side business will continue to operate in these cities. Impacted employees will be offered an opportunity to switch to other cities while those who chose to move will get three months salary and six months of medical insurance coverage, the report added.

Digital payments and financial services firm Paytm has reported over two-fold rise in its gross merchandise value to about Rs 1,66,600 crore in the first two months of the third quarter of this fiscal, driven by sharp uptick in loan disbursals.

One97 Communications Ltd, the parent company which owns and operates brand Paytm, had recorded GMV (gross merchandise value) of Rs 72,800 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

The number of loans disbursed from the Paytm platform increased over four times to 27 lakh during the reported period, from 5.30 lakh a year ago. The value of the loan disbursed increased by 375 percent on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis to Rs 13,200 crore ($178 million) in the first two months of the quarter from Rs 280 crore.

Paytm posted growth of 36 percent in monthly transacting users (MTUs) at 6.32 crore during the reported period, from over 4.66 crore average MTUs in the first two months of the same quarter a year ago.

Digital payments major PhonePe said offline merchant transactions on its platform have shown 200 per cent growth since last year, and it processed over a billion P2M (peer to merchant) transactions in the month of November.

The company also said it has digitised 25 million small merchants and kirana stores in the country.

PhonePe attributed this growth to the rapid expansion it has seen in offline merchant acceptance across geographies, with a 1.25 lakh strong field force who have been instrumental in driving and supporting the company's merchant acceptance network across Bharat.

"PhonePe now has a merchant network across 15,700 towns and villages, constituting 99 percent pin codes in the country," it said in a statement. The company had previously announced its plans to hit the 25 million number by the end of 2021 and has achieved this target weeks ahead of schedule.

In November, PhonePe processed over a billion P2M transactions. P2M transactions on PhonePe include payments made by users at offline and online stores and all utility payments like Recharges, Bill Payments and Financial Services.

BookMyShow Stream, the pay per view (PPV) platform of online movie ticket booking and entertainment platform BookMyShow, has announced the introduction of a new content format with TV series launched on the platform.

It will roll out a slew of exclusive, curated titles and mini-series across genres and languages from across the world including the platform’s owned content under the BookMyShow Stream Originals banner, the company said in a statement.

The new TV Series catalogue will feature titles and mini-series that are absolutely exclusive to the platform and will not be available to watch anywhere else for Indian audiences. BookMyShow Stream will offer users the option to rent a TV series of their choice for a finite duration or buy it for unlimited access.

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime Group postponed its $767 million Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) on Monday after being placed on a US investment blacklist.

SenseTime said it remained committed to completing the offering and would publish a supplemental prospectus and an updated listing timetable, Reuters reported.

SenseTime had planned to sell 1.5 billion shares in a price range of HK$3.85 to HK$3.99, according to its regulatory filings. That would raise up to $767 million, a figure that had already been trimmed earlier this year from a $2 billion target.

However, instead of setting its listing price on Friday, as scheduled, it found itself in urgent talks with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and its lawyers over the future of the deal amid reports about the looming blacklist.

SenseTime did not provide details on the timetable for a revised IPO in its filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday.

One source said the company was trying to move quickly to avoid the regulatory requirement to completely refile the IPO after Jan. 9 when its financial numbers in the current prospectus would need to be updated. The company had retained around $450 million from cornerstone investors and could expect most of them to stay in the deal, the source added.

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been named Time 2021 Person of the Year.

Time gave Musk the award for his "dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable".

This year, pop star Olivia Rodrigo was named Artist of the Year and four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles was selected as Athlete of the Year. The title of Heroes of the Year, previously known as "Guardians," went to the scientists behind the mRNA covid-19 vaccine specifically Katalin Kariko, Barney Graham, Kizzmekia Corbett and Drew Weissman.

Alibaba Group Holding. has fired a woman who accused a manager of sexual assault, a surprise move that came just months after China's e-commerce leader admitted bungling its initial response to the allegation.

The employee surnamed Zhou told the Dahe Daily Alibaba had terminated her for spreading false information in August about being raped by a senior manager. She didn't get any severance and was compensated up to the date of termination on November 25., according to a screenshot of an official memo and an interview with Zhou published by the central Chinese newspaper.

Zhou's termination caps a months-long scandal that played out across social media and ignited an intense debate about the excessive drinking perpetuated by Chinese corporations and discrimination against women at tech firms.

The employee touched off a furore in August when she published an 8,000-word account accusing her manager and a client of sexual assault after an alcohol-fueled dinner during a work trip.

Alibaba in recent months has taken a hard line against information leaks associated with the case. It dismissed 10 staffers for leaking her accusations, sourced told Bloomberg News.

Britain's antitrust regulator will look into Microsoft’s $16 billion purchase of artificial intelligence and speech technology firm Nuance Communications, as per Reuters.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has been stepping up its regulation of Big Tech, said it was considering if the deal would result in lesser competition in the UK market.

Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance in April to boost its presence in cloud services for healthcare. The deal has already received regulatory approval in the United States and Australia, without remedies given.

Reuters reported last week the deal, which will be Microsoft's second-biggest after its $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016, was set to secure unconditional EU antitrust approval.

Apple faces an investigation in Poland over whether its new rules on privacy and personal data processing for iOS devices violate competition law, Polish antimonopoly watchdog UOKiK said.

According to Reuters, Apple rolled out an update of its iOS operating system in April with new privacy controls designed to limit digital advertisers from tracking iPhone users.

The Polish regulator said Apple's new rules have significantly reduced the ability of third-party apps to obtain personal data in order to send personalised adverts.

"We want to examine whether Apple's actions may be aimed at eliminating competitors in the market for personalised advertising services, the objective being to better sell their own service," UOKiK President Tomasz Chrostny said in a statement.

The regulator said it was investigating the issue, but the proceedings are not directed against a particular company.

The European Union's tech chief Margrethe Vestager has also warned Apple against using privacy and security concerns to fend off the competition on its App Store.