Startup Digest: GST Council's decision on online gaming awaited, NITI Aayog bats for gig workers, D2C market to touch $60Bn by FY27: CII-Shiprocket, PropShare & Battery Smart

The GST council had appointed a group of ministers for online gaming, casinos, and race tracks, taking into account the concerns of both the government and industry. The group concluded its final meeting on May 18, 2022, and submitted the recommendations to the GST council.

India's gig workforce could triple from 7 million in 2021 to 23 million by 2030, according to NITI Aayog's report - 'India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy.'

Besides asking the government to extend social security measures for gig workers, the think tank has made a host of recommendations to companies such as Ola, Uber, Swiggy, Zomato and others.

Some of the suggested benefits for gig workers are occupational disease and work accident insurance, retirement or pension plans and other contingency benefits, support to workers in a situation of irregularity of work, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs associated with platforms, and contingency cover out of a corpus fund.

The direct-to-consumer ecosystem is set to soar higher. A report prepared by CII in collaboration with Shiprocket and Praxis Global Alliance says that the D2C market in India could grow at 40 percent CAGR to touch the $60 billion mark by FY27 from $12 billion in 2022.

The report highlights that incumbent players such as Unilever, Marico, Tata Consumer and ITC are focused on either acquiring prominent D2C brands or launching their own brands online or building their own D2C platforms.

The report says that several D2C brands in India have surpassed Rs 100 crore revenue within 3-5 years of launch.

Rupifi, which offers Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions in the B2B payments space, has launched MUNAFA - a community platform.

MUNAFA will provide MSMEs with access to resources that could enable their day-to-day operations and growth. It offers guidance for GST or tax filing, benefits of various government schemes, business opportunities in various clusters markets and more.

Aimed at strengthening its foothold in the retail and marketplace segments, the company also announced the launch of 2 new products  - B2B Checkout and BNPL for Brands. “Over the last two years Rupifi has  powered more than 100,000+ SMEs across 10,000+ Pincodes in India. We aim to provide B2B Payments and Credit solutions to help more than 5 Million SMEs by 2025," said Anubhav Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Rupifi.

At least 100 employees have quit Trell with the social commerce startup struggling to make pending payments to creators and influencers associated with its platform, according to reports.

Earlier, the startup had laid off 300 employees amid an EY probe into financial irregularities and mismanagement. It is backed by investors such as Mirae Asset, H&M, Sequoia Capital India, KTB Network, Beenext, Fosun and Samsung Venture Investment.

Pulkit Agrawal, Arun Lodhi, Prashant Sachan and Bimal Kartheek Rebba founded Trell in 2016 as a community-based social network, which soon became India’s fastest-growing lifestyle community-commerce platform.

Loco, a live game streaming and e-Sports platform, announces ‘Legends’, which it claims to be India’s first NFT platform for e-Sports.

The first asset on Loco Legends will be NFT e-sports cards. This offering combines non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and free to play eSports fantasy gaming. Users can purchase NFT trading cards allowing them to buy and sell cards amongst each other and also participate in free-to-play fantasy pools.

Loco Legends launches with exclusive partnerships with more than 50 top e-Sports teams in India including 8bit, s0ul, Godlike, Revenant, Blind, and XO among others. Loco claims to have 52 million users.

Solv, a B2B digital marketplace for MSMEs, has raised $40 million in Series A funding round led by Japan-based SBI Holdings with participation from SC Ventures. This round of fundraise takes Solv’s total funding to nearly $80 million.

The startup, which runs a B2B e-commerce marketplace for India’s MSME sector with an open trade ecosystem across the entire value chain, is now planning to launch additional high-margin product categories and expand to more than 300 cities in India.

It wants to offer BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) loans, particularly in the NTC (New-To-Credit) segment. It also plans to build a global tech-stack from India to expand operations in Africa and Southeast Asia.

With over 220,000 MSMEs on its platform, which is clocking more than $260M in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), Solv is now targeting half a billion-dollar GMV run-rate and positive unit economics by Dec, 2022.

Real estate investment platform PropShare has raised $47 million in Series B funding round led by WestBridge Capital with participation from existing investors Pravega Ventures.

Established in 2016, PropShare allows ordinary users access to institutional grade assets with 8-10 percent in-place rental yields and 17-20 percent returns.

With fresh capital, the platform plans to grow to over $1 billion in transacted assets on the platform by expanding into newer geographies and property types. Currently, PropShare has scaled to $125 million in assets under management (AUM).

Battery Smart, which runs a battery-swapping network for electric vehicles, has raised $25 million in its Series A funding round led by Tiger Global with participation from Blume Ventures and Orios Ventures.

Operationalized in June 2020, Battery Smart’s battery-as-a-service model enables battery swapping for electric two and three-wheelers. The Delhi NCR-based startup claims to have completed over 2.5 million battery swaps through its network of more than 200 live swap stations across 10 cities in India.

With fresh capital, Battery Smart is planning to enter new territories, strengthen its Battery Assignment Technology, and ramp up hiring to continue scaling operations.

The startup's fundraise follows a favourable policy move. Last month, the government think tank NITI Aayog released the draft battery swapping policy to standardise the interoperability of electric vehicle batteries.