Here are the top headlines from the startup space.
Lummo lays off 50-60 employees from its Bengaluru office: Report
Indonesia-based SaaS startup Lummo has laid off around 50-60 employees from its Bengaluru office, sources told Moneycontrol
The lay-offs of Indian employees, which happened on the morning of June 7, come after around 100-120 employees were terminated from the Jakarta office. In India, employees with engineering and product roles were mostly laid off, the report added.
Also read: Young Turks turns 20: Here’s a look back at the early days of some of India’s startup founders
In the early hours of Tuesday, 50-60 employees in India started receiving direct emails informing them to move on. The company has a total of around 500 employees in its offices in Jakarta and Bengaluru.
MFine launches wallet for cashless OPD for corporate employees
Digital health platform MFine has announced the launch of MFine Wallet to cover out-of-pocket OPD expenses and simplify OPD reimbursements for corporate employees.
More than 500 corporates have partnered with MFine to offer a wide range of healthcare services and the MFine Wallet will now make it easier for their employees to avail cashless OPD benefit. Several organizations have already signed up with MFine Wallet as part of the corporate wellness programs for their employees, the statement said.
The company claims to have witnessed a 4x growth in the number of corporates and users using MFine services over the last one year. Currently, MFine is used by over 500,000 corporate employees and their families for preventive health checks, specialist doctor consultations and advanced screenings, the firm added.
Meddo Health expands to Tier 2 and 3 cities with launch of full service healthcare centers
Outpatient healthcare platform, Meddo Health, has announced its pan-India expansion plans to tap tier 2 and 3 markets with the launch of full-service healthcare centers.
The company will begin its operations in Chandigarh and Jaipur, with plans to further expand its presence in Pune, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad by 2023, a statement said.
With their services already live in Jaipur and Chandigarh, Meddo now seeks to expand its footprint to 1000+ centers over the next year. It currently has over 4000 doctors and 350 Full-Service Health centers.
T-Hub to assist 12 Australian startups in accessing Indian market
Startup ecosystem builder T-Hub has announced the selection of 12 Australian startups and will provide them with access to the Indian market.
These startups will be a part of the first cohort of the Big LEAP Incubator program in partnership with partnership La Trobe University, Arrow Digital, a digital marketing agency and Investible, an early-stage venture capital firm.
The selected startups will be provided soft landing and enterprising opportunities in the Indian market. The program will guide and mentor the startups in the areas of go-to-market strategy, business expansion plans, local market access and networking opportunities, a statement said.
The program aims to fine-tune the expansion business plans of the startups, test their ideas for the Indian market, hone their skills, and build a strong network with Indian stakeholders for their long term success.
ElectricPe appoints Rohit Agarwal as CTO
EV charging platform ElectricPe has appointed Rohit Agarwal as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He comes with 11-years of experience in technology and product development.
Having worked with early-stage startups, his expertise lies in deep tech, machine learning, and software building. Prior to joining ElectricPe, Agarwal has worked at Udaan in the Ads team and focussed on introducing Ad properties in the pharma category.
The startup said as it rapidly scales the public charging infrastructure network on its platform to 100,000 points by the end-2022, Agarwal be responsible for the product tech strategy and development. He will lead the team to provide seamless full stack solutions across all EV stakeholders.
Sustainable investing to surge to $125Bn in India by 2026: Benori Knowledge Report
Sustainable investments by Indian PE and VC firms are projected to grow to $125 billion by 2026, at a 5-year CAGR of 46 percent. It is also estimated that sustainable investments would make up 40 percent of AuM by Indian PE and VC firms, according to a report by Benori Knowledge, a custom research and analytics solutions provider.
According to the study, the sectors attracting the most sustainable investments are renewable energy, agritech, e-mobility and waste management. E-mobility especially has been of interest to PEs and VCs, with investments into the sector doubling between the period of 2019-2022.
Within the next five years alone, the electric vehicle market in India is projected to attract investments worth Rs. 94,000 crores, the report added.
GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY & STARTUP NEWS
Twitter plans to have shareholder vote by August on sale to Elon Musk
Twitter anticipates a shareholder vote on its $44 billion sale to Elon Musk could come by early August, as it continues to work constructively to complete the deal with the world's richest person, the social media company's top executives told employees.
Musk's lawyers warned Twitter that he might walk away from the acquisition if the company fails to provide the data he seeks on spam and fake account, according to Reuters.
Twitter has said it is continuing to share information with Musk. Part of that data is the "firehose," a set comprising all tweets on the platform analyzed by different parameters, such as devices of users or profiles of accounts that publish tweets.
Twitter sells this data to social media monitoring companies as part of its licensing business but plans to furnish it to Musk for free as part of the information exchange, the sources said. The firehose does not contain confidential information, such personal details of Twitter users that are not public or how often they verify their accounts, sources told Reuters.
US sets high bar to settle Facebook antitrust suit: FTC chair
US Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who promised tougher antitrust enforcement, said she would not rule out a settlement with Meta's Facebook, which the agency sued in 2020, but indicated there was a high bar for any agreement.
In an interview to Reuters, she also criticized what she said was a large number obviously illegal deals and added she was not a fan of agreements to remedy problematic mergers with asset sales. Nor does she like behavioral remedies, when companies pledge a particular policy change for a certain number of years.
Under former President Donald Trump, the FTC sued Facebook in December 2020 alleging that the company acted illegally to maintain its social network monopoly. Asked about the likelihood of a settlement, Khan said: "We've laid out the relief that we think would be necessary. I think you can yourself calculate the likelihood of Facebook willingly settling for some of that relief."
Meta unfriends FB ticker in final farewell to Facebook era
After a decade of trading as Facebook, the social media giant is shedding the last vestige of its old corporate avatar as it begins trading under the ticker symbol 'META' on Thursday.
Meta Platforms has rebranded from its eponymous social networking platform in October 2021, betting that the metaverse, a shared virtual realm, will succeed mobile internet.
Beijing gives initial nod to reviving Ant IPO plans in Shanghai, Hong Kong: Report
China's central leadership has given a tentative green light to Jack Ma's Ant Group to revive its initial public offering in Shanghai and Hong Kong, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Ant, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, aims to file the preliminary prospectus for the offering as soon as next month, said the sources, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The fintech giant, however, still needs to wait for guidance from China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) on the specific timing of the prospectus filing, said one of the sources.
In a publicly released statement, Ant said there was no plan to relaunch its IPO, which was hastily shelved at the behest of Beijing in November 2020. At the time, it was slated to be valued at around $315 billion and planned to raise $37 billion, a world record.
Russia's Navalny scolds Google and Meta for helping Putin
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny scolded Google and Meta Platforms for shutting down advertising, a step he said had undermined the opposition and thus was a gift to President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, by far Russia's most prominent opposition leader, casts Putin's Russia as a dystopian state run by thieves and criminals where wrong is cast as right and judges are in fact representatives of a doomed lawless country.
In a written address to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, Navalny, who is currently in a Russian jail, said technology was being used by the state to arrest dissidents but that it also gave an opportunity to get to the truth.
"The Internet gives us the ability to circumvent censorship," Navalny said in the address, a copy of which was posted on his official blog.
"Yet, at the same time, Google and Meta, by shutting down their advertising in Russia, have deprived the opposition of the opportunity to conduct anti-war campaigns, giving a grandiose gift to Putin."
Apple to fund pay-later loans off its own balance sheet
Apple plans to fund loans for its forthcoming Apple Pay Later service off its corporate balance sheet, the company said.
Apple said its treasury department will decide the exact mechanism it will use to fund the loans and funding sources may shift over time. Loans and creditworthiness decisions will be handled by a wholly owned subsidiary, Apple Financing, Reuters said.
Apple announced the pay-later service this week, offering to split purchases up into four equal payments over six weeks. The service will launch later this year along with Apple's latest operating systems for iPhones and iPads and will put it into competition with existing buy-now, pay-later firms such as Affirm Holdings and Block’s Afterpay.
Spotify expects to reach $100Bn in revenue in 10 years
Spotify expects to reach $100 billion revenue annually in the next 10 years and promised high-margin returns from its costly expansion into podcasts and audiobooks, as per Reuters.
The audio streaming company hosted its first investor day since going public in 2018, hoping to stoke Wall Street's enthusiasm despite the slowing global economy.
To reach its ambitious goal, Spotify would need to make its revenue grow nearly 10-fold from 2021 revenue of $11.4 billion, and Chief Executive Daniel Ek also forecast gross margins to jump to 40 percent and operating margin to 20 percent in the same time.
Tesla goes ahead with China hiring event after Musk job warning
Tesla has added two dozen new job postings for China and kept open an invitation to a hiring event, a week after Elon Musk threatened job cuts at the electric car maker and said the company was “overstaffed” in some areas, as per a Reuters report.
Tesla had announced plans to hold the event online starting from 7 p.m. Shanghai time to recruit staff for “smart manufacturing” roles, according to an online post. The event was not visible from other accounts as of late Thursday and it was not immediately clear whether it had proceeded for applicants.
Tesla had 224 current openings in China for managers and engineers under that category, according to a separate post on its WeChat account, 24 of which were newly posted on June 9. Among the posted positions are managers and engineers to supervise the operation of its 6,000-ton die casting machines known as Giga Press, one of the world’s biggest.
(Edited by : Anand Singha)
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