PhysicsWallah acquires two firms, forays into govt job prep & print books
Edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah (PW) has acquired PrepOnline, an online learning platform for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), and Altis Vortex, a publisher of exam preparation books.
With these acquisitions, PhysicsWallah can provide affordable and quality education for JEE, NEET, and GATE aspirants, CUET (Common University Entrance Test), and state-level government exam aspirants.
To enhance its teaching infrastructure, the company has roped in 35 employees from PrepOnline, of which 18 are adept teachers with around 8-10 years of experience.
Also read: Indian startup funding hits two-year low in July-September period: PwC India report
On the other hand, Altis Vortex, will be assimilating with PhysicsWallah's editorial team to create relevant study materials resonating with students' current demands for PhysicsWallah publication. It will cover exams like GATE, NDA, UPSC, SSC, NEET PG, and CUET, to name a few. The new partners will also support PW in other domains, including retail marketing, e-commerce sales, and printing.
Close to this acquisition, the platform plans to expand more categories and launch more YouTube channels to scale its accessibility among millions of learners.
Vedantu takes majority stake in test prep platform Deeksha for $40M
Live online learning platform Vedantu has bought a majority stake in test preparation platform Deeksha for $40 million. Deeksha is a K-12 test preparation players in Karnataka and according to Vedantu, this strategic partnership will further its hybrid education strategy.
"With this acquisition, our mission is to empower and scale Deeksha's current learning model by deploying our disruptive in-house hybrid technology to reach the masses in remote areas and create impact at scale," said Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-Founder, Vedantu.
This culmination of online and offline capabilities will help us expand our hybrid learning initiatives, Krishna added.
This partnership will leverage Vedantu's technology and integrate it into offline centers to create a scalable hybrid model which provides access to quality teaching, even in remote tier 3 and 4 towns at affordable cost, a statement said.
Deeksha said it will bring in close to 13,000 of its students to Vedantu's platform. In addition, Deeksha will leverage the edtech unicorn’s already existing strong credentials in LIVE Classes, educational technology, and strong pedagogical content.
Edtech startup FrontRow lays off 125-130 more employees
Frontrow, a masterclass-focussed edtech startup has sacked 125-130 employees or 75% of its existing workforce. This is the firm’s second round of layoffs in the last six months, after it let go 145 employees in May.
In a twitter thread, Co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh. explained the decision, saying "As we looked at our business we realised that the push on sales and marketing that we had done was both unsustainable and the wrong way to build the business."
“Unfortunately, over the past couple of months, it’s become clear that the business fundamentals were still not working despite our best efforts,” Singh added.
FrontRow claims to have provided a month’s severance to these employees and is helping them get other opportunities.
Firings at Lightspeed and Elevation Capital-backed Frontrow come alongside the news of the most-valued edtech company in India — BYJUs — planning to sack 2,500 employees. Overall, Indian edtech startups have laid off at least 7,000 employees in 2022 amid the funding winter.
Zoomcar to go public via SPAC deal: Report
Zoomcar, a car-sharing platform, has reached an agreement to go public via a merger with blank-check firm Innovative International Acquisition Corp., according to a report by Bloomberg News.
The merger with the special purpose acquisition company implies a pro forma enterprise value of about $456 million for the business, the report added.
Last November, Zoomcar got $92 million in a Series E round led by SternAegis Ventures, bringing the total it has raised to $332 million, according to data provider PitchBook. The company, whose headquarters are in Bangalore, operates in more than 50 cities in India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Egypt.
Teachmint inks partnership with OrangeSlates to upskill school teachers across India
Edtech platform Teachmint has partnered with OrangeSlates, an educator upskilling platform, to enable dedicated and consistent upskilling of schoolteachers across India.
As a part of the partnership, different courses will be available on Teachmint’s Integrated School Platform for all its school partners, enabling educators to learn, train and upskill conveniently.
Courses will include use of digital tools such as Microsoft Word, managing special education needs, Bringing Experiential Learning to Classrooms, Gamifying Assessments, Interpersonal Skills and among others, the firm added in a statement.
“With our partnership with OrangeSlates and the addition of teacher upskilling courses, we have further expanded our school digitisation offerings. Teacher training is an integral part of building high-performance schools, as highlighted in NEP 2020,” Divyansh Bordia, COO and Co-Founder, Teachmint, said.
Indian startup funding hits two-year low in July-September period: PwC India report
Startup funding in India in July to September period of the calendar year 2022 hit a two-year low at $2.7 billion across 205 deals. As per a PwC India report, early-state deals were better placed amid an overall decline in funding across all stages of investment.
Early-stage deals contributed around 21 percent of the total funding by value in Q3 CY22 compared to approximately 12 percent in the previous three months, showing that venture capital (VC) firms continue to back the Indian startup ecosystem.
Growth and late-stage funding deals accounted for 79 percent of the funding activity in Q3 CY22 (value terms). These represented 30 percent of the total deal activity (count terms). Average ticket size in growth-stage deals continued to decline and was $32 million during Q3 CY22.
Early-stage deals accounted for 70 percent of total funding in Q3 CY22 compared to their 60 percent share in Q2 CY22 (in volume terms). The average ticket size per deal ranged from $4-5 million per deal. In value terms, early-stage deals contributed around 21 percent of the total funding in Q3 CY22 compared to around 12 percent in Q2 CY22.
Only two startups in India attained unicorn status in Q2 CY22, mirroring a global trend in decline in the number of new unicorns this last quarter. Globally, Q3 CY22 produced 20 unicorns and 45 percent of them are from the SaaS segment. No new decacorns were added in this quarter.
35 North hires banking veteran as Operating Partner
Asset management company 35 North Ventures has onboarded Sunil Gurbaxani, former managing director and CEO at Dhanlaxmi Bank, as its operating partner.
“His leadership appointments are strategically aligned with our aim to fortify human capital within the company and have people with the right skills and experiences who will help us reach the next level of growth,” said Milan Sharma, Partner, 35 North Ventures.
The VC firm runs India Discovery Fund, a SEBI-approved angel fund with a fund size of $100 million. The fund was launched last year and invests in asset-light business models that are tech-enabled. It seeks to provide growth capital to companies across categories such as edtech, fashion, fintech, defence tech, food & beverages amongst others.
Ozonetel launches Contact Center Platform on WhatsApp
Ozonetel, an omni channel customer communication platform provider, has launched a full-featured contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) platform on WhatsApp.
As per the company, organisations can set up contact centre operations using WhatsApp and reduce cost of operations by more than 75 percent. Businesses can increase by five-fold the number of customer engagements that contact centre agents handle, a statement said.
Businesses will have access to all contact centre features needed to personalise communications, including virtual numbers, automatic call distribution, interactive chat response systems, bots, and more. Brands can leverage the investments they have incurred on advertising their toll-free number and continue to use the same number for WhatsApp messages from customers.
“Ozonetel’s CCaaS platform on WhatsApp will effectively address the advanced messaging needs of businesses and their customers. This is powered by Ozonetel's CloudAgent platform that handles over 2 billion conversations a year and powers over 100,000 contact center agents,” said Chaitanya Chokkareddy, chief product officer, Ozonetel.
Shiprocket partners Shadowfax for same-day and next-day deliveries
E-commerce logistics aggregator Shiprocket has partnered with a crowdsourced third-party logistics platform Shadowfax Technologies to facilitate same-day and next-day deliveries for D2C brands like boAT, Mamaearth and MyGlamm.
The service will be rolled-out in the top 20 cities in India by the end of this year post which it will be scaled to other parts of the country, the companies said in a joint statement.
The partnership intends to leverage Shadowfax's significant hyperlocal fleet presence across the top cities of India to provide speed and reliability giving it a competitive edge compared to traditional logistic solutions.
GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY & STARTUP NEWS
Big Tech's hiring freeze unlocks rich talent pool for US startups
Late-stage US startups are scooping up talent unlocked by layoffs and hiring freezes at Big Tech, adding experienced engineers and project managers to their roster despite signs of an economic slowdown, Reuters reported.
Companies, with steady cash flow from viable products in the market, are offering rich pay checks to lure talent that would have otherwise preferred working at big technology firms including Microsoft and Facebook-parent Meta.
Stack Overflow Chief Executive Prashanth Chandrasekar said the coding platform's headcount had more than doubled this year to 540, with some of the new hires being tapped from firms such as Google and Apple.
Deepak Rao, CEO of X1 Card, said the credit-card startup's headcount had more than doubled to 35 in a year and more employees from larger companies would join it in the coming months.
The hiring spree comes even as startup funding is drying up in the face of decades-high inflation, a stronger dollar and massive rate hikes, which have pushed Big Tech to pull back on their spending spree.
ByteDance plans music-streaming expansion to take on Spotify: WSJ
China's ByteDance is in talks with music labels for expanding its music-streaming service globally to compete with industry leaders such as Spotify, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The TikTok parent plans to eventually integrate music streaming within its short-video service and scale it to serve as a major platform for distributing music globally, according to the report.
The company had discussed in recent months launching its Resso music-streaming service, currently available in India, Indonesia and Brazil, in more than a dozen additional markets, but expansion to the United States isn't immediately on the cards, according to the report.
Google approves Trump's Truth Social for Play Store
Google has approved former US President Donald Trump's social media app Truth Social for distribution in the Google Play Store, a company spokesperson said.
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which operates Truth Social, is expected to make the app available in the Play Store shortly, Google said.
"It's been a pleasure to work with Google, and we're glad they helped us to finally bring Truth Social to all Americans, regardless of what device they use," TMTG's Chief Executive Officer Devin Nunes said in a statement.
Truth Social, which launched in the United States in the Apple App Store in February, had not previously been available in the Play Store due to insufficient content moderation, according to a Google spokesperson in August. Google had expressed concerns to Truth Social about violations of its Play Store policies prohibiting content like physical threats and incitement to violence.
US FCC to ban all US sales of Huawei, ZTE equipment: Report
The US Federal Communications Commission plans to ban all sales of Huawei and ZTE telecommunications equipment in the United States on national security grounds, news website Axios reported.
Last year, US President Joe Biden signed legislation to prevent companies that are deemed security threats from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S. regulators.
