Startup Digest: Shiprocket acquires Wigzo Tech, Ola co-founder Ankit Bhati launches new startup and Apple hits $3 trillion market value

Explaining the acquisition rationale, Shiprocket said that it has been leveraging delivery-behavior data by enabling end-to-end logistics and fulfillment for over 2.5 lakh SMEs, Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) retailers and social commerce sellers.

Now, with Wigzo Tech embedded in its technology platform, it will be able to offer intelligence about customer purchasing behavior to increase conversion.

Curefoods, a delivery-only restaurant chain operator has acquired five direct-to-consumer brands for undisclosed sums as part of its plans to significantly enhance its footprint in India this year.

The company has acquired Juno's Pizza based out of Mumbai; Bengaluru-based Cupcake Noggins, organic ice cream brand Iceberg; Delhi-based Nomad Pizzas and Jaipur-based White Kitchens, Curefoods said in a statement.

"With the five food brands now on board, Curefoods has more than 20 brands in its portfolio and is looking to house a total of 25 brands by mid-2022, notably strengthening its D2C (direct-to-consumer) offering," it said.

Stating that it is on an ambitious road to expand presence in the coming year, the cloud kitchens operator said it plans to have a presence across 20 cities with 200 locations.

E-commerce roll-up unicorn Mensa Brands has acquired leather goods manufacturer and seller, Estalon for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition marks Mensa’s foray into the leather goods segment, which is gaining popularity both in domestic and international markets.  With this, Mensa Brands has till now completed acquisition of 16 brands in total.

“We believe that with Mensa’s complementary skills in technology, operations and brand building, it is poised to achieve a high growth rate of 5X of the market in the next 3-5 years,” said Ananth Narayanan, Founder and CEO of Mensa Brands.

The content-to-commerce 'house of brands' Good Glamm Group has announced the acquisition of two more influencer management platforms - Winkl and Vidooly.

And, with it, it has created a new entity called the Good Creator Company (GCC) to bring together all its influencer and creator platforms under a single umbrella.

To build this tech platform and acquire more influencer-driven companies, the Good Glamm Group has seeded the new venture with Rs 200 crore.

With the combined strength of Plixxo, Winkl, MissMalini and Vidooly, the good creator company will host 250,000 influencers and reach over 70 million users every month.

The GCC currently has a Rs 75 crore revenue run rate and is targeting a Rs 250 crore revenue run rate by December 2022.

Express delivery platform Borzo that facilitates same-day intra city deliveries has acquired NOW Delivery for a cash + stock deal.

Founded in 2016, NOW Delivery is an quick delivery platform for local retailers. It is backed by Maple Accelerator, Maple Capital Advisors, Naveen Munjal of Hero Electric and others. NOW Delivery’s seed investor Maple Capital Advisors will exit the startup post the deal.

NOW Delivery’s Uber-styled platform runs on a fleet of over 1,500 riders across ten cities in the country and clocks over two million orders per annum. It has plans to expand its service to 20 cities in the next 12 months.

Ola Electric, which began deliveries on December 15, said at least 4,000 scooters have been dispatched. The actual vehicle registrations on the Road Transport Ministry portal are approximately 400. This reported mismatch in the sales figures of Ola Electric scooters has even the FADA president worried.

However, Varun Dubey, Chief Marketing Officer, Ola Electric told CNBC-TV18 in an exclusive chat that a vast majority of data is not reflected on the VAHAN app.

"It is important to understand how VAHAN works and there has been a lot of misinformation on this on social media as well as on some TV channels. All states don't report data into VAHAN number one, number two, there are some states that run the older VAHAN version where it may take up to a month for the reader to show up. Number three, temporary registration plates are not reported in VAHAN and temporary plates to permanent plates take up to a month," Dubey said.

Dubey said that 4,000 scooters have been dispatched in December, many of them have been delivered. However, some of them are also in the final stages of registration and they will be delivered over the next couple of days as and when the registration gets done.

"Our customers are in touch with our brand champions that are assigned to each customer and they are working through the registration process to get the scooter delivered," added Dubey.

Cab aggregator Ola's co-founder Ankit Bhati will be launching a new startup called Amnic in the SaaS space, along with former colleagues Satya Nagarajan and Nimish Joshi, sources familiar with the development told Moneycontrol, adding that Sequoia Capital is likely to invest $15-$20 million in the start-up as part of a seed round.

The newly-minted startup Amnic will operate in the DevOps (software development and IT operations) toolchain space, where it will help businesses maintain a software development pipeline and make the process easier, the report added.

According to Zauba Corp, Amnic Technologies Private Limited was incorporated on June 3, 2021. It is classified as a non-government company and is registered with the Registrar of Companies, Bangalore. Its authorised share capital is Rs 10 lakh and paid-up capital Rs 10 lakh. It is involved in other computer-related activities (for example maintenance of websites of other firms/ creation of multimedia presentations for other firms etc.). The directors listed are Nagarajan Sathya Narayanan and Ankit Bhati.

BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover said that a viral audio clip which claims to be of him verbally abusing a Kotak Mahindra bank employee for not getting share allotment in beauty brand Nykaa’s IPO is “fake” and that it was a “scamster” who put it out.

“Folks. Chill. It’s a fake audio by some scamster trying to extort funds (US$ 240K in bitcoins). I refused to buckle. I’ve got more character. And Internet has got enough scamsters,” Grover tweeted.

Ashneer Grover also shared screenshots of his e-mail exchange from last month with “Unicon Baba” who sought $240,000 in exchange of marketing and promotion for BharatPe.

The unverified clip, tweeted on Wednesday morning by an account named “@BabuBongo”, has a SoundCloud link with an audio clip. “How rich founders treat poor bank employees,” the account claimed.

TickerPlant, a subsidiary of 63 Moons technologies limited, today announced its collaboration with Google Cloud for the development of the CryptoWire eco-system, catering to all stakeholders of crypto and the blockchain industry on a common platform.

As an exchange neutral global platform, CryptoWire aims to simplify the digital asset class, blockchain technology, its industrial application and empower enthusiasts and professionals to make informed business decisions by offering deep insight and leading-edge knowledge.

CryptoWire's state-of-the-art knowledge portals, CryptoTV and Crypto University will provide technology and knowledge-intensive global intervention in crypto asset and blockchain ecosystem to enable seamless operations and convergence of all applications for participants to make informed investment decisions and enable industry usage of the blockchain.

KPIT Technologies has partnered with dSPACE GmbH to offer a comprehensive solutions test suite for smart charging of electric vehicles.

The collaboration brings together the hardware and software competencies of dSPACE and KPIT Technologies to offer comprehensive testing options for the mobility ecosystem, the company said in a statement.

dSPACE provides simulation and validation solutions for the automotive industry, allowing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their suppliers to test software and hardware components of a new vehicle before launch. The company’s areas of expertise include connected cars, self-driving cars and electric vehicles.

Food aggregators like Swiggy and Zomato will collect and deposit tax at 5 percent rate, a move which will widen the tax base as food vendors who are currently outside the GST threshold will become liable to GST when provided through these online platforms.

Currently, restaurants registered under GST are collecting and depositing the tax.

Also, cab aggregators like Uber and Ola will have to collect 5 percent Goods and Services Tax (GST) for booking two- and three-wheeler vehicles. Also, footwear irrespective of prices will attract 12 percent tax from Saturday.

The move came into effect on January 1. These are among the many changes in the GST regime that have come into effect in this new year 2022.

Agritech platform Ninjacart has announced an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback worth Rs 100 crore. This is the company’s second ESOP buyback after a previous round in 2019.

Both current and former employees with vested ESOPs as of December 2021 will be eligible for the buyback programme, with the option to sell their entire holding, the Flipkart-backed firm said in a statement.

The latest ESOP buyback announcement comes on the heels of Flipkart and Walmart announcing a fresh round of joint strategic investment in Ninjacart worth $145 million.

The e-commerce marketplace Flipkart Internet has reported a 28 % jump in its revenues for the year FY20-21. The company has recorded Rs 8,115 Cr in its revenues, as per data sourced from Tofler.

It further reported a net loss of Rs 2,881 Cr during the same fiscal. This is 49 % increase from the last financial year. The company’s total expenses for the fiscal were reported as Rs 10,996 cr.

Meanwhile, its wholesale arm reported its revenues as Rs 43,357 crore, a 25 % jump since the last financial year. The company further reported a net loss of Rs 2,445 crore during the same fiscal.

This is 22 % decrease from the last financial year. The company’s total expenses for the fiscal were reported as Rs 45,801 crore.

Amazon Wholesale India has collected a revenue of Rs 3,143 crore in financial year 2020-21, marking a 7 percent year-on-year decline. In FY20, the e-commerce giant had posted a revenue of Rs 3,388 crore, as per data sourced from Tofler.

The company has reported a net profit of Rs 43 crore in FY21, which marks a 132 percent increase as compared to the last fiscal.

Amazon Wholesale India’s total expenses for FY21 were reported as Rs 3,098 crore.

In terms of revenue, this marks a second consecutive year of decline for the company. The revenue had dipped by 70 percent in FY20, as compared to FY19 when it was recorded as Rs 11,250 crore.

India's competition watchdog has ordered an investigation into Apple business practices in the country, saying it was of the initial view that the iPhone maker had violated certain antitrust laws.

The order from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) comes after a non-profit group alleged this year that Apple was abusing its dominant position in the apps market by forcing developers to use its proprietary in-app purchase system.

The complainant, "Together We Fight Society", argued that Apple's imposition of a 30% in-app fee for distribution of paid digital content and other restrictions hurts competition by raising costs for app developers and customers, while also acting as a barrier to market entry.

The CCI said Apple's restrictions prima facie result in denial of market access for potential app developers and distributors.

The festive year-end marked an upswing in hiring activity across all major metros, with retail, hospitality, and education sectors witnessing a significant year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in December 2021, according to the Naukri JobSpeak Index 2021.

Sectors like travel and hospitality (+22%), retail (+20%) and education (+12%) have been showing good growth owing to the festive quarter and a rebound, the report added.

Top metro cities saw growth in hiring in December when compared with the same month of 2020. Hyderabad is leading with a 12% y-o-y growth followed by Bangalore (+11%), Mumbai (+8%), Pune (+4%), and Chennai (+6). Delhi was flat and Kolkata declined by 3%.

The report highlighted that the software & IT sector continues to grow with it growing by 8% Y-O-Y. Real estate sector showed promising signs by recording a growth of 8% in hiring activity for Dec’21. Apart from hospitality, education and retail which were leading the growth, other sectors that grew included BFSI (+3%) and Advertising (+18%).

Sectors such as insurance (-19%), BPO (-14%), and FMCG (-12%) de-grew as they saw a decline in hiring activity in December this year over the same period last year.

Bitcoin on Friday slumped as much as 5% to its lowest since late September, tumbling under $41,000 amid a broader sell-off for cryptocurrencies, Reuters reported.

Bitcoin was last down 3.7% after touching $40,938, its lowest since Sept. 29. The world's biggest cryptocurrency has lost over 40% since hitting a record high of $69,000 in November and the volatility that has plagued it since its birth 13 years ago remains stubbornly present.

Ether, the second largest token by market cap, fell as much as 8.6% to $3,114, its lowest since October 1.

Apple became the first company to hit a $3 trillion stock market value as investors bet the iPhone maker will keep launching best-selling products as it explores new markets such as automated cars and virtual reality.

As per Reuters, on the first day of trading in 2022, the Silicon Valley company's shares hit an intraday record high of $182.88, putting Apple's market value just above $3 trillion. The stock ended the session up 2.5% at $182.01, with Apple's market capitalization at $2.99 trillion.

Apple shared the $2 trillion market value club with Microsoft, which is now worth about $2.5 trillion. Alphabet, Amazon.com and Tesla have market values above $1 trillion.

After delivering handsome returns for investors last year, Google’s top leaders are getting a salary boost for 2022 along with hefty stock awards.

As per CNBC, Google parent Alphabet said in a filing with the SEC that its board approved new compensation packages for finance chief Ruth Porat, legal head Kent Walker, search boss Prabhakar Raghavan and Philipp Schindler, the company’s chief business officer.

The executives’ base salaries will increase from $650,000 to $1 million, according to the filing, which hit the SEC’s website on Tuesday and is dated December28. They each received stock awards valued at between $23 million and $35 million, split between performance-based equity and stock that vests over time.

France's data privacy watchdog CNIL has fined Alphabet's Google a record 150 million euros ($169 million) for making it difficult for internet users to refuse online trackers known as cookies, Reuters reported.

Meta Platforms' Facebook was also fined 60 million euros for the same reason, the CNIL said.

Internet users' prior consent for the use of cookies -- tiny snippets of data that help build targeted digital ad campaigns -- is a key pillar of the European Union's data privacy regulation and a top priority for the CNIL.

In its statement, the watchdog said it had found that the facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com websites didn't allow the refusal of cookies easily, citing Google's video-streaming platform.

The CNIL said the two companies had three months to comply with its orders or face an extra penalty payment of 100,000 euros per day of delay.

Uber will end its Uber Eats restaurant delivery service in Brazil from March 7 and focus instead on deliveries by its online groceries provider Cornershop and on Uber Direct, a delivery service for stores.

Brazil Journal, citing sources close to the matter, said the move is part of a global repositioning strategy under which Uber is looking to close unprofitable operations. Uber did not give a reason for closing Uber Eats Brazil in its statement.

Uber's move comes amid fierce competition in food deliveries in Brazil, where other providers include Rappi, which is backed by SoftBank Group, and iFood, part of Movile, a technology group backed by Prosus.

A US jury on Monday found Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes guilty of conspiring to defraud investors in the blood testing startup, convicting her on four of 11 counts, Reuters reported.

Holmes was convicted on charges of defrauding three other investors, as well as conspiring to do so. She was acquitted on three counts of defrauding patients who paid for tests from Theranos, and a related conspiracy charge. The jury could not reach a decision on three counts related to individual investors.

A sentencing date was not immediately set.

Holmes was also charged with misleading patients about the tests’ accuracy but was acquitted of those charges. Holmes is likely to appeal. The jury’s verdict came after seven days of deliberations.

Chinese authorities rapped Walmart for allegedly violating cybersecurity laws, local media reported, the latest trouble for the US retailer that is already a target of accusations in the country for supposedly stopping sales of products from Xinjiang.

The police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen discovered 19 "vulnerabilities" in Walmart's network system in late November and accused it of being slow to fix the loopholes, the China Quality News, backed by the country's market regulator, reported.

Walmart was ordered to make rectifications, the report said, without mentioning any fines or details of the vulnerabilities.

China's top market regulator said on Wednesday it has fined units of Alibaba Group, Tencent and Bilibili for failing to properly report about a dozen deals.

According to Reuters, China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) placed penalties of 500,000 yuan ($78,692) on the companies per deal, the maximum under China's 2008 anti-monopoly law.

The penalties come amid an ongoing regulatory crackdown on a range of industries in China, with the tech sector as a main target.

US video gaming platform Roblox has taken down its Chinese app that fronted its expansion efforts into the country, telling Reuters it was part of "a number of important transitory actions" as it builds its next version.

The LuoBuLesi app, which Roblox launched in July in partnership with an affiliate of Tencent Holdings was shut down on December 8, disappearing from mainland app stores. The app now shows users a message thanking them for using the test version when they log on.

A Roblox spokesperson told Reuters that the move was necessary as it builds the "next version of LuoBuLeSi", but did not say when the app would return.

Chinese gaming and social media company Tencent Holdings has taken a small stake in Britain's Monzo as part of a fundraising, the digital bank just weeks after it fetched a valuation of $4.5 billion, Reuters reported.

Monzo did not disclose details of Tencent's stake, but Sky News earlier reported that the Chinese firm was investing a minority of a $100 million capital injection, citing a source close to the process.

Tencent holds stakes in major US tech companies, including electric-car maker Tesla and photo-messaging app maker Snap.

GameStop is launching a division to develop a marketplace for nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and establish cryptocurrency partnerships, sources told Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. The video game retailer is undergoing a revamp, with Chairman Ryan Cohen tapping executives from companies including Amazon to turn GameStop away from brick-and-mortar and towards e-commerce.

The company is asking select game developers and publishers to list NFTs on its marketplace when it launches later this year, the WSJ report said.

The retailer has hired more than 20 people to run the unit which is building an online hub for buying, selling and trading NFTs of virtual videogame collectibles such as avatar outfits and weapons, according to the WSJ report.

Former President Donald Trump's new media venture plans to launch its social media app Truth Social on February 21, according to an Apple App Store listing.

TRUTH Social, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) alternative to Twitter, is available for pre-order before going live on the US Presidents' Day holiday, as per a Reuters report.

The app's launch would come 13 months after Meta Platforms Facebook and Twitter banned Trump for encouraging his supporters to participate in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol based on unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Facebook owner Meta has applied to be able to appeal a ruling by a British competition watchdog that it must sell popular animated images platform Giphy, Reuters reported.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in November it had found that the acquisition of Giphy would reduce competition between social media platforms and in display advertising.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal said on Wednesday that Meta had lodged an application for review on Dec. 23, challenging the ruling on six grounds.

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the storming of the US Capitol, Twitter convened a team to prepare the social networking site to address any harmful content associated with the event, the company told Reuters.

Social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook were accused of enabling extremists to organize the siege on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Republican then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's presidential election victory.

Twitter said it "convened a cross-functional working group" comprised of members across its site integrity and trust and safety teams, which is specific to the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol and will watch for risks such as tweets and accounts that incite violence. The company did not say how many people were on the monitoring team.

Tesla reported record quarterly deliveries that far exceeded Wall Street estimates, riding out global chip shortages as it ramped up China production.

It was the sixth consecutive quarter that the world's most valuable automaker posted record deliveries, as per Reuters.

Tesla, led by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, delivered 308,600 vehicles in the fourth quarter, far higher than analysts' forecasts of 263,026 vehicles.

Tesla's October-December deliveries were up about 70% from a year earlier and nearly 30% higher from record deliveries the preceding quarter.

Japan's Sony Group plans to launch a company this spring to examine entering the electric vehicle market, looking to harness its strengths in entertainment and sensors to play a bigger role in next-generation mobility, Reuters reported.

The new company, Sony Mobility comes as the Japanese tech giant is "exploring a commercial launch" of electric vehicles, Sony chairman and president Kenichiro Yoshida told a news conference, speaking ahead of the CES technology trade fair in the United States.

Yoshida unveiled a prototype sport utility vehicle (SUV), the VISION-S 02, which uses the same electric vehicle platform as the previously announced VISION-S 01 coupe that began testing on public roads in Europe from December 2020.

Scammers took home a record $14 billion in cryptocurrency in 2021, thanks in large part to the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, according to new data from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

Losses from crypto-related crime rose 79% from a year earlier, driven by a spike in theft and scams.

Cryptocurrency theft rose 516% from 2020, to $3.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency. Of this total, 72% of stolen funds were taken from DeFi protocols, as per CNBC.

Losses from scams rose 82% to $7.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

Over $2.8 billion of this total came from a relatively new but very popular type of scheme known as a “rug pull,” in which developers build what appear to be legitimate cryptocurrency projects, before ultimately taking investors’ money and disappearing.