Startup Digest: Simplilearn acquires Fullstack Academy, Aditya Birla Group’s TMRW to invest in 8 D2C brands & Agnikul Cosmos sets up India’s first private rocket Launchpad

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail’s venture TMRW will invest nearly Rs 300 crore to acquire stakes in eight different digital-first lifestyle brands, including D2C brand Bewakoof.

The brands are women’s western wear label Berrylush, casual wear brand Bewakoof, women’s casual & western wear brand Juneberry, teen’s occasion wear brand Natilene, kid’s wear Nauti Nati, athleisure and active wear brand Nobero, casual and denim wear brand Urbano, and casual wear and fast fashion brand Veirdo, it said in a statement.

The company expects TMRW to cross an annual revenue rate of over Rs 1,500 crore over the next 12 months after getting the new brands on board. With this, TMRW has established its presence across a broad spectrum of apparel segments ranging from Casual Wear, Kid’s Wear to Western Wear. The plan is to expand in related Lifestyle categories including Beauty & Personal Care.

The company will open a 90,000 square feet flagship store in Mumbai, which is expected to be operational by 2024. ABFRL said that the store would be housed across two historic buildings.

Amazon India has decided to shut down Amazon Distribution, the company's spokesperson told CNBC-TV18. The tech and e-commerce company recently decided to shut down its food delivery and its edtech vertical too.

As per the company, the decisions have been taken by the company as a part of the annual operating planning review process and the cost-cutting measures.

The Amazon Distribution vertical procures fast-moving consumer goods from companies and distributes them to hundreds of small neighbourhood stores. However, this unit operated only in three Karnataka cities — Bengaluru, Mysuru, and Hubbali — and involved about 50 employees.

“As part of our annual operating planning review process, we have made the decision to discontinue Amazon Distribution, our wholesale e-commerce website for small neighbourhood stores around Bengaluru, Mysore & Hubli," said an official spokesperson.

The spokesperson further added that the company will be discontinuing this programme in a phased manner to take care of current customers and partners and we are supporting our affected employees during this transition.

Dhruva Space, which has sent two tiny satellites recently, is looking to raise $20-25 million in the next one to two years to create infrastructure facilities here to be able to launch satellites weighing up to 100Kg, Abhay Egoor, co-founder and CTO said.

"We are looking to raise or invest about USD 20 to 25 million over the next 1-2 years where this amount of capital would be used to invest and build an infrastructure facility for assembly, integration and testing of satellites up to 100 kg class. We are exploring setting up the same facility in Hyderabad. We are already in conversation with parties," Egoor told PTI.

He also said after the successful launch of Thybolt 1 and Thybolt 2-the tiny satellites into space, the firm is now currently working on a satellite weighing about 30 kg which will be broadly catering to communications and scientific applications, on their P30 platform.

Covvalent, a B2B platform for specialty chemicals, has raised $4.3 million in a seed funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners.

Angel investors and founders including Vishal Chaudhary (co-founder, Zetwerk), Ramakant Sharma (Founder, Livspace), Rajesh Yabaji (Founder, BlackBuck), Rehan Khan (MD, MSD India Region), Jawaid Iqbal, Anubhav & Ankit Singh (co-founders, Rupifi) and Kaushal Soparkar (Founder, Meghmani Group) also participated in the round.

As per the startup, the fresh capital will be used to build its product and business teams and sharpen its technology tools to ensure a precise match between customer specifications and a supplier’s output.

“As we scale, technology will be a key differentiator, enabling us to deliver a smooth buying experience, while bringing transparency in supply chain and automating quality controls,” said Arush Dhawan, Co-Founder Covvalent.

Proptech firm Homesfy Realty has raised $1.1 million from investors to expand business and also filed its draft paper with Sebi to launch an Initial Public Offer (IPO).

Mumbai-based Homesfy Realty Ltd is engaged in providing real estate broking services to real estate developers, retail buyers/sellers and investors for residential and commercial space. It has an operational presence in Pune, Bengaluru, and Delhi-NCR as well. The company runs two platforms Homesfy.in and MyMagnet.io.

Recently, the company has filed the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) for its SME IPO with NSE Emerge. The proceeds from the proposed IPO will be used for working capital, general corporate purpose, and organic growth.

Relove, a technology platform that helps brands with circularity, has raised $700,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by Hearth Ventures.

The round also saw participation from Blume Ventures and angel investors like Anita Dongre, Aakrit Vaish, and Utsav Agarwal.

This investment will help Relove scale its mission to enable circularity in fashion, the firm said in a statement.

“Through this funding we are going to ensure scale, by normalizing having a resell button on every website,” said Kirti Poonia, Co-Founder, Relove.

India's first privately-owned space rocket launchpad and the mission control centre was inaugurated at the ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, said Agnikul Cosmos.

Agnikul Cosmos, the city-based rocket startup, said the launchpad and the mission control centre was designed by it and executed with the support of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and private sector space regulator IN-SPACe.

The company said the launch of its first rocket will happen from its own launchpad. The mission would be a technology demonstrator that will mirror Agnikul's orbital launch but at a reduced scale.

“The ability to launch from our own launchpad while still working with ISRO's launch operations teams is a privilege that we have been granted by ISRO and IN-SPACe,” said Srinath Ravichandran, Co-Founder and CEO, Agnikul Cosmos.

magicpin, a discovery and user savings platform, has announced its partnership with Park+, a super app for car owners, to provide new offline shopping experiences to consumers.

The partnership will see Park+ and magicpin offer a suite of products and services that bring users of both platforms together, a statement said. This partnership will enable the customers trying to book a parking spot in areas of high footfalls, such as malls and markets, to discover great deals and shopping offers around their location via magicpin.

“With magicpin’s partnership with Park+, shoppers stepping out and using Park+ services will be able to discover amazing shopping offers and discounts,” said Anshoo Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder, magicpin.

Car sharing marketplace Zoomcar has announced the appointment of Naveen Gupta as Vice President and Country Head for India.

In his new role, Gupta will be responsible for all aspects of growth, operations and customer experience for the company in the country.

"His diverse skillsets and seasoned leadership will play an instrumental role in continuing to scale the India business," said Greg Moran, CEO and Co-Founder of Zoomcar.

In February this year, Bengaluru-headquartered Zoomcar had elevated Nirmal NR as the CEO for India market. Gupta previously worked with Hero MotoCorp, redBus, Swiggy and Cars24.

Twitter has shown a lack of transparency in the fight against misinformation, France's regulator in charge of digital communications Arcom said, as the social media platform faced heightened scrutiny following steep job cuts.

In a third yearly report on "the fight against the manipulation of information," Arcom pointed to Twitter's "very loose transparency regarding data" on the matter, adding that the company had provided "imprecise" details on how its automated tools worked.

Under a French law adopted in 2018, 12 of these platforms must disclose the processes they have put in place to handle their own definition of misinformation, leading to "naming and shaming" presentations by the authority.

The 12 online platforms include Alphabet's YouTube, online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, Meta's Facebook and —for the first time — the fast-growing short-video platform TikTok, owned by China-based firm ByteDance.

Twitter's lead privacy regulator in the European Union said it is concerned about the impact layoffs at the social media company may have on its ability to meet privacy obligations but is so far getting answers to its questions.

"We are concerned and we're tracking it very closely. So far we're getting answers to our questions," Ireland's Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC) Helen Dixon told Irish national broadcaster RT.

"We're in multiple daily contact with them and we've a range of contacts still based at Twitter in Dublin. It's a fast evolving situation, I think where we arrive at the point where we can't get answers and we have no point of contact, then we will be in very serious difficulty."

Twitter CEO Elon Musk says new user signups to the social media platform are at an "all-time high", as he struggles with a mass exodus of advertisers and users fleeing to other platforms over concerns about verification and hate speech.

Signups were averaging over two million per day in the last seven days as of November 16, up 66 percent compared to the same week in 2021, Musk said in a tweet.

He also said that user active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly 8 billion active minutes per day in the last seven days as of November 15, an increase of 30 percent in comparison to the same week last year. Hate speech impressions decreased as of November 13 compared to October of last year.

Reported impersonations on the platform spiked earlier this month, before and in wake of the Twitter Blue launch, according to Musk.

Spending on Cyber Monday, the biggest US online shopping day, is set to hit a record $11.2 billion, according to a report, as discounts on everything from clothes to TVs drive shoppers to click "add to cart" even as stubbornly high inflation persists.

The Adobe Analytics report predicts spending on Cyber Monday to rise 5.2 percent as inflation-weary consumers have been putting off holiday shopping for weeks in the hopes of deep post-Thanksgiving markdowns.

Adobe Analytics, which measures e-commerce by analyzing transactions at websites, has access to data covering purchases at 85 percent of the top 100 internet retailers in the United States.

Cyber Monday sales fell 1.4 percent last year as retailers spread out promotional deals across weeks from as early as October to better manage inventories amid widespread product shortages.

Tesla is developing a revamped version of Model 3, as the top EV maker aims to cut production costs and boost the appeal of the five-year-old electric sedan, Reuters reported.

One focus of the redesign codenamed "Highland" is to reduce the number of components and complexity in the interior of the Model 3 while focusing on features that Tesla buyers value, including the display, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the revamp has not been announced.

The revamp of the battery-powered sedan, which could also include some changes to the Model 3’s exterior and powertrain performance, will go into production at Tesla’s factory in Shanghai and the company’s Fremont, California plant. Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory will put the redesigned Model 3 into production in the third quarter of 2023, the report added.