Startup digest: Top startup stories of the day

E-pharmacy companies PharmEasy and Medlife have sought approval of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for a potential merger. As per the CCI filing, PharmEasy looks to acquire 100 percent equity shares of Medlife. Medlife and its promoters will get 19.59 percent of the equity share capital of PharmEasy's parent company API Holdings.

Space tech startup Pixxel has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Blume Ventures, growX ventures and Lightspeed India. The round also included contributions from Inventus Capital India and other angel investors including Stanford Angels and Ryan Johnson, a veteran in the earth imaging space. The new funding will strengthen Pixxel's plans for its first satellite launch later this year and accelerate development of the second satellite which the team plans to launch next year. The bigger plan is to deploy a total of 30 satellites by December 2022 for its global constellation.

Homegrown short video sharing platform Chingari raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Brian Norgard, the CPO of Tinder and leading French entrepreneur Fabrice Grinda. OLX founder Fabrice Grinda has more than 200 investments in several big firms including Alibaba Group and Airbnb Norgard has earlier invested in startups like SpaceX, Lyft and NotionHQ

Hiring platform for entry-level talent Able Jobs has raised $1.8 million in seed funding. The investment was led by SAIF Partners and saw participation from Y Combinator, Titan Capital, FirstCheque, angel investors Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal and former WhatsApp executive Neeraj Arora. The company plans to use the funds raised to build training products for enterprise and expand into sectors like FMCG, BFSI etc.

Tech giant Google has launched its entry-level job search platform Kormo Jobs in India. The platform hosts over two million verified jobs currently. Jobs was piloted in Bangladesh in 2018 and expanded to Indonesia in 2019. Last year, Google had introduced Kormo in India under the brand Jobs as a Spot on Google Pay app that helped a number of companies including Zomato and Dunzo access over two million verified jobs on the platform Google will rebrand 'Jobs Spot' on Google Pay as Kormo Jobs in India. The service will be a standalone android app.

The food delivery industry in India is now clocking around 75-80 percent of pre-COVID GMVs according to report by food delivery platform Zomato. The dining out industry in India is yet to bounce back and operating at 8-10 percent of pre-COVID levels. Residential areas are doing 50 percent better than commercial areas. The number of restaurants offering food delivery are at 70 percent of pre-COVID levels. Out of this, about 5 percent restaurants did not offer food delivery services pre-COVID.

Most of these are dining out centric places which have shown agility to pivot to food delivery. While sporadic lockdowns in some cities disrupt business as usual for a few days, however, according to Zomato, food delivery volumes bounce back as soon as these lockdowns are lifted. The food delivery segment may hit pre-COVID levels of business in the next 2-3 months.

However, dining out space seems to be witnessing an absolute contrast. Even cities where restrictions have been lifted, has only 17 percent dining out restaurants are open for business. Out of the 83 percent restaurants that are not open for business, 10 percent restaurants have shut down permanently and 30 percent restaurants may not reopen at all. Remaining 43 percent are closed are likely to reopen, as the situation becomes better. 60 percent restaurateurs said they estimate to retain less than half of their original business volumes for a few months even post-COVID.

Taiwan-based AI based digital transformation and data-driven marketing solutions company iKala has raised $17 million in a Series B funding led by Taipei-based Wistron Digital Technology Holding. Existing investors Hotung Investment Holdings and Pacific Venture Partners also participated in the round. The funds will be used to expand into new markets, including Indonesia and Malaysia, while strengthening iKala’s position in its existing markets — Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.

CpaaS startup CometChat has raised $1.6 million in a seed round from Colorado-based Range Ventures, NY-based Silicon Badia and India-based iSeed Ventures. The funds raised will be used for scaling up the US and India sales and marketing teams as well as shoring up product development. Founded in the US in 2019,the firm works with global enterprises by providing plug n play communication products to improve brands’ reach. CometChat, a product tech company, designs critical functions like chat, video and live event capabilities within websites and apps to help enterprises who are looking to boost user engagement accelerate their go to market time.