News Roundup: 10 Indian Startup News That You Don’t Want To Miss This Week [23-28 October]

We bring you the weekly dose of important Indian startup news of the week.

This is one of the important news in the Indian startup ecosystem. Anand Rai, founder of GoJavas has alleged Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal and Vulcan Express for the criminal breach of trust, cheating, intellectual property theft, theft of trade secrets and data and misappropriation of funds, among others. Snapdeal has refuted the claims and will take strict action against the company.

Further Less than two weeks after withdrawing its case against Unicommerce Paytm seems to be back at it again. As stated by COO Amit Sinha, Paytm Mall will soon take legal action against the technology solutions arm of Snapdeal for alleged data misuse. Also, Paytm Mall has barred sellers on its platform from availing services provided by the Unicommerce.It has intimated all its vendors that infringement of this term could result in either termination of the contract or even legal action. Amidst all these legal tangles, Snapdeal has also claimed a six-fold increase in its net margin during the festive season sale period September 1, 2017, till October 20, 2017.

Also, both Flipkart and Amazon slashed investments in their respective marketplaces in FY2016-17. While Flipkart slashed investment to $414K (INR 27 lakh) from $250 Mn, Amazon pushed it to $308 Mn from $1.14 Bn (INR 7,643 Cr) it pumped in the Amazon Seller Services a year before. Furthermore, Amazon also pumped in $40 Mn (INR 260 Cr) into its digital payments arm, Amazon Pay.

Important Indian Startup News Stories Of The Week

KSUM Allows Teachers To Start Their Own Ventures

The Kerala government has approved the state startup apex body Kerala Startup Mission’s (KSUM) proposal to allow teachers to take a sabbatical leave and start their own startups along with students. The initiative will accord sabbatical leave to teachers who aspire to become entrepreneurs. Teachers can now either start their own startup or can also join students.

Govt. To Invite Tenders For Setting Up WiFi Hubs In 250K Gram Panchayats

The $568.8 Mn project is slated for completion by 2019. As part of the initiative, the Indian government is preparing to launch broadband services with high speed of around 1000 megabit per second (1 Gbps) in nearly 100K gram panchayats by the end of 2017.

RBI Order For Linking Aadhaar With Bank Account Violates Right To Privacy

The new petition by Kalyani Menon Sen, who describes herself as a feminist scholar and activist working for 25 years on issues relating to women’s rights, challenges the constitutional validity of the decision of RBI. The petition comes a day after RBI stated that linking of bank accounts with Aadhaar has been made mandatory under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

SJM Urges Indian Government To Deny Any Pact On Ecommerce

Swadeshi Jagran Manch, known as SJM, an organisation affiliated by RSS has urged the Indian government to not enter into any pact on ecommerce during Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership aka RCEP negotiations. SJM believes that a pact on ecommerce could significantly benefit global etailers like Amazo and Alibaba.

Paytm, Mobikwik Commits Funds To Meet RBI’s Full KYC Norms

MobiKwik has committed $61.6 Mn (INR 400 Cr) over the course of five years to comply with the KYC requirements of its customers. Paytm, on the other hand, has earmarked over $500 Mn over a period of three years to reach a target of 500 Mn full KYC wallet by the end of the year.

Find the complete list of all the startup news from last week →