Startup and funding world today? What’s happening today? 19th April 2017
Here’s your daily dose of startup and funding news from India and around the world.
19th Apr ‘17
India startup #news:
• SoftBank is considering a sizeable investment of ~$1.5bn in Paytm in a deal that could value Paytm at over $7 bn.
• Myntra has acquihired logistics startup InLogg to reduce their delivery costs in smaller cities by about 25%.
• Goldman Sachs & Credit Suisse to set terms for Flipkart’s Snapdeal buy.
• Asset Vantage, a Mumbai-based fintech company that offers a SaaS-based investment portfolio management software, has acquired Santa Clara-based software company Financial Navigator. The 30-year-old American firm that also runs a portfolio tracking software focused on the wealth management market.
• Omni Hospitals in talks with PE firms to raise $50M.
• US, UK, Australia and Singapore reforming work visas to protect local jobs; Australia scrapped a visa programme yesterday that was being used extensively for transfer of skilled foreign workers while US executive orders expected a day later will overhaul the H-1B system.
• Telecom regulator TRAI plans multiple open house talks on net neutrality.
• Aircel may approach RBI for payments bank licence.
• India to enact data protection laws by October.
• TCS profit misses mark as BFSI & retail verticals disappoint.
Funding News:
• Nomura has launched the `Voyager Nomura Fintech Partnership’, a global accelerator cum co-creation platform. The idea is to collaborate with startups all over the world to build products and solutions specifically for capital markets.
• Samara Capital has struck a deal with a facility management services provider. This is to set up an investment platform that will seek to acquire companies in the segment.
Around the world:
• China EV startup Nio to sell mass-production car next year.
• Ant Financial merges with Lazada’s HelloPay Group.
• Baidu to launch its self-driving car technology for restricted environment in July before gradually introducing fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020.
• At Facebook F8, Zuckerberg launched Camera Effects platform that allows artists and developers to create augmented reality effects for the Facebook camera.
• Wells Fargo tests Facebook chatbot.
• Facebook Spaces allows users to hangout with their friends in VR.
• Instagram on Android gets offline mode.
• Facebook announces React Fiber, a rewrite of its React framework.
• Google Earth is getting a revival with a new feature called Voyager. Google has partnered with BBC and NASA to add video clips, photos and text narratives to 3D representations of particular locations.
