14th April: Pine Labs, Sequoia, Zilingo, Kotak & Avalanche
Most significant stories about the Indian startup and tech ecosystem in under 120 seconds.
From The Crux Newsletter this week.
Payments player Pine Labs is set to gain deeper access to the market of small offline retailers after buying a majority stake in payments solution company Mosambee. Its product suite will now boast mobile point-of-sale terminals and a lighter software platform, which banks use to process transactions at small merchant outlets.
Mumbai-based Mosambee, known little outside banking circles, is a key partner of HDFC Bank. According to industry insiders, it works with three to four other lenders. It is estimated to have a merchant base of 1 million and manages about 600,000 terminals (read more).
Other significant stories about the ecosystem
Sequoia Capital India’s Shailendra Singh has stepped down from the board of troubled Zilingo Pte following questions about the high-profile Singapore startup’s accounting practices. Singh, a managing director at the influential venture capital firm, resigned as a director about a week ago, after the departures of Temasek Holdings Pte’s Xu Wei Yang and Burda Principal Investments Ltd. 's Albert Shyy (read more).
Flipkart, after investing close to $700 million in Flipkart's marketplace and new healthcare vertical, the Indian ecommerce company's Singapore entity has invested $116 million in fashion retailer Myntra (read more).
Ecommerce’s new shiny roll-up business is already getting tested after a year of frenetic fundraising, which saw more than $700 million being racked up by half a dozen Thrasio-style brand aggregators. The exuberance is waning rapidly, making way for consolidation with some players even exploring a full sale as they struggle to raise fresh capital (read more).
Sales of electric two-wheelers are surging in upcountry markets amid a rapid climb in motor-fuel costs, giving semi-urban India a disproportionate ownership share in the EV business that logged its best performance to date in FY22 (read more).
Kotak, which was among the very few Indian financial institutions that warmed up to the cryptocurrency world, is having second thoughts. The private sector bank has discontinued - at least temporarily - handling payments for trades with CoinSwitch Kuber, a large crypto intermediary (read more).
A senior judge of the Singapore High Court has dismissed at least two appeals filed by Affle, a shareholder of Indus OS, which challenged the acquisition of the Bengaluru-based startup by Walmart and Flipkart-owned PhonePe after a term sheet for the acquisition was signed (read more).
Ava Labs Inc., the lead developer of the Avalanche blockchain, is in the process of raising a new round of funding, the company, founded and helmed by Cornell University professor Emin Gun Sirer, is raising $350 million at a $5.25 billion valuation. Its new valuation would make it one of the world's most highly valued crypto startups. (read more).