Startup news: India
The April 2020 startup news round-up for India, covering India’s tech, fintech and startup funding news in the early-stage scene. News items are collected at the country level, rather than country-plus-technology, to provide a view of overall developments in India’s startup ecosystem.
Links below are India’s startup news headlines from April 2020, with each link connecting you with the online news source for that headline, covering either an individual Indian startup in the news or the wider Indian startup ecosystem in some way – VC investments, government or private startup support initiatives, or industry-related tech news, for instance.
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- India: FarEye logistics SaaS firm raises $25M to grow international markets, backed by Microsoft’s M12 venture fund
- India: Plunes raises $300K pre-A with platform aggregating doctors and healthcare service providers
- India: Government amends Foreign Direct Investment law to protect world’s 2nd-largest internet market from hostile takeovers
- India: EWar Games gaming platform raises $200K with user base of 500K and 45K games played on the platform each month
- India: Vogueme Technologies secures $400K with Toch, platform for meta-tagging objects, people, emotions, locations, scenes and activity in video in real time
- India: DailyHunt news aggregator app raises $24M in latest round, with Goldman Sachs Asia and China’s ByteDance investing
- India: A brief intro to 9 startups developing solutions to fight Covid-19, working with IoT, drones and more
- India: Facebook launches Fundraisers program, expanding partnerships with state governments for WhatsApp and Messenger helplines focused on COVID-19
- India: YAP, API infrastructure startup, raises $4.5M Series A, providing digital payments infrastructure to over fintech firms
- India: Paytm Payments Bank partners Mastercard to issue physical and virtual debit cards, enabling contactless in-store transactions, ATM cash withdrawals globally and more
- India: KarbonCard raises $1M with corporate solutions providing credit access to early-stage startups
- India: A look at the likely impacts on 60M MSMEs, 120M farmers and 30M small merchants of Facebook’s planned $5.7BN investment in Reliance Jio telco
- India: An intro to the 15 startups selected for Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program for early-stage startups
- India: GUVI edtech startup raises $780K pre-Series A with education platform offering courses in vernacular languages
- India: CollabCAD network launches to provide a platform for students across the country to create and modify 3D designs and share design data
- India: An intro to SmartVizX’s Trezi, VR platform allowing architects, suppliers and real estate developers in the construction industry to collaborate and communicate
- India: Venture Catalysts launches 9Unicorns Accelerator, modelled on similar lines to US-based Y Combinator Fund
- India: Fittr raises $2M pre-Series A with focus on health and fitness services delivered online
- India: Memer meme-sharing app startup acquired by ShareChat, Twitter-backed video-sharing social network
- India: Super-app competition set to heat up with Facebook’s investment in Jio mobile operator likely to set the stage for Paytm challenge
- India: Karnataka state gov’t to require quarantined individuals to install app and send a selfie every hour to verify location, a new level of COVID-19 surveillance madness
- India: A brief look at the boom in coworking in India’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities
- India: A brief look at survey results from Paxful, peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace, gauging interest in and concerns around cryptocurrency
- India: Recko fintech startup raises $6M, aiming to streamline and automate payments reconciliation across transaction lifecycle and commercial contracts
- India: An intro to Marut Dronetech, deploying drones to spray disinfectant in public spaces in effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus
- India: Recko enterprise fintech secures $6M Series A with artificial intelligence to reconcile digital transactions
- India: An overview of HungerBox’s journey from startup to full-spectrum food-tech service offering pre-ordering, live tracking, digital payments and more
- India: Fingpay raises $3.5M Series A with range of payment solutions and points-of-contact for merchants and customers
- India: Ergos agri-tech startup gains $5M backing with ‘grain bank’ providing storage, digitisation, credit and liquidation for small and marginal farmers via single platform
- India: DeHaat agritech raises $12M Series A with platform connecting small farmers with small suppliers of farm input and equipment, aiming for one-stop seed-to-sale service
- India: My Game Mate mobile gaming platform raises $200K seed funding for North America push, initially focusing on Canada’s estimated $317M esports market
- India: A look at Mall91, language-focussed social commerce startup with a presence in 2000 of the country’s small towns
- India: Plop, mobile-based interactive multimedia platform, gains funding to allow writers and publishing houses create and monetize interactive fiction
- India: Futurepreneur Grand Challenge 2019-2020, hosted by Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship, unveils 15 winning food-and-beverage focused women entrepreneurs
- India: With 91% of the world’s student population out of school, India’s online learning platforms and edtech startups are surging
- India: Zupee online gaming startup gains $8M with app-based live quiz tournaments and over 10M games played per month
- India: Vedantu Innovations interactive online tutorial platform raises $12.7M, with sights set on service expansion to cover kindergarten to Class 5 level
- India: A brief intro to 5 of the country’s female entrepreneurs working in the fintech space
- India: An intro to TravelDilSe, AI-backed travel assistant platform providing customised holidays, price comparison and bookings, itinerary management and more
- India: An intro to 10 of the country’s data analytics-focused startups
- India: Sikkim Manipal University partners LetsAccelerate, incubation arm of LetsVenture angel investing platform, for accelerator program, selecting 16 startups
- Germany’s ProVeg Incubator selects Australia’s Heuros and India’s Mister Veg for plant-based and cultured food program
