September 18, 2019

Company News

Startup Street: Freshworks’ US listing plan and Urban Ladder’s plan to turn profitableedit

From a small garage in Chennai to Wall Street, Startup Street puts the co-founder of Freshworks Girish Mathrubootham in the hot seat as he plans a multi-billion dollar US listing.Also, CNBC-TV18 checks in to Urban Ladder where CEO Ashish Goel and his team are betting big on offline stores to turn in their first profit this financial year. Also, catch all the action at Extreme Entrepreneurs 2019, a new-age business training series for startups by Lightspeed India.

Publication : CNBC TV-18

Date : September 17, 2019

Lower discounts, economic slump take toll: Click-wait for ecommerce as consumers put off buysedit

With the inclusion of categories like furniture and large appliances on the list of products sold online, hiring is going to be more than 30% compared with last year, said Alok Kumar, a senior director at ManpowerGroup India. The demand is also going to be multiplied with Paytm Mall, added Kumar. Urban Ladder CEO Ashish Goel confirmed the trend. “Diwali is very important for us. We will hire up to 30-35% more compared to last year,” he said. “At a conservative estimate, peak demand for us will go up by 20-25%,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, a cofounder of TeamLease Services.

Publication : The Economic Times

Date : September 16, 2019

E-commerceHiring

Competition and Industry News

Flipkart, Amazon craft a new engagement codeedit

While the aggressive push towards digital inclusion may have driven millions to explore the cavernous depths of the internet, it has not been as easy as leading them down the gilded hallways of e-commerce. A plethora of reasons keep customers disengaged from the final transaction: ignorance about the process or about the product, a complex payment process or varying levels of literacy, everything turns into a friction point that the e-commerce companies are now trying to tackle.

Publication : Business Standard

Date : September 17, 2019

AmazonFlipkart
Consumers are likely to be back in the market for festive season: surveyedit

Despite rising concerns across sectors over a slowing economy and tightening of discretionary spends, consumers are likely to loosen the purse strings during the upcoming festival season. According to its annual mood survey conducted by LocalCircles, nearly 43 per cent consumers surveyed said they would spend up to ₹10,000 on festive basics, while 31 per cent said they plan to spend reasonably between ₹10,000-₹50,000 during the festival season. About 4 per cent of respondents said they plan to spend luxuriously over ₹50,000 during the festive season.

Publication : The Hindu Business Line

Date : September 17, 2019

ConsumersSpending
Entrepreneurs can no longer treat debt like equityedit

The love affair of big entrepreneurs with debt that began in the 1970s was rational. The licence raj ensured that businesses did not have clients but hostages, and prices almost never went down. The lack of fiscal discipline and formal inflation targeting ensured that nominal prices always rose and the replacement cost argument with appreciating rather than depreciating assets became a viable argument. Finally, the nationalization of banks and legal system choke ensured that debt defaults had weak consequences because of slothful or unwilling lenders (amenable to “phone banking” and political influence). Consequently, many Indian entrepreneurs treated debt like equity—payable when able.

Publication : Mint

Date : September 17,  2019

Corporate financeDebt
CCI keeping close watch on Ecomm’s deep discountsedit

Ecommerce platforms, such as Amazon and Flipkart, are getting ready to launch big sales in the upcoming festival period, and traders’ bodies have opposed the move to offer consumers significant discounts on products during the sale period. The CCI has initiated a study into the practices of the e-commerce sector. A report on the interim findings has also taken into account the grievances of small businesses.  “Thus, their businesses can become unviable if this (deep discounting) continues for a long time as there is a permanent erosion in the value of the product in the mind of the customer,” Gupta said.

Publication : The Economic Times

Date : September 18, 2019

 

Deep discounting
Startups seek change in listing requirementedit

For startup founders whose holdings in their companies typically range between the high single digits or in the low-to-mid-teens, the Sebi stricture to maintain a 20% stake in order to list on Indian bourses is proving restrictive. For example, the founders of Lenskart, Ola and PolicyBazaar have stakes ranging between 4% and 15% in their respective ventures, following dilution in their holdings after multiple rounds of funding. Executives argue that Sebi’s suggestion that promoters make up for the shortfall from their respective investors when their own stakes fall short of the 20% requirement, is also not a viable option.

Publication : The Economic Times

Date : September 18, 2019

 

FundingListingpromoter shares
Digital Disruption: E-commerce Revolution & How to Be Future Readyedit

For most of human history, people have been good at predicting future technologies. Today however, predicting things even just 5 years ahead seems to end up futile. India is at the cusp of an e-commerce revolution. Although e-commerce has been making the rounds in the country for over a decade, it is in recent years that an appropriate ecosystem has begun to fall in place. Factors such as internet access, staggering penetration of mobile phones and robust investment have driven the growth of this industry and if current projections are anything to go by, India is en route to becoming the world’s fastest growing e-commerce market.

Publication : Entrepreneur 

Date : September 16, 2019

Disruption
E-commerce deadline extended: More time given for comments on draft consumer protection guidelinesedit

The Department of Consumer Affairs, which had issued draft ‘consumer protection’ guidelines for e-commerce last month seeking feedback from e-commerce companies and other stakeholders by September 16, 2019, has now extended the deadline for the same to October 31, 2019. “The Department of Consumer Affairs now extends the receipt of comments from the stakeholders on the draft guidelines on e-commerce, available in the website of the department,” it said in a note on Monday. The government had issued the draft more than five months after the department for the promotion of industry and internal (DPIIT) issued the draft e-commerce policy for regulating flow and storage of user data along

Publication : Financial Express

Date : September 17, 2019

Draft E-commerce policy
Browse by Month
Browse by Month