Late-stage investors are becoming more bullish about doubling down on category leaders in the startup world, with the number of investment rounds that have topped $100 million increasing by 40% so far this year. There have been 45 such deals in 2019 compared to 32 a year ago, data collated by industry tracker Tracxn show. Several large and diverse set of investors have bet on Indian startups this year. With the rush of capital and new types of investors coming in, venture capitalists said the time taken for startups to grow their business and rack up $100 million in funding has also shrunk over the past few years.

Publication: The Economic Times

Date: December 7, 2019

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal told Parliament on Friday that the government is considering formulating a national e-commerce policy but has not fixed a deadline for it. “The formulation of National e-Commerce Policy is under consideration of the government, for which no timeline has been fixed,” Goyal said in reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, adding that a draft policy covering various areas of e-commerce has been prepared and put out in public domain for comments.

Publication: The Economic Times

Date: December 7, 2019

In order to make it smoother sail for the Indian startup ecosystem, the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) has decided to set up a bimonthly and quarterly panel to address the grievances of venture capitalists and startups. The panel will be headed by the minister of commerce and industry Piyush Goyal. It will also comprise of senior officials of various government departments like finance, corporate affairs, central board of direct taxes (CBDT), central board of indirect taxes and customs (CBIC), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), along with the department of financial services.

Publication: Inc42

Date: December 8, 2019

Companies like Facebook and Twitter are poorly policing automated bots and other methods for manipulating social media platforms, according to a report released on Friday by researchers from the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. With a small amount of money, the researchers found, virtually anyone can hire a company to get more likes, comments, and clicks. After four weeks, about 80% of the fake clicks remained, the researchers said. And virtually all of the accounts that had been used to generate the clicks remained active three weeks after researchers reported them to the companies.

Publication: The Economic Times

Date: December 9, 2019