Curefoods extends its cloud kitchens in India

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October 23, 2021

Curefoods, a leading cloud kitchen company with brands including EatFit, has announced the acquisition of many direct-to-consumer food brands around the country. Curefoods’ portfolio currently includes ten brands, seven of which are new, including CakeZone and MasalaBox, Ammi’s Biryani, Olio and Crusto’s, Chaat Street, and Paratha Box.

YumLane, Sharief Bhai, and Aligarh House are just a few companies acquiring exclusive online franchising rights.

Curefoods is hoping to onboard a total of 25 companies to tap into India’s expanding cloud kitchen industry. Fifteen more letters of intent have already been signed by the company (LOIs). When onboarding such brands, it usually follows a 21-day period of end-to-end closure.

Curefoods integrates these brands into the business by leveraging its end-to-end farm-to-fork technologies and highly effective consumer-facing marketing stack. Furthermore, Curefoods’ expertise in operating highly advanced central kitchen facilities enables it to power these food brands and accelerate their growth.

“We are on a mission to make good food easily accessible at affordable prices, and to do this; we are acquiring a host of brands that people recognize and love. Given the accelerated growth of cloud kitchens in India, especially since the pandemic, we want to leverage our market expertise and advanced technology in order to elevate and amplify the experiences these brands offer. By having them under the Curefoods banner, we will be able to ensure the creation of a highly standardized, efficient, and hygienic kitchen network across the nation. We are excited to have all the newly acquired brands on board and look forward to serving India some really great food,” shared Ankit Nagori, founder, Curefoods.

Google in talks to invest in Meesho

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October 22, 2021

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Google is in talks to invest $50-$75 million in social commerce startup Meesho. The internet search giant supports promising Indian startups such as Dunzo, a hyperlocal delivery service, and Glance, a lock screen platform from InMobi.

Meesho’s recent financing round included the investment, which valued the Bengaluru-based company at $4.9 billion.

Meesho is a three-sided marketplace that connects suppliers (manufacturers and distributors) and resellers with customers on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. Its early investors include Facebook, B Capital, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital India, Y Combinator, and Elevation Capital. When resellers sell to clients, they buy listed products from suppliers and earn commission on each transaction.

Google has made several investments in India, most recently through its $10 billion India Digitization Fund, unveiled in July of last year. Simsim, a video social commerce firm, was acquired by Google’s YouTube video-sharing platform in July.

Meesho’s total funding this year has surpassed $900 million, including $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund II in April.

Meesho plans to leverage the new funding to grow into a consumer-facing e-commerce company that can compete effectively with Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart.

Meesho was founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal as a social commerce reseller system, with a considerable base of women resellers selling products in the low-end, unbranded, and long-tail ecommerce segments.

Meesho’s plans to compete in the big league were evident after SoftBank’s funding infusion, and it has since been actively investing in marketing and personally reaching out to consumers.

Meesho shifted to a zero-commission scheme earlier this year to attract more merchants to its site. Meesho onboarded over 100,000 businesses ahead of the holiday season through efforts such as free ad credits and no return shipping fees. On its platform, it currently has 250,000 vendors.

Apart from operating in the unbranded long tail, Meesho is also heavily investing in its online grocery delivery vertical, Farmiso, which has been aggressively hiring.

“Conventional grocery models have very high logistics costs, and that’s why you will see all your existing logistics companies, even after many years, are only functioning in the top 4-8 cities. When you leverage the community leaders model, you are able to serve this customer with very low-ticket sizes and offer them pricing while having a very strong unit economics base. We will continue to focus on small towns and cities and capture the entire online grocery demand,” said the founder of Meesho, Vidit Aatrey.

Google has doubled down on its startup investments in the last few years, focusing on content and commerce.

It invested $4.5 billion into Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms and led a $145 million investment in InMobi’s Glance, which runs the Roposo short-video platform.

VerSe Innovation, the parent firm of Indian content and news aggregator Dailyhunt, has invested in the technological behemoth. It just took part in DotPe’s Series A investment round, raising $27.5 million.

Belgian Waffle Co concentrates on expansion

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October 21, 2021

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The Belgian Waffle Co, owned and run by Bloombay Enterprises LLP, has expanded its horizons. The brand is currently concentrating on adding more new outlets to its inventory and getting into the FMCG category via e-commerce platforms and their stores.

Taking a multichannel approach, the brand, launched in 2015, now aspires to be present across categories such as QSRs, e-commerce platforms, modern trade, and A-list stores across the country.

It was the pandemic that accelerated the digital and FMCG growth of the company. “We had always planned to naturally extend into this segment and Covid fuelled the need to expedite this and diversify. We have a skilled product team and the right expertise that allowed us to innovate and create the perfect product basket for retail consumption, which resonated with our core brand promises,” said Shrey Aggarwal, founder of The Belgian Waffle Co.

The pandemic also prompted the QSR chain to focus as much, if not more, on online performance than in-store performance. However, the founder believes that the game will be played on an omnichannel level in the future, rather than online, in-store, or in silos.

“While third-party delivery platforms will continue to be a key lever in our growth platforms, we do believe having our own D2C platform will help us take our online experience to the customer even further and provide more value. Our own brand store will launch in the next couple of months and will provide some exciting additions,” Aggarwal added.

Belgian Waffles Co. began with a single location in Mumbai and has since expanded to 75 cities in India and Nepal, with 275 locations. In the next three years, the waffle company hopes to become the country’s most significant QSR dessert player, with 750 locations across the country and overseas.

“For our core business, we have always had a Pan Indian focus and ensured our model is built to fit that vision of scale while prioritising quality at all times. Our products have a high shelf life and we provide our own custom products and flavours centrally to all our own and partner stores throughout the country and internationally through 3P logistics,” Aggarwal stated.

He believes that today’s consumers are more adventurous and responsive to a good product. Gen Z and young millennial audiences are well-versed in global tastes and trends, as well as their preferences. He went on to say that the epidemic had a significant impact on consumption patterns.

He said, “We are seeing online consumption increasing and with higher ticket sizes than in-store purchases. With stores back open now, we are also witnessing consumers flocking back to our stores and picking up from where they left off. I think the consumer preferences are now going to be an amalgamation of offline and online consumption patterns, and those who serve omnichannel experiences and provide quality and convenience will make the most.”

Apple iPhone maker aims to manufacture electric vehicles in India

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October 20, 2021

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On Wednesday, Liu Young-way, Chairman of Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, said that the company is considering producing electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe, India, and Latin America and “indirectly” partnering with German automakers.

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, aspires to become a key player in the global electric vehicle market and has signed agreements with Fisker Inc of the United States and PTT PCL of Thailand.

After introducing three electric vehicle prototypes on Monday, Liu told reporters at a business forum in Taipei that he couldn’t reveal any details about their plans for Europe, India, and Latin America due to “disclosure restrictions.”

“Europe will be a bit faster, I agree with that. But as to where, I can’t tell you,” he said.

When asked if they would work with German automakers, he answered “indirectly,” adding that Europe would come first, followed by India and Latin America, with Mexico being “very possible.”

In May, Foxconn and carmaker Stellantis announced that they would form a joint venture to deliver in-car and connected-car technologies to the whole automotive industry.

This month, Foxconn purchased a facility in the United States from Lordstown Motors Corp to manufacture electric vehicles. It purchased a semiconductor facility in Taiwan in August to meet future demand for auto chips.

Foxconn, which is best known for making iPhones for Apple Inc, has set a goal of providing components or services for 10% of the world’s electric vehicles by 2025-2027.

Facebook intends to change its name

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October 20, 2021

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According to The Verge, which cited a source with direct knowledge of the matter, social media behemoth Facebook Inc will rebrand itself with a new name next week.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wants to discuss the name change during its annual Connect conference on Oct. 28, but it might be revealed sooner, the Verge reported.

In response, Facebook said it does not comment on “rumour or speculation.”

The news comes when the US authorities scrutinize the company’s business operations. Facebook has been chastised by lawmakers from both parties, illustrating Congress’s growing dissatisfaction with the firm.

According to the Verge, the renaming will portray Facebook’s social network app as one of many products under a parent company that manages Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and other companies.

It’s not uncommon for companies in Silicon Valley to change their names to expand their offerings.

In 2015, Google formed Alphabet Inc as a holding company to oversee numerous other operations ranging from its autonomous vehicle unit and health technologies to delivering internet services in rural locations, in addition to its search and advertising companies.

According to the report, the rebranding will reflect Facebook’s focus on developing the so-called metaverse, an online world where people can travel and converse in a virtual environment using a variety of gadgets.

Facebook has made significant investments in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), intending to connect its almost three billion users via various devices and apps.

On Tuesday, the business announced plans to generate 10,000 jobs in the European Union over the next five years to aid in developing the metaverse.

Since July, Zuckerberg has been promoting the metaverse, first conceived in a dystopian novel three decades ago and has since been mentioned by other internet companies such as Microsoft.

Microsoft is terminating LinkedIn in China

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October 18, 2021

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The world’s most popular social media platforms are unavailable in China. None of the social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Messenger, are allowed to operate in China. The only major social networking platform that isn’t blocked in China is LinkedIn. And now that Microsoft has declared that LinkedIn would be shut down in China, it won’t be able to operate there.

In a blog post, the US-based tech giant said it is “facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we’ve made the decision to sunset the current localised version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn’s global social media platform, later this year.”

According to a previous report by The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese internet regulator has instructed Microsoft to control its content properly. Some US journalists had their LinkedIn accounts prohibited in China, while professors and researchers had their accounts blocked. Big Tech companies have always been targeted in China, and corporations like Facebook and Google have a near-zero presence. Apple is one of the few major American tech companies with a significant presence in China.

Microsoft isn’t exiting China completely as the company said that its new strategy will be focused “on helping China-based professionals find jobs in China and Chinese companies find quality candidates.”

InJobs, a new job application portal for China, will be launched to help with this. It will lack a social feed, making it impossible for users to share posts or articles. “This decision aligns with our commitment to creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. While that has been our vision for nearly two decades now, it feels more important than ever as we all strive to build a global economy that delivers more prosperity and progress to people all over the world,” said Microsoft in the blog post.

Facebook intends to recruit 10,000 workers in EU

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October 18, 2021

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Facebook says it will hire 10,000 people in the European Union to work on a new computing platform over the next five years.

The high-skilled professionals will assist construct “the metaverse,” a futuristic concept for connecting people online that includes augmented and virtual reality, according to a blog post published by the firm on Sunday.

While dealing with other issues such as antitrust crackdowns, the testimony of a former whistleblowing employee, and concerns about how the company handles vaccine-related and political misinformation on its platform, Facebook executives have been touting the metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile internet.

In response to a Wall Street Journal report about the business’s inability to detect and remove hateful and extremely violent posts, the firm defended its approach to combating hate speech in a separate blog post published on Sunday.

“This investment (in new jobs) is a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent,” the company said.

Ex-Intel executives’ startup plans to address spiraling costs of AI

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October 14, 2021

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After Intel Corp bought Naveen Rao and Hanlin Tang’s firm in 2016, their task was to assist the chip giant profit from artificial intelligence, which required a lot of computing power and had proven profitable for the chip industry.

However, after quitting Intel last year, the two announced their new startup, MosaicML, on Wednesday. Its goal is to let corporations and researchers use less computer power and fewer chips to do artificial intelligence tasks more efficiently. DCVC, Lux Capital, Future Ventures, Playground Global, and other venture capital firms have contributed $37 million to the company.

Artificial intelligence models, which must be “trained” using massive troves of data, have increased in complexity since 2018, according to MosaicML’s inventors. Training a model can now cost millions of dollars in processing power, making it out of reach for all but the largest businesses.

“Businesses can’t do this anymore – they can’t have access to the latest methods,” Rao told Reuters in an interview. “It’s not good for our field.”

Professor Michael Carbin and Jonathan Frankle, a Ph.D. candidate in his research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, connected Rao and Tang with researchers who had published work on making machine learning more efficient. The group discovered no single method for lowering AI processing costs but rather a mosaic of multiple approaches forming among academics, hence the company’s name.

MosaicML transforms those existing ideas into something that enterprises can use right away. It then offers premium services, such as tools for calculating the tradeoffs between speed, cost, and accuracy when training an AI model using various types of computing hardware.

MosaicML’s work, according to David Kanter, executive director of MLCommons, an AI industry group that is not affiliated with MosaicML, is important to watch because predicting and controlling computing costs has become a key issue for businesses looking to take advantage of the latest advances in AI technology.

“Removing hassle, making it faster, making it more affordable, all these things are potentially beneficial to the industry,” Kanter said.

Nazara Technologies seeks to expand in the US, Europe

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October 14, 2021

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Nazara Technologies, a gaming and sports media company that recently raised Rs 315 crore to boost its acquisition strategy, has expanded its reach to the United States and Europe.

Nazara is attempting to fill some gaps in its casual, social multiplayer, e-sports, and real money gaming divisions, after actively exploring and purchasing startups over the last five years.

“We are looking at expanding our M&A team outside India. All our M&A has broadly happened in India because we are a product of the Indian ecosystem,” said chief executive Manish Agarwal. “We want to really kind of expand our M&A into Europe and US, especially in the mobile gaming space because that’s where you have a long history of game development in Europe for 40 years versus India for four-five years.”

In March, Nazara made its public market debut, becoming India’s first publicly traded gaming company. Since then, the stock has nearly doubled in value.

Gamnat Pte, an investment firm run by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, and Ahmedabad-based Plutus Wealth Management contributed to the company’s funding round last week.

“This money which we have raised is a war chest for us to quickly accelerate the deals. If you notice in the past, our deal is always done with a combination of our equity and cash,” said Agarwal. “Having cash really helps you in closing things because then you can satisfy the demands of the founders or financial security needs of the founders much better if you have some cash upfront that you can give.”

According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the Indian gaming business is expected to reach $6-$7 billion in value by2025, up from $1.8 billion today (IAMAI).

People were hungry for entertainment options during the Covid-19 pandemic, which boosted the gaming industry’s growth, and video games’ popularity is predicted to continue.

Nazara’s IPO in March included a Rs 583 crore secondary share sale, but the business did not attract any new capital. The additional funds will allow the company to increase its acquisitions.

Lulu Group opens third shopping mall in Bengaluru

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October 12, 2021

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Lulu Group, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, unveiled a new shopping complex in Bengaluru on Monday and plans to develop two additional properties in India in the next six months, indicating that the company remains optimistic about long-term retail growth. Lulu Group Chairman and Managing Director M. A. Yusuff Ali told PTI that the company had committed an investment of around Rs 4,500 crore for the development of five shopping malls in India in the first phase of its expansion in the country, three of which have already opened in Kochi, Thrissur, and now Bengaluru.

The Lulu group will manage and operate the 8 lakh square feet ‘Global Mall’ in Rajajinagar, Bengaluru, which the Lulu company does not own.

“We have one large hypermarket in Kochi and one small hypermarket in Thrissur district. This (at Bengaluru) is our third Hypermarket in India,” Ali said, who is visiting India for the launch of the Bengaluru mall.

The Bengaluru mall will also feature a 60,000 sq ft entertainment zone called Funtura and a 2 lakh sq ft hypermarket.

“There has been some delay in our two mall projects at Trivandrum and Lucknow. We will not back off from any projects. We are going forward,” Ali said.

Trivandrum’s upcoming mall will open by the end of this year, while Lucknow’s retail mall will open in the first quarter of 2022.

“In the first phase, we had planned these five projects. The first batch of investment is around Rs 4,500 crore for all these five projects,” Ali said.

The company is looking at new markets in states where it currently has a presence and new states for the next round of investment.

Asked about the outlook on retail business amid the COVID pandemic, Ali said: “Being a retail organization with almost four decades of experience, we have gone through ups and downs. But obviously, the worst is behind us. Things cannot go worse than that. In challenging times, we have to make adjustments and fine-tunes things, but now I can fairly say with the confidence, it is only going forward.”

“Travel restrictions have eased out; people are vaccinated, they are more careful about themselves, people are eager to come out and enjoy and lead the life back. Enough of virtual and digital life. We are seeing tremendous growth potential,” he observed.

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