Abhishek Securities

  Last week was abuzz with a lot of funding activity. From logistics to digital payments to edtech, many large sectors saw sizeable funding rounds. Moneycontrol looks at last week's funding rounds, armed with data from business intelligence platform Tracxn. Byju’s:  The poster boy of the edtech ecosystem in India, Byju’s has been a darling of investors the world over. This week news broke out about it landing another $200 million from large equity investors like T Rowe Price and BlackRock. Since the acquisition of White Hat Jr and the overall growth of the edtech sector post the COVID-19 pandemic, not just Byju’s, but multiple other companies in this space have been in the spotlight. As per media reports, the latest round pushes the valuation of the company to $12 billion. Cars24:  Another unicorn in the startup club, used car retailing startup Cars24 raised $200 million from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global. Cars24 saw multiple factors playing in its favour. Firstly, d

  Paytm   Money, the wealth management arm of One97 Communications Ltd, will allow users to invest and participate in upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs) in India on its platform, it said on Sunday. Paytm Money will enable investors to instantly apply for the latest IPOs from their Unified Payments Interface ( UPI ) ID-linked bank accounts and complete the application process in three-four days. The platform will also offer an interface to help users change, cancel or reapply the bids within the IPO window. It will also aim to introduce features that will allow investors to track upcoming IPOs, view company history, download the draft prospectus, and check the performance of past IPOs. This service will be available both on the Paytm Money app and the website. The new service will give retail investors wealth creation opportunities as they will be able to apply and join the growth story of rapidly expanding companies, the company said. “The Indian startup ecosystem has a growing a

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday raised nearly Rs 82 crore by way of private placement of 4.63 per cent of its equity shares to 19 new banks, non-banking entities and the parent companies of payment systems aggregators. “This broad basing exercise was done to further diversify and distribute the NPCI shareholding to a larger set of the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) regulated entities and categories of payment industry participants. NPCI made an offer for the private placement to 131 RBI regulated entities, out of which 19 evinced interest and were allotted shares in NPCI,” the not-for-profit initiative, which runs and manages the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), said. Though traditional banks such as the State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank remain the bigger players for now, other older players such as Standard Chartered Bank, Dhanlaxmi Bank, and IDFC First Bank have found seats at the expa

  Fino Payments Bank has reported a profit after tax of Rs 4.5 crore in the second quarter of FY 2021, up 136 percent from Rs 1.9 crore in the previous quarter, the Mumbai-based bank said on November 25. At an operational level, the bank had reported profitability in the last financial year. It reported a total transaction settlement of Rs 33,000 crore in the September quarter, up 43 percent from year-ago period. Overall, the bank had an operating profit of Rs 13 crore. The performance came on the back of a network of 5.5 lakh businesses that offer banking services to consumers across the nation. These include Fino’s own and its partner’s physical network. “The biggest positive for us is the change in customer’s banking behaviour resulting in increased transactions. We will continue to explore growth opportunities in payment services as well as the trillion-dollar digital payments space and create value for all our stakeholders,” said Rishi Gupta, chief executive officer, Fino Payments

  Digital payments company Paytm has announced that Paytm merchants can now receive unlimited payments through Paytm Wallet, UPI and Rupay cards at zero percent fee. The move is said to benefit more than 17 million merchants on the digital payments platform as they can now transfer money to banks without any deductions. The company also said that the development would provide merchants with a "single point of reconciliation" for all their payments. That means merchants will no longer require multiple QRs at their counters to receive money from regular users. The company is a press note states that business accounts can now select 'all-in-one QR' to accept payments from Paytm wallet, Paytm UPI, or any other UPI app. Speaking about the development, Kumar Aditya, Paytm senior vice president said, "We are empowering our merchant partners across the country to accept wallet payments and get them directly into their bank account without worrying about the charges. The

  During the pandemic, workplaces may have moved to the new normal, but what also appears to be in sharp focus is the diversity and inclusion policies in organisations. The question also arises is, is every domain a level playing field for women?  Throwing light on this and more is  Radhika Ramesh, executive vice president of global delivery centre head for CIS India at Capgemini.  She entered the workforce 27 years ago and says it’s an optimistic scenario for women as companies are gradually opening up to accommodate women employees and tailor policies for their professional growth.  The French IT major’s Mumbai office for Cloud and Infrastructural Services (CIS) used to be a hub of about 4,000 professionals . As the COVID-19 pandemic mandated work from home, this has significantly reduced to a mere 300 – working from Mumbai while the rest transitioned to working from villages, other rural areas, tier II and III cities. “This gave us an insight into the infrastructure facilities avail

  Homegrown helmet maker Studds Accessories aims to increase its market share in India to 40 per cent over the next three years. Sidhartha Bhushan Khurana, MD - Studds Accessories Ltd, confirmed the development to carandbike recently. The company expanded its production capacity to 14 million units per annum with the inauguration of two new facilities earlier this year. Studds currently holds a market share of 30 per cent in the helmet segment and aims to capitalise on the newfound push for personal mobility in the post COVID era. With India being the largest two-wheeler market in the world, the growth potential is immense for the company. Responding to a query about growth plans from carandbike, Sidhartha Bhushan Khurana said, "Studds currently has around 30 per cent of the share in the Indian helmet market and it is the largest amongst all helmet manufacturers in the country. While the demands have been subdued because of the COVID-induced lockdown, we have continued to see grow

  MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings (CSK) has emerged as the strongest franchise during the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) which concluded on November 10. According to a study by media consulting firm Ormax Media, CSK has the highest fan following with 26.8 million fans. The study on ‘IPL Franchise Fans’ is based on a research conducted among 3,200 respondents across 23 states in India. The data was collected through the course of the eight weeks of IPL 2020. The study pegs the number of fans across the eight IPL franchises at 86 million. It  defines a franchise fan as someone who has a clear favorite team, is emotionally connected with it, watches its matches from start to finish, and discusses the team and its players online or offline.  While CSK had low scores during the league, there was no impact on its fan following. After CSK, coming on the second position is IPL 13 winners Mumbai Indians (MI) with 24.8 million fans. Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) took the th

  Tata Technologies, a leading global engineering and product development digital services company has been positioned in the  ‘Leadership Zone’  of the latest Zinnov Zones Global ER&D services 2020 report. Tata Technologies has made impressive gains across all the key areas within ER&D services and has been positioned as  Global Leader in the   Automotive ER&D, Aerospace ER&D , as well as  Digital Thread services , a testament to its compelling value proposition across the product engineering value chain and manufacturing domain. For two consecutive years, Zinnov has also rated Tata Technologies as  1st amongst all India-based Automotive ER&D ESPs . Tata Technologies’ mission is to help the clients Engineer the better products and there are two key components to the company’s value proposition; the first one being outsourced product engineering services for our clients helping them conceptualize and design better products, and the second one is helping them manufac

  Paytm Money is planning to launch loan against stocks and mutual funds, it said Tuesday. The fintech major, which launched direct mutual fund platform in September 2017, reported investments worth  ₹ 5,000 crore through its platform in February this year. Later in September, the company introduced direct stock trading for its customers. The platform has seen investors shift some of their mutual fund allocations to stock trading, Varun Sridhar, CEO of Paytm Money told Mint. It has also seen an increase in the average SIP amounts this year, particularly from more experienced investors. "As a leading direct mutual fund distributor and wealth platform, managing customers’ short-term liquidity needs or unforeseen expenses is our priority. We are thus considering and studying the launch of a simple loan against securities products involving both mutual funds and invested stocks. The key is a few click experience, lower than unsecured loans pricing and a flexible product," said Sr