Author: Irene Vyas

Mumbai: Launched in 2021, Alpha Coach is a one-of-its-kind fitness marketplace which combines an automated nutrition application with fitness coaching & challenges with top coaches & fitness creators. In a span of fewer than two years, Alpha Coach has witnessed steady growth across both its free nutrition-focused app, Evolve, as well as the newly launched Alpha Coach Club, a platform that helps coaches launch their online fitness business. Having grown revenues at 10x in FY2023, Alpha Coach now aims to close on Rs. 10 crores in revenue in the current financial year. As a part of its current expansion, Alpha Coach…

New Delhi: FlowX.ai, a startup based in Romania, has secured $35 million in a Series A funding round to support its platform that combines digital transformation and AI for application integration. The company, headquartered in New York with an engineering team in Romania, focuses on the financial sector and collaborates with systems integrators to connect with users. FlowX.ai plans to continue targeting financial customers while expanding its reach in the future. With its AI-driven approach, the startup aims to streamline the integration, application development, and service creation processes for enterprises, particularly in the finance industry. Notably, FlowX.ai has established partnerships…

New Delhi: PhonePe has secured an additional $100 million in funding from General Atlantic and its co-investors as part of its ongoing $1 billion fundraising round. This latest investment brings the total amount raised by PhonePe this year to $850 million and values the company at $12 billion. Earlier in January, PhonePe had announced that it had raised $1 billion in multiple tranches at the same valuation of $12 billion. Since then, the fintech unicorn has received $550 million from General Atlantic, $100 million from Tiger Global Management, Ribbit Capital, and TVS Capital, and $200 million from its largest shareholder,…

New Delhi: The absence of women among the potential successors for the CEO position at Morgan Stanley highlights the need to foster and retain diverse talent, according to experts in corporate governance. The leading candidates to replace James Gorman as CEO include Ted Pick and Andy Saperstein, who are both co-presidents at Morgan Stanley, as well as Dan Simkowitz, the head of investment management. However, the latest data on workforce diversity in the U.S. banking sector reveals that women are underrepresented in leadership roles at Morgan Stanley compared to other top banks. According to the reported data from 2021, only…

New Delhi: Google challenger Neeva has announced that it is discontinuing its consumer search business and shifting its focus to AI and the enterprise. The founders of Neeva, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, explained in a recent blog post that the company faced significant challenges in attracting new users and the current economic climate made it unviable to continue its consumer search operations. Neeva was founded in 2019 by former Google employees and was initially launched as an ad-free, subscription-based search engine in the United States. Later, it introduced a free tier to attract more users. While Neeva claimed to…

New Delhi: Patient21, a startup based in Germany, has successfully raised €100 million ($108 million) in a Series C round of funding led by Israeli venture capital firm Pitango. The funding, a combination of equity and debt, will help Patient21 further develop its digital healthcare platform and expand its brick-and-mortar clinics. Founded in 2019 in Berlin, Patient21 offers a comprehensive digital healthcare platform that covers various aspects of the patient journey, including online bookings, digital case histories, check-ins, billing, insurance, and more. Unlike its U.S. counterpart Carbon Health, Patient21 does not primarily focus on remote healthcare options. Instead, it has…

New Delhi: Zomato, the food and grocery delivery platform based in Gurgaon, has announced a reduction in its net loss for the fourth quarter, narrowing it down to Rs 187.6 crore compared to Rs 359.7 crore in the previous year. The company also reported a significant increase in revenue from operations, which rose by 70% to Rs 2,056 crore. Additionally, Zomato achieved positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of Rs 28 crore, excluding the quick commerce business. Looking ahead, the company aims to attain a consolidated net profit within the next four quarters. Deepinder Goyal, the founder…

New Delhi: As the IT hardware industry faces a recession in Europe and the US, India is poised to become a key driver of growth for products like laptops, computers, and servers. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for IT and Electronics, predicts that the Indian market will expand over 2.5 times in the next three years, surpassing $25 billion in size. In one of the interviews, Chandrasekhar explains that initiatives like the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for IT hardware and strong demand will attract major global companies to consider manufacturing investments in India.  Here are the key excerpts from…

New Delhi: The retail segment of the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) experienced a significant decline in orders, dropping by over 50% to approximately 12,000 orders last Sunday compared to the previous weekend. This decline was attributed to a substantial reduction in logistics discounts offered by the network, resulting from a revision of incentives disbursed by ONDC. Additionally, some grocery-focused seller-side apps faced operational challenges as they were unprepared for the sudden increase in order volume. The decrease in retail orders primarily affected food delivery, with a smaller number of grocery orders and a low single-digit percentage of home…

New Delhi: Japan is actively considering the adoption of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, a move that highlights the growing interest in digital cooperation between the two countries. Kono Taro, the Japanese Digital Minister, expressed the government’s serious intent to join India’s UPI payment system and explore opportunities for mutual recognition of Electronic ID (EID) to enhance interoperability. This collaborative effort aims to facilitate seamless cross-border payments and promote digital advancements. In a conversation with Sidhant Sibal from WION, Minister Taro highlighted the commitment of Japan and India to foster digital cooperation. The Japanese government recognizes the potential of…