Way2News raises $14 million in Series B round led by WestBridge Capital

Way2News, a hyperlocal news platform, has raised $14 million in a Series B funding round led by WestBridge Capital, with participation from venture capitalist Sashi Reddi.

With a strong presence already established in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu, this funding will fuel Way2News’ growth, scaling its operations, enhancing its technology, and further bolstering its presence in the South India, the firm said in a statement.

“This investment is a step towards expanding our footprint into every household in South India, ensuring that all citizens can access timely and relevant news in their language. We focus on building an inclusive, dynamic, and engaging news experience for every Indian. With this funding, we aim to scale our platform further, bringing more communities into the fold,” said Raju Vanapala, Founder and CEO of Way2News.

AI optimisation startup LLUMO AI raises $1 million funding

Artificial intelligence optimisation company LLUMO AI has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Rahul Agrawalla, General Partner at Sense AI, with participation from India Quotient, Aum Ventures, Venture Catalysts, IIM Indore Alumni Angel fund, and a host of US-based angel investors.

Llumo AI’s platform is designed to deliver measurable, production-ready benefits to AI companies by cutting LLM costs by 80%, reducing time-to-market by 90%, and minimizing prompt engineering hours—valued at $150,000 annually per person.

The seed funding will enable Llumo AI to further develop its technology, expand its team of AI experts, and accelerate its go-to-market strategy, it said.

British fintech firm Revolut prepares for 2025 India launch: Report

Britain’s Revolut is preparing to launch its services in India next year, the Financial Times reported.

Revolut set up in India in 2021 but did not receive in-principle approval from the country’s central bank to issue prepaid cards and wallets until earlier this year, the newspaper reported.

Paroma Chatterjee, chief executive officer of the Indian arm of the bank, said they are “very, very close, literally down to single-digit bugs in the system”.

Swiggy launches new initiative to transform delivery partners into sales executives

IPO-bound Swiggy has announced the launch of “Project Next,” a new initiative designed to provide career growth opportunities for delivery partners while accelerating restaurant onboarding. Project Next is a part of Swiggy’s larger initiative Swiggy Skills, which offers skilling, training, internship, and employment opportunities in its value chain, a statement said.

Project Next aims to enhance restaurant expansion across 150+ growing markets and offer delivery partners a meaningful career advancement. With Project Next, delivery partners will be responsible for onboarding and managing Swiggy’s growing restaurant network, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, offering restaurants high-quality support on the platform.

“Swiggy works with nearly 4 lakh delivery partners across India. While many value the platform for flexible earning opportunities, some aspire for more. To empower this group, we launched Project Next under our Swiggy Skills initiative. This unique program helps delivery partners transition from “blue collar” to “white collar” workers. It is heartening to see that within weeks of launch, hundreds of partners under ‘Project Next’ have already onboarded over 360 restaurants”, said Rohit Kapoor, CEO, Swiggy Food Marketplace.

Razorpay launches a real-time data integration platform ‘DataSync’

Fintech player Razorpay has launched DataSync, a no-code data integration platform that provides real-time data access, allowing businesses to enhance business intelligence, improve financial reporting, strengthen fraud and security monitoring, and uncover new revenue opportunities.

Built on Amazon Redshift and the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, DataSync will help businesses securely and easily integrate their financial and business data on Razorpay. This will enable businesses to leverage their data for deeper business intelligence, enhanced financial reporting, improved fraud & security monitoring, and generate new revenue ideas, turning payment data into a profit center, a statement said.

DataSync will also help businesses save up to 50% in operational costs, improve fraud detection, and ensure 99.99% uptime with fast access to critical transaction data.

E-commerce firms to start Annual Festive Sale from Sep 26

Meesho, an e-commerce marketplace, has announced its highly blockbuster sale is set to commence on September 27. With over 20 lakh sellers and 12 crore product listings across 30 categories, Meesho said it aims to make festive shopping more accessible, affordable, and convenient for shoppers across the country.

E-commerce major Flipkart and Amazon India will start their annual festive sales from September 26. Flipkart said it is ready to meet the festival demand for same-day delivery with over 2 lakh product categories across over 20 cities ahead of The Big Billion Days 2024.

Flipkart’s fashion and lifestyle e-commerce platform Myntra will start its annual sale from September 25.

Amazon said more than 14 lakh sellers will offer crores of products to customers. In preparation for the upcoming festive season, Amazon India announced the launch of three new fulfillment centers in Delhi NCR, Guwahati and Patna. All these buildings are ready and operational ahead of the upcoming festive season and will collectively support more than 2.5 lakh sellers across Delhi NCR, Bihar and Assam.

Myntra’s GenZ customer base doubles to 16 million

E-commerce fashion platform e-commerce platform Myntra said it has doubled its GenZ customer base to 16 million in 2024 from over 8 million in mid-2023. The growth was led by Myntra’s GenZ fashion vertical FWD — an app-in-app offering, it said.

“With the online trend-first fashion market expected to grow over 8x into a $5 billion market by 2028, FWD by Myntra is taking charge in reshaping fashion for young India, reflecting Myntra’s commitment to staying ahead of GenZ’s rapidly evolving trends and preferences,” a company statement said.

Flipkart-owned Myntra looks forward to adding another 20-25 million GenZ, born during the late 1990s and early 2000s, customers in the next couple of years, it added. “We plan to double our customer growth and penetrate deeper into the market, by leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance every touchpoint from selection to discovery to delivery,” Myntra CMO Sunder Balasubramanian said.

Koo co-founder Mayank Bidawatka starts new venture

Mayank Bidawatka, the co-founder of India’s defunct microblogging platform Koo, has started a new venture called ‘Billion Hearts Software Technologies’.

Bidawatka informed in a LinkedIn post by writing, “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Founder at Billion Hearts Software Technologies!”. Bidawatka will launch the startup in a few months as per his LinkedIn post.

According to Bidawatka, the Billion Hearts will build digital products. He wrote on LinkedIn, “Billion Hearts as a name represents the dreams of many. And hopefully the usage of billions of users around the world for whom this startup will build beautiful digital products”.