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Cabinet approves Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 with Rs 10,000 Cr corpus

EntrackrEntrackr · 7d ago
Cabinet approves Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 with Rs 10,000 Cr corpus
Medial

The Union Cabinet has approved the creation of Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 (FOF 2.0) with a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore to support startups through venture capital funds. The new fund will build on the earlier Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) launched in 2016. Under the first fund, Rs 10,000 crore was committed to 145 alternative investment funds, which together invested over Rs 25,000 crore in more than 1,300 startups across sectors. FOF 2.0 will continue to invest in SEBI-registered alternative investment funds, which will in turn deploy capital into startups. The initiative aims to address funding gaps, especially in early-growth and technology-driven sectors. The new fund will focus on areas such as deep tech, manufacturing, and innovation-led businesses. It also aims to strengthen the domestic venture capital ecosystem and expand capital access beyond major metro cities. As per the report, India currently has over 2 lakh recognised startups, compared to fewer than 500 in 2016 when the Startup India initiative was launched.

Rediff.com India receives TPAP licence from NPCI

EntrackrEntrackr · 1m ago
Rediff.com India receives TPAP licence from NPCI
Medial

Rediff.com India receives TPAP licence from NPCI Rediff.com India announced that it has received final approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for its Third-Party Application Provider (TPAP) licence, paving the way for the rollout of its digital payments platform, RediffPay. With this approval, the company has commenced Closed User Group (CUG) testing, an essential step before entering the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem. It is also preparing to launch what it claims will be India’s first UPI app built around a financial-wellness, customer-centric proposition, designed to encourage saving, investing, and responsible access to credit. According to the company’s press release, the CUG testing marks its entry into the UPI ecosystem. “It enables us to extend secure, interoperable UPI services through RediffPay and advances our mission to broaden financial inclusion while delivering simple, intuitive digital payment experiences for users across India,” the release said. RediffPay aims to combine traditional UPI features with a broader financial-wellness, customer-centric offering. Beyond standard bill payments, mobile recharges, and cross-app UPI interoperability, the app will promote better financial habits through curated savings and investment products such as equities, mutual funds (MFs), fixed deposits (FDs), recurring deposits (RDs), and similar products, along with pathways to quick credit. The RediffPay platform will also support Credit Line on UPI, expanding access to formal credit, particularly in Tier-2, Tier-3, and smaller towns and cities. The company plans to onboard small, micro, mid-sized, and large merchants across India by offering RediffPay UPI QR-code-enabled point-of-sale (POS) solutions, integrating merchant credit demand into its UPI ecosystem. Rediff.com India is a subsidiary of Infibeam Avenues, which acquired a controlling stake in Rediff in 2024 and has since increased its holding to 82%. The company aims to serve its existing base of 60 million unique Rediff visitors and email users. It will offer localised email services compliant with the DPDP Act and provide multilingual UPI services to reach the next 250 million users in India.

uEngage aspires to be Shopify for restaurants in India

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
uEngage aspires to be Shopify for restaurants in India
Medial

If you’re a new restaurant owner, you will probably get your joint listed on Zomato and Swiggy at the earliest. The listing helps with instant discoverability in the operational area and access to the delivery fleet among other benefits. The catch, however, is the steep commission charges restaurant owners have to pay these food aggregator platforms. This is one of the reasons why you see different pricing on Zomato and restaurants’ own menu cards. Chandigarh-based uEngage is looking to fix this exact problem for restaurant owners in the country. The startup offers a wide range of services such as Edge (which lets you start your own ordering app), Flash (which helps manage deliveries and riders), and Prism (which helps automate marketing). The startup is also active on ONDC, enabling businesses to join the open network for digital commerce. We spoke to uEngage CEO and founder Sameer Sharma to learn more about his platform, what it is trying to accomplish, and future roadmap. Here are the edited excerpts: What are the key problems that uEngage is trying to address? When Zomato, Swiggy, and other aggregators entered the picture, we couldn’t understand why they kept increasing commissions and pressuring merchants. Initially, it was 14%, which seemed high. Now, it’s beyond 22% for a major list of merchants, with some newer brands facing rates up to 32-35%. But that’s just the beginning. Beyond base commissions, there are additional costs like payment gateway charges, marketing click payments, often without clear, and cancellation charges without go ahead from the merchant. Recently, I met a leading Zomato-listed restaurant in Chandigarh. Despite generating sales worth Rs 30 lakh, they received only Rs 14.91 lakh, over 50% of their revenue. This has been happening for a while, and this is why we started uEngage. While aggregators offer great technology, demand generation, and modern logistics, there are downsides. Merchants lose control over brand positioning, customer relationship and face significant financial constraints. While aggregators aren’t necessarily evil, there’s much at stake for restaurants in the given circumstances. Please touch upon how the platform works, and how your growth has been so far? uEngage is Like Shopify for restaurants. Being a food-specific platform, we have been able to go deeper and offer extensive plug n play solutions to our restaurant partners. Initially launched as digital ordering platform for restaurants, uEngage has extended the platform into 3 different products covering: Direct Ordering (Mobile Apps, SEO First Websites, WhatsApp Ordering and KIOSk Ordering) – uEngage EDGE Customer Marketing and Omni Channel Loyalty – uEngage PRISM Last Mile Delivery and Tracking (Self Delivery and 3PL) – uEngage Flash At one end we have integrated industry leading POS and Billing Players like Petpooja , POSIST, Urban Piper, TM Bill, etc. to make life simpler for outlet staff, on the other end, we work closely with leading logistics players such as Dunzo, Zomato Xtreme (Zomato’s B2B service), Shadowfax, Loadshare, and Rapido. Together, they form a comprehensive Direct Ordering stack, including commerce, marketing, and logistics components. This ecosystem enables us to provide a holistic solution to our clients. As far as our financial growth goes, last year, our revenue stood at Rs 5.7 crore. This year, we anticipate closing it around Rs 13 crore to Rs 14 crore. This year, we’re projecting a GMV of around Rs 310 crore rupees for our brands. Orders from partner platforms to our revenue; they belong to the respective brands. However, they contribute to the GMV we generate for them. Our focus as a bootstrap company remains on profitability, and we’ve been profitable for more than two years now. Regarding our partnerships, we currently work with close to 4,000 outlets for our Direct Ordering Business and overall 15000+ Outlets for all our offerings including ONDC. What are your plans for the ONDC network? The ONDC is still at a nascent stage but a significant contributor to our revenue. Currently, we have around 15,000 outlets. Our target is to reach 50,000 outlets within the next three to four quarters.

Invest4Edu makes education planning easy for parents

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
Invest4Edu makes education planning easy for parents
Medial

Not everyone can afford to pay for high-quality education for their children. Whether it’s about studying in a premier institution in India or colleges abroad, it’s expensive. The complexities of accessing education loans have also been a significant pain point for parents. Of late, quite a few startups have begun working in this space. For instance, GradRight helps make higher education abroad accessible and affordable. Other notable names are Leap Finance and Propelled. Another startup trying to tap into this space is Invest4edu. Based in Mumbai, Invest4Edu aims to address common anxieties around the rising cost of education, college planning, and long-term payment. We spoke to the company co-founder and CEO Peeyush Agrawal to learn more about the ‘ed-fintech’ startup, how it operates, and more. Here are the edited excerpts: What are the key challenges in the industry that have not been addressed yet? And how do you plan to address them? There has been a surge of edtech and fintech companies, and all of them are doing a great job in their respective horizons, but we have found that India still lacks tech platforms offering comprehensive education financial solutions. Only partial solutions are being offered by existing Edtech and Fintech companies. There is a lack of focused unified solutions in the market, and an absence of education goal-based planning leading to insufficient funds for education. Less than 30% of parents use money for their child’s education from dedicated education savings. Inadequate planning leads to insufficient funds for education, restricting a child’s ability to achieve their real potential. Two out of three Indian parents cannot plan for retirement due to the higher education financing needs of their children. With smart AI-based tools, we want to empower parents and students to discover and plan their education goals. Early planning with mandate-based early savings and great career-building services will help Indians manage education inflation and fulfill their commitment to quality education. We are offering an array of education services to help students and parents discover ideal career paths in the increasingly changing environment. What are the key highlights of your platform? We at Invest4Edu offer an AI-based education journey, essentially a digital toolkit aiding parents in crafting career-centric education goals from nursery to university. The toolkit is aimed to simplify learning requirements, skill development, assessments, and counseling with precise expense details. There is also a free planner that ensures holistic education. Subscription plans offer services like career counseling, skill-building, and financial investment guidance for achieving goals. We also have a College cost calculator, EduAbacus, which helps deliver informed decisions on future education costs. Subscriptions or standalone services from this tech-driven platform streamline education planning for parents and students. How do you generate revenues? Invest4Ed offers a unique blend of educational and financial services to B2C and B2B2C markets. We have an annuity-based revenue model with high customer retention. The revenue is generated from commission on financial products like MF, FD, Insurance along with fees from educational solutions and subscription plans. What are your short-term and long-term goals in terms of product and business expansion and diversification? Over the next two years, our company aims to spearhead a transformative initiative in education planning that prioritizes and enhances while ensuring accessibility for a diverse student population of more than 2 Lakh students. Our long-term goal is to create 1.5 Million User Base and 0.5 Million Families Empowered In this endeavour. We will be building a $250 Million Mutual Fund AUM & Monthly SIP Book of $60 Million. We have recently expanded our core team aimed at launching our global business.

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