"WEEK 4"
Hi folks! Anmol here today, with our weekly recap of the week's news and one in-depth story (from the paid newsletter). The last week has been quite interesting- EdTech companies raising money & acquiring companies, interesting inside stories about Paytm and their internal workings and also 👁️👄👁️
Weekly Recap
Flipkart is attempting 90 mins delivery: Flipkart is planning to launch hyperlocal delivery services next month, starting with a pilot in Bengaluru.
Unacademy acquires coding platform CodeChef: Unacademy announced the acquisition of CodeChef, an online platform for algorithm and coding. The acquisition is being seen as a move that will help the company launch a coding skills offering for school kids.
Milkbasket raises $5.5M: Hyperlocal delivery service Milkbasket has raised $5.5M in fresh funding led by Inflection Point Venture and participation from existing investors including Blume Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Mayfield India, Unilever Ventures and BeeNext.
Nestaway acquisition plans: Nestaway, the co-living company, has acquired StayAbode and plans to acquire 2-3 more companies as it plans expand capacity to 50k beds by March 2021.
Vedantu invests $2M in Instasolv: Instasolv (a doubt clearing platform) has raised $2M from the live online tutoring platform Vedantu, which also gives Vedantu the rights to acquire the startup.
BharatPe enters the PoS business: The QR-based payments company BharatPe is entering the Point of Sale business.
AngelList launches a cap table management product: AngelList announces their first India exclusive product, EquityList (more on this below).
Come Home & Build: With Donald Trump's decision to suspend the H-1B program (via an executive order), a lot of Indians working at US tech cos are worried & unhappy. And it sounds like some folks are seriously considering moving back to India.
EquityList
AngelList has launched a product exclusively for the Indian market- EquityList. It helps founders & startups manage their cap tables, as well as manage their employee equity program. The product is quite similar to Carta's core service (which is used by a large portion of the SF Startup Industry).
Currently startups in India don't really have a great way of managing these complex breakdowns, and use a combination of Excel sheets, documents and lawyers to manage their cap tables.
As someone who has used Carta personally, it's honestly a breeze to use and I can't imagine how employees in India understand the equity they're entitled at to the companies they work at.
There is a definite lack of transparency when it comes to employee equity in India, and hopefully products like these helps to change that.
It also makes a bunch of sense that AngelList is offering the EquityList product for free, and given their penetration in the Indian startup world (for their other products), it seems like a no-brainer for companies to use the product.
It is yet to be seen what this product turns into, but I would presume they eventually build out services on the product that they charge companies for (like Carta does).
(If you’re a founder in India you should 💯% use EquityList to manage your cap table and employee equity program so head over to their website, schedule a call and let them know you found them on this newsletter)
Reads of the Week
Wave Hunting by Ayo
Will The Real Vijay Shekhar Sharma Please Stand Up? ($) by Ashish K Mishra
How India’s Jio Won Facebook’s Heart ($) by Wayne & Juro [Tweet about Ambani's email habits]
Returning to India: A decision framework by Hemant Mohapatra
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