Yup! You heard it right. We're doing this every single week!
From internship opportunities to who’s the new hotshot in Dalal Street, funding alerts to alumni who made us proud, founders' word to ‘startups in the spotlight’, book quotes to crosswords, we’ve got it all here!
Short, crispy news handed right in your mail every Sunday.
To fir “Chaliye shuru karte hai” :)
#primetime
What’s the rush about 10 min deliveries?
Grofers rebranded itself as Blinkit! (But why tho? :/ )
Quoted as part of a pivot to “instant commerce indistinguishable from magic”,
with lofty promises of speeding up deliveries of everything from groceries to electronics in a burgeoning market dominated by Walmart's Flipkart and Amazon's local unit.
This announcement comes at a time when the quick commerce space is getting hot among investors and peers like Swiggy Instamart and Zepto are trying to capture the market share with all their might.
However, they recently announced the temporary halt of operations in areas where it will not be able to deliver goods in 10-minutes. Umm, what??
"Sacrifice customers to grow the business" - A new concept in the making.
With an impact of 75,000 of its daily customers, will this bold move of “focus” be the striking factor for the “Name=Promise” strategy of blinkit in the coming future or a disaster in the making?.. we’ll find out.
#whatsthisword
Let’s crack this BNPL jargon!
With digital payments being more widely accepted, a new avatar of credit has emerged in the form of “buy now pay later” or BNPL.
From fintech startups, e-commerce giants, NBFCs to banks — everyone has jumped on to the BNPL bandwagon and it’s easy to see why. India’s low organized credit penetration means that not many consumers or businesses have credit histories and this leaves them out of the traditional lending umbrella.
Credit cards and large personal or business loans are out of the question for this segment of the population, so BNPL has stepped in.
According to Edelweiss Research analysis, BNPL is set to record a CAGR of over 45%, and form a $15 Bn opportunities by 2024, accounting for a whopping 9% of all eCommerce payments.
Indeed, fintech startups are the first movers, but banks have been agile to jump in and NBFCs too are joining in. It’s no wonder then that the BNPL ecosystem in India has grown to over 30 players.
Did you Know? : ZestMoney, one of the early movers in the BNPL space and India’s fastest-growing consumer-lending fintech startup is co-founded by one of our alumnae: Priya Sharma (Metallurgical 2001)!
#alumnistories
Zscaler Added to the Exclusive Nasdaq-100 Index
Recently, Zscaler was just named to the Nasdaq-100 Index, one of the world’s pre-eminent large-cap growth indexes. Inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 illustrates that a growing set of enterprises have realized the value the Zero Trust Exchange delivers in accelerating their digital transformation initiatives.
(To provide some context on the significance of this grouping, the companies tracked in the Nasdaq-100 alone represent more than 90% of the market capitalization of the entire Nasdaq Composite.)
Jay Chaudhary- Founder of Zscaler (Richest: World #45, India #10) [Yes we’re not kidding!]
An IIT BHU alumnus, Jay Chaudhary is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the Company Zscaler.
Zscaler is transforming enterprise security and accelerating the digital transformation to help customers expedite the adoption of the zero-trust security model for today’s internet-driven, cloud-first business.
Leveraging more than 25 years of security industry expertise and being an accomplished entrepreneur, he’s been honored twice as Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year (Southeast Asia)” and “Entrepreneur of the Year (Silicon Valley)”.
#bookworms
Funding Your Startup: And Other Nightmares by Dhruv Nath
If you’re looking for a book that gives more insights into Indian start-ups and not only those based overseas, including even those start-ups which did not do well, then this book is for you!
The book leverages the experience of the authors with mentoring multiple start-ups and summarises it in a PERSISTENT framework which makes it easy to follow and compare. With an easy and humorous tone, this book is a pleasure to read.
Here’s a discussion video on the same by Dhruv Nath himself which delves deep into his journey of writing this book:
You can buy the book using the mentioned link: https://amzn.to/3qsQEyT
#funzone
Play Time
Every week, we’ll be releasing a fun-crossword puzzle for you to exercise your entrepreneurial brains!
Here’s the link for the debut version:
https://crosswordlabs.com/view/e-cell-weekly-newsletter-1
#youtubebinge
Sometimes simping is good…
“I first envisioned Zoom when I was a freshman in college in China and regularly took a ten-hour train ride to visit my girlfriend (who is now my wife). I detested those rides and used to imagine other ways I could visit my girlfriend without traveling — those daydreams eventually became the basis for Zoom.”
Quite an interesting story for the foundation of a company that serves roughly 400 million people every single day with annual revenue figures touching $4 billion!
Watch here to find out the full story:
#quotethis
Bitter Truth
“If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.”
-Brian Chesky, Co-founder of Airbnb
Well, that’s all folks...
Hope you liked the very first edition of our weekly newsletter!
(As we’re Marvel fans and its the post-credits, we really thought of making some “No Way Home” puns for our advertisement ;)
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Until next time :)