Good Morning,
Nykaa stands out in the Indian startup ecosystem due to the different steps that Falguni Nayar, the investment banker turned entrepreneur, took in her journey while building the cosmetics-to-fashion giant.
The founder of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, which runs Nykaa, owns 52.56 percent of the company along with her family, a rare feat in the industry where startup founders usually see their stake dilute at every funding round. Case in point: Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder of foodtech unicorn Zomato, which went public in July, currently holds a 4.71 percent stake.
Nykaa’s shareholding pattern gives a strong sense of nostalgia of traditional family-owned businesses. And, indeed, Nykaa operates as a strong family-run business that has the involvement of family members in the business operations.
The family-run factor also helped Falguni, an investment banker for 18 years with Kotak Mahindra Group, to have a strong grip on the business and a stronger grip on shareholding. Read more.
The Interview
According to a recent survey by Gartner, 48 percent of companies investing in technologies are looking to invest in cloud computing as well.
Chiratae Ventures’ Kailash Nath, 3one4 Capital’s Sonal Saldanha, Blume Ventures’ Arpit Agarwal, Kalaari Capital’s Vamsi Krishna Reddy, and Qualcomm Ventures’ Swapna Gupta discuss how most startups are going to be cloud-first and how modern cloud experience is going to look like in 2025.
Editor’s Pick: Blockchain gaming
With the rise of blockchain technology, decentralised gaming is gaining attention globally, spearheaded by the likes of blockchain-based games Axie Infinity (AXS), The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), etc.
On a blockchain-based game, players have complete control over their digital identities, accounts, and assets. They also have full freedom in interacting with the game’s native micro-economies to trade and encash assets as they please. Read More.
Startup Spotlight
Helping D2C businesses turn to WhatsApp
Mohit Kumar, Aditya Chintapalli, and Kirushanth Kumar realised that there was growth among D2C brands and a surge in social commerce, especially on WhatsApp, amid the pandemic.
This led them to found San Francisco-headquartered SaaS platform, BusinessOnBot. It enables D2C businesses to create a loyal user base from scratch through its sales, user acquisition, and retention tools on WhatsApp. Read more.
News & Updates
- Social ecommerce platform DealShare has strengthened its senior leadership for the next stage of growth, Co-founder and CEO Vineet Rao told YourStory. The company expects to clock annualised GMV of $700 million in December 2021 — 15 times DealShare’s GMV a year before.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“The virus will disappear in a period of time, but the innovativeness that we bring during these difficult times would be something we could look back on and say there was a good part of what we faced.”
Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and Chairman of Tata Trusts
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