Fintech platform Money View announces multiple ESOP buybacks
Bengaluru-based fintech startup has announced its first ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) buyback for its employees. The employees who completed one year with the startup will be eligible to participate and sell up to 20 percent of their vested shares in this buyback. The company plans another buyback by June 2023 with more to follow, it said.
Co-founder and CEO Puneet Agarwal said, “We’re among very few startups that are growing profitably. This has only been possible because of the collective conviction and the contribution of the entire team. With this buyback programme, we are celebrating and acknowledging the hard work and passion of our colleagues.”
The startup aims to hire 600 employees across tech, product and analytics roles, among other areas.
Founded in 2014, Money View is an online credit platform that offers instant personal loans, cards, BNPL (buy now, pay later), and personal financial management solutions to customers. In March 2022, the startup had raised $75 million as part of its Series D funding round from Tiger Global, Winter Capital, Evolvence India, and Accel.
B2B fintech EnKash to double its employee base
Spends management platform and corporate cards company on Wednesday announced its plans to double its team size by hiring over 120 employees over the next few months.
The company will mass-hire high-potential talent from across cities, it said in a statement.
The fintech firm will hire across three major categories: technology, business, and support from verticals such as Engineering, Quality Assurance, Product Design, Data Science and Analytics, Direct Sales, Alliances and Partnerships, Sales Operations, Business Operations, Finance Operations, Customer Care, Legal and Compliances, Credit, Risk, Finance, and Human Resources. The team members will also be responsible for the company’s geographical expansion plans, globally.
To facilitate the training of fresh hires, the firm plans to organise training sessions with a blend of both virtual as well as in-person sessions.
This recruitment drive will take EnKash’s total employee strength to over 250 members by March 2023. The company currently employs ramped up and recently ramped-up its team size by over 100 percent. It now plans to strategically increase its team strength to 500 within FY 23-24.
“Our hiring plans are aligned with our strategy of growing in a capital-efficient manner. Contrary to ongoing trends in the startup ecosystem, we are looking to hire innovative minds to further bolster our consistent growth. EnKash has witnessed an unprecedented growth of 10X in its user base. This potential talent will further help us innovate, solve and create a competitive advantage for us in the payments industry,” EnKash co-founder Hemant Vishnoi said.
In April 2022, EnKash raised $20 million in a Series B round from Ascent Capital, Baring India, and Singapore-based White Ventures.
PickMyWork to expand agent network, hire across verticals
Gig employee hiring platform provider PickMyWork said it is expanding its agent network by 10X and aims to empower over one lakh agents.
The Gurugram-based startup enables digital companies to acquire end customers, including individuals and shops, for their products through a pay-per-task model. It currently works with 10,000 gig workers and merchants as part of its agent network and offers them supplemental income opportunities.
Among its clients are B2B (business-to-business) giants such as Meesho, Freecharge, AU Small Finance Bank, ICICI Bank, CityMall, JAR, FI Money, Amazon Pay, and Lendbox.
PickMyWork was incorporated in 2019 by Kajal Malik, Vidyarthi Badireddy, and Utsav Bhattacharjee. The startup currently has a strength of 35 employees and aims to reach a mark of 100 within the next two quarters, it said. The brand will be aggressively hiring across multiple departments including tech, business development, marketing, alliances, and partnerships.
“We aim at supporting consumer tech companies while also creating income opportunities in Tier-II and III cities, thus, trying to establish a holistic model for all. Furthermore, we are also strengthening our in-house team, which means that we will be able to create more permanent jobs too. This is also in line with our fiscal targets which we are sure to accomplish,” said Kajal Malik, Co-founder and CSO, PickMyWork.
OmniCard ties up with Mobileware Technologies to offer UPI-based interoperable wallet solutions
, an omnichannel spending platform, has tied up with Mobileware Technologies to offer scalable payment solutions to organisations.
Mobileware will be offering OmniCard with Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) interoperability features along with hosted UPI switch to work easily in the interoperable UPI ecosystem.
OmniCard is a bank-independent, RBI-licensed PPI that offers a RuPay-powered card and a mobile app. The payment platform provides multiple online and offline payment modes, card controls, a security system, money management and other features.
Commenting on the partnership, Satyajit Kanekar, Co-founder and CEO at Mobileware, said, “OmniCard has a unique product line that focuses primarily on the youth of India who influences the lifestyle and spending trends in today’s time. The financial freedom and responsibility that Omnicard provides the youngsters are remarkable, and we are happy to be offering our seamless interoperability solution that further makes online transactions easier for their customers.”
Content marketplace NewsReach launches local news community programme
In order to promote indigenous content and empower hyperlocal publishers, has launched an initiative under the name ‘Local News Community Programme’. The programme is focused on bringing upfront the local news publishers.
The programme is being launched with support from OHO Gujarati, a premium Gujarati content streaming platform, and Supercity Lifestyle.
“Our first goal when we started in 2020 was to reach out to the unreached. The growth of small and medium vernacular local houses was on our agendas. Though high-quality journalism has a social and political influence, most of these publications are not yet sustainable. With targeted finance and support, we hope they can pave new paths to long-term viability for journalist-entrepreneurs,” said Darshan Shah, Founder, NewsReach.
The 15-day cohort will begin on July 15, 2022. The deadline for the application is July 5 and the announcement for the finalist will be made on July 10. The publishers across print, electronic, and digital media having local exposure as per eligibility criteria can apply.
NewsReach allows stringers/reporters to directly license their content to publications and media houses. The content marketplace has worked with over 2,000 publications and 3,000+ journalists.
Founders of NewsReach — Soniya Kundnani and Darshan Shah
Agritech startup Kisanwala adds new co-founder
Agritech startup has onboarded former President for DuPont South Asia, Ramkrishna Mudholkar as its new co-founder and Executive Director.
Kisanwala was launched in 2020 by Suresh Alturi and Parag Modi. The platform offers services such as soil testing, advisory, agronomy, and forecasting via its app.
Ramkrishna worked with DuPont for over 25 years where he led the Crop Protection business in South Asia and ASEAN, Solae Soy Protein business in South Asia, and as DuPont Corporate President, South Asia.
Before DuPont, he worked for a German MNC Hoechst AgrEvo in the field of agro products in India. Post his DuPont career, the leader worked as an independent strategy consultant to agri input companies like Biostadt and Nuziveedu Seeds and is also on the board of NACL as an independent director, associated with Global BioAg Linkages as an advisor, and is an investor in startups.
Audio content platform Kuku FM crosses one million active paying subscribers in India
Vernacular audio content platform on Wednesday said it has crossed one million active paid subscribers on the back of massive adoption and growth of audio content listeners in India.
Founded by former IITians and former Toppr executives Lal Chand Bisu, Vinod Kumar Meena, and Vikas Goyal, the platform claims to have clocked 27X growth in the last 12 months.
To date, the startup had raised $25 million from Krafton, Verlinvest, Vertex, 3one4 Capital, and IQ.
“India has emerged as the ultimate frontier for acquiring content subscribers with top OTT platforms, having captured over 100 million, mostly English-educated subscribers, so far. With Kuku FM’s focus on regional languages, it is a product with ambitions of capturing subscribers from the remaining 1.2 billion Indians who are not English educated, the company said in a statement.
Among the seven Indian languages that Kuku FM has, it has recently started audio content in South Indian languages which, as per the startup, is seeing month-on-month growth of over 80 percent. It claims to have 30,000 creators on its platform and hosts 150,000 hours of content across audiobooks, stories, book summaries, courses, and podcasts on its platform.
(This is an ongoing story and will be updated with the latest updates throughout the day.)
