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Hello,

The Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) has a new member—Amazon India.

Amazon will join ONDC by integrating its logistics network and SmartCommerce, its AWS-powered suite of SaaS products that enables Indian MSMEs to build and scale their business across digital mediums.

Meanwhile, Tiger Global Management sold 20,386,688 equity shares in Delhivery—or a total 2.80% stake—via the open market.  

Tiger Global Management-operated venture capital funds, Internet Fund III and Tiger Global Investments Fund, sold 19,288,238 and 1,098,450 equity shares, respectively.  

In other news, Air India plans to hire more than 4,200 cabin crew and 900 pilots this year. This follows a major revamp that saw the carrier seal orders for a record 470 jets earlier this month.

ICYMI: A mother in Alabama, United States, gave birth to two sets of identical twins in back-to-back pregnancies, also known as MoMo twins.

Did you know MoMo twins are some of the rarest types of twins, making up fewer than 1% of all births in the United States?

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Inside India’s bar culture
• Crayon Motors’ EV bet
• Karnataka’s growth story

Here’s your trivia for today: What is a single strand of spaghetti called?

Alcobev

Inside India’s bar culture

Post-pandemic, India’s alcobev landscape has seen the emergence of newer brands, thanks to consumers’ increased desire to try new cocktail mixes. YS Life caught up with the most reputed names in the industry to get a sense of the industry’s future. 

Cheers:

• India is one of the world’s fastest-growing alcobev markets, with an estimated size of $52.5 billion in 2020. 
• Bartenders turning bar owners, such as Yangdup Lama at Sidecar and Vaibhav Singh at Perch, have brought new energy to the industry.
• Tarun Sibal, Chef and Co-owner of Goa’s popular culinary bar and restaurant, Titlie, believes that each bar has a story–some thrive on playfulness, others on indigenous local produce, and some on sustainability. 

<Top Funding Deals of the Week>

Startup: FreshToHome 

Amount: $104M

Round: Series D

Startup: NxtWave 

Amount: $33M 

Round: Series A

Startup: Mintoak 

Amount: $20M 

Round: Series A

Electric vehicle

Crayon Motors’ EV bet

India’s electric vehicle (EV) industry, thanks to the government’s push in recent years, is growing. Co-founders Rakesh Jain, Rahul Jain, and Mayank Jain of Delhi-based Crayon Motors, an e-scooter manufacturing company, jumped in on the EV opportunity way back in 2014. Their experience in the EV segment with UP Telelinks Ltd, their family-owned business, helped them get an early start. 

Top gear:

• Crayon Motors has built a 40,000-sq.ft. manufacturing facility with a capacity to produce 20,000 electric scooters per year. 
• In 2020, it launched a series of scooters in different designs–Zumba, Snow, Snow +, Envy, and Zeez. 
• The company’s scooters have a maximum speed of 25 km/h, and they are priced at Rs 45,000.

Investment

Karnataka’s growth story

While Bengaluru’s thriving IT industry takes the lion’s share of attention when it comes to Karnataka’s rise over the years, the state has worked on multiple investment strategies to become India’s economic hotspot. 

Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory, caught up with Murugesh R. Nirani, Minister for Large and Medium Industries, Government of Karnataka, to understand more about all that is in store.

Diversification:

• Infrastructure investments have helped the state to build connectivity across all modes of transport, Nirani says. Alongside eight functioning airports in Karnataka, three more will be operational shortly in Hassan, Vijaypura, and Shivamogga. 
• Apart from setting up semiconductor plants in Belgaum and Hubli, Karnataka has planned investments in data centres, aerospace, and defence. 
• While industrial investment will lead to job creation, youth in the state will be strongly encouraged to start their ventures.

News & updates

• Binge more: Netflix decreased its subscription costs in more than 100 territories over the past week or so as customers continue to contemplate which streaming services to keep amid price hikes. According to Ampere Analysis, the price drop affects more than 4% of Netflix’s subscriber base—over 10 million people.
• Four minutes: Alchemy, a web3 development platform, is releasing a new tool to help developers create Web3 applications faster. The tool—“create-web3-dapp”—will help builders start their application within four minutes, Elan Halpern and Vitto Rivabella, product leads at Alchemy, told TechCrunch.
• U-turn: A Japan Airlines domestic flight turned into a seven-hour ordeal for over 300 passengers after narrowly missing a curfew and then being sent on a roundabout route back to its starting point. The flight missed Fukuoka airport’s 10 p.m. cutoff time for commercial planes, despite expectations it would land with 4 minutes to spare.

What is a single strand of spaghetti called?

Answer: Spaghetto

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