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Looks like there’s no relief in sight for Paytm.

In a meeting with its Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the RBI has reportedly refused to grant any extension to the February 29 deadline of stopping major services for Paytm Payments Bank Ltd. The banking arm now faces the task of transferring all its accounts to a third party.

The only respite for the fintech was on the stock market as its parent One97 Communications’ shares recovered some ground for the second consecutive day, hitting the upper circuit of 10%. 

Meanwhile, more firms are poised to take Paytm’s pie, as the market regulator approved Juspay, Zoho, and Decentro as payment aggregators, allowing them to facilitate online payments on ecommerce websites via a range of options.

Elsewhere in the fintech world, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has issued a fresh notice to digital payments company BharatPe, seeking details about the proceedings against its co-founder Ashneer Grover and the alleged financial irregularities at the company.

In other news, Orios Venture Partners made a partial exit from dairy startup Country Delight, earning a 45X return on its initial investment. The venture fund still holds a majority stake in the company. 

ICYMI: Meet Kmoin Wahlang, a mother of 12, who has been running marathons since she turned 69.

And lastly, veg thali will cost you a little more.

According to a CRISIL report, an average vegetarian thali is 5% more expensive than last year, while non-veg thali’s price is down 13%. The latter is still double the price of a veg thali, which will now cost you over Rs 26. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Meesho bets on logistics with Valmo
• Freshworks’ Q4 losses halve, revenue up 20%
• Eco Way enables green deliveries in Dubai

Here’s your trivia for today: Where is the world’s oldest astronomical clock located?

Logistics

Meesho bets on logistics with Valmo

SoftBank-backed ecommerce startup Meesho has entered the logistics industry through supply chain service Valmo, aiming to provide low-cost solutions to micro-enterprises.

Meesho looks to create a logistics marketplace to make demand accessible to local players by removing barriers to entry. Valmo’s disaggregated network will help maintain low costs per shipment even with volatile demand patterns, said the company.

Key takeaways:

• Meesho has been building its logistics platform and onboarding clients for the last year. So far, the platform has onboarded nearly 3,000 local and regional entrepreneurs across 6,000 pin codes in 20 states. 
• Valmo was built on the idea that the sector is growing fast and holds immense potential to expand local and regional capacity, Sourabh Pandey, CXO of Fulfilment and Experience at Meesho, told YourStory.
• India’s logistics sector, which is largely unorganised, is poised to touch $330 billion by 2025, according to Redseer Strategy Consultants. 

Funding Alert

Startup: Attentive.ai

Amount: $7M

Round: Series A

Startup: Metafin

Amount: $5M

Round: Undisclosed 

Startup: Cashinvoice 

Amount: $3M

Round: Series A

SaaS

Freshworks’ Q4 losses halve

SaaS company Freshworks registered a 20% growth in revenue for the quarter ended December 2023, driven by generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) in its product portfolio even as losses narrowed, outperforming estimates.

Report card:

• Freshworks reported revenue of $160.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2023, a year-on-year growth of 20%.
• More importantly, it narrowed its losses to $28 million for the December quarter, a YoY decline of 49% from $55 million a year ago.
• The company’s chief revenue officer Pradeep Rathinam has resigned from the firm he joined in 2020. Abe Smith will take over his role.

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Freshworks founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham

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Electric Vehicles

Eco Way enables green deliveries in Dubai

Ivan Kroshny, a Ukrainian businessman who moved to Dubai in 2021 to open a speciality coffee chain, noticed that delivery persons in the city primarily used gasoline bikes or scooters to carry out their jobs. This significantly contributed to CO2 emissions and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH), which can cause respiratory illnesses.

In 2023, Kroshny, using his experience in manufacturing electric vehicles in China, set up EV delivery startup Eco Way to replace gasoline bikes.

Going green:

• Eco Way has developed three versions of its proprietary e-bikes for delivery: H-9 City, H-9 SPORT, and H-9 PRO. The e-bikes are capable of reaching speeds of 100-110 km/h and have a range of up to 120 kilometres. 
• The company’s bikes are powered by CATL batteries. CATL is a China-headquartered company that manufactures and distributes batteries for EVs and energy storage systems.
• The e-bikes come with two batteries, enabling couriers to use one while charging the other and swap them at any of its 13 charging stations. 

News & updates

• Buyback: China’s Alibaba Group Holding announced an increase of $25 billion to its share repurchase program through the end of March 2027. The company reported revenue of 260.35 billion yuan ($36.19 billion) for the three months ended December 31, 2023. The company’s US-listed shares were up 3.5% in premarket trading.
• Pay cut: Singapore’s biggest bank DBS has slashed its CEO’s bonus by 30% after disruptions to its digital services, despite it posting a record profit. The company said the cut to Piyush Gupta’s variable pay amounts to $3.1 million and that his full salary for 2023 will be disclosed in March.
• Disconnect: Workers will have the right to ignore their superiors after they clock off under new Australian laws that could see offending bosses facing criminal penalties. The ‘right to disconnect’ is part of a raft of changes to industrial relations laws proposed by the Australian government to restore work-life balance.

Where is the world’s oldest astronomical clock located?

Answer: Prague, Czech Republic. Dating back to 1410, the astronomical clock runs from 9 am to 11 pm daily.

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