Hello Reader,
The Enforcement Directorate on Friday conducted raids at six premises in Bengaluru belonging to online payment gateways Razorpay, Paytm, and Cashfree Payments. This is part of an ongoing probe against “illegal” instant smartphone-based loans “controlled” by Chinese persons.
The agency said it has seized Rs 17 crore worth of funds kept in “merchant IDs and bank accounts of these Chinese persons-controlled entities” during the raids.
In other news, Tata Play (earlier Tata Sky) is likely to file its DRHP for an IPO by the end of this month, reported Mint. The IPO is expected to be at $300 million at least.
Lastly, this couple in the US had an Amazon-themed wedding as a tribute to their careers in retail and ecommerce. Think barcodes, miniature shopping carts, and more.
Talk about a Prime wedding!
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Ninjacart’s quest to fix the food supply chain
- How to build category creators in India
- Sustainable entrepreneurship in agriculture
Here’s your trivia for today: Who performed the first-ever jazz concert outside the US and when?
Turning Point
Ninjacart’s quest to fix the food supply chain
When agritech startup Ninjacart was founded in 2015, it operated on a B2C model to transport fruits and vegetables from retail outlets to consumers in under 60 minutes.
Facing delays in deliveries and middlemen exploiting farmers, the founders made a pivot to a B2B model, replacing middlemen with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), data science, and app-based platforms.
Smooth deliveries:
- Ninjacart delivers fresh vegetables and fruits from farmers to retailers and other businesses in less than 12 hours.
- In March 2022, the startup launched a $25 million Agri Seed Fund to support emerging and new-age agri startups.
- It partnered with Avanti Finance to provide farmers with easy access to credit products.
Investor
How to build category creators in India
What does it take to build a category creator? According to Bala Srinivasa, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures, it’s important to identify startups that are taking a new digital solution that was previously not available for that given category.
“If you’re going to go digital to make money, you need to understand the psyche of the consumer and build certain flows that allow you the stickiness and the retention, and all of a sudden it’s a great business,” he says.
Parameters to shine:
- The ability of the company to reduce the friction in the adoption of their product.
- Making the product of a small-ticket high frequency that can align with the middle class.
- The way the founders spend their money and how they earn on a daily and weekly basis.
Agriculture
Sustainable entrepreneurship in agriculture
India’s agricultural sector is plagued by low profits, driving a mass exodus of the youth from the farms in search of better opportunities. Bengaluru-based Akshayakalpa Organic aims to make farming economically viable.
Akshayakalpa Organic is an organic dairy enterprise that offers milk and milk-based products free from antibiotics, synthetic additives, and chemical pesticide residue.
Key points:
- It identifies farmers and equips them with academic, financial, technological, and mechanical resources.
- The organisation ensures farmers follow a no-alcohol policy, and pass sanitary and quality assessments of their produce.
- Akshayakalpa Organic has recycled about 1,93,208 discarded milk and milk product packaging from its consumers.
News & updates
- Trade talks: The Biden administration will allow Trump-era tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese merchandise imports to continue while it reviews the need for the duties. The tariffs will continue after the administration received a formal request from businesses benefiting from them.
- Pathbreaking: Google Maps has transformed the way that we navigate the world, make decisions, and think about our privacy in the 17 years since its launch. How did this tech product remap the whole world?
- Recess time: Schools across Europe are facing a staffing crisis, with authorities cutting learning hours, increasing class sizes and lowering recruitment standards as they struggle to fill tens of thousands of vacant teaching posts at the start of the new academic year.
Who performed the first-ever jazz concert outside the US and when?
Answer: Jazz went international when Freddie Keppard performed the first-ever jazz concert outside the US in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1914.
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