Additionally on this letter:
■ No slowdown in internet commerce
■ Jitesh Shah of Byju’s joins Ola Electrical
■ Defined: Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip
B Capital closes second Alternatives fund at $750 million
B Capital cofounders Raj Ganguly (left) and Eduardo Saverin
International funding agency B Capital, which has backed the likes of Byju’s, Meesho and PharmEasy in India, on Tuesday stated it has closed its second Alternatives fund at $750 million.
Fund particulars: By B Capital Alternatives Fund II, the entity will make major and secondary follow-on investments in late-stage portfolio corporations throughout core sectors of expertise, healthcare, and local weather tech. It would again startups throughout North America and Asia.
A small portion of the brand new fund will even be invested throughout new funding alternatives.
SoftBank India elevates Sarthak Misra
SoftBank India has elevated its funding director Sarthak Misra to a companion, sources informed us.
Inform me extra: Misra joined the fund in 2019 from Matrix Companions India. He sits on the board of ecommerce agency Meesho and business-to-business etailer OfBusiness, and in addition works intently with corporations like Swiggy and Lenskart.
Additionally learn | SoftBank India working companion Vikas Agnihotri leaves fund
Inside management construction: Sumer Juneja, managing companion, India & EMEA, heads the India and Europe marketplace for the expertise funding fund. Juneja has now been operating the India funding staff at SoftBank for greater than 5 years.
Apart from Misra, Narendra Rathi, funding director at SoftBank Funding Advisors, appears at offers in SaaS and business-to-business (B2B) sectors. Each Misra and Rathi will proceed to report back to Juneja.
Catch-up fast: We reported on March 11 that homegrown funding fund A91 Companions, which has backed Digit Insurance coverage, HealthKart, Blue Tokai Espresso, and Paper Boat, is within the technique of elevating its largest but fund at $700-750 million. This shall be among the many quickest scaleups when it comes to fund dimension for a home funding fund amid a broader urge for food for the India market amongst restricted companions.
Startup Mahakumbh | Reside reveals, sports activities turning into youth favourites: BookMyShow CEO
BookMyShow’s Ashish Hemrajani at Startup Mahakumbh in dialog with Accel’s Prashanth Prakash
Reside leisure and sports activities have gotten huge types of leisure for the youth, BookMyShow founder and chief government Ashish Hemrajani stated on Tuesday.
Shifting focus: “Roti, kapada, makan is finished. Discerning individuals have gotten the cash. Now they’re specializing in exterior of science and maths. They’re specializing in artwork, music, sport,” he stated on the second day of Startup Mahakumbh in New Delhi. In keeping with Hemrajani, these areas have gotten industrial as nicely.
Quote, unquote: “We determined to leap into the reside occasion area as a result of we needed to disrupt that and we created that for the youth and the youthful demographic of India,” stated Hemrajani. Whereas there was preliminary concern that OTT platforms would kill theatricals, after Covid-19, OTT platforms took benefit of theatricals by investing closely in content material, he stated.
Additionally learn | Indian startups seen elevating $10-12 billion this yr: Peak XV’s Rajan Anandan
Catch-up fast: The primary day of the three-day Startup Mahakumbh noticed a variety of deliberations and classes. A deeptech startup coverage is within the last phases of inter-ministerial consultations, division for promotion of trade and inner commerce (DPIIT) secretary RK Singh stated.
Additionally learn | Indians choosing premium merchandise, say Lenskart, BlueStone founders
In a chat with Information Edge cofounder and vice-chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Deepinder Goyal stated quick-commerce platform Blinkit will develop into bigger than its father or mother Zomato’s food-delivery enterprise in a yr.
Additionally learn | India wants totally different method to AI; concentrate on alternatives holds the important thing: Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh
Ecommerce nonetheless guidelines regardless of the return of offline shops
Even with the top of Covid-era restrictions, and bodily shops reopening for enterprise as common, internet commerce has not slowed down as a lot as anticipated. The handy contactless supply from on-line procuring, which boomed through the pandemic years, appears to be sticking.
No slowdown: Whether or not it is on a regular basis treats like cookies or big-ticket gadgets like TVs and fridges, on-line gross sales are going sturdy, as excessive, and even greater than throughout lockdown intervals, in response to information from NielsenIQ and GfK.
Altering methods: “This displays a post-pandemic change in shopper behaviour, notably in metro areas, the place on-line procuring is gaining reputation because of its comfort, selection and aggressive pricing,” Praful Babar, head of ecommerce for FMCG at NielsenIQ, informed ET.
Breaking it down: Knowledge reveals on-line gross sales of FMCG merchandise jumped in 2023.
- On-line gross sales of impulse buys like sweets and chips reached 5% in 2023, up from 3% in 2022
- In case of cloth look after merchandise like washing powders/liquids, the contribution rose from 6% to 7% in the identical interval
- Digital merchandise noticed a 1-2 proportion level enhance in on-line gross sales
Additionally learn | Fast-commerce turns into the villain for neighbourhood kirana shops
Area of interest merchandise: GfK information reveals on-line gross sales of electronics and home equipment like fridges, washing machines and TVs surged in 2023, outpacing offline progress. On-line gross sales of classes like frost-free fridges, front-loading washing machines, and larger TVs (55 inches and above) doubled in comparison with their offline counterparts.
Additionally learn | Ecommerce clicks dip in December, triggering progress considerations
Ola Electrical hires Jitesh Shah of Byju’s to steer after-sales
Jitesh Shah
Ola Electrical has introduced in Jitesh Shah, the previous enterprise head of Byju’s examination prep and Aakash digital companies, as the top of its after-sales and companies division.
Inform me extra: Shah, who started working at Ola Electrical a couple of months in the past, is spearheading an growth of Ola’s service centres and fast-charging community, in addition to an extension of guarantee on all new scooter gross sales introduced by the agency in February.
Byju’s stint: Shah was among the many two senior executives heading enterprise verticals at Bjyu’s. He was appointed proper after the beleaguered edtech startup consolidated 4 verticals into two in August final yr.
Catch up fast: The electrical scooter maker is seeking to develop its charging community ten occasions over to 10,000 fast-charging factors by the top of the subsequent quarter, whereas additionally increasing its service centre community from the present 400 to 600 by April 2024, founder and managing director Bhavish Aggarwal had stated in February.
The corporate has additionally finalised plans to launch an electrical autorickshaw meant to be bought on to customers, we reported. The car, which can be launched later this month, is prone to be known as Raahi.
ETtech Explainer: All it’s good to learn about Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip
Nvidia Company, the world’s largest producer of synthetic intelligence (AI) chips, unveiled a brand new era of software program—Blackwell—throughout its annual GPU expertise convention (GTC) in San Jose, California, solidifying its dominance within the AI world.
Inform me extra: The brand new era of AI graphics processors is named Blackwell B200 GPU, with the primary superchip named GB200, which pairs two B200 GPUs with a Grace CPU, set to be shipped later this yr.
What does it do? Blackwell chips allow organisations like Amazon Internet Providers, Dell Applied sciences, Google, Meta and Microsoft to develop and function real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter massive language fashions whereas lowering prices and vitality consumption by as much as 25 occasions in comparison with chips like H100.
Development trajectory: Nvidia’s shares have surged 240% over the previous 12 months, making it the U.S. inventory market’s third Most worthy firm, behind solely Microsoft and Apple. It dominates the info middle AI chip market, capturing roughly an 80% share final yr.
Rivals within the AI race: Nvidia faces sturdy competitors from rivals like Intel and AMD, each of which launched new merchandise to the market final yr. In December, Intel unveiled a collection of AI chips, together with Gaudi3, a GPU meant to compete with Nvidia and AMD’s choices.
At this time’s ETtech Prime 5 e-newsletter was curated by Megha Mishra in Mumbai.
