Uber’s rival Didi Chuxing Raises $600M from China Life Insurance Co Ltd.Chinese car-hailing app Didi Chuxing said on Monday it had received an investment of about $600 million from China Life Insurance Co Ltd, boosting resources to fund its battle with Uber just a month after it raised $1 billion from Apple Inc.
The latest fund-raising comes with China's top ride-hailing company locked in a struggle to fend off its global rival's march into China. Uber raised $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund in new resources earlier this month.
OYO Rooms Dragged To Delhi High Court For Non- Payment of ServicesBudget hotel aggregator OYO Rooms has been dragged to the Delhi High Court by a Mumbai based hospitality advisory firm, Noesis Capital Advisors. The case has been filed by the company over non-payment of over 1.5 crore rupees for using its services. The firm has filed a winding up petition against Oravel Stays, the company that owns OYO Rooms.
The hospitality advisory firm has reportedly claimed that the $400-million startup has failed to make the payment despite using their services during the scaling-up phase of the venture, in an ET news report.
Yahoo Retires its 10-year Old Messenger AppYahoo is all set to retire its 18-year old Messenger application on August 5 after launching a new messaging app. Those who are still using the old Messenger app will not to be able to access their chats after that. Last year in December, Yahoo had launched its new Messenger app for Android,iOS, and the web.
The new app integrates features from Yahoo-owned Flickr, Tumblr and Xobni. It allows users to quickly share large batches of high-resolution images, and taps into the library at blogging platform Tumblr to let people add animated GIFs to conversations as easily as inserting emojis.
Gaia Smart Cities Acquires IOT business, Netcore
Gaia Smart Cities, Internet devices firm, has acquired Internet of Things business of communications service provider Netcore in a an equity deal. Internet of Things involved in connecting various devices with internet to control them and extract data related ton their function in structured format like calorie burn data from smart wrist bands, switching on or off to AC, TV, car from mobile phones etc.
US PE Firm Looking to Invest $1B in Indian Infrastructure I Squared Capital, US private equity (PE) firm, is looking to invest as much as $1 billion (around Rs.6,700 crore) in Indian infrastructure, including roads, logistics and rooftop solar power projects.
“While we don’t have country specific allocations, we can see ourselves putting somewhere from $500-600 million to a billion dollar plus in the country over the life of our fund. If the right opportunity shows up, then we can transact at that scale,” said Gautam Bhandari to delastreet asia. Bhandari is a partner at I Squared Capital, who is looking to deploy about one-third of its funds under management in the region. In 2015, I Squared Capital raised a $3 billion fund named ISQ Global Infrastructure Fund. That corpus has now grown to $3.8 billion, Bhandari said in an interview on Thursday.
Bombay Shirt Company Raises Bridge Funding From Patni GroupIn a bridge round of funding, online custom-made shirt retailer Bombay Shirt Company has raised Rs 6.6 crore (around $980,000) from its existing investor Patni Group and an undisclosed investor, The Economic Times has reported. The Mumbai-based company will use the funds to expand to Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, and to hire tech specialists. The company also appointed its new vice president of finance and business development, Ankit Vora, formerly of US-based Parallel49 Equity.
Venture Factory Launches VF-Healthcare Program Which Aims to Fund up to 5 Healthcare StartupsVF-Healthcare program launched by Venture Factory, aims to fund up to 5 startups in the healthcare sector, making investments along with follow on funding ranging between $500,000 and $2 million per startup.
The investment firm has entered into a strategic partnership with Practo, Cloudnine and Plan India, the partners will help identify existing problems prevalent in India's healthcare sector and select startups that come up with solutions. Venture Factory will close the investments during the next six months, scouting for entrepreneurs from varied backgrounds, not restricted to the IIT's, IIM's and ISB schools.
Former CEO of Vodafone Made a Capital Investment in TruecallerThe former Vodafone CEO, Arun Sarin, has made a capital investment in the mobile communications app Truecaller, while also joining the company's advisory board.
Sarin would be bringing with him his global experience and network, using which he would focus on supporting and advising the company on the overall strategy, said a statement from Vodafone.
The Sweden-based company is known to offers services related to caller ID, spam detection and search to its customers.
