Digital Financial News

Bright Money, which allows users to reduce debt, has raised $12 million in an equity funding round led by existing investors Alpha Wave, Hummingbird VC and Peak XV Partners. As part of the funding, the consumer fintech startup has also raised $50 million in debt from speciality finance company Encina Lender Finance.

Wealth Redefine, a wealth management and financial advisory firm, is extending its presence to offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and the Middle East by 2025. It is also toying with potential expansion into Kolkata.

According to an IMF paper published in 2021, close to 80% of central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is unclear."This needs to be rectified," says Carstens. "The public rightly demands forms of money that meet their needs and expectations.

«The demand is looking great especially both in the passenger car as well as in the commercial vehicles. So once the demand is there, I think so the price levels definitely sustain,» says Anuj Kathuria, President (India), JK Tyre. We all know what is happening with crude oil prices. Internationally, rubber prices as well have been seeing a jump. Tell me firstly, what is happening to your raw material basket cost increase from first quarter up until now? As far as the input material prices are concerned, if you take the quarter one and even what we are seeing in quarter two, they have been largely range bound. There are some commodities where we saw a downward trend continuing from the quarter four of last year. In some commodities, they have been more flattish. Yes, there are indications of the crude oil, but as of now, that has not reflected in our input material costs. But we are watching it very carefully and we would be keeping those things in mind. But as of now, as I said, all the input material costs whether it is natural rubber or others, are all range bound.

Flipkart, Blaupunkt, has introduced its newest entry into the television market, which is 43-inch QLED & 55-inch 4K Google TV. The newly launched TVs start at a price of Rs 28,999 while the 55-inch Google TV model is available at Rs. 34,999. The sale of Blaupunkt's 55 and 65-inch TVs has seen an astounding 300% jump in sales over the last year. The launch in exclusive collaboration with Flipkart took place on Wednesday.

Bitcoin, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency, was trading below $27,000 early on Wednesday, showing a nearly 0.50% decrease in price to $26,220. 

Paint Revamp: The old Paint app is getting a generative AI powered upgrade with the Windows 11 Copilot and the Redmond-based company is promising features like AI for drawing and digital creation, background remover and more. Moreover, Microsoft has also announced that Paint Cocreator preview will start rolling out to Windows Insiders users from today while it will be available to general public in the coming days. Cocreator will help users generate unique images by entering a text prompt and selecting a style.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Co-Founder & Executive VC, Info Edge, says “ it is pretty clear that investors are giving a signal to startups to turn profitable. Now, many will do that and get there and some will not be able to and they will face a challenge.” What is the start-up scene like now that funding seems to have dried up? Funding never went away, it just became more discerning. So lots of money, but people are now funding very carefully. Valuations may be a bit muted. The velocity of funding may be slow. Maybe some of the bets people are taking may not be that speculative but funding is there.

“The market is witnessing robust traction in the small and mid-cap space and these indexes are consistently outperforming the broader benchmark, given the strong buying momentum,” says Raghvendra Nath, MD, Ladderup Wealth Management Pvt. Ltd. In an interview with ETMarkets, Nath said: “Small and mid-cap space encompasses a variety of choice picks indicating stellar growth and return possibilities, amid the fast-growing economic landscape in India. These factors are, synergistically, driving interest in the space” Edited excerpts: What a month for Indian markets – Nifty climbed 20,000 and then saw some profit-taking. How are you seeing markets? Given the overall positivity in sentiment post the successful G20 presidency, which is expected to propel Indian economy to the forefront of the global arena, as well as lower CPI and wholesale inflation, domestic indexes are likely to continue their strong performance going ahead.

₹5,512.50 crore in October 2020. Earlier this week, RIL's retail arm received the full subscription amount of ₹2,069.50 crore from the global investment firm KKR and has allotted 1.71 crore equity shares. Also read: Reliance Retail in talks with Gulf, Singapore funds on $1.5 billion investment: Report Following the share allotment, KKR's shareholding in RRVL has increased to 1.42% from 1.17%.

Mukesh Ambani’s sprawling retail empire. ADIA is seeking to invest $600 million into the organized retailing business of Asia's richest person, people aware of the developments told ET, at valuations that significantly exceed those during an earlier concluded round three years ago. ADIA is already an investor in Reliance Retail Ventures (RRVL), having bought a 1.2% stake for Rs 5,512.50 crore ($751 million) in October 2020, when the company raised Rs Rs 47,265 crore by selling 10.09% stake to a clutch of bulge-bracket investors that included Saudi PIF, Mubadala, GIC of Singapore, Silverlake, TPG and GA. From the previous bunch of investors, KKR has already made a follow-on investment of Rs 2,069.50 crore at a pre-money equity value of Rs 8.361 lakh crore ($100 billion), making RRVL among the top four companies by implied market capitalization in the country. Thus far, Qatar's $1-billion infusion has been the only fresh investment in the current round of fund raise. The current valuation is almost at a 60% premium to the last financing round three years ago, but is much lower than what most equity analysts perceive the value of the privately held retail business to be.

The flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has sparked renewed interest among investors and enthusiasts as its price increases. 

Rigi, a pioneer in empowering online creators to monetise their content, is thrilled to announce the launch of GapUp, a curated discovery platform designed for users to access and learn from influencers and online content creators across a multitude of domains. This groundbreaking platform is poised to address the pressing demand for authentic and trustworthy information in the rapidly expanding digital landscape. GapUp promises to be the nexus of expertise, bringing together financial experts, fashion mavens, tech innovators, business coaches, fitness experts, travel gurus, and more. With features that enable influencers to initiate courses, live interactions, and foster vibrant communities, GapUp ensures an immersive learning experience for its users. As the global shift towards the digital age accelerates, consumers are inundated with a plethora of information.

This is part of a series of interviews with the winners of The Economic Times Startup Awards 2023. Petcare brand Heads Up for Tails (HUFT) is looking to chart newer domains of growth and plans to take its private-label portfolio across nutrition, grooming and lifestyle products to the global market in 2024, its founder Rashi Narang told ET. The company, which started in 2008 and is backed by the likes of Peak XV Partners and Verlinvest, is also looking to double down on its offline presence and launch new stores in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Netapp expects the Indian market to accelerate and become the data storage firm’s largest market in Asia in the next three to five years from the top three position currently. This will be on the back of the country’s demographic and economic advantages, and Netapp's headroom to grow in this market, George Kurian, chief executive and member of the board of Netapp, told ET. Kerala-born Kurian, who became chief of the $6.36 billion company in 2015, is currently on a visit to India.

payment company Worldline, which works with banks to deploy Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals at merchant outlets for card payments, is undertaking a major shift in its business strategy in India. The company is acquiring its own merchants as part of a broader strategy to compete with homegrown fintech startups such as Paytm, Pine Labs, Innoviti Payments, Mswipe and Razorpay-backed Ezetap. Worldline has deployed 500,000 payment terminals so far across India on behalf of banks.

Jessica Rosenworcel on Tuesday said she would move quickly to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules rescinded under former President Donald Trump. Rosenworcel is asking her colleagues to take an initial vote on Oct. 19 on the proposal to largely reinstate open internet rules adopted in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama.

OpenAI is talking to investors about a possible share sale that would value the artificial-intelligence startup behind ChatGPT at between $80 billion to $90 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal is expected to allow employees to sell their existing shares as opposed to the company issuing new ones to raise additional capital, according to the report.

Google argued that it needed its privacy in an antitrust trial that would spotlight its dominance in online search. «Once commercially sensitive information is disclosed in open court, the resulting harm to the party's competitive standing cannot be undone,» the internet giant wrote to the judge presiding over the case.

Chase UK, JP Morgan’s British digital bank, says it will bar customers from making cryptocurrency transactions starting next month — citing an uptick in scams and fraud

The head of SBS corporate strategy has laid out an ambitious vision to be able to deliver bespoke content in the language of any user’s choice, enmeshing the specialist broadcaster in the daily media diet of foreign-language speaking Australians.