Oyo sets sights on wedding business
Oyo is planning to gatecrash the big fat Indian wedding this season with a chain of offline stores.
The stores, some of which will sell wedding products while others will be experiential in nature to help customers simulate wedding scenarios. This will help Oyo monetise a large number of its properties that can be used as banquet and wedding halls by creating a 360-degree ecosystem related to weddings [via]
A distraction? Well, Oyo is pretty much done with hotel penetration in India and before it gets into more conflict with hotel owners, diversification is a great strategy to stay relevant and also to monetize its services marketplace IP and infrastructure.
India’s Drones Policy is taking off : Zomato, swiggy and Dunzo might be leading the race.
The DGCA has sought additional details from seven consortia that had applied to conduct long-range, or beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), drone experiments.
The seven that were picked were food and delivery companies Zomato, Swiggy and Dunzo, medical delivery providers Zipline and Redwing, Tata Advanced Systems Limited, and drone maker Throttle Aerospace Systems, which has partnered with Honeywell.
India slips 10 places on global competitiveness index; Singapore tops the list
India, which was ranked 58th in the annual Global Competitiveness Index compiled by Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF), is among the worst-performing BRICS nations along with Brazil (ranked even lower than India at 71st this year) – via
And we continue to debate on cows and religions, while China is grabbing the AI market!
Hotel operators who partnered with Oyo call it ‘biggest online fraud’, demand criminal probe
Oyo charges hotels a roughly 20 percent franchise fee on room revenues when hotels join its network, but some Indian hotel operators say the startup often ends up taking half or more of revenues through fees that were not initially disclosed.
This conflict comes at a time when Oyo is raising Series F at $10Bn valuation.
Quote of the day:
“I think the (economic) slowdown is helping the cinema business,” PVR CEO, Gianchandani said. “There is negativity around and people want to escape it.”
[via]
Flipkart, Amazon could generate up to $6 billion or Rs 39,000 crore in sales this festive season
In the first phase of the festive sale, E-commerce companies are estimated to have registered sales of close to $3 billion or Rs 19,000 crore, up 30 percent from last year.
The report said there was a 30 percent year-on-year growth during the first festive sale event, with significant share coming from customers in tier-II cities and beyond.”Given the strong industry performance during the first sale event, the whole festive month up to October-end is expected to generate up to $6 billion or Rs 39,000 crore in sales (via).
Note that these are ‘predictions’ and numbers are coming from a consulting company and not directly from the horses’ mouth.
Quickies:
- Sequoia has announced Surge 02’s 20 startups. Take a look here.
- Nano sold only 1 car between Jan to Sep, 2019.
Finance ministry suggests shutting down BSNL and MTNL
The development comes after the finance ministry rejected the proposal of the department of telecommunications (DoT) to pump in a massive Rs 74,000 crore to revive the ailing PSUs.
The cost of closure won’t be as high as Rs 95,000 crore as argued by the DoT earlier [via]
There are arguments that the decision is being done to favor Jio – but then, BSNL and MTNL have also lost relevance. They are ‘done’, unless revived.
