Indian Households See Inflation Staying Low, RBI Surveys Show
Indian households expect price pressures to stay low over the next 12 months, surveys by the Reserve Bank of India showed.
In the May round of surveys on inflation expectations, released Friday, households' perception of current inflation declined 10 basis points from the previous poll in March, while they expected inflation to moderate by 20 basis points a year from now.
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Entrepreneur
21 minutes ago
- Entrepreneur
Money Moves: Top Indian Startups That Raised Big This Week (May 31–June 06)
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. The Indian startup ecosystem continues to see a healthy flow of capital as investors bet on innovation across e-commerce, clean energy, fashion, fintech, and agri-tech. This week (May 31–June 06), several diverse ventures raised fresh rounds of funding, signaling investor confidence in scalable and future-facing business models. From battery-swapping infrastructure to furniture marketplaces and men's fashion, here's a snapshot of the week's most notable startup funding deals. Udaan Udaan was founded in 2016 by ex-Flipkart leaders Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar, and Vaibhav Gupta. Based in Bengaluru, the company operates as a B2B e-commerce platform connecting small and medium businesses with suppliers and customers across categories like electronics, fashion, and food. Udaan facilitates easy product discovery, secure payment processing, and logistics support to ensure timely delivery and streamlined business operations. Funding Amount: USD 114 Million Investors: M&G Investments, Lightspeed Venture Partners Snitch Snitch was launched in 2019 by Siddharth Dungarwal and started as a B2B apparel brand before pivoting to a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model in 2020. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Snitch offers trendy men's fashion through its website, mobile app, and brick-and-mortar stores. Its clothing line caters to modern urban men, with a focus on affordability, style, and frequent design drops to stay on-trend. Funding Amount: USD 40 Million Investors: 360 ONE Asset, IvyCap Ventures, SWC Global, Ravi Modi Family Office Battery Smart Founded in 2019 by Pulkit Khurana and Siddharth Sikka, Battery Smart is based in Gurugram and aims to transform EV adoption through its battery swapping network. The startup targets electric two- and three-wheelers, offering a quick-swap model that allows users to replace discharged batteries with fully charged ones within minutes, eliminating wait times and improving EV efficiency. Funding Amount: USD 29 Million Investors: Rising Tide Energy, responsAbility, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, LeapFrog Investments Stable Money Stable Money was established in 2022 by Saurabh Jain and Harish Reddy in Bengaluru. Initially offering digital fixed deposits for risk-averse investors, it has now expanded to include short-duration corporate bonds (2–6 months), mutual funds, and secured credit cards. Its platform appeals to first-time wealth-tech users with benefits like same-day liquidity and lifetime-free demat accounts. Funding Amount: USD 20 Million Investors: Fundamentum Partnership, Aditya Birla Ventures, Z47, RTP Global, Lightspeed Samunnati Chennai-based Samunnati was founded in 2014 by Anil Kumar SG. It focuses on financial inclusion in the agriculture sector, offering loans, advisory services, and non-financial solutions to smallholder farmers, agri-enterprises, and those within the agri value chain. The startup aims to empower rural India by addressing financing gaps in the agri-ecosystem. Funding Amount: USD 6 Million Pepperfry Established in January 2012 by Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah, Pepperfry has grown into a leading online and offline furniture marketplace. Headquartered in Mumbai, it provides a wide array of home furniture and décor solutions, including sofas, beds, lighting, and carpets. With a strong omnichannel presence, the brand caters to modern Indian households seeking stylish, functional furnishings. Funding Amount: USD 5 Million Investors: General Electric Pension Trust, Norwest Venture Partners, Panthera Growth Partners Diverse sectors such as e-commerce, fashion, EV infrastructure, and agriculture witnessed robust funding this week, reaffirming investor optimism in India's evolving startup landscape.
TechCrunch
2 hours ago
- TechCrunch
After its data was wiped, KiranaPro's co-founder cannot rule out an external hack
Indian grocery delivery startup KiranaPro's recent data loss story has more holes than Swiss cheese, as the startup remains unclear whether the incident was an internal breach or an external hack. Last week, the Bengaluru-based startup discovered that it could not access its back-end servers and that all its data, including its app code, had been deleted from GitHub. The startup on Friday blamed a former employee for the breach. However, in an interview, KiranaPro co-founder and CEO Deepak Ravindran conceded that the company had not deactivated the employee's account after they departed the company and cannot rule out the possibility of subsequent malicious misuse of their account. 'If we go deeper, we have to do a real forensic investigation. We are going to talk [about] this with our board, the investors, and we are going to get a formal opinion on that also with our legal advisers,' Ravindran told TechCrunch. Earlier on Friday, Ravindran claimed in a post on X that the incident that affected its data was an internal breach. 'After careful investigation, we conclude that this was not a hack. No external party penetrated our ordering or payment systems, exploited vulnerabilities, or bypassed security protocols,' he wrote. The co-founder also explicitly shared a screenshot of a LinkedIn profile of one of KiranaPro's former employees on X on Thursday, alleging that they had deleted the startup's code. (TechCrunch is not sharing the post's link, as the startup has yet to offer concrete proof supporting its position.) '[T]his was an internal data breach. Specifically, it was the result of actions taken by a trusted internal employee who had legitimate access to our systems,' the co-founder wrote in his post on Friday. 'This individual intentionally deleted critical server logs while they were being tested and/or edited, an action that goes directly against our policies, our principles, and the trust we place in our team.' When TechCrunch asked if KiranaPro could rule out whether any third party had maliciously gained access to the former employee's account, Ravindran could not. 'We have to do a complete forensic check on the company. We have to do the entire IP scan. We have to look at where the tracks happened. We have to check the computers, MacBooks, and whatever is used. Everything has to be done. Then we have to spend money … so, that's why we decided not to,' he told TechCrunch. Then what was the basis of Ravindran's allegation? It was a GitHub response, a copy of which he shared with TechCrunch. The response included a username, which Ravindran said was associated with the former employee. 'All we have is the emails that we got from GitHub, stating that [the former employee's username] as an individual is the one who deleted the account. We haven't done the investigation further,' Ravindran told TechCrunch. Former employee's account was never offboarded Launched in late 2024, KiranaPro operates as a buyer app on the Indian government's Open Network for Digital Commerce. The startup allows more than 55,000 customers in 50 cities to purchase groceries from their local shops and nearby supermarkets using its voice-based interface. The company also supports local language inputs, including English, Hindi, Malayalam, and Tamil. Ravindran stated that they decided to call out the former employee based on the company's 'belief system,' as they claim the former employee deleted the data after their sudden termination. However, the startup said it is not aware if there were enough protections on the former employee's devices, such as multi-factor authentication, to restrict malicious third-party access, like malware. The company confirmed it did not remove the employee's access to its data and GitHub account following his departure. 'Employee offboarding was not being handled properly because there was no full-time HR,' KiranaPro's chief technology officer, Saurav Kumar, confirmed to TechCrunch. Company restores AWS account and GitHub data Alongside its code saved in GitHub, KiranaPro also lost access to its Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, which included its customer data and their transaction details. Ravindran told TechCrunch that the GitHub data was restored after getting its backup from one of their employees. The startup also regained access to its AWS account along with its customer data. Both the co-founder and CTO said the AWS account was protected by multi-factor authentication, but neither could say how the account was accessed, as nobody else had physical access to Ravindran's phone, which generates the multi-factor code. Nonetheless, Ravindran claimed that the customer data stored in the AWS cloud remained intact and was not accessed by any third parties, nor was it downloaded by the former employee in question. 'Because if that is the case, I will get its notification on email or anything [sic],' he said. That said, Ravindran stated that the startup has enough evidence to file a formal complaint with the police, but said that its investigation is ongoing. The startup has also not fully paid its current employees, the company's co-founder confirmed, soon after the company raised a seed round of ₹100 million Indian rupees (about $1.2 million), which Ravindran said has yet to be fully wired. The startup counts Blume Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, and Turbostart among its institutional venture backers, as well as Olympic medalist PV Sindhu and Boston Consulting Group managing director Vikas Taneja among its angel investors. It has 15 employees located in Bengaluru and Kerala.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
China Central Bank Extends Gold-Buying Streak for Seventh Month
China's central bank expanded its gold reserves for a seventh straight month in May, furthering its bid to diversify holdings despite ongoing price fluctuations. The People's Bank of China added 60,000 troy ounces of the metal to its reserves last month, taking the total to 73.83 million fine troy ounces, according to data released Saturday.
