Spice Money: Industry Monitoring 12 March 2019
- Priyanka Kanodia
- Mar 18, 2019
- 5 min read
Spice Money
Competitors
Ebix offers to buy Yatra for $336 million
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 12 March, 2019
US-based software company Ebix has offered to buy India's second-largest online travel service provider Yatra Online, Inc, for $336 million (Rs 2,347 crore) in what is seen as an unsolicited bid. Ebix said that it would pay for Yatra Online at its discretion either in cash or by issuing Ebixstock, which will be converted at its 10-day average price at the time of closing the deal, or $59 per share, whichever is higher. Ebix stock traded at $50.67 per share on the Nasdaq at the time of going to press. Listed on the Nasdaq in New York, Yatra Online, Inc. is the parent company of Gurugram-based Yatra Online Pvt Ltd which was founded in 2006 and operates the travel website Yatra.com.
At $7 a share, the offer for approximately 48 million outstanding diluted shares of Yatra Online amounts to 84% premium to the travel portal’s closing share price of $3.80 on March 8. On Monday, after Ebix made its offer public, the Yatra stock appreciated 40% to trade at $5.39 per share at the time of going to press. “If you are a listed company, you are always on the block. We needed to make a very compelling offer while at the same time keep the interests of Ebix shareholders in consideration,” Robin Raina, chairman and CEO of Ebix, told ET over the telephone. “If the deal goes through, Ebix shareholders will get additional earnings per share (EPS) of 25-to-30 cents.”
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Industry News
Fintech pivots to UPI as most prefer it for loan payment
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 12 March, 2019
Fintech founders may be rueing the lack of ‘standing instructions’ on the updated version of Unified Payments Interface, but the application in its present form is emerging as the preferred gateway for consumers to repay loans. Multiple fintech entrepreneurs ET spoke with said they are either in the process of bringing in UPI as a repayment mode or have already done so, hoping that the popular application will improve the repayment trend. “On LazyPay, we have almost 30% of the repayments now happening on UPI,” said Jitendra Gupta, managing director of PayU India.
“Around six months back it was zero, which shows the kind of growth in adoption that we have seen on UPI.” LazyPay works with payment gateway service provider PayU to offer UPI as a payment solution. Lizzie Chapman, cofounder of digital lending startup Zest Money, said more than 40% of the repayments are now happening on UPI. “I think the major reason that could be driving this behaviour is that the payment experience is very smooth and consumers love the way transaction happens on UPI,” said Chapman. Pune-based Loantap uses UPI or IMPS for payment of instalments in case the auto debit facility does not work for a specific bank account. Satyam Kumar, chief executive of Loantap, told ET that a very small share of repayments happen on UPI.
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https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/fintech-pivots-to-upi-as-most-prefer-it-for-loan-payment/articleshow/68368532.cms
How digital voice is becoming the fastest way to go online
Publication- ET Tech
Edition- Online
Date- 12 March, 2019
Students of the Brihanmumbai municipal school in Andheri’s DN Nagar are now privy to that savoury secret after the Google boss’ visit here last week. And when a student asked Pichai what it takes to be an engineer, the boy next doorturned-Silicon Valley pin-up said, “Do you have a radio and TV at home? When it gets old, just learn to break that apart.” It was the perfect photo-op. But Pichai used this opportunity to see how Bolo — a reader app powered by Google AI for text-to-speech and speech recognition — works on the ground. He even tweeted, “Had the chance to visit some students today who are learning to read using Bolo, excited for all the great books they’ll discover.”
Far removed from that suburban Mumbai school, Sid Chatterjee of Austin, Texas, too has a use for voice when he is on the road and has to deal with email. He dictates to his Samsung S8, which has a voice mode in English and other languages, including Bengali. “It’s my default option and has 98% accuracy,” says Chatterjee, chief technology officer of Pune-headquartered Persistent Systems, an IT services company. “Talking to a device via voice interface is a very liberating feeling compared to figuring out a vernacular keyboard.”
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PayU in talks to acquire online payments firm Wibmo for $60M
Publication- ET Tech
Edition- Online
Date- 12 March, 2019
Digital payments company PayU is in final stages of discussions to acquire Bengaluru and Cupertino-based Wibmo that specialises in processing online payments, three people in the know of the matter said. If the deal, estimated at $50-60 million, goes through, it will be another wager by PayU that has earmarked more than $1 billion to deploy in India, as it bulks up its portfolio here inorganically. Wibmo, backed by early-stage venture fund Accel Partners, specialises in multiple payment service offerings, including 3D secure, for ensuring safety of digital transactions to mobile payments and merchant payments. Wibmo was formerly known as Enstage. The Naspers-owned PayU will get to own the entire payment process through this acquisition, the sources said.
“Naspers has a huge appetite for investments in the fintech space and this acquisition will complete the entire suite of payments offerings for PayU which otherwise is in the business of providing payment acceptance solutions for online merchants,” said one of the persons cited earlier. “The deal is valued at around $60 million," the person said.
ET had in its February 19 edition reported that PayU is in advanced discussions to pick up 25-30% stake in Capital Float for up to $150 million. In an emailed response to ET's query, a PayU India spokesperson said, “It is the company’s policy to neither acknowledge nor deny its involvement in any merger, acquisition or divestiture activity nor to comment on market rumours.” Govind Setlur, founder & CEO of Wibmo, did not reply to ET’s query as of press time Monday. As per industry sources, Wibmo is one of the largest players in the 3D secure process of digital payments, which is the page where customers are asked to punch in their passwords or one-time passwords (OTPs) to authenticate digital transactions. It works with most of the large Indian banks. As per their website, the company is certified by Mastercard, Visa, RuPay as well as PCI DSS which means they can process all forms of digital payments from cards to mobile based transactions.
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Startups look to cash in on ‘buy now & pay later’
Publication- Gadgets Now
Edition- Online
Date- 12 March, 2019
As mobile wallets grapple with regulatory constraints, working around the buy-now-pay-later model sense fresh opportunity by leveraging the ease of transaction they offer. Industry insiders said mobile wallets, which were originally positioned as a single-click checkout process for online commerce, can slowly give way to a where consumers can make purchases in one go and pay in bulk later. They might not be as mass market as wallets, but from a checkout convenience factor, they could be better than wallets. Success rate for transactions on this mode are as high as 99%, which is one of the major selling points for ecommerce companies, according to the insiders. Nityanand Sharma, who cofounded , said that his product leverages the age-old ‘khata’ system, where the local grocer or the merchant maintained a notebook and the consumer would pay in bulk at the end of the month.
“The practice of keeping a ‘tab’ is an old tradition in India and permeates from large cities to small towns and villages. We want to build Simpl as a massmarket product in that fashion based on people’s trust,” he said. Sharma said that mobile wallets could hardly offer a single click checkout option because in more than 80% cases a consumer would need money to be added to the wallet during the purchase. A product like Simpl, on the other hand, offers the true single-click checkout option.
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https://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/startups-look-to-cash-in-on-buy-now-pay-later/articleshow/68298482.cms
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