Paytm president Bhushan Patil quits; Eupheus, Dunzo eye funding; LoanMeet shuts down

Bhushan Patil, president of the country’s biggest digital payments company Paytm, owned by One97 Communications Ltd, has quit the firm, The Economics Times reported.

Patil joined Paytm in March 2016 after a five-year stint with China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. He was solely responsible for building Paytm’s cross-border commerce business.

A graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Patil has also worked at Zapak Digital Entertainment, Yahoo and Talisma Corp.

One97, founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, operates digital payments and e-commerce businesses through separate entities. It has raised funding from the likes of Japan's SoftBank Group Corp., Alibaba and multi-stage investment firm SAIF Partners.

The company has expanded its financial services business through its unit Paytm Payments Bank Ltd, which also houses its digital wallet. It is also starting a mutual fund distribution platform under Paytm Money Ltd.

Eupheus Learning in funding talks

Education-technology firm Eupheus Learning is in talks to raise up to $15 million (Rs 104 crore at current exchange rate) in a Series A funding round from new and previous investors, said a media report.

Previous investor Sixth Sense Ventures may participate in the funding round, said financial daily Mint.

Run by Proficiency Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the ed-tech venture was founded in 2017 by Sarveshwar Shrivastava, Rohit Dhar, Ved Prakash Khatri and Amit Kapoor. The co-founders all previously worked at education company Encyclopaedia Britannica and set up Eupheus Learning with their own capital.

Eupheus Learning creates textbooks in 10 subjects — English, maths, general knowledge, environmental science and others —for students of classes one to eight and digitises them.

It last raised an undisclosed sum from consumer-focused venture capital firm Sixth Sense Ventures in October last year.

Task management app Dunzo in funding talks

Bengaluru-based daily tasks management app Dunzo, run by Dunzo Digital Pvt. Ltd, is in talks to raise up to $50 million (Rs 346.7 crore at current exchange rate) from new investors, two persons in the know told Mint.

There were some initial talks with Zomato for a potential acquisition, but that didn’t move forward, one of the persons told Mint.

Founded in 2015 by Kabeer Biswas, Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri and Mukund Jha, Dunzo is a chat-based task management app that allows users to create to-do lists. It fulfils tasks such as grocery and restaurant deliveries, instant local courier services and home services. The platform uses both artificial intelligence and human operators to offer its services.

The startup offers its services through a mobile app, which is available on both Android and iOS platforms. As part of the features offered, Dunzo enables users to create multiple tasks and track them simultaneously.

Dunzo is currently operational in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.

It last raised Rs 9.84 million in a fresh round from new and previous investors.

LoanMeet shuts ops

Online peer-to-peer lending platform LoanMeet, owned by Strivers Solutions Pvt. Ltd, has shut down its operations as it failed to raise funds, online publication Entrackr reported.

LoanMeet used to provide short-term working-capital loans to retailers for inventory financing.

Bengaluru-based LoanMeet was found by Sunil Kumar and Ritesh Singh in 2016. Before LoanMeet, Kumar used to run a consulting firm, while Singh had founded an app-based service aimed at easing commuting.

LoanMeet last raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Chinese entrepreneur-turned-investors Cao Yibin and Huang Wei, along with participation from KrazyBee.com co-founder and chief executive Madhusudan E.

The company faced stiff competition from other lending startups Capital Float, Loan Frame, Happy Loan, which mostly deal in loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).