Swiggy to hire 3 lakh delivery executives; Centre reviews surge pricing by cab aggregators

Food tech company Swiggy wants to hire more delivery executives. The government is reviewing cab aggregators’ surge pricing.  

Swiggy plans to hire 3 lakh delivery executives

Food technology unicorn Swiggy is planning to rope in close to 3 lakh delivery executives over the next 18 months, Economic Times reports.

Bundl Technologies Private Limited, which operates online food delivery platform Swiggy, claims that this move will take the total count of delivery executives to five lakh from the three lakh previously.

Sriharsha Majety, chief executive officer, Swiggy said that if some of these growth estimates continue, it won’t be long before Swiggy becomes the third-largest source of employment in the country, behind the Army and Indian Railways.

The Indian Army currently employs 12.5 lakh whereas Indian Railway employs over 12 lakh people at the end of March 2018, it added.

Centre reviewing surge pricing by Ola, Uber

The Centre is looking into surge pricing by cab aggregators Uber and Ola after it received a complaint from RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the Economic Times reports.

The complaint was addressed by Nitin Gadkari, minister for road transport and highways (MoRTH), who has moved the complaint to a joint secretary-level officer of the ministry to review the matter, the report said.

Ashwani Mahajan, national co-convener, Swadeshi Jagran Manch alleged that Uber and Ola have started profiteering under the ambit of surge pricing. 

“Just in the last two weeks, we received screenshots where a fare of Rs 2,000 was quoted in Mumbai for a 6-minute ride. This is outrageous and plain profiteering by these platforms," he said, reports ET. 

Govt to launch start-up portal, updates version of BHIM app

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) is planning to launch a specialised portal for start-ups, an updated version of the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app and an Indian software product registry today, the Financial Express reports.

Several industry leaders in the information technology and start-up space like Deepender Goyal, founder of Zomato, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive officer, Paytm, Kunal Bahl, founder, Snapdeal, among others, are expected to attend the event. 

The govt wants to open a portal to support start-ups to reach out to mentors, facilitating technology resources across a gamut of incubators, and help companies scale from ideation to marketplace, the report said.

Shopmatic inks deal with online payment company PayU

Singapore-based e-commerce technology firm Shopmatic has entered into a partnership with Naspers-owned payment solutions provider PayU.

Shopmatic merchants will now be able to accept payments from customers from multiple channels, devices and modes on a single platform, the companies said in a joint statement.

The integration will also provide Shopmatic merchants with omnichannel refund modules, assisting them with bulk refunds for both online and offline transactions, the joint statement added. 

Shopmatic has acquired over 260,000 new customers on its platform over the past six months.

“Through this partnership with Shopmatic, we are powering the ambitions of the small and medium merchants. We are confident that our innovative payment solutions will simplify payment processes for Shopmatic’s merchant partners,” said Noopur Chaturvedi, country head, small and medium businesses, PayU.