With the food delivery segment plateauing, small and mid-sized restaurants are finding it difficult to survive amid high commissions. Elsewhere, LetsVenture has rebranded to bring together its various business lines under a unified identity. Here are all the top stories from the Indian startup ecosystem today.
Featured stories
In the Zomato, Swiggy vs restaurants war, it’s a fight to the last rupee
In Namakkal, a small Tamil Nadu town known more for its egg production than its restaurants, 85 food establishments did something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: they collectively severed ties with India’s two largest food delivery platforms. Starting July 1, they stopped accepting food orders through online delivery platforms like Zomato and Swiggy, fed up with high commission rates and ‘hidden charges’.
Years of quiet frustration had finally boiled over. Namakkal represent the latest fracture in the symbiotic relationship between food delivery aggregators and restaurants—a relationship that, according to several restaurateurs, is turning parasitic. Read more.
How Reslink is powering India’s clean future
During his freshman year at IIT Delhi, Shashank Jha attended a talk in a nearly empty 1,000-seat hall—he was one of only five people there. The guest lecturer casually mentioned quitting their job at Google in California because they were getting ‘too comfortable’.
That remark struck a chord with Jha. Shortly after graduating in 2023, he started Reslink, a Delhi-based greentech company. It provides end-to-end hybrid solar solutions for residential and commercial use. Read more.
Logistics company CJ Darcl bets big on AI to deliver outsized gains
We must have come across news articles on how important it is for legacy brands to adopt technology to stay relevant in this cut-throat competitive market. For the 50-year-old logistics and transportation company, CJ Darcl, technology is integral to its business.
Today, operating over 2,500 trucks daily, as well as cargo movement by rail, air, and waterways, the Gurugram-headquartered company is betting big on artificial intelligence to bring in outsized gains.
With its warehousing facilities spread across 200 locations in India, CJ Darcl moved more than 19 million metric tonnes in FY24, serving over 2,000 customers. And managing this vast network of operations requires robust software technology. Read more.
Sonajharia Minz becomes first Adivasi woman to co-lead a UNESCO Chair
In an academic landscape that has long been dominated by Eurocentric norms, Professor Sonajharia Minz became one of those few Adivasi women to break into the highest ranks of Indian academia in the 1980s. She recalls that back then, “there were a grand total of three Adivasi women academics in JNU.” And this was pre-reservation times.
Four decades later, Minz, who comes from the Oraon tribe (a prominent Scheduled Caste community), has now been appointed UNESCO Chair on Indigenous Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development. In this joint appointment between Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, Minz will co-chair the position alongside Amy Parent, a member of the Nisga’s Nation in British Columbia and an indigenous scholar specialising in language, land, health and education within her community. Read more.
Latest news
LetsVenture rebrands to LVX to integrate private market offerings
LetsVenture, a platform for private market investments, has rebranded as LVX, bringing together its various business lines under a unified identity. The company hopes to broaden its offerings across the early- and growth-stage funding landscape, and to focus more actively on investor education and exit facilitation.
The platform will now operate through three segments: LVX Start, which facilitates early-stage investments; LVX Grow, which focuses on growth-stage capital raises and secondary transactions; and LVX School, an education-focused initiative for investors participating in private markets. Read more.
Funding news
Enrission India Capital invests in Uravu Labs to accelerate climate-tech innovation
Enrission India Capita has announced its latest investment in Uravu Labs, a climate-tech company that has developed an innovative technology to harness renewable energy to extract water directly from air.
Founded in 2019 and led by CEO and Co-Founder Swapnil Shrivastav, Uravu Labs uses proprietary liquid salts and renewable heat sources—such as solar, biomass, and industrial waste heat—to absorb and condense atmospheric moisture into mineral-rich water.
Clean Fanatics raises $2M in seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures
Clean Fanatics, a premium marketplace specialising in high-quality home services, has raised Rs 17 crore ($2 million) in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also saw participation from Blume Founders Fund, Let’s Ventures, Trica, TiE Angels, and other prominent angel investors.
The funds will be directed towards team expansion, technology enhancement, and scaling new verticals such as civil construction and home renovation.
Other news
Zoomcar unveils ‘ZoomPro’ to revolutionise fleet hosting
Zoomcar, a peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace, has rolled out ‘ZoomPro’, a B2B dashboard designed to enable large fleet partners to manage vehicles, pricing, and bookings with ease, without relying solely on the Zoomcar mobile app.
Some key features of ZoomPro offering for Fleet partners include a centralised view of bookings across fleets, multi-user access for streamlined operations, smart car reassignment with real-time availability, vehicle performance tracking and insights, and AI-driven pricing insights and recommendations.
(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)
Edited by Kanishk Singh
