Reliance launches new brand🧃; Byju’s-BCCI partnership to end soon🏏; Slice receives PPI licence💳
Reliance launches new brand 'Independence', Byju’s-BCCI jersey partnership may end soon, Slice receives PPI licence, Funding Deals and more.
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Reliance launches new brand on Adani’s turf🧃
Reliance Consumer Products Ltd, the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) arm of Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, on Thursday launched its packaged goods brand Independence in Gujarat, entering the home turf of rival Adani Wilmar Ltd.
Independence will sell a wide range of products under several categories, including staples, processed foods and other daily essentials such as sugar, dal, biscuits, sunflower and groundnut oil, besan, wheat flour and bottled water. Its products will be available at kirana stores in select markets in the state for now.
Apart from Adani Wilmar, the brand will wrestle for market share with the likes of Tata Consumer Products Ltd, Patanjali Foods and ITC Ltd.
Reliance has also tried to acquire local brands to drive scale and presence across FMCG categories.
Byju’s-BCCI jersey partnership may end soon🏏
Byju's is seeking to exit its jersey sponsorship deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as the edtech company works toward rationalising its media expenditure.
Byju's has told the BCCI that it wants to call time on the sponsorship deal, the sources said. However, the company might continue as a sponsor until March 2023.
After Byju’s original deal term with the BCCI expired in March 2022, it extended the deal with the BCCI until 2023-end, for $55 million.
New-age businesses have been minimising advertising spending since fresh funding has dried up due to the global economic downturn.
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GalaxEye Space, a spacetech startup focused on earth observation, has raised $3.5 million in a seed round of funding led by Speciale Invest, a deep-tech venture capital firm.
Card fintech company Slice receives prepaid pay licence from RBI💳
While going for card-based fintech isn’t getting any easier, Slice, which was affected by the RBI’s ban on loading of PPIs through credit lines earlier this year, has been making moves in the payments space and has now received a PPI licence from the banking regulator.
Through the licence, Slice will now look to open minimum-KYC accounts for teenagers, in a bid to widen its user base, and double down on offerings for its waitlisted customers, sources said.
Slice added UPI payments in May to cater to its waitlisted customers. At the time, the company said it had 10 million waitlisted customers. It also plans to issue cards to this new cohort of teen users.
Since the RBI’s order, Slice has unbundled payments and credit as two separate business lines. However, the core business for Slice continues to be credit.
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