Grab.in joins ONDC🛒, Ola halted EV production🛑, Oracle’s India cloud targets 3X growth💸

Grab.in joins ONDC, Ola Electric halted EV production, Oracle’s India cloud unit targets triple-digit growth, Funding Deals and more.

Aug 01, 2022

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Logistics startup Grab.in integrates with the government’s ONDC🛒

Reliance Retail-owned Grab.in, a last-mile logistics provider, has integrated its platform with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) network. It will support intracity hyperlocal deliveries, said Pratish Sanghvi, a cofounder.

Founded in 2014, Grab.in caters to restaurants, online grocers, offline and online retail, ecommerce platforms, kirana stores and pharmacies. It was acquired by Reliance Industries in 2019 and is now housed under Reliance Retail, which has a stake of around 80% in it.

While Reliance Retail-backed Dunzo is already on the ONDC as a logistics partner, Grab's entry marks Reliance's formal entry into the much-hyped network.

ONDC is being pitched as a disruptor to break the dominance of ecommerce companies Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart.

Ola Electric halted EV production over ‘inventory pile-up’🛵

Ola Electric suspended production of its electric scooters at its Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu plant for nearly a week mainly because it had too much inventory.

Ola Electric has about 4,000 scooters piled up at the plant, which it calls ‘Future Factory’. According to a source, when Ola Electric stopped the line on July 21, it produced only 100 units a day, against its current capacity of 600.

Ola started trial production at the Tamil Nadu plant in October and regular production in December, so it has only been around eight months since production started in earnest.

The company did not clarify its daily production and booking numbers. It did not elaborate on the duration of the suspension but maintained it was brief.

Hot Shorts⚡

Rural-focused agri-fintech startup Jai Kisan raised $50 million (Rs 390 crore) from GMO Venture Partners, Yara Growth Ventures and Mirae Asset, among others, in a combination of equity and debt of the first tranche of its ongoing Series B round.
Logicserve Digital, one of India's largest integrated digital marketing agencies, has raised Rs 80 crore from Florintree Advisors.

Funding Deals - Explained

Oracle’s India cloud unit targets triple-digit growth in next few years💸

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's (OCI) India unit is targeting to grow in triple digits for the next couple of years, on the back of the country’s economic growth and increased spending of the middle-class on technology, top executives said.

It is also betting big on the financial sector as well as government projects to drive this growth.

“The Indian economy is forecast to expand nearly 8% this year. It is by far above every other economy in the world. If you factor in the size of the economy and also the growth of the middle class, it's getting wealthier,” said Garrett Ilg, president of Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle.

This comes as Oracle’s India business has been a strong growth engine for the company – with the OCI unit clocking over 100% growth for the third year in succession and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business also more than doubling for each of the last two years.