China’s Hellobike, Ant, and CATL Team Up to Reboot Urban Mobility with Robotaxis

In a bold stride toward redefining urban transportation, China's Hellobike has teamed up with Ant Group and CATL to launch a dedicated robotaxi venture. With an investment of over 3 billion yuan (approximately $417 million), this collaboration aims to go beyond autonomous vehicles, laying the foundation for a green, intelligent, and deeply integrated mobility ecosystem.

Founded in 2016 by Han Mei, Jiang Wei, Li Kaizhu, and Yang Lei, Hellobike—officially Hello TransTech—has rapidly evolved from a modest bike-sharing startup into a shared mobility powerhouse. Headquartered in Shanghai, the company initially caught attention with its focus on accessible and scalable bike services. Its acquisition by Youon Bike in 2017 didn’t slow its pace; instead, Hellobike expanded into e-bikes, carpooling, and ride-hailing—building the operational backbone that now supports its robotaxi ambitions.

So, what’s behind this high-octane trio?

• Hellobike contributes its deep operational know-how and user-facing mobility infrastructure.
• Ant Group injects cutting-edge digital technologies like AI, blockchain, and carbon credit tracking into the venture.
• CATL, the battery titan, powers the vision with its advanced energy solutions—including sodium-ion batteries and battery-swap innovation.

Their combined goal is a smart “vehicle-battery-cloud” system aimed at slashing 150,000 tons of carbon emissions annually while increasing operational efficiency by 30%. The first phase includes deploying 100,000 electric vehicles and 500 intelligent battery-swap cabinets across 20 cities, including Shanghai and Chengdu.

This isn’t just another autonomous driving experiment—it’s a blueprint for how fintech, clean energy, and shared mobility can converge to create scalable solutions for 21st-century cities. For markets like India watching from afar, the Hellobike model might offer inspiration for how homegrown mobility players and tech giants could team up to catalyze similar change.

Ant Financial-backed BAce Capital leads $7.5M Series B round in Lido Learning to expand its offering to Indian students

Lido Learning, an ed-tech startup focusing on live online tutorials, has just closed a $7.5M Series B round. The round is led by Ant Financial-backed BAce Capital, and completes the ed-tech startup’s overall funding at $10.5 million. Existing investors also participated in the round.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and with a growing number of parents exploring distance learning as an option for their children, Lido fills the crucial need for technology that connects expert teachers to students across the country. Launched in April 2019, Lido aims to solve the one-size fits all approach to education in India through live, small group, highly interactive, online tutorials led by expert tutors. Every student on Lido has a unique learning journey with 1:6 tutorials and customized homework, with their own academic mentor.

Within a year, Lido has built a rapidly growing customer base across all major cities while offering Math and Science tutorials for Classes 5-9 in ICSE and CBSE syllabus. With the new funding, Lido plans to build a presence in Tier II and Tier III towns to democratize high quality education across India; and expand into more curriculum focused subjects, as well as 21st-century skills like analytical thinking, critical reasoning, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

“The first time I met the Lido team, I realized this is not just another startup, but a strong team with a united vision to provide every Indian family with equal and better quality education that they deserve,” said Benny Chen, Managing Partner at BAce Capital. “In just a couple of months, Lido has built a community of students, tutors and parents leveraging its technology to make education more accessible, and improve the interaction between students and tutors significantly through measuring learning results."

“We are excited for this next stage of growth, as online tutorials are going to take off in a big way in India. With high-speed internet penetration, the tech infrastructure is ready; and as more students and parents experiment with online learning in the current pandemic, the customer mindset is ready“, said founder and CEO, Sahil Sheth. “At Lido, we want to make sure the online tutorial experience is significantly better than what you can get offline. That is why from day one we have been focused on building extreme personalization for every student’s needs, with AI and advanced analytics, while still keeping the fun of going to tuition classes with friends, and having a teacher in a small group format who motivates and coaches. Our vision is to build 250 million unique learning journeys for 250 million unique Indian students, and we are constantly striving to get there."

Lido is BAce Capital’s first ed-tech investment in India, as part of a strategy to continue investing in early stage companies in emerging economies, focusing on India and Southeast Asia.

“During the tough season of a global pandemic and in the years after, BAce is committed in supporting Lido to deliver the best quality tutoring services to Indian families.” said Chen.

Zomato Raises $150 Mn from Existing Investor Ant Financial

Online restaurant guide and food ordering platform Zomato on Friday said it has raised USD 150 million (over Rs 1,065 crore) from existing investor Ant Financial as part of a larger funding round.

According to a regulatory filing by Info Edge India, which is also an existing shareholder in Zomato, this transaction is at a pre-money valuation of USD 3 billion.

The investment is part of a larger funding round of up to USD 600 million, announced by Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal in December.

"We have raised USD 150 million from Ant Financial as a part of a larger round. Ant Financial has been a steadfast partner in our journey towards achieving market leadership in on-demand food delivery in India, and dining out globally," a Zomato spokesperson said in a statement.

The filing by Info Edge India said Zomato Media has signed a definitive agreement to undertake a primary fund raising of up to USD 150 million from its existing shareholder, Antfin Singapore Holding Pte Ltd, and/or any of its affiliates.

"...upon closing as a consequence of this fund raise, our shareholding in Zomato shall stand reduced to about 25.13 per cent on fully converted & diluted basis. The transaction values Zomato at a pre-money valuation of USD 3 billion," it added.

In December last year, Goyal had told PTI that Zomato is looking to raise USD 500-600 million by January 2020 or so. PTI AKT AKT

Women-Centric Social Network Healofy Raises $8 Mn from China's BabyTree

Bangalore-based Healofy, a women-centric content social network, has raised $8 million (~ ₹ 55 crore) in Series A round of funding led by BabyTree Group, a China's largest and most active maternity and child-focused (M&C) community platform, said the company in a press release.

BAce Capital, a fund led by Alibaba's affiliate Ant Financial Services Group, and Omidyar Network also participated in the funding round.

The startup, exactly a year ago, had raised $1 million from Omidyar Network in seed funding round.

The startup plans to invest the funds to further strengthen the product, engineering and data science teams and scale its machine learning and personalisation engine. 

So far, Healofy has raised a total of $11.1M in funding over four rounds including the latest one.

Established in September 2016, Healofy is addressing the growing demand among mothers and women in India as a whole for relatable and credible content on topics ranging from pregnancy to parenting.

Healofy has grown to become the largest women-centric online community in India. Healofy plans to use the funds to further strengthen the product, engineering and data science teams and scale its machine learning & personalization engines. It also intends to expand into e-commerce and additional content categories, including fashion, food and lifestyle.

"Healofy has rapidly established an active online community for women in India, and we are delighted to partner with them through this investment," said Huainan Wang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at BabyTree.

"There is huge potential in the she-economy and mobile social sector in India, and M&C social is where the two overlap. We have successfully leveraged engaging content, social features and online services to serve China's M&C community, and we are confident that Healofy can learn from our experience to drive ongoing growth of their platform," he said

Following the investment, BabyTree will share its experience in developing products, services and profitable business models to help Healofy increase share of the online M&C market in India.

"We are very excited to be partnering with our investors as we enter our next phase of growth," said Gaurav Aggarwal, Chief Executive Officer at Healofy. "Women
are the primary purchase decision makers in most Indian households. Our
data shows they are social and network-reliant in their decision
making, underlining the importance of building trust through a strong
network. To help them become comfortable with online transactions, it is
critical for the next set of e-commerce platforms to innovate and
provide an online shopping experience
similar to the offline world. BabyTree has demonstrated that highly
engaged networks can transition to highly profitable platforms, and we
look forward to diving deeper into their capabilities and knowhow."

BabyTree's investment in Healofy is its first investment in an online M&C platform outside of China, and an important part of its strategy to expand its presence in the global M&C family service industry.

Mr. Huainan Wang added, "This marks our first step outside of China, and we will continue to look for opportunities where we can leverage our expertise in fostering online M&C communities to support similar platforms in other high growth international markets."

About BAce Capital, it is a fund led by Ant Financial Services Group, formerly known as Alipay, an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group. Ant Financial is the highest valued fintech company in the world, and the world's most valuable unicorn (start-up) company, with a valuation of US$150 billion .

Zomato Raises Fresh Funding of $210 Mn from Alibaba's Ant Financials

Gurgaon-based restaurant discovery and food-delivery app, Zomato, has raised a fresh capital of $210 million from Alibaba's payment affiliate Ant Financial, which has already made an investment of $200 million in the company in February this year. The investment will be for a little over 10% stake in Zomato.

In May this year, IndianWeb2 first reported about the possibility of this funding round of Zomato. Zomato was reportedly in talks to raise another fresh $200 million from Alibaba after its February funding round.

In a stock exchange filing on Friday, Zomato's oldest backer Info Edge disclosed that it's ownership in the company will fall from 30.91% to 27.68% as a result of the fresh capital infusion from Alipay Singapore Holding Pte. Ltd or other affiliates of Ant Financial.

"We would like to bring to your knowledge that Zomato has signed a definitive agreement to undertake a primary fund raise of approximately USD 210 million from Alipay Singapore," said Info Edge in the filing.

The latest funding comes within a week after it was reported that Zomato is in process of launching its own digital payments and mobile wallet solution in order to prevent its users going out of its ecosystem while making payments online

Post this latest funding, Zomato is valued at around $2 billion, up from its valuation of $1.5 billion in its last fund-raise.

With this funding, Ant Financial, which already held 20-22% stake in Zomato, has now become the largest shareholder in the company securing largest share close to Info Edge's 27.68% stake post-dilution.

So far, Zomato has raised a total of $651 million in funding over 11 rounds including this one.

The fundraising for Zomato is likely to continue as its rival Swiggy is in talks to $500-700 million from Alibaba rival and WeChat application owner Tencent besides existing backer Naspers at a valuation of $2.5-3 billion, as ET reported last month.

Zomato has also held talks Ctrip, a largest online travel portal of China, to invest in the possible round of about $400 million. Both Zomato and its largest competitor Swiggy have also held talks with Softbank Vision Fund.

Source - Economic Times

Alibaba Invests $500 Mn In BigBasket and Zomato

In what could be seen as 'Twin' funding, Alibaba has led two financial rounds of India's two domestic startups -- Bigbasket and Zomato, reported Times of India.

As per regulatory filings Alibaba led a $300 million funding round in Bengaluru based online grocer Big Basket while its affiliate Ant Financial has invested $200 million in Gurugram-based food discovery and delivery app Zomato.

Post these two funding, Big Basket is now valued at $950 million while Zomato was valued at $1.1 billion, said the report. Although it is to be noted that last month a report by wall street giant Morgan Stanley’s research arm, Zomato has shot up its valuation to US $2.5 billio

Both -- Bigbasket and Zomato -- funding transactions saw significant secondary sale of shares executed by existing investors of Bigbasket and Zomato respectively.

In a filing made to the Bombay Stock Exchange, InfoEdge, which runs portals like Naukri.com, said it had divested $50 million in Zomato shares. Big Basket also saw its early investors liquidate around $80-100 million by part selling their stakes. Alibaba had recently picked up a $35 million stake in logistics startup Xpressbees, spun out of baby products retailer FirstCry.

As per documents sourced from business research platform Paper.Vc, Alibaba through Alibaba.com Singapore E Commerce has put $196 million in primary capital in the Bengaluru-based BigBasket with existing investors Abraaj Group, Sands Capital and IFC chipping in with the rest.

Hari Menon, co-founder and CEO of BigBasket said to TOI, "We are going to use this capital to go deeper in our existing markets. Our focus will be to aggressively grow over the coming months."

With this investments in place, China's Alibaba is now dominating India's startup space in payments, e-commerce, logistics and food-delivery.
Jack Ma calls it "iron triangle" of businesses in ecommerce (Paytm Mall, Bigbasket), payments (Paytm) and logistics (XpressBees), which can feed off each other.

Moreover, last month it was also reported that Alibaba, along with Paytm and UCWeb, is planning to launch an over the top (OTT) video streaming service in India soon.

The Zomato funding comes at time when the food delivery segment in India is heating up with new players like UberEats, Ola’s acquisition, for which Ola has committed to invest additional $200 million, to get the slice of food delivery business in India. And now, British food delivery unicorn startup Deliveroo entering the Indian market as well.

Alibaba Invests $500 Mn In BigBasket and Zomato

In what could be seen as 'Twin' funding, Alibaba has led two financial rounds of India's two domestic startups -- Bigbasket and Zomato, reported Times of India.

As per regulatory filings Alibaba led a $300 million funding round in Bengaluru based online grocer Big Basket while its affiliate Ant Financial has invested $200 million in Gurugram-based food discovery and delivery app Zomato.

Post these two funding, Big Basket is now valued at $950 million while Zomato was valued at $1.1 billion, said the report. Although it is to be noted that last month a report by wall street giant Morgan Stanley’s research arm, Zomato has shot up its valuation to US $2.5 billio

Both -- Bigbasket and Zomato -- funding transactions saw significant secondary sale of shares executed by existing investors of Bigbasket and Zomato respectively.

In a filing made to the Bombay Stock Exchange, InfoEdge, which runs portals like Naukri.com, said it had divested $50 million in Zomato shares. Big Basket also saw its early investors liquidate around $80-100 million by part selling their stakes. Alibaba had recently picked up a $35 million stake in logistics startup Xpressbees, spun out of baby products retailer FirstCry.

As per documents sourced from business research platform Paper.Vc, Alibaba through Alibaba.com Singapore E Commerce has put $196 million in primary capital in the Bengaluru-based BigBasket with existing investors Abraaj Group, Sands Capital and IFC chipping in with the rest.

Hari Menon, co-founder and CEO of BigBasket said to TOI, "We are going to use this capital to go deeper in our existing markets. Our focus will be to aggressively grow over the coming months."

With this investments in place, China's Alibaba is now dominating India's startup space in payments, e-commerce, logistics and food-delivery.
Jack Ma calls it "iron triangle" of businesses in ecommerce (Paytm Mall, Bigbasket), payments (Paytm) and logistics (XpressBees), which can feed off each other.

Moreover, last month it was also reported that Alibaba, along with Paytm and UCWeb, is planning to launch an over the top (OTT) video streaming service in India soon.

The Zomato funding comes at time when the food delivery segment in India is heating up with new players like UberEats, Ola’s acquisition, for which Ola has committed to invest additional $200 million, to get the slice of food delivery business in India. And now, British food delivery unicorn startup Deliveroo entering the Indian market as well.

Why Alibaba May Back Zomato in India

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding's payments affiliate Ant Financial is currently contemplating investing a whopping $200 million in Zomato Media, an India-based food tech company and international restaurant advertising platform.

Ever since the word about this "would-be" investment got out, people in the food tech world have been picking each other's brains about what made Alibaba go after an Indian food-delivery platform. A close scrutinisation of Ant Financial's recent investment habits does give us a little idea about what the Chinese ecommerce biggie is thinking.

According to Mint, Alibaba investing big bucks into Zomato can be considered another "move by Ant Financial to continue to follow Chinese tourists in south-east Asia." In August this year, the Ant decided to join hands with Yelp in the US so as to facilitate the restaurant payments of Chinese tourists' in the country. This move came close after Amazon in June announced about its plans to acquire Whole Foods.

Commenting on the deal brewing between Zomato and Ant, China Daily said that the Indian restaurant aggregator had sought financing from Ant. It further remarked that if the deal does go through it fits beautifully with Alibaba's recent purchase of a big stake in India's largest mobile wallet operator, Paytm.

The food delivery business in India, which is just a smaller part of Zomato's overall business, is very competitive and has even lower margins. In July, while Zomato did 3 million orders, its rival Swiggy claimed to have outdone Zomato by successfully completing 4 million orders. Swiggy is backed by Naspers, a South Africa media company, which also owns a big portion in China's Tencent Holdings.

The Ant-Zomato deal could end up valuing Zomato anywhere between $800 million and more than $1 billion. Starting its journey in 2008, Zomato is currently live in 24 countries and 10,000 cities. Two years ago, the platform raised funds from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Vy Capital. Established names like Sequoia Capital and Info Edge also find a place among the firm's institutional investors.

Keep watching this space to know if the Ant-Zomato deal goes through or not. Either way, we will keep you updated.

[Image: Entrackr]

Why Alibaba May Back Zomato in India

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding's payments affiliate Ant Financial is currently contemplating investing a whopping $200 million in Zomato Media, an India-based food tech company and international restaurant advertising platform.

Ever since the word about this "would-be" investment got out, people in the food tech world have been picking each other's brains about what made Alibaba go after an Indian food-delivery platform. A close scrutinisation of Ant Financial's recent investment habits does give us a little idea about what the Chinese ecommerce biggie is thinking.

According to Mint, Alibaba investing big bucks into Zomato can be considered another "move by Ant Financial to continue to follow Chinese tourists in south-east Asia." In August this year, the Ant decided to join hands with Yelp in the US so as to facilitate the restaurant payments of Chinese tourists' in the country. This move came close after Amazon in June announced about its plans to acquire Whole Foods.

Commenting on the deal brewing between Zomato and Ant, China Daily said that the Indian restaurant aggregator had sought financing from Ant. It further remarked that if the deal does go through it fits beautifully with Alibaba's recent purchase of a big stake in India's largest mobile wallet operator, Paytm.

The food delivery business in India, which is just a smaller part of Zomato's overall business, is very competitive and has even lower margins. In July, while Zomato did 3 million orders, its rival Swiggy claimed to have outdone Zomato by successfully completing 4 million orders. Swiggy is backed by Naspers, a South Africa media company, which also owns a big portion in China's Tencent Holdings.

The Ant-Zomato deal could end up valuing Zomato anywhere between $800 million and more than $1 billion. Starting its journey in 2008, Zomato is currently live in 24 countries and 10,000 cities. Two years ago, the platform raised funds from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Vy Capital. Established names like Sequoia Capital and Info Edge also find a place among the firm's institutional investors.

Keep watching this space to know if the Ant-Zomato deal goes through or not. Either way, we will keep you updated.

[Image: Entrackr]

Reliance Capital Sells 1% Stake In Paytm For Rs 275 Crore

Back in February, we reported how Anil Ambani's Reliance Capital was contemplating selling its 1 per cent shareholding in the Delhi NCR-based payment and commerce company Paytm to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. And now comes the news, that the deal has been inked.

Reliance Capital has reportedly sold its share in Paytm to Alibaba and its payments affiliate Ant Financial for a whopping amount of Rs 275 crores.

It is important to note here, that Reliance Group's financial services arm had spent just Rs 10 crore for this stake in Paytm. The company made this investment seven years ago in the year 2010 just ahead of the proposed IPO for Paytm parent company, One97 Communications, which was aborted at a later stage.

Reliance Capital, which is a constituent of CNX Nifty Junior and MSCI Global Small Cap Index, is a part of the Reliance Group. It is amongst India’s leading and most valuable financial services companies in the private sector. Over the last couple of months, the industry rumour mill was hot with rumours that the company is in talks with a lot of potential buyers for the sale of its 1 per cent share in Paytm. The partial sale of its stake ended up churning out over 25 times the gains for the ADAG Group firm.

Alibaba and Ant Financial's move to buy Reliance Capital's 1 per cent stake in Paytm is a well thought out move. The two companies together own a 40% stake in One 97 Communication, Paytm's parent company. The two had most recently hiked their stake in the online retail unit when Alibaba Group led a whopping $200 million round in Paytm E-commerce, which was recently demerged from One 97. Paytm E-commerce has been modelled after Alibaba's famous digital platform TMall.

Not only Alibaba and Ant Financial, but there are several other suitors in the industry which are vying for a secondary stake in Paytm's parent company One 97 Communications, which is currently valued at $4.8 billion. However, unfortunately, it is all talks and no action for them till now.

Prior to this, Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma had recently sold his 1 per cent holding in One97 Communications to raise about Rs 325 crore. The money has been put into the group's payments bank operations which are expected to commence by the end of this month.

Reliance Capital Sells 1% Stake In Paytm For Rs 275 Crore

Back in February, we reported how Anil Ambani's Reliance Capital was contemplating selling its 1 per cent shareholding in the Delhi NCR-based payment and commerce company Paytm to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. And now comes the news, that the deal has been inked.

Reliance Capital has reportedly sold its share in Paytm to Alibaba and its payments affiliate Ant Financial for a whopping amount of Rs 275 crores.

It is important to note here, that Reliance Group's financial services arm had spent just Rs 10 crore for this stake in Paytm. The company made this investment seven years ago in the year 2010 just ahead of the proposed IPO for Paytm parent company, One97 Communications, which was aborted at a later stage.

Reliance Capital, which is a constituent of CNX Nifty Junior and MSCI Global Small Cap Index, is a part of the Reliance Group. It is amongst India’s leading and most valuable financial services companies in the private sector. Over the last couple of months, the industry rumour mill was hot with rumours that the company is in talks with a lot of potential buyers for the sale of its 1 per cent share in Paytm. The partial sale of its stake ended up churning out over 25 times the gains for the ADAG Group firm.

Alibaba and Ant Financial's move to buy Reliance Capital's 1 per cent stake in Paytm is a well thought out move. The two companies together own a 40% stake in One 97 Communication, Paytm's parent company. The two had most recently hiked their stake in the online retail unit when Alibaba Group led a whopping $200 million round in Paytm E-commerce, which was recently demerged from One 97. Paytm E-commerce has been modelled after Alibaba's famous digital platform TMall.

Not only Alibaba and Ant Financial, but there are several other suitors in the industry which are vying for a secondary stake in Paytm's parent company One 97 Communications, which is currently valued at $4.8 billion. However, unfortunately, it is all talks and no action for them till now.

Prior to this, Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma had recently sold his 1 per cent holding in One97 Communications to raise about Rs 325 crore. The money has been put into the group's payments bank operations which are expected to commence by the end of this month.