Mobikwik To Raise Fresh Funds With $1 Billion Valuation

Few days back we reported that a recent RBI data has revealed that growth of digital payment startups like PayTM, Mobikwik and Freecharge have been spurred by demonetization. Seeing that factor investors are lining up to fund digital payment startups, and as PayTM recently raised whopping $1.4 billion from Softbank and Freecharge's parent company is already down for selling out itself its time for Mobikwik to become next unicorn of India.

According to a report by Techcrunch, Mobikwik's co-founder Upasana Taku confirmed that the company is in talks to raise $100 million--$150 million in a round that would value the company at more than $1 billion, making its entry to India's elite club of Unicorn Startups. Upasana hasn't revealed the investors that her startup is talking to, she however said that the startup would include one major strategic investor and a number of financial institutions.

The possible fund raise will happen in next couple of months and post raising funds Mobikwik plans to invest $45 million of the capital raised on growing user and merchant bases, and expand its current base of six offices to more than 20.

Founded in 2009 by Upasana Taku and Bipin Singh, Gurgaon-based Mobikwik has so far raised about $126.85M in 6 rounds from 9 investors including Sequoia Capital and Tree Line Asia, among others.

Paytm, on other hand, has raised over $2.5 billion from investors with valuation of about $7 billion, and is now second most valuable tech startup in India behind only Flipkart.

Both -- Mobikwik and Payt -- claims to have ridden the wave of demonetization. Mobikwik has registered userbase jumped from 25 million to 55 million, while its merchant base rose to 1.5 million from 250,000 before demonetization. While PaTM is momving to e-commerce segment due to Alibaba's influence MobiKwik, however, has ambitious target is to sustain only the mobile wallet growth and reach 100 million users and 10 million merchants in the next year.

In May 2016 Mobikwik began providing small loans to consumers as part of its service. The company launched its MobiKwik Lite mobile app in November 2016, designed for users of older 2G mobile networks and for those in areas with poor internet connectivity.

In 2014, MobiKwik had also won the mBillionth Award South Asia in the category of Mobile Business, for socially valuable contributions to South Asia's digital infrastructure.

Mobile Based Fintech Startup Eko Launches API for Innovative Payment and Financial Services

Eko, a leading mobile-based fintech company, today launched Domestic Money Remittance Service through API integration in partnership with 10 plus companies in mobile recharge, travel & ticketing domain. Some of the partner companies include UFX, The Services Online and Yahya Technologies. With this, the partner companies will plug in Eko’s API to leverage the platform for direct connectivity with NPCI, UIDAI, banks and aggregators. During a three-month beta testing phase, Eko has helped its partners process over Rs. 100 crore of remittances over these APIs.

Eko has released APIs for its domestic money transfer business which allows companies who have similar business models to plug in these APIs and extend the same to their channel partners. The APIs also allow development of innovative payment & financial services such as digital wallets, P2P transfers and in store & online payments.

Mr. Abhishek Sinha, Co-founder & CEO, Eko Financial Services said, "We would like the developer community to leverage Eko’s PPI license & framework of payment APIs and build their own innovative use-cases/products. This is really to further push the agenda of ‘Make in India’ and also contributing towards ‘India Stack’ which is trying to bridge the digital divide in our country."

Mr. Rahul Jain, Product Manager, Eko India Financial Services said, “This is yet another milestone for Eko in domestic money remittance service. Eko is emerging as the most preferred and convenient choice for domestic money remittance service. Our user experience is far superior to existing options and brings in more flexibility, trust and transparency over product & pricing. The API will further enhance UI/UX, making it win-win situation for both Eko and its partners. Together, we look forward to providing higher value to our customers."

Mr. Usman Faheed, Managing Director, UFX said, “As we at UFX believe in “Customers is First & always right” so our understanding on business growth is to fulfil their demands without delay. With Eko as our technology partner, we are sure that we will grow in multi-folds by providing innovative products, superior quality and trust to our channel. Both EKO and UFX are in similar lines in terms of our vision and mission which is the key to our partnership."

Mr. Harsh H Thacker, Managing Director, The Services Online said "Delivering innovative services and quality products in market with safety and confidentiality of transactions was the prime motto of the company which got boosted by joining hands with EKO which not only helped us to make business environment smoother but also allows flexibility for connecting services to our platform smoothly."

Eko is rapidly expanding its network and currently has more than 5000 agents across 13 states and 80 cities.

Founded in 2007, Gurugram (Gurgaon) headquartered Eko is India’s leading fintech company, which provides mobile money through its unique 2-factor authentication (2FA) technology. It is the only company globally that empowers customers to do secure financial transactions on their mobile phones, including basic feature phones, without installing any software on the phone or the SIM card. Eko’s platform has securely processed over $3 Million worth of transactions serving over 10 million customers, most of which are low / moderate income customers. In 2010, it was chosen amongst the 'NASSCOM EMERGE 50 – The League of Ten for 2010' list by NASSCOM, the Indian chamber of commerce, for "50 Emerging companies which are redefining the benchmark of excellence for the next generation of SMEs."

Few Payment Startups In India Are Vunerable And Could Risk Its Credit Card Users, Says Study

In an effort to save our precious time and effort and bag in some really amazing discounts, many of us have now switched to the online shopping sites for our shopping needs. For many of those for whom online shopping is a regular affair, here's something you need to know.

A recent study done by Fallible.co, a security firm working towards escalating the security of tech startups has made some shocking revelations. According to the study, many of the popular Indian startups whose services we avail online possess a potential credit card detail theft for the customers.

The study done by the security firm found vulnerabilities in the payment gateways of popular sites like Makemytrip, BookmyShow, Yatra, Swiggy, Voonik, Mobikwik, Foodpanda, Freecharge, Uber, Ola, Snapdeal, Redbus and Rupay.

According to Fallible.co, the study results in no way claims that these aforementioned startup's payment gateways are hacked or insecure, but it just means to stress that they are not up-to-date in their security measures and can be easily hacked. The security firm also further noted that any of the customer who has availed paying for the services on these startups through their credit cards, their details are now probably stolen.

Though the security firm did not present any valid proof for their claims but it does serve as a warning bell for credit card users on these startups website and mobile apps and the startups themselves. Though no proof was presented, Fallible.co did manage to provide an example of one of the traditional payment gateway certified by PCI DSS level 1 as being hacked. The thing to be noted is that the startup that makes use of this particular payment gateway has over 15 million transactions being processed on per month basis.

Another popular payment gateway that can be easily hacked using the ‘commodity grade gaming PC’ in only a week's time was also named by Fallible.co. According to them, every particular detail about the credit card can easily be stolen.

The security firm also had a piece of advice for people who have already used their credit cards on the aforementioned startups. The firm warned the users to keep a close check on their credit card's usage and report any vulnerability they see as soon possible. It also noted that the hackers might not make use of the stolen information immediately but might plan to do so gradually over a period of time.

According to the firm, people should switch from credit cards to debit cards as they require a PIN and an OTP and hence are more safer.

[Update] Full credit card leak issue details

In the year 2015, Abhishek Anand, co-founder, Fallible.co had revealed that almost 70 percent of the technology driven startups that they had investigated were easily vulnerable to hacking. These included some of the big names like Zomato, HomeShop18, Peppertap and Ola etc. Anand also divulged that out of the seventeen startups that they contacted in order to share the hacking vulnerabilities details with them, only two willingly offered bug bounty benefits.

Few Payment Startups In India Are Vunerable And Could Risk Its Credit Card Users, Says Study

In an effort to save our precious time and effort and bag in some really amazing discounts, many of us have now switched to the online shopping sites for our shopping needs. For many of those for whom online shopping is a regular affair, here's something you need to know.

A recent study done by Fallible.co, a security firm working towards escalating the security of tech startups has made some shocking revelations. According to the study, many of the popular Indian startups whose services we avail online possess a potential credit card detail theft for the customers.

The study done by the security firm found vulnerabilities in the payment gateways of popular sites like Makemytrip, BookmyShow, Yatra, Swiggy, Voonik, Mobikwik, Foodpanda, Freecharge, Uber, Ola, Snapdeal, Redbus and Rupay.

According to Fallible.co, the study results in no way claims that these aforementioned startup's payment gateways are hacked or insecure, but it just means to stress that they are not up-to-date in their security measures and can be easily hacked. The security firm also further noted that any of the customer who has availed paying for the services on these startups through their credit cards, their details are now probably stolen.

Though the security firm did not present any valid proof for their claims but it does serve as a warning bell for credit card users on these startups website and mobile apps and the startups themselves. Though no proof was presented, Fallible.co did manage to provide an example of one of the traditional payment gateway certified by PCI DSS level 1 as being hacked. The thing to be noted is that the startup that makes use of this particular payment gateway has over 15 million transactions being processed on per month basis.

Another popular payment gateway that can be easily hacked using the ‘commodity grade gaming PC’ in only a week's time was also named by Fallible.co. According to them, every particular detail about the credit card can easily be stolen.

The security firm also had a piece of advice for people who have already used their credit cards on the aforementioned startups. The firm warned the users to keep a close check on their credit card's usage and report any vulnerability they see as soon possible. It also noted that the hackers might not make use of the stolen information immediately but might plan to do so gradually over a period of time.

According to the firm, people should switch from credit cards to debit cards as they require a PIN and an OTP and hence are more safer.

[Update] Full credit card leak issue details

In the year 2015, Abhishek Anand, co-founder, Fallible.co had revealed that almost 70 percent of the technology driven startups that they had investigated were easily vulnerable to hacking. These included some of the big names like Zomato, HomeShop18, Peppertap and Ola etc. Anand also divulged that out of the seventeen startups that they contacted in order to share the hacking vulnerabilities details with them, only two willingly offered bug bounty benefits.

JusPay,Mobile payments startup ,Raises Rs 40 crore from Accel Partners and other

Mobile payments startup, Juspay, has raised Rs 40 crore (approx $5.8Mn) in series A round of funding by VC firm Accel Partners and Bookmyshow founders.

Juspay stated that the funds will be used for the product development. As per a leading media publication, The deal values three-year old Juspay, which also counts India Value Fund partner and former Network18 CEO Haresh Chawla as an angel investor, at over Rs 200 crore. Accel has picked up about 20% stake in the company.

Juspay was founded, in 2012 by Vimal Kumar and Ramanathan RV, with a vision to enable the Bn people in India with secure 1-click payments on mobile. The mobile payments company’s technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets & cards. It also helps merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay’s client include companies like Amazon India, Snapdeal, Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, Yatra, Swiggy, Freecharge, Foodpanda, and Jabong.

The mobile payments company's technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets and cards, besides also helping merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay, which has about 30 workers, has seen the number of transactions on its platform increase to 600,000-700,000 a day now from less than 100,000 a year ago. The platform started operations with redBus and Snapdeal as clients, and now has two products - express check out and one-click browser check out .

 

JusPay,Mobile payments startup ,Raises Rs 40 crore from Accel Partners and other

Mobile payments startup, Juspay, has raised Rs 40 crore (approx $5.8Mn) in series A round of funding by VC firm Accel Partners and Bookmyshow founders.

Juspay stated that the funds will be used for the product development. As per a leading media publication, The deal values three-year old Juspay, which also counts India Value Fund partner and former Network18 CEO Haresh Chawla as an angel investor, at over Rs 200 crore. Accel has picked up about 20% stake in the company.

Juspay was founded, in 2012 by Vimal Kumar and Ramanathan RV, with a vision to enable the Bn people in India with secure 1-click payments on mobile. The mobile payments company’s technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets & cards. It also helps merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay’s client include companies like Amazon India, Snapdeal, Bookmyshow, Makemytrip, Yatra, Swiggy, Freecharge, Foodpanda, and Jabong.

The mobile payments company's technology helps companies simplify payments by aggregating different services across net banking, wallets and cards, besides also helping merchants improve success rate of payments on the platforms.

Juspay, which has about 30 workers, has seen the number of transactions on its platform increase to 600,000-700,000 a day now from less than 100,000 a year ago. The platform started operations with redBus and Snapdeal as clients, and now has two products - express check out and one-click browser check out .