India: Paytm Is Bringing In Sellers from AliExpress, AdStringO And FundsIndia Announce New Rounds

International Business Times: Paytm, which has recently forayed into online retailing business, is planning to bring in 1,00,000 sellers from Chinese e-tailer Alibaba’s online arm AliExpress to its platform from August. The Delhi-based company estimates its gross merchandise value (GMV) to increase by $1.5 billion from AliExpress businesses in the next six months. Paytm, originally a mobile payment services, has crossed $1.5 billion (about ₹9,600 crore) in GMV in the year ending April 2015.

The latest move by Patym is part of its major stakeholder Alibaba’s strategy to expand its business outside China. Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has 25 percent stake worth $650 million (about ₹4,160 crore) in One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm. Alibaba aims to garner a pie of lucrative $6 billion (₹38,400 crore) e-commerce market in India. Read the full article

TECHINASIA: AdStringO, a Mumbai-based software startup, today announced it raised US$350,000 in seed funding from Indian Angel Network. The investors in the round include Arihant Patni, Vishal Khare, and Viswanath Ramachandran. AdStringO is an endpoint compression software for enterprises like banks and insurance companies to on-board and service customers from rural areas. It has a team of field representatives who are mobile equipped to scan documents and upload images, audio, and video. The software can compress the files to one-tenth the size and works in low bandwidth areas. With AdStringO, the time taken to activate a bank account or pass a loan document can be reduced to merely four hours, where before it took anywhere from one week to one month. Read the full article

TECHINASIA: Financial services site FundsIndia announced today that it raised US$11 million in series C led by asset management firm Faering Capital. Existing investors Foundation Capital and Inventus Capital Partners also participated in this round. The fresh funding will be used for marketing. It will also be used to enhance its service offering, especially using mobile platforms. FundsIndia offers mutual funds from all asset management companies, stocks, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) from Bombay Stock Exchange, fixed deposit products from companies, Reliance MyGold Plan, and other services. It has tied up with 39 banks for online transaction facilities and claims to have customers from all over the country and abroad. Read the full article