PhonePe’s new savings product: Digital payments platform PhonePe has introduced a savings product ‘Liquid Fund’ on its app to help its users grow their savings by earning higher short term FD-like returns with the ease and liquidity of a Savings Account. Users can begin saving with as low as Rs.500/- in a completely secure and paperless process in less than 5 minutes. Liquid Funds are the best way for new users to experience Mutual Funds as the money is invested in safer instruments such as bank and government securities. Customers can withdraw their money instantly – anytime and from anywhere*. There is no lock-in period and the customer does not have to maintain a minimum balance. The best part is that customers can watch their money grow every day.
redBus has introduced bikes into rPool, its in-app ride sharing service that was launched recently. Starting with Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, this new service allows office goers to avail and offer rides in their personal two-wheelers, while commuting between home and their workplace. Like car pool, bike pool, emerges from the need to develop sustainable solutions for the burgeoning traffic congestion problems that most Indian cities endure on an everyday basis. The concept also allows young office-goers, savings on fuel as they share costs by offering their pillion seats to a co-rider.
JLL Spark, Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm of JLL, has invested an undisclosed amount in India’s largest flex-space technology platform, Qdesq. Through this investment, the proptech focused fund has marked its first India focused investment. Founded in 2015 by Paras Arora and Lavesh Bhandari, Qdesq is a digital platform that allows companies to transact flexible workspaces, managed workplaces, virtual offices and individual offices. The company lists India’s largest inventory of available flex spaces in near real time and currently transacts one desk every 20 minutes on behalf of corporates looking to avoid locking themselves into long term leases. At present, Qdesq has approximately 2,200 centres, lists over 500,000 desks in near real time, covering the top 35 Indian cities.
e-commerce marketplace Flipkart has massively expanded the reach of its pick-up operations in 800 additional cities and towns in the last six months — an initiative that will help bring thousands of new sellers, MSMEs, domestic manufacturers and artisans into the e-commerce fold. ‘The Reach Project’ by Flipkart was initiated in February to rapidly scale up pick-up capabilities and to cater to seller requests in hitherto unserviceable parts of the country. More than 60,000 sellers from these cities and towns are set to benefit from this expansion, especially as it comes ahead of the crucial festive season. The states that will see the biggest impact from this initiative include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Tripura. In total, the new PIN code additions represent an almost 40% increase in serviceable cities pan-India. Particularly in Tier III and beyond cities and towns, the Reach Project has increased operations in serviceable PIN codes by almost 50%.
