Archive: October 6, 2021

Omega Seiki Mobility partners with Exicom for its lithium-ion batteries to provide environment friendly and long cycle life battery solutions

New Delhi, October 06, 2021: Omega Seiki Mobility Pvt. Ltd. (OSM), part of Anglian Omega Group of companies, today announced their partnership with Exicom Tele-systems for Lithium-ion batteries for OSM’s wide range of electric L5 cargo vehicles. Exicom Tele-systems is a 27 years old Indian Company, which is aligned with the thought of ‘Make-in-India’ with Omega Seiki Mobility.

Omega Seiki Mobility – a company strongly committed to an all-electric future; is a leading last-mile solution provider to many fleet & individual owners and is co-developing solutions with technology partners to make EV’s more affordable and reliable. Under this partnership, Exicom will be supplying its recently launched 10.8 kW fixed batteries that will give a range of 120km on a full charge and added features of real-time battery analytics, long cycle life, high environmental protection, and very rugged design.

This partnership also marks the commercial introduction of Exicom Tele-systems flagship BMS namely Exicom “MEXX” which has industry-leading features of safety, accuracy, SoX prediction algorithms, and many more which give users the desired performance and safety.

Speaking on the partnership with Exicom Tele- Systems Mr. Uday Narang, Founder and Chairman, Omega Seiki Mobility, said “OSM believes that the way to develop faster EV Vehicle Technology is through creating alliances. We are elated to partner with Exicom Tele systems as they share the same values as OSM, by creating Made-In-India and Made-for-India products. This partnership is giving new hopes for the future of the EV Ecosystem in India. The benefit of this technology is that Exicom Tele system Li-ion batteries are for all types of vehicles with technology that is global, cost which is affordable, a quality that is world-class”.

Mr. Anant Nahata, Managing Director, Exicom Group said “We are delighted to have this partnership with Omega Seiki and contribute to their electrification journey and sustainable last-mile operations. Exicom is the industry leader in providing battery and charging solutions for light electric vehicles and has integrated its latest 10.8 kW battery in the range of OSM’s delivery 3Ws. It will benefit all Indian customers by offering reliability and consistency of performance they are looking for.”

Exicom is supported by an in-house team of amazing R&D engineers for all our core markets who continuously strive to build state-of-the-art solutions for its customers and thus help accelerate the faster transition to a greener environment. The development efforts focus both on leading technologies, & incremental improvements of existing designs and always with an overall aim of increasing performance while reducing costs. Almost all of Exicom’s revenues are derived from in-house developed products. Exicom Group has a skill set in areas of power electronic design, firmware, mechanical & thermal design, systems engineering, customized solutions, battery design, and product validation.

Omega Seiki Mobility believes in creating sustainable mobility solutions with an integrated approach of connecting Automobiles and Society. The brand’s focus is to eventually create a clean ecosystem with eco-friendly, safe, and congestion-free mobility. OSM is one of India’s leading clean energy incubators and has become synonymous with India’s sustainability success. The electric vehicle manufacturing company aims to fast-track future mobility, with green energy at its core, by implementing data-driven, smart engineering.

Omega Seiki Mobility, which has its EV manufacturing plant in Faridabad, launched its first electric three-wheeler in the country in early 2020 and the company aims to become a complete mobility solutions provider in the EV market.

HID Global Opens Warehouse in Bangalore to Strengthen Base in India

Bangalore, India, October 6, 2021 ̶ HID Global, a worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions, today announced the opening of a warehouse in Bangalore to support the company’s strategic growth in the Security Issuance identity business in the region and support partner community. With this facility, HID Global is better positioned to serve the growing needs of the domestic market and create new jobs.

Located in the center of the business hub, local and regional customers will benefit from faster supply chain management, avoid the challenges of international logistic distribution, save on import duties and taxes costs.

“As the Indian market witnesses exponential growth in five years, the addition of a 16,000 sq. ft. warehouse will promote the expansion of the workforce, improve service level commitments, and grow partnerships in the community. We want to be part of the journey and contribute to the identity market by introducing the latest technologies with best practices locally,” said Wei Jin, Lee Regional Business Director, Secure Issuance APAC.

“With this opening, all Secure Issuance products for desktops, including FARGO® printers, consumables, and related accessories, will ship from Bangalore. The local warehouse at Bangalore will keep us closer to the market, serving our partners better and strengthen our position in India,” said Vishal R. Soni, Director for Secure Issuance, HID Global India.

India is the hub of HID Global’s 25,000 sq. ft. R&D center based in Chennai, which has grown tremendously over the past few years. The center provides solutions and services for physical and logical access, goID™ and cloud-based solutions, web, and mobile application development. The R&D center contributes significantly to HID Global’s strategic focus for cloud and mobile solutions and innovative industry-leading solutions implemented in more than 80 countries.

ICICI Bank launches contactless payment solution through iMobile Pay

Mumbai: ICICI Bank today announced the launch of a contactless payment service through its banking app, iMobile Pay, that enables customers to tap their smartphones to pay at POS (Point of Sale) machines of merchant outlets. The service offers improved convenience to over 1.5 crore debit and credit card customers of the Bank as they will no longer need to carry their cards for payments at retail stores. Based on the Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, the innovative payment service empowers customers to create digital versions of their physical ICICI Bank debit and credit cards on the iMobile Pay app. Using the digital cards, customers can initiate electronic payments at merchant outlets from NFC enabled Android smartphones by just waving their phone near a contactless POS device.

Mr. Sudipta Roy, Head- Unsecured Assets, ICICI Bank said, “We, at ICICI Bank, focus on technological innovations to offer unique, fast and convenient solutions to our customers. We were first to introduce ‘Tap to Pay’ facility five years ago by digitising cards and offering secured contactless payment through our digital wallet app, Pockets. Now we have extended this facility through our mobile app, iMobile Pay. This contactless mobile payment solution offers cashless payments to the Bank’s customers using just their smartphones, thereby eliminating the need to carry cash or debit and credit cards.

We believe, with ‘Tap to Pay’ payment solution, customers will experience enhanced convenience as it provides instant, safe and secure payments. Additionally, the solution offers enhanced security as the customer’s card details are not shared during the transaction process and are stored virtually in the Bank’s secure cloud server. We thank our partners Visa and Comviva who have enabled this collaboration. We will continue on our endeavour to improve cards payment experience for our customers through innovation and excellence with focus on safety and security.”

The facility of ‘Tap to Pay’ through iMobile Pay is now available on Visa cards and it will soon be activated on Mastercard cards too.

Mr. T. R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa said, “Contactless payments are becoming the go-to way of paying instantly and securely at merchant outlets, today accounting for 1 out of every 2 face-to-face Visa transactions in Asia Pacific. We are delighted to strengthen our strategic and innovation-focused partnership with ICICI Bank by enabling contactless payments on iMobile Pay banking app, embedding the ease of tapping to pay into the mobile banking experience for millions of Visa cardholders of the Bank.”

Mr. Srinivas Nidugondi, EVP and Chief Growth and Transformation Officer, Comviva, said, “We are thrilled to partner with ICICI Bank to modernize payments and evolve the digital landscape in India. As one of the world’s leading digital payment platform provider, Comviva is extremely excited to offer swift, secure and convenient payment experience to ICICI Bank customers. iMobile Pay ‘Tap to Pay’ will accelerate the growth of safe and hygienic contactless payments and contribute towards India’s growing digital economy.”

To avail this service, customers need to update the new version of the iMobile Pay app from Google Play Store on their NFC enabled smartphones of OS- Android 6 and above. Customers will have to do a one-time activation through iMobile Pay to start using the ‘Tap to Pay’ service and then make the payment securely and conveniently at retail stores. As per the RBI guidelines, customers can make payments upto Rs 5,000 per transaction with just tapping or waving the phone near the POS device. For transactions above Rs. 5,000, customers will have to enter their card PIN along with waving the phone near the POS device.

Customers can follow below given easy steps to avail the service:

1. One time activation:

• The customer has to login to iMobile Pay app and click on ‘Tap to Pay’ icon on the login page or ‘Shop’ section.
• Thereafter, the customer needs to select registered debit and credit cards to make a digital version and then click on ‘I Agree’ to accept the terms & conditions.
• The customers can create virtual cards against each of their ICICI Bank Visa credit and debit cards

2. Making a payment:

• Log in to iMobile Pay app and click on ‘Tap to Pay’ on login page or ‘Shop’ section
• Select a virtual Visa card to make the payment and wave or tap the phone near the NFC enabled POS device
• A message of ‘Payment initiated successfully’ appears on the phone confirming the transaction

For news and updates, visit www.icicibank.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ICICIBank

Unicommerce Emerging e-commerce segments 2021 Report:

Unicommerce Emerging e-commerce segments 2021 Report: 143% growth for Beauty and personal care segments and 119% e-commerce growth for Health and Pharma sectors in the first eight months of 2021

New Delhi, 6th October 2021: Unicommerce‌‌, India’s‌ ‌largest‌ ‌e-commerce‌ ‌focused‌ ‌supply-chain‌ ‌SaaS‌ ‌technology‌ ‌platform, unveiled a first-ever industry trends report on the emerging categories that are changing the dynamics of the e-commerce retail industry. The report titled ‘Emerging e-commerce segments 2021’ highlights segments that had a negligible online presence before the pandemic but have swiftly grown in the last 18 months to increase their overall e-commerce share and become emerging e-commerce segments.

The report further throws light on interesting trends across new segments such as FMCG, Beauty & personal care, Health & Pharma, Home Decor & Furniture, and Sports and Fitness equipment. It also details out the sub-segments under these categories, highlighting how these new segments are growing their e-commerce presence, along with the drivers for growth potential in the coming years. The report analyses e-commerce trends for the period of January-August 2021 and January-August-2020 with a sample size of over 40 Mn orders.

Speaking on the launch of the report Kapil Makhija, CEO, Unicommerce said “The pandemic has altered consumer buying patterns and accelerated the adoption of technology amongst brands at a faster pace. Rising e-commerce adoption has led to the birth of many new segments in the e-commerce industry that were insignificant until last year. Our aim with this report is to showcase the evolving trends in these emerging categories along with detailing the growth trends of sub-segments under each category. An important finding from the report is the phenomenal growth of brand websites and marketplaces and how it’s impacting all these emerging segments. We received an overwhelming response to our previous reports and we are confident that this report will also help e-tailers in understanding the emerging segments and adapt well to the changing dynamics of the e-commerce industry. We are committed to helping e-tailers in their e-commerce journey and this report helps in furthering our mission.”

Some of the key findings of the reports are:

FMCG becoming an integral part of e-commerce

FMCG is one segment that started making news right from the beginning of lockdown in March 2020. The FMCG e-commerce sector saw a major spike at the beginning of lockdown and it was considered as a temporary phenomenon given the conventional nature of the industry, and consumers were expected to go back to old ways of shopping after some time. Today even after 18 months, the FMCG segment continues to grow at a rapid pace. The changing consumer behavior supported with increasing e-commerce adoption across the country has led to an exorbitant order volume growth of 74% for the FMCG segment for the period of January-August 2021, over the corresponding period a year ago.

The FMCG segment can be broadly divided into two categories and both segments reported almost similar growth as the overall category: The Food and beverages segment reported 72% order volume growth in January-August 2021 as compared to the same period last year, while the organic food segment reported a 74% rise in order volume during the same period.

Beauty & Personal care growing exponentially

The beauty and Personal care segment was growing rapidly even before the pandemic. The pandemic further accelerated the growth of the industry and the new age digital companies were able to efficiently meet the rising consumer demand with automated supply-chain and digitizations across various cycles of the operation. An increasing number of consumers are now buying beauty and personal care products online, the segment reported 143% order volume growth, highest amongst all the emerging segments.

The segment can be broadly divided into three key segments: The first one is Face care which has always been the most important sub-segment with the widest range of product portfolio and is the real growth driver for the segment with 179% order volume growth in January-August 2021 as compared to the same period last year. The second segment is Haircare, which has garnered a lot of consumer attention and has reported a strong order volume growth of 91% during the above-mentioned time frame. The third segment is Body care, while it’s an important segment it reported a slower order volume growth of 48% in January-August 2021 vs January-August 2020

Beauty and personal care is an interesting category where marketplaces are the real growth drivers with 163% order volume growth for the period of January-August 2021 as compared to the same period last year. One of the key reasons that marketplaces are driving faster growth over brand websites is the gaining popularity and stronghold of platforms such as Nykaa within the Beauty and personal care segment. Myntra has also started extensively focusing on the beauty segments in the last year, with beauty-focused sale events and promotions. Interestingly, brand websites are also catching up with 141% order volume growth. This showcase the rising acceptance of new D2C brands amongst consumers

Health & Pharma: Sector with immense growth potential

It’s a category that is growing exponentially, especially at a time when there is a major focus on building strength and immunity in people. Health and pharma sector continues to grow and reported 119% order volume growth in Jan-Aug 2021 as compared to the same period last year.

Nutraceutical is a subsegment in Health and Pharma that has garnered a lot of attention with its strong growth in the last one year. It includes dietary supplements and herbal powders and medicines with vitamins, minerals, and plants with specific medicinal properties to improve immunity and give necessary nutrition to the body. The nutraceutical segment reported 143% order volume growth from January-August 2021 as compared to the same period last year. They have been in high demand as consumers are focused on building strong immunity against COVID-19.

Home Decor & Furniture and Sports & Fitness Equipments

E-commerce is also helping the unorganized categories such as- home decor and sports & fitness industry to become part of organized retail and its getting the necessary attention from consumers. The majority of sales in these sectors is still a part of unorganized retail with small shop owners in local market.

The home decor industry growth reported an order volume growth of 51% with a significant GMV growth of 108% leading to the highest average order value growth of 38%. Due to work from home, a lot of consumers ordered office furniture last year and it’s one of the key factors driving strong growth for the home decor and furniture segment.

Sports goods refer to equipment and clothes that are required for participating in sports. It’s a small industry and at a nascent stage of the e-commerce business and it holds immense growth potential with 66% order volume growth, along with muted GMV growth of 18%. This sharp decline in Average order volume can be attributed to limited outdoor activity and an increasing number of consumers ordering essentials for workouts at home.

Tier-I cities are the traditional trendsetter of Emerging categories

It’s usually observed that every sector in e-commerce has a trickle-down effect. Any new sector first starts gaining traction in the metropolitan and Tier I cities, and later Tier II and Tier III cities gain traction. This has been observed in mature categories such as Fashion and Electronics. Before the pandemic, the emerging categories used to hold a very small part of the overall e-commerce business, with limited consumers, therefore the market share divide between Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III cities was almost equal. In the first eight months of 2020, Tier I cities contributed 39% market share, followed by 38% share of Tier III cities and 23% of Tier II cities. However, the market shares changed significantly in 2021, with 161% growth of Tier I cities contributing 52% of the overall market share of the emerging segments. Followed by 85% growth of TierII cities contributing 19% of the market share and 75% growth of Tier III cities with 29% market share.

Unicommerce is uniquely positioned to provide e-commerce supply chain technology cloud solutions to help industry players of all sizes to manage their business efficiently. Unicommerce has worked with over 15000 retail brands across sectors and in the last one year, the company has onboarded 15,000+ clients across sectors such as FMCG, Beauty and Personal Care, Health and pharma, Agriculture, Homedecor, Nutraceutical Fashion, Electronics among others. Over the last few years, Unicommerce has been able to establish itself as a preferred choice of companies that are establishing their e-commerce operations and its sector-agnostic platform can easily be adjusted based on the specific requirements of any industry. Unicommerce platform processes over 20% of India’s e-commerce volume, manages over 1500 stores and 6000+ warehouses, and processes over 1 Mn orders daily amounting to USD 5 Bn+ GMV annually.

About Unicommerce

Unicommerce eSolutions is India’s leading e-commerce focused supply chain SaaS platform. Established nine years ago, Unicommerce is a market leader processing over 20% of e-commerce volumes in the country. The company has disrupted the e-commerce and retail industry with clients like Myntra, Jack Jones, Adidas, Vero Moda, Forever New, Marico, Netmeds, Healthkart, Mamaearth, mCaffeine, Sugar Cosmetics, Lakme and Nivea, and many more. The company also started working with clients in international operations with clients in Middle-east, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The company has been profitable for over four years and aims to further deepen its presence in the country and expand aggressively in international markets.

Employee benefits & insurtech platform ‘Pazcare’ raises $3.5 million in seed round led by BEENEXT & 3one4 Capital

Bengaluru, October 6, 2021: Employee benefits and insurtech platform Pazcare on Wednesday announced that it raised $3.5 million (INR 25 crore) as part of its seed round led by BEENEXT, along with 3one4 Capital, and other investors. The round also witnessed the participation of angel investors, including Kunal Shah (CRED), Ashneer Grover (BharatPe), Aprameya R (Koo), Zishaan Hayath (Toppr), and existing investors Ashish Hemrajani (BookMyShow) and Haresh Chawla(True North), among other marquee investors.

Founded in 2020 by Sanchit Malik and Manish Mishra in Bengaluru, Pazcare is redefining the way employee benefits are managed in India. It enables real-time management of employee benefits and streamlines them in one place. For Pazcare, which is growing 100% month-on-month, these funds will help propel their growth among new categories of customers, accelerating product development and hiring across all functions.

India has over 1 million employers looking to provide benefits such as group term life insurance, health insurance, doctor consultations, accident coverage and other health & financial benefits to their 100 million+ employees. The employee benefits market in the country is a multi-billion dollar industry growing 18% year-on-year. Most employers in the ecosystem are looking for a novel solution to reform legacy issues pertaining to policy & claims management and having to liaise with multiple vendors.

“Through our world-class tech platform, we are trying to create a real-time user experience, which makes it extremely easy for the employer as well as the employee in personalising and managing their benefits. Over the next three years, we aim to be a leading full-stack employee benefits marketplace and platform that touches the lives of over 3 million employees,” said Sanchit Malik, the co-founder and CEO of Pazcare.

“We are glad to collaborate with Sanchit and Manish, second-time founders who are disrupting the fragmented employee benefits space in India in terms of ease of use. We are excited to partner with Pazcare and its global applicability as they demonstrate success with their customers with high NPS,” said Dirk Van Quaquebeke, Managing Partner at BEENEXT.

“Sanchit and Manish have a very product-led, unique take on how employee benefits need to be managed and delivered. They have shown amazing vision and product execution so far and we are incredibly excited to partner with them on their growth journey as they scale up this platform,” said Anurag Ramdasan, Partner, 3one4 Capital.

Within a span of just seven months, Pazcare has achieved significant growth and has already partnered with over 150 employers, including Betterplace, Vedantu, WazirX, Payback, Mamaearth, and Toppr etc., touching the lives of over 80,000 users currently. The company intends to onboard over 500 corporates over the next two quarters.

Pazcare provides employers and their employees with flexible and personalised benefits, thereby transforming the employer-employee relationship at scale. Among the host of benefits that Pazcare provides are benefits and insurance management, mental health solutions, virtual doctor consultations, comprehensive blood tests, etc. Pazcare’s employer dashboard and employee app make managing the benefits extremely convenient. Over the coming years, Pazcare also aims to widen its offerings beyond healthcare and be one-stop-shop for all kinds of employee benefits.

The current round of institutional seed investment in Pazcare comes close on the heels of a pre-seed round in June 2021, when the company raised undisclosed funding from angel investors and leading Indian entrepreneurs, including Ashish Hemrajani and Parikshit Dhar (BookMyShow), Haresh Chawla(True North) and Mohit Garg (MindTickle), some of whom have also doubled down on this round.