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<ul><li><keyword id="1552189" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pine-labs" source="Orion">Pine Labs</keyword>’ former CTO Sanjeev Kumar will now head the research and development (R&amp;D) vertical.</li><li>Kalagara has spent 12 years working with PayPal, three years at Flipkart and about 8 years working in the USA.</li><li>Pine Labs is expected to file the preliminary paperwork for its public listing by the end of October.</li></ul>Payments company Pine Labs, which is expected to file for its initial public offering (IPO) soon, has appointed former Flipkart executive <keyword id="12347953" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="phanimohan-kalagara" source="Orion">Phanimohan Kalagara</keyword> as its chief technology officer (CTO). Sanjeev Kumar, former CTO of Pine Labs, will now move to a new role within the company and head the research and development (R&amp;D) vertical. Phanimohan Kalagara has over two decades of experience in the field of technology having worked in ecommerce, financial technology, and computer-aided design &amp; computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) industries. He also has expertise in emerging technologies like virtual reality. “With Pine Labs, I see a massive opportunity to make a substantial difference to the future of merchant commerce in Asia. Looking forward to being part of this team that is set to shift the fintech landscape in Asia," Kalagara said in a press note. He has previously worked as the senior vice president of product and engineering at Flipkart, senior director of engineering PayPal and director of software development at Advanced Interactive Systems. He spent 12 years working with PayPal and three years at Flipkart. “We have made several new appointments in the past one year to bolster our technology capabilities. Phani [Kalagara] comes with a wealth of experience in product and engineering and is the right man to lead our Technology team during this exciting phase of growth for the company,” Amrish Rau, chief executive of Pine Labs, said. Pine Labs is expected to file the preliminary paperwork for its public listing by the end of October. The company is expected to list in Nasdaq listing in the US and plans to raise over a billion dollars from this issue, as per media <a href="https://www.livemint.com/market/ipo/pine-labs-may-file-for-nearly-1-bn-nasdaq-ipo-by-oct-end-11633888624007.html">reports</a>. The company has reportedly hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to manage the proposed IPO. The Noida-based fintech startup has raised $838 million to date from marquee investors like IIFL Asset Management, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Neuberger Berman Loan Advisers Holdings and more. Pine Labs had raised $100 million from Invesco Developing Markets Fund in September, and it is now valued at $3 billion. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/enterprise/news/facebook-plans-to-rebrand-itself-to-a-metaverse-company-with-a-new-name/articleshow/87150303.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" style="">Facebook plans to rebrand itself to a metaverse company with a new name</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/whatsapp-rolls-out-redesigned-icons-working-on-done-and-undo-buttons-for-media-editing/articleshow/87131523.cms" style="">WhatsApp rolls out redesigned icons, working on “Done” and “Undo” buttons for media editing</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/facebook-tests-new-feature-that-will-allow-users-to-cross-post-their-videos-and-photos-on-instagram/articleshow/87131315.cms" style="">Facebook tests new feature that will allow users to cross-post their videos and photos on Instagram</a>

IPO-bound Pine Labs appoints former Flipkart, PayPal exec Phanimohan Kalagara as CTO

New Delhi, Mar 3 () Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs on Tuesday said it has appointed Amrish Rau as its chief executive officer.Rau brings fintech, entrepreneurial and corporate experience to his new role as the chief executive officer (CEO) and replaces Vicky Bindra, a statement said.Bindra, after a two-year stint as the CEO, is moving back to San Francisco and will continue to be an advisor to the company supporting strategic initiatives, it added.Rau's startup - Citrus Pay, which was funded by Sequoia India, was acquired by PayU in 2016 in one of the largest fintech acquisitions. He has also served as the managing director for First Data Asia, NCR and Siemens Nixdorf. "I am excited to welcome Amrish to the Pine Labs family. With Amrish's ability to innovate, seek out options with channels and customers we believe Pine Labs can be a true global commerce platform," Pine Labs Executive Chairman Lokvir Kapoor said.Pine Labs has evolved into offering payment acceptance technology, stored value products, in-store consumer credit and other merchant solutions in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. It processes payments of USD 30 billion per year and serves about 1.4 lakh merchants across about 4.5 lakh network points.Its key investors are Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal, Sofina and Mastercard. SR RUJ

Pine Labs appoints Amrish Rau as CEO

Acouple of years into the COVID-19 pandemic, a California state flag appeared on a front porch near my parents' home in suburban Austin. The whole thing felt a little too on the nose, as if one household was trying to sum up all of the city's recent changes — the tidal wave of coastal dwellers, the skyrocketing home values, the maddening traffic — with a single banner.The flag is gone now, and so is the gold rush. Home prices and asking rents in Austin are down significantly from a year ago. Local Zillow listings are littered with price cuts. Real-estate agents who once doubled as bouncers at crowded open houses are now hiring ice-cream trucks to lure prospective buyers into properties.The sudden shift in Austin's real-estate market can be read in two ways. Look at it through one lens, and it's a cautionary tale in which FOMO-filled buyers irrationally bid up home prices, setting the stage for an inevitable bust. Look at it another way, though, and it's a success story of a growing city: Real-estate developers saw all those millennials and out-of-towners clamoring for a piece of Austin and answered the call, building tens of thousands of new homes in just a few years. The construction boom, combined with spiking mortgage rates, kept prices from spiraling further out of control. In other words, Econ 101 happened.This isn't a bust in the traditional sense — pretty much anyone who owned a home in Austin before 2020 is substantially richer today than they were a few years ago. But as other pandemic Zoomtowns continue to see increases in prices and rents, Austin stands alone in its change of fortune. The reversal has meant short-term pain for homebuyers who bought near the peak, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/home-sellers-summer-disappointment-mortgage-rates-house-prices-real-estate-2024-5">disappointed sellers</a> who now expect smaller windfalls, and homebuilders who are eager to offload their inventory. But letting some air out of the bubble will turn out to be a great thing for Austin in the long run. The slowdown, experts told me, is a sign of a healthy market, an example of how cities can dodge a true housing crisis by allowing developers to do what they do best: build, build, build.Housing in Austin has been through so many extreme distortions that nobody really knows what "normal" even means anymore. Long before offices shuttered and remote workers started pining for more space, Austin residents were sounding the alarm on the city's rising costs. New construction practically ground to a halt after the financial crisis in 2008, but as the economy recovered, the city's population exploded. No <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2020-census-fastest-growing-and-shrinking-metro-areas-2021-8">major metropolitan area in the US grew faster</a> between 2010 and 2020 than Austin, where the number of residents surged by 33% over the decade. Real-estate developers ramped up construction to meet the demand, but they couldn't get enough shovels in the ground to keep prices in check. The median cost of a house in the Austin metro area grew by 63% during that time, Zillow found, reaching $323,000 at the cusp of the COVID-19 crisis.Then the real boom began. To well-paid workers unmoored from their desks during the pandemic, Austin <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moved-from-san-francisco-to-texas-for-work-life-balance-2023-8">looked like paradise</a>: lower taxes, cheaper homes, and a thriving business ecosystem. Big-name tech firms like Oracle, Facebook, and Google endorsed the city, as did "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/manosphere-widening-ideological-gap-between-young-men-women-gender-genz-2024-2">manosphere</a>" figureheads such as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-austin-joe-rogan-biggest-boom-town-50-years-2021-2">Elon Musk</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/celebrities-moved-to-texas-from-california-new-york-reasons-why-2024-8">Joe Rogan</a>, who urged others to follow in their footsteps. Austin was once again the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.austinchamber.com/blog/05-09-2023-migration">fastest-growing large metro</a> from 2020 to 2022, according to the Census Bureau, surging in population by 5.3%, or more than 120,000 people.As people flocked to the city, home prices exploded. I don't need to tell you that Austin got really expensive really fast, but the raw numbers are still stunning: The typical home price rose by nearly 56% in just a couple of years, Zillow found, surpassing $500,000 by the start of 2023. Homebuyers <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moving-to-austin-buy-a-home-texas-tech-jobs-2023-10">got swept up in bidding wars</a>, reasoning that even if the price ended up being steep, it would only climb higher if they waited. Things got so crazy that one large-scale builder started accepting bids for homes on its website, sight unseen. "That never happens," Keith Hughes, an Austin-based executive at the housing-research firm Zonda, told me. "It was that kind of frothy."I'd already moved out of Texas by that point, but I worried from afar that my hometown would meet the same fate as San Francisco, the poster child of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/economic-inequality-housing-shortage-causes-2023-1">housing shortage and all its associated woes</a>. I feared that Austin would become known as a playground for the rich, a city where displacement and mind-boggling home prices marred the natural beauty that once made it such a draw. In my hand-wringing, though, I'd overlooked one crucial detail: Texas is better at building homes than almost anywhere else in the country.Austin-area builders immediately raced to meet the new demand, securing permits for about <a target="_blank" href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AUST448BP1FH">2,600 new single-family homes</a> in April 2021 alone, a 45% jump from the same month in 2019. All told, plans for more than 130,000 new housing units of all kinds were approved from 2020 through 2022. Once the paperwork goes through, it can take anywhere from a few months to a couple of years for homes to hit the market, so for a while, it didn't feel like any relief was on the way. That couldn't have been further from the truth.Consider the following trend: In the spring of 2022, more than 3,000 new listings were hitting the market each month, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.parcllabs.com/">Parcl Labs</a>, a real-estate-analytics company, found. By the following spring, the figure had surpassed 5,000. All told, Austin's housing stock has ballooned by more than 76,000 units since 2020, an 8.34% increase that includes single-family homes, condos, and townhomes. That's to say nothing of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rent-decline-fall-apartment-housing-market-landlords-tenant-lease-construction-2023-3">roughly 40,000 new rental apartments</a> that also opened their doors during that time. Now compare Austin's building blitz with San Francisco, which has added a measly 14,000 homes over the same period and grew its housing stock by less than 1%."It's pretty amazing when you think about it," Jason Lewris, a cofounder of Parcl Labs, told me. Considering the size of the Austin market, moving the stock of homes by nearly 10% is a colossal feat. "These are huge housing markets," Lewris added. "Austin wasn't small in 2019."Thousands of new homes weren't the only things pumping the brakes on Austin's runaway market. Mortgage rates reached record lows during the thick of the pandemic in 2021, making it easy for homebuyers to stretch their budgets by borrowing a lot of money for cheap. Then in spring 2022, the Federal Reserve started hiking interest rates to bring down inflation, and mortgage rates leaped. In October 2023, the rate for a typical home loan hit a 20-year high, making the prospect of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-mistake-buyers-sellers-mortgage-rates-time-to-buy-2024-3">buying</a> — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/denmark-mortgage-rates-lock-in-effect-home-buying-selling-easier-2024-5">or selling, for that matter</a> — a lot less appealing. More expensive loans forced buyers to consider the possibility of paying several hundred dollars more each month for the same home, and many decided to play the waiting game instead. The result is homes are sitting on the market longer. These days, "there's no sense of urgency," Doreen Sidney, a local real-estate agent, told me. "There's no rush. The home that you saw two weeks ago, it'll still be there."The job market cooled as companies pulled back on hiring or laid off workers in the face of higher borrowing rates. Migration to Austin also slowed considerably. Between July 2022 and July 2023, more people moved out of the city's main county than moved in for the first time in two decades. Some departed for the suburbs or cheaper Texas locales like San Antonio — 20% of new San Antonians in 2022 had <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2023/09/14/austin-sanantonio-migration-data-2023.html">moved from Austin</a>. Others, including some tech workers from places such as California, decided Austin wasn't all it was cracked up to be and moved on. "Austin is where ambition goes to die," one disappointed founder and angel investor <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-workers-moved-to-austin-regrets-2023-8">told Business Insider</a> last year.There was no shortage of ambition among Austin's homebuilders, however. Their efforts may have been focused on chasing all the profit that comes with a crush of demand, but they ended up doing what hopeful buyers had been praying for — bringing down home prices. The typical home price in Austin was down almost 4% in July compared with the same month in 2023, according to the Freddie Mac House Price Index, while prices across the US were up more than 4%. On the one hand, a single-digit drop like Austin's "is not a huge number," Sean Kelly-Rand, a Boston lender who works with home developers, told me, adding: "On the other hand, that's massive." Overall, Austin home prices are down more than 14% from the peak in 2022, according to Freddie Mac, and more than 18% according to Zillow.Homeowners and -builders don't like to see price drops — they want to watch their wealth balloon and reap the rewards of a market that's running red hot. But just like a collapse in prices is bad news for everyone, an unsustainable run-up in home values is also unhealthy. Companies don't want to move to a place where workers can't afford to live. Wannabe sellers might choose to stay in homes they've outgrown if they can't find anything else within their budget. Add up <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-doom-loop-fix-american-city-housing-transit-2023-7">all these problems and you get San Francisco</a>. A crash in home prices would've also been bad news for Austin, sure, but that's not what's going on here. The vast majority of homeowners in Austin are still wealthier than they were before all this craziness, and local homebuilders made plenty of hay while the sun was shining. For that reason, Austin's slowdown isn't a doom signal — it's a dazzling success."It's nice to see the positive developments in Austin," Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow, told me. "Austin should be a model for the rest of the country in terms of allowing builders to meet demand."Austin's long-standing advantages were on full display during the building boom: Sun Belt cities in the lower half of the US have traditionally been more permissive of growth, which enabled developers to mobilize when they saw the first signs of Austin's unprecedented spike in home values. And most of the new construction was concentrated in the suburbs, where there was plenty of space to build outward. Not all cities have the luxury of ample space, but they do have the power to cut red tape and make it easier to build more types of housing. When developers can get projects approved more quickly, they're more responsive to buyer demand, which prevents prices from getting out of hand. Relaxing the zoning laws, which tell builders what they can and can't build, allows developers to get creative and add multiple housing units to lots that might have traditionally allowed only single-family homes.Nobody watching the Austin market should be having flashbacks to the Great Recession. The market's cooling is less a disturbing sign of cratering demand and more a hopeful hint that the city can adapt to people's desire to call it home."I think Austin is going to be fine in the medium to long run," Jenny Schuetz, a housing-policy expert at the Brookings Institution, told me. "The fundamentals of Austin's economy are great, and it's going to continue to grow with jobs and population over time." In fact, easing the housing crunch will probably add to Austin's allure, which has always been at least partly predicated on being cheaper than the big cities on the coasts. The next challenge will be to avoid forfeiting this success — homebuilding is prone to cycles of booms and busts, and developers are already pulling back on new construction as they try to get their already-built units off their books. Home prices in Austin may be down year over year today, but it's not like there's a glut of empty homes like there was around the country in 2008. If building in Austin dries up, prices may very well resume their rise.Kelly-Rand, the Boston lender, thought about making inroads in Austin a few years ago when the building renaissance was in full swing. But ultimately, he decided not to — buyers' behavior was too frenzied for his taste, and prices seemed likely to come down when all those homes on the horizon actually got built. Nevertheless, Kelly-Rand told me he's still a believer in the Texas capital."Long term, I think Austin will be in an even better position," Kelly-Rand told me. "I think the right thing is happening in that developers are meeting demand."<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/james-rodriguez">James Rodriguez</a> is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

How Austin's real-estate boom went bust

<ul><li><keyword id="3827754" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pinelabs" source="Orion">PineLabs</keyword> on Wednesday announced an investment in <keyword id="3465176" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="mosambee" source="Orion">Mosambee</keyword>.</li><li>This investment will now value Mosambee at upwards of $100 million.</li><li>Mosambee has a base of 1 million SME merchants and various government departments.</li></ul>Initial public offering (IPO)-bound fintech startup PineLabs on Wednesday announced an investment in Mosambee — an end-to-end payment solution provider in India — in exchange for a majority stake. This investment will now value Mosambee at upwards of $100 million, PineLabs has revealed. The leadership team at Mosambee will continue to operate independently and serve the needs of their customers spread across diverse industries. Founded in 2008 by Alok Arora, Bhushan Thaker and Sameer Chugh, Mosambee is a payment solution company that caters to both online and offline merchants in India and six other countries. The company claims to have a base of 1 million small, medium enterprises (SME) merchants and various government departments, who use Mosambee’s solutions to digitise their payment collections. “With the extensive reach of Pine Labs and their portfolio companies, we aim to continue to deliver strong profitability and breakthrough solutions to our clients,” Mosambee’s cofounder Chugh said. According to business intelligence platform Crunchbase, Mosambee has raised over $2.5 million prior to this. It is backed by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) Venture Capital and Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund. Earlier this year, Mosambee announced the acquisition of Cashless Technologies that runs Benow, a ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ startup. “Ever since its founding, Mosambee has made tremendous progress in elevating the merchant experience through cutting-edge fintech solutions. They were a natural fit for us due to our shared purpose of making innovative fintech products accessible to all and driving forward the digital payment revolution in India,” Amrish Rau, the chief executive officer (CEO) of PineLabs, said in a statement. Founded in 1998 by Lokvir Kapoor, Pine Labs is a merchant payment solutions firm that enables businesses to accept online and offline digital retail transactions. The company powers over 250,000 merchants across over 675,000 merchant network touchpoints in India and Southeast Asia. Pine Labs serves prominent large, mid-sized and small merchants across Asia and the Middle East, including Apple, Starbucks Corp, McDonald's Corp and more. It is planning on hitting the public market soon, and filed for a initial public offering (IPO) in the US in January this year. The company is reportedly planning to raise half a billion dollars from the public market, at a valuation of $6-7 billion. SEE ALSO <a class="tout-title-link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/infosys-icici-bank-vedanta-among-stocks-to-watch-out-for-on-april-13/slidelist/90811799.cms">Infosys, ICICI Bank, Vedanta among stocks to watch out for on April 13</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/telecom/news/recommended-spectrum-prices-are-backed-by-scientific-calculations-says-trai-chief-vaghela/articleshow/90812587.cms">Recommended spectrum prices are backed by scientific calculations, says Trai chief Vaghela</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/retail-inflation-rose-to-6-95-in-march-government-data/articleshow/90802182.cms">Retail inflation rises to 6.95% in March on costlier food items</a>

IPO-bound PineLabs just added a million merchants to its kitty with its latest acquisition

<ul><li>White Oak Capital’s wholly owned subsidiary GPL Finance and Investments had acquired YES Asset Management Company last year.</li><li>On Thursday, the subsidiary received the nod from regulator <keyword id="35210" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sebi" source="Orion">SEBI</keyword> to become the sponsor of YES MF.</li><li>With this, India will now have four new fund houses coming up soon -- Groww, Zerodha, Samco MF and White Oak Capital.</li></ul>Wealth management firm White Oak Capital has received approval from India’s market regulator to get started with the <keyword id="598742" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="mutual-fund-business" source="Orion">mutual fund business</keyword> after it acquired YES Mutual Fund (MF) last year. In September 2020, the investment management firm had bought YES MF from YES Bank, which was struggling with bad loans and raising fresh capital. The transaction will be completed in the next few weeks. GPL Finance and Investments, White Oak Capital’s wholly owned subsidiary, received Securities and Exchange Board of India’s nod to become the sponsor to the newly owned AMC. Sponsor can be seen as the promoter of the associate company. YES MF is the smallest amongst the 44 fund houses in the ₹36 trillion industry with ₹81.45 crore average assets under management (AUM) as of June quarter, according to the Association of Mutual Funds in India. Commenting on the development, <keyword id="1603586" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="prashant-khemka" source="Orion">Prashant Khemka</keyword>, founder at White Oak Capital said, “We have instituted a performance-first culture at our firm, earning the confidence of investors globally who have entrusted us with assets of over ₹40,000 crores in the past four years. We are excited about offering our investment expertise to retail investors across the country.” Khemka is the former chief investment officer (CIO) and lead portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Aashish P Somaiyaa, who will be taking over as chief executive officer of the AMC said, “We continue to build a seasoned team of industry professionals to provide best in class investment products to retail investors. We will look forward to covering India well beyond the metro cities including B30 locations, to achieve higher inclusivity through omni-channel presence across physical, virtual and digital channels.” B30 cities include tier II and tier III cities. Last week, Samco MF, an online discount broker, announced its entry into the mutual fund business. With this, India will now have four new fund houses coming up soon -- Groww, Zerodha, Samco MF and White Oak Capital. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/ipo-bound-pine-labs-raises-another-100-million/articleshow/86262592.cms">IPO-bound Pine Labs raises another $100 million</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/banks/news/indias-bad-bank-get-government-nod-green-lights-narcl-with-30600-crore-guarantee/articleshow/86262155.cms">India's bad bank get government nod — green lights NARCL with ₹30,600 crore guarantee</a>

Wealth management firm White Oak Capital gets SEBI’s nod to enter mutual fund business

<ul><li><keyword id="184851" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="glance" source="Orion">Glance</keyword> is not an app, rather it’s a built-in feature of Android phones that pushes personalised content on lock screen.</li><li>Glance is a brainchild of InMobi, India’s first digital company to be valued over a billion dollars.</li><li>Glance has over 140 million daily active users already due to its strong presence in sub-$250 smartphones in India.</li></ul><keyword id="10926" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="reliance" source="Orion">Reliance</keyword> has penetrated almost every aspect of our lives — whether it's through their telecom and internet services, ecommerce and retail network, oil and gas business or its bundle of digital services. The Mukesh Ambani-led company has now reportedly set its eyes on tapping into a wide array of Android phones as well, with a<a href="https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/reliance-industries-in-talks-to-buy-stake-in-google-backed-glance-inmobi-report-11632745302124.html"> $300 million</a> investment in Glance. This may be an interesting development, especially when Reliance plans to launch its own Android smartphone <keyword id="11900973" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="jiophone-next" source="Orion">JioPhone Next</keyword>. Glance is not an app, rather it’s a built-in feature of Android phones. When users that have Glance enabled on their phones, wake their Android smartphone up, they must have noticed a catchy image with a news headline. Well, that’s the first and most basic glimpse of what Glance does. Once they swipe right, they can watch Lives as well as short video content, see photo stories and play games. It provides personalised content on the lockscreen, across categories like news, entertainment, tech, sports, fashion and travel. The said content is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and is available in different languages — English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and more. Glance has a strong presence in the Android ecosystem Glance claims to have over 150 million daily active users. The reason for this massive growth has been its strong presence in the sub-$250 smartphone market, which makes up 80% of sales in India, says a Counterpoint Research <a href="https://www.counterpointresearch.com/glance-active-user-base-india/">report </a>published in September this year. About 79% of Glance users in India use phones priced below the $250 mark. Over 45% of Glance’s traffic comes from users using smartphones ranging between $150-250 and 12% are from users using phones below $100 price point. Users using phones priced between $100-$150 and above $250 make up another 21% each of the company’s user base. <div type="image" title="Take a deeper look at the meteoric rise of Glance that may have caught Mukesh Ambani’s eye" msid="86579557" hostid="261"></div> The research also revealed that 70% of newly-launched smartphones in India, in the sub-$250 segment now, come pre-installed with the platform. According to a previous press note issued by the company in December 2020, it had over 115 million daily active users who spent 25 minutes per day consuming content on Glance. Monetisation is still underworks Besides organic growth and strong alliance with Google, Glance has also relied on mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;A) to build on its growth with more users and offerings. Over the last two year, it has acquired Indian short-video <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/advertising/ad-tech/news/inmobis-glance-to-boost-its-regional-content-after-acquiring-roposo/articleshow/72220702.cms">content platform Roposo in 2019</a> and e-commerce platform Shop101 in 2021. Global expansion and monetisation of Glance has been on the agenda for InMobi this year. “The course to monetisation is important. In 2021, we will spend a lot of time trying to figure out the right experiences in monetisation,” founder and chief executive (CEO) Naveen Tewari previously <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/inmobi-to-test-monetisation-for-content-platform-glance-this-year/articleshow/80390045.cms">told</a> Economic Times in January 2021. The company was also considering leveraging 3 million creators on Roposo to monitise the short video app, either by connecting them to brands or setting up social commerce on the platform. Glance provides distribution and scale for its content business and Roposo provides it with fresh user-generated content, Tewari had emphasised. Reliance set to launch its Android phone next month Ambani has stressed that the <keyword id="4792220" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="jiophone" source="Orion">JioPhone</keyword> Next will be amongst the most affordable smartphones in India and globally. The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/jiophone-next-smartphone-announced-check-out-features-launch-date/articleshow/83806398.cms">JioPhone Next will be available</a> for purchase from October 15, delayed from the previous deadline of September 10. The price of the smartphone has not been revealed yet, but it is expected to cost ₹3,499. Reliance has plans to take it beyond India once it is rolled out in India. Glance is a brainchild of InMobi, India’s first digital company to be valued over a billion dollars. Glance, on a standalone basis, too is valued at over a billion dollars and is backed by global tech giant Google. While InMobi was founded by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal in 2007, Glance was introduced to the world in 2019. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/pine-labs-is-betting-on-these-two-segments-to-make-it-worth-6-billion-dollars/articleshow/86559235.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" style="">Nearly as old as Google, Pine Labs is betting on these two segments to make it worth $6 billion</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/tesla-boss-elon-musk-becomes-the-richest-man-in-the-world-yet-again/slidelist/86552402.cms" style="">Tesla boss Elon Musk becomes the richest man in the world, yet again</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/ofbusiness-was-the-only-woman-led-startup-that-entered-the-unicorn-club-this-year/articleshow/86511076.cms">OfBusiness was the only woman led startup that entered the unicorn club this year</a>

Take a deeper look at the meteoric rise of Glance that may have caught Mukesh Ambani’s eye

<keyword id="6354814" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="prime-minister-Narendra-Modi">Prime Minister Narendra Modi</keyword>’s aggressive push for cashless society is showing some results post <keyword id="3315394" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="demonetisation">demonetisation</keyword> as digital transactions have gone up by 25% since demonetisation announcement. 
 Not only in organised retail, <keyword id="6358577" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Digital-Payments">digital payments</keyword> saw an increase from roadside merchants as well, who are shifting to digital payments. 
 
"From month on month, now we are checking weekly growth data which is showing a jump of around 5 per cent per week, which is a very healthy number. The average value of each transaction which had slipped to Rs 2,000 from Rs 2,700 before November 8 has now stabilised at that level," Lokvir Kapoor, chief executive officer at Pine Labs, which facilitates installation of point of sale (PoS) terminals at merchant outlets, told ET. 
 
Since note ban, Pine Labs has been processing around 1.1-1.2 million transactions on an average per day. Before demonetisation, the figure was nearly 5 lakh on an average weekday. 
 
"We did 2 million transactions last Sunday; this Sunday being Christmas, we saw 2.2 million transactions on our network which is a healthy 10 per cent jump," Kapoor told ET. 
 
"We are mostly prevalent in smaller cities like Jaipur and Chandigarh and are operating 10,500 PoS terminals presently. Now, our call centre is flooded with queries from merchants who wish to accept digital payments; we received an order of 3,000 terminals over the past one month," Jitendra Gupta, managing director, PayU India, told ET. 
 
India has around 15 lakh PoS terminals, almost 74 crore (740 million) debit cards and 2.7 crore (27 million) credit cards. This data does not refer to wallets which are a parallel network. 
 
These mobile wallets too have started reaping the benefits of demonetisation. 
 
Card processing companies and banks have upgraded their bandwidth to process the rising number of payments. 
 
"I believe it will take around 18-24 months of consistent push from the authorities in order to bring about a behavioural shift in Indians. The habit of making payments through cash has to change so that people even make card transactions for small purchases," Manish Patel, founder of mSwipe, which also works with roadside stalls, told ET.

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