Entrepreneurship News and Headlines
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Rapido officially launched Ownly, a standalone food‑delivery app in Bengaluru on March 3, 2026, backed by roughly $15 million (₹125 cr) from Nexus Venture Partners. The platform targets the 70,000 FSSAI‑licensed restaurants absent from Swiggy and Zomato, offering a zero‑commission model that could bring average meal prices down from about $4.80 (₹400) to the $1.20 (₹100) range typical of street‑food orders. Leveraging its extensive bike‑taxi fleet, Rapido aims to cut logistics costs and avoid the steep platform fees that have risen nearly 800% on incumbent apps since 2023. Early data shows 2,300 restaurants onboarded, with 15% new to online ordering, signalling a potential shift in India’s $85 billion food‑services market.
Dream Sports, the parent of fantasy‑sports platform Dream11, announced it will launch a stockbroking service called Dream Street. The brokerage, aimed at retail investors, builds on the company’s recent wealth‑management app Dream Money and will tap the large Dream11 user...
Ramraj Cotton, the Indian ethnic‑wear label famed for modernising the dhoti, is gearing its operations for a public listing by 2030. Founder K R Nagarajan aims for a ₹10,000 crore (≈$1.2 billion) turnover before the IPO, while rolling out professional systems, senior hires and...
Terrestrial Bio, the microneedle vaccine patch pioneer originally founded as Vaxess Technologies, announced a $50 million Series B financing round to shift its focus from vaccines to GLP‑1 peptide delivery. The capital, led by a consortium of biotech investors, will fund clinical...
Trayd, a New York‑based construction‑tech startup, closed a $10 million Series A led by White Star Capital, bringing its total financing to $17 million. The SaaS platform automates payroll, HR, compliance and labor‑cost tracking for specialty trade contractors, shrinking a 14‑hour manual process...
Sherweb secured a $125 million minority investment from Investissement Québec to fund its next growth phase. The capital will expand its cloud marketplace and MSP enablement platform, building on the recent MicroWarehouse acquisition that gave it over 7,500 partners in North America...
Fintech startup Glimpse announced a $35 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from 8VC and Y Combinator. The company, a Y Combinator graduate, pivoted from an Airbnb product‑placement venture to an AI‑driven platform that automates retailer...
Swedish deep‑tech startup Renasens closed a €10 million seed round (about $11 million) to build a pilot plant in Borås, Sweden, for its waterless, chemical‑free textile recycling platform. The technology uses supercritical carbon dioxide to dissolve polymer chains, enabling the separation of...
Norwegian legal‑tech startup Newcode secured a seed round of over €5.7 million (≈$6.2 million) backed by Alliance VC, The LegalTech Fund and other investors. With this capital, the company will establish an Irish hub in Dublin, hiring 30 employees in its first...
London‑based Eunice, which builds AI‑driven due‑diligence infrastructure for regulated markets, closed an $8 million seed and pre‑seed round led by Moonfire Ventures and Speedinvest. The funding will accelerate development of its institutional‑grade AI agents and broaden coverage beyond digital assets into...
Italian‑based Subbyx has closed a €30 million (≈$33 million) Series A round, bringing its total financing to €50 million (≈$55 million). The round, led by Systemiq Capital with Azimut participation and venture debt from Flashpoint, will fund the rollout of its AI‑powered Subbyx Builder platform...
Swiss startup Pave Space has secured $40 million in seed funding to build a 20‑metric‑ton orbital transfer vehicle capable of moving up to five metric tons from low‑Earth orbit to medium, geostationary or lunar trajectories in less than a day....
India’s leading digital commercial‑vehicle marketplace 91trucks has acquired Motorfloor and Trucksfloor, the two platforms operated by Bhubaneswar‑based Indiyanet. The deal merges two of the country’s top‑traffic sites, creating a more comprehensive buying and selling experience for trucks, buses and three‑wheelers....
Berlin‑based Cellbricks Therapeutics secured €10 million (≈$11 million) in funding, including a €7 million seed round and over €3 million of non‑dilutive capital, to advance its light‑based biofabrication platform. The company aims to commercialise vascularised human tissue implants for complex wound healing and breast...
Notch Ltd., a former specialty insurer turned AI startup, announced a $30 million Series A round to accelerate its AI operating system for regulated sectors, especially insurance, across the United States. The platform provides transparent, auditable AI agents that automate both front‑office...
Airbase announced its emergence from stealth with a $5 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, joined by Squadra Ventures and Founders You Should Know. The startup aims to automate the Federal Communications Commission’s outdated, manual spectrum‑allocation workflow that relies on...
Fintech VibePay, a UK peer‑to‑peer payment app backed by Nick Candy’s Candy Ventures, entered liquidation after investors withdrew funding. The company, founded in 2019 by Luke Massie, had raised over £12 million (approximately $15 million) and aimed to enable open‑banking account‑to‑account transfers...
Dare Okoudjou, a Benin‑born telecom engineer, founded MFS Africa—now rebranded as Onafriq—to build the continent’s underlying payments rail. The network interconnects more than 500 million mobile wallets and 200 million bank accounts across 40 African nations, turning a fragmented ecosystem into a...
Spendesk, the AI‑powered spend‑management platform, announced the hiring of Quentin Vigneau as Chief Product Officer and Alan Wright as Chief Technical Officer. The appointments come as the company celebrates its first profitable year and launches a new finance category, Spend...
Starting a business with the end in mind forces founders to choose the right legal entity, anticipate ownership changes, and embed exit‑oriented provisions from day one. The article compares sole proprietorships, LLCs, C‑corps and S‑corps, highlighting how each impacts tax...
Fintech startup Kiwi has named payments veteran Sumeet Basrani as its new Chief Business Officer, bolstering the firm’s leadership as it pivots toward mass‑scale credit distribution on India’s UPI network. Basrani arrives with more than 15 years of experience at...
Thread Factory, a B2B fashion‑supply platform, secured a pre‑seed round of about $180,000, led by AJVC. The funding will boost its technology stack, expand the team, and grow its retailer‑manufacturer network across India. The startup reports an annual recurring revenue...
Togo’s tech ecosystem gained global attention when Lomé‑based super app Gozem closed a $30 million Series B round in February 2025, briefly placing the country among Africa’s top five startup funding destinations. The nation now hosts over 300 registered startups that have...
Amazon Leo announced a plan to double its launch cadence, targeting 20 missions in the second year after completing 11 launches in the first year. The company already operates more than 200 satellites and has hundreds of flight‑ready units stored...
Fullife Healthcare, the parent of Fast&Up, secured Rs 300 crore (approximately $36 million) in a Series D round led by Elev8 Venture Partners, marking the investor’s first foray into the direct‑to‑consumer segment. The capital will fund brand acceleration, new product lines in digestive...
Cricketer Riyan Parag has invested roughly ₹2 crore (about $240,000) in industrial‑tech startup Proxgy, joining backers Ajinkya Rahane, Nikhil Kamath, Peyush Bansal and Suhail Sameer. Proxgy, founded in 2020, creates IoT‑enabled hardware and AI‑driven software to boost safety and efficiency for blue‑collar workers. The fresh capital...
Yazu Hospitality, a design‑led restaurant group founded in 2019, now runs eight outlets across five Indian cities, with its flagship Yazu brand contributing 85% of revenue. The company projects a 20% revenue increase next fiscal year, targeting Rs 60 crore (~$7.2 million) from...
Thai AI group Amity announced a $100 million Series D round, the biggest generative‑AI raise in Southeast Asia, bringing its total capital to about $160 million. The funding backs a revenue run‑rate that has topped $100 million, driven largely by European operations, and fuels...
Communications strategist Rachel Abad has launched Looped‑in, a behaviour‑change consultancy aimed at embedding audience insight, concept testing and behavioural frameworks into communications planning. Abad brings 15 years of experience working with major Australian organisations such as the Level Crossing Removal...
Co‑working operators in Lagos are being forced to relocate because soaring electricity costs, driven by the new service‑based tariff, are eroding margins. In Band A zones, a ₦200,000‑₦400,000 (≈$435‑$870) monthly bill can be cut to about ₦250,000 (≈$543) by moving to...
The merger of Australian restaurant‑tech firms Mr Yum and me&u defied early scepticism by surviving a grueling first year of integration and emerging profitable by late 2025. Founders focused on disciplined system consolidation, customer migration, and cultural alignment rather than headline...
Argentine fintech Rexi announced a $1.2 million pre‑seed round backed by multiple U.S. venture capital firms. The AI‑native platform automates bank reconciliation for fintechs, banks and payment companies by deploying intelligent agents that match transactions and resolve queries within minutes. The...
Alex Prichard, culinary director of Sydney’s iconic Icebergs Dining Room, announced he will leave his role after 11 years to launch his own restaurant. The new venue, Sara Dining, is slated to open in Berry on the NSW South Coast in...
Human capital is increasingly recognized as a strategic asset in the GCC, where talent scarcity and mobility demand a shift from treating HR as a support function to a core business driver. Companies that overlook employee experience face hidden costs...
Saudi quick‑commerce startup Ninja, founded in 2022, is weighing a Riyadh IPO after posting roughly $1 billion in 2025 revenue and targeting $1.6 billion in 2026. The company secured $250 million of funding in 2025, lifting its valuation to $1.5 billion and joining Saudi...
Phoenix Venture Partners announced the third closing of its debut Phoenix Venture Partners Innovation Fund, bringing new investors from the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. The fund, which previously closed its second round at $50 million, targets...
The NSF‑backed Tech Metal Transformation Challenge, run through Stride Ventures, awarded roughly $16 million to eight winning teams for metal‑recovery technologies. Each winner receives up to $2 million in the first 10‑month stage, with potential follow‑on funding of $2.5 million and $3 million for...
MaRS Impact Health will convene more than 1,000 biotech, digital‑health and medical‑device innovators in Toronto on April 23, showcasing Canada’s push to define a "middle‑power" role as the global healthcare market fragments. The summit highlights rare‑disease breakthroughs, including mRNA vaccine...
Cohere, a Toronto‑based large language model developer, signed a memorandum of understanding with Swedish defence contractor Saab to embed its generative‑AI technology into the company’s GlobalEye surveillance aircraft. The collaboration will focus on data‑driven mission support, predictive maintenance tools, and...
Serbian studio Nordeus, founded by Branko Milutinović, grew its flagship football manager Top Eleven to over 300 million users and was acquired by Take‑Two Interactive in 2021. From day one the company pursued a global‑first mindset, stayed bootstrapped for a decade,...
Pleo, a Copenhagen‑born fintech, has spent a decade turning a pan‑European vision into reality by embedding local offices, partnerships, and autonomous teams across 16 countries. The company argues that true scaling comes from “going local,” adapting tone, product features, and...
Swiss biotech NanoZymeX has secured €160,000 (about $174,000) from Venture Kick to accelerate its lipid‑nanoparticle platform for enzyme replacement therapies. The technology, spun out of the University of Basel, seeks to improve delivery of therapeutic enzymes into muscle cells and lysosomes,...
Kevin Busque, former TaskRabbit VP, discovered that only 36% of employees used the company’s 401(k) plan, exposing costly, clunky legacy systems. He co‑founded Guideline in 2015 to build a transparent, fee‑free retirement platform for SMBs, designing the entire software stack...
Flexzo AI secured $12 million in Series A funding, led by Octopus Ventures with participation from Fuel Ventures, to expand its agentic AI workforce platform for healthcare. The UK‑based startup uses machine‑learning to match clinicians to open shifts, automate allocation, and cut...
Bengaluru‑based Sarvam AI is in talks to raise up to $250 million in a new round led by Nvidia, Accel and HCLTech, which could lift its valuation to roughly $1.5 billion—over seven times its 2023 level. The startup recently unveiled two home‑grown...
Tiltify reported that creators donated more than $100 million in 2025, roughly double its 2024 total, cementing creator‑led philanthropy as a major growth engine. The platform’s tools—especially creator‑designed incentives, auctions and matching challenges—accounted for 40% of the funds raised, up from...
Cathy Tie, the founder of Origin Genomics, announced the shutdown of her previous embryo‑editing venture and the launch of a new startup focused on pre‑implantation genetic modification. The new company, dubbed EmbryoX, has secured $55 million in Series A funding led by...
Spade announced a $40 million Series B round led by Oak HC/FT, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and other fintech investors. The New York‑based fintech reported 470% year‑over‑year growth and a peak daily transaction volume of 1.9 billion, underscoring rapid adoption. The capital will...
Before spending big money, test the demand in two ways. The post How Foreign Brands Test the U.S. Market appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
