Welcome to the Backstage with Millionaires weekly news show, hosted by Caleb Friesen. This week, Reliance is taking on Tesla with Addverb Technologies, Deepinder Goyal asked job applicants to pay ₹20 lakh (even though Zomato wasn’t planning to take the money), Xiaomi partnered with PhonePe’s Indus Appstore, Zepto expanded their 10-minute food delivery, and Mamaearth’s stock price plummeted.

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00:00 Reliance Takes on Tesla With Addverb Technologies
1:53 Deepinder Goyal’s ₹20 Lakh Zomato Job Posting
5:36 Xiaomi Partners With PhonePe’s Indus Appstore
6:43 Zepto Expands 10-Minute Food Delivery
8:00 Mamaearth Stock Price Nosedive
9:19 Funding News

Reliance Takes on Tesla With Addverb Technologies

Reliance-owned Addverb Technologies is entering the humanoid robotics business and they plan to build 100 of these humanoid robots by next year. Addverb Technologies will directly compete with companies like Tesla, Unitree, Figure, and Agility Robotics. Addverb thinks they can pull this off thanks to Mukesh Ambani, who spoke at Nvidia’s recent AI Summit in India, announcing Reliance’s partnership with Nvidia to build AI infrastructure in India.

Deepinder Goyal’s ₹20 Lakh Zomato Job Posting

Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal is hiring a Chief of Staff, but there is a catch: the job doesn’t pay you a single rupee in the first year. In fact, if you’re selected, you’ll have to pay Zomato ₹20 lakh, or at least that was what the original job posting said. Later on though Deepinder Goyal revealed that the ₹20 lakh requirement was just a filter, and that Zomato would not actually be asking the Chief of Staff to pay ₹20 lakh.

Xiaomi Partners With PhonePe’s Indus Appstore

Xiaomi is ditching its own app store GetApps in India and replacing it with PhonePe’s Indus Appstore on all Xiaomi smartphones sold in India. This is a massive win for PhonePe, as Xiaomi has sold over 250 million smartphones in India.

Zepto Expands 10-Minute Food Delivery

Zepto is doubling down on 10-minute food delivery. The company is expanding its Zepto Cafe service to three more cities, with a bold goal of Zepto Cafe reaching ₹1,000 crore in ARR by FY26. Zepto launched Zepto Cafe as a pilot project in Mumbai back in 2022. Fast forward to today, the service is live in Mumbai, New Delhi, and Bengaluru, already hitting an ARR of ₹160 crore.

Mamaearth Stock Price Nosedive

Honasa Consumer’s stock price has dropped more than 30% in just two days - reaching an all-time low. The trouble started when the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation accused Mamaearth of putting distributors in financial trouble. According to AICPDF, Honasa Consumer has left distributors stuck with 300 crore rupees worth of unsold inventory, including products that are nearing expiry dates, making them hard to sell. On top of that, AICPDF claims that Mamaearth hasn’t settled 50 crore rupees worth of credit notes for returned stock. Mamaearth strongly denies these allegations.

Funding News

This week Indian startups raised $228 million. Gurugram-based health and fitness startup HealthKart raised $153 million. Pune-based biotech startup OneCell Diagnostics raised $16 million in their series A round. Gurugram-based beer brand Proost raised $3.55 million dollars in their series A round. Hyderabad-based spacetech startup Abyom raised $2 million in their seed round. Bengaluru-based 10-minute food delivery platform Swish raised $2 million in their seed round. Bengaluru-based healthcare startup Theranautilus, which is developing tiny nanobots, raised $1.2 million in their seed round.

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