Why Are Electric Scooters Catching Fire in India? – Indian Startup News #114

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This week in Indian startup news, Why are electric scooters catching fire, Furlenco lays-off 180-200 employees, Ola to acquire Avail Finance and Chalo acquires Vogo.
00:00 Introduction
00:09 Why are electric scooters catching fire?
01:22 Furlenco lays-off 180-200 employees
02:12 Ola to acquire Avail Finance
02:52 Chalo acquires Vogo
03:27 Sponsor shoutout
04:44 FanCraze raises $100 million
05:13 Citymall raises $75 million
05:54 Classplus raises $70 million
06:29 HackerRank raises $60 million
07:03 Rapid funding news

Why are electric scooters catching fire: This week, there have been instances of four electric scooters from Indian EV startups Ola, Okinawa and PureEV catching fire. While the investigations are still underway, Okinawa has claimed that the incident happened due to ‘negligence in charging the vehicle’ - the electric scooter was plugged into an old socket which led to a short circuit - which sparked a fire in the vehicle. On the other hand, it is being said that Ola and PureEV’s electric scooters have caught fire due to ‘thermal runaway in lithium-ion batteries’ - this happens when cells in a battery overheat and initiates a chain reaction among surrounding cells due to which the temperature of the battery increases rapidly in milliseconds.

Furlenco lays-off 180-200 employees: After Lido Learning and Trell, now furniture rental startup Furlenco has laid-off around 180-200 employees involved in customer support roles. They’ve also (temporarily) shut down operations across Kolkata, Mysuru, Chandigarh and Jaipur. This news comes less than a year after Furlenco had raised $140 million (in a mix of equity and debt) and was even planning for international expansion.

Ola to acquire Avail Finance: Ola is set to acquire financial services provider for blue-collar workforce Avail Finance - in a share-swap deal worth $50 million - which is down from their previous valuation of $86 million. It’s worth noting that Avail Finance is founded by Ola’s co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal’s brother Ankush Aggarwal. With this acquisition, Ola plans to strengthen their financial services arm Ola Financial to cater to the financing need of their driver-partners and to launch their own neo-banking products.

Chalo acquires Vogo: Bus transport technology provider Chalo has acquired scooter-sharing startup Vogo. This is Chalo’s second acquisition in six months - previously they had acquired office shuttle service provider Shuttl. Chalo already has access to over 15,000 buses through its platform and with this acquisition they want to boost bus ridership by making it convenient for their users by providing access to Vogo scooters at major bus stops - for rides to and from these bus stops.

FanCraze raises $100 million: Cricket NFT marketplace FanCraze has raised $100 million in a round led by Insight Partners to build a cricket metaverse - where users will be able to collect cricket NFTs, engage in play to earn cricket games and buy their own digital lands.

Citymall raises $75 million: Social commerce platform Citymall has raised $75 million in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners at a $350 million valuation to expand to 100 cities in the next 18 months and add products across new categories like fashion and general merchandise.

Classplus raises $70 million: Edtech startup Classplus, which helps teachers to manage, launch and sell their online courses, has raised $70 million in a round led by Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global Management at $570 million valuation to expand their global presence.

HackerRank raises $60 million: Developer hiring platform HackerRank, which helps developers hone their coding skills and connects them with software companies to ease their hiring process, has raised $60 million in a round led by Susquehanna Growth Equity at $500 million valuation.

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