Digital Striker Private Limited, an optical fiber tools and equipment company founded by Priyanka, has raised $1 million (approx. ₹8.5 crore) from Foxhog Ventures, the USA-based venture capital firm led by CEO, Mr. Tarun Poddar. The funding will be used to set up India’s first manufacturing unit for optical fiber tools and equipment, a space currently dominated entirely by Chinese imports.The Problem Digital Striker Is SolvingIndia’s optical fiber industry is 100% dependent on China for tools and equipment products essential for building and maintaining the country’s digital infrastructure. Currently, only 35% of India’s mobile towers are connected through fiber, signaling massive untapped potential. Despite this, not a single company in India manufactures tools like fiber strippers, cleavers, VFLs, power meters, or splicing machines locally. This dependency has created a chain of challenges 100% advance payment requirements, 3-month delivery cycles via sea freight, bulk order mandates, and no local service support.What the Funding Will DoThe $1 million investment will be deployed across two key areas. Approximately ₹5-6 crore will go toward setting up the manufacturing plant, hiring talent, and establishing offices in key metro cities across India. The remaining ₹4-5 crore will support import operations to fulfill existing demand while local…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

In this exclusive interaction with StartupTalky, Gaurav Verma, Head – B2C at PharmEasy (API Holdings), shares insights on how the company is evolving from an online pharmacy into a full-stack healthcare platform. He discusses his focus on sustainable growth, operational efficiency, and customer trust while operating in India’s price-sensitive and highly regulated healthcare market.Verma highlights the key verticals driving revenue, from medicines and diagnostics to consultations and care services, and explains how data, technology, and a loyalty-led approach are shaping decisions and improving margins. He also outlines PharmEasy’s long-term vision of creating a trusted, integrated healthcare ecosystem accessible across India. StartupTalky: To start with, could you briefly share your role as Chief Business Officer at PharmEasy and the key business priorities you focus on today?Mr. Gaurav Verma: As Chief Business Officer at PharmEasy, my role is to drive sustainable growth while staying true to our purpose of making healthcare more affordable and accessible across India. I oversee business strategy across key verticals, with a strong focus on execution, partnerships, and ensuring growth is backed by solid operational and financial discipline.Over the past year, we’ve strengthened our operating model by introducing sharper review mechanisms and a more data-led approach to execution. This…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

India’s UPI ecosystem is at a crossroads. As transactions volume and value reach record levels, the government is gently pushing UPI players towards self-reliance. The clearest signal is that the central government’s incentive outlay towards UPI and RuPay in FY27 has shrunk to INR 2,000 Cr, even as the ecosystem has grown to new heights. UPI transactions recorded a 32.5% YOY growth in volume terms in 2025 at 228 Bn transactions as against 46.2% YOY spike in 2024 at 172 Bn transactions. With growing international presence, it’s not just the Indian market that has benefitted from this wave. So the fact that the central government is continuing to support this growth through public spending is great, right? It’s not as simple as that. As per Union Budget 2026 documents, the government spent INR 2,196 Cr for incentives for FY26, so at first glance the allocation for the forthcoming year seems more or less on par. But in the previous year’s budget, the central government had initially allocated INR 437 Cr for incentives. Effectively, it ended up spending 5X this figure in FY26. Despite knowing the gap in the allocation and actual spending in the previous year, the government is holding…  ​Read MoreInc42 Media

Amazon has expanded the responsibilities of long-time executive Amit Agarwal, placing him in charge of the company’s Worldwide Selling Partner Services (SPS) organisation—a core business that manages Amazon’s global third-party seller ecosystem. The move follows the transition of Dharmesh Mehta, who led SPS for more than a decade, into a technical advisor role reporting directly to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.Agarwal, currently Senior Vice President for International Emerging Stores, will continue to oversee Amazon’s marketplace operations across a group of high-growth countries while taking on leadership of SPS. He will report to Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores.The expanded mandate positions Agarwal at the centre of Amazon’s marketplace strategy. SPS oversees the tools, infrastructure, and services used by millions of third-party sellers globally, including onboarding, payments, logistics integrations, advertising products, compliance systems, and seller support. Third-party sellers now account for the majority of units sold on Amazon’s platform, making SPS a critical driver of both growth and profitability.Agarwal is one of Amazon’s longest-serving executives, having joined the company in 1999. Over more than two decades, he held leadership roles across engineering, retail, and international expansion. He is widely associated with Amazon’s push into emerging markets and played a key role…  ​Read More​YourStory RSS Feed

Before organised platforms emerged, India’s home services market operated almost entirely through informal labour.Customers routinely allowed unknown service providers into their homes without background checks, fixed pricing, or accountability. Price negotiations happened inside the home, disputes were common, and incidents of theft or impersonation were not rare.This made home services a high-fraud category. One poor experience could permanently stop repeat usage. The core barrier was not discovery or convenience. It was fear. Trust was not an add-on feature. It had to be the product itself.Why early marketplaces failedMost early platforms followed a thin marketplace model. They listed professionals, facilitated bookings, and relied on ratings to manage quality. This scaled supply quickly but left trust largely unmanaged. Ratings were easy to game, onboarding checks were superficial, and impersonation at the doorstep remained a major risk.Urban Company took a different route. Instead of maximising listings, it focused on controlling quality end to end. The company moved from being a simple intermediary to a full-stack operator, owning onboarding, training, verification, and post-service accountability.This slowed growth and increased costs, but it directly addressed the trust deficit in the category.Turning vetting into a trust signalUrban CompanyUrban Company treated onboarding as a filtration process, not a…  ​Read More​YourStory RSS Feed

As part of its ongoing staff realignment efforts, aerospace giant Boeing intends to cut 300 supply chain positions in its military division. Affected employees will be notified this week. The layoffs would affect multiple locations across the US. Large firms across sectors are cutting back on staff and are looking closely at expenses, so this step makes sense. Boeing stated in response to enquiries regarding the defence layoffs that it routinely assesses and modifies its workforce in order to remain in line with its obligations to its clients and neighbourhoods.Hiring Continues in BoeingBoeing keeps hiring even though they have reduced head count. More than 1,300 job openings exist inside the organisation at the present time.  A number of Boeing’s defence employees are being considered for possible redeployment to other positions. Federal reports show that as of the end of 2025, Boeing had 182,000 employees worldwide, an increase of around 10,000 from the previous year.Employment growth is attributable to a number of factors. These factors include the incorporation of Spirit AeroSystems, an acceleration of commercial jet production, and preliminary work on the F-47 fighter plane for the United States military. Parts of the workforce are upset about the most recent changes,…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Pet healthcare startup Dr. Doodley has raised $3.3 Mn (about INR 30 Cr) in its pre-Series A round, which was a mix of equity and debt, led by V3 Ventures. It also saw participation from Campus Fund, Thackersey Family Office, and angel investors, including 360 ONE Wealth founders Yatin Shah and Karan Bhagat and Dalmia Bharat Group MD Gautam Dalmia. The funding round comprised INR 20 Cr equity and INR 10 Cr debt. The Bengaluru-based startup operates a hospital-backed, round the clock vet-at-home and multi-specialty pet hospital network. It plans to use the capital to open four new multispeciality pet hospitals in Bengaluru over the next 12 months. The startup also plans to roll out 30-minute vet-at-home services and introduce flat INR 10,000 pricing for all surgeries, with plans to enter other tier I cities later this year. It is aiming to treat 1 Lakh pets in the next year and increase the number of veterinary doctors on its payroll to 100. Dr. Doodley currently operates a team of 35 doctors across three 24/7 hospitals in Bengaluru, which offer services like in-house diagnostics, imaging, surgeries, blood tests, and specialised in-patient care. The startup was founded in 2023 by Utsav Bisaria…  ​Read MoreInc42 Media

Fibr AI, the innovative company transforming how businesses engage with customers online, today announced it has successfully closed a $7.5 million seed funding round. The round was led by Accel in India, with significant participation from WillowTree Ventures and MVP Ventures, alongside a distinguished group of Fortune 100 operators and angel investors.Fibr AI is at the forefront of building the “Agentic Web,” a revolutionary approach that redefines websites from static pages into intelligent, adaptive experience systems. This paradigm shift addresses a critical gap in modern marketing: while targeting and advertising have become increasingly personalized, the website experience has largely remained uniform for all visitors, leading to missed conversion opportunities and wasted marketing spend.”Marketing has become intelligent everywhere except the website,” stated Ankur Goyal, CEO and Co-Founder of Fibr AI. “We envision a web where every URL acts as a living experience system, understanding context and responding in real-time to human visitors, specific cohorts, and even AI agents. This transforms the website from a passive destination into an active, revenue-driving component of a marketer’s growth strategy.”Pritam Roy, CPO and Co-Founder, emphasized the company’s mission: “Our goal is to empower businesses to deliver truly personalized web experiences at scale. We’re building the…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories

Ride-hailing platform Uber has appointed Indian-origin executive Balaji Krishnamurthy as its chief financial officer.A graduate of Manipal Institute of Technology, Krishnamurthy has been with Uber for more than six years and will assume his new role from February 16, following the resignation of the present chief financial officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah.”Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, Chief Financial Officer, will step down from his role on February 16, 2026. Balaji Krishnamurthy, currently Vice President, Strategic Finance, will assume the role of Chief Financial Officer on that date,” the company said in a regulatory filing.Mahendra-Rajah will serve the company as a senior finance advisor reporting to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi through July 1, 2026.”For those who don’t know Balaji, he is trusted by investors, knows Uber’s business inside and out, and is a brilliant, decisive strategist. He has worked closely with me and our management team for years, and I am thrilled for him to step up as CFO as we kick off another big year for Uber,” Khosrowshahi said.Krishnamurthy, age 41, joined Uber in 2019 and has served in a range of leadership roles at the company, including as vice president for strategic finance since 2023. He was head of investor relations from 2020 to 2023.Krishnamurthy…  ​Read More​YourStory RSS Feed

Octobotics Tech Pvt Ltd, an industrial robotics company, has announced the successful closure of its Series Seed funding round of approximately ₹10 crore.The round was led by Navam Capital, with participation from BYT Capital. The funds will be deployed to accelerate product development, strengthen field validation, and support international expansion.Founded in 2020 by Ishan Bhatnagar and Gulshan Kumar, Octobotics develops AI-enabled, vertically integrated Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) robotics platforms engineered for harsh environments across industrial and rail applications.The company currently serves leading organisations including the Indian Navy, IOCL, Saudi S-Chem, BPCL, HPCL, Aarti Industries, and GSFC, and recorded ₹2 crore in annual revenue in the last fiscal year.“This capital will support R&D for vertical integration and the pursuit of IECEx and ATEX certifications, while expanding our operations in India, Singapore, and the Middle East,” said Ishan Bhatnagar and Gulshan Kumar, Co-Founders of Octobotics. “The distribution-led approach allows us to deploy these systems to assist human operators and reduce the need for manual tasks in hazardous environments.”Commenting on the investment, Dr. Anjan Ray, Investment Partner at Navam Capital, said,“Octobotics is addressing specific maintenance challenges within critical infrastructure. Their focus on a vertically integrated technology stack and a scalable distribution model provides a…  ​Read MoreStartupTalky- Business News, Insights and Stories