How a Rs 33 crore investment led to a Rs 300 crore exit; India's #MeToo unfolds

Thursday October 11, 2018 , 3 min Read

Here's how a Rs 33 Cr investment led to a Rs 300 Cr exit. Gurugram-headquartered HR tech startup Mettl, co-founded by Ketan Kapoor and Tonmoy Shingal in 2010, gets acquired by Mercer, a global consulting leader and a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. One of the first successful SaaS acquisitions of India, it closed at 7x of what the startup had raised in equity funding over the years.

Siddhartha Gupta (Chief Revenue Officer), Guneet S Sahai (CTO), Tonmoy Shingal (Co-founder and COO) and Ketan Kapoor (Co-founder and CEO)

India’s own #MeToo movement is now gathering momentum since it broke on social media last week, calling out names from the media, film, and entertainment industries. Beginning with actor Tanushree Dutta coming out against her accusers, Bollywood bigwigs Nana Patekar and Vivek Agnihotri, hushed whispers are now turning into loud voices. Those named include Alok Nath, Chetan Bhagat, Tanmay Bhat, MJ Akbar, Vairamuthu, Suhel Seth and more. Will the victims and survivors get justice? Only time will tell.

India's #MeToo movement has opened the Pandora's box

Google is changing its Play Store permissions. Only your default phone, SMS and Assistant can access your call logs and SMS. To arrest the leak of sensitive user data after a security breach at its just-shuttered social networking platform Google+, the company announced a change in its Play Store's policies. What now? Starting today, apps like Mobikwik, Paytm, BookMyShow, GoIbibo, MakeMyTrip, JioTV, SonyLIV, Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon, Paytm Mall will not have access to your call logs or your SMS-es.

Google Play will not allow all apps to access a user's call logs and SMS-es.

Around 42.5 percent of corporate employees in India suffer from some form of depression, claims Assocham. What is causing mental stress across Indian workplaces? Increasing competition, the pressure to live Insta-perfect lives and today's fast-paced nature of our lives, say employees. Corporates and startups are now investing in mental healthcare programmes, offering yoga, meditation, nutritious diets, and even campaigns and workshops on mental health illness.

At a workshop, when asked, "How many of us know someone who has experienced an emotional difficulty?", a majority of the employees raised their hands.

We all learnt ‘best out of waste’ in school, and even made some items as projects. The ideas were soon forgotten; but now, they are making a comeback. Upcycling is eco-friendly, and as many are showing, fashionable too. In order to limit clothes from finding their way to landfills, designers and innovators have come up with ways to recycle and upcycle them.