BTS of digital payments; Smart hydroponics for your living room

Hello,

“It’s alive! It’s alive!”

For any other company, it would be perturbing to have an old rival rise back up from the grave after a decade. For Reddit, it’s business as usual—considering its co-founder is responsible for the revival.

Digg, one of the first social news aggregators of the internet, is set for a comeback under its original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

The site is relaunching with a nostalgic goal—reviving the community-centred golden era of the internet. And its founders believe AI could be the key to it all. 

Meanwhile, in the backdrop of Tesla’s upcoming India launch, the US and Indian governments are locked in a stalemate—tariffs or no tariffs? 

The US wants India to eliminate levies on car imports—currently some of the steepest in the world—under a proposed bilateral trade deal. India, however, is reluctant to immediately do so, even as it considers further cuts.

On the VC side, Peak XV Partners just saw another senior-level exit amid a string of high-profile departures. The trend of talent drain in India’s largest VC investor does raise questions: how is the firm planning on rebuilding its reputation amid ongoing crises at its marquee companies and a larger market slowdown?

In other news, we may be one step closer to bringing back the wooly mammoth (and no, this isn’t the plot of a new Jurassic Park movie). 

Scientists plan to “de-extinct” the mammoth with a new genetically modified ‘wooly mice’—with all the cold endurance traits of the massive prehistoric species in an itty bitty, furry form.

Life does find a way.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• BTS of digital payments
• Smart hydroponics for your living room
• Darwinbox raises $140M in funding

Here’s your trivia for today: What everyday object appears frequently in Picasso's paintings?

Startup

BTS of digital payments

Rajjat Gulati and Rohit Mahajan, both with extensive experience in the payments industry, identified a fundamental challenge: despite being central to financial transactions, banks struggled with outdated infrastructure that hindered the adoption of modern digital solutions. In 2022, they founded plutus One to help financial institutions modernise their payment systems, ensuring efficiency, security, and scalability. 

“The idea for plutos ONE emerged from our previous venture, Loofre, a merchant aggregator for banks. We saw firsthand how digital payments were transforming consumer behaviour, yet banks lacked the necessary infrastructure to support this transformation,” Gulati, Co-founder, plutos ONE, tells YourStory.

Scalable solutions:

• plutos ONE enables banks to function as Biller Operating Units within the BBPS framework, allowing them to offer real-time transaction management, automated reconciliation, and secure payment processing. BOUs facilitate digital bill payments by acting as intermediaries between billers and the BBPS ecosystem.
• It incorporates AI-driven conversational interfaces into its platform. Users can pay bills via WhatsApp and other messaging platforms, with support for 18 languages.
• The startup operates on a B2B SaaS model, generating revenue through subscription fees, transaction-based pricing, and premium service offerings for banks and financial institutions.

Funding Alert

Startup: Darwinbox

Amount: $140M

Round: Undisclosed

Startup: Leap Finance

Amount: $100M

Round: Debt

Startup: Nuuk

Amount: $5M

Round: Series A

Startup

Smart hydroponics for your living room

Who doesn’t wish to have some greenery in their house? Whether you have a large or small space, having plants in the house definitely improves one’s mood and adds a touch of nature to this urban concrete landscape. Modern gardening equipment like hydroponics systems makes it much easier for urban dwellers to grow their own food at home. 

Chennai-headquartered urban farming startup Croppico, founded by Shamil Bicha, offers smart hydroponic systems powered with AI to manage and automate various aspects of plant growth.

Home gardening:

• Homie, the flagship product of Croppico, is an automated hydroponics system that features a four-tier vertical structure, which supports 72 plants and includes a nursery for 80 saplings. Its modular design optimises space, making it ideal for homes, offices, and commercial spaces.
• The startup has also developed a FarmAssist app, where customers can regulate water, nutrients, lighting, and fertigation (a process to deliver nutrient-rich water directly to plant roots via irrigation) in the system.
• Croppico’s Homie is priced at Rs 1.25 lakh for urban homes and Rs 1.45 lakh for corporates. The founder adds that the company aims to reduce its production costs to Rs 1 lakh as it scales further.

Funding

Darwinbox raises $140M in funding

HR tech unicorn Darwinbox has bagged $140 million in a funding round co-led by Partners Group and KKR, with additional support from Gravity Holdings. The fresh capital will be utilised to enhance product development and expand its global footprint.  

“By placing the employee experience front and center—and ensuring our platform is deeply configurable to diverse local needs—we have helped transform HR for enterprises globally. With top-tier investors backing us, we’re poised to amplify our global momentum and deliver innovative AI-powered solutionsfor thousands of enterprises worldwide,” said Jayant Paleti, Co-founder of Darwinbox.

Key takeaways:

• The Hyderabad-based firm has expanded internationally across multiple markets, including Asia Pacific, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• Since entering North America two years ago, Darwinbox has gained strong traction and is now doubling down on its presence in the region. Over the last two years, the company claims to have reported a fivefold growth in revenue in global markets, over 60% of which comes from new markets.
• Currently, the firm has over 900 enterprise customers and nearly three million employees as end-users across 130 countries. Some of its clientele include Starbucks, Nivea, AXA, Cigna, WeWork, Crisil (an S&P company), T-Systems.

News & updates

• Export duty: India's small engineering goods exporters have urged the government to cut import tariffs on some US goods to try and achieve more favourable trade terms, as the US prepares to implement a 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports, effective March 12, raising Indian exporters' concerns about declining orders and rising costs.
• Cuts: The European Central Bank is expected to cut interest rates for the second time this year at its Thursday meeting, but disagreement among policymakers may be set to increase amid tariff uncertainty and a potential ramp-up in regional defense spending.
• Economy: China has set its GDP target for 2025 at “around 5%”, a figure which was unveiled by Premier Li Qiang in the annual government work report, which also outlined plans to stabilise economic growth by boosting domestic demand and creating 12 million new urban jobs. However, economists believe the 5% growth target, which is in line with 2024’s figure, will be challenging.

What everyday object appears frequently in Picasso's paintings?

Answer: Guitars (Although his Cubist works approach abstraction, he never relinquished the objects of the real world as subject matter).

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