Amazon India launches Health & Personal Care store
Amazon India has introduced a health and personal care category on its marketplace. This will offer products like dietary supplements, health drinks, multivitamins, glucose monitors, contraceptives, personal care products, body supports and mobility aids like walkers, arm slings and knee braces among others.
It also has a dedicated Ayurveda store with single herbs, formulations, personal care, medicated massage oils and rubs. The company claims to offer more than 4,500 products from more than 150 Indian and international brands like Optimum Nutrition, Nature’s Best, Nature’s Bounty, Nestle, Horlicks, McDavid, Gillette, Dettol, Oral-B and Colgate among others.
Last month, Amazon India had introduced a sports and fitness vertical. It had also recently added handbags & luggage section and a video games section before that. It claims to currently offer more than 15 million products across 21 categories.
Flipkart launches new verticals
Flipkart has introduced a new luxury store for health and beauty products. This will offer products like perfumes & body mists, skin care products, bath & body care products and professional hair solutions among others. It offer products from brands like Dior, Chanel, Guerlain, Roberto Cavalli, Hermes, Neutrogena, L’Oréal and Revlon among others.
It has also re-entered the large appliances category by launching televisions on its sites. The category will be initially available to users in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore with plans to roll it out to other cities shortly. The company claims to currently offer over 10 million products across more than 70 categories.
Shopclues introduces Spiritual products
E-commerce marketplace Shopclues has introduced a new spiritual and divinity category which will offer festival puja items, vaastu & FengShui products, Zodiac sign jewellery, gemstones and rudrakshas among others.
It will also offer home decor items like mandirs, puja thalis, paintings, swastikas and chowkis among others along devotional Music CDs and books.
ISRO launches second navigational satellite
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its second navigational satellite IRNSS-1B (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota last week. The organization had launched the first satellite in July last year.
Two more satellites namely, IRNSS-1C and IRNSS-1D, are expected to be launched in the second half of 2014 and the entire IRNSS constellation of seven satellites are to be completed by 2015-16, following which it will be able to provide navigation service in the country. More on ISRO’s plans here.
NTT Docomo to reportedly retain its Tata Teleservices stake
NTT Docomo is retaining its 26% stake in the joint venture Tata Teleservices for at least another year, reports The Economic Times citing sources. The report says that this extension has been provided for the company to find a buyer and get a higher valuation for its holdings.
There are rumors that Tata group is in talks to sell Tata Teleservices and Tata Communications to Vodafone Group, thereby exiting the telecom business altogether. A Business Standard report today suggests that Tata Group may have to invest another Rs 2,000 crore into Tata Teleservices over the next two years for loan servicing. This is in addition to Rs 2,480 crore invested by Tata group earlier in January this year to pay off debt.
Microsoft Ventures India launches JumpStart helpline
Microsoft Ventures India has launched a dedicated helpline for startups to ask business and technical questions, reports The Economic Times. This helpline will be manned by Microsoft trained professionals and will be open from Monday to Friday during business hours. Microsoft will apparently use the learnings from this helpline to fine tune its Microsoft Ventures program including the company’s accelerator.
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