From SoftBank looking to pare more than two-thirds of its stake in its first-ever India bet to Pine Labs’ evolution from a hardware provider to a software and services platform, YourStory brings you the latest developments across sectors.
Featured stories
Year in Review: Top 10 celebrity-backed ventures of 2025
Celebrities are no longer just faces for brands and startups; they are now sitting at the table to shape narratives, accelerate growth and often direct the next big consumer trend. YourStory has curated a list of the top 10 celebrity-backed investments that defined 2025. Read the entire list here.
Unstop is building India’s largest early-talent hiring engine
New Delhi–based AI hiring startup Unstop combines AI automation with a 28-million-strong talent community to streamline hiring for students and enterprises alike.
The platform focuses on early talent. Students can discover internships, jobs, hackathons, case challenges, competitions, mentorship sessions, and résumé-building resources, free of cost.
For employers, Unstop.ai brings the entire hiring process into one place. The platform manages registrations, runs assessments and coding tests, conducts AI-proctored exams, takes interviews, tracks scores automatically, and monitors everything through built-in dashboards and analytics, all on a single platform. Read the full store here.
Latest news
Pine Labs is more than a POS terminal company; software services now account for 71% of revenue
Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, has spent years telling investors that the company is more than just a point-of-sale (POS) terminal company. During the firm’s first earnings call since going public, Rau finally had the numbers to back up his assertion.
Subscription and rental revenues from traditional POS devices now make up just 29% of Pine Labs’ total revenue, down from over 40% two years ago. That means the remaining 71% now comes from transaction processing fees, consumer financing partnerships, online payment processing, and prepaid card services. Read the full story here.
SoftBank to pare more than two-thirds stake in InMobi, its first-ever India bet
SoftBank Group is set to reduce its stake in InMobi by more than two-thirds, said people with knowledge of the matter. InMobi was the Japanese investor’s first direct investment in India and the country’s first unicorn.
If completed, the deal would represent another liquidity event for SoftBank from an Indian company, boosting its returns portfolio. SoftBank’s track record in India has been mixed, with significant gains from PB Fintech and its formerly struggling Blinkit (Grofers) investment, but losses exceeding $500 million from Paytm. Read the full story here.
Nearly 24,000 women-led MSMEs shut down in the last 5 years: Minister
More than 24,000 women-led MSMEs (Micro, Medium, and Small Enterprises) shut down between July 2020 and November 2025. That’s an employment loss of 1,61,580 jobs across the country.
Answering questions raised during the Parliament Winter Session, Shobha Karandlaje, Minister of State for MSMEs, said, more than 2.86 crore women-led MSMEs were registered between July 2020 and November 2025.
The minister presented detailed data in the Lok Sabha on Thursday in response to an unstarred question on the status of women in the MSME ecosystem. Read the full story here.
Funding news
CoreOps.AI raises $3.5M in pre-Series A round
Deep-tech startup CoreOps.AI raised $3.5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Siana Capital Management, with participation from Kettleborough, Aroa Venture Partners, and other HNI investors.
It will use the new funds to accelerate the company’s engineering expansion, strengthen its AI platform capabilities, and grow its partner ecosystem as the firm scales globally.
“Enterprises today need AI that is real-deployed, integrated and delivering business outcomes,” said Rajiv Srivastava, CEO, CoreOps.AI. “This investment enables us to accelerate our mission of building the enterprise AI operating system, helping organisations modernise 2X faster, reduce operational costs by up to 25% and unlock autonomous intelligence across business functions.”
Sports coaching platform TIDA Sports raises Rs 3 Cr in seed round
Multi-sports training and coaching startup TIDA Sports raised Rs 3 crore in seed funding led by Inflection Point Ventures to widen its footprint across five states and 30 cities, upgrade its tech stack, strengthen B2B operations, acquire more coaches, and scale up its on-ground marketing efforts.
The company hopes to partner with 200 schools and bring sports training to over one lakh students. TIDA Sports works through partnerships with schools and collaborations with local sports body academies, making sports venues, coaching, and tournaments accessible to all. It has collaborated with schools such as GD Goenka, DPS, DAV, and Aravali to run and enhance their sports programmes.
At present, TIDA Sports operates across Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Haryana with training centres in Rishikesh, Haridwar, Dehradun, Chandigarh tricity, Patiala, Jalandhar, Ambala, Amritsar, Ludhiana, and Ferozepur.
SpinItUp raises Rs 50 lakh in pre-seed funding
Music commerce platform SpinItUp raised Rs 50 lakh in a pre-seed funding round led by Zee TV Ideabaaz Titans—Jimmy Mistry of Della Adventure Resorts, Anupam Bansal of Liberty Shoes and Archana Jahagirdar of Rukam Capital, at a valuation of Rs 10 crore.
The funds will help it improve its tech stack, make the firm’s platform experience smooth and fast, network expansion, and venture partnerships. As part of these priorities, the company is also looking to expand its core team across tech, product, and growth.
SpinItUp will also focus on aggressive marketing and creator acquisition to onboard DJs across every major nightlife city as part of its pan-India footprint.
Niyo expands forex operations
Niyo, a travel fintech platform, has expanded its forex operations through NiyoForex to offer a full suite of services including foreign exchange cash, multi-currency cards, and outward remittances for education purposes. Now Niyo will provide its services through both digital and physical formats.
In 2025, NiyoForex has doubled its branch footprint from three to six, with operational centres in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru (two branches), and Gurugram. The company plans to expand this network to 50 branches over the next 2–3 years, leveraging a partnership model to keep operating expenditure low.
According to the company, the branch model enables it to offer the a range of cross-border solutions such as remittance, multi currency cards and forex cash to leisure travellers, students, and working professionals while also enabling a digital layer, through the Niyo App.
MumbaiHacks 2025 gets over 3500 participants
MumbaiHacks 2025, an agentic AI hackathon hosted by The Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM), and Made in Mumbai witnessed the participation of over 3,500 individuals.
This hackathon was held on November 28 and 29 to come out with solutions across three tracks–fintech, healthtech and misinformation detection. It saw participation of 900 women. The prize money of Rs 1 crore, which included both cash and rewards, was split across three winning teams. The solutions built covered topics such as personal finance, cardiology, digital health records, agentic AI study companion to combat exam related misinformation etc.
(This article will be updated with the latest news throughout the day.)
