Despite a fall in air travellers, four travel portals claim to have made a profit for the quarter ended 31 March, according to this Mint story. MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, Travelguru and Yatra claim to have made a profit in the latest quarter. MakeMyTrip claims to have made a net profit of…

—J.S. Sarma (pictured, right), a member of the Telecom Disputes Settlement And Appellate Tribunal, will likely be announced as the next chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Business Standard reports. Sarma was not among the 13 candidates who were originally shortlisted by the selection panel. BS columnist Sunil…

We had first reported the Matrix Partners and Ebay backed free online classifieds website Kijiji.in going in for a re-branding. Quikr.com, it’s new avatar, has now gone public. Afaqs quotes Jiby Thomas, co-founder and VP Marketing, Quikr.com, as stating that the Matrix Partner funding in February (prior to which Kijiji.in…

Futurbazaar,com, the online shopping window of the Future Group owned Pantaloons Retail is expecting to cross Rs 180 crore in revenue in the new fiscal on the back of a re-launched website. According to BS, the now year old online retail arm of Pantaloon Retail has already clocked Rs 62…

Mobile payment service provider Obopay and Nobel Prize winning Dr. Yunus’s micro-finance firm Grameen Solutions, have tied up for a mobile banking initiative. The Bank A Billion initiative proposes to bring banking services to a billion of the world’s poorest people by 2018. The initiative will start initially in Mumbai…

The Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to keep their mobile payment services on holds until final guidelines are issued. However, mobile alerts for credit/debit, balance enquiry and other are service in the nature of providing information will be continued to be made available reports BS. Importantly, all mobile-based…

Just when you thought you knew all the usual suspects. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Adwords has launched its netbanking service and tied up with DirecPay, a subsidary of BCCL’s Timesofmoney. The option list for Netbanking currently features only eight banks supported by Direcpay (full list here). Some digging reveals DirecPay has…

Matrix Partners and eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) backed free online classifieds website Kijiji.in has re-branded itself as Quikr.com. The site as of this night was still undergoing migration and had a referral to Kijiji India. A notice on Kijiji indicates more changes Quikr might feature more than just a cosmetic and…

—- Sulekha has tied up exclusively for content with CareerBuildersIndia.com for its ‘Premium Jobs’ section. The section will be co-branded although on checking it wasn’t live as yet. —- Cricinfo has tied up with Myntra.com, the online personalized merchandise portal, to offer cricket merchandise. Cricinfo users can customize T-shirts, mugs,…

The Reserve Bank of India has issued draft guidelines on mobile payments, a few highlights from the 12 page document below: Mobile Payment has been defined as ‘information exchange between a bank and its customers for financial transactions through the use of mobile phones. Mobile payment involves debit/credit to a…

BCCL, the parent company of Times of India, has taken an undisclosed stake in Culture Holiday, the parent company of online travel portal TravelChaCha.com, adding to more crush in the now-crowded online ravel sector in the country. Terms were not disclosed. More details here.

Paymate has raised $9 million (Approx Rs 38.5 Crore) in series B funding from Mayfield Fund and existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers and Sherpalo Ventures. Nikhil Khatau, MD of Mayfield Advisors will join the board. Amount of stake sold remains undisclosed although BS states Ajay Adiseshann, founder and…

Tanla, an Indian provider of mobile services, said it acquired an 85 percent stake in Openbit, a Finland-based mobile payment software company for $15.8 million in cash (Euro 12 Million)reports IDG via NetworkWorld. The remaining 15 percent of the company, currently held by Openbit’s management, will be purchased in two…

User review portal MouthShut has gone in for a re-design, adding local listings and reviews to the mix. Currently it lists entries from 20 cities and small towns covering restaurants, malls, pubs and clubs. According to the release, it seems more like a navigation tweak with citywise categorization of content…

Cleartrip has launched Cleartrip Videos gleaned from the Short Flicks Festival which had been sponsored by the DAG, KPCB and Sherpalo funded online travel portal. The one to three minutes long user submitted videos are across multiple cities. This is a good addition to the Lonely Planet content tie-up feature,…

—Lakshmi Narasimhan, Head of Business Development for Network18, has been appointed CEO of Infomedia India. Readers will remember that Network18 acquired Infomedia last fiscal. Narasimhan will expand the portfolio of Infomedia titles. Prakash Iyer, who was CEO & MD of Infomedia will now be MD. [more at exchange4media]—Mohit Gupta has…

Corrigendum: It had appeared to me (Nikhil Pahwa, Editor, contentSutra) that Ezeego1 had repositioned itself as a travel meta aggregator. The company informs us, and on checking we’ve verified that, Ezeego1 was launched as a travel Meta aggregator. It’s not a case of repositioning, and the error is regretted. Original…

Cleartrip has tied up with Star India’s mobile application PLUS, to deliver travel related information to users. The service allows users to access travel information and make reservations via the client’s interface. The release has Sandeep Murthy, CEO, Cleartrip, stating their tie-up with PLUS will give them access to 200…

People Group’s real estate property, Makaan.com, has launched an SMS based mobile application, developed by sister concern, Mauj Mobile. The difference being that while those like Magicbricks have apps that require GPRS connectivity, ‘Makaan Mobile’ is purely SMS based. The release quotes Aditya Verma, Business Head, Makaan.com, stating “With the…