Startup Street: The Startup Behind Snapchat’s Latest Update

This week on Startup Street, Hero MotoCorp-backed electric bike startup Ather Energy has had a busy month. Tencent-sponsored healthcare startup Practo has some tax troubles brewing. Snapchat rolled out its latest feature recently, but another French startup may have had something to do with it. And SpaceX had a burning start to its big weekend as it successfully landed a used rocket for a second time.

Snapchat’s Latest Feature...Courtesy Zenly

French startup Zenly which allows social mapping, has been acquired by Snap Inc. for $200 million in cash plus additional stock awards, according to a report by Bloomberg.

While Snap bought Zenly in May, the Snapchat application introduced its latest mapping feature on Saturday. The app now allows users to spot their friends’ locations on a map. The feature comes with three options. Users can either allow all friends to look at their location, select friends who can see their location, or activate the "ghost mode".

Prior to Zenly, the technology company had acquired Placed, another location based startup.

Electric Bike Startup Gets Former Royal Enfield Veteran On Board..And A New Factory!

Former Royal Enfield chief Venkatesh Padmanabhan has joined Ather Energy, a startup backed by Hero Motocorp Ltd. and one which is developing India's first "smart” electric scooter.

Venki, as he is fondly referred to, has joined Ather Energy as chief operating officer and will oversee sourcing, vendor development, quality and manufacturing, the company said in a blog post earlier this month.

Padmanabhan had earlier been the chief executive officer of Royal Enfield between 2011 and 2013. He has also been associated with Daimler Group's Chrysler, General Motors and Cadillac.

The startup said having Padmanabhan on board will help them accelerate the production of S340, the electric scooter Ather is building.

But that isn't the only good news for the startup. Ather took possession of a defunct railway container manufacturing facility in Bengaluru's Whitefield area and has started building a factory there. The facility will be used for mass production of the S340.

The launch of S340 was originally scheduled for December last year but was delayed after Ather failed to get a production model ready. The company in its recent blog post said it is currently in testing mode.

Ather Energy has been funded by Hero MotoCorp, Tiger Global, and Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, mainly due to their in-house designed Lithium ion battery pack.

Tencent-Backed Practo Faces Tax Evasion Probe

The healthcare startup is being investigated for possible tax evasion during a cross-border corporate restructuring. according to a report by Nikkei Asian Review.

Bengaluru’s Department of Income Tax has issued a notice to the company’s management, asking for an explanation on the wide variation in valuations reported only a month apart in 2014, the report said.

The lower valuation was used to calculate capital gains tax on the transfer of assets to an offshore affiliate account in Singapore, it said. The tax authorities also seized the startup's records in late May, according to the report.

In July 2014, a month before the transfer of assets, the company was valued at Rs 462 crore. In August 2014, another valuation report put the company's overall worth at Rs 4 crore, it said.

An email sent to the startup by BloombergQuint went unanswered.

SpaceX Launches Used Rocket Successfully For A Second Time

Elon Musk’s space startup has taken a leap towards its goal of reducing the cost of space travel. Its Falcon 9 rocket launched the BulgariaSat-1 satellite into orbit on Friday. The same Falcon 9 had earlier supported the Iridium-1 mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in January this year.

“Following stage separation, the first stage of Falcon 9 successfully landed on SpaceX’s East Coast droneship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. This marks the first time a Falcon 9 first stage has landed on both SpaceX’s East and West coast droneships, having previously landed on ‘Just Read the Instructions’ in the Pacific Ocean,” SpaceX’s website said.