GoMechanic

US-based venture capital fund General Catalyst, which has backed the likes of tech firms such as Stripe, Snap and Airbnb, has stepped up its focus on governance in Indian startups amid rising cases of financial irregularities in recent months.“One of the things we have been focusing a lot on, especially here in India, is emphasising the role for great CFO and making sure these companies are working with the right audit firms, and that there's transparency in what's being reported,” said Hemant Taneja, MD and CEO, General…

Troubled Indian car service and repair startup GoMechanic has been acquired by a consortium led by Lifelong Group, the auto parts firm said. It did not give any financial details of the transaction. The development comes barely two months after the startup's co-founder Amit Bhasin admitted to errors in the company's financial reporting. The company also said it will lay off 70% of its workforce and conduct a third-party audit of its business. "This transaction will assist in preserving the ecosystem at large and also…

The registrar of companies (RoC) has sought to examine the books of GoMechanic’s holding entity Targetone Innovations Pvt Ltd amid allegations of irregularities and corporate governance issues at the startup, sources in the know told ET. Section 264(4) of the Companies Act empowers the RoC to conduct an inquiry into the affairs of a company once directed by the ministry of corporate affairs, these sources added. Last week, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) issued a notice to Sequoia-backed beleaguered automobile…

Payment aggregator CCAvenue has seen an 18% jump in new merchant sign-ups in the October-December period, while merchant addition tripled in six months for Pine Labs’ Plural. The increase in the share is pursuant to Razorpay, Cashfree Payments, PayU and Paytm pausing new sign-ups following an order from the Reserve Bank of India which has also rejected payment aggregator licence applications of some of these players.Also in this letter:■ Govt hopeful of work starting on at least one semicon unit by year-end■ Tata-Uber…

This week the lending unit of US crypto firm Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest digital asset company to go bust after the collapse of the ‘stablecoin’ terraUSD and its sister token Luna last May.Here’s a list of major cryptocurrency companies that have gone bankrupt since then.Three Arrows Capital: The crypto hedge fund defaulted on a crypto loan worth more than $650 million soon after the terraUSD-Luna collapse and filed for bankruptcy on July 1, 2022.Voyager: The US crypto lender filed for…

Automobile after-sales service startup GoMechanic co-founder Amit Bhasin on Wednesday admitted to errors in financial reporting, following which a forensic audit has been ordered and a business restructuring undertaken which will see 70 per cent of the 1,000-odd workforce being laid off.Nearly two years after it raised a mammoth $42 million (roughly Rs. 340 crore) in funding, it emerged that GoMechanic cooked its financial books by inflating revenues.In a post on LinkedIn, Bhasin said founders got "carried away" in their…