| July 9, 2022 |  | | Hello Reader,
“I shop, therefore I am.”
India is one of the largest retail markets in the world. After all, we love to shop!
Increased digital adoption and restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic also led more and more people to shop online. India’s ecommerce market is projected to grow to a whopping $120 billion by 2026—up from $38 billion in 2021—revealed a report by industry body FICCI and consultant firm Anarock.
And one of the key drivers of this exponential growth is the burgeoning D2C ecosystem, with 10,000+ direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands across the country that cater to even the smallest of needs and wants of consumers. In fact, we are spoilt for choice—with both large and small players vying for a slice of the D2C pie.
At YourStory, we are looking for the country’s 500 most promising players—Challenger Brands—and if you think you have what it takes to propel India’s D2C ecosystem to the next level, sign up here .
Meanwhile, more than 100 of Delhi’s brightest and innovative minds joined us at an exclusive meetup for Web3 founders, investors, and developers. Stay tuned for and follow The Decrypting Story on Twitter to join us when we come to your city!
In this newsletter, we will talk about - A waterless ‘public toilet’
- Cracks in BNPL services
- Hack your brain to lose weight
Here’s your trivia for today: Where was the first McKinsey & Company office opened? | | | | Sanitation | | A waterless ‘public’ toilet |  | | Public toilets—two words enough to make many shudder in fright, especially women.
For Siddhant Tawarawala, a frequent traveller in his college days, the issue of non-availability of clean restrooms led him down the path of entrepreneurship.
Deciding to find a viable solution after attending a workshop for entrepreneurs during his third year of engineering, he launched Peeschute in 2017. The startup makes unisex paper-based disposable urine bags to help people relieve themselves.
The sell-factor? Peeschute's pocketsize bags solidifies the urine immediately to keep it leakproof and odourless so that it can be disposed of at one’s convenience.
Key takeaways: -
Peeschute aims to solve larger issues like open urination, adequate public urinal facilities, reducing the UTI risks, and improving sanitation standards.
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The urine bags, which are available on its website as well as on Amazon and Flipkart, costs just Rs 15.
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The startup, realising that lack of privacy can make it difficult for people to use the bags on some instances, also launched Peeschute Baksa, a plug-and-play unisex urinal solution.
Peeschute recently found an investor on Shark Tank with Aman Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of boAt Lifestyle, who invested Rs 75 lakh in the company. | | Read More | | | | | | | | $100M | | InsuranceDekho
Undisclosed | | | | | $15M | | Innoviti Payment Solutions Series D | | | | | | | BNPL | | What are you signing up for? |  | | How many of us read the terms and conditions (T&Cs) when we sign up for yet another app or online service? Most of us may think—the worst that could happen is the company could (and mostly, will) sell our data.
But when it comes to credit services, not knowing the T&Cs could prove to be a lot more trouble.
As buy now pay later (BNPL) services come under the scanner, a recent study by Chennai-based policy research institution Dvara Research reveals that most BNPL products lack measures to protect customers.
In fact, in some cases, customers may find it difficult to even locate and access T&Cs, further exacerbated when BNPL products are embedded as a payment option at the point of sale.
Hidden cracks: -
Researchers at Dvara Research reviewed T&Cs of 10 popular BNPL providers—Ola Money Postpaid, Amazon Pay Later, Paytm Postpaid, LazyPay, Unicard, FlexMoney, ZestMoney, Slice, Simpl, and Kissht—to identify the clauses that diverged from regulations or raised consumer protection concerns.
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Most of the players place the “burden” of ensuring the “suitability of the credit” on the buyer. Some providers like Amazon Pay Later and Unicard explicitly place the responsibility of assessing the suitability of the credit line on the customer.
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While it is disclosed that platforms could access customers’ credit information for making credit assessments, none of the providers who were studied, barring PayTM PostPaid, disclosed whether they report customers’ repayments to credit bureaus.
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Further, the customer is expected to periodically visit the provider’s website to review the changes in the T&Cs, if any, rather than be informed of the changes they tend to agree to upon sign-up. | | Read More | | | | | | Startup | | Hack your brain to lose weight |  | | New and innovative ways of losing weight keep propping up every year or so. From going on extreme diets to hiring personal trainers, there are numerous ways to achieve your weight goals.
However, research shows that 80 percent of people who shed a significant amount of body fat can’t maintain their new weight for 12 months.
But what if you could lose weight without any diet or exercise? Shivanshi Verma and Sandeep Kumar have been working on this vision through the Yoboshu app.
Initially launched as a fitness centre aggregator platform, Yoboshu pivoted to focus on diet and nutrition in 2020. It designed a "habit building" programme with the help of behavioural therapists, psychologists, nutritionists, exercise physiologists, lifestyle coaches, as well as physicians.
Tricks to follow: -
10-5-10 rule: Eat for 10 minutes, take a break, and then finishes off the rest of the meal.
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Divide and conquer: Divide meal into portions and eat one at a time.
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Three-week rest: Avoid sugar and caffeine for three weeks. “When you manage your time, portion, activities and sleep, you can effectively lose weight,” says Shivanshi.
| | Read More | | | | | | News & Updates | | | -
Bottling up: Christian Cavaletti from Italy has broken the record for the largest collection of Pepsi cans. It includes 12,402 cans from all over the world and many limited editions of the soda.
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Remove from cart: Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter Inc. may fall apart over his doubts that the company is accurately reporting the number of spam bots on the service even as company executives reiterated the number is low and tried to better explain how they calculate the figures.
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Evolution: Meta is introducing a new way for people to log in to virtual reality headsets without using their Facebook credentials, the company’s latest effort to separate its futuristic metaverse ambitions from its core social media business. | | | | | | What do we have for you? | | |  | | How is cloud computing making retail operations agile, building simplified workflows, and enabling the efficiency of a highly-competitive business? Listen to experts debate and discuss the future of retail tech at our webinar ‘Cloud raising capabilities for retail businesses’. | | Register Here |  | | Top startups, trending tech topics, engaging conversations, prolific speakers. Catch all this and more on July 14, 4:30pm onwards at ITC Gardenia, Bengaluru, at Intel and YourStory’s ‘Digilogues: Startup Connect’. Be a part of panel discussions and keynote speeches on important new-age technologies such as AI, ML/DL, big data, analytics, and more. | | Register now | | | | | | | Where was the first McKinsey & Company office opened? | | Answer: Chicago, US. | | | | We would love to hear from you! To let us know what you liked and disliked about our newsletter, please mail editorial@yourstory.com .
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