Mumbai, Feb 14 (PTI) The board of directors of Honeywell Automation India has appointed Pulkit Goyal as the chief financial officer and a key managerial personnel, effective February 12.

Goyal has a rich international leadership experience of over 16 years, mostly in the capital goods companies and conglomerates. Most recently, he was the CFO and member of the executive board of ThyssenKrupp Industries India, and was driving the group's strategic realignment, operational excellence and financial performance since 2013.

Also Read | Infinix Zero 5G Debuts in India at Rs 19,999; Check Details Here.

Goyal is a chartered accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and holds a bachelor's degree in Commerce from JNV University, Jodhpur.

Also Read | RBI Recruitment 2022: Apply for 950 Assistant Posts on rbi.org.in; Check Details Here.

*** *High-end real estate metaverse platform Metamall raises USD 400K

Metamall has closed its IDO (initial dex offering) round raising USD 4,00,000 with the supply of 80 million tokens, taking the total fund raising at USD 7 million (about Rs 52.8 crore).

With this round, Metamall has become the first retail commerce-themed metaverse to raise funding of over USD 7 million from private and public investors, the startup said.

Metamall is a metaverse-based high-end real estate that allows buyers to own, build, develop and stake the virtual real estate as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).

IDO is a standard fund-raising tool used by crypto-based startups which follows private investors. Metamall has already raised USD 4.6 million in its seed, strategic and private rounds and more than USD 2 million through NFT land sales.

*** *SaaS platform Bitespeed raises USD 1.9m from Sequoia, others

Consumer-focused SaaS platform BiteSpeed has raised USD 1.9 million (about Rs 14.3 crore) in funding led by Sequoia India's Surge.

The seed funding round also saw participation from First Cheque, Whiteboard Capital and Angels including Cred founder Kunal Shah and Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal.

BiteSpeed provides e-commerce brands with the tools to help them embrace conversational commerce as the future of selling online and retain their customers over chat apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Vinayak Aggarwal founded Bitespeed in June 2019 in Gurugram.

*** *India's Pineapple export to US rise nearly 100 pc in Apr-Dec 21

India's export of Pineapple rose by almost 100 per cent to USD 3.26 million during April-December 2021 compared to USD 1.63 million in the same period previous year, the commerce ministry said on Monday.

The major export destinations for pineapple during the period include the UAE, Nepal, Qatar, Maldives and the US.

Export of shallots (a kind of onion) also rose to USD 11.6 million in April-December 2021.

The major destinations for the product include Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, the UAE and Singapore.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)