This past week was filled with multiple technology updates, investments, resignations and cybersecurity attacks. While the founder of the ecommerce firm Amazon, Jeff Bezos, beat Bill Gates to become the world’s richest person for the second time, head of Zomato’s Base operations stepped down. If you missed the major news of this week, here’s our weekly wrap up.
1. GROUP VOICE, VIDEO CALLS COMING SOON TO WHATSAPP
The most commonly used messaging service finally announced a much awaited feature to its app. WhatsApp will release new features such as group video and voice calling for the users in a future update. Along with the ability to make conference calls on the app, WhatsApp will also be giving more power to group administrators. Group admins will now be able to choose if their participants can modify the subject, icon or description of the group. These new features have already been rolled out through the Google Play Beta Programme in the 2.17.387 version of the app.
2. FLIPKART TO INVEST IN SWIGGY, URBANLADDER AND URBANCLAP?
Flipkart, Bengaluru based ecommerce firm, is planning to diversify its strategy by investing in a large number of startups. To boost its presence in India, Flipkart is planning to invest in several startups. The company reportedly, is in talks with food delivery startup Swiggy, home services startup UrbanClap and furniture retail firm UrbanLadder. In a bid to ward off any competition from Amazon India, the company raised a whopping $ 3 billion from SoftBank Group Corp, Tencent Holdings, eBay Inc., and Microsoft Corp.
3. FACEBOOK AIMS AT CREATING MORE ORGANIC AND ORIGINAL CONTENT FOR ITS USERS.
Social media giant Facebook has begun testing a major change with regards to the News Feed. Facebook is looking at creating two new sets of news feeds that will be divided on the basis of original content for friends and adverts and promoted content. This test is being carried out in six countries including Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka. While paid promotions will not be affected by this change, promotions of pages that are not paying Facebook for advertising will be affected. The aim is to replace original content with paid content and give users more time to browse.
4. TOPPR RAISES RS. 45 CRORES IN SERIES B FUNDING ROUND
Edutech firm Toppr, based in Mumbai, has raised $ 6.92 million in a Series B funding round from existing investor SAIF Partners along with Helion Ventures and FIL Capital Management. The personalized elearning solutions provider plans to use these funds to expand their geographical footprint and accelerate their user acquisition. Founded in 2013 by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti, Toppr provides personalized educational services for students from classes 5 to 12, across CBSE, ICSE and various other State Boards. With a strong presence in 16 cities, they also provide tailored content to help students prepare for board and competitive exams like IIT JEE and NEET, among others.
5. SAMIR KUCKREJA, HEAD OF ZOMATO BASE, STEPS DOWN
Samir Kuckreja, the head of the cloud based Point Of Sale (POS) system, Zomato Base, resigned from his post from the restaurant discovery and food delivery firm, Zomato. Kuckreja, who had joined the firm just eight months ago, decided to call it quits following the company’s decision to not follow the growth road map for Zomato Base that he had agreed with the firm originally. More than half a dozen C suite executives have recently quit Zomato within months of joining. Chief Operating Officer of Zomato Deepak Gulati, also resigned last month.
6. NEW RANSOMWARE SPREADS THROUGH RUSSIA AND EUROPE
The year 2017 has seen multiple cybersecurity attacks that have left nations crippled. The latest attempt at creating havoc was the new ransomware called BadRabbit which spread across Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. Corporate networks, computer systems for the Kiev Metro, Ukraine’s Odessa International Airport and several Russian media outlets were affected by the malware before reaching Turkey, Bulgaria and Germany. Reports suggested this ransomware attack was planned in advance and was spread using tools similar to the NotPetya ransomware. Computers affected by the malware were asked to pay a ransom of 0.05 Bitcoins or roughly $ 276 in exchange for their data.
7. EBAY INC ACQUIRES 5.44% STAKE IN FLIPKART
eBay, the ecommerce platform, has acquired a 5.44% stake in Flipkart. This deal, was in exchange for their Indian business, which was valued at $ 211 million and for a $ 514 million cash investment in Flipkart. In the quarterly report filed with the US Securities and Exchange (SEC,) the company also mentioned it gained $ 167 million through the sale of its eBay India business. The companies received approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for the acquisition of 100% share capital of eBay India in June this year. eBay India could not get a stronghold in the Indian market despite being in the market two years before Flipkart.
8. SOFTBANK AND OTHERS JOIN ECOMMERCE LOBBY GROUP INDIATECH
Japan based venture capital firm SoftBank along with Matrix Partners and Kalaari Capital have joined the industry lobby group Indiatech.org. The venture capital firms will provide all the member startups with financial strategic expertise. Investors such as Tiger Global Management, Steadview Capital and Accel India were also invited to be a part of the initiative along with SoftBank and Matrix Partners. The lobby group, headed by Sachin Bansal, aims to represent local ventures seeking protection from resourceful global rivals. Indiatech will also focus on issues like job creation, skills training and providing resources to scale up Internet businesses.
9. ASIA HAS MORE BILLIONAIRES THAN USA
According to a report by Union Bank of Switzerland (USB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Asia has overtaken the United States of America with the highest number of billionaires. 117 people broke past the billion dollar mark in 2016, bringing the total number of billionaires in Asia to 637. Overall, in 2016, the world’s 500 richest people added $ 824 billion to the total, recording an increase of 19% in their wealth. The net worth of the world’s richest people combined is estimated at $ 5.2 trillion as of 25 October 2017. While China and India contributed to three quarters of the world’s new billionaires, US added only 25 billionaires for a total of 563.
10. WHATSAPP LAUNCHES ITS LATEST FEATURE: RECALL.
Facebook owned messaging service WhatsApp finally gave users what they have always wanted. The “Recall feature” will allow people to delete messages once sent in both the sender’s and the receiver’s phone. However, users can only delete the messages after seven minutes of it being sent. The deleted messages will be replaced with a “This message was deleted” message instead. Although the feature has been rolled out globally, only a few countries have received the update so far. But messages that are in quotes along with broadcasts cannot be deleted.
11. AMAZON TO DOUBLE DOWN ON INDIAN INVESTMENTS
Jeff Bezos, the founder of ecommerce firm had made a commitment to invest close to $ 5 billion in the lucrative Indian market. In this regard, Amazon plans to double down on its investments in India to focus on key areas such as its digital payments platform Amazon Pay and the Prime membership program. The company has already spent close to $ 2 billion to scale up its Indian business and recently pumped Rs. 260 crores in its online payments platform Amazon Pay. Both ecommerce majors, Flipkart and Amazon have been battling to claim the top position, post this year’s month long festive season sale.
12. IPHONE X SOLD OUT MINUTES AFTER PRE ORDERING STARTS
The latest smartphone released by technology giant Apple, iPhone X was sold out ten minutes after the pre orders were opened. The shipping time for the different models began to slip soon after the pre orders began at 12:01 A.M., on Friday, 27 October 2017. Consumers in Australia and UK also saw a delivery delay of five to six weeks. According to the ecommerce site eBay, there were 36,555 searches for iPhone X from midnight until 1 P.M., Eastern Standard Time. The first all screen smartphone, iPhone X, was revealed in September this year and is equipped with super retina display, Face ID scanning and wireless charging.
That’s all for this week! Subscribe to our portal to never miss updates from the startup world! If your startup has an exciting announcement coming up, you can even write to us at [email protected]. Catch up with the highlights of the week with our The News This Week section.
