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Former SoftBank COO Nikesh Arora Appointed as the CEO of Palo Alto

2Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Former SoftBank COO Nikesh Arora Appointed as the CEO of Palo Alto

Nikesh Arora, an Indian businessman who was the president and COO of SoftBank Group, has now been appointed as the CEO and chairman of 'Palo Alto Networks', the global cybersecurity leader. Arora has replaced Mark McLaughlin who has been the head for nearly seven years and has played a major role in its difficult stage of growth. The past CEO will now become the board's vice chairman. He said he wanted to step down as CEO so that he could spend more time with his family. McLaughlin, in this context, expressed,"Over the course of several quarters, I have been discussing succession planning with the Board and I couldn't be more pleased that we have found a leader in Nikesh." Nikesh Arora has worked with SoftBank as well as with Google. He served at SoftBank from 2014 until 2016, when he...

PhonePe on The Ladder of Success, Crossed 100 Million Users

2Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

PhonePe on The Ladder of Success, Crossed 100 Million Users

The Bengaluru-based Flipkart-owned company PhonePe has reportedly made its way across 100 million registered users on its platform in less than two years of its inauguration. The company's annual total payments volume (TPV) have also received a boost crossing $20 billion in the month of May. Paytm, the firm's close rival stated its annualised transactions amounting to $29 billion through its platform performing 63 million transactions in April, while the Digital payments firm PhonPe has performed 60 million transactions with a total of 30 million customers using Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in the month of May which is quite close to its competitor. “We have gone from launch to 100 million users in just 21 months. Our next goal is to onboard a million merchants for our customers, a...

World’s Highest-Valued AI Company Raises $1.2 Billion Within 2 Months

2Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

World’s Highest-Valued AI Company Raises $1.2 Billion Within 2 Months

China's leading artificial intelligence company, SenseTime has raised $620 million in its latest Series C+ round of fundraising, being the world's highest-valued AI company at a valuation of more than $4.5 billion. The company had raised $600 million last month Alibaba-led investors and Singapore’s state investment firm and now is back with an upraise. The latest funding of the startup is being carried on in association with some well-known and noteworthy companies - Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global. SenseTime confirmed that Qualcomm, which formerly sponsored the firm, was also in this round. The new investment brought the amount raised to more than $1.2 billion and tripling its valuation in under a year. SenseTime is at present valued at over $4.5 bill...

Google Launches an Indian Q&A App Neighbourly

1Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Google Launches an Indian Q&A App Neighbourly

The American technology company Google is lately focusing on India quite a lot. The technology giant has just instigated an all-new Q&A app in beta known as 'Neighbourly' (targeted at neighborhood communities) which will resolve the queries related to places and events in your community. The Android application will enable the users to ask questions to their neighbors through text or by voice and find well-grounded and admissible answers. The people can share local expert skill or knowledge, and keep updates from the neighborhood.In a blog, Caesar Sengupta, VP of Next Billion Users Team, said, "People nearby often have the exact information you need, but they are too busy these days to stop and chat on the street or in the park. And group chats keep getting bigger and noisier - and oft...

1Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

India’s GST Revenue Collection Crosses 94,000 Crore

Hasmukh Adhia, the Union Finance Secretary has announced that the revenue collection from the total goods and services tax (GST) for the month of May amounted to Rs 94,016 crores. The news became trending on Friday after the statement given by Adhia. In this context, he quoted, "The total GST collection for May (April revenue collected in May) is Rs 94,016 crore, which is higher compared to average monthly collection of Rs 89,885 crore of 2017-18. This reflects better compliance after introduction of e-way bills." Digging into the details, the Finance Ministry's information as filed in the reports revealed that out of the total amount of revenue, Central GST (CGST) amounted to Rs 15,866 crore while the State GST (SGST) amounted to Rs 21,691 crore. On the other hand, Rs 49,120 crore w...

1Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Amazon India Unit Suffers Heavy Losses

Amazon Seller Services, the Indian unit of US e-commerce retailer Amazon has witnessed a growth in their losses by 31% in the financial year 2016-17 reaching up to Rs. 4,830.6 crore. This is because of the exaggerated investments in the country in order to fight against its competitor, Flipkart. The Amazon Seller Services handles and operates a marketplace that assists the sellers to sell their products online in India and globally as well. Though due to investments, the company suffered losses, the revenue from the sales saw a rise of 43%, from Rs 2,276 crore in 2016 to Rs 3,256.6 crore in the year ended March 2017. In 2015-16, the Bengaluru-based unit suffered a net loss of Rs 3,679.9 crore. Where the competitor company Flipkart succeeded in lowering its losses to Rs 1,638.6 crore ...

Patanjali’s Kimbho Removed from Google Play Store

1Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Patanjali’s Kimbho Removed from Google Play Store

WhatsApp's rival, Patanjali's messaging app Kimbho that was being talked about yesterday, has now disappeared from the Google Play Store as well as from its own webpage. Within a day of its launch, the 'Swadeshi Messaging Platform' has been suspended due to some security issues as reported by some users who downloaded it for the day. At the time of its availability, the app reached up to 1.5 lakh downloads and was rated 3.9 out of 5. The spokesperson of Patanjali S K Tijarawala who confirmed its launch yesterday has now tweeted that Kimbho was only updated for a day on 'trial basis' and would soon make a comeback with a formal launch. On the other hand, a message on Kimbho's twitter page said that the app was facing heavy traffic issues and is now in the process of upgrading its serv...

1Jun By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Xiaomi to Start its Television Production in India for Diwali

Chinese electronics company Xiaomi is planning to go ahead with the manufacturing of televisions in India. Instead of importing them from the other country, the company has decided to partner with Foxconn which is Taiwanese contract manufacturer. This idea has basically been formulated to intimidate online sales in the upcoming festive season during Diwali. “Xiaomi’s talks are in advanced stages with Foxconn for manufacturing televisions in India, which will start from July-August so that in the festive season-Diwali sales it has mostly made-in-India models,” quoted an industry executive acquainted with the idea. The manufacturing of televisions in India will give tax benefits to the company, but, it has been reported the prices of the television may not come down and that is because...

31May By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Treebo Makes its First Acquisition by Getting Hold of Events High

India’s third-largest Bengaluru-based Hotel chain, Treebo Hotels has made its very first acquisition by getting hold of an event and activity discovery platform that brings all events, movies and things to do in various cities of our country. The acquired company is known as Events High. The event company provides various kind of information to the customers regarding the events and activities and also the ability to book them in 8 cities (Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Goa). The activities that they offer consists of – concerts, heritage walks, treks and hikes, dance workshops, educational workshops, cooking classes, sports carnivals, summer camps, road trips, language festivals, parties and nightlife and various other adventurous activities and fun eve...

Apple’s iOS 11.4 Software Update is Out with All-New Features

31May By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Apple’s iOS 11.4 Software Update is Out with All-New Features

The popular technology company, Apple Inc. released its new software update, iOS 11.4 that has come up with a few new features, which may interest the Apple users. The latest update will bring features such as AirPlay 2 and iMessages in iCloud among others. Stating in detail, apart from a couple of performance advancements and bug fixes, iOS 11.4 update focuses on: Update 1 - AirPlay 2 : This update will help us control the compatible home audio system and speakers, which are based on the new AirPlay protocol, throughout our home location that is one can play a song everywhere or transfer music from one room to another using an Apple device or with the help of Siri. This will allow two HomePod speakers to work together as a stereo pair. Along with this, the interesting part is that t...

Everything You Need to Know About Baba Ramdev’s Swadeshi Chat App : Kimbho

31May By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Everything You Need to Know About Baba Ramdev’s Swadeshi Chat App : Kimbho

After the telecommunication sector, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev is venturing into the social media sector. Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali has now introduced a new messaging application called Kimbho, right after launching its very own sim card in association with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) on Tuesday. It is being strongly believed that Patanjali's Kimbho has been created to give a tough competition to the most popular messaging platform, Whatsapp Messenger and also to other similar apps. The tagline of this Indian application says "AB BHARAT BOLEGA”, which in English, means ‘Now India will speak’. The all-new app is thus, being promoted as the “swadeshi messaging platform”. The news was confirmed as SK Tijarawala, Patanjali’s spokesperson tweeted, Now Bharat will speak. After launching SIM car...

Future Group to Acquire Iraya to Compete With Rival Patanjali

30May By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Future Group to Acquire Iraya to Compete With Rival Patanjali

Kishore Biyani, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Future Group is eyeing to acquire the Gujarat-based Ayurveda company Iraya from Athena Life Sciences. Iraya is an ethical cosmetic brand which deals in herbal beauty and personal care products. This sector has lately seen a great success and Biyani is all set to enter it. With this acquisition, Baba Ramdev’s ayurvedic brand Patanjali should gear up to face a tough competition in the market. Similar to Patanjali, Iraya sells ayurvedic products such as ayurvedic oil, facial massage cream, neem and basil soap, hair gel, nutrifying skin food and face wash, among others. It also deals in herbal products for anti-dandruff and hair re-growth treatment. “We are in talks for acquisitions in the ayurvedic beauty space. Valuations m...