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22Mar By reutersNo Comments

FUNDING

BigBasket Raises $150 Million in Funding Led By Abraaj Group

Grocery delivery service BigBasket has raised $150 million in fresh funding in a round led by UAE's Abraaj Group as the company looks to expand its services into smaller cities, the investor said. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Helion Advisors along with International Finance Corp and Sands Capital participated in the round, Abraaj said in a statement. Online grocery sales is a fast-growing segment in India's e-commerce industry as more consumers log in to the Internet for their purchases. Rival Grofers, an app-based service that connects local stores to customers, raised $120 million from Japan's Softbank last year to expand operations. Amazon.com Inc, which is aggressively investing in India, also launched a grocery delivery pilot in Bengaluru late last y...

Twitter to keep 140-character limit, CEO Jack Dorsey says

19Mar By reutersNo Comments

News

Twitter to keep 140-character limit, CEO Jack Dorsey says

Twitter Inc's 140-character tweets are here to stay, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said on Friday, ending speculation that the microblogging site might abandon one of its trademark features for a 10,000-character limit. "It's staying. It's a good constraint for us and it allows for of-the-moment brevity," Dorsey said on NBC's Today Show. A Twitter spokesman declined to elaborate. In January, technology news website Re/code reported that Twitter was building a new feature that would allow tweets as long as 10,000 characters. Twitter has declined to comment on the feature directly. But Dorsey tweeted the day of the report that the company had seen more screenshots of text posted as a way to get around the 140-character limit. "We're not going to be shy about building more utilit...

Foodpanda buys Delivery.com’s HK business, consolidating territories

18Mar By reutersNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Foodpanda buys Delivery.com’s HK business, consolidating territories

Online takeaway delivery firm Foodpanda is acquiring the Hong Kong assets of U.S.-based Delivery.com as it consolidates its position in key markets while shedding assets elsewhere. Founded in 2012, Berlin-based Foodpanda expanded rapidly worldwide through nine acquisitions fuelled by $310 million in capital it raised in six tranches, as online takeaway food startups enjoyed a frenzy of funding. Foodpanda, which is 49 percent owned by German emerging market e-commerce investor Rocket Internet, was active in up to 40 markets a year ago but has pared this back to focus on 24 markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. It split off its 10-country Africa business and last month sold its Latin American operations to UK rival Just-Eat. The merger of Foodpanda with Delivery.com,...

17Mar By reutersNo Comments

INDIA

Leave India, We are Not Scared of You: Indian Government to Monsanto

U.S. seed company Monsanto is welcome to leave India if it does not want to lower prices of genetically modified cotton seeds as directed by the government, a minister said on Wednesday, in a sign the rift between New Delhi and the firm is widening. The comments come as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist government expects to develop its own genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties early next year to end Monsanto's dominance; it controls over 90 percent of cotton seed supply. New technologies are critical to lifting India's poor farm productivity, although even if India did develop a home-grown GM cotton variety in 2017, it would struggle to sustain a programme that needs to refresh seeds every decade or so, experts warned. The introduction of Monsanto's GM cotto...

Skype Co-founder Launches Ultra-private Messaging App, Wire

13Mar By reutersNo Comments

News

Skype Co-founder Launches Ultra-private Messaging App, Wire

FRANKFURT: A group of former Skype technologists, backed by the co-founder of the messaging platform, has introduced a new version of its own messaging service that promises end-to-end encryption for all conversations, including by video. Wire, a 50-person startup mostly made up of engineers, is stepping into a global political debate over encryption that pits privacy against security advocates, epitomized by the standoff between the US government and Apple. The company said on Thursday it was adding video calling to a package of private communications services that go beyond existing messaging providers. Rivals such as Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp or Telegram offer encryption on only parts of a message's journey or for a specific set of services, it said. Wire, which is b...

Alibaba’s Ant Financial Could Be Valued At Nearly $60 billion: Source

9Mar By reutersNo Comments

FUNDING

Alibaba’s Ant Financial Could Be Valued At Nearly $60 billion: Source

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's (BABA.N) arm, Ant Financial Services Group, is seeking a valuation of nearly $60 billion in its current round of funding, a person familiar with the matter said. Ant Financial, which operates the "Alipay" online payment platform, is in talks to raise funds from existing and new investors, which could include CCB International, the person said on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Monday that Ant Financial planned to raise up to 20 billion yuan ($3.07 billion), pegging its valuation at nearly $50 billion. Ant Financial declined comment on the Journal's story. The company was not available to comment on the $60 billion valuation outside regular business hours. The latest round of funding is expected to be co...

2Mar By reutersNo Comments

CHINA

China Party to Punish Former Tycoon for Microblog Posts

China's ruling Communist Party will impose "severe intra-party penalties" on a former property tycoon whose microblogs were closed at the weekend after he criticised government policy, state news agency Xinhua reported. Microblog portals such as Weibo.com and t.qq.com, among China's most popular, were ordered to shut the accounts of Ren Zhiqiang, a retired top executive from a state-controlled property developer who had more than 30 million online followers. China's Internet regulator said that Ren, a party member, had been "spreading illegal information". Chinese media has accused Ren of making remarks criticising state media and questioning whether taxpayers money should be used to promote the government. The Beijing city Xicheng district party committee said that Ren had "re...

Alibaba’s Ma, Tsai to buy back $500 million in shares

29Feb By reutersNo Comments

News

Alibaba’s Ma, Tsai to buy back $500 million in shares

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Monday Chairman Jack Ma and Vice Chairman Joe Tsai have agreed to buy back a combined $500 million in company shares, part of a $4 billion stock repurchase scheme announced in August. The buyback comes as the e-commerce firm's shares languish at $66.91, more than a dollar off their IPO price of $68, and as it struggles with slowing growth and a gloomy outlook for the Chinese economy. Sina News reported that Ma and Tsai had signed an agreement to use their private funds to repurchase shares worth $500 million. An Alibaba spokesman confirmed the news but declined to give details. In August, Alibaba announced the $4 billion share repurchase programme which would take place over two years and was aimed at offsetting the impact of its share-based compe...

UltraTech to Buy Jaiprakash Cement Plants For $2.4 Billion

28Feb By reutersNo Comments

ACQUISITION

UltraTech to Buy Jaiprakash Cement Plants For $2.4 Billion

UltraTech Cement Ltd , part of the Aditya Birla conglomerate, said on Sunday it had agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates Ltd's cement plants for an enterprise value of 165 billion rupees ($2.4 billion). UltraTech, beating competition from domestic and international bidders for the assets, said in a statement it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Jaiprakash to acquire plants whose capacity totalled 22 million tonnes a year. The agreement will increase India's biggest cement maker's installed capacity by one-third to 90.7 million tonnes annually, and provide infrastructure firm Jaiprakash with much-needed relief to pare its debts. Other companies interested in Jaiprakash's plants included Irish building materials group CRH and India's Dalmia Cement, sources told Reuters th...

Alibaba in Talks With Several Banks For Up to $4 Billion Loan

26Feb By reutersNo Comments

News

Alibaba in Talks With Several Banks For Up to $4 Billion Loan

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) is in talks with several banks to borrow up to $4 billion to fund expansion plans, including acquisitions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The loan is expected to be finalized next month, one of the people told the Journal. Alibaba has been picking up stakes and buying companies in China and abroad. The company has also been expanding in other areas such as online video and local services as volume growth in core online shopping business slows. Alibaba shares were up 2.2 percent at $68.13 in premarket trading on Friday. Up to Thursday's close of $66.66, the stock had fallen about 18 percent this year.

MobileIron Software Could Have Opened San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone

21Feb By reutersNo Comments

USA

MobileIron Software Could Have Opened San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone

The US investigation agency FBI demands that Apple Inc unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Rizwan Farook might have been avoided if his employer, which owns the device, had equipped it with special mobile phone software it issues to many workers. San Bernardino County, which employed Farook as an environmental health inspector, requires some, but not all, of its workers to install mobile-device management software made by Silicon Valley-based MobileIron Inc on government-issued phones, according to county spokesman David Wert. That software is designed to secure corporate data. It also allows information technology departments to remotely unlock phones, even without assistance of the phone's users or access to the password needed to open the phone and unscramble the data. "I...

Yahoo Inc Officially Launched The Sale of Its Core Business

20Feb By reutersNo Comments

News

Yahoo Inc Officially Launched The Sale of Its Core Business

Yahoo Inc officially launched the sale of its core business on Friday, a move seen as a positive step for frustrated investors but not enough to keep an activist hedge fund from pursuing a proxy fight against the struggling Internet company. Yahoo shares jumped after the company announced its board has formed a committee of independent directors to explore strategic alternatives, and that it has hired investment banks and a law firm to run the process. The launch of the auction process, a move activist hedge fund Starboard Value and other shareholders have pushed since late last year, showed the company was moving another step closer to selling its core business, which includes search, mail and news sites, rather than spin it off as previously planned. The move follows more than t...