Tuesday, March 19

Entrepreneurs Talk

Read the successful businessman stories and their business and how they face the problems and resolve them according to the situation to get the success.

Cryptocurrency & NFTs are Fake: Bill Gates
Entrepreneurs Talk

Cryptocurrency & NFTs are Fake: Bill Gates

NYC, 15th June 2022: The tech billionaire & founder of tech company Microsoft Bill Gates, criticised cryptocurrencies and NFTs. He termed cryptocurrency & Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) as fake, saying that it is based only on the Greater fool theory. Gates was speaking at an event on climate change hosted by TechCrunch. Bill Gates joked that the world is going to improve a lot with expensive photos of monkeys. These are of no use. One can neither invest in the long term or short term. He also pointed out that bitcoin has a lot of risk for retail investors and that mining the coin also harms the environment. The Microsoft co-founder said he preferred investing in tangible assets or “a company where they make products.” He also mentioned that he does not hold any crypto assets....
No More startup after WhiteHat $300 million Sale: Karan Bajaj
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No More startup after WhiteHat $300 million Sale: Karan Bajaj

After the blockbuster sale of WhiteHat Jr for USD 300 million to Byju's, the former's founder Karan Bajaj said he is a "wanderer" who will neither go back to creating another startup nor follow in the footsteps of other entrepreneurs who dabble in the space as investors after a successful exit. Bajaj said he is a "minimalist" who does not think a lot about money and stressed that all his investments are long-term ones where he does not fret about those. Earlier this month, Bajaj's edtech venture was acquired by Byju's in an all-cash deal for USD 300 million within 20 months of its incorporation in one of the largest deals in the upcoming space. "I feel there is an endpoint of a journey. With this chapter, I'm kind of putting a lot of myself into it, and I feel I reached a very lo...
Online classes short term answer, need to make schools resilient: Nandan Nilekani
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Online classes short term answer, need to make schools resilient: Nandan Nilekani

The rapid shift to teaching and learning activities online prompted by the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic is only a "short-term response" and we need to fundamentally reimagine schools as a resilient system which can function under continuous turbulence, according to Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani. Classroom should not be the only location, teacher the only facilitator and textbook not the only medium, is the roadmap laid by Nilekani for a "resilient" school system while delivering the keynote address at a virtual conference on 'Future of Schools: Overcoming Covid-19 challenge and beyond' organsied by Ashoka University. "The rapid shift to move everything online, zoom classes, teaching through smart phones, all of this is part of a short-term response which was ne...
How 1974 Incident Turn Narayan Murthy into Compassionate Capitalist
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How 1974 Incident Turn Narayan Murthy into Compassionate Capitalist

A bitter experience on a train in 1974 in Nis, a border town between what is now Serbia and Bulgaria, turned N R Narayana Murthy into a "compassionate capitalist", leading him to create Infosys, the country's IT bellwether. Recalling the incident, Murthy said he was engaged in a conversation with a girl, who could only understand French, but it landed him in trouble. "We were talking about life in Bulgaria. I think the boy, who was accompanying the girl, got upset with us for some reason. So, he went and brought the police," Murthy said on Sunday while addressing the audience at a tech fest organized by IIT, Bombay, through a video link. The Bulgarian guards took Murthy's passport, luggage and dragged him on the platform. He was kept in an 8X8 room, with primitive toilet faciliti...
My Intuition decides in Which Startup I have to Invest: Ratan Tata
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My Intuition decides in Which Startup I have to Invest: Ratan Tata

Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata, who has invested in over a dozen startups since he hanged up his boots from the Bombay House, becoming an investor in upcoming new-age companies has been "an accident." The chairman emeritus of the $110-billion salt to software Tata Group, arguably one of the most successful investors of all-time, was an early backer of Ola, and Paytm since 2015 when he made these investments in a personal capacity. He also has a small stake in One97 Communications that owns Paytm, and took on the role of an advisor to the firm. He made his maiden eCommerce investment in Snapdeal. Tata's other top investments in the startup space include fitness startup CureFit; weather forecaster ClimaCell; auto portal CarDekho; online furniture mart UrbanLadder; etailer of eyew...
Zomato Headed for Profitability; Sees 10x Growth in 5 Years: CEO Deepinder Goyal
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Zomato Headed for Profitability; Sees 10x Growth in 5 Years: CEO Deepinder Goyal

India's largest restaurant search and food delivery platform Zomato is on the verge of cracking its maiden profits on the back of rapid expansion into newer cities that have brought more business to both established outlets and 'dark kitchens', creating thousands of jobs, its founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said. The company on September 7 laid off 540 employees at its head office in Gurugram across its customer, merchant, and delivery partner support teams, but Goyal insists Zomato is creating more jobs than ever before. Starting off in 2008 by scanning and putting restaurant menus online, Zomato has expanded to 24 countries and services 10,000 cities globally, he told PTI. In India, it serves 25 million customers in over 500 cities in India and is valued by analysts at between ...
Kishore Biyani Lauded Amazon Deal, Help Future Group on Payment Side
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Kishore Biyani Lauded Amazon Deal, Help Future Group on Payment Side

Future Group founder Kishore Biyani has said global e-commerce giant Amazon's investment in the firm is not just to raise money but also to become a part of the ecosystem. The company recently announced Amazon picking up a full 49 percent stake in Future Coupons, the promoter entity of Future Retail, with an option to acquire the entire stake later. Future Coupons currently does not own a stake in Future Retail but had recently subscribed to convertible warrants for Rs 2,000 crore. "We had subscription warrants of our company and we had to raise money, so the deal was struck. Moreover, the investment by Amazon is strategic to become a part of the ecosystem," Biyani said here late Monday evening. He said the deal is basically aimed at enhancing the payments portfolio of both th...
Most SoftBank Vision Fund investors want to join second fund: Masayoshi Son
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Most SoftBank Vision Fund investors want to join second fund: Masayoshi Son

Most investors in SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund want to join the group's forthcoming second fund, founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said on Wednesday, adding discussions would begin soon.  The entrepreneur said in May a second fund would launch "soon", with SoftBank likely to be the only investor initially. Raising further funds is essential if Son is to extend his spending spree on late-stage startups around the world. Investors in the first fund include the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, Apple Inc and Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd. The Vision Fund will ramp up its employee numbers to 1,000 from 400 currently, Son said at the group's annual general meeting. The fund's head, Rajeev Misra, said he sees i...
India has wage problem, not job problem: Mohandas Pai
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India has wage problem, not job problem: Mohandas Pai

Bengaluru: Former Infosys CFO and multi-sector investor T V Mohandas Pai said India does not face a job problem, but one of the wages, as a lot of low paid jobs being created do not find favour with degree holders. "India is not producing good jobs, but creating a lot of ₹10,000- ₹15,000 low-paid jobs which are not fancied by degree holders. India has a wage problem, not a job problem," Pai said. Also, India has regional and geographical problems, Pai said. Pai suggested that India adopt the Chinese model of opening up labour-intensive industries and building infrastructure near coasts, besides investing heavily in hitech R&D to meet the aspirations of job-seekers. "We should look at what China has done. They first opened up the labour intensive industry invited the rest o...
Facebook breakup could boost Chinese rivals: Sandberg
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Facebook breakup could boost Chinese rivals: Sandberg

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said a breakup of Facebook would not address "underlying issues" facing the sector and suggested that such a move could help rivals in China. Sandberg, interviewed on CNBC television, was asked about the latest calls to break up Facebook and other major Silicon Valley firms which dominate key sectors. "You could break us up, you could break other tech companies up, but you actually don't address the underlying issues people are concerned about,” Sandberg said in the interview. Sandberg said the social network used by more than two billion people was working to address concerns about election security, online violence promotion and data protection, but that a breakup might only serve to help competitors from China. "While people are concerned with t...
Google will never sell data to 3rd parties: Sundar Pichai, Google CEO
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Google will never sell data to 3rd parties: Sundar Pichai, Google CEO

Google will never sell any personal information of its users to third parties, CEO Sundar Pichai has said, amidst growing global concern over the misuse of personal data by some social media giants. In an opinion piece in The New York Times published on Tuesday, he also said that privacy cannot be a "luxury good" that is only available to people who can afford to buy premium products and services.The 46-year-old Indian-origin CEO of Google said he believed that privacy was "one of the most important topics of our time."People today are rightly concerned about how their information is used and shared, yet they all define privacy in their own ways, he said. "To make privacy real, we give you clear, meaningful choices around your data. All while staying true to two unequivocal policies...
Facebook building privacy-focussed social media platform: Zuckerberg at f8 summit
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Facebook building privacy-focussed social media platform: Zuckerberg at f8 summit

Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook annual f8 event announced that the company was committed to building a "privacy-focussed" social platform to ensure that conversations stay private and user data is secure across its products like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. He acknowledged that there are privacy concerns related to its platforms, but asserted that he remains committed to bringing in changes and "starting a new chapter". "As the world gets bigger and more connected, we need that sense of intimacy more than ever. So that is why I believe the future is private," Mark said. "This is the next chapter for our services... We don't exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now, to put it lightly. But I'm committed to doing this well and starting a new chapter for our ...