INDIA | Pixr8 News

19Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

CapitalG India Head Kaushik Anand Resigns to Join A91 Partners

The India head of CapitalG, Kaushik Anand is reportedly is quitting from the growth-stage fund. CapitalG is one of the largest investments units across the globe that is owned by Google’s parent Alphabet. With his departure, Anand is slated to join A91 Partners, an investment firm set up by three ex-Sequoia managing directors. He is being expected to join the A91 board as a Partner early next year. This development was confirmed by Anand as well as CapitalG. The fund which was earlier known as Google Capital started investing in India in 2014 and has backed companies like Aye Finance, Cuemath, CarDekho, Freshworks, and Practo. "We have experimented with different operating models and have decided to return to a centralized office located in San Francisco. We look forward to continui...

15Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Jack Dorsey, on his Maiden Trip to India, Meets Political Leaders and Bollywood Celebrities

It has been a great pleasure for India to welcome the Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is on his maiden trip to India. However, the experts have been feeling that the social media platform Twitter has been missing several opportunities to make itself relevant in the country and this has been the basic purpose of the co-founder to visit the country. In its most recent earnings announcement in October, Twitter reported an annual increase of 29 percent in revenue to $758 million in India. However, its monthly active users fell to 326 million in the September quarter. "Twitter does not even account for 5 per cent of revenue from social media platforms in India," said Meenakshi Tiwari, a forecast analyst who looks at business technology and digital marketing at research firm F...

13Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Visa, Mastercard and American Express May Have to Pay Tax in India

International payment companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express now may have to pay around 15% tax on their India income. This may happen as they set up servers locally to comply with a central bank directive on data storage. The Reserve Bank of India had ordered payments companies to locally store data on all transactions taking place within India from October 15. Visa, Mastercard and American Express mentioned that they had taken steps to comply with the regulation. At present, all these companies are out of the tax net in India, as they do not have a ‘permanent establishment’ in the country. The companies work and offer their services here through offices in jurisdictions such as Singapore and store data on servers located in countries like the US and Ireland. As soo...

10Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Online Sale of Smartphones in India to Cross 50 Million Mark

The online sales of smartphone in India got a hype during the festive season sale on various e-commerce platforms and thus, it is all set to cross the 50 million mark in a year for the first time ever in 2018. The year was driven by discounts, buy-back offers and easy financing options offered by retailers such as Flipkart and Amazon and others especially at the time of the festive season. Research firm CMR estimated that online sales in the fourth quarter of 2018 will increase 60-65% year-on-year and on the other hand, sales in bricks-and-mortar stores are likely to fall 4-6%. Counterpoint Research has projected a 51% increase in online sales and 11% for offline. “With the onset of festival season, more smartphone vendors in partnership with e-commerce players are offering discount...

Mumbai-based Fino Payment Bank Fined with Rs 1 Crore by the RBI

7Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Mumbai-based Fino Payment Bank Fined with Rs 1 Crore by the RBI

The newly licensed payments bank based in Mumbai called Fino Payment Bank has been fined with an amount of Rs 1 crore by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Following this move, the payments bank was required to stop all its account opening activities. The RBI found out that there were few accounts with the bank with deposits in excess of Rs 1 lakh, which goes against the licensing criteria of a payments bank. “The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has, on October 31, 2018, imposed a monetary penalty of Rs 1 crore on Fino Payments Bank Limited (the bank) for contravention of the direction to stop opening of new accounts until further instructions…,” said the regulator. A Fino Payments Bank spokesperson stated that the RBI has directed Fino Payments Bank to put in place appropriate process to a...

3Nov By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

India’s PM Narendra Modi Launches 59 Minutes Loan for MSMEs as Diwali Gift

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a number of measures and services for the people of our country including the most interesting and valuable one under which, the small and medium enterprises will be able to sanction loans of up to Rs 1 crore in just 59 minutes through a special portal. This has basically been done to give a boost to the nation's second-biggest employing sector. For a long time, the Prime minister has been looking upon and taking efforts for the startups of our country and he has launched yet another measure that will be really helpful for the small businesses. The programme was unveiled as part of 12 new decisions to aid the sector which, the PM said, were like "Diwali gifts for MSMEs". "As we speak, somewhere in the country your entrepreneurial bro...

Karnataka Govt Signs up 21 Firms to Turn ST/SC Youth into Entrepreneurs

31Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Karnataka Govt Signs up 21 Firms to Turn ST/SC Youth into Entrepreneurs

In a bid to help startups grow and expand, the Karnataka state government has signed up 21 firms including Uber, Ola, Swiggy and Bata for its ambitious programme called Samruddhi. The programme aims at creating 10,000 entrepreneurs annually over the next three years from among the SC/ST youth. Under this, once the youth is skilled and certified by the partner enterprises, he will be free either to opt for a job or start their own venture with seed funding from the Social Welfare Department. The funding support will go up to Rs 10 lakh. For Samruddhi, the stated government has set aside Rs 800 crore. The seed fund approach is a step away from the traditional business loans as the government saw a potential for misuse of these loans. “What we are doing is India’s most aspirational ski...

24Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

India Tops Google Play Store Downloads in Last 7 Years

With the growing number of Android users in India, the country saw 36.9 billion app downloads from Google Play Store between January 2012 and August 2018 which marks as the highest among all countries, according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie. This study was done on the 10th anniversary of the Google Play Store. India accounted for 11.2% of the Google Play Store pie worldwide, given that global downloads for the period were 330 billion. Following India, the US was in second position with 35.1 billion downloads. The further positions were held by Brazil (25.2 billion), Russia (15.9 billion), Indonesia (14.6 billion) and Mexico (12.7 billion). On an annual basis, India became the No. 1 downloader from Google Play Store in 2016. Taking into account both Google Play Store and Apple ...

13Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Indian Passengers May Enjoy In-flight Wifi Connectivity from Next Month

With the technology growing at a great pace, Indian passengers can now expect to browse the internet and make calls on board from next month. The Indian airline SpiceJet has announced that they will become the first airline to offer wifi on board, as their new Boeing 737 Max is fitted with systems to make it possible. “We have also selected a service provider and as soon as government approvals come, passengers will be able to use wifi on board, most probably from next month,” SpiceJet CMD Ajay Singh said. "Fares currently are not sustainable and airlines will have raise fares to meet cost of operations and remain profitable.” The aircraft of the airline is fitted with Satcom that will enable the airline to offer internet on board. Also, the airline will offer wifi ‘complimentary’ for th...

Karnataka Launches Programme to Fund SC/ST Entrepreneurs

8Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Karnataka Launches Programme to Fund SC/ST Entrepreneurs

India has been coming up with various programmes for startups for a long time. The Karnataka State Government has now launched its ambitious programme called Unnati. This programme is basically focused on promoting technology startups steered by SC/ST entrepreneurs as well as those that are developing a product or a solution with a strong rural-focus. “We will support these startups by way of funding which can go up to Rs 50 lakh,” Social Welfare Minister Priyank Kharge said. The programme has been divided into two categories so as to provide benefits. These include: - The startups where an SC/ST entrepreneur has a substantial stake with a hands-on role in the management. For this, the only criterion is the idea has to be good enough regardless of the sector. ...

5Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

Kochi is All Set to Launch Autonomous Cars in India

Recently Kochi became the first city in India to have a cashier-free store. A few weeks after this, the city is all set to welcome to the driverless car. Cocon-2018, the annual cybersecurity conference to be held in Kochi will host a live display using a prototype autonomous car. The autonomous or self driving car is touted as the next revolution in the transportation sector. Also, it is a vehicle that can sense its environment and navigate without much human input. Along with this, there will be a session on security concerns raised by hackers in the field of transportation. Apart from the driverless car, the eleventh edition of the conference would showcase futuristic live demonstrations, including the functioning of an AI-enabled drone, robotics and hacking through IOTenabled a...

29Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

INDIA

India’s DMRC has partnered with PhonePe to Facilitate Payments

The digital payment player PhonePe has tied up with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to offer PhonePe users with the service of recharging their DMRC smartcards on the app itself. This service will be made available to the users through a micro app in the freshly created 'Apps' section on the PhonePe app. The fintech company stated that it will be the exclusive partner to power UPI payments for DMRC smartcard recharges. The people can also make use of the PhonePe app as a payment option to recharge their smart card on DMRC website. This association has added to PhonePe’s travel and commute services portfolio which already consists of cabs, buses, hotels and flight services. PhonePe which is part of Walmart-owned Flipkart group had also partnered with Indian Railway Catering and...