Friday, March 29

News

Mobikwik Offers 6% Annual Interest Rate on 5000/month Balance in Wallet
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Mobikwik Offers 6% Annual Interest Rate on 5000/month Balance in Wallet

Fin-tech company MobiKwik today said it will offer 6 per cent annual interest on the account balance to its mobile wallet users. The company, which competes with Alibaba-backed Paytm, has over 30 million wallet users in the country. MobiKwik claims it is growing at 250 per cent per year and expects to touch 70 million users by the end of 2017. "This is the first time in India that users can get higher profits than institutional savings on their mobile wallet balance," MobiKwik said in a statement. To avail the 6 percent annual return, users would have to maintain an average of Rs 5,000 or more in their wallets per month. "Profits will be credited to users MobiKwik accounts on a monthly basis only. The announcement is part of the company's plan to expand its services across solution...
Microsoft Launches Early Stage Investment Venture Arm That Will Replace Microsoft Accelerator
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Microsoft Launches Early Stage Investment Venture Arm That Will Replace Microsoft Accelerator

Nagraj Kashyap, the Corporate VP of Microsoft Ventures announced a new early-stage investment group of Microsoft called Microsoft Venture. The entity will look after investment in early age startups.  In his blog, Nagraj mentioned, The Microsoft Venture name was assumed from an existing team within our Developer Evangelism team. That team has now been rebranded to Microsoft Accelerator. Microsoft Ventures will focus on start-up investments while Microsoft Accelerator will focus on start-up enablement, primarily through our seven accelerators around the world.  On one side of the spectrum, we help early stage companies with tools, technology and consulting through Microsoft Accelerator*. And at the other end is where you’ll typically see our larger investments and acquisitions. Microsoft ...
Swachh Bharat: 94% People Willing to Be Part of E-commerce Packaging Reuse
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Swachh Bharat: 94% People Willing to Be Part of E-commerce Packaging Reuse

IANS- With e-commerce rapidly growing in India, a survey has said that 94% people want to be part of any initiative for recycling of packaging material and contribute to the cleanliness campaign. "94% people surveyed said that they would be willing to recycle for a small incentive," said the survey by LocalCircles, a citizen engagement platform. The participants were asked if they would take part in box recycling programme towards the cause of Swachh Bharat (Clean India) if e-commerce companies or their affiliates collected empty goods boxes for a small shopping credit. The survey report has also been shared with the Urban Development Ministry and the Commerce Ministry. According to an Assocham report, digital commerce market in India has grown steadily from $4.4 billion in 2010 to...
NewsBytes Launches its News Bot on Facebook Messenger
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NewsBytes Launches its News Bot on Facebook Messenger

Started by IIT, IIM and Ivy League alumni; Gurgaon-based news technology start-up NewsBytes launched its automated bot on Facebook Messenger. The beta version of their cross-platform bot is a part of Facebook's Messenger program revealed at F8 conference. It is known to be India's first news bot. In its one year of existence, NewsBytes, by Elysium Labs Private Limited, with around 40k downloads on Play Store, has seen a spectacular growth so far. It is one of the highest-rated news apps in India. Its primary focus is to reduce information overload in your everyday news consumption. Its engine along with human curators picks up the most significant news events of the day, summarizes them and creates the contextual timeline around them. Available globally, in English, the bot lets user...
Sudha Murty, Infosys Chairperson Launches Infosys Household Biogas Digester Project
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Sudha Murty, Infosys Chairperson Launches Infosys Household Biogas Digester Project

Software major Infosys today announced the launch of a Rs 22 crore household biogas project in Ramanagara district in Karnataka. Under the project, Infosys will build 7,620 household biogas units and provide an equal number of biogas stoves to as many families in the district. Over a 10-year period, the project is expected to generate biogas equivalent to about 1 million cylinders of domestic LPG, the company said in a release here. SKG Sangha, a Karnataka-based NGO with experience in implementing biogas projects, will be the implementation partner for the project, it said. Infosys will train the beneficiaries, maintain the biogas digesters and monitor their performance, the release added. The project was inaugurated by Sudha Murty, Chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, Ind...
Freecharge Now India’s Fastest Growing Payments App
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Freecharge Now India’s Fastest Growing Payments App

The reach of the digital payments platform Freecharge has grown from 17% to 30% in the period from October 2015 to April 2016 in India -- the highest growth in app usage for any payments app in the country, a Nielsen study revealed on Monday.   Freecharge also emerged as the most engaging app in the category with the average time spent on the app per month -- increasing from 28 minutes to 55 minutes in the period October 2015 to April 2016, said the data from Nielsen Informate Smartphone Panel.   Freecharge core philosophy is focused on making transactions swifter and more secure. A number of features such as On the Go Pin (patent pending), Speed Pay (making transactions within 10 seconds), first of its kind Social Pay services like Chat n Pay, payments throug...
Snapdeal Opens Data Sciences Centre in California
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Snapdeal Opens Data Sciences Centre in California

Online marketplace Snapdeal today said it has established a data sciences centre in San Carlos, California to get top global talent and build high-value solutions. The centre will focus on big-data and advanced analytics to add clarity to Snapdeals consumer-centric initiatives, help shape business strategy and optimise the operational efficiencies using data. "We have set up a data science engine in California, which is home to domain talent, to further augment our efforts in creating a superior customer experience and strengthen our supply chain. Snapdeal is extensively working on data mining through an existing analytics team," Rohit Bansal, co-founder, Snapdeal said. The centre houses experienced data scientists from leading global brands like Groupon, Google, Yahoo and Amazon and ...
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Myntra Launches ‘Try Myntra’ Campaign to Encourage Online Shopping

Myntra - India's leading fashion portal has launched 'Try Myntra, you'll love it' campaign as a successor to its popular '#JustArrived' tagline. Through this campaign, Myntra aims to address the inhibitions of shoppers who are reluctant to buy clothes online. The campaign is estimated to reach out to 20 million online shoppers who avoid online shopping of clothes due to constraints such as touch, feel, fitting, exchange policy and others. The campaign targets the key essence of easy returns and cashback policies, while emphasizing the fact that clothes purchased online are perfectly fitting. As a part of campaign, two short films have been launched. The first film starts with Abhay Deol andIra Dubey, as a married couple, wherein Ira is trying a new one piece dress, only to realize th...
Housing.com Target $10 mn Revenue in 2016
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Housing.com Target $10 mn Revenue in 2016

Housing.com , which has raised over $ 100 million from various investors including Softbank and has restructured the business, today said it expects $ 10 million revenue in the current fiscal. Last November, it had decided to monetize its products as part of the restructuring exercise. "Housing.com is receiving an overwhelming response to the products it launched in January with revenue growing 200 percent month-on-month and the company on track to achieve $10 million in revenue this fiscal year," it said in a statement. After the company decided to focus its business on home buying and selling, Housing.com said it has started a series of digital advertising products for developers and brokers to provide maximum customer exposure and return on investment for their home sal...
Facebook Report or Agenda? $1 trillion Extra GDP By 2020 if All Indians Get Online
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Facebook Report or Agenda? $1 trillion Extra GDP By 2020 if All Indians Get Online

IANS- Four of five Indians could afford the internet if data costs fell by 66 percent, according to a Facebook-commissioned report on Internet access. But Indian telecom operators already run data services at a 11 percent loss, making cost-cutting difficult. The statistics mean that a data plan currently priced at Rs.100 should not cost more than Rs.34 if India has to make the internet affordable for 80 percent of its population. But the adverse economics imply this cannot happen without intervention from the government - whose Rs.20,000 crore ($2.9 billion) plan to connect each of India's 250,000 panchayats with broadband by 2018 is three years behind schedule. The internet reached 29 per cent of Indians - 354 million users - in September 2015, IndiaSpend reported. It could rise ...
News

Flipkart Row Will Affect Startups Hiring Market

Darling of jobseekers till recently, the startup space may lose some sheen in the job market as management and tech graduates might prefer joining safer companies after the Flipkart fiasco, say experts. The e-commerce major has deferred joining dates for campus hires from IIM Ahmedabad and IITs citing restructuring of its businesses, for which it has got a lot of flak from the colleges as well as the industry. Reports suggest Flipkart is not the only company from e-commerce and related sectors to have deferred the joining dates for their campus hires and there are many others including InMobi, CarDekho and Hopscotch. According to industry and HR experts, it might also bring a lot of pressure on reputation, success and unpredictability of the educational institutions concerned as it di...
A New Technology to Mask Call Drops
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A New Technology to Mask Call Drops

Trying to deflect heat over poor service quality, mobile operators are taking refuge in a new technology to "mask" call drops that show a call as remaining connected even when the network connection is lost and the caller is unable to hear voice from the other side. Earlier, the call used to get automatically disconnected in case of the user moving to a poor network area, making it a dropped call under the current regulatory framework. The new technology ensures the call remains artificially connected until the caller or receiver decides to terminate it and the user is billed for the entire duration despite not being able to talk for full or part of the call duration. "Telecom operators are using Radio-Link Technology (RLT) which is helping them mask call drops while the consumer is...