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Tech In Asia Lays Off Employees After Scrapping Planned ICO

28Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Tech In Asia Lays Off Employees After Scrapping Planned ICO

Singapore-based media startup Tech In Asia lately announced an $18 per month paywall and the subscription went live this week. This was built to make the business self-sustaining after a tricky period of business in which the company observed an ICO and was forced to lay off its staff. The company made cutbacks of s many as one-third of its team after it went back on a plan to raise money from an ICO. It was in July that the company canceled its ICO plans and fired 18 of its 60 employees in Singapore. “Our goal is to give Tech In Asia back into the hands of the community and harness community forces to bring us closer to our mission of building and serving Asia’s tech communities,” the company stated. Most of the layoffs were in non-editorial business lines such as the company’s jobs ...

San-Francisco based DoorDash Accused Against Customer Accounts Hacking

26Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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San-Francisco based DoorDash Accused Against Customer Accounts Hacking

Food delivery startup DoorDash has received a number of complaints from customers who say their accounts have been hacked. A lot of people have tweeted at @DoorDash with their complaints stating that their accounts had been improperly accessed and had fraudulent food deliveries charged to their account. In several cases, the hackers changed their email addresses so that the user could not regain access to their account until they contacted customer services. However, many people said that they never got a response from DoorDash. “We do not have any information to suggest that DoorDash has suffered a data breach,” said spokesperson Becky Sosnov. “To the contrary, based on the information available to us, including internal investigations, we have determined that the fraudulent activity ...

Instagram’s Co-founders Step Down from Facebook’s Company

25Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Instagram’s Co-founders Step Down from Facebook’s Company

The co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have reportedly stepped down and now have plans to leave the company in coming weeks. This move is possible to add to the challenges faced by Instagram’s parent company, Facebook. The two co-founders did not give a reason for their departure, however, stated that they planned to take time off after leaving Instagram. Systrom and Krieger have been in contact with each other since 2010 when they met and transformed a software project built by Systrom into what gradually turned out into Instagram. At present, the Facebook-owned app has more than 1 billion users. Instagram has been one of the most important acquisitions of Facebook. The social media company took over Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, wh...

Reliance Jio Appoints Shyam Mardikar as Group CTO of Mobile Networks

24Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Reliance Jio Appoints Shyam Mardikar as Group CTO of Mobile Networks

Reliance Jio Infocomm has appointed Shyam Prabhakar Mardikar on the position of group chief technology officer of mobility. He will be responsible for looking after the deployment of the company’s 4G networks in the country. This appointment has come after the exit of Jagbir Singh, who had joined the company before the soft launch of 4G services. He left the company in June this year. Prior to this, Mardikar served Bharti Airtel as its chief technology officer for mobile networks for two years. He was associated with the company since August 2012. Shyam Prabhakar Mardikar on his new appointment will report to Mathew Oommen, who is the president of Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio in Mumbai. Jio is aggressively expanding its 4G LTE network for coverage and capacity in India. It is deepen...

India’s Popular Social Media Platform Will Double The Hiring

24Sep By AnkitaNo Comments

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India’s Popular Social Media Platform Will Double The Hiring

After raising USD 100 million, India's regional language social media platform ShareChat will double its employee numbers from current 75 to 150 people as it looks to further strengthen its technology platform and reach 100 million monthly active users. The Bengaluru-based company has recently raised USD 100 million in series C funding led by Shunwei Capital and others like Yuri Milner, Lightspeed US, handset maker Xiaomi and Morningside Venture Capital. "We are focused towards scaling up business in India, the financing will be used to scale up the business by creating and maintaining infrastructure. One of our main focus areas will also be to hire talent. We have about 75 people right now and we expect to double that to about 150 people in the next one year," ShareChat CEO Ankush Sac...

Customer Service Software Firm Zendesk Launches a New Program for Startups

21Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Customer Service Software Firm Zendesk Launches a New Program for Startups

NYSE-listed customer service software company Zendesk has introduced a new program for startups which would offer monthly credits for free access to their suite of products. The company stated that it will provide a monthly credit of $218 for twelve months, that is equivalent to one-year free access to Zendesk Suite's professional plan for two people. "The Zendesk Suite comes with a host of tools that can power a startup towards achieving its business goals and this will free up time for promoters to focus on their core expertise of building and scaling their respective businesses" said KT Prasad, Country Sales Director, Zendesk India. On the alternative basis, it can be used across the company's individual products like Support, Chat, Guide and Talk. Also, in addition to this, partic...

SaaS Unicorn Freshworks Launches its Second India Office at Bengaluru

21Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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SaaS Unicorn Freshworks Launches its Second India Office at Bengaluru

Customer engagement software company Freshworks launched its second India office at Bengaluru. This unit will act as a second engineering center and will be focussed on building new platforms and to dedicate more resources to its data science requirements. The SaaS unicorn is preparing for scale - and handling a larger customer base will require the extra hands onboard. This will also help the company to go upmarket and win over bigger deals. “Speeding up product development and enhancing our AI/ML capabilities will be the prime focus as we continue to invest in nurturing niche engineering proficiencies. Bangalore will strengthen our Platform Services, Data Science, Data Platforms and Site Reliability Engineering teams,” said STS Prasad, Senior Vice-President of Engineering at Freshwor...

Zomato Appoints Thomas Phillippe as its General Counsel

19Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Zomato Appoints Thomas Phillippe as its General Counsel

The restaurant discovery and food delivery platform Zomato has been taking various efforts to keep up with the growth phase. And now, the company has taken on board Thomas Phillippe as its General Counsel. Prior to Zomato, Thomas was earlier a partner at legal firm Khaitan & Co. This new appointment marks the first such role at Zomato which has previously been working with legal firm AZB & Partners as its advisor. The new General Counsel has over 13 years of experience as a private practice lawyer in both domestic and cross-border M&A, private equity, and venture capital transactions. This may be a positive point for the foodtech firm. From the past few years, Thomas has played a valuable and important role at e-commerce and financial technology companies in advising ...

Four Senior Walmart Officials Take Transfer to Flipkart

18Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Four Senior Walmart Officials Take Transfer to Flipkart

Soon after the Walmart-Flipkart deal, four senior leaders from the US retail giant have been appointed at the Flipkart Group level. The four senior leaders will make the transfer by October. The executives that are supposed to make the transfer are Walmart's M&A head Emily McNeal, who will join the Flipkart Group as senior vice president and group chief financial officer. Another official that will take a transfer consist of Daniel De La Garza, who has come on board as vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer. Next will be Grant Coad as general counsel and Dawn Ptak as vice president and group controller. “Each of these leaders currently leads crucial charters at Walmart and will bring a wealth of experience to the Flipkart Group,” stated co-founder Binny Bansal. “The...

Soon after the Flipkart Acquisition, Walmart Paid Rs 7,439 Crore Tax

17Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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Soon after the Flipkart Acquisition, Walmart Paid Rs 7,439 Crore Tax

One of the largest retail player Walmart has reportedly paid Rs 7,439 crore tax on the payments the company made to acquire the shares of 10 major shareholders of Flipkart. Various shareholders of Flipkart including the major ones like SoftBank, Naspers, venture fund Accel Partners and eBay, had sold their holdings to Walmart. On the last date for depositing taxes with the Indian authorities that is on 7th September, Walmart paid Rs 7,439 crore withholding tax on payments made to 10 shareholders of Flipkart. "Of the 44 shareholders in Flipkart who have sold shares, Walmart has deposited taxes for only 10 funds and entities. We have asked Walmart to explain the rationale followed while deducting or not deducting taxes from the shareholders. They have been asked to give a case to case ex...

PayU Recieved Licence from RBI to open its own NBFC

17Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

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PayU Recieved Licence from RBI to open its own NBFC

PayU India has received a license from the Reserve Bank of India to operate its own non-banking financial company, a development that will provide a big boost to the fintech firm in growing its consumer credit business. PayU India managing director Jitendra Gupta will head the new initiative. The NBFC, PayU Credit, which will be a subsidiary of PayU, is the latest offering from the company that looks to expand its suite of credit-focused offerings. “With payments, we have access to data, and we generate data… For us, when we look at the market, the new aspirational class coming in, they need access to financing. We give financing to the consumer, which, in turn, reinforces business with merchants… This is not a market where one company can dominate,” le Moal said. PayU India processes...

17Sep By AnkitaNo Comments

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Time Magazine Sold For $190 Million

Time Magazine is being sold by Meredith Corp to Marc Benioff, a co-founder of Salesforce, and his wife. The sale is occurring nearly eight months after Meredith Corp. completed its purchase of Time Inc. The Wall Street Journal reported that the iconic news magazine is being sold for USD 190 million to Benioff, one of four co-founders of Salesforce, a cloud computing pioneer. Meredith, the publisher of such magazines as People and Better Homes & Gardens, had put four Time Inc publications up for sale in March. Launched by Yale graduates, Time Magazine first went on sale in March 1923 with a cover price of 15 cents. Its circulation was a modest 9,000 copies, according to a corporate history written by Robert T. Elson. Its online platform Time.com audience grew to 31.7 million...