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Snap Brings on Board Amazon & HuffPost Senior Executives

26Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Snap Brings on Board Amazon & HuffPost Senior Executives

The parent company of the photo messaging app Snapchat called Snap Inc has announced the appointment of Amazon's head of advertising Jeremi Gorman as its chief business officer. Along with him, HuffPost media company Chief Executive Jared Grusd will also join as the chief strategy officer. The moves were disclosed in an internal memo shared by Snap. It was last month that Snap said its Chief Strategy Officer Imran Khan would step down, with his last day still undetermined. Khan was the latest top-level resignation from the company surrounded by pressure to stem a drop in users following a controversial redesign of the Snapchat app. Snap has set an aim of becoming profitable next year by growing users and ad sales. Snap did not previously have a chief business officer overseeing it...

E-commerce Giant Amazon Sets Up Captive Call Centers in India

24Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

E-commerce Giant Amazon Sets Up Captive Call Centers in India

The e-commerce player Amazon has set up captive call centres in India to handle some of its international and domestic customer and seller services. The company has taken a departure from its previous strategy of working purely with business process outsourcing companies. The e-commerce giant is expecting to expand more and more in India. The company has been looking at its customer service strategy over the past year. It was in January that Amazon acquired a warrant in US company StarTek that is tied to the amount of revenue Amazon generates for the US BPO company. “Amazon has looked at this very strategically. If they are giving you business then they want part of that upside or, in some cases, they think they can generate and keep the efficiencies for themselves. They have a long ...

Amazon Partners with Qualcomm to put Alexa assistant in More Headphones

23Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Amazon Partners with Qualcomm to put Alexa assistant in More Headphones

Amazon is joining hands with microchip firm Qualcomm for the purpose of spreading the use of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in wireless headphones. Following the deal, Qualcomm will release a set of chips that any maker of Bluetooth headphones can use to embed Alexa directly into the device. With this, when the headphones are paired to a phone with the Alexa app on it, the users will be able to talk to the voice assistant by pressing a button on the headphones. The functioning of the device would be similar to Apple's AirPods wireless earbuds, which enable users can tap the devices to talk to Apple's virtual assistant, Siri. Qualcomm has developed a pre-made circuit that headphone makers can drop into their device to imbue it with Alexa. "This radically reduces their cost and time t...

eBay Files a Lawsuit Against the Largest E-commerce Player

18Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

eBay Files a Lawsuit Against the Largest E-commerce Player

The e-commerce player eBay has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Amazon stating that the online retail giant used eBay's messaging system to steal its sellers. In the following lawsuit, eBay said Amazon representatives signed up for eBay accounts and messaged sellers to get them to sell their goods on Amazon.com. This violated its user agreement. As far as the complaint is concerned, Amazon representatives spelled out their email addresses and asked eBay sellers to talk on the phone in order to evade detection. eBay called it an “orchestrated, coordinated, worldwide campaign'' to “illegally lure eBay sellers to sell on Amazon.'' US-based retailer Amazon refused to comment on the lawsuit. Both e-commerce platforms eBay and Amazon depend on independent sellers to boost their rev...

Amazon to Take up Stake in Kishore Biyani’s Future Retail

18Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Amazon to Take up Stake in Kishore Biyani’s Future Retail

The e-commerce giant Amazon is all set to acquire a stake of just under 10% in Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail. The deal is likely to be approved by the latter’s board on October 29. The retail major is expected to pick up shares through the foreign portfolio investors route at a hefty premium to the prevailing share price for gaining business exclusivity and future shareholding rights. Future Retail shares ended 14% higher at Rs 494 apiece after television channels stated that Amazon was going to buy a 7-8% stake in the India-based company. Future Retail that operates Big Bazaar and Easy Day supermarkets would reach Rs 25,000-crore market value after this deal. Amazon’s investment has strategic underpinnings and could evolve alongside regulatory and business developments. The Se...

Google Soon to Launch its ‘Shopping’ Tab in India

15Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Google Soon to Launch its ‘Shopping’ Tab in India

The technology giant and the largest search engine Google is reportedly going to launch its ‘Shopping’ tab in India. This would allow users to search for products to buy and directing them to merchant websites or e-commerce platforms for product listings. The tab is currently in working and in a few months, the Shopping tab will be piloted soon, prior to a full-fledged launch before the end of the year. “We are always exploring options to help consumers find the products they want to buy more quickly and efficiently from local merchants,” a Google spokesperson stated. Google has been in talks with e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Paytm Mall and Snapdeal to join together in the company’s shopping tab initiative. Besides large e-commerce websites, Google is also expected to tap into...

Amazon Pay Gets Huge Investment Ahead of Festive Season

5Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Amazon Pay Gets Huge Investment Ahead of Festive Season

The retail giant Amazon is continuing to invest considerable capital into its payments arm Amazon Pay, adding Rs 590 crore in the recent infusion. This move comes just before the festival sale of Amazon. With this, Amazon Pay is expected to offer large cashbacks to customers during the upcoming sales to attract more customers. Also, it may offer affordability products such as debit card EMI and cardless EMI to push sales of high-ticket products. “Our focus is to make digital payments the most trusted, convenient and rewarding choice for customers. We continue to explore ways to do this, in partnership with banks, processors, fintech companies and ecosystem partners,” an Amazon Pay spokesperson said. Along with this, the company also has plans to start selling insurance in India, as pe...

Amazon Brings In Fire TV Stick 4K in India at Rs 5,999

4Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Amazon Brings In Fire TV Stick 4K in India at Rs 5,999

Amazon has launched its new Fire TV Stick 4K which is an upgraded version of its streaming media stick along with a new Alexa-powered voice remote. The new device is priced at Rs 5,999 in India. It features a quad-core 1.7GHz processor. Along with this, the device comes with support for 4K content, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ for an improved and better picture quality. Parag Gupta, Head – Product & Marketing of Amazon India stated that the Fire Stick 4K is 80% faster than its predecessor Fire TV stick that was introduced in India in April last year. "It (Fire Stick 4K) is a complete 4K solution our customers are looking for, all within a compact stick form factor. The team invented an entirely new antenna technology and combined that with a powerful 802.11ac Wi-Fi to optimize for ...

Amazon to Increase Minimum Wages of US Employees to $15

3Oct By Gauri SinghNo Comments

USA

Amazon to Increase Minimum Wages of US Employees to $15

Amazon has announced that the company is reportedly raising the minimum wage for all its United States employees to $15 which will be effective from next month. The raise is applicable for part-time workers and those hired through temporary agencies. The company mentioned that it would also persuade Washington to raise the federal minimum wage which has been around $7.25 for almost a decade. The rise in the wages will apply to more than 250,000 Amazon employees, including those at the grocery chain Whole Foods. Also, it will apply to more than 100,000 seasonal employees that the company plans to appoint for the holiday season. However, the change in wages will not apply to contract workers. “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to ...

Amazon to Launch Amazon 4-Star Store in New York

27Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Amazon to Launch Amazon 4-Star Store in New York

The retail giant Amazon is prepping up to expand its brick-and-mortar footprint with a new kind of store. The company has planned to launch an “Amazon 4-Star” store in New York today. The store will have all the products that are rated 4 stars and above, are a top seller or are new and trending on Amazon. Basically, the store will have all the best products that Amazon sells. The location of the store will be in SoHo, on Spring Street between Crosby and Lafayette Streets. It will function between 10 AM – 9 PM Monday through Saturday, and 11 AM – 8 PM on Sundays. Amazon 4-star opens tomorrow in the SoHo neighborhood of #NYC – check out a sneak peek of the store here: https://t.co/tA2G8zI5OK pic.twitter.com/UYD0UeEkA5 — Amazon News (@amazonnews) September 26, 2018 ...

Facebook Set to Launch its Own Video Chat Device

24Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Facebook Set to Launch its Own Video Chat Device

The social media giant Facebook is reportedly ready to make an announcement regarding its own video chat device called Portal next week with an aim to take on Amazon's smart home devices. With this new launch, the company will give a fight to Amazon's Echo Show. It will be available in two variants where the larger variant could be priced at around $400, while a smaller variant could go for around $300. However, it will have connection with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and let users watch videos, play music, see cooking recipes, and much more. The report said that Facebook had originally planned to announce Portal at its annual F8 developer conference in May "But the company's scandals, including the Cambridge Analytica data breach and the bombshell revelation that Russia used t...

Amazon, Samara Capital Acquire Aditya Birla Group’s ‘More’

20Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Amazon, Samara Capital Acquire Aditya Birla Group’s ‘More’

In the era of growing acquisitions, retail giant Amazon and home-grown equity fund Samara Capital have entered into a deal to acquire Aditya Birla Group's food and grocery retail chain known as ‘More’. After Future Group's Big Bazaar, Reliance Retail and DMart, More is the fourth-largest supermarket chain in the country. The two companies acquired the retail chain in a deal worth the enterprise valuation of Rs 4,200 crore. Aditya Birla Retail Ltd (ABRL) owns and operates 575 More stores. Following the acquisition, Samara Capital took over 51% of Kumar Mangalam Birla's ABRL, on the other hand, Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC, Amazon's investment arm got hold of the rest 49%. “The board of directors of the company, at its meeting held on September 19, 2018, has approved the sale...