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Amazon Plans to Launch 3,000 Amazon Go Cashierless Stores

20Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Amazon Plans to Launch 3,000 Amazon Go Cashierless Stores

The retail giant Amazon has made aggressive plans of launching as many as 3,000 new Amazon Go cashierless stores in the next few years. The people familiar with the development stated that the company plans to open 10 such stores by the end of this year. These stores will further be expanded to 50 locations across major metro areas by 2019 and as many as 3,000 stores by 2021. At present, Amazon has three Amazon Go stores in Seattle and has announced one in Chicago with further plans to expand its operations in San Francisco and New York. The Amazon Go stores have no cashiers and allow shoppers to buy things with the help of a smartphone app. This makes the shopping experience easy for the customers and also saves their time that was required to stand in the queue. This concept is ...

Amazon Launches Amazon Go Checkout-free Store in Chicago

17Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

USA

Amazon Launches Amazon Go Checkout-free Store in Chicago

The retail major Amazon is all set to launch the next Amazon Go checkout-free store in Chicago. The new cashierless store will start operating today which is the first to open outside of Seattle. With this opening, the store will make use of proprietary technology made up of hundreds of cameras and sensors to see what customers have taken. The Just Walk Out tech allows customers to swipe in with their Amazon Go app, pick up what they want and walk out. When they leave, the items are automatically charged to the credit card on the account, without the need to talk to a cashier or swipe a barcode. This is really a convenient and time-saving method of shopping. With this move, the customers now won’t have to stand in the queue and wait for their turn to pay for their items. This hig...

Amazon Launches Hindi Version of its App and Website

4Sep By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Amazon Launches Hindi Version of its App and Website

The leading e-commerce platform Amazon has announced the launch of its first Hindi version of the Android app and website. This move has been primarily taken to make deeper footprints into India’s fast-growing e-commerce market, boosting up its battle with Walmart’s Flipkart. This move clearly signifies the importance of the Indian market in the e-commerce sector. With the addition of Hindi language support, Amazon looks to capture a wider audience in the country. Also, a notable thing is that the app does not need to be updated to make use of this new feature. “What we believe is, Amazon.in in Hindi is a critical step to actually address the next 100 million customers,” Manish Tiwary, vice president (category management) at Amazon India stated. The language button now has the option ...

Amazon Rebrands Offline Initiative in India

29Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

Amazon Rebrands Offline Initiative in India

The popular e-commerce player Amazon India has announced that it will be promoting all its 14,000 assisted online shopping points in 21 States across the country. And, this will be done under Amazon Easy brand, starting with 200 such facilities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. All the points will be branded Amazon Easy by mid 2019 as stated by Kishore Thota, director-customer experience and marketing, Amazon India. This will be done majorly for stores dealing in a host of items from groceries, medicines and mobiles besides some exclusive outlets. With Amazon Easy, the staff of offline stores in tier II and tier III markets are instructed to assit customers shop on Amazon.in and this in turn also helps them to earn commission. Thota stated that in the two States, where there are 1,...

Amazon Pay Looking to Acquire Tapzo in a Cash & Stock Deal

28Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

ACQUISITION

Amazon Pay Looking to Acquire Tapzo in a Cash & Stock Deal

Amazon’s online payments processing service Amazon Pay is looking forward to acquiring personal assistant platform Tapzo in a part-stock and part-cash deal with an aim to build on its payment offering and create multiple use cases for it. The deal has been valued at between $40-45 million. The stock component will give a cash-out to investors whereas Ankur Singla and Vishal Pal Chaudhary, co-founders of Tapzo will get some cash along with shares in Amazon. The sources have claimed that the deal was completed last week and Tapzo’s founders are likely to get on board Amazon Pay’s team in India. Founded in 2010, Tapzo is an aggregator platform that allows users to access over 35 apps including Amazon, Flipkart, Ola, Uber, and more from its interface. It provides a group of transactio...

Alexa Users Can Now Teach it Hindi and Other Local Languages

15Aug By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Alexa Users Can Now Teach it Hindi and Other Local Languages

Amazon's digital assistant Alexa from the past few months is bringing in various modifications for the purpose of increasing its customer base. Now, Alexa has introduced a feature that its users can teach it local Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi and Bengali. The e-commerce major Amazon announced a new skill aimed at improving Alexa's speech recognition. As of now, the artificial intelligence-powered Alexa used to engage with people in English, however, now it is expanding its language skills. "Alexa gets smarter every day and now customers in India can help Alexa learn Hindi, and other Indian languages, using the new Cleo skill," Amazon stated. Alexa at present competes with virtual assistants like Apple's Siri and Google Assistant. Cleo enables the users to share more facts and ...

Xiaomi Mi A2 to be Launched In India Exclusively on Amazon

31Jul By AnkitaNo Comments

Tech

Xiaomi Mi A2 to be Launched In India Exclusively on Amazon

Xiaomi, a leading chinese smartphone company is all set to launch its next Android One device in its portfolio, known as Xiaomi Mi A2 exclusively in India. The second generation of Android One handset has been spotted on e-commerce website Amazon. Therefore, it isn't clear whether the handset will be available for purchase on the day of the launch, August 8, or sometime later after its launch in India. SPECIFICATIONS: DISPLAY: 5.99-inch IPS LCD screen of full HD+ resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels with 18:9 aspect ratio. COLOUR: Gold, Blue and Black WEIGHT: It measures 158.70 x 75.40 x 7.30 (height x width x thickness) and weighs 168.00 grams. PROCESSOR: Octa-core Snapdragon 660 processor (four 2.2GHz Kyro 260 cores + four 1.8GHz ...

30Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

FUNDING

Shuttl Raises Series B Funding Round From Amazon

Online minibus service Shuttl has successfully raised an amount of $11 million (about Rs 75 crore) in a series-B financing round. This particular funding was led by Amazon, in connection with the Amazon Alexa Fund, and Dentsu Ventures along with existing investors. The funds so raised will be utilized for product development, expansion into new cities and marketing. The company is also looking to increase the routes and frequency of its bus shuttle service in Delhi. Amit Singh, the chief executive officer of Shuttl said, “At Shuttl our mission is to take the pain away from everyone’s commute and reduce congestion in cities via a seat-based smart bus option. We have shown that this can be done at scale. We will continue to improve the consumer experience, design more routes, and restore...

Amazon To Add More Features To Alexa With Yext Business Services

26Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

Tech

Amazon To Add More Features To Alexa With Yext Business Services

Amazon, the popular e-commerce platform is reportedly adding new features into its exclusive product Alexa. The company is expanding Alexa’s brain with the help of Yext Business Services. Amazon is adding hours, addresses and phone numbers of more than 1 million business locations to its Alexa digital-assistant platform so customers can access the information via voice command. This will be done in collaboration with Yext, which offers business data used in Alphabet's Google search engine, Apple's Siri digital assistant, and Facebook's social media platform. Amazon has offered similar news through consumer-review website Yelp, which has enabled users to ask questions like "Alexa, what's the best Mexican restaurant nearby?" The data from Yext provides more material directly from busin...

NestAway Appoints Ex Amazon Executive Sandeep Daga as CFO

26Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

News

NestAway Appoints Ex Amazon Executive Sandeep Daga as CFO

NestAway, a home rental network has reportedly appointed former Amazon executive Sandeep Daga as the Chief Financial Officer of the company. Prior to NestAway, Daga was the Finance head for food and retail business in Amazon. He has been working with Amazon since October 2015. Apart from Amazon, he has also been at key positions in Reliance Retail, Lifestyle International, ITC Ltd and Larsen and Toubro. Daga has experience of over 22 years in consumer-facing business. "I am super excited to be part of NestAway, as it is well poised to leverage technology coupled with a customer-centric approach to solve the unstructured and unregulated rental housing market for the urban migrants. As NestAway continues to innovate and grow the home rental network, it is at the forefront to unlock huge ...

RBI Says Cash-On-Delivery Deals Not Allowed

25Jul By AnkitaNo Comments

News

RBI Says Cash-On-Delivery Deals Not Allowed

The most convenient payment option Cash-on-delivery (Cod) provided by several online retailers such as Flipkart and Amazon may be a regulatory grey area as per the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) response to a Right to Information (RTI) query. The RBI has said that e-commerce platforms are "not authorised" to collect money from customers on behalf of third-party vendors in cash-on-delivery (CoD) deals. RBI made the statement in a reply to an RTI query. “Aggregators/payment intermediaries like Amazon and Flipkart are not authorised under Section 8 of the PSS (Payments and Settlements Systems) Act, 2007,” mentioned the apex bank in response to the report. The statement by the RBI could be a critical blow to the e-commerce industry in the country. According to the reports over half of th...

Amazon Launches ‘Engineering Bookstore’ on its Platform

21Jul By Gauri SinghNo Comments

BUSINESS

Amazon Launches ‘Engineering Bookstore’ on its Platform

The e-commerce giant Amazon has launched a new shopping tool known as "Engineering bookstore" for the Indian customers. As part of this, the company is providing a search tool through which the engineering students can search for textbooks, reference books and study materials. To make use of this particular tool, the customers are required to select their university and department and Amazon will streamline a list of suggested books for them that they can purchase. Amazon claims that it provides thousands of books in this segment, in English and also in various Indian regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya and Gujarati. Books in foreign languages such as Spanish, Chinese, German and Italian among others are also available. These books can also b...