Weekly Wrap-Up: Corruption Reduction, Indian Railways Digital Ads, Paypal Digital Wallet & More…

It’s Monday morning and time to do a quick wrap-up of the posts published on trak.in last week. If you were offline last week for any reason, this is a great way to catch up with all the tech-buzz!

Internet/Tech/E-Commerce

In one of the biggest failures related to Aadhaar security, a website maintained by Jharkhand Govt. has accidentally leaked more than 1 million Aadhaar records of pensioners. The breach was reported by Indian Express newspaper on Saturday, and after that, the website was blocked.

If there was any doubt regarding the troubles of beleaguered e-commerce portal Snapdeal, then this news will remove all such apprehensions: They are vacating 60% of their Gurgaon office space due to the cash crunch, and a reduced workforce.

While more and more people are now looking forward to watching TV shows on personal computers, mobile devices, thereby ditching television as the medium; 50% of all revenues for the music industry is now coming from online streaming.

Pakistani hackers have again unleashed a reign of terror, by triggering a cyber war with India. In a daring attempt, Pakistani hackers called “Pakistan Haxors Crew” or PHC hacked 10 websites of major educational institutions in India, which included prestigious names such as IIT Delhi, IIT Varanasi, Aligarh Muslim University, Delhi University and others.

The future of Internet in India is not English, but it is vernacular languages. And in a recent event, Rajan Anandan, VP for Google’s India and South-East Asian operations has made it clear that growth of English speaking Internet users in India is now over.

While India has been placed at #5 position globally in terms of data breach and exposed digital identities, we are ranked #2 in Asia, just behind China. This means that we are relatively safe when it comes to digital hacking and identity theft.

In a direct, and blunt stand, Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, has asked all users to quit using WhatsApp, if they are not happy with their privacy policy. This is a shocking, and some extent, an arrogant stand taken by Facebook.

Business/Startups

Federal Reserve System, which is US’s central banking system, has prepared a report according to which Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime will boost our GDP by 4.2%, which is Rs 6.5 lakh crore.

In their lawsuit, Uber has alleged that accused few taxi unions of stopping drivers from working, and blamed them as genuine drivers were “verbally abused, physically assaulted and threatened”.

A war of words has broken out between India’s most powerful lobby of IT & ITeS companies, and US Govt. over the ongoing H-1B visa row. Last week, in a press statement, US Govt. had accused leading Indian IT companies of misusing H-1B visa lottery system and resorting to unfair practices to garner maximum work visas.

PayPal is seeking to get a Pre-paid Payment Instruments (PPI) licence in India. They are already evaluating various other methods of market entry in India including investments and acquisition of existing mobile wallets providers.

While an effective content marketing strategy is optimum for maintaining efficiency, there will always be challenges. But, these can be overcome keeping in mind a few simple tips.

Telecom/Mobile/Gadgets

Uber had found a way to identify individual iPhones even when the app was deleted, which led Tim Cook threatening Travis Kalanick to have Uber iPhone app removed from the App Store, as per an article in New York Times.

Reliance Jio is making news every day whether it is on the data front, or on ISD calling rates, or via its new promotional offers packed with tons of free data. The company is also witnessing the largest migration from free to paid services in history.

In a big push to Digital India, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has now announced that the mobile subscribers in the country would be able to pay for their digital content purchases up to Rs. 20,000 using prepaid balance or postpaid mobile bill.

There is some bad news for Reliance Jio’s rivals, and excellent news for Jio patrons: The age of freebies and discounts from Jio can continue for next 12-18 months, as predicted by leading telecom analysts from US and India.

Reliance Jio has finally launched the regular tariff plans for its 4G subscribers after offering freebies for over 7 months under various promotional offers. The company has recently crossed 108 million subscribers mark and now wants 50% market share in India.

Chinese smartphone maker Vivo has launched their newest offering: Vivo V5s, with claims that the phone offers fastest fingerprint scanner – It takes just 0.2 seconds to unlock the phone using the fingerprint scanner.

Others

Armed with over 2 lakh digital screens, which would be installed across 2175 railway stations, Indian Railways is planning to generate Rs 10,000 crore of advertisement revenue from digital advertisements.

Such has been the influence of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that even today managers rely on it, deriving ‘tricks and tips’ to motivate employees. And often, the results are disastrous.

After the military banned Patanjali’s Amla Juice from their stores, a huge controversy has erupted regarding the quality checks conducted by Baba Ramdev’s fast growing FMCG company.

Indian Railways has decided to go for complete digitalization of their railway operation. A customised ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) would be developed for them, which will manage each and every rail operation.

One out of three employees in India has admitted that they are not loyal to any particular industry or sector, and are open to switching industries if they receive the right salary and benefits.

While Softbank is all set to infuse $1.9 billion into Paytm, which will raise its valuation to $9 billion; on the occasion of Akshay Tritiya, Paytm has launched world’s 1st mobile wallet based Digital Gold scheme.

As per the study by CMS, corruption in India has witnessed a steady and gradual decline, if analysed by the data of the last 10 years, from 2005 to 2016. The study found that in 2005, 53% of the surveyed households complained about corruption in India, as they experienced it firsthand.

In a move to rapidly expand the ecosystem of Google Assistant, Google has released its developer preview SDK (Software Development Kit) to 3rd party developers. Now, they can use the Google Assistant to build smart gadgets.

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