Weekly Wrap-Up: Android One, Google Domains, Rakuten India, FIFA Ads And More

It’s Monday morning and time to do a quick wrap-up of some of the buzzing posts that we published on Trak.in last week.

Here are 6 amazing ads on FIFA Football World Cup that were created by various Brands who went on to notch millions of views on Youtube! This sure is a Must Watch!

Around 18 kms away from Ahmedabad airport, Gujarat is building India’s first International Financial Tech City: “Gujarat International Financial Tec (GIFT) City”, which is also India’s first smart city to be created from scratch.

In 2014, Facebook’s userbase in India will grow at 40 percent, more than double compared to any other Asia-Pacific market and most that any other country in the world

Google is getting into Domain Registration Business and this is a big deal for end users as well as competing registrars. Google Domains is currently in Beta and invite only!

Arise India has just launched a series of LED TVs which are completely based on latest Android JB 4.2 OS. Named as “Arise LED TV For Android”, these TVs would cost you between Rs 32,000 to Rs 2,00,000 for screen dimensions: 32 inch to 84 inch.

Vicky.in, one of the leading Indian car & bike portal has today announced launch of Indian’s first used bike valuation tool. The new service allows one and all to evaluate the market price of their old two wheeler an a jiffy.

Microsoft has just announced a very tempting offer: 15 GB free online storage for all OneDrive users; up from 7GB limit and 1 TB of space for Office 365 users; up from previous 20 GB limit.

Helpshift, San Francisco and Pune based Mobile CRM solutions company, has today announced that it has raised Series A funding round of $10 million.

India’s third largest & national airlines: Air India has finally joined Star Alliance Group. After a meeting of the Chief Executives’ Board of the member airlines in London, the world’s most powerful association of international airlines decided to include Air India into their exclusive group.

Google Voice search algorithms have been update and now they support tough to understand Indian accents as well. Google worked with over 700 people to improve the voice search to satisfaction.

The Indian government is aiming to generate 20,000 MW of solar power by 2022, which is currently at 2600 MW capacity. They are currently in process of inviting bids for the same!

Indian organized retail Industry, which is currently valued at $40 billion will swell to $200 billion in the next 5-7 years according to a report by BCG and CII

Wafer is essentially a customizable NFC tag sticker which users can use to complete many everyday tasks by just tapping your phone on to a Wafer tag. Currently you can support their Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

Japanese E-Commerce giant Rakuten has announced that they are opening up Rakuten India Development and Operations Center (RIDOC) in Bangalore India.

LinkedIn did some analysis of the cities which attract most of the technology driven talent, and they came up with some surprising findings – Top 4 cities in the world which attracts tech talent are Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai!

Google’s India playstore now lists Samsung Gear Live and LG G Smart Watches! It is still under “Coming Soon”, however, the prices have been declared and it will not be long before they start shipping to Indians.

Google at its I/O conference has announced Android One Sub-$100 Smartphone Program, and has partnered With Micromax, Karbonn And Spice to bring these Affordable Android L based smartphones to India!

United Nations has recognized Indian Govt’s mobile governance initiative: Mobile Seva, and has awarded them with the prestigious “The United Nations Public Service Awards Programme” (UNPSA)

It was on the cards for sometime now and finally it has officially happened. Flipkart has launched its own Android tablet under its Digiflip brand. The tablet, Digiflip Pro, is priced at Rs. 9999 and is focused on the entry level buyers.

Chinese Smartphone maker Xiaomi, who is preparing to make a big entry into the Indian Smartphone market, will sell its devices exclusively via Flipkart

Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy is partnering with Amazon to launch an ecommerce project in India, according to a Reuters report. This could be considered a vital turning point for the Indian eCommerce industry.

Here are some very interesting Insights Into Indian Smartphone Handset Market. Micromax topped the market when it came to number of handsets launched, whereas nearly half of all smartphones launched in 2014 had 1GB Ram!

TRAI has released their Telecom Subscription addition stats for the month of April 2014 and for 7th month straight, India has seen positive number of additions. As per the report, India’s net mobile subscriber additions stood at 2.93 million, taking the total tally of subscribers to 907.44 Mln.