It’s Monday morning and yet again time for a quick wrap-up of posts published on trak.in last week. If you were offline for any reason, this is a great way to catch up with all the tech buzz!
After choosing Paytm as a partner for selling e-toll tags, NHAI (National Highways Authority of India) has granted contract to Paytm for managing 40 out of 350 toll plazas across the country.
According to new information from The Grand Tour, a British motoring television series exclusive to Amazon Video presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, the show will be made available to 200 countries in December 2016, and India should be on the list of these countries.
Flipkart has plans to expand its product portfolio and get into groceries, and a possible re-entry into the furniture business. “There’s definitely room to build a profitable grocery business, but it’s hard. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but it’s hard,” Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal told Reuters.
The surgical strike against black money continues with full force, as banks are now overflowing with deposited money, even as black money hoarders are discovering new ways to convert their wealth into white.
Flipkart’s rendezvous with Chinese products has almost ended, as they have decided to embrace Make in India vision with full force. As per reports coming in from various sources, Flipkart is all set to re-introduce private label products, made by Indians, in a new avatar, and create some ripples across the industry.
Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook) are not leaving any stones unturned to copy Snapchat and the wildly popular disappearing photos feature. Snapchat introduced an idea that clicked with the younger generation and now almost every other social media platform is trying to copy that.
91 Locker app is lock screen app that lets you customize your phone’s lock screen as per your liking. Now before you start thinking of it as just another lock screen app that lets you set a wallpaper for your lock screen, allow me to tell you that 91 Locker lets you do much more. [sponsored]
Recent statistics point to the exuberance in the Indian luxury market. An Assocham study stated that the Indian luxury market is expected to cross ~US$ 18 bn by 2016 from ~US$ 15 bn growing at a CAGR of ~25%. As per Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, the luxury industry has the potential to grow 10-fold from and reach $180 bn by 2025.
Razorpay, a new entrant in this competitive niche of online payment gateway, has introduced several interesting features which makes them one of the few smart players who do understand the need and requirements of the all digital businesses. [sponsored]
Reliance Jio may be in deep trouble right now. Demonetization move by PM Modi has wreaked havoc in Jio’s expansion plan as they growth rate has plunged by 50% as a result of currency ban.
Bombay Stock Exchange, India’s oldest and world’s fastest stock exchange, has admitted the power of digital media in fueling rumors, and have decided to act against this practice. Targeting the very medium which breeds false stories and rumors, which can trigger unprecedented buying/selling of few stocks, BSE is pretty serious in containing this menace.
To provide a balance between high-end specifications and battery life, Gionee has decided to announce a phone, internally named M2017, that will have all the specs you would see in an expensive phone, along with 7000 mAh battery.
78 year old Larsen & Toubro (L&T), which is India’s largest engineering firm has decided to terminate 14,000 employees in a single go. This is being described as India’s largest ever layoff. 14,000 employees represent 11.2% of total workforce of L&T in India.
There are some startups and online portals that are going an extra mile to allow people to dispense cash from ATMs. One of them being BookMyChotu.com that allows you to hire a personal helper on per hour basis.
Assocham along with research firm RNCOS has come out with an interesting study on the mobile wallet market in India. As per their research, there is immense potential in the growth of the market, as it can reach Rs 30,000 crore between 2016 and 2022, maintaining a growth rate of massive 141% year on year.
Paytm has just created millions of Point of Sales (PoS) across the nation, with one strategic move. Now, anyone with a merchant account with Paytm can receive payments via debit card/ credit card, which means that digital payments have been super-simplified and scaled beyond imagination. [Note: However, they had to retract the move within a day because of security concerns!]
Airtel has announced the pilot launch of their payments bank in Rajasthan, thereby beating Paytm in the race to launch India’s first such bank.
After effects of currency ban is slowly coming into force. While SBI has claimed 100% increase in digital payments, India’s largest ecommerce portal, IRCTC.co.in will not charge any online booking fee till December 31.
All public sector banks and some private sector ones have agreed to waive the transaction cost for all payments made through debit cards. This fees waiver has been activated till 31st December. From 2017 onwards, the fees applied on transactions will be back and the Government will want to test the effectiveness of this monetary change. ICICI Bank and Axis Bank have decided to waive off the fees till the end of this year.
Ola is now getting in-car entertainment with launch of Ola Play. Unlike Uber, this will be made available to select customers taking Ola Prime rides. The service will be launched in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi initially and will roll out to other cities by March 2017.
To all the 8.4 million Vodafone M-Pesa customers, the company has rolled out the option to withdraw money from any of the Vodafone outlets through the digital wallet. Subject to availability of cash, users can withdraw from more than 1 lakh outlets around the country.
Leading amongst the Android smartphone makers, Huawei realised a profit of $0.2 billion, capturing a market of 2.4%. Vivo and Oppo both captured 2.2% of the global operating profits. This is the first time Huawei has become the most profitable Android vendor across the globe.
State Bank of India, which is India’s largest bank having a customer base of 200 million and 5.2 million mobile banking customers, has finally launched their own UPI (Unified Payment Interface) based app: SBI Pay.
Even after 18 days of currency ban, a lot of interesting developments are being reported from across the country. While some of them are catastrophic for employment, some are being hailed as revolutionary.
World’s largest ecommerce portal, Amazon has decided to sell products of India’s fastest growing FMCG company, Patanjali in international markets. As per reports coming in, Amazon has planned to sell Patanjali’s products across 9 countries which include US, UK and Japan, commanding 300 million customers.
