It’s Monday morning and yet again time to do a quick review of the posts published on trak last week. If you were offline for any reason this is a great way to catch up with all the tech buzz from last week.
Contents
Internet/Tech/E-Commerce
WhatsApp is in the process of integrating UPI on its platform, for peer to peer transfer of money. With over 1 billion active users on the platform and 200 million users in India, this integration can be the next biggest disruption for other similar services.
Snapdeal, which is right now going through a rough patch, has now more reasons to worry. A possible infusion of $100-150 million by Softbank has been cancelled, thereby making the fate of Snapdeal even more doubtful.
After months of testing and refinement, Google has officially launched Youtube Go app on Google Play Store in the beta version. This means that the app may be in the development phase, but offers you an early access to YouTube Go.
As the new financial year started on April 1st, e-commerce battle is warming up in India. While Flipkart has decided to use Artificial Intelligence to predict consumer behaviour, Amazon will launch exclusive smartphones with their own products.
Global payment gateway provider, PayU, has launched and interesting service for people in India. LazyPay, developed by PayU, now allows deferred payments by upto 15 days, in the same way credit cards do.
Now, Google Play Music is finally offering monthly subscriptions on its app in India. As soon as you open the app, it will prompt you to try a 30-day trial of the unlimited service on the app, post which you can purchase a monthly subscription at Rs. 89.
Govt. has informed Supreme Court that they will regulate and monitor all OTT services which includes WhatsApp, Facebook, Google Talk, Skype, WeChat and more. And this can change so many things now..
While Softbank is pushing hard to sell Snapdeal to Flipkart, a shocker has come its way. A FIR has been registered against Jasper InfoTech Pvt Ltd and Snapdeal employees by a city court have directed the registration under a cheating case. The investigation report is against the Co-founder of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and its 11 other executives.
In the past year, YouTube has blown up with the sheer content and volume of video creators on the platform. The company has also taken steps to ensure the right content reaches the viewers, and alongside promote smaller YouTubers by highlighting their content every week. Now, it has started restricting monetization access to Youtube Channels that have more than 10,000 views only!
To make Twitter experience less annoying on slower internet speeds and slower smartphones, the social media company has announced Twitter Lite. It has been developed keeping in mind low data usage, quick loading on slower connections, resilience on unreliable mobile networks, and low space consumption at less than 1MB.
Such is the momentum, that within a year of its launch, UPI has actually overtaken digital wallets in terms of growth and expansion. And if we believe the reports, then very soon, more digital transactions would be happening via UPI apps, compared to digital wallets.
Business/Startups
Global restaurant search and discovery app, Zomato, has just announced that its online food ordering service has already clocked over 2 million orders in the month of March 2017. In comparison, Swiggy clocked around 1 million orders last year in May.
While India is approaching more flexible methods for online payments to counter the challenges faced after demonetization, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant has said that digital transactions will be done via mobile wallets and biometric system, obliterating the need for credit and debit cards in coming days.
When their best-laid plans have not fructified, the product has fallen flat, someone else has stolen their thunder and money has run dry, it is the ability to come up with a new plan and the zeal to try again, which sets them apart from the pack.
Telecom/Mobile/Gadgets
According to leaked photos, the Reliance Jio IPTV based set top box comes with an RJ-45 Ethernet port, so that you can connect your broadband to the STB and enjoy internet on your television or display. This will allow users to enjoy fast broadband internet on their television through the IPTV setup.
An investigation by Fast Track Complaints Committee (FTCC) formed by ASCI has found Airtel to be guilty of showcasing wrong facts. In their findings, the Committee said: “:The FTCC referred to the TRAI web-site with respect to the coverage of Airtel vis a vis Reliance Jio and noticed that there is a significant gap between Geographical dispersion of Airtel and Jio 4G subscribers which could impact the comparison.”
BSNL has launched several new plans for their Post Paid users, which is now offering as much as 500% more data. Meanwhile Idea Cellular has launched Jio-like plans which offers 1 GB to 6 GB per day, along with free voice calling to any number.
Xperia XZs does nothing better than the OnePlus 3T, a smartphone priced Rs. 20k less than XZs except for the camera. Other than the camera, XZs fails to impress and the company has gone way too steep with the pricing.
Partnering with Amazon India, Moto G5 has been launched at a retail price of Rs. 11,999, which is cheaper than last year’s Moto G4. The company has upgraded the internals and provided a minor facelift to the front and back of the smartphone.
The rumoured Jio 4G laptop will come equipped with a dedicated 4G SIM slot and will be a rebranded version of a laptop made for InFocus by Foxconn, the report claims. The Jio laptop will sport a 13.3-inch full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display with an aspect ratio of 16:9.
Jio Happy New Year Offer ended on 31st March and with that came the announcement of another offer from Jio as ‘Jio Summer Surprise Offer’! The ‘Jio Summer Surprise Offer’ offered free data and other benefits till the end of June 2017, followed by the pack benefits that you recharged for in the next month, i.e. July. However, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has advised that Jio should withdraw their Summer Surprise offer. Based on our sources, Jio may withdraw this Summer Surprise Offer in next 24 hours. So, if you have been wanting to subscribe to it, you should do it IMMEDIATELY!
COAI has highlighted smartphones like Lenovo A7000 and K4 Note, Xiaomi Redmi 3S and Note 3, Motorola Moto G4, Oppo A35, Micromax Canvas E451 and Intex Aqua Craze that are causing a slowdown in data network speeds.
Vivo, which is the official sponsor of the 10th edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, has decided to launch a IPL centric smartphone, in a limited edition mode. Vivo V5 Plus, which was actually launched in the month of January, has now been re-launched in a new avatar, embedding IPL elements in an innovative manner.
Samsung & Apple, both has been defeated by Xiaomi, when it comes to most preferred smartphone brand. While Micromax & Lenovo are now the least preferred brands. What is trigerring this change?
Last time BSNL redefined Internet speed was in 2015 when it made 2 Mbps – Now it will soon increase it to 4 Mbps as the minimum broadband download speed for all of their broadband plans. The news becomes viral, and BSNL is rumoured to have attracted a new generation of Internet users due to this standardization of Internet speed.
Others
In an anti free-market move, Singapore is now stopping Indian IT professionals from entering their country as their issuance of work visa has dropped “to a trickle”, in the last 12 months.
India’s leading cab-hailing service, Ola, has now enabled support for making payment for rides via UPI (Unified Payment Interface). This move would benefit all Ola users across 102 cities who use it for booking rides across 5,00,000 vehicles registered with Ola including cabs, auto-rickshaws and taxis.
For the first time ever, ISRO has partnered with private players for building satellites. This is one big leap for India’s premier space agency, as never before in the history of India’s space program, private players been allowed to contribute.
Since ages, salaried employees have been using one time-tested and reliable method to save tax: House rent paid under House Rent Allowance. But no longer now.
The common man is, of course, worried about the actual impact of GST on his pocket, and understanding this need, we bring to you 7 major services which can become expensive after GST rolls out, and 7 of those services, which can become cheaper.
While 40-60% of all Indian techies working in the USA can get negatively impacted by the new H1-B visa rules announced this week, UK’s new visa rules are all set to hit 30,000 Indian techies working in the UK.
A recent survey by EY, for understanding the penetration of corruption and fraud across the world has revealed some interesting numbers. Termed as Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) Fraud Survey, the results throw back at us deeply disturbing trend, when it comes to the very psychology of corruption in India.
Trak Super Quiz Video
Do check out this week’s Super Quiz Video
And, while you are at it – Just make sure to check out our up-to-date Indian Startup Funding & Investment Chart
