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!
Contents
Internet/Tech/E-Commerce
In August 2016, Orkut’s founder Orkut Büyükkökten came up with a new social network to connect people on the basis of similar interests, called ‘Hello’. The idea of this app was to connect people who share the same passion and interests.
Facebook owned social networking site, Messenger and Instagram are possibly all coming together with the integration of notifications. This means that the notification center of these three applications is going to be clubbed into one.
National Consumer Helpline is a joint initiative by Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) and the Consumers Ministry. As per recent data released by the Consumer Ministry, around 3.5 lakh complaints by consumers were lodged at the National Consumer Helpline in the last one year.
Netflix, the global phenomenon which has changed everything about Television habits, everywhere in the world, has come up with an interesting analysis of their viewer’s watching habits.
Now, you will be able to search for Instagram stories basis their location tags and hashtags. In case you want to search stories about New York City, just search for it in the search tab and you’ll see a new ring which has all the stories associated with it.
With the recent malware attacks around the world, the focus is again on the VPNs and how they can help to safeguard systems. It is now becoming imperative to take care of one’s safety while on the internet and Virtual Private Networks go a long in ensuring that!
Business/Startups
A study by The IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics have found a similar failure rate of 90% among Indian startups as well. And, it appears that lack of innovation along with the lack of skilled people are the major drivers of startup failures in India.
Gone are the days when Uber used to charge the fare of a trip based on the distance travelled – this is certainly so old fashioned and cliché, right? The new way to determine fares is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Paytm revealed quite a few details of their payments bank before the launch, and we sum up everything here for the benefit of our readers. Before we get into details, please understand that Paytm Payments Bank will be available on an invite-only basis.
If Musk’s tweet is to go by, then Tesla is definitely not entering India this year. Even for 2018, we can expect the company to launch Model 3 in India only the end of the year. However, one thing is for sure that the company is eager to launch the car because of the sheer growth numbers.
OYO Rooms, India’s largest hotel aggregator, launched OYO Townhouse in New Delhi and Gurgaon. Since then, the service has expanded to Hyderabad in Jubilee Hills and Noida in Sector 51. However, the company’s plan is to rapidly increase the number of townhouses in India.
Splitwise is world’s largest expense and bill splitting app and now the company has added the ability to pay the other people through Paytm. Splitwise is not very famous in India but has recently started seeing growth considering sharing options available.
In a statement which signifies more growth and development, Indian Govt. has said that India’s digital economy will swell to $1 trillion by 2024, up from $270 billion, which is the current market size.
Credit rating agency Moody’s have presented a grim and harsh outlook for Airtel in their latest ratings. Not only have they downgraded Airtel’s rating from stable to negative, they have also predicted slower revenues and lesser subscribers for them in the coming days.
The government of India has decided to abolish the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) entirely and replace it with a new process and protocol for managing foreign direct investments.
Brand Finance, which is a brand valuation and strategy consultancy, has calculated the financial semantics of the brand IPL, and their biggest, most charismatic teams. And the results will surely surprise you.
Earlier, Govt. had decided to provide tax and other benefits to a startup only if it’s less than 5-year-old. But now, this definition has been extended to 7 years. This will now help more startups to claim the benefits under Startup India program, and hence, will attract more entrepreneurs as well.
Mercedes Benz has decided to slash prices of their India manufactured cars by Rs 7 lakh, and the reason which they attributed to this heavy discount is the implementation of GST, effective July 1st. Hence, this becomes the first case study for Indian economists, wherein both Make in India and GST, collectively has resulted in reduced prices for a luxury commodity.
Telecom/Mobile/Gadgets
Hong Kong Based financial services provider UBS AG has released its telecom report for the month of March, and have stated that Jio’s aggressive and fast growth mode has slowed down. Their report indicates that Airtel, along with Vodafone and Idea have recovered substantially from the onslaught of Jio in the previous months.
Vertu, the British manufacturer of luxury, hand-made phones has again shocked us with their launch. Christened as Vertu Signature Cobra, this is Vertu’s newest launched mobile phones, which costs Rs 2.3 crore or roughly $360,000 a piece.
You might have heard about the AirBar, a device which turns your normal laptop screen into a fully working touch screen. But the best part is, that AirBar is now officially available in India. You can order one right now through Amazon and can even avail the special discount (till the lightning deal and stocks last).
For India, Google is making an effort to launch Android Pay by 2017, through Government’s UPI(Unified Payment Interface). UPI has been lauded by the industry and it allows transaction between two entities in the most simple manner without letting out any details.
Sony wants to exit from the ‘Premium Standard’ segment, as it calls it, at a global level. This means that Sony Xperia X and X Compact, that were launched in 2016, will be discontinued globally.
Last month, Reliance Jio, in strongly written words, had complained to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) against Airtel, Vodafone and Idea regarding discriminatory pricing plans for the same class of subscribers. In a landmark judgement, TRAI has upheld the complaint and has ordered all telecom providers to immediately stop this practice.
Others
Described as semi-high speed train by Indian Railways, the USP of Tejas Express lies in ultra luxurious amenities and facilities being provided in the train, which is not available in any other train as of now; including the legendary Shatabdi and Rajdhani Express.
India’s largest meal voucher provider, Sodexo, has tied up with Zeta that offers paperless meal vouchers to corporates. Sodexo sees a great potential in doing away with paper vouchers and shifting to virtual cards. With Paytm also entering into Meal Voucher space with their digital offering, it has become imperative for Sodexo to embrace digital in a big way!
In a unique study conducted by PG students of School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), it was found Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport takes maximum time to reach, compared to any other airport in the country.
Creativity is such a vague, broad term; but the irony is that everyone needs a splash of creativity for breaking the monotony, and to find some really interesting solutions.
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