Walmart chief financial officer Brett Biggs said it anticipated regulatory changes in India but was disappointed it happened so quickly, referring to the foreign direct investment (FDI) norms in ecommerce that changed last month. “We will have legislation changes, we know that and you work your way through it. It is disappointing that you have […]
Archives for 2019
Lancaster University adopts AWS chatbots to support student services
Lancaster University has launched a chatbot for students to help them navigate their way through the university world, including serving up information about their studies and social life. Built on AWS, the chatbot allows students to ask questions and receive contextual replies, as if they’re chatting to a human. They can ask questions about their […]
Salesforce launches myTrailhead to drive skills and learning in business
Salesforce has launched myTrailhead, a branded learning experience platform to help businesses offer their employees enhanced skills training. myTrailhead builds upon Salesforce’s Trailhead, but allows organisations to brand the platform with their own logo, tone of voice and resources in just a few clicks. Employees can learn the skills they want, when they wish, developing […]
Cloud market expected to surge at a rate of 18% by 2023
A report into the global cloud market has revealed that the value of cloud services could grow by an annual rate of 18% between 2019 and 2023 as businesses look to automate more services and deliver better experiences to customers. Other primary growth drivers are that businesses want to save costs and obtain a higher […]
Huawei moves into Russian cloud market with third-party data centre support
Huawei has extended its reach across Eurasia, renting 500 racks in data centres across Russia to localise their services for the market. The racks are residing in facilities owned by 3Data, IXcellerate and DataPro, according to Russian news site Kommersant. Russia has pretty extreme data sovereignty laws, stipulating that any information held by Russian companies […]
India’s digital revolution: It’s going great guns, but India must remain open to foreign technologies and capital
By Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University While digital technology now touches most Indians, there is insufficient appreciation of how far India has come within a short period. Digital infrastructure has greatly reduced friction in transactions whether financial or otherwise. This infrastructure and what will be built on it in the near future promise significant productivity gains. […]
Dubai firm moves Bombay HC to block Netflix’s film on 26/11
A Dubai-based firm has moved the Bombay High Court to block Netflix from releasing the film Hotel Mumbai on the OTT entertainment provider’s platform in India on the grounds that it has the rights to release the film in the Indian market. According to a petition filed by Plus Holdings in the Bombay High Court […]
Amazon Prime Video to raise India game with original shows
Amazon Prime Video has unveiled a big line-up of original Indian shows, including the first multi-season tent-pole action thriller web series starring Bollywood A-lister Akshay Kumar, as it bets big on India, its largest and fastest-growing market globally. India has the biggest set of originals for Prime Video outside of the US, Jennifer Salke, head […]
New economy spending big on ad blockbuster
Amazon and Flipkart didn’t stint on advertising in 2018, with a combined expenditure of Rs 2,373 crore. That was more than what Procter & Gamble (P&G), Reckitt Benckiser and Godrej — among the country’s top 10 advertisers — spent in total. Hindustan Unilever was still the number one though, raising its ad spend 11% to […]
‘Website not found’ pop-ups leave Internet activists fuming
By Tushar Kaushik Internet activists are concerned over what they term as rising instances of websites being blocked by internet service providers (ISPs) and the government without citing any reason for doing so. Last year, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) blocked 2,799 URLs for allegedly hosting malicious content, marking a sharp increase […]