Archives for February 2019

Grocery and food delivery platform Postmates said on Thursday it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Postmates, which has tied up with companies such as Walmart, Starbucks and Chipotle Mexican Grill for delivery services, operates in 2,940 U.S. cities, as well as in Mexico. The San […]

Joining Microsoft‘s call to regulate the misuse of facial recognition technology, retail giant Amazon‘s Cloud arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has asked lawmakers to formulate some rules around the use of the technology. The announcement came amid increasing scrutiny on the use of facial recognition by researchers, lawmakers and civil liberties groups. “Facial recognition should […]

Photo: Elise Amendola Netflix has rolled out its Smart Downloads feature for iOS users, nearly seven months after launching the feature on its Android app. Aimed at making binge watching easier for users, Smart Downloads automatically deletes the downloaded episodes of a television show after the user has finished watching it and downloads the next […]

Photo: Arun Sharma Baba Ramdev-promoted Patanjali Ayurved has said the government’s revised ecommerce policy on foreign direct investment (FDI) which was rolled out on February 1 this year “will help to create a level-playing field for all retail platforms, and encourage fair and healthy competition among them”, one year after it inked extensive partnerships with […]

The central bank on Thursday said it is examining the possibility of bringing payment gateway operators under its direct regulatory ambit, a move that industry players said will make the digital payments ecosystem more secure and stable. “We are considering the feasibility of directly regulating these payment operators…given their growing importance in the payment systems […]

Grocery e-tailer BigBasket is closing a new $150-million round that will catapult its pre-money valuation to $1 billion, said four people familiar with the deal details. Existing backer Alibaba is leading the latest fund raise, while new investors UK government-owned CDC Group and South Korea’s Mirae Asset Global Investments are also participating, sources familiar with […]

The recent change in e-commerce regulations will in no way impact the transaction volumes of Cloudtail India on the Amazon portal, as those had always been below a quarter of the online retailer’s annual sales transactions, people familiar with the matter said. Cloudtail, in fact, will derive growth from the expansion of India’s retail market […]

With Cloudtail and Appario Retailmaking a comeback on Amazon, third-party vendors have expressed concern over how they would compete with these preferred sellers. ET spoke to several third-party sellers, who said they are once again competing on price, shipping and logistics and do not expect a level playing field even now. The ownership of Cloudtail […]