L-R: Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg Quibi, the multi-billion-dollar streaming platform launching Monday, is betting it can transform entertainment with short, Hollywood-quality clips to watch “on the go” — even as much of the world is trapped at home. Industry legends and stars from Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro to Jennifer Lopez and Reese […]

Online food delivery and restaurant recommendation platform Zomato has raised close to $5 million (Rs 38.20 crore) from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust, a fund managed by British investment manager Baillie Gifford. According to documents filed by Zomato with the Registrar of Companies, and accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler, the Gurugram-headquartered company has allotted 1,177 […]

Amazon is postponing its major summer shopping event Prime Day until at least August and expects a potential $100-million hit from excess devices it may now have to sell at a discount, according to internal meeting notes seen by Reuters. Amazon declined to comment. Prime Day, a marketing event Amazon started in 2015 to drum […]

Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Several food delivery services, cab and bike taxi aggregators, and non-essential ecommerce firms are joining hands with retail chains and online grocers to supply groceries to consumers stuck at home because of the lockdown. Uber, Domino’s Pizza, Rapido, Zypp, Swiggy, Zomato and Scootsy have all ventured into grocery delivery in partnerships with […]

Domestic remittances, usually from big cities and more affluent areas to India’s rural hinterland, plunged about 80% in the past two weeks, triggered likely by a sudden loss of jobs and the return of the migrant workers to their homes. The Centre’s decision to transfer funds directly to their bank accounts might cushion the impact, […]

Illustration: Rahul Awasthi E-grocer BigBasket will hire 10,000 permanent on-ground staff to work at warehouses, distribution centres and as delivery personnel, over the next few days. The company’s rival Grofers also plans to recruit 2,000 additional workers, as both the companies look to service a massive demand surge caused by the nationwide lockdown due to […]

Walmart-owned Flipkart has assured employees that there will be no pay cuts and all job offers, including internships, will be honoured. In a virtual town hall, the first after the lockdown, Flipkart Chief Kalyan Krishnamurthy assured over 6,000 employees that Flipkart is in a “financially healthy” state. “Flipkart is safe and (financially) healthy. There is […]

Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Online food delivery orders for Zomato and Swiggy have dropped 70% in the last 10 days to under 1 million a day, as customers step back and top restaurants shut shop amid a lockdown induced by the Covid-19 virus outbreak, said investors, companies and restaurants to ET. “From a steady state of […]

A clutch of top executives from startups have built a web-based app CovidMaps to help find information about stores in one’s neighbourhood to buy essentials. CovidMaps.in, a volunteer-led nonprofit project, lists details around when a store is open, what items are available and how much, safety precautions being observed, crowding, wait times to help people […]

Infectious disease researchers are using Facebook mobile location data to provide daily updates to U.S. cities and states evaluating the effectiveness of social distancing orders aimed at slowing the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network, a group of 40 health researchers from universities including Harvard, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, said that since mid-March its […]