US retail giant Walmart on Tuesday reported that ecommerce contributed 12% to its international sales during the quarter ended January 31, led by Flipkart and online grocery delivery in several markets. In its fourth quarter earnings report, the company said that international sales had grown by 2.3% to $33 billion, despite a disruption in Chile […]
Social media companies to join hands for cleanup
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi The world’s biggest social media companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter and ByteDance, are exploring an industry-wide alliance to curb fake news on their platforms in India, even as the government finalises regulations aimed at censoring content. The proposed alliance — to be named the Information Trust Alliance (ITA) — will be a […]
ShareChat to stay focused on users, unique content
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi ShareChat will continue to focus on growing and retaining users over monetising the platform, a top executive of the homegrown social media platform told ET, even as the app faces intense competition from Chinese ByteDance-owned short video platforms TikTok and Helo in India. In the last six months, ShareChat has consciously boosted […]
India to have more than 907M internet users by 2023: Report
India will have more than 907 million internet users by 2023, accounting for nearly 64% of the population, according to Cisco Annual Internet Report. The report has highlighted that devices and connections are growing faster (7% CAGR) than the population (1% CAGR) in the country. This trend has been boosting the growth in the average […]
India to have more than 907 internet users by 2023: Report
India will have more than 907 million internet users by 2023, accounting for nearly 64% of the population, according to Cisco Annual Internet Report. The report has highlighted that devices and connections are growing faster (7% CAGR) than the population (1% CAGR) in the country. This trend has been boosting the growth in the average […]
SoftBank’s latest fund wheeze sets off new alarms
By Chris HughesSoftBank Group Corp. became vulnerable to activist attack by Elliott Management Corp. because of the harmful noise generated by the Japanese technology investor’s giant Vision Fund. That noise just won’t die down. Sunday brought a report in the Financial Times that Vision Fund head Rajeev Misra is looking to raise a multi-billion dollar […]
B2B e-commerce firm MaxWholesale raises $3 million in new funds
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi MaxWholesale, a B2B e-commerce platform for kirana (mom-and-pop stores) has raised $3 million led by Indian Angel Network and Al Falaj Investment Company (AFI), an Abu Dhabi based private family office. Existing investor Maple Capital also participated in this round along with Infoedge’s ex-CFO Ambarish Raghuvanshi, Maple Capital’s Abhinav Grover and Biba […]
Swedish investor lowers Quikr valuation by 45%
Swedish investment firm Kinnevik has marked down the valuation of Quikr by 45% to about $570 million from more than $1 billion as of September 2019, the firm said in its annual earnings statement earlier this month. The fall in valuation comes as the Bengaluru-based online classifieds and transactions marketplace discovered fraud in its co-living […]
Bezos launches $10B fund to combat climate change
His company is often criticized for its environmental record, but Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, said Monday that he was committing $10 billion to a new fund to tackle climate change. In a post to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram, the e-commerce tycoon said the Bezos Earth Fund would […]
Visa says OTP not needed for ‘routine’ transactions
Global card network provider Visa aims to phase out the twofactor authentication (2FA) process on routine card transactions during digital checkouts and replace the scrutiny layer with a riskbased prompt, where transactions deemed unusual or risky by banks would be vetted through a One Time Password (OTP) check. For this, Visa plans to hold discussions […]