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  Meta-owned WhatsApp has confirmed that it is running a cash-back campaign in India to drive more users on its digital payments service. The company is giving away Rs 11 cashback up to three times by sending money to three different contacts via unified payments interface (UPI) on WhatsApp. "We are running a campaign offering cashback incentives in a phased manner to our users as a way to unlock the potential of payments on WhatsApp," a company spokesperson told IANS. "We'll continue to drive awareness of payments on WhatsApp as part of our broader efforts to bring the next 500 million Indians onto the digital payments ecosystem," the spokesperson added. Read More

  TikTok rival YouTube Shorts is now averaging over 30 billion daily views -- four times as much as a year ago, as short-form content is witnessing huge adoption across the globa, including India. According to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai , viewers are watching over 700 million hours of YouTube content on televisions every day. "Just as YouTube evolved from desktop to mobile, and that created huge opportunities, we are excited about the new opportunities we see now. Short-form video is one," he said during the company's earnings call late on Tuesday. YouTube Shorts has been rolled out to over 100 countries, and is helping creators monetise their short-term videos. Read More

  Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc for $44 billion on Monday in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person. Elon Musk to buy Twitter Discussions over the deal, which last week appeared uncertain, accelerated over the weekend after Musk wooed Twitter shareholders with financing details of his offer.   Under pressure, Twitter started negotiating with Musk to buy the company at the proposed $54.20 per share price. The deal ends Twitter's run as a public company since its 2013 initial public offering. Click Here

  Future Retail Ltd (FRL) on Wednesday held a meeting of its shareholders to consider and approve the sale of the company's retail assets to billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd . The meeting was chaired by Shailesh Haribhakti, FRL said in a regulatory filing. Haribhakti has been appointed by the NCLT to chair the meeting. The result of the voting will be announced in due course, it added. The meeting was held through video conferencing and "requisite quorum was present", the filing added. Read More

  Amazon India on Wednesday said that over 10 lakh sellers are now selling on its e-commerce platform from across India. The company had started in India in 2013 with 100 sellers and has today grown to be the preferred online destination for sellers across India. Notably, more than 90 per cent of the sellers on Amazon are small and medium local businesses (SMBs) and over half of these sellers on the marketplace come from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Since January 2020, more than 4.5 lakh new sellers have joined Amazon and over one lakh of these new sellers are local offline retailers & neighbourhood stores that have onboarded the Amazon marketplace through the 'Local Shops on Amazon' program. Click Here

  Bounce, the Bengaluru-based smart mobility solution company, reinforced its commitment to support India’s EV (electric vehicle) potential by unveiling its first consumer electric scooter , the Bounce Infinity E1. The Bounce Infinity E1 will be offered with a unique ‘Battery as a service’ option – the first of its kind in the Indian market. The scooter with battery and charger is Rs 68,999 (Delhi Ex-showroom) and the price for Scooters with Battery-as-a-Service is priced at Rs 45,099 (Delhi Ex-Showroom) plus subscription to Battery-as-a-Service. Customers can pre-book this smart scooter by paying a minimal amount of Rs 499 which is totally refundable. Bounce Infinity E1 scooters are FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric vehicle ) II eligible. “I strongly believe in the potential of electric vehicles in India – it is with this vision that we launched our in-house EV mobility solutions in June 2019,” said Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO and co-founder of Boun...

  Two of the world’s richest men, fighting over a near-bankrupt Indian retailer, have made so much noise that its board has woken up super cranky. In less than a week, the three independent directors of Future Retail Ltd . have shot off two letters to the country’s competition authority, alleging that Amazon.com had deliberately misled the regulator about the true nature of its 2019 investment in a related entity. They want the antitrust watchdog to cancel the transaction. The 2025 dollar bonds of Future Retail rose a little Monday, though they still trade at 61 cents to the dollar. Based on what an arbitration tribunal in Singapore has had to say on the issue of alleged misrepresentation by Amazon, the maneuver looks like a long shot. But one never can predict the course of regulatory action in India. If the gambit succeeds, Asia’s wealthiest businessman, Mukesh Ambani, may be able to get his hands on Future’s retail stores after all, a deal Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has so far m...

  Meesho, a fast-growing internet commerce platform, has announced a $5.5 million ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) liquidity programme for all eligible current and former employees with vested stocks. This is the company’s second such liquidity program in less than a year. Last month, Meesho raised a $570 million Series F from Fidelity Management & Research Company, B Capital Group, and other new and existing partners like Prosus Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Facebook, growing its valuation by over 2x to $4.9 billion. “We continue to see meteoric progress not only as a business but also in our efforts to democratize internet commerce for everyone,” said Vidit Aatrey, founder and CEO, Meesho. “Our employees have been at the forefront of driving this momentum, and we want to give them ample opportunities to celebrate and grow with us. As we hire across the board and scale our tech and product talent by 2.5X, ESOPs will give employees high ownership, while provid...

  Ola Electric, the ride-hailing firm's electric vehicle arm, on Friday said that it sold e-scooters worth over Rs 1,100 crore in just two days, during its sale of Ola S1 and S1 Pro scooters. The SoftBank-backed company said this was unprecedented not just in the automotive industry, but also represented one of the highest sales in a day (by value) for a single product in Indian e-commerce history. “Day 2 of the EV era was even better than Day 1. Crossed Rs 1,100 crore in sales in 2 days,” tweeted Bhavesh Aggarwal, co-chairman and group chief executive officer, Ola, on Friday. Thursday was the second and final day for the purchase of the Ola S1 and S1 Pro, the first in Ola's range of electric scooters. The company had sold scooters worth over Rs 600 crore in just 24 hours. Click Here

  K Raheja Group-owned retailing firm Shoppers Stop has collaborated with global IT and professional services company Accenture to accelerate its digital commerce transformation across retail channels, a joint statement said on Tuesday. The programme aims to enhance customer experience and profitability, as well as support Shoppers Stop's goal of being the go-to digital destination, it stated. Shoppers Stop Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Venu Nair said omnichannel commerce has been a huge focus area for the company. "By collaborating with Accenture, we want to further strengthen our digital commerce strategy for greater reach and access and also improve the overall shopping experience of our customers," he said, adding that the company aims to "achieve significant profitable growth" in the digital commerce revenues over the next three years. Read More

  Omnichannel eyewear brand Lenskart on Wednesday said it plans to expand its workforce and add over 2,000 employees across the country by March 2022. In addition, Lenskart will also expand its international teams in Singapore, West Asia, and the US by adding 300 more employees. Lenskart has been aggressively hiring across verticals, especially the tech and data science team, roping in data scientists, business analysts, data engineers, and experts, a statement said. The company is looking to add 1,500 more retail employees "to manage their rapidly increasing stores" and over 100 engineers to the technology team across Bengaluru, NCR, and Hyderabad, it added. Over 300 employees will join the supply chain and manufacturing operations, while another 100 people will be hired for corporate functions across finance, consumer insights, human resources, and merchandising. Click Here

  Walmart-owned Flipkart on Thursday said it has expanded its network in Gujarat with the addition of four new supply chain facilities that will support local sellers from the state and to cater to the growing demand for e-commerce. The new facilities are located in Ahmedabad and Surat, and are collectively spread across an area of nearly 5 lakh sq ft, helping create more than 5,000 direct and indirect local jobs in the state, a statement said. This will further help strengthen the support for close to 35,000 local sellers from Gujarat to get national market access while ensuring wider selection and faster deliveries for the customers, it added. "The expansion of the supply chain in Gujarat is a testament to Flipkart's commitment to serving customers from the state and nearby region in a fast and seamless manner and contributing to its economic growth by enabling market access to MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) and other local sellers," it said. Click H...

  Microsoft is giving all its employees a $1,500 (over Rs 1.12 lakh) pandemic bonus, in recognition of a challenging fiscal year that the tech giant just completed. According to The Verge which has seen an internal memo, Microsoft is gifting the bonus to all staff below corporate vice president level that started on or before March 31, 2021. Microsoft bonus payouts It will also include part-time workers and those on hourly rates. "Microsoft's chief people officer, Kathleen Hogan, announced the gift to employees today, and it will apply to all eligible employees in both the US and internationally," the report said on Thursday. Microsoft has 175,508 employees worldwide. Read More

  E-commerce giant Amazon is building a computer vision-based grading solution for food products such as onions and tomatoes. The machine learning-based approach analyses produce images to detect defects such as cuts, cracks and pressure damage. It can carry out millions of assessments per day at a cost that is far below compared to any other method, said a top Amazon scientist. “Quality is one of the key drivers of fruit and vegetable purchasing decisions and a critical factor in achieving customer satisfaction,” said Rajeev Rastogi, vice president, machine learning, Amazon India at the company’s Smbhav event. “Having humans grade the quality of fruits and vegetables by manually examining each individual piece of produce like tomato or onion is not scalable to millions of quality assessments per day.” Amazon plans to develop a conveyor belt based automatic grading and packing machine. It would leverage hardware and machine learning to pack produce into predetermined quality ...

  Future Retail on Wednesday said Amazon has approached Supreme Court against a Delhi High Court order which stayed a single judge's order restraining Future Retail Ltd from going ahead with its Rs 24,713 crore deal with Reliance Retail to sell its business. "The company's advocates are in receipt of communication dated April 13, 2021, from advocates of Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC informing that Amazon has filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court of India against the captioned order dated March 22, 2021 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi," Future Retail informed the stock exchanges. Future Retail said it will "defend the matter/proceedings through our legal counsels". On March 22, the Delhi High Court stayed a single judge's order restraining Future Retail Ltd (FRL) from going ahead with the deal with Reliance Retail to sell its business, which was objected to by US-based e-commerce giant Amazon. Cli...

The Women of Big Bazaar SOS, the composite group of women who work for the Future Group , on Monday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sought his support to protect their livelihoods as legal tussle between Amazon and Future Group continues. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Women of Big Bazaar SOS group said: "Future Retail and Reliance had entered into an arrangement through which Future's retail stores will continue to be operated by Reliance. Reliance has also committed to clear all debts and dues owed by Future Retail to suppliers and vendors." "Since we had been facing tough times during the pandemic, this deal provided us with a lot of hope and confidence for our continued livelihoods. However, Amazon... has tried to stop this tie-up, and consequently our future and that of our families hangs precariously," it added. Read More

  Low-cost airline IndiGo on Tuesday appointed Jiten Chopra as its chief financial officer (CFO), effective February 21, 2021, and will succeed Aditya Pande, who is leaving the company to pursue other interests. Chopra will report to IndiGo's whole-time director and CEO Ronojoy Dutta . He joined the airline in February 2020 as head of governance, risk, and compliance. Prior to joining IndiGo, he spent 25 years working at BSR & Co (KPMG) in audit and risk management, business development, operations, and transaction services.  

  Airtel is now a 5G-ready network and the telecom operator is waiting for adequate spectrum allocation to rollout 5G services in the country, said Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel on Thursday. Recently, the company demonstrated live 5G over a commercial network in Hyderabad city and said that its network is 5G ready. Airtel 5G Airtel did this over its existing liberalised spectrum in the 1800 MHz band through the Non Stand Alone  network technology. Using the dynamic spectrum sharing, Airtel operated 5G and 4G concurrently within the same spectrum block. Read More

Market regulator SEBI gave a go-ahead on Wednesday to Future Group's scheme of arrangement and sale of assets to Reliance, based on which the Bombay Stock Exchange also granted its "no adverse observation" report to the Rs 24,713-crore deal. Reliance Future deal The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) allowed the deal with some riders, five months after it was announced last August.   ALSO READ: Delhi HC rules Amazon's attempt to control Future violative of FEMA FDI The SEBI has said the litigation pending before the Delhi High Court and arbitration proceedings by the global e-commerce major Amazon contesting the deal should be specifically mentioned by Future Group while seeking shareholders or the National Company Law Tribunal approval, the BSE stated in its observation letter. Read More

  On August 29 this year, the Future Group announced sale of its retail and wholesale business to Reliance Retail in a Rs 24,713 crore deal The Delhi High Court will pronounce its verdict on Future Retail Ltd ’s plea to restrain Amazon from writing letters to regulators against its asset sale with Reliance Industries. The court had reserved its verdict for today on November 20. On August 29 this year, the Future Group announced sale of its retail and wholesale business to Reliance Retail in a Rs 24,713 crore deal. It announced plans to merge key group companies, including Future Retail, Future Lifestyle Fashions, Future Consumer, Future Supply Chains and Future Market Networks into FEL. However, the Jeff Bezos led company argued that a 2019 pact it signed with Future prevented the Indian company from selling its retail assets to certain parties. Read More