Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday December 24

• Snapdeal launches offering for farming and agriculture inputs for farmers. The store currently offers over hundred products across categories like seeds, irrigation and farming tools. The firm has started with some 300 SKUs to begin with and also plans to launch a hindi version of the store. On the face of it, the approach seems to be unique, however what could be interesting to see is how does Snapdeal makes it simpler to buy such products online or for that matter the smartphone. Moreover, how does it tackle the pain point of logistics without bloating up the cost of purchase and cash payments in remote villages. We tried checking for some random fertiliser for a remote village in eastern region in India and the site threw up a “Product cannot be delivered at your pincode location” message. But to be fair its the first day of its official launch.

• Gift cards are the best gifts, research shows: the less specific the gift, the more it will be appreciated. The sad truth is that while gift cards constitute a minority of holiday gifts, according to the National Retail Federation, they have been the most popular gift request since 2007. In studies to be presented early next year at a conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, researchers tried to analyze the emotional turmoil churned up by the exchanging of gifts, noting that the giver’s earnest intentions may often widely miss the mark of the recipient’s true desires. The closer the relationship, the more thought givers believe they should put into selecting a gift. But when subjects were asked what they would like to receive, they overwhelmingly replied that they wanted credit-card gift cards, which would give them the flexibility to choose exactly what they want.

• Huawei's smartphone sales shoot up after copying Xiaomi's online strategy: China's Huawei has taken sales of its low-price Honor brand of smartphones to 20 million from 1 million in just one year, hitting pay dirt with the disruptive online-only strategy it copied from smaller upstart Xiaomi. Privately owned Xiaomi, valued at over $45 billion, sold 15.8 million smartphones in July-September versus Huawei's 15.9 million, according to Gartner. A year earlier, Xiaomi reached just 3.6 million compared with 11.7 million for Huawei. But analysts say the low-cost strategy has fanned the price wars and thin profit margins prevalent in China, and that its spread could affect margins at all makers. Honor brand president Jeff Liu said industry transition to an online sales strategy was inevitable given the competitive pricing, afforded by reduced distribution expenses that would otherwise make up 30 percent of handset costs. "E-commerce is massively changing the traditional channels for the smartphone industry, and we needed to go in that direction too," Liu said in an interview in Beijing, where he unveiled the Honor 6 Plus smartphone last week. Honor handsets dropped the Huawei name last December and have since been marketed and distributed independently of Huawei-branded phones. They are sold in countries ranging from Belgium to Brazil, primarily via marketplaces such as those of JD.com Inc in China and Flipkart in India.

• Indian startup action: Six startups selected for Kyron’s new accelerator batch: Cubito: It has developed an employee transport system that features automated grouping, routing & driver allocation, besides information exchanges between employee & drivers. All allocations are done in real time. Xpense Manager: It is an app that aims to simplify process of expense claims & reimbursements inside companies by way of supporting the business workflow of approvals & support for policies for employee expense & reimbursements. Eywa Media Innovations: It aims to make TV watching interactive and fun. The company claims to have partnered with a leading broadcaster in India already. Viamagus : A SaaS startup, Viamagus claims it helps simplify the way businesses and individuals build & maintain their online presence and do business online. Its cloud- based tools help you build websites & portfolios, blogs, e-mail/SMS campaigns and landing pages quickly, and in a code-free and fully hosted manner. The firm has over 100 customers. Cashkumar: It is an online platform that claims to be providing the best rates for foreign currency exchange in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. With an aggregation platform backed by a reverse bidding process, travellers can buy or sell their foreign currency and travel insurance at the best possible rates. Adwyze: It is a marketing optimisation platform that allows marketers to improve the performance of their marketing budgets.