Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday February 11

• Facebook edges towards eCommerce; ad giant makes it easier for members to sell: Facebook on Tuesday announced the addition of a new feature for Facebook Groups designed to make it easier for members of a “For Sale” group to list their items. The new “Sell” feature, which is now starting to roll out globally to more groups, will allow members to create a post where you can add a description of the item for sale, set a price and set a pick-up or delivery location. The social network today already hosts tens of millions of groups based around a variety of interests, and “For Sale” groups are one of the most popular categories. In these groups, members use Facebook as an alternative to something like Craigslist for local selling, or as an alternative to eBay for selling collectibles or other items of broad interest, like books or electronics. Currently, members in these “For Sale” groups generally post photos and text descriptions of their items, but the addition of the “Sell” feature will make filling out the necessary information a bit more structured than before.

• ICICI Bank has launched a digital wallet that will allow its users to instantly send money to any e-mail id, mobile number, or Facebook friend, besides a bank account. Called ‘Pockets’, the wallet also enables users to pay bills, recharge mobiles numbers, book movie tickets, order food, send physical and e-gifts, as well as split and share expenses with friends. How it works? After downloading the wallet from Google Play store, users will need to tap on ‘create an account’, and enter basic details like their name, mobile number, gender, email id, date of birth and address. Post that, users will receive a one time password (OTP) on their mobile numbers to create a user id and password, after which they can get started by loading funds into ‘Pockets’ using any bank’s net banking or debit card details. In comparison, existing ICICI bank savings account customers can register for the e-wallet by simply using their internet banking login credentials and authenticating the OTP sent to their registered mobile number. How is it different? The e- wallet uses a virtual VISA card with which users can shop online on any website or mobile application in India. Customers can also request for a physical card to use it at any retail outlet. Users can set up ‘favourites’ from their contacts, thereby allowing them to make payments quickly. From the app, users can also request for a savings account to be added to the e-wallet, and an ICICI bank official will visit them to open the savings account using ‘Tab Banking’. The users can view their account statement and track expenses by clubbing them under a hashtag. Off late, ICICI bank has been launching a number of technology-led services that include the launch of the Windows version of iMobile; fully automated 24X7 ‘Touch Banking’ branches; Tab Banking; and contactless debit and credit cards. Last month, the bank had launched ‘icicibankpay’, which it claims is India’s first service that allows users to send money over micro-blogging site Twitter.

• Top tech firms, already sitting on mountains of cash, are borrowing record amounts. Why? Because they can. Microsoft, one of a handful of U.S. companies with top AAA credit ratings, sold a record $10.8 billion of bonds Monday. The 40-year portion of the offering pays an annual interest rate of 4 percent. The Redmond, Washington-based company had $6.4 billion of cash and cash-like securities on its books as of year end. And Apple, which had a whopping $19.5 billion of cash stashed away at the end of December, is back in the bond market for the second time this month. The iPhone creator raised $6.5 billion in an offering last week and is now heading to Switzerland to sell at least 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.1 billion) in its debut offering in that nation. The party in bonds seems like a win-win for everyone -- for now, at least. Buyers of Microsoft’s $10.8 billion bond sale Monday reaped a $32.7 million reward just in the first few hours after the sale as the debt’s market value climbed. So, what’s the problem? Well, it’s always a little scary when everyone piles into a trade that already seemed crowded. Yields on U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds have fallen to 3.1 percent, compared with 4.7 percent on average over the past decade, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. Buying top-rated bonds isn’t a guaranteed payday either. These notes are more sensitive to moves in benchmark government yields, a potential liability as the Federal Reserve debates raising interest rates this year. Why should having billions of dollars in cash stop you from borrowing more? That appears to be the logic at top-rated companies like Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. They’re selling bonds at an accelerating clip, locking in cheap interest rates for as long as 40 years. “The cost of capital that you’re paying is so obscenely low that there’s no reason not to” borrow, said Jody Lurie, a corporate credit analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia. Corporate treasurers are wondering: “When is this wonderful market situation for these higher-rated credits going to end?”

• Flush with cash, Apple is expected to expand its share buyback programs, CEO asserts that Apple isn’t a cash hoarder. That’s the message Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook delivered to investors on Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. “By and large, my view is for cash that we don’t need -- with some level of buffer -- we want to give back,” Cook said. “It may come across that we are, but we’re not hoarders.” The Cupertino, California-based company is reviewing its capital-return program and will announce changes in April, he said. Apple has completed $103 billion of its $130 billion dividend and stock-repurchase plan, which has been increased several times before. “We started with dividends and buybacks and we’ve tweaked that model every year,” Cook said. “We’ve been sort of on a cadence of once a year we look at it very deeply, very thoughtfully, and we change the program accordingly.” The iPhone maker ended December with $178 billion in cash and marketable securities, according to a company statement on Jan. 27. Of that, $157.8 billion was held by foreign subsidiaries, where the money is shielded from U.S. taxes unless it’s repatriated. The company has raised the equivalent of more than $40 billion in debt in less than two years to help finance dividends and buybacks, including the sale of $6.5 billion in bonds last week and 1.25 billion Swiss francs ($1.35 billion) of bonds in that currency this week. Apple is boosting its borrowing as it seeks to return more capital to investors without incurring U.S. taxes on foreign profits. The company’s cash hoard grew by about $23 billion in the December quarter from the previous period as the introduction of more expensive, larger-screened iPhones helped boost Apple’s profit to a record. China in particular was a bright spot, with sales rising 70 percent. Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn has been pressuring Apple to increase its buybacks, arguing that the stock is undervalued and should be trading at a price that would give the company a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion. The shares rose 1.9 percent to $122.02 on Tuesday in New York trading, boosting the company’s market value to more than $710 billion. “In April, we believe Apple is set to announce a new 3-year total capital return program in the $150 billion to $200 billion range when it refreshes its goals this spring,” Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Plc, wrote in a note to investors. “We believe management will want to give itself some flexibility to raise this forecast later down the road (its usual practice) and also have some flexibility to re-evaluate the targets should it get more certainty on tax policies.”

• Several of the best-funded startups in Singapore are struggling; rocket startup Lazada is the one unicorn on the list: 1. Lazada, US$686 million: The fashion ecommerce retailer is one of Rocket Internet’s greatest successes so far, and is the only unicorn on this list with a valuation of US$1.25 billion. Thanks to its recent shift to a marketplace model for third-party merchants, Lazada’s sales – or gross merchandise volume (GMV) – doubled in the second half of 2014 as compared to the former half, bringing its total GMV for that year to roughly US$274.2 million. 2. Zalora, US$238 million: The other Rocket Internet-backed startup on the list, Zalora’s last-seen numbers aren’t exactly rosy. According to leaked documents, it had a net negative income of US$91 million in 2012, expecting to reach profitability by 2015. 3. iCarsClub, US$70.5 million: A peer-to-peer car rental platform is a great idea in Singapore, given the high costs of car ownership here. Nailing the execution, however, is a whole different ballgame, and iCarsClub has received some negative publicity in 2014 regarding just that. Still, having a war chest at its disposal will certainly help if it is directed in the right direction. iCarsClub and its Beijing-based spinoff PPzuche now have over 120,000 private cars available in their databases. 4. PropertyGuru, US$53 million: Online property classifieds are a hotly-contested industry in Southeast Asia, but somehow PropertyGuru have managed to stay ahead of the pack. In Singapore, 99.co is the latest challenger. CEO Steve Melhuish had revealed a couple of years ago that the company might go public, but nothing has happened since then. 5. Reebonz, US$40 million, 6. Bubbly, US$39 million, 7. MyRepublic, US$37.5 million, 8. Migme, US$34.6 million , 9. Wego, US$34.5 million, 10. Viki, US$24.3 million

• [Indian startup action] StoreKing, an e-com enabler for offline stores in small towns gets funding from Mangrove Capital: Mangrove Capital Partners, a Luxembourg-based venture capital firm which has backed Skype and Nimbuzz, has invested in LocalCube Commerce Pvt Ltd, an e-com enabler for offline stores in small towns under the brand StoreKing, as per its website. Although the investment amount stands undisclosed, the VC firm typically puts in $5-10 million in a company initially. It is learnt that the transaction was completed a few weeks ago. We have contacted Sridhar Gundaiah, founder of LocalCube, and will update the post as and when we hear from him. StoreKing is essentially an enabler for offline stores to expand their reach. It installs digital kiosks with screens at stores in small towns providing a self-service shopping experience to consumers. It claims it is present in over 600 stores in 22 districts of Karnataka and covers over 190 towns in the state According to its site, its kiosk-enabled stores sees over 50,000 walk-ins everyday and over 200,000 people have registered on its platform and it has sold over 30,000 SKUs to date. The Bangalore-based startup was founded in 2011 by Gundaiah, a computer science engineer who was previously with online travel agency Via.com. He had also founded a location based startup Yulop and in the past worked at Yellow Tag and EDS. Meanwhile, Mangrove Capital’s partner Michael Jackson told The Economic Times that the VC firm has earmarked a corpus of $200-250 million to invest in India’s e-commerce, internet and telecom startups. It has an investment horizon of 5-10 years.