Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, March 16

• Rumor of the day: Snapdeal in advanced talks to buy Freecharge for INR 2800 crores: Snapdeal is reportedly in advance talks to buy online recharge company Freecharge for Rs 2,800 crore. Freecharge, which allows users to recharge their pre-paid phones and get an equal value discount coupon, has emerged as a popular recharge option and a head-on competitor of PayTM, which recently attracted investment from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Freecharge has raised multiple rounds of funding. In February 2015, it raised $80 million from San Francisco-based hedge fund Valiant Capital Management and Hong Kong-based Tybourne Capital Management along with Sequoia Capital, RuNet and Sofina Capital. In September 2014, the company had mobilised $33 million from Sequoia Capital, Sofina and RuNet. It had also raised Rs 20 crore from Sequoia Capital in 2011. If the deal goes through, this will the largest acquisition in the Indian e-commerce space . It will even trump Flipkart's acquisition of fashion e-tailer Myntra last year for a whopping $370 million. If the acquisition comes through, there are several reasons it will make sense for Snapdeal, the leader in the marketplace business. Snapdeal will ride on Freecharge's growing popularity and its huge user base of over 20 million users. Freecharge works with upwards of 300-odd retailers, selling their discount coupons and processes recharges worth over Rs 100 crore per month. For most mobile recharge companies like Freecharge, PayTM, Mobikwik or Oxigen, mobile recharge is a very thin margin product but has worked well to grab a massive user base. Having scaled up to a few million, these companies have used their customer base as launch pads for a host of other services, including DTH recharges, utility bill payments, online shopping, bus ticket bookings, movie bookings and ordering from fast-food chains such as Dominos and Pizza Hut. For instance, Oxigen Services (India), launched in 2004 as a mobile recharge venture, now does Rs 600 crore worth of transactions per month - the biggest chunk of its business comprising money transfers (Rs 200 crore), followed by recharges (Rs 100 crore) and bill payments (Rs 30 crore) The deal will help Snapdeal diversify into a host of other online services, get more retailers onboard and provide it an edge over its emerging competitor in the marketplace model -- PayTM, now backed by Alibaba's might. Also, since mobile is the most important leg of growth, this acquisition will make the Snapdeal brand resonate better on mobile phones.

• Not topical, but interesting: A well-known link on Top 12 Product Management Mistakes: 1. Confusing Customer Requirements with Product Requirements 2. Confusing Innovation with Value 3. Confusing Yourself with Your Customer 4. Confusing the Customer with the User 5. Confusing Features with Benefits 6. Confusing Building Right Product with Building Product Right 7. Confusing Good Product with Good Business Model 8. Confusing Inspiring Features with “Nice-to-Have” Features 9. Confusing Adding Features with Improving Product 10. Confusing Impressive Specifications with an Impressive Product 11. Confusing a Complete Product with a Sellable Product 12. Confusing Product Launch with Success

• YouTube embraces 360-degree videos, signaling the next trend in video: Friday YouTube announced it now supports 360-degree video uploads, marking a significant step toward the video format going mainstream. Currently these YouTube videos can only be viewed on Google Chrome and in YouTube’s Android app. YouTube says it’s working on compatibility for iOS devices and other Web browsers. The videos are a step toward virtual reality, offering an 2D-immersive experience in which a user can pan around a video with their mouse. It’s similar to the experience of Google Maps’ Street View function, except with video not photos. Viewers will no longer be locked to a fixed perspective. For now, uploaders of 360-degree videos will need to run a script on their video to add metadata so YouTube recognizes it as a 360-degree video. YouTube is working to automate this step. The viewing experience is especially neat for an Android user in the YouTube app. If you move your phone from side to side, the perspective will shift. Makers of 360-degree cameras expect these videos to soon be ubiquitous. “Similar to Flip driving the popularity of YouTube video and the idea of sharing, 360-degree cameras and technology take video as we know it to the next level,” said Paul Meyhoefer, vice president of marketing at JK Imaging Ltd, maker of the Kodak SP360. YouTube will support uploads from 360-cameras such as the Bublcam, IC Real Tech’s Allie, Kodak’s SP360 and the Ricoh Theta. The cameras are fairly expensive — ranging from about $300 to $700, but they should become cheaper in time.

• Lyft Raises $530M at $#2.5B valuation: Uber, the ride-hailing start-up, is a $40 billion juggernaut, but it is not without competition. Lyft, another ride-hailing start-up and Uber’s biggest competitor in the United States, announced on Thursday that it had raised $530 million in venture capital, valuing the start-up at $2.5 billion. The investment was led by Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant, which contributed more than $300 million.

• China puts tech bill that concerns West on hold: U.S. official: China has put a hold on a draft counter-terrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over sensitive information to government officials, a senior U.S. official said in a good sign for Western businesses who saw the rule as a major impediment to working in the world's second largest economy. President Barack Obama said in an interview with Reuters on March 2 that he had raised concerns about the law directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "They have decided to suspend the third reading of that particular law, which has sort of put that on hiatus for the moment," White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel said on Thursday, according to a webcast of a discussion at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "We did see that as something that was bad not just for U.S. business but for the global economy as a whole, and it was something we felt was very important to communicate very clearly to them," Daniel said. It was not clear whether the bill would proceed or not. China Central Television reported on March 9 that Wang Aili, a senior official with the Chinese National People's Congress Standing Committee's legislative affairs commission, said the bill was not on the schedule for the NPC's annual session, which began last week. A third reading and vote would be scheduled in "due time," he said. The law would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys, the passcodes that help protect data, and install security "backdoors" in their systems to give Chinese authorities surveillance access. One industry source, who requested anonymity, said the move gave companies "some breathing room, but not complete relief" because the bill could be picked up again at any point as only the standing committee — not the full parliament – was needed to pass a law. But another was optimistic that was the end of the matter. "The Chinese are not ready to kick out all foreign companies, and because they weren’t ready to take that step, they backed off," said a U.S. technology industry expert, who asked not to be identified to avoid complicating his employer's dealings in China. "You can bet that the next steps will be something that tightens up somewhere but doesn’t cause this level of pain." The initial draft, published by the NPC late last year, requires companies to also keep servers and user data within China, supply law enforcement authorities with communications records and censor terrorism-related Internet content.