Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, March 11th

• TechCrunch Sources: India’s Flipkart in talks to raise up to $1b, likely in a down round: After years of raising hundreds of millions of dollars to tap into the burgeoning e-commerce market in India, one of the country’s biggest tech companies is facing a markdown in its valuation as it aims to pick up yet more investment. TechCrunch has learned from sources that Flipkart is looking to raise up to $1 billion in funding to grow its business and shore up against competition from local rival Snapdeal and global giant Amazon. “The funding is now delayed and should take another 3-4 months. A downround is certain,” said a source. According to our sources, one potential investor is Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The company — already a backer of rival Snapdeal — reportedly met with Flipkart management in Hong Kong to discuss investing at less than $10 billion. Other sources say a round would not be this low, and more likely in the range of $11 billion to $14 billion. Alibaba’s alleged interest in Flipkart has been reported previously. Another investor that has been eyeing up a stake in Flipkart is the Fosun Group, sometimes referred to as the Berkshire Hathaway of China. It’s not clear what valuation Fosun has discussed with Flipkart.

• Box Shares Soar as Sales Rise 36 Percent on Shrinking Losses: Shares of cloud storage and collaboration company Box rose by 11 percent in after-hours trading as the company posted fourth quarter results that were better than what analysts expected. Box shares rose $1.38 to $13.90 after posting a per-share loss of 26 cents on revenue of $87 million. Analysts had forecast a loss of 29 cents a share and sales of $81.8 million. The company also finished its fiscal year with revenue of $303 million, up 40 percent year-on-year, and an operating loss of $201 million which ballooned from a $166.6 million operating loss in 2015. The company said Q1 will come in between $88 million and $89 million with a loss of between 23 and 24 cents, both of which were in line with analysts’ estimates. For the year it expects revenue in the range of $390 million to $394 million, with a loss ranging from 83 to 85 cents. It also said it expects a positive free cash flow from operations — a key milestone toward profitability — in the fourth quarter.

• Pre-Roll Ads For Virtual Reality Are Here: Virtual reality is in its “early days” — ask anyone involved in the field and that’s usually their chosen term. And as with the genesis of social media, there’s a coming mad dash of people eager for ways to cash in. On Facebook, gaming companies figured out they could spend fistfuls advertising mobile games and get paying users in return. A handful of ad veterans who rode that social media wave are now trying to replicate the success on VR. A new startup called Immserv is launching a “first-of-a-kind platform” that lets developers creating VR content promote that content with ads. Their product is essentially a YouTube pre-roll ad, just inside VR devices. Immserv is starting with Google’s Cardboard and Samsung’s Gear VR. Say you’re playing a game in your virtual headpiece (maybe this Firefly Rescue one, designed by Immserv partner Archiact Interactive). A video ad pops up at the onset or in the middle of the game, promoting another game; users are invited to download that app by using the head tracking feature in the VR device. The ads are sold on a cost-per-view basis ranging from three to five cents, said Shah. The company has been testing the ads since December and is going live with at least a dozen apps, launching in advance of the Game Developers Conference next week. Ads in VR are tricky, partly because of formatting challenges, but more critically because they risk upsetting users coming to the incipient form. “You can absolutely turn off customers if you’re not careful,” said Eric Hine, an executive producer for Archiact Interactive. But he stressed that Immserv ads in his games won’t, because they play like thrilling trailers and only run if consumers opt in. The launch also comes at the onset of a pivotal year for VR, as big tech companies hope that consumer enthusiasm for the field approaches the fervor for it inside the big tech companies. Neither Google nor Facebook, massive digital ad sellers, have announced plans to bring ads to their VR efforts. Google is testing in-app purchases and pushing the media industry to build VR content for YouTube. These may be indicators of a coming ad model, although the search giant is also pondering a subscription model across several of its products.

• Salesforce Expands Machine-Learning Service to Microsoft Outlook: Salesforce.com Inc. is taking another step forward in its partnership with Microsoft Corp., expanding integration with the Outlook e-mail program to help sales representatives streamline tasks such as scheduling meetings and responding to messages. With the new SalesforceIQ Inbox for Outlook application, Salesforce is folding its predictive technology into an e-mail service that has more than 400 million users. The app will let executives work directly from within Outlook on their desktop computers, boosting productivity by automating key steps while interacting with their customers. E-mail continues to be a crucial tool used by sales representatives when they’re trying to land a deal, said Steve Loughlin, chief executive officer of the SalesforceIQ unit. “There are all these data sources that sales reps are trying to access -- they’re drowning in the information," Loughlin said. "This is a way to pull it all together into a single place and deliver it where they are working." Salesforce is extending the reach of machine-learning technology after acquiring RelateIQ for $390 million in 2014. With Inbox, predictive tools are folded into Outlook to erase manual steps. For example, the program can juggle potential meeting times inside e-mails -- automatically adjusting open calendar spots as they fill up before e-mails are returned. The cooperation between San Francisco-based Salesforce and Microsoft broadens the companies’ growing partnership. About two years ago, the two agreed to make some of their business-software products work better together, signaling a thaw in relations between the longtime rivals. “A large number of Salesforce’s large customers are on Outlook,” Loughlin said. "This is going to be a huge opportunity."