Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, April 11

• Battle of Billionaires: Son Set to Clash With Bezos in India: SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos are heading for a clash in India. SoftBank is closing in on an agreement to combine its e-commerce company Snapdeal with market leader Flipkart Online Services Pvt., creating a stronger domestic player to compete with the American behemoth, according to people familiar with the matter. To get the merger done, Son is willing to cut Snapdeal’s valuation 85 percent to $1 billion, said the people, asking not to be named because the talk is private. The combination of India’s two leading e-commerce players is being called an arranged marriage, said the people, with Son playing the role of matchmaker. The Japanese billionaire, who owns about a third of Snapdeal parent Jasper Infotech Pvt, plans to contribute that equity to the merged entity and to infuse another $500 million to $1 billion in Flipkart through a transaction with Flipkart backer Tiger Global Management, the people said. Flipkart is already raising cash for the battle. The Bangalore-based company said Monday it had raised $1.4 billion from Tencent Holdings Ltd., Microsoft Corp. and EBay Inc. in what it said was the largest internet investment in India. That would give Flipkart more firepower to battle Amazon in one of the world’s fastest growing online retail markets. The Seattle-based company has vowed to spend $5 billion in the country and India chief Amit Agarwal has used the money to gain customers. Flipkart said the post-transaction valuation for the company was $11.6 billion. An alliance among Flipkart, Snapdeal and EBay could give the business customers, scale and technology, though it’s not clear how easily those could be integrated.

• Why eBay’s CEO sold eBay India and poured $500 million into the country’s top Amazon rival: Can you explain how you went from investing in Snapdeal — and then selling most of your stake in them — to investing in one of its biggest competitors, Flipkart? Devin Wenig: The process started almost a year ago with us looking at the Indian market and seeing who was winning and who was losing and what the next few years were going to be like. We were evaluating both eBay India and Snapdeal. And what was the conclusion? I’ll start by saying I really do believe the market will be a strong commerce market. There are just too many positive dynamics: Too much growing wealth, too much tech adoption, too much demand for goods and supply-demand imbalance. It’s also true that the market has been overheated, not rational, and probably over-invested in too many companies. It’s been a very unhealthy e-commerce dynamic for a few years. The conclusion was, it was going to have to consolidate, that fewer parties were probably a good thing for the market. Flipkart had a very strong close to last year and they are starting to pull away. So if we are serious about the market, I want to invest in — and be partners with — those that are going to win. The conclusion was there weren’t going to be 10 winners, but maybe only one or two. And Flipkart — given all of that — was the natural party to align with. How concerned are you about how unprofitable all the companies in this market are? Consolidation in the market is healthy and we believe Flipkart will do what it takes to build a long-term business. But long term might be long term. It might take more money and more time. Am I concerned about it? Yeah, of course. But we think that these moves in the market make it much more likely that in a reasonable time frame and investment, they will get to a profitable scale.

• U.S. drone sales have more than doubled from last year: U.S. drone sales have more than doubled between February 2016 and February 2017, according to new data released today from NPD group. Customers may shy away from a high price tag. In the first two months of 2017, drones that cost over $300 accounted for less than half — 40 percent — of units sold. Still, drones costing over $300 amount to 84 percent of dollar sales in the past two months, NPD found. It’s not for unusual for high-end products to make up the bulk of dollar sales in an industry, even if cheaper products account for the majority of sales. Still, it means that most people are trying to find a cheaper drone — something China’s DJI, the biggest consumer drone maker in the world, has yet to produce. The cheapest drone DJI has on its website right now is around $500 for a new Phantom 3. Its next cheapest drone is the Mavic Pro at $1,000. When buying smaller unmanned aircraft, consumers jumped for high tech bells and whistles. In January and February 2017, drones costing between $300 and $500 sold five times faster if they came equipped with autopilot features and 19 times faster if the drones could detect and follow the person operating it, such as when riding a bike or running.