Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, August 2nd

• Uber to Sell to Rival Didi Chuxing and Create New Business in China: In a stark signal of how difficult it is for American technology companies to thrive in China, Uber China said it was selling itself to Didi Chuxing, its fiercest rival there. The sale, which would create a new company worth about $35 billion, would end the great ride-hailing battle of China. A person with knowledge of the deal said Uber investors had been pushing for such a transaction. The companies have been fighting relentlessly for market share in mainland China for two years, spending tens of millions of dollars every month to attract riders and drivers. The merger would end that competition and create significant scale, but it would also be a repudiation of Uber’s ambitions to take on local Chinese competitors in their huge home market.Still, it is by no means a financial catastrophe for Uber, which for about $2 billion of investment in the Chinese market gets a $7 billion share in a company that is likely to grow. It also saves the cash it may have spent competing in China for other projects.Under the terms of the deal, the new company’s estimated worth is a combination of Didi Chuxing’s $28 billion valuation and Uber China’s $7 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information had not yet been made public. Uber shareholders would receive a 20 percent stake in the new company. Didi Chuxing would also make a $1 billion investment in the company’s operations in the rest of the world, called Uber Global, which was lastvalued at $62.5 billion, according to the two people with knowledge of the sale. Bloomberg first reported news of the deal.

• Didi Schools Uber on Doing Business in Cut-Throat Chinese Market: The deal is the culmination of more than a year of take-no-prisoners war between the world’s two largest ride-sharing companies, a series of clashes played out in the media and on the dusty streets of hundreds of cities. That battle, waged through massive subsidies on rides, wound up costing Uber $2 billion, the people said. Alarmed, its investors clamored for a ceasefire.In the end, Didi proved too resourceful -- and too well-connected -- for the ride-sharing giant to dethrone. Uber threw in the towel just days after China banned the practice of charging less than the cost of a ride, depriving the U.S. company of a tried-and-true engagement tactic. In a blogpost obtained by Bloomberg before an official announcement, Kalanick portrayed the deal as a merger that strengthens both parties; others, including Grab CEO Anthony Tan, saw it as a humbled Uber taking its ball elsewhere.But Didi proved more creative, and local connections came through. The conflict took an unusual turn as third parties began to get drawn into the mix. In August, Uber complained it had been blocked from WeChat, the popular messaging service run by Didi-backer Tencent. Then Didi recruited allies, forging a four-way alliance with ride-sharing services that compete with Uber, including Lyft Inc. in the U.S., Grab and India’s Ola. Didi gained confidence as it entered the new year. From President Jean Liu on down, its executives were determined to deal a knockout blow. Didi began raising more money and its emboldened executives openly declared victory. “We will be the last one standing,” Stephen Zhu, vice president of strategy, said in what proved to be a prescient April address.Recent funding saw Uber’s valuation swell to $68 billion and the company said it had access to more than $11 billion on its balance sheet. Didi, said to be valued at close to $28 billion, had more than $10 billion at its disposal. In the end, Didi proved too large an opponent, with backers including some of China’s largest government institutions and even Apple Inc. The four-year-old company now handles more than 11 million rides a day and serves about 300 million users across some 400 cities, offering taxis, private cars, ride sharing and test driving.

• Didi’s acquisition of Uber China throws the global anti-Uber alliance in doubt: Didi Chuxing, China’s homegrown ride-hailing startup, was the glue that held together the global anti-Uber alliance that included Lyft, Grab and Ola. But now that Didi has acquired Uber’s China operations, that partnership has been thrown into doubt. In addition to a $1 billion investment Didi is making into Uber, the deal also brings Uber CEO Travis Kalanick onto Didi Chuxing’s board and Didi Chairman Cheng Wei onto Uber’s board. Both Kalanick and Wei are non-voting members of the board. That means, as of last night, Didi Chuxing is more invested in Uber’s success than it is in the alliance. Didi, so far, had invested about $100 million in Lyft, $350 million in Grab and $30 million in Ola, altogether about $480 million, less than half of what it just invested in Uber.

• More news on this: Uber’s surrender in China puts more pressure on big tech companies to thrive in India

• Delphi, Singapore launch test of self-driving taxis: Delphi Automotive Plc will launch a small test fleet of automated taxis in Singapore next year, aiming to ferry passengers around a city district in one of the first real-world tests of automated rides on demand, the company said on Monday. The project, run in partnership with the Singapore Land Transport Authority, will road test a concept that many companies investing in automated driving believe offers the fastest path to making such technology commercially viable. A cab ride in a dense urban area can cost $3 to 4 a mile, Delphi vice president of engineering Glen DeVos said in an interview. “We think we can get to 90 cents a mile” with an automated vehicle. That drops the price of transporting goods and people, and allows for the costs of automated driving systems to be spread over hours of operation and multiple users. Initially, the cars will have drivers ready to take over if the piloting systems fail, DeVos said. But by 2019 or 2020, “we’ll have removed drivers from the car,” Glen DeVos, Delphi’s vice president of engineering said in an interview.

• Microsoft Sells $19.75 Billion of Bonds in Its Biggest Ever Sale: Microsoft Corp. raised $19.75 billion in the third-largest U.S. corporate bond sale of the year to help finance its planned purchase of LinkedIn Corp. Investors put in more than $50 billion of orders for the deal in the software maker’s biggest ever sale. The strong demand helped Microsoft to borrow at lower rates than it paid for the $13 billion of bonds it raised in October. It also saved about $40 million in annual interest payments compared with what it was offering to pay initially, according to people familiar with the matter. Investors have been clamoring for U.S. corporate debt in recent months. Yields are turning negative on a growing number of bonds globally as central banks in Japan and Europe ramp up stimulus packages, spurring money managers to seek higher returns in the U.S.S&P Global Ratings assigned the bonds the top AAA grade in a note reviewing the sale on Monday. Moody’s Investors Service also gave the bonds its top grade. The longest portion of the debt is a 40-year bond that yields 1.8 percentage points above Treasuries. On Thursday, Apple Inc. sold $7 billion of bonds. Investors opened their wallets for the iPhone maker, allowing the company to lower yields on all portions of the offering, which was funding shareholder buybacks. Like Apple, Microsoft’s debt issuance is tied to avoiding an increase in its tax bill. Companies with cash holdings from overseas profits have to pay a 35 percent tax to repatriate those funds to the U.S. Rather than use that cash to fund its acquisition and pay the hefty taxes that result, it is far cheaper for large multinationals like Microsoft to borrow the funds.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, October 8

• Singapore Post, Like Amazon, Tests Package Delivery by Drone: Singapore Post Ltd. is testing package delivery by drone, echoing attempts by Amazon.com Inc. to extend the commercial capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles. The company known as SingPost said a drone it developed with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore carried a packet containing a letter and T-shirt on a five-minute, two-kilometer (1.2 miles) flight. This marks the first time any postal service has successfully used a drone for “point-to-point recipient-authenticated mail delivery,” it said in a statement Thursday. SingPost is looking to such unmanned aircraft as online transactions increase in the Asia-Pacific region and as Singapore plans to develop itself into a so-called Smart Nation through technology usage. There is “immense potential” in drone technology for last-mile mail and e-commerce delivery, Bernard Leong, SingPost’s head of digital services, said in the statement.

• An Amazon Rival, Jet.com, Eliminates Its Membership Fee: Just three months after its introduction, Jet.com, the much-hyped rival to Amazon and Costco, has done a 180-degree turn in its business model by making its members-only shopping club freely accessible. On Wednesday, Jet said it would eliminate its $50 annual membership fee, but continue to provide better prices on items, along with high-quality customer service and free shipping on orders of more than $35, among other benefits. The about-face raises questions of whether Jet was struggling to gain the traction it needed to expand its business. But Marc Lore, the company’s chief executive, said in a blog post that customer response to Jet over a three-month free trial period had exceeded expectations. The average amount of items per order was twice what it expected, for instance, he said. While eliminating a membership fee may help expand Jet.com’s customer base, the move could diminish the company’s chances of turning a healthy profit. Mr. Lore had raised more than $200 million from investors to fund the site. In an interview with The New York Times, he had predicted that the company would take five years to grow to a point where it was not losing money on every shipment. The $50 membership fee would have been a major revenue stream contributing to Jet’s profit. Now Jet’s revenue will rely on raking in commissions on sales from retailers. Discounts for customers come from what Jet calls Smart Cart savings, which let shoppers lower costs by adding more products to their shopping carts, resulting in orders that are more efficient and cheaper to fulfill.

• Amazon Seeks Cloud Computing Growth With New Data Products: Amazon Web Services announced products Wednesday that give businesses new ways to transfer, manipulate and derive insights from data they store in the company’s cloud. The products span diverse areas of information technology from a business intelligence service named Quicksight, to security systems, to new tools to help people migrate databases from proprietary versions into free ones hosted within Amazon. The company also unveiled a new product, called Snowball, that is a hardware device that lets businesses securely transfer large amounts of data into the Amazon Web Services cloud. And Amazon announced a deal with consulting giant Accenture Plc to focus on corporate customers. The products and services shown at the company’s re:invent customer conference in Las Vegas represent a further expansion by Amazon into competitors’ territories, whether database vendors such as Oracle Corp. or business intelligence companies such as Tableau Software. The effort also keeps the pressure on traditional hardware providers, who are seeing their businesses slow as more of their customers opt for cloud computing offered by Amazon and others. Amazon’s Web Services division generated $1.8 billion in sales in the Seattle-based company’s most recent quarter and almost $400 million in operating profit. The e-commerce company created the AWS division almost 10 years ago, giving it a lead on competitors such as Microsoft, Google  and IBM. that were slow to release their own cloud services. In recent years that has changed. Microsoft is now a major competitor to AWS via its Azure service, and companies like Oracle are converting more applications to run in the cloud.

• Snapdeal invests $20M more in logistics firm gojavas: Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, which runs online e-com marketplace Snapdeal, has invested $20 million (Rs 131 crore) more in logistics firm QuickDel Logistics Pvt Ltd, which runs operations under the gojavas brand, it said on Wednesday. Snapdeal had first invested in gojavas, which was previously a part of Jabong, a lifestyle e-tailer incubated by Rocket Internet, in March this year. It had not disclosed the investment amount but said it has picked a minority stake in the logistics firm. “The company’s average timeline for delivering Snapdeal orders has reduced by a full 24 hours in the last six months and our teams have worked closely to come up with innovative solutions that are enhancing customers’ shopping experience on Snapdeal. With the freshly infused funds, our aim is to help gojavas become more successful and expand their reach,” said Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal. Snapdeal said it has invested $100 million in the last six months to improve it delivery timelines by 70 per cent and it will invest $200 million more in next 12 months to strengthen its supply chain. gojavas will be using the capital for expanding its operations to 100 more cities within 12 months. Vijay Ghadge, COO at gojavas, said the partnership with Snapdeal has helped it become one of the largest independent logistics players in the country with a revenue run rate of Rs 500 crore currently. gojavas currently manages over 1 lakh sq ft of fulfilment centres and helps more than 400 companies reach consumers in close to 350 cities and towns in more than 3,000 PIN-codes. It claims to deliver over 1.8 lakh packages every day and closed FY15 with revenues of over Rs 200 crore. It was originally an in-house delivery venture of Jabong but later spun out as a separate third-party logistics firm.

• Pandora Buys Ticketfly, a Competitor to Ticketmaster: Pandora Media, the biggest player in Internet radio, has moved into the ticketing business with an agreement to buy Ticketfly, an independent firm that competes with Ticketmaster and is popular with clubs and festivals in the United States and Canada. Pandora announced early Wednesday that it would acquire Ticketfly for $450 million, in a mix of cash and stock. The deal further expands Pandora’s interests in providing services to artists. Last year, it introduced a data system, the Artist Marketing Platform, or AMP, that shows musicians which songs are most popular on the service and where. And in May, Pandora bought Next Big Sound, another data service, which studies the listening and searching patterns of streaming music customers. Pandora, which has nearly 80 million regular listeners, said that its acquisition would benefit artists and listeners. The deal will also add a level of complexity to the sometimes delicate system of alliances in the ticketing world, which is dominated by Ticketmaster, a unit of Live Nation Entertainment. Ticketfly, which was founded in 2008 and was an early proponent of using social media and the web to market tickets, has become a popular choice for promoters that want to avoid the Ticketmaster system. Last year, according to its announcement with Pandora, Ticketfly sold 16 million tickets worth more than $500 million. Among Ticketfly’s clients are the club Brooklyn Bowl and the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. This year, the independent ticketing world was jolted when Ticketmaster bought Front Gate Tickets, another service popular with clubs, festivals and acts, a move that led some bands, like Wilco, to shift their alliances to other companies. Pandora’s control of Ticketfly could pose a challenge to Ticketmaster, particularly given Pandora’s history of using its user data for marketing. The company, which derives about 80 percent of its revenue from ad sales, has long pitched advertisers on its ability to identify its users based on their demographic data and listening habits — even going so far as to say it can predict its listeners’ political affiliation. “The combination of Ticketfly and Pandora will be a marketing and event discovery powerhouse.”

• Amazon considering online TV service: Amazon.com Inc is considering the creation of a live online TV service and has reached out to networks such as CBS Corp and Comcast's NBCUniversal to express interest in carrying their channels, Bloomberg reported. The e-commerce giant's talks with the networks are in preliminary stages, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Such a move would increase Amazon's already growing presence in online video. Amazon currently offers an on-demand video streaming service similar to that of Netflix. Amazon signed an exclusive deal with former "Top Gear" host Jeremy Clarkson in July to present a new motoring show for its Amazon Prime subscription service. The company last month said it would launch six TV show pilots for its video streaming service in the United States, the UK, Germany and Austria for the 2015 fall pilot season.

• If Your Wi-Fi Is Terrible, Check Your Router: Bob McConnell, a retired engineer, set up a new wireless router in his home this year to get faster Internet speeds. Instead, he got the opposite, with his iPad often getting no wireless connection in his bedroom. For days, he tinkered with the router’s settings, but couldn’t figure out a fix. “It was totally ruining my life,” said Mr. McConnell, who lives in a condominium building in Kirkland, Wash. “Things would work, and then the next morning they wouldn’t work again.” What Mr. McConnell experienced is a situation we call “Wi-Fi headache,” and it’s an ailment that many can relate to. The condition is rooted in the networking devices called routers that people install in their homes for Wi-Fi connectivity. Most routers are difficult to configure for anyone who doesn’t work in an information technology department. Jargony tech terms like 802.11 or dual-band add to the confusion when people upgrade a router or try to decide which one to pick. So to diagnose and cure Wi-Fi headaches, we teamed up with The Wirecutter, the product recommendations website. The Wirecutter put dozens of top-rated routers and devices through hundreds of hours of testing to pick out the best router for most people and come up with other recommendations tailored to different living situations and budgets. It also ran new tests for The New York Times to come up with best practices for getting a stronger, faster Wi-Fi signal. The bottom line: People with devices both new and old will see an improvement by upgrading to a recent router that supports the latest Wi-Fi standards. But they should be wary of buying a cheap router that isn’t any good, or spending too much on one that is too complex for their needs.

• Pure Storage Falls In Public Debut, CEO Optimistic: Pure Storage, the enterprise storage company, went public on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday. After pricing at $17, shares traded down in its debut, closing the day at $16.01. CEO Scott Dietzen spoke to TechCrunch about why the company executed an IPO during what has been a lackluster year for tech stocks. “We were ready to be a public company,” said Dietzen. “We don’t worry about market conditions. Great companies can come out when it’s right for them.” The company’s IPO performance, slipping in its first day’s trading, isn’t big news. Other recent IPOs that have seen sharp declines in value following their flotation have performed more strongly. For example, Box, a tech company that went public this year, surged on its initial day as a public company. In the ensuing months, its shares have sagged. For industry watchers, any current public technology offering is a bellwether. The IPO cadence for technology firms has been infamously slow in 2015, causing concern among those both seeking liquidity for their investments, and executives worried about where their private valuation might square with the public markets. To underscore that point, Dropbox, a company that could formerly do no wrong, recently endured an embarrassing haircut. Pure Storage’s offering went off mid-range. It fell a modest 5.8 percent. These things are not the end of the world. But they may describe public investor uncertainty about the value of firms that are burning large quantities of cash to expand their top line. Box, MobileIron, and a host of others have endured related declines.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 8

• Here is an MP3 version of this snippet

• China stocks are 8% down this morning; Alibaba stock is at its lifetime low: China's securities regulator said there was "panic sentiment" in mainland stock markets on Wednesday, acknowledging the recent increase in irrational selling, Reuters reported. Shortly after, the People's Bank of China said it will closely watch stock market direction and guard against systematic regional financial risks. The comments did little to soothe investor worries about tumbling mainland equities, with the Shanghai Composite sinking more than 8 percent in early trade on Wednesday. In US trading, Alibaba was traded at its lifetime low.


• Worldwide spend on gadgets will fall year-on-year this year for the first time since 2010: According to a new forecast from Gartner, shoppers worldwide will spend less on gadgets in 2015 than they did in 2014 — the first drop since 2010. Analysts from Gartner still predict we'll spend a total of $606 billion in 2015. But it's still a decline of 5.7 percent compared with 2014 — lower than Gartner had forecast just three months ago. So what's behind the softer sales? Its because sales of desktops, tablets and smartphones are all slowing. Fewer people are buying desktop computers in Western Europe, Japan and Russia. In addition the tablet market is reaching its saturation point, and that analysts expect users to upgrade their tablets an average of once every three years — far less than smartphones. Sales of mobile devices such as smartphones as well as of high-end laptops will continue to grow, the firm said. Still, even within that bright spot, there is some hint of a slowdown. The rates of first-time smartphone buyers in China, one of the world's fastest-growing and most important mobile markets, have slowed.


• Alibaba boosts Singapore Post stake, invest in SingPost's e-commerce unit: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is investing about $206 million to expand its holdings in Singapore Post and its e-commerce subsidiary, the two companies said in a statement. SingPost is seeking to boost its e-commerce business to offset weak postal revenues, and last year an Alibaba unit bought an over 10 percent stake in SingPost for $249 million. In the latest deal, Alibaba said it was buying an additional 5 percent stake in SingPost for S$187.1 million. Alibaba will also invest up to S$92 million to buy a 34 percent stake in Quantium Solutions, a SingPost subsidiary that provides e-commerce logistics across the Asia Pacific. Alibaba is currently the second largest shareholder in SingPost after Singapore Telecommunications


• Music streaming firm Saavn raises $100M from Tiger Global, others: Saavn (South Asian Audio Video Network), a US-based Indian music streaming firm, has raised $100 million in Series C funding from existing investor Tiger Global Management and others. The company will use the money to improve product development efforts and to speed up customer acquisition. Saavn is said to be preparing for the launch of a video streaming service. The company claims to be adding one million users every month. Earlier this year, Saavn had appointed former Google executive Mahesh Narayanan as COO. Last year, Saavn added Twitter-powered radio station to its service. It also entered into licensing agreements with Warner Music and EMI Music that helped it add 800,000 tracks from international artists.


• ClipMine Improves Videos With Crowdsourced Tagging And Annotations: So this happens to me pretty often: I pull up an online video that I want to watch, only to be taken aback when I realize that it’s 10 or 20 or 30 minutes long. It’s particularly frustrating when there’s just one section or just one quote that I’m looking for. I end up skipping around trying to find that one bit — not exactly a great experience. A new startup is trying to fix that. With ClipMine, you get searchable videos, with a table of contents. For example, here’s a curated collection of videos related to startups. With each video, not only can you see an outline of all the big topics covered and jump to the section that interests you, you can also search for every time something gets mentioned (though your success will depend on how thoroughly the video has been tagged and annotated). To be clear, ClipMine isn’t trying to build its own video player. Instead, it sits on top of players like YouTube. You can also install a plugin to see the ClipMine player anywhere you see YouTube videos.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, May 19

• WSJ's Scoop: Google's eCommerce play: Company will launch buy buttons on its search-results pages in coming weeks. Google Inc. will launch buy buttons on its search-result pages in coming weeks, a controversial step by the company toward becoming an online marketplace rivaling those run by Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. The search giant will start showing the buttons when people search for products on mobile devices, according to people familiar with the matter. The buy button will appear only on mobile phones (and currently only to a small percentage of mobile traffic). 1. It’s currently available only in the US. 2. Shoppers will input their credit card information with Google once, or can use a variety of digital payment methods (Google hasn’t clarified which ones yet). 3. Shoppers will have the option to choose different colors, sizes and shipping options. 4. Shoppers will have their email and address information shared with retailers, if they opt in. (This is important.) 5. The program will continue to be advertising-based, instead of commission-based, which is substantially different from Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces. So what does this mean for retailers and brands? At ChannelAdvisor, we think this could be big news — one of the biggest disruptions since Google launched Product Listing Ads (PLAs) — and something all retailers and brands need to watch closely. Our experience shows that early adopters of PLAs gained an early and sustainable lead, and we think this change has the potential to further separate the leaders from the laggards. So it makes a ton of sense to us at ChannelAdvisor that Google may be launching its own version of a marketplace by way of a buy button — think of it as a “transactional ad unit.” In fact, given Google’s assets — from Android to Google Wallet to PLAs and everything in between — it’s actually a bit of a surprise to us that this hasn’t happened sooner. Our verdict? This development could be huge for retailers, and those that get on the bus early are likely to widen the competitive gap between themselves and their competitors.

• Just Dial integrates e-commerce marketplace with its local business listings platform. Just Dial Ltd, which runs an India-specific local business listing platform Justdial.com, has expanded the scope of its B2C transaction based services by adding product e-commerce marketplace. The firm had started what it called ‘search plus’ or transaction services where it allowed people to order food online from local restaurants, book doctor’s appointment and flight tickets and much more. With product e-commerce it is now entering a much wider market which can add to its revenue stream. The company has added a ‘shop online’ feature on the homepage where it lists products across several categories such as mobile, appliances, electronics besides a host of others including those which are not pushed by big e-commerce marketplaces such as tiles, sanitaryware, bicycle, paints etc. Since it is a marketplace it essentially connects consumers to third party vendors and only acts as a platform linking the buyer and sellers while facilitating the transaction. In the process it comes across as another hyper local e-commerce platform which links local shops to consumers online. This makes sense for Just Dial as it extends the offering by allowing those local sellers already listed on its platform to sell products. Few weeks ago restaurant listing site Zomato started online ordering of food from its restaurant partners in a similar move to extend an existing business line. However, how seriously the consumer would absorb the Just Dial offering given there are specialised e-commerce ventures doing a similar job with better UI/UX, is something we would get to know as Just Dial starts sharing user stats, from next quarter. One area of differentiator could be its delivery promise. The site claims some products like grocery and medicine ordered through its platform will be delivered in an hour while for some others like electronics, Just Dial says it offers a ‘7-hour express delivery’ for orders placed before 2 PM and the offer comes with Just Dial’s written guarantee along with manufacturer’s warranty & original invoice. Orders post 2 PM will be delivered in the next 24 hours. Although most large e-commerce properties also offer same day delivery for some products, since Just Dial primarily leverages local sellers, it can actually cut down on delivery timelines. It would compete with several players such as Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, ShopClues and Paytm. Indeed Paytm appears to be the closest peer to Just Dial in terms of the e-commerce business model. Others offer warehousing and even logistics services to their vendors.

• People Changes at Tiger Global. Tiger Global Management on Monday announced key personnel changes including the departure of Feroz Dewan, who has run the closely watched Wall Street firm's hedge fund operations and is leaving to start his own business. Dewan, a partner who has been with Tiger Global for 12 years, will leave at the end of June, the firm's founder, Chase Coleman, wrote to clients in a letter seen by Reuters. Tiger Global oversees roughly $20 billion in assets, with roughly half invested in its fast-growing private equity business. The remainder is invested in public equities with about $6 billion in its hedge fund and $3.5 billion in its long-only portfolios. Scott Shleifer, who had been running the private equity business with Lee Fixel, will take over as head of the firm's public equity business. Tiger Global has long been focused on technology investing and listed Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc as its biggest holding at the end of the first quarter. It also raised its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Co , which listed its shares in the biggest ever initial public offering last year, a regulatory filing shows. The hedge fund started the year on a rocky note but recovered some ground in April with a 3.2 percent gain, leaving it down 2.4 percent for the year to date, an investor said. Separately, Caleb Watts, also a Tiger Global partner, also will be leaving to focus on managing his own money, according to the letter. To streamline operations the firm is also merging its Tiger Global Internet Opportunities Fund into its Tiger Global Long Opportunities fund.

• Alibaba-backed Visualead rolls out new dotless QR codes that aim to reduce counterfeiting. In January, Alibaba disclosed its investment in Visualead, an Israeli startup that helps brands make colorful, visually appealing QR codes. While the company’s product was cute, its value to Alibaba is growing clearer now that it has revealed a new QR code alternative that aims to prevent counterfeit sales. Alibaba is using Visualead’s technology to power Blue Star, a new tool that prints out individual, scannable codes for individual packages. When scanned using the mobile app for Taobao, an image appears confirming (or denying) the product’s authenticity. Brands can choose from a set number of templates to customize these landing images and throw in links to promotions or e-commerce pages… perhaps even ones that are on an Alibaba property. Visualead co-founder and CEO Nevo Alva tells Tech in Asia that Alibaba only opens Blue Star to genuine brands. That means Nike can sign up, but FakeNikes.com will get turned away. Alva also adds that Alibaba is providing Blue Star free-of-charge for the time being, irrespective of where the goods will be sold. That means that Nike can pin the codes to packages that will go to an Alibaba competitor.

• Spotify Inks Deal With Starbucks Tasking Customers With Picking In-Store Music. Spotify and Starbucks just announced a clever deal to promote Spotify Premium while giving Starbuck customers and employees the opportunity to influence the music played at their local Starbucks. This is the latest in a line of high-profile deals Spotify bagged that puts its brand in front of an important consumer demographic. Soon baristas will be tasked with making coffee and picking the music in their locations. The deal links Starbucks’ loyalty program with Spotify’s massive music ecosystem, giving My Starbucks Reward members unique access to Spotify. Program users will then be able to influence which songs makes it on in-store playlists. The program starts with 150,000 U.S.-based Starbucks store employees who will receive a Spotify Premium membership in the fall. The plan is then to roll out the service to Starbucks customers shortly after. Streaming music companies such as Spotify, Rdio and others are racing to differentiate themselves. Since most platforms offer similar music and experiences, the war is mostly in public relations. And Spotify is winning this part of the war signing deals to allow Uber riders to DJ from the backseat and getting the streaming service into BMW and Mini cars. Starbucks has long associated itself with emerging music and this deal with Spotify pushes the coffee retailer (along with its legions of dedicated customers) into the age of streaming media.

• Singapore’s Postal Service Reinvents for the Digital Age, Derives a Quarter of its Revenue from eCommerce: With traditional mail services in decline, post offices around the world are scrambling to reinvent themselves for the digital age. “Sitting on that burning platform, we looked around and said, ‘Where could we develop?’” said Wolfgang Baier, the chief executive of SingPost. Japan Post is buying the largest private package and freight delivery company in Australia, Toll Holdings, in a bid to create a rival to UPS and FedEx. The United States Postal Service, which lost $5.5 billion last year, is providing Sunday deliveries for Amazon. Australia Post is working with the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba to help local businesses connect with consumers in China. There are at least two business trends unfolding before us. One is the death of mail,” said Frank Lavin, chief executive of the e-commerce consultancy Export Now. “The second is this boom in e-commerce.” SingPost’s makeover is among the most ambitious. Besides its regular postal duties, it offers a basket of services for companies, including website development, online marketing, customer service and, of course, package delivery. Following the Amazon model, it is building a network of 24 warehouses in 12 countries to stockpile goods for companies. The e-commerce team is staffed with former Silicon Valley executives. Singapore’s central location, said Mr. Baier, makes it a natural hub for e-commerce in Asia. He recited numbers to demonstrate the scale of the opportunity: Over 600 million consumers live in the region around Singapore, and 2.2 billion people are within a five-hour flight. The shift has been stark for the postal service, once a state-owned company that went public in 2003. Four years ago, e-commerce barely figured into its bottom line. Today, it accounts for more than a quarter of the group’s revenues, which have grown by 60 percent during that same period. Others are taking notice. Last year, Alibaba paid $250 million for a 10 percent stake in SingPost. Alibaba and SingPost are now in discussions to form a joint venture focused on e-commerce logistics in Southeast Asia. Then, two years ago, SingPost made its biggest digital push, creating SP eCommerce to tap into the Internet retail boom in Asia. Today, it counts nearly 1,000 companies as clients, including Philips, Uniqlo, Deckers and Muji. SP eCommerce’s offices feel more start-up than mailroom. There is a Foosball table in one corner. Employees can play Ping-Pong. The group’s chief executive, Marcelo Wesseler, created his first e-commerce website in 1997 and worked in Silicon Valley before moving to Singapore. Other employees have come from technology stalwarts like Amazon and Hewlett-Packard. The company also created a customer-care department. At its Singapore offices, 30 or so employees handle the phones, answering questions or addressing complaints. An additional 200 customer-service agents work elsewhere. As part of the e-commerce expansion, SingPost upgraded its core delivery services. It has bolstered its network of warehouses and fulfillment centers, most of which are in Asia. The centers handle freight and customs clearance so goods can move faster through the region, where regulations differ from country to country. In Singapore, SingPost has invested $182 million in building a high-tech warehouse that will merge logistics and sorting into one assembly line. Workers punch or scan an order on a screen, and robotic trays deliver products from shelves for them to pack and ship. SingPost is pitching itself as a conduit to the Asian consumer, particularly in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. With its swelling population of young and mobile consumers with newly disposable incomes, the region offers a rich seam of new opportunities. Looking beyond its borders for growth, the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi last year opened a regional headquarters in Singapore, using it as a launching pad to move into Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Next, it is targeting Vietnam and Thailand. It teamed up with SingPost for support on logistics for e-commerce, which accounts for 80 percent of Xiaomi’s sales in Southeast Asia. At its campus in Singapore, SingPost built a warehouse specially for Xiaomi, where orders from the first click to the final delivery are handled. Inside the 11,000-square-foot space, a smartphone battery is stuffed into a cardboard box, sent flying down a green conveyor belt and zipped off to the customer a few miles away. A video camera is perched above, controlled by someone who watches from Beijing.