Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, July 07

• India's $4 Smartphone Seems Too Good to Be True: A little-known Indian company called Ringing Bells Pvt is set to start shipping the Freedom 251. The prototype touts a quad-core processor, a 4-inch screen and front and back cameras - at the astonishingly low price of 251 rupees (less than $4). While global brands Samsung Electronics Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. sell devices for less than $100, the $4 smartphone is the one stirring up the internet-hungry, app-crazy hordes in a country where Apple Inc. has been unable to make a dent. With iPhones costing upwards of $700, Apple commands a mere 2 percent market share in a country where the World Bank puts the per capita income at $5,630. Brands can't make money even on $50 smartphones, so profiting from a $4 device is a ludicrous idea, say experts like Tarun Pathak, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. While Micromax sells millions of cheap devices every month in smaller cities - it profits by taking advantage of economies of scale. Ringing Bells’ managing director Mohit Goel isn't counting on a profit from device sales, conceding that the company will lose hundreds of rupees on each unit, and is instead planning to recoup money through advertising and marketing deals. Goel has said the company is importing kits from Taiwan and assembling the phones in a factory in Haridwar near Delhi.Even at $4, the smartphone could still be out of reach for most because of scarcity. When Goel first announced Freedom 251 in February, the company said over 70 million jostled to register, crashing its website. Last week he said Ringing Bells will soon start shipping 200,000 smartphones to buyers picked by lottery. Other details were not available and e-mails, phone calls and text messages to Goel and his representatives in the past days went unanswered. Selling such a cheap device has attracted scrutiny along with the publicity. The prototype Freedom 251 presented to the media turned out to be produced by another manufacturer with its logos covered. Thwarted buyers protested outside the company’s headquarters, setting off inquiries by the police and tax officials. Pankaj Mahindroo, president of the Indian Cellular Association, with members including Apple and Samsung, said “We are concerned and keeping a close watch.”

• Another Tesla crash is under investigation to see if Autopilot is at fault: U.S. transportation regulators are opening a new probe of a Tesla car crash, one week afterannouncing an investigation into a fatal crash of a Tesla operating in the company’s semi-autonomous driving mode. The new investigation involves a non-fatal crash on July 1 in Pennsylvania. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will try to determine if the Tesla’s Autopilot functions were active at the time. The additional investigation will likely intensify scrutiny around the safety and design of Tesla’s Autopilot product, which provides some self-driving features as a software update. 

• Zomato's Results: For the year ending March 2016, Zomato posted revenues of Rs 87.5 crore for the India region, up from Rs 46 crore revenues in 2015. India accounted for 47.3% of Zomato's overall revenues that stood at 184.97 crore for FY16. The net loss for the India region however shot up to Rs 247 crore for the fiscal, up more than three times from Rs 62.3 crore loss in 2015. This is nearly half of Zomato's overall net loss of Rs 574.5 crore in FY16.In the US market that accounts for nearly 50% of its listings, the Gurugram-based company posted a net loss of Rs 327.5 crore on revenues of Rs 6.73 crore for the fiscal. This is a massive increase from Rs 33 crore on revenues of Rs 5.1 crore in 2015. Zomato had forayed into United States last year with the $52 million UrbanSpoon acquisition that was eventually folded into the company.In terms of segments, Online advertising still dominates Zomato's revenues, accounting for 91.4% of the company's overall revenues. The segment's revenues grew by 76.1% to Rs 169.1 crore for FY16, from Rs 96 crore in FY15. Revenues from online ordering was at Rs 7.5 crore for the fiscal, accounting for nearly 4% of the company's revenues. Goyal had recently said that 20% of its India revenues came from the ordering business in April this year. Subscription revenues grew to Rs 8.4 crore from Rs 0.64 crore in 2015. This includes revenues from its business app from restaurants and its Whitelabel platform among others.

• Apple Drops to Fifth in China’s Mobile Market as Locals Rise: Apple Inc. dropped to fifth place in Chinese smartphone shipments, losing ground in its biggest overseas market in a fresh blow for the technology giant. IPhones made up 10.8 percent of devices sold in May, down from 12 percent a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research. By comparison, Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies Co. increased its lead with 17.3 percent. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has publicly touted the importance of China, where the company is combating a slowing domestic economy and local vendors with increasingly popular devices. The launch of the cheaper iPhone SE was meant to boost Apple’s popularity in developing markets and Cook met with China’s vice premier Liu Yandong in May. Instead, it has suffered commercial, legal and regulatory setbacks in recent months leading to lawsuits and key products getting shut down. Local brands Huawei, Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi are now the top four smartphone makers in China with a combined market share of 53 percent, according to Counterpoint research director Neil Shah. Oppo almost doubled its market share to 11 percent. Apple’s sales in Greater China, which also includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, fell 26 percent during the March quarter compared to a year earlier, amid a slowing market.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, November 2

• Meg Whitman Seeks Reinvention for HP as It Prepares for Split: When HP splits in two on Sunday after a year of planning, what is left will bear little resemblance to the engineering-driven company founded more than 75 years ago in a garage not far from Stanford University. On one side will be HP Inc., which will largely consist of personal computers and printers. On the other, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, which will sell the computer servers, data storage, networking, software and consulting services that run a modern company. Each company is expected to have annual revenue of about $50 billion and will be among America’s 500 largest public companies. Neither will have the standing as one of the most innovative operations in the world that the old HP enjoyed for decades.

• With Instagram’s Boomerang, making gifs is easier than ever: It’s a gif world, and we’re just living in it. Those short, looping (often loopy) animated files pop up just about everywhere on the Web and in social media. Now, it’s easier than ever to make them yourself. Instagram’s new app, Boomerang, makes it very easy to make your own 1-second gifs for sharing on Instagram, Facebook and your phone’s camera roll. The process couldn’t be simpler. Just find something moving that you want to shoot, hit the capture button and keep as still as you can for a second or so. You can shoot from either rear-facing or front-facing camera. To work, the app will need permission to access those cameras, as well as your phone’s storage. Free, for iOS and Android.

• Uber Germany retreats to Berlin, Munich: Taxi-hailing service Uber Technologies is making a retreat in Germany to the cities of Berlin and Munich as it grapples with a ban from using unlicensed cab drivers. Uber will for now suspend services in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Duesseldorf, it said in a statement on Friday, citing a difficult regulatory environment. A German court in March banned Uber from running services using unlicensed cab drivers and set stiff fines for any violations of local transport laws by the pioneering online taxi firm. The company in Germany has since limited itself to drivers that hold a passenger transport license, among other legal requirements, through its UberX and UberBlack smartphone apps, but it has run into a shortage of suppliers of ride services.

• Zomato CEO warns may not meet revenue goal, pulls up sales team: Zomato, the restaurant listing and services company which is valued around $1 billion, might fail to meet its sales target for the current financial year, according to an email co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal sent to the staff on Friday. In a long mail that Goyal first sent to the company’s sales team and later forwarded to all employees, he talked about the underperformance of the sales team and how it might result in the company missing its revenue targets. “We are far behind the numbers that we promised our investors for this financial year (year ending March 2016) – our investors have said that so far, we have always delivered what we have promised. We are close to not living up to that for the first time in the last 5 years,” Goyal said in the email. The email came a fortnight after the company sacked about 300 employees globally, or 10 per cent of its total workforce. Zomato has also been facing difficulties in retaining top-level staff as a number of senior executives have left the company after short stints.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, September 8

• Amazon plans to sell $50 tablet: WSJ. Online retailer Amazon.com Inc plans to release a $50 tablet in time for the holiday season, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The 6-inch screen tablet comes with a mono speaker and is priced much lower than Amazon's Fire tablet, the cheapest variant of which is sold at $99. The company was not immediately available for comment. Amazon also plans to release 8-inch and 10-inch screen tablets, the report said. While other Amazon Fire tablets show advertisements as screen savers, it was not clear if the new 6-inch tablet's cost included ads, according to the report.

• Apple's New Ad Blockers Threaten to Remove Publishers' Mobile Ads: When Apple unveils its new iPhone and iOS 9 operating system this week, it could also drop a bomb on publishers, introducing ad-blocking technology that threatens to impact the revenue they make from smartphones. Ad blockers have been available on desktop browsers for years, but analysts say Apple's backing has the potential to make ad blocking more mainstream, making it available to a wider group of consumers. With Apple's new tools, developers can build ad-blocking apps that consumers can download to wipe out ads on mobile sites. Run-of-the-mill ads like banners and display placements are easy targets for ad blockers. But a small test by Adweek of a handful of apps shows that they remove native and branded content, too—putting the business model of publishers that have been at the forefront of native advertising—including BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Forbes and The Atlantic—at risk.

• Didi Kuaidi raises $3 billion as rival Uber China brings in $1.2 billion. Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Kuaidi is set to raise about $3 billion through its latest fundraising round, said two people familiar with the matter, just as funding at the Chinese unit of rival Uber reaches $1.2 billion. The inflow of cash raises the stakes between two of the world's most valuable start-ups. It also illustrates how investors are undeterred by the two companies spending heavily as they subsidize rides to gain market share, betting on China's Internet-linked transport market becoming the world's biggest. Didi Kuaidi, which has the largest market share of car-hailing apps in China, in July said it raised $2 billion, and that the amount may rise another "few hundred million" due to what it said was tremendous interest from global investors.

• One of Bollywood's biggest studios is betting it can win the online streaming race. Encouraged by an activist investor, the executive chairman of Eros International Plc is making its Eros Now streaming service a priority -- shelving a plan to create an old-fashioned television network to focus on video-on-demand optimized for mobile devices and priced for widespread adoption. The idea is to use the Mumbai studio’s bulging catalog of more than 2,000 films and new, exclusive series to build a critical mass of devoted users before Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. plant their flags in the world’s second-most populous country. “We thought, ‘We have the market share, we have the movies,”’ Lulla, 53, said in his London office on the city’s Georgian-era Manchester Square, looking every bit the mogul in a crisp, open-necked white shirt and slip-on shoes. “Why don’t we create our own platform?” Thanks to a production machine built by his father Arjan, who founded Eros in 1977, it releases upwards of 70 movies a year -- more than any U.S. rival. Eros is “exactly where Netflix wants to be in the next three to five years,” Lulla said. “I’m already there.”  Since a largely marketing-free soft launch about a year ago, Eros Now has attracted more than 26 million users. The official hard-sell unveiling was in July, with promises that movies will be available to stream immediately after they hit theaters. Promotions tease new digital series including “Khel,” a drama about “the twisted characters that populate the world of cricket,” and “Ponniyin Selvan,” based on a 2,000-plus-page novel about an ancient Tamil kingdom. A basic, ad-supported tier is free, while premium services cost from 50 rupees (about 80 U.S. cents) to 100 rupees monthly. Prices are higher outside India, where there’s opportunity in diaspora communities. In the U.S. it’s $7.99 -- which happens to be Netflix’s base cost.

• Samsung to Cut 10% of Headquarters Staff, Economic Daily Says. Samsung Electronics is preparing to cut 10 percent of workers at its headquarters, according to a Korean newspaper, as the world’s biggest smartphone maker loses sales to Apple and Chinese vendors. Samsung is targeting workers in the human resources, public relations and finance departments, Korea Economic Daily reported Tuesday, citing people it didn’t identify. The Suwon, South Korea-based company also plans to cut some expenses next year, the report added. Samsung declined to comment in an e-mail. The moves come after new high-end Galaxy smartphones failed to impress consumers, triggering five straight monthly declines and wiping out more than $40 billion in Samsung’s market value since April. The company’s share of global smartphone shipments fell more than 3 percentage points in the second quarter, and it’s no longer the top seller in China, the world’s biggest mobile-phone market. Samsung, which had 206.2 trillion won ($171 billion) in sales last year, is estimated to post about 200.2 trillion won in sales this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

• Baidu to Boost Spending on India, Indonesia as Mobile Sales Boom: Baidu plans to boost investments in India and Indonesia as China’s largest Web search provider tries for a greater presence on smartphones. “They have a lot of characteristics that mimic China’s development,” Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Li said during an interview in Beijing on Monday. “There is no legacy of PC user behavior and probably mobile is going to have a very speedy development.” Baidu is spending on new businesses while locked in competition with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. In July, Baidu forecast sales below estimates, and Chairman Robin Li pledged to tap its $12 billion of cash to build out its shopping, taxi and delivery services amid China’s economic slowdown. China saw its first decline in smartphone shipments in six years during the first quarter, while India’s shipment volume surged 44 percent in the second quarter. India is now the world’s third-largest smartphone market. During the past two years, Baidu spent almost $1 billion on more than 20 investments, including Uber, travel website Qunar and video-streaming service iQiyi, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company is now exploring investments in the local education and medical sectors, Li said. The spending likely will be small, with Baidu interested in minority stakes as well as full acquisitions, she said. Baidu also is keen to make use of its relationships with educational institutions by providing student loans, President Zhang Ya-Qin said in a separate interview. It has issued 100 million yuan ($15.7 million) in loans, averaging 20,000 yuan each, since starting its lending program last month, he said.

• Facebook’s Messenger And The Challenge To Google’s Search Dominance. When Facebook announced M—an A.I.-powered personal assistant that lives inside Messenger—it fired a massive shell across Google’s bow. Indeed, if Facebook can successfully scale M to its entire audience (and WhatsApp’s, as well), this new product represents a direct assault on search and AdWords—the lifeblood of Google’s business. To understand how a digital personal assistant that lives inside a mobile messaging app represents a disruptive threat to Google, let’s look at why Google is in this situation in the first place. Google faces the classic innovator’s dilemma: somewhere in the recesses of its collective corporate mind, Google knows that keyword search—the current foundation of its empire—is not the future. Because Larry Page and Sergey Brin are visionaries, they know that the next-generation solution to the problem of search looks less like a clickable list of links and more like a primitive Star Trek computer or an early version of the A.I. from the movie Her. The future of search is an intelligent digital assistant that can complete tasks. Like Google today, the search engine of the future will be able to mine the vast expanses of the internet for relevant information and deliver it to you in milliseconds. But much unlike today’s Google, the future’s search engine will behave like a digital personal assistant that can understand and predict your needs, then deliver on them without requiring you to navigate to any web pages or tap around a bunch of apps. When you do ask for something, this search engine will not respond with a list of blueish links. Instead, it will respond with a definitive result or a completed task. When it doesn’t have the definitive result or can’t complete the task on the first pass, it will ask you further questions to get closer and closer, until the machine gets it right. it’s not yet clear if Larry Page and Sergey Brin would be willing to invest in an Alphabet spin-off that threatened to kill their golden goose: the risks are just so big, and the scale of the rewards so uncertain. Meanwhile, Siri remains a wildcard, Facebook is testing M, Microsoft is bringing Cortana to Android, and Slack is making a long-term run at the A.I. assistant game, too. This is why they call it a dilemma.

• AOL Scoops Up Mobile Ad Network Millennial Media for $238 Million: AOL has acquired mobile ad network Millennial Media for $238 million, or about $1.75 per share. The Millennial deal is the newest step in building out AOL's tools to compete in mobile advertising against behemoths like Facebook, Yahoo and Google. With the deal, Verizon-owned AOL is getting access to mobile inventory in Millennial's 65,000 apps—equivalent to 1 billion active global users in markets like Germany, France and Japan. It will also help build out its cross-screen programmatic platform called One. AOL's move is the latest sign of the times for mobile ad networks like Millennial (which spent more than $300 million on its own acquisitions in recent years) that have struggled in recent years to keep up in a fast-paced industry. With Millennial now off the table, it could set off a wave of other deals for tech companies to gobble up smaller mobile ad networks that specialize in video and location-based targeting. To stay ahead, Millennial zeroed in on building up its automated capabilities the past couple of years by acquiring two other big mobile players. In 2013, it bought real-time bidding platform Jumptap in for $209 million. Then in September 2014, Millennial acquired ad network Nexage for $107 million. 

• Zomato raises $60M from Temasek, Vy Capital, is a Unicorn now: Restaurant listings and review firm Zomato, which is expanding its business into food ordering and table reservation, has entered the coveted ‘Unicorn Club’ as it has just raised $60 million (Rs 390 crore when it sealed the deal) in a fresh round of funding from Singapore government’s investment company Temasek and existing investor Vy Capital. Although it has not disclosed the valuation, back-of-the-envelope calculations show Zomato is now valued around $1 billion. This would make it one of the eight odd Indian unicorns, a tag meant for startups sporting over $1 billion valuation. Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola, One97 Communications, InMobi, Quikr and Mu Sigma are the other known Unicorns from India. Though some of these firms were launched years ago, their current core business took shape just around five years back. For Zomato, this is its third round of funding since last November when it bagged $60 million and followed it up with another $50 million this April. It was valued at $660 million (post money) in November 2014.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 5

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet on SoundCloud

• The Apple Watch will hit retail stores on June 26: Apple said it would start selling some models of its watch at its retail stores this month, and also roll out the gadget in seven more countries. The watch has been on display in Apple stores around the world since April 10, when it became available for preorder online and at shops including trendy fashion boutiques in Paris, London and Tokyo. Apple had directed people to order online, preventing long queues around its stores that have become a norm with the company's rollout of new products. Apple Watch will be launched in Italy, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan on June 26, the company said. The watch is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK. Apart from online stores, customers in these countries can also buy the devices at Apple's retail stores and some authorized resellers. The company has not given any sales figures for the watch since it began taking orders, but has often said demand was outstripping supply. "The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way," said Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations. "We're also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders."

• Amazon's e-gifting offering launched quietly recently: Amazon Allowance, which recently debuted without much fanfare, lets people set up monthly or weekly payments to credit their kids' — or anyone else's — Amazon account with a cash balance, like a gift card. That saves parents from having to find cash, write a check or a make a bank transfer, and gives the recipient a way to shop on the website without a credit or debit card. The initiative is significant in a few ways. The e-giving (electronic gift card) market is projected to reach $14 billion in 2017, up from $6 billion last year, according to CEB, and U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and JC Penney Co. have all made e-gifting a part of their strategy. It's also a way to get younger shoppers accustomed to buying things on Amazon. And with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. aiming to turn smartphones into digital wallets, Amazon needs to keep shoppers close. Amazon account holders will be able able to set up one-time and recurring allowances for "family, friends, or employees that are age 13 and above," according to the website. The recipient must have an Amazon account (a parent or guardian will have to help set up an account for those under 17). People can also set up allowances for themselves to budget or save up for a purchase. "Sending money to family or friends can be a frustrating process," said Manish Bansal, general manager of gift certificates at Seattle-based Amazon. "A lot of early customers are using Amazon Allowances as a way to budget —whether through one-time or recurring allowances. We’re also seeing parents using Amazon Allowances to send money to college kids who need help buying textbooks and dorm essentials."

• Snapdeal, GoJavas to pick up return orders in 90 minutes: E-commerce marketplace Snapdeal, and QuickDel Logistics, which operates under the GoJavas brand, have launched a new service that will ensure pick up of return or replacement e-commerce orders within 90 minutes of intimation. The new service, christened ‘go-90′, has gone live in 15 cities, as per a press statement. GoJavas was previously a part of Jabong, a lifestyle e-tailer incubated by Rocket Internet. The move is seen as another step towards stimulating online shopping in the country since returns are seen as a major challenge. Reportedly, around 5-9 per cent of all e-commerce orders end up being returned in India.

• Facebook Launches Facebook Lite - A Stripped Down Android App For The Developing World: Today, Facebook is launching a bare-bones, low-resolution version of its Android app that works well on crummy networks or outdated phones, and burns much less data than its normal smartphone apps. It will roll out today in Asia, and come to parts of Latin America, Africa, and Europe in the coming weeks. Facebook Lite is designed specifically for the developing world to help the social network on-board its next billion users. Facebook Lite doesn’t offer data-intensive features like videos or Nearby Friends. But if users are willing to accept that and lower-resolution image thumbnails, they can access Facebook quick, smooth, and cheap from the most remote corners of the planet. Roughly a year back, that’s when we realized that our current Facebook experiences needed a lot more work, specifically in emerging markets and more specifically where networks are bad” Facebook Lite’s product manager Vijay Shankar tells me. So Facebook set out on two parallel paths. First, it would try optimize its flagship apps to load faster with less data. It’s already shrunk down its main Android app. Second, Shankar tells me “We floated another idea. What if we were building this from scratch for emerging markets? How do we completely re-architect this?” Rather than imagine what the problems in these areas were, Shankar says “we did a lot of research on the ground and spent a lot of time in Africa, and India and Indonesia.” The team discovered the solution would need three things: One, to work on any Android phone, regardless of storage space, RAM, and CPU. Two, to load fast even on 2G mobile connections, which is what 4 billion people on earth are stuck with. Three, to use as little data as possible, as the prohibitive cost of data plans is actually the largest barrier to Internet usage, not network access. The main way Facebook makes the app use less data is by never pre-loading full-resolution images. Photos and link preview thumbnails in the News Feed appear a bit grainy at first. They’ll load in full-res if tapped, but Facebook only wants to do those big data pulls if people volunteer for them. If you try to post a photo to Facebook Lite, the app compresses the image and then sends it in the background, so its small and you don’t have to spend the wait time staring at the screen. “Every roundtrip to the server is painful” Shankar says, so “we’re very careful about what features and experiences we offer in the app.” There will be some ads, but several of Facebook’s top formats like app install ads won’t be in Facebook Lite. Advertisers might not love the idea of their creative assets being compressed into low-res. But otherwise, users would probably scroll past them before they even load. Today, Facebook Lite begins its official global rollout. At under 1 megabyte in size, Shankar says it can be downloaded in seconds for cheap on even slow 2G connections. I played with it for a few minutes, and was surprised by how slick and full-featured it was despite the compromises.

• Coke's New Twitter Ads Call Out Viewers by Name As Social Promos Get Personal. Coca-Cola has been buying Promoted Tweets that show up in viewers' Twitter feeds and address them by their first names. The ad copy starts with: "Hey [NAME], #ShareACoke is back! Order..." You can see the full promo in the above image. The new tactic is part of a larger, ongoing "Share a Coke" campaign that debuted earlier this spring. The company is encouraging people to buy 8-ounce bottles of the soda, personalized with their names, for $5 apiece. Coke wasn't available for comment. But it appears the Atlanta-based soda giant is employing Twitter's Tailored Audiences platform in an innovative way to create this targeted style of advertising. Twitter deferred to Coca-Cola about the campaign and didn't state whether other brands were using the personalized call to action. But it would certainly interest any marketer that is looking to increase its click-through rates on the microblogging platform.

• Alibaba has tied up with China's largest loan restructurer to sell bad debt online. Alibaba will cooperate with the biggest state-owned loan restructurer to dispose of more than 4 billion yuan ($645 million) of non-performing assets on its online shopping platform Taobao. China Cinda Asset Management, which announced the tieup with Ma last week, saw profits rise 32 percent to a record in 2014. China’s non-performing loans climbed by an unprecedented 140 billion yuan in the first quarter to 982.5 billion yuan, the most since 2008 and almost the size of Vietnam’s economy. UBS and Standard Chartered are among companies that bought stakes in Cinda before its 2013 public share sale as a stepping stone into the distressed asset market. Cinda’s market value of $23 billion is now larger than KKR’s $19.1 billion. Cinda already sold two bad loans on Alibaba’s retail site Taobao in April for a combined 24.5 million yuan, according to a China Banking Regulatory Commission statement at the time. Four more were auctioned last month for 31.4 million yuan. One of the soured loans auctioned in May was originally from Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. with a clothing company in the eastern Zhejiang province as the debtor. Cinda disclosed details such as the name of the borrower, the principal amount, accrued interest and guarantors of the loan on Taobao. Bidders were advised to look at the loan documents and check the collaterals before auction. Both individuals as well as institutions were allowed to bid. “Alibaba’s online loan auction platform broadens the investor base for bad loans and therefore will lead to better price discovery for distressed assets,” said Liao Qiang, a banking analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Beijing. The legal complexities involved in unwinding such debts and the need to divulge information publicly may limit growth in online auctions, according to KPMG’s Gleave. “Alibaba’s auction site is just a market place,” he said. “Whether that’s a good way to trade bad debts is still to be seen.”

• Yahoo Says Shutting Down Maps Service Site, Other Tools: Maps.yahoo.com will close at the end of June, Amotz Maimon, chief architect at the Sunnyvale, California-based company, said in a blog post. Yahoo will still support mapping as part of other services including search and the photo-sharing website Flickr. Yahoo also is paring back or ending support for other sites and services, including mail support for older versions of Apple Inc.’s iPhone operating system. The company is shuttering market-specific media properties, including Yahoo Music in France and Canada and the home page for the Philippines. In addition, it will end support for creation of Pipes, a Web-content gathering tool. Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is looking for ways to keep costs under control as she works to turn around the company she has led for almost three years.

• Facebook Messenger Ditches Constant Mapping To Lay Groundwork For More Location Features. Facebook is removing the confusing, slightly creepy always-on location sharing feature in Messenger for a more explicit, one-time way to share where you are or will be. Location will no longer be a “second class citizen”, Messenger Head Of Product Stan Chudnovsky tells me. Instead, Messenger has big plans for GPS features, saying “What we’re launching is the foundation of everything that’s coming.” For example, “You might want to make reservations. How are we all getting there? Maybe there’s a transportation service somehow” Chudnovsky hints. When I ask if Messenger might build on Uber’s API to let you instantly book rides, he coyly replied “I didn’t say that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like what you’re saying.” The new design for location sharing in Messenger is rolling out today for everyone on iOS and Android. It banishes the blue arrow and any way to constantly share your coordinates. It’s replaced with a pin button alongside those for sending photos, stickers, or money, or an option in the three-dot More drawer. Tapping it pulls up a map with your current location pinned, which you can send to friends with one more tap. This makes it easy to tell a friend “Here’s where I am, come meet me.” By dragging the map, you can change the pin’s location. That lets you pick a meetup spot. You can also use suggestion of nearby Facebook Places like local businesses, or search for one to set the pin to a specific destination. Chudnovsky says trying to do something similar by opening Google Maps would take “7 taps, 2 app switches, and 150% frustration.”

• Computer Scientists Are Astir After Baidu Team Is Barred From A.I. Competition: A group of researchers at the Chinese web services company Baidu have been barred from participating in an international competition for artificial intelligence technology after organizers discovered that the Baidu scientists broke the contest’s rules. The competition, which is known as the “Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge,” is organized annually by computer scientists at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan. It requires that computer systems created by the teams classify the objects in a set of digital images into 1,000 different categories. The rules of the contest permit each team to run test versions of their programs twice weekly ahead of a final submission as they train their programs to “learn” what they are seeing. However, on Tuesday, the contest organizers posted a public statement noting that between November and May 30, different accounts had been used by the Baidu team to submit more than 200 times to the contest server, “far exceeding the specified limit of two submissions per week.” This year, Baidu announced that it had built a custom supercomputer named Minwa with the intention of dedicating it to the image recognition contest. Baidu researchers subsequently made a series of announcements about the success of the computer, including one playing up a result more accurate than an earlier score by Google scientists. On May 4, Baidu posted an article on its technology blog headlined “Baidu Achieves Top Results on Image Recognition Challenge.” The article has since been removed.

• Zomato’s revenue and operating loss more than tripled last year; Meritnation’s growth slowed to a crawl: Zomato, which recently expanded to allow food orders online and has been aggressively expanding overseas with as many as nine firms in its kitty in the past 12 months alone, saw operating revenue rise over three times from INR 30.6 crore in FY14 to INR 96.7 crore last year. Its operating EBITDA loss in the same period also more than tripled to INR 136 crore from INR 41.39 crore in the year ended March 31, 2014. Operating revenue growth for Meritnation was just 6.5 per cent to INR 21.59 crore. However, the firm managed to restrict its operating losses which declined by a fifth to INR 22.72 crore.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, May 1st

• LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp - recent Internet darlings - each slumped by more than 20% this week on weak earnings: A trio of social media stocks is getting pummeled this week, a sign that Wall Street may be unwilling to overlook missteps at some of its Internet darlings. LinkedIn on Thursday plunged as much as 25 percent in after-hours trading after the professional social networking company forecast second-quarter sales that were weaker than Wall Street estimates. The drop followed the declines of two other social networking companies. Twitter shares are down around 25 percent this week after the company reported quarterly sales that fell short of expectations, while local reviews site Yelp plummeted 23 percent on Thursday, a day after it too posted sales that disappointed Wall Street. The performances illustrate the way investors are questioning whether social media companies can keep their growth rates vigorous enough to justify their valuations. The stocks of all three companies had traded at relatively high levels, reflecting Wall Street’s giddy projections. Yet all three shattered that perception in their own way. And while many of these stocks are often volatile, with investors on edge about the weak economy, interest rates and other issues, shareholders increasingly have little tolerance for the slightest misstep. “Based on where some of these stocks were trading, expectations were already very high and were priced for relative perfection,” said Colin Sebastian, a senior analyst for Robert W. Baird & Company. “The reaction when companies don’t achieve great results can be fairly severe.” Any continued rockiness in the stocks could cause repercussions. Last year, several technology companies — including the online storage firm Box — delayed their initial public offerings because of turbulence in tech stocks. A protracted swoon in public tech companies could also trickle into their privately held counterparts. These companies have been frothy lately, with start-ups daily hitting $1 billion-plus valuations and renewing talk of a bubble in Silicon Valley.

• Linked earnings: Q1 revenue $637M (+35% Y/Y), net loss $42M; shares slump 27% LinkedIn Corp slashed its full-year profit forecast, citing slower revenue growth at its hiring business and a delay in recognizing the contribution of lynda.com, the online education company it has agreed to buy. Shares of LinkedIn fell as much as 27 percent after the bell on Thursday. The professional social network operator agreed this month to buy lynda.com for about $1.5 billion and expects to close the acquisition in the second quarter. LinkedIn forecast 2015 profit of $1.90 per share, excluding items, on revenue of about $2.90 billion. It had earlier forecast earnings of $2.95 per share on revenue of $2.93 billion to $2.95 billion. Revenue growth from the company's hiring business slowed to 36 percent for the first quarter ended March 31. The business, which the company calls Talent Solutions, accounted for about 62 percent of total revenue. Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn reported a net loss attributable to shareholders of $42.5 million, or 34 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared with $13.4 million, or 11 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $637.7 million from $473.2 million.

• How mental illnesses help entrepreneurs thrive. Michael A. Freeman had long noticed that entrepreneurs seem inclined to have mental health issues. The clinical professor of psychology at UC-San Francisco’s medical school spent a decade at a company where his clients were the founders of businesses. He estimates that about a third of them seemed to have some type of mental health condition. He still notices the trend today in his work coaching executives. Freeman and California-Berkeley psychology professor Sheri Johnson decided to take a deeper look at the issue. They begun polling entrepreneurs and found a strong link between mental health conditions and entrepreneurship. “The people that we admire for being entrepreneurs seem to come from the same gene pool as the people who are kind of socially stigmatized because of mental health conditions,” Freeman said. “They must confer some adaptive advantage otherwise they wouldn’t be so highly represented in the population.” Forty-nine percent of entrepreneurs surveyed reported at least one mental health condition. Nearly a third reported having two or more mental health issues, such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety or substance use conditions. And half of the entrepreneurs who reported no mental-health conditions identified themselves as coming from families with a history of mental illness. This may seem counterintuitive. Why would an unstable person be most attracted and suited to launch a business? Freeman points out that there’s a beneficial side to these mental health conditions. Those weaknesses come with corresponding strengths that the average healthy person doesn’t have. For all of its ills, depression also brings empathy and creativity. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi attempted suicide as teenagers. Uncommon levels of empathy can allow a businessman to better understand a customer’s need. And a creative mind won’t be satisfied on the corporate ladder, but instead in a fast-moving start-up where he or she can unfurl ideas and dreams. Individuals with ADHD naturally make decisions faster, are comfortable working independently and are more creative, necessary skills at a start-up. They’re likely to be bored working for someone else.

• Rocket Internet-backed Foodpanda raises $100M led by Goldman Sachs: Foodpanda.com, a Rocket Internet-backed global, multi-location online food ordering marketplace (which operates under Hellofood brand in some markets), has raised $100 million funding led by global financial services giant Goldman Sachs, the company said. Existing investors including Rocket Internet also participated in the latest round. This round takes the total funding raised by Foodpanda to date to $310 million. Foodpanda will use the funding to expand its last-mile delivery operations and improve customer experience across 40 markets. The new investment comes barely two months after Rocket Internet led a $110 million funding round in the company. A few unnamed new investors also participated in that round. “We believe that Foodpanda has a tremendous opportunity to cement its emerging markets leadership position in the coming years. It is our expectation that the company’s innovative, value-added offerings will lead Foodpanda to be the winner in online food delivery within the markets in which it operates,” said Ian Friedman, vice president at Goldman Sachs Investment Partners. The company had raised $60 million from a group of investors, including existing investors Falcon Edge Capital and Rocket Internet last August. In February the same year, it had raised $20 million from Phenomen Ventures, a Russia-based venture capital firm, and a group of unnamed investors. Prior to that, Foodpanda had received $8 million in funding from iMena Holdings, an online consumer business group operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in September 2013. Before that, it had raised over $20 million from a group of investors that included Investment AB Kinnevik, a Sweden-based investment company, and Phenomen Ventures. Existing investor Rocket Internet also invested in the round. “The emerging markets represent the largest opportunity in online food delivery and we are committed to create the most convenient way for ordering and delivering food,” said Ralf Wenzel, co-founder and CEO of Foodpanda. Founded in April 2012, Foodpanda features location-specific listing of restaurants on its site. Users can check out menus, along with special offers, post that they can order and get food delivered to their homes. One can also search for restaurants according to cuisine, and/or by other parameters such as vegetarian/non- vegetarian, healthy food, etc. According to the company, it has partnered with over 45,000 restaurants in 40 countries globally. Foodpanda had acquired two key rivals in India over the past few months—Just Eat India and TastyKhana—to cement its position as the top player in the business in the country. It is now facing a bunch of competitors with restaurant review site Zomato starting online food ordering and new VC-backed startups like TinyOwl among others. Recently it started its own food logistics business with last mile delivery from restaurants to the consumers who order online through its site. Earlier, Foodpanda was just an online ordering platform.

• Apple, IBM and Japan Post See Profit in the Old-Age Market: Japan is an incubator of aging. More than other country, it is a graying nation. Twenty-five percent of its population, or 33 million people, are age 65 or older, more than double the global average. IBM, Apple and Japan Post Group, a giant postal service, bank and insurer, declared on Thursday that they were joining to deliver a new technology service to the fast-growing market of older Japanese adults. The service involves equipping Japan’s silver generation with iPads loaded with software apps to help them communicate with family and friends, monitor their health, and buy goods and services. For IBM and Apple, the initiative is another step in the partnership they formed last year, mainly to create mobile apps for corporate workers. The project with Japan Post goes beyond the workplace into homes. Quality-of-life services for aging populations will certainly be a big, if broad and diverse, marketplace. And Japan is a prime test bed. Citing the nation’s geriatric demographics, Taizo Nishimuro, chief executive of Japan Post, said, “Many countries will be facing the same issue soon.”

• Leaked Lyft Document Reveals a Costly Battle With Uber: Behind the friendly pink mustaches and fist bumps, Lyft is spending furiously to maintain second place in the U.S. ride-sharing industry, and steal market share from the distant leader, Uber Technologies. The expensive battle plan helped Lyft claim a fourfold increase in active passengers on 2.2 million rides in December 2014, but growth is beginning to slow, according to a company presentation to investors that was obtained by Bloomberg. Lyft estimates $130 million in revenue for 2014, according to the document.The presentation offers a revealing look inside a company that's sweeping U.S. cities, and attracting the attention of venture capitalists and regulators. The presentation, compiled for its $530 million fundraising round announced on March 12, includes recent and projected revenue, ridership figures, marketing costs, and other data about the business. Lyft and Uber aren't publicly traded, and neither company discloses financial information about its operations. Lyft and Uber declined to comment In addition to providing a window into its business, Lyft had some choice words for its chief rival. The presentation describes Uber as a "top-down model," with an "exclusive mentality" and "anti-social culture." While the 40-page document does not detail Lyft's operating expenses or losses, it does illustrate the mounting costs of marketing the service. Lyft estimates that the company spends a combined $530 on marketing to each driver and 22 passengers in San Francisco, and it takes about nine months to recoup those costs through its Lyft Classic service—not to be confused with the carpooling option, Lyft Line. The company expects to spend 60.5 percent of its revenue on marketing in December 2015, the document says. A ride booked in San Francisco through the Classic service generates a 92-cent profit for Lyft, including marketing costs but excluding corporate expenses, such as software developers and office space. Lyft co-founder John Zimmer told Bloomberg in January that the company is profitable in San Francisco and its other most established markets. The $130 million in revenue for 2014 is based on the combined net revenue from Lyft Classic and gross revenue from Lyft Line during the month of December, which implies $10.8 million in revenue during that month. Using the same calculation, Lyft reports revenue of $12 million in 2013. (Tallying gross revenue from Lyft Line, which includes money paid out to drivers, has the potential to significantly distort the company's 2014 revenue and growth, as well as projections, because the service didn't exist in 2013. However, the document says it does so for the purposes of generally accepted accounting principles.) Lyft projects $796 million for 2015, a slowdown in growth but still an impressive 512 percent jump from 2014. In the interview from January, Zimmer said the company's revenue and rides rose fivefold last year. Despite ride-sharing companies' attempts to guard financial details, Uber has faced similar leaks. The company generated $22 million in revenue during a one-week period in November 2013, according to an internal dashboard posted to the blog Valleywag. Uber drivers were completing more than 100,000 trips per week in each of its largest cities, and San Francisco had about 70,000 active users a week in December 2013, according to a separate report in Business Insider. Uber said on Jan. 22 that it has more than 160,000 active drivers in the U.S. who give more than a million rides a day. Lyft has seen similarly staggering growth in the number of drivers and riders using the service. In December 2012, Lyft had 400 drivers giving 40,000 rides a month; by 2013, it had 7,000 drivers and 488,000 rides a month; in 2014, it was 51,000 drivers and 2.2 million monthly rides, according to the document. The number of people booking rides through the app each month rose from 9,000 in 2012 to 631,000 last year. Though currently unprofitable, Lyft's ride economics appear to be going in the right direction. The company increased its share of each fare from 6.7 percent in July 2014 to 25.7 percent in December, the document says. The increase is expected to be less dramatic this year, reaching 26.2 percent in December 2015, according to the company's forecast. The investor presentation also touts its progress with city officials, citing 28 new regulations in six states last year. The document illustrates Lyft's obsession with quick pickups. In San Francisco, the time between a ride request and the car's arrival in December 2014 was 2.62 minutes, an improvement from 3.1 minutes in August. The average time in all of Lyft's markets fell to 3.9 minutes from 4.18 minutes during the same period. It seems the war with Uber could be measured in seconds.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, April 24

• Amazon earnings: revenue $22.7B, +15% Y/Y, net loss of $57M, but shares surge on cloud computing revenue, profitability: The retailer lost 12 cents a share for a net loss of $57 million, as revenue rose 15 percent — a little more steeply than expected, especially in light of the company’s size — to $22.72 billion. Analysts had projected a loss of 13 cents a share on revenue of $22.39 billion, according to Thomson Financial. Last year, Amazon had a profit of 23 cents a share in the first quarter. AWS had net sales of $1.57 billion in the first quarter, up 49 percent from $1.05 billion in the first quarter of 2014. Shares in Amazon usually move forcefully after the earnings release — often down, but strikingly up after fourth-quarter results were announced three months ago. The stock has risen about 25 percent since then. In regular trading Thursday, the stock barely moved, but were up 8% in extended trading. 

• AWS is unexpectedly large $1.57B quarterly revenue - and very profitable! Amazon.com Inc's first-quarter revenue grew more than expected as rising sales in North America and its burgeoning cloud-computing services unit offset new business investments, boosting its shares nearly 7 percent. The e-commerce company for the first time broke out financial details of its secretive cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, on Thursday, saying revenue jumped almost 50 percent to $1.57 billion, or about 7 percent of total revenue. The unit's operating income grew 8 percent to $265 million. Amazon shares rose $26.01 to $416 in extended trading, after closing slightly higher at $389.99 on Nasdaq. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos revealed in a statement that Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and its growth is accelerating. "We're putting a lot of capex (capital expenditure) there, and we think over time we will be able to generate significant free cash flow," Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak said on a conference call. Cloud computing has turned out to be more lucrative than expected, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter noted. "Amazon's Web service is profitable, and apparently was a year ago as well. Everybody thought it was losing money ... and is probably a bit smaller than people thought it was." 

• Amazon's North America business up 24% Y/Y, international business continues to drag - down Y/Y Amazon's sales from North America rose 24 percent to $13.4 billion in the quarter ended March 31, the company said. The company said it is continuing to build its Prime delivery business with its one-hour delivery service called Prime Now. It is also investing in original content for its Prime instant video services and devices. The international unit, which accounts for about 35 percent of total sales, remained a drag, with sales for the quarter slipping 1.77 percent to $7.75 billion. Szkutak said Amazon has stepped up its investments, particularly in India, and remains selective in China. "The growth rate in India is very rapid," he said. "A big part of the challenge there is helping sellers to succeed and grow their online businesses."

• Microsoft earnings: revenue $21.7B, +6% Y/Y, net income $4.99B; shares up on cloud strength: Microsoft reported net income of $4.99 billion, or 61 cents a share, down from $5.66 billion, or 68 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Revenue rose to $21.73 billion from $20.4 billion a year ago, Microsoft said. Wall Street analysts were especially pleased that Microsoft exceeded their profit forecasts. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters was for earnings of 51 cents a share and revenue of $21.06 billion. Microsoft shares jumped more than 3 percent in after-hours trading. Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets, said that Wall Street was expecting to give Microsoft a C grade for the quarter after the company delivered disappointing results over the holiday period. He said the company ended up delivering a B-plus performance, adding that “it appears Microsoft is back on the right track after a head-scratching performance last quarter.” 

• Microsoft Cloud Strength: Azure revenue is $1.57B quarterly revenue A bright spot for Microsoft was the growth in its cloud business, a catchall category that includes Office applications that are sold as subscriptions and its Azure business, through which it rents computing capacity in Microsoft data centers to clients. The company said its commercial cloud revenue grew 106 percent during the quarter, and amounts to a $6.3 billion annual business based on its recent performance. The company said its commercial cloud-related revenue for the quarter more than doubled, and was now running at $6.3 billion a year. Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday its quarterly cloud revenue rose almost 50 percent to $1.57 billion, suggesting a similar annual number. Microsoft's overall revenue rose 6 percent to $21.7 billion, above Wall Street's average forecast of $21.1 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Taking out the effects of the strong U.S. dollar on currency rates, Microsoft said revenue would have risen 9 percent. Earnings per share declined to 61 cents per share from 68 cents in the year-ago quarter. Analysts had expected 51 cents, on average.

• Google earnings: $17.3B, +12% Y/Y, net income $3.6B; shares up despite earnings miss: Google on Thursday reported first-quarter revenue of $17.3 billion, up 12 percent over the same period last year. That figure was driven substantially downward by the strong dollar. Absent currency fluctuations, revenues would have been up 17 percent. Google missed Wall Street’s expectations for the sixth time in the last nine quarters. Net revenue, which excludes payments to the company’s advertising partners, was $13.9 billion, up from $12.2 billion. Analysts had expected net revenue of $14.04 billion, according to Bloomberg. Net income in the first quarter, which ended March 31, was $3.6 billion, or $5.20 a share, compared with $3.5 billion, or $5.04 a share. Excluding the cost of stock options and related tax benefits, Google’s profit was $6.57 a share, compared with $6.27 a year ago. Analysts had expected $6.63 a share. During its first-quarter earnings call on Thursday, the search giant tried to assuage analysts’ long-running concern that its growth is slowing because mobile phones, with their tiny screens that can be clumsy to click through, are a less lucrative advertising medium than the desktop computers with which the Google empire was built. In doing so, Patrick Pichette, the company’s chief financial officer, who is leaving, noted that Google’s YouTube video site has been growing fast but for now is simply a less lucrative business than Google’s highly targeted search ads. Google shares were up about 3 percent in after-hours trading.

• With Mi 4i Smartphone, Xiaomi Turns to India: For those who think the West is the center of the tech world, Xiaomi has a different opinion. The upstart Chinese maker of smartphones just hosted its biggest event outside of its home country to introduce a new flagship phone, and it wasn’t in the United States or even Europe, it was in India. The phone, the Mi 4i, was introduced on Thursday by Hugo Barra, a former Google executive. The phone includes impressive specs and special features in India — like extra language options — and will go on sale April 30 in India, and in May in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. As the company’s Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s chief executive, normally does in China, Mr. Barra guided an enthusiastic audience through the phone’s range of features. But for all the attention Xiaomi gives to technical details and its operating system, the denouement came when Mr. Barra announced the price of the phone: 12,999 rupees, or roughly $200, a low price for a flagship device. While there are a huge number of reasons for Xiaomi, valued at $45 billion after its latest December fund-raising round, not to push into markets like the United States — from potential patent lawsuits to having to develop relationships with carriers — perhaps the primary reason Xiaomi is entering India is because the country looks quite a bit like China several years ago. Most importantly, Indians are expected to buy far more smartphones this year than they did in 2014, according to IDC, the research firm. IDC estimates that the country will buy 111 million smartphones this year and 149 million units in 2016. India is expected to outpace the United States in sales in the coming years. Yet the $200 price point makes the Mi 4i far cheaper than the leading phones from other companies like Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Even so, in India, the Xiaomi phone still ranks as expensive, about double the price of the cheap mainstays of companies like Micromax.

• Quikr valued around $890M in latest funding round: Classifieds site Quikr, which raised $150 million in fresh funding from existing investors besides a new investor Steadview Capital Management, was valued at around $892 million, as per a note by its Swedish investor Investment AB Kinnevik. Kinnevik said its own stake had an implied value of $158 million and the fair value of ownership of its holding is $93.2 million which gives a fair value of around $517 million to Quikr. Kinnevik had also participated in the latest round with an infusion of $40 million as part of a larger $150 million funding early this month. It also saw participation from other existing investor Tiger Global. With the September deal, the total capital raised by Quikr stood at around $350 million. The latest funding comes barely seven months after it raised $60 million in a fresh round of funding led by Tiger Global with participation from its existing investors, including Matrix Partners India, Nokia Growth Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, Warburg Pincus and eBay Inc, besides Kinnevik. In the last disclosure, Kinnevik had pegged a fair value of Quikr at around $340 million. Founded in 2008 by Chulet and Jiby Thomas (who quit the firm later), Quikr was originally started as Kijiji India. The firm later rebranded to Quikr. It is a large scale cross-category classifieds business with over 30 million consumers. These consumers come to Quikr to sell, buy, rent or find products and services in a variety of categories such as electronics and household goods, real estate, cars, bikes, jobs and services. The firm claims that small businesses across 1,000 cities are using the site. It recently announced the launch of a new classifieds website for real estate called quikrhomes.com to allow B2C as well as C2C discovery of properties up for sale as well as those available for rent. It is also launching separate verticals and new sites with separate URLs for around half a dozen areas. Early this year, Quikr launched Nxt, an instant messaging service to enable buyers and sellers to interact with greater convenience and privacy.

• Twitter invests in Swirl, a beacon-based ad-targeting startup: Swirl, which offers a platform for retailers and brands to market to customers via beacons, announced Thursday it has raised $18 million from a handful of investors, including Twitter Ventures.Other investors in the Series C round include Hearst Ventures and Softbank Capital, both who have funded Swirl in the past. Beacons are a young, Bluetooth-powered technology that provides the potential for companies to specifically target in-store customers. A retailer could realize that a customer has been dwelling near its TVs for 15 minutes, and send a coupon for a 4K TV via a smartphone push notification. In one recent success story, American Eagle Outfitters found it was able to increase the likelihood of a customer trying on clothes when it used beacons to send customers a push notification. Still, beacons have a ways to go before gaining mainstream adoption. A sticking point has been ensuring customers have the relevant app installed on their smartphone, which acts as a tripwire of sorts and tips off the store of the consumer’s location. If a customer doesn’t have the right app, they’ll never receive the notification. This is what makes the interest of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook so noteworthy. “Everybody’s got one of these widely distributed apps on their phone,” said Swirl chief executive Hilmi Ozguc. “That’s where the whole picture is completed, and that’s what’s exciting about this.” Facebook announced in January it is testing using beacons at eight stores in New York City. Twitter declined to comment on its interest in beacons. With a treasure trove of information about users, social networks are already well-positioned to target advertisements at an extremely granular level. Facebook and Twitter could potentially take this another step forward, and fine-tune ads for users’ exact locations at a given moment. They could likely charge a hefty premium for such ads. “There’s a vast market potential here. And it’s going to be a big source of new mobile advertising revenue for a lot of companies,” Ozguc said. “From Facebook to Twitter, to you name it. So I think you’ll see a lot of these big guys start to make some moves and bets on the space and start offering the benefits they bring, this massive audience reach.”

• Zomato embeds Uber button to its own app for hailing cabs to reach restaurants in 13 countries: Zomato.com, owned and operated by Gurgaon-based Zomato Media Pvt Ltd, has entered into a partnership with Uber Technologies Inc (Uber) to enable users to book cabs to the restaurant they are planning to eat at, right from its own app. The feature has gone live for Zomato users in London and South Africa, and will now be rolled out to users in other key markets. The partnership would cover Zomato users in 27 cities across 13 countries where both the firms have a presence – India, Australia, Canada, the UK, South Africa, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Turkey, UAE and the US. “This partnership makes eating out more convenient with the Zomato app connecting to Uber services seamlessly,” said Pankaj Chaddah, co-founder and COO, Zomato. “Through this API integration, Zomato users in 13 countries will now be able to reach those hidden gems in their cities seamlessly and in style,” said Eric Alexander, head of business, Asia, Uber. How it works:Once a user has found a place to dine at or have drinks at using the Zomato app, a single tap on the Uber button on the restaurant page will allow him/her to find the nearest Uber cab. In addition to seeing the estimated fare and how long it will take for the Uber to arrive, one will also be able to choose the Uber service that best suits one’s need.

• Details on Alibaba's Cloud: After keeping the world waiting for nine years, Amazon finally broke out earnings for its Amazon Web Services on Thursday. The $1.57 billion in sales for the quarter suggest that the company is far ahead of rivals in the cloud computing business. But as AWS expands globally, it faces strong competition from a familiar foe: Alibaba. Amazon already has 28 percent of the worldwide market for cloud infrastructure services, followed by Microsoft with 10 percent, according to a report by Synergy Research Group. To expand its share, Amazon has spent the past few years plunking down gigantic data centers around the globe to help it quickly serve customers outside the U.S. In some cases, it did so to abide by local regulations as to where these servers should be located. Unlike many of its rivals, Amazon has targeted China, opening a data center near Beijing in 2014. Alibaba opened its first overseas data center in Silicon Valley in March to help provide cloud computing services to Chinese customers, Yu says. At the time, Alibaba said it served a 22.8 percent market share of the Chinese infrastructure-as-a-service market in the first half of 2014. It currently has five data center hubs in Asia: Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen. Like Amazon, Alibaba has a strategic partnership with Intel to do custom chips. Unlike Amazon, it has been more public about its experimentation with low-power server processors based on designs from ARM Holdings. Alibaba joined a cross-industry engineering organization named Linaro in April to develop software to get the most out of new chip designs from ARM. The company is looking at ARM closely, says Yu, and will have more details to share next year. By adopting a non-standard processor architecture, Alibaba would be able to save money on its mammoth electricity bills by tailoring its chips to its software. In doing so, it would join a small club of companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, with the scale and engineering talent needed to make such a move. Aliyun has more than 1,200 employees, 80 percent of whom are engineers, says Yu. The company began looking at doing heavy engineering on hardware and software about 10 years ago, predating the formation of its cloud. As is typical of large Chinese technology companies, Alibaba is woven into China's bureaucracy. The company currently has strategic agreements with 12 Chinese provinces, regions, and municipalities, as well as an undisclosed number of government agencies, including the China Central Government Procurement Agency. That guarantees it a lot of business in China and ensures that its infrastructure is stress-tested in the same way that large clouds from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are. This helps to make its service more resilient.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, April 22

• Zomato rolls out online ordering of food in updated app, to allow cash-less payments at restaurants: Zomato.com, has entered the online ordering space as a mobile-only offering. Its updated version of mobile app comes integrated with a meal ordering option. The service has gone live with 1,000 restaurants currently and users can look for those outlets offering the option within the ‘Nearby’ tab in the app. It then throws up those names which offer online ordering as a sub-set of the overall list of restaurants in the location. We have not checked the process throughout but it involves a mobile verification while placing the order. The users would have to make cash payments as restaurant delivery boys come with the package. The updated app also shows an option of cashless payments which is not active yet. Zomato spokesperson told Techcircle.in that this option is currently active only in Dubai and will soon be launched in India. This would allow users to pay after a meal at a partner restaurant through the Zomato app, instead of paying cash or using credit/debit cards to settle bills at the restaurants.

• Alibaba Expands Seller App - Wants Merchants to Ditch their PCs: The ecommerce titan has rolled out new tools into its Taobao mobile app (pictured above) that allow the marketplace’s 8.4 million annual active merchants to run their stores solely from their phones. The shift to mobile-only is optional for now, but an Alibaba representative tells Tech in Asia that two million merchants have already opted for the smartphone-only method in the two weeks since the new tools have been available in beta. “The growing adoption of smartphones and mobile shopping in China means that online merchants should shift their focus from PC to mobile,” said Zhang Kuo, director of Alibaba Group’s mobile business division, in a statement. That means an online seller will run their store and add new products to it just from their phone rather than using the desktop browser-based interface. To make that process easier on mobile, merchants can scan a new product’s barcode with their phone to add it to the store’s inventory using the Taobao app. “To complete product dispatch procedures, merchants can simply scan barcodes on shipping bills to enter package tracking numbers, without the need to manually input them,” added a spokesperson. Brand-new Taobao merchants can even start their store from scratch within the Taobao app without the need to fire up a laptop. Across Taobao and sister site Tmall (a marketplace aimed at larger merchants and major brands), Alibaba has 334 million shoppers. Of the total RMB 787 billion (US$126.4 billion) in consumer spending (GMV) on the two estores in Q4 2014, 42 percent of that tally was spent by people shopping on mobile devices.

• Amazon Targets Priceline, Expedia With New Hotel Booking Site: In its push to expand beyond an online store for books and merchandise, Amazon.com Inc. is entering the travel-reservations business. The e-commerce retailer Tuesday introduced Amazon Destinations, which provides maps, lodging deals and information about restaurants at popular weekend getaways near Los Angeles, New York City and Seattle. The new site is a travel-focused expansion of the Seattle-based company’s Amazon Local, which connects Amazon shoppers with deals close to them. The world’s biggest online retailer by revenue will be competing with Priceline Group Inc., Expedia Inc., startup Airbnb Inc. and others for a piece of the online hotel booking market. Tourism in the U.S. is a $960 billion industry, according to researcher IBISWorld.

• Yahoo Q1 Earnings: Revenue $1.23B, +9% Y/Y, Net Income: $21M, down from $312M Y/Y; Shares Fall, Then Rise on Hope of Alibaba Stake Sale: At Yahoo, the turnaround that investors are hoping for remains elusive. The Internet company reported first-quarter financial results that showed strong growth in newer areas like mobile advertising. But costs rose even faster, depressing profits. Yahoo posted net income of $21 million, or 2 cents a share, down sharply from the $312 million, or 29 cents a share, the Internet company reported a year ago. Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, Yahoo made a profit of 15 cents a share, falling short of the 18 cents a share that Wall Street had expected on that basis. Revenue for the first quarter was $1.23 billion, up slightly from the $1.13 billion that the company brought in during the same period last year, as search revenue and even old-fashioned display ads increased. After deducting payments to advertising partners, however, revenue was $1.04 billion, below the $1.07 billion predicted by analysts. Yahoo’s stock initially fell in after-hours trading following the release of its results. But it rose during Yahoo’s conference call with analysts, when Ms. Mayer said that Yahoo had hired advisers to explore how to maximize the value of the company’s 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, which is worth nearly $9 billion. Since Ms. Mayer joined the company in 2012, Yahoo’s stock has traded more on the value of its investments in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, a leading Chinese e-commerce company, than on its core business. In January, she announced plans to spin off Yahoo’s 15.4 percent stake in Alibaba. In Yahoo’s operating businesses, Ms. Mayer is trying to refocus the company around mobile apps, native ads, video services and the Tumblr social network, while reducing staffing in the company’s other divisions, like its traditional web offerings. In the first quarter, Yahoo cut net employment by 1,100 jobs, Ms. Mayer said on the call. Since her arrival, she has reduced the number of full-time employees by 2,800 jobs, or 20 percent. Last week, Ms. Mayer renewed the company’s partnership with Microsoft on search results and advertising, which accounted for 35 percent of Yahoo’s revenue last year. Under that deal, the two companies will continue to work together for five more years, with Yahoo now getting the ability to serve up its own search results and ads for up to 49 percent of queries.

• Shyp, an On-Demand Mailing Service, Raises $50 Million: Shyp, a company that lets customers summon workers to quickly pick up, pack and ship parcels, said on Tuesday that it has raised $50 million in venture capital, the largest funding round in the start-up’s history. The new round values Shyp at just above $250 million, according to two people with knowledge of the financial terms, who requested anonymity because the deal talks were private. A Shyp spokesman declined to comment on the company’s valuation. The funding is another significant bet on the future of on-demand start-ups by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the storied venture capital firm that led Shyp’s new financing round and that recently won a case against a former partner who alleged gender bias at the firm. With the round, which also includes participation by previous investors Homebrew and SherpaVentures, John Doerr, a Kleiner executive, will join the board of directors at Shyp. Kleiner has also put money in to other on-demand companies like Uber and DoorDash. Uber, the on-demand ride-hailing service, has also dabbled in the business of moving goods from one place to another, signaling its ambitions to become a way to transport anything and everything to different places around the world. Shyp, on the other hand, piggybacks on existing transportation networks like UPS, FedEx and the United States Postal Service. Instead of doing all of the shipping itself, Shyp hires contract workers to pick up items from customers, and pack and ship them, eliminating the hassle of standing in line at the post office or finding the proper packaging supplies to send the items. “We asked ourselves, what is the ideal way to ship something?” said Kevin Gibbon, chief executive of Shyp. “Can we scale this business to happen in multiple cities? Can we improve operations and logistics to make it cheaper and faster?” Mr. Gibbon said his service was complementary to the shipping networks already in place, as Shyp’s local logistics networks gather many packages together to hand them off to the actual companies doing the transportation, a task that he said would cost companies like DHL and FedEx much more in time, labor and resources to offer. Shyp makes a $5 service fee on each package it delivers. Shyp also announced it is opening up a pilot version of its service in Los Angeles; it currently operates in San Francisco, New York City and Miami.

• "Notifications Are The Next Platform" TC Columnist Opines Push Notifications Replacing Search as Primary Engagement Point: Search (largely Google) has long been the access and discovery point for web services. This model was pull-driven (i.e. we proactively find information on websites as we need), and worked pretty well as large category killers (Facebook, Amazon) owned the lion’s share of traffic (and revenue). Google was happily profitable owning the distribution channel. The mobile world started out as a pull-driven model — discovery and access was/is largely driven by a combination of the app store and the “grid of apps.” This model, however, is starting to break, as some significant trends are driving it to failure. Primary among these is the volume of information that’s now available and regularly accessed; we have hundreds of apps on our phone (though we only actively engage with a handful), and without any real category killers, consumers are swapping new apps in and out at a regular pace. Most importantly, our engagement is now defined by push-driven notifications rather than the traditional pull-driven experience. We’re “hunting and pecking” through our app grid a lot less; the apps that notify us (without over-notifying to the point of uninstall) are rewarded with our engagement (and our dollars). Based on this data, our fundamental belief is that notifications represent the future access and discovery point for mobile services — that notifications will be the starting point (or “front door”) for all of the interactions on your phone. Snowball data shows that over 60 percent of notifications are social messages (almost 40 per day). Will Facebook Messenger subsume the notification panel? Our data shows some interesting trends. As noted above, 60 percent of all notifications are social messages. However, our data also shows that users on average interact with 5.5 messaging apps weekly (does not count email)*. Though users regularly use over 5 social messaging apps, Facebook + WhatsApp represents an astounding 79 percent of all messaging by volume. This is incredibly high. Notifications represent the future app interface, and Facebook is making a bold play to own them. Whatever party is successful will have to be thoughtful about social messages, as they represent the bulk of notifications by volume. What we’re seeing today is the first step toward monetization of the OS and the emergence of a new important distribution channel, and apps and platforms would be wise to think critically about it.