Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 19

Foxconn, Alibaba, others invest $500M in Snapdeal; eBay pares stake: Online marketplace Snapdeal raised $500 million in fresh funding led by iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and existing investor SoftBank. Its other existing investors Temasek, BlackRock, Myriad and PremjiInvest also participated in this round, as per a press statement. Separately, e-commerce giant eBay said it has sold a portion of its holding in Snapdeal, 18 months after leading a $134 million funding round in the Gurgaon-based company. Snapdeal will use the money to expand geographical reach and enhance services in a bid to better compete with well-funded rivals such as US-headquartered Amazon and Bangalore-based Flipkart. The announcement confirms a previous report that said Snapdeal has raised $500 million, citing sources. With the latest funding, Alibaba is now backing two companies (Snapdeal and Paytm) who are directly slugging it out for supremacy in India’s consumer internet space.

Upstarts Raid Giants for Talent in Silicon Valley: The unicorns, a class of hot start-ups valued at $1 billion or more, are all aggressively pursuing the best and brightest minds in Silicon Valley with promises of talked-about workplaces and eye-popping payouts. Amid a general scramble for talent, Google, the Internet search company, has undergone specific raids from unicorns for engineers who specialize in crucial technologies like mapping. In particular, Uber — the largest unicorn, with a valuation of more than $50 billion — has plundered Google’s mapping unit over the last 12 months, aiming to bolster its own map research. Airbnb, the popular short-term rental start-up, has gone on a more general hiring spree, poaching more than 100 workers. While the unicorns typically pick off small groups of engineers at a time, making little impression on a large company’s total employee numbers, the poaching attacks are often aimed at siphoning off the best talent in strategic technologies. That can sting the likes of a Google, where executives have said one skilled engineer can be worth many times the average. To snag employees from large rivals, unicorns have a simple recruiting pitch: They are on a path to success, as illustrated by their rising valuations. Many offer generous equity packages of restricted stock units that can later translate to big paydays for employees if the unicorn goes public or is sold — a lure that neither Google nor any other public tech company can dangle. Also, the unicorns say they are far more fleet-footed and cutting-edge than large organizations.

Alibaba Cash-Burning Buybacks Make Internet Bonds China’s Worst: China’s Internet bonds are lagging behind as disappointing earnings and plans for buybacks to shore up slumping shares fuel concern finances will deteriorate. Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, announced a $4 billion share repurchase last week, while Baidu, its most-popular search engine, unveiled a $1 billion plan in July. Their bonds have contributed to a 0.4 percent loss on technology notes this quarter, the worst sector in a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investment-grade dollar note index for China that gained 0.4 percent. That’s a turnaround after Baidu’s 2012 debut in global debt markets gave it a self-proclaimed “war chest” and Alibaba’s $8 billion sale in 2014 became Asia’s biggest corporate dollar bond offering. The companies’ shares have slumped at least 9 percent this quarter as authorities tighten controls on Web content and crack down on fake goods online. “Companies such as Baidu and Alibaba came out with weaker results, and have announced cash-burning buybacks or acquisitions, which triggered a sell-off,” said Anthony Leung, a credit analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong, said. “In addition, regular negative headlines such as the sale of counterfeit goods, have hurt their bonds.”

Lenovo Joins Smartphone Compatriots for ’Make in India’: Lenovo started making smartphones in India, becoming the largest Chinese company to produce mobile devices there after the government raised import taxes. Lenovo will use contract manufacturer Flex’s factory outside the southeastern city of Chennai for its Lenovo and Motorola brands, Amar Babu, chairman of Lenovo India, said Tuesday in a phone interview. The brands will have a combined annual capacity of 6 million units, Lenovo said in a statement. Foxconn Technology Group this year began producing smartphones in India for China’s Xiaomi and OnePlus after the Indian government raised taxes on some foreign-made goods to attract investment in manufacturing. Lenovo’s announcement marks the largest Chinese name yet to be lured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India campaign as competitors vie for a share of the world’s third-largest smartphone market. “Output from the plants is focused mainly on serving the Indian market,” Babu said. Lenovo has no immediate plans to develop phones specifically for India, he said. Lenovo considered adding smartphone manufacturing to its own personal-computer plant in Puducherry in the southeast before deciding to outsource to Flex’s existing factory in Sriperumbudur, Babu said.

Airbnb partners with China Broadband, Sequoia to expand in China: Online home-rental marketplace Airbnb Inc said on Tuesday it was partnering with investment firms China Broadband Capital and Sequoia China to expand into the Chinese market and find a chief executive for its operations in the country. The company, which was recently reported to have completed a $1.5 billion private funding round, said in a blog post it was also working with a larger group of investors, including Horizon Ventures, GGV Capital and China-based Hillhouse Capital. Airbnb, which matches people wishing to rent out all or part of their homes to temporary guests, has grown quickly and is valued at more than $20 billion. Airbnb said the number of outbound Chinese travelers using its service grew 700 percent in the past year. China Broadband and Sequoia China will help it customize technology for the Chinese market and establish a "localized presence" in the country, it added.

Twitter to accelerate push for content partnerships in Asia: Twitter said on Tuesday it plans to accelerate its push for content partnerships in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It has appointed a Singapore-based executive, Rishi Jaitly, to boost teams in major markets such as Australia, India, and Japan as well as to expand into Greater China and Southeast Asia, the company said in a statement. Jaitly was previously Twitter's market director for India and Southeast Asia. Twitter has been aggressively expanding its capabilities to carry pictures, video and interactive content.

Kik Takes $50 Million Investment From WeChat Parent Company Tencent, Hits $1 Billion Valuation: Kik Takes $50 Million Investment From WeChat Parent Company Tencent, Hits $1 Billion Valuation. The app has 240 million registered users and claims that 40 percent of American teenagers are actively on Kik. The deal doesn’t mean the two apps are planning to integrate, but they will have a strategic partnership moving forward, according to Kik co-founder Chris Best. That means sharing things like data and app information, he added. He also said that Kik won’t be targeting China anytime soon (seems obvious now given WeChat’s foothold there) but plans to use the money to grow the company’s employee base.