Flipkart bets on MarQ to push large appliances this festival season

d of Flipkart’s flagship BigBillionDays sales, customers could start seeing advertisements of a new consumer durable brand in India. MarQ, Flipkart’s private label for large appliances, aspires to become India’s youngest consumer durables brand.

Launched ahead of last year’s Diwali festive sales, MarQ has grown to become one of the best performers in the large appliances categories on Flipkart’s platform. The company claims it is on target to grow sales through the label by over 100 per cent during this BigBillionDays, compared to the last.

While the private label was initially rolled out in a few categories such as refrigerators and televisions, the company has slowly been entering several other categories, including water purifiers and air conditioners, with products under the MarQ brand.

Beware Google, Facebook! Amazon sets sights on the $88 bn online ad market

Verizon doesn’t sell its mobile phones or wireless plans over Amazon. Nor does it offer Fios, its high-speed internet service. But Verizon does advertise on Amazon.

On Black Friday last year, when millions of online shoppers took to Amazon in search of deals, a Verizon ad for a Google Pixel 2 phone — buy one and get a second one half off — could be seen blazing across Amazon’s home page. And on July 16, what Amazon calls Prime Day, an event with special deals for its Prime customers, Verizon again ran a variety of ads and special offers for Amazon shoppers, like a mix-and-match unlimited service plan.

Amazon, which has already reshaped and dominated the online retail landscape, is quickly gathering momentum in a new, highly profitable arena: online advertising, where it is rapidly emerging as a major competitor to Google and Facebook.

The push by the giant online retailer means consumers — even Prime customers, who pay $119 a year for access to free shipping as well as streaming music, video and discounts — are likely to be confronted by ads in places where they didn’t exist before.

Siri, Alexa may have made your lives easier, but can they also educate you?

Convenience is atop the list of benefits Siri and Alexa have brought to millions. But is it possible that they’re promoting literacy, too?

Certainly, it’s not a benefit that immediately comes to mind. After all, we speak and Siri writes. We ask a question and Alexa enters the search terms for us. Load your iPhone up with podcasts, or ask Siri or Alexa to find you the bestseller you’ve been wanting from Audible.com, and you might never need to read a book again. With each voice-to-text improvement, we seem to be moving backward — toward a culture that relies less and less on letters or the ability to read and write.


History tells a different story. As the scope for oral communication expands, we can take comfort, and some instruction, from the variety of forms literacy has taken since its beginning in the West.

Soon, your kirana shopkeeper can help you shop online with Amazon Easy

Amazon Easy, an India-specific innovation where customers not so familiar or comfortable with doing online shopping on their own are assisted in doing so by a trained storekeeper in their neighbourhood, has been formally rolled out in five districts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana by the American e-commerce company on Tuesday.

Amazon has been working on the store partner model to enable online shopping in small towns and cities since 2015 under the code name Project Udaan. Now, it is planning to bring all the existing 14,000 partner stores across 21 states under the brand Amazon Easy by the middle of next year.

"This is in a way getting ready for the next wave of online customers who are going to be very different from the present 100 million online customers in India," Kishore Thota, director (customer experience and marketing) at Amazon India, said, while announcing the launch of Amazon Easy at 200-plus stores in two Telugu speaking states.

Why Mukesh Ambani's Reliance, not Walmart, is Amazon's real rival in India

It’s time the Amazon.com Inc. boss took notice of his real rival in India, the only billion-strong consumer market open to Western tech firms. While Walmart Inc.’s acquisition this year of Flipkart, a homegrown e-tailer, might have given the impression that the battle for India would be an all-American contest, a new national e-commerce policy doing the rounds in New Delhi should disabuse Bezos of that notion.

If the draft policy becomes a law, the oil-to-telecom tycoon who’s India’s richest man will emerge as the most formidable challenger to the wealthiest person on the planet.

The core contest comes down to warehouses. Foreign-funded firms aren’t allowed to hold e-commerce inventory in India. That’s a disadvantage for Amazon since it prevents the firm from fully capitalizing on the strengths of its vaunted logistics operation, seen as one of its most decisive edges in the US.

Amazon was hoping that those rules would be loosened but the proposed policy instead calls for harsh controls on even the phantom sellers that Amazon and Flipkart have been using to get around the no-inventory problem. If the new policy is strictly implemented, Amazon and its preferred resellers, won’t be able to offer deep discounts.

With an eye on Flipkart-Walmart deal, Amazon invests Rs 27 bn in India

As the massive $16 billion deal between Flipkart and Walmart, which will add a further $2 billion to the Indian firm’s warchest, nears closure, rival Amazon is ensuring that it keeps up the fast pace of investments in its India business.

Amazon Seller Services, the marketplace unit of the US online retail giant in India, received an infusion of Rs 27 billion (approx $385 million) earlier this month, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) which were sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc.

The Seattle-headquartered company also invested a further Rs 1 billion in Amazon Retail India, the food retail unit of the company which will drive its grocery category. Amazon had said that it would invest $500 million into food retail soon after the government opened the sector up to 100 foreign direct investment.

Govt asks Amazon India to set up server to protect customers' personal data

The government has asked American e-commerce major Amazon to set up a server in India as it looks to prevent unbridled migration of the personal data of customers. Recently, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad conveyed this to Amazon India head Amit Agarwal. In the past too, the government has been vocal about data localisation, engaging with companies such as Google, WhatsApp and Facebook on the issue.

Although currently there is no law in India regarding data safety, the government is working on a data protection framework based on the recommendations of Justice B N Srikrishna-led panel. To start with, foreign e-commerce companies will be asked to set up servers in India, so that the personal data of customers, generated through e-commerce operations, does not go out of the country. The draft national policy for e-commerce also proposes mandatory localisation of customer data. However, once the data protection rules come into effect, all the sectors will fall under their purview.

“Big foreign companies are welcome to join their effort in India. What concerns me is unbridled migration of data, without the consent of Indians. Therefore, location of servers in India and the element of consent of Indians for use of their data become equally important,” Prasad said.

UP govt to rope in Amazon, Wipro, GE at 'One District, One Product' summit

To give a major push to Uttar Pradesh's micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and cottage industries, the Yogi Adityanath government will exchange memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with top companies such as Amazon, Wipro and GE on Friday.

President Ram Nath Kovind will inaugurate the state's flagship 'One District, One Product' summit aimed at showcasing its traditional cottage industries and crafts.

On the occasion, the government will exchange MoUs with e-commerce major Amazon, Wipro, GE Healthcare, Quality Circle of India (QCI) and India's leading bourses -- the BSE and National Stock Exchange (NSE). These entities would help the MSMEs and cottage industries by providing training, branding, marketing and other institutional support.

For example, Amazon will extend marketing support to traditional industries in 9 districts, including Gorakhpur, Agra, Meerut, Varanasi, Kanpur and Aligarh. The company will showcase local products over its online marketplace and create a micro-site dedicated to the ODOP scheme.

Paytm receives final tranche from $445 mn funding from SoftBank, Alibaba

Paytm Mall has received the final tranche of its $445 million (about Rs 3,000 crore) funding from SoftBank and Alibaba, a move that will give the online shopping venture of Paytm more financial muscle to take on giants like Flipkart and Amazon. In April, Paytm Mall had closed $445 million funding round from SoftBank Investment Holdings and Alibaba.com Singapore E-commerce. According to the latest documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Paytm E-commerce -- which runs Paytm Mall -- has issued a total of 237,705 shares to SB Investment Holdings (UK) and Alibaba.com Singapore E-commerce as part of the fourth tranche. The issuance of 211,293 shares to SB Investment Holdings and 26,412 shares to the Alibaba entity was approved by the Board of Paytm E-commerce on June 6, 2018, the documents added.

Google steps into Facebook's turf with hyperlocal query app Neighbourly

Google is stepping into social networking giant Facebook’s territory with its new app called Neighbourly that will allow users to ask queries and get them answered by other users in their vicinity.

The internet giant on Thursday launched the beta version of the hyperlocal app for the users in Mumbai, and said it would take a call on rolling out in other cities based on the response the company receives. Available on Google Play Store, the app supports smartphones with Android Jelly bean and higher versions operating systems.

While Google has existing platforms like Search, Assist and Local Guides to cater to a number of different queries that users may have, the new app will be a standalone platform without integrating any of these services for the time being, said Josh Woodward, Group Product Manager at Google’s Next Billion Users team.

“Google Search got started by connecting people to information on the web. We found that most of life happens within one km radius of where you live, so we created an experience from the collective knowledge within the range,” said Woodward. Neighbourly lets people share their own expertise and keep up with their neighbourhood safely through multiple queries they can post and view on the app.

Behind Seattle's Amazon Tax: A tech boom that sent house rents soaring

It was, as the local public radio station said, the day “Seattle Nice” died. On May 2, the residents of Seattle were hit with a one-two punch. For months, the city council had been debating a new tax on large employers to raise $75 million for new affordable housing and services for the homeless, whose growing population had burst out of shelters and into tents around the city.

In the late morning, just before a council hearing, a columnist for the Seattle Times broke the news that Amazon.com Inc., the city’s largest employer, was playing hardball. The typically hermetic company said it paused expansion plans for buildings that would house about 7,000 employees pending the outcome of the upcoming tax vote.

Later that night, hundreds of residents packed a Methodist church in the gentrifying Ballard neighbourhood, turning what was supposed to be a civil town hall discussion into a scrum that exposed deep division in the city.

Walmart's Flipkart deal gets rude welcome from market, shares plunge 4%

Walmart Inc.’s deal to buy a controlling stake in India’s biggest online seller is meeting skepticism on Wall Street.

The world’s largest retailer will acquire a 77 percent holding in Flipkart Group for $16 billion, the companies said earlier Wednesday. Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and other shareholders will hold the remainder. The tie-up values the Indian e-commerce giant at about $20.8 billion and marks a blow against rival Amazon.com Inc. as the battle for e-commerce supremacy goes global.

The deal -- Walmart’s biggest ever -- gives it greater access to India’s e-commerce market, which Morgan Stanley has estimated will grow to $200 billion in about a decade. But it will take some time for the business to turn profitable, and analysts on a Wednesday morning call about the deal adopted a cautious tone. S&P Global Ratings changed its outlook on Walmart to negative.

“As Flipkart is expected to generate meaningful losses for at least the next few years, this is clearly an investment for the future,” Moody’s analyst Charlie O’Shea wrote in a note.

Walmart shares dropped as much as 4.2 percent to $82.12 as of 10:28 a.m. in New York -- the lowest intraday price since October. The company’s stock was already down 13 percent this year through Tuesday’s close.

Amazon infuses Rs 26 bn in India, Jeff Bezos shows he still means business

After losing out to Walmart in acquiring online marketplace Flipkart, Amazon’s Chief Executive Jeff Bezos is keen to show that he still means business in India and has charged up the company’s local e-commerce unit with fresh funds.

Amazon Seller Services, the marketplace unit of the US online retail giant in India, saw a cash infusion of Rs 26 billion (approximately $390 million) late last month, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) that was sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc on Tuesday.

The Seattle-headquartered company, earlier this month, is learnt to have made a bid to acquire a controlling stake in Flipkart with an investment of around $12 billion along with a $2 billion break-away fee. However, Flipkart board preferred to go with Walmart as the investors and founders were afraid that a deal with Amazon would run into regulatory hurdles.

It's not me, it's Berkshire: Buffett says his firm's name will outlast him

If a major company needs capital or a private firm wants to sell, Warren Buffett’s checkbook is often the one they seek out.

Will that stay the case when it’s someone else’s signature?

That was the question from several Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders at the firm’s annual meeting Saturday, adding a fresh angle to the topic of succession for the 87-year-old chairman. Berkshire’s desire to utilize a cash pile that has grown to more than $100 billion makes finding large-scale deals a key issue for whoever will be the conglomerate’s next leader.

Buffett downplayed any unique skill he has to drum up deals, using his inability to find recent ones as evidence. Berkshire often makes large investments in times of panic, when its stable capital, and not the Buffett name, is the allure, he argued.

“The reputation belongs to Berkshire now,” Buffett said at the meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. “We are the first call and will continue to be the first call.”
Charlie Munger, Buffett’s 94-year-old vice chairman, said already most acquisitions are coming from the chiefs of the company’s operating subsidiaries, not he and Buffett.

Amazon Prime has now topped 100 million subscribers, reveals Jeff Bezos

Amazon has persuaded more than 100 million shoppers to subscribe to its Prime service that offers free two-day shipping and other perks that help bind people to the company and its ever-expanding empire.

CEO Jeff Bezos quantified the size of Amazon's Prime membership for the first time Wednesday in his annual letter to the Seattle company's shareholders. Before Bezos' revelation, analysts had been left to guess how many people had been willing to pay $99 per year for the Prime service, which Amazon launched 13 years ago as a way to foster customer loyalty.

The scope of Prime's success stunned even the most optimistic of analysts, such as GBH Insights' Daniel Ives. He had previously estimated Amazon had 92 million Prime subscribers.

"It's a mind-boggling number that serves as a key barometer to how big Amazon's kingdom has become," Ives said.

Costco has been selling annual memberships to get bargains on goods stocked in its warehouses for decades, and already been outdone by Amazon's Prime service. Costco has 50.4 million memberships that allow 92 million cardholders to shop in its warehouse and website.

Amazon falls 5% on reports of Trump targeting co by changing tax treatment

The Nasdaq Composite index fell on Wednesday, dragged down by losses in Amazon and Apple, while gains in healthcare stocks propped up the Dow and the S&P 500.

Amazon fell more than 5 percent after reports that President Donald Trump is looking to target the company by changing its tax treatment.

Apple dropped 1.6 percent after Goldman Sachs analyst cut sales estimate for iPhone for March and June quarters, citing weak demand.

However, Facebook's shares rose more than 2 percent after the company said it was giving users more control over their privacy by making data management easier and redesigning the settings menu.

The social network has lost more than $100 billion in market value since March 16, when it first acknowledged that user data had been improperly harvested by a consultancy firm.

"We had Facebook making some announcements. That's obviously taking some pressure off the stock at the moment," said Andre Bakhos, managing director of New Vines Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Amazon to sell smart locks so it can slip packages into your home

Amazon.com Inc has plans to drop off packages directly into shoppers' homes.

The world's largest online retailer on Wednesday announced Amazon Key, a lock and camera system that users control remotely to let delivery associates slip goods into their houses.

The move, in the works for more than a year, may help Amazon capture sales from shoppers who could not make it home to receive an order in person, and did not want the package stolen from their doorstep. It also signals Amazon's ambitions in the growing market for home security devices, where Alphabet Inc's Nest Labs competes.

"This is not an experiment for us," said Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of delivery technology, in an interview.

"This is a core part of the Amazon shopping experience from this point forward."

Members of Amazon's Prime shopping club can pay $249.99 and up for a cloud-controlled camera and lock that the company offers to install. Delivery associates are told to ring a doorbell or knock when they arrive at someone's house. If no one greets them, they press 'unlock' in a mobile app, and Amazon checks its systems in an instant to make sure the right associate and package are present.

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Amazon vs Alibaba: The R&D spending war

Alibaba this week announced a big push to do more research and development, ploughing $15 billion into new innovation over the next three years. Here’s how that stacks up to what Amazon is already doing:

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Wall Street falls on North Korea comments, tech selloff

US stocks fell sharply in late morning trading on Monday after North Korea accused the United States of declaring war and a selloff in technology stocks accelerated.

North Korea's foreign minister said President Donald Trump had declared war on North Korea and that Pyongyang reserves the right to take countermeasures.

The five tech giants — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet — were down between 3.7 per cent and 1.05 per cent, weighing on the three major indexes.

The S&P technology index slid 1.37 per cent, on track for its worst single-day percentage loss since August 17. The index, however, has climbed 23 per cent so far this year, outperforming the 11.5 per cent gain in the broader S&P index.

"Technology stocks have been outperformers for a while, so it could be a slight amount of profit taking," said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.
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Amazon plans $5 billion second headquarters in North America

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it plans to open another headquarters in North America and spend more than $5 billion for its construction and operation.

The e-commerce company, currently based in Seattle, said it was yet to zero in on a location, but expects to expand the new headquarters to include up to 50,000 high-paying jobs.

Amazon said it was seeking proposals from local and state government leaders for the new headquarters.

Apple Inc had reportedly spent about $5 billion on its spaceship-shaped headquarters in Cupertino, California.

Amazon said its new headquarters should ideally be located in a metropolitan area with more than one million people and one that can attract and retain technical talent.

The company's Seattle headquarters is spread across 8.1 million square feet in 33 buildings and employs more than 40,000 people.

Amazon expects the new headquarters to be a "full equal" to its Seattle office, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
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