By Michael McDonald and Lulu Yilun Chen Just before the Coronavirus-induced US lockdowns began in March, some of the world’s investing elite gathered at an invite-only event in Silicon Valley. Representatives for super-rich families and endowments crowded into Vina Enoteca, an Italian restaurant right by the Stanford University campus. They were there to hear from […]
ETtech Top 5: VC investments slump, no income for blue-collar workers & more
Dear reader, Venture capital investments slumped to $2.2 billion in the first quarter of calendar year 2020 compared to $6 billion in the preceding three months. Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Investors tread warily The funding, according to the latest edition of KPMG’s Venture Pulse report, was hit hard by a combination of global macroeconomic uncertainty and […]
Jio-Facebook alliance may go beyond kirana stores
The partnership between India’s largest conglomerate Reliance Industries and US social media giant Facebook could expand beyond the scope of just onboarding kirana stores for JioMart through the WhatsApp platform, sources said. Apart from using the messaging app WhatsApp, going forward, Reliance could leverage other online platforms of Facebook group, such as Instagram and Facebook, […]
No surprise
In early March, I wrote a letter to clients of the firm to get across a very simple, but powerful concept that I wanted everyone to understand: The news will get worse, but its ability to shock us will diminish. Read: “The One Thing We Know For Sure” for more on this. US stocks stopped […]
ETtech Top 5: Microsoft may back Paytm, SoftBank Vision Fund eyes secondary deals & more
Hello everyone, India’s payments space has seen a flurry of activity of late. First it was Facebook, which bought a minority stake in Jio Platforms to push its WhatsApp Pay through Reliance Industries’ e-commerce venture JioMart. Soon after, Walmart-backed Flipkart pumped an additional $28 million into PhonePe. And now, Paytm is said to be in […]
Covid-19: LittleMore Labs launches exam-from-home solution PEXA Lite
Edtech firm LittleMore Innovation Labs has announced the launch of PEXA Lite has announced the launch of PEXA Lite, which will offer an “exam – from – home” service to overcome the impact of Covid-19 lockdown on educational institutions. “PEXA Lite is being introduced in India first, followed by UAE, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore. We […]
Zoom’s biggest rivals are coming for it
By Mike Isaac and Sheera FrenkelAs people turned in droves to video chatting app Zoom in recent weeks, the buzz caught Facebook’s attention. Inside the social network, that immediately set off a scramble. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, ordered employees to ramp up and focus on the company’s own video chat projects, especially as use […]
Brewers seek nod for home delivery
A national association of beer companies has approached chief minsters of eight states this weekend seeking partial resumption of brewing facilities and sale of beer through ecommerce and home delivery platforms. “Covid-19 has the potential to disrupt business for the rest of the year. It is imperative that state excise departments introduce policies that facilitate […]
Most SMEs have run out of cash: Survey
Nearly half of the country’s small businesses have either exhausted their funds or are close to doing so, as the unprecedented demand crash due to the extended coronavirus-led lockdown forces them to dig into their own reserves, a recent survey shows. The survey by community platform LocalCircles, which covered around 7,000 businesses–including startups, small and […]
Non-essentials sales curb could pinch ecomm firms hard
From expecting the Indian ecommerce firms to benefit from the lockdown just as they have in the US and China, analysts and industry watchers are now expecting overall growth in the sector to be in the mid-single-digits this year, down from almost 35% in 2019. For the two largest players in the space, Walmart-owned Flipkart […]