By Pavel Alpeyev SoftBank Group fell by its most in more than seven years, after worsening sentiment around the coronavirus outbreak and the value of its global portfolio stung Masayoshi Son’s investment group. The shares fell 10% Monday, marking their biggest decline since October 2012 and wiping out gains since Paul Singer’s Elliott Management revealed […]
Archives for March 2020
Airbnb makes tweaks to refund policy amid spread of coronavirus
By Olivia Carville and Eric Newcomer Airbnb is making adjustments to its refund policy in an attempt to balance the needs of hosts and guests on its home-sharing site amid the global coronavirus outbreak that has severely reduced travel demand. Because Airbnb operates as an online platform — connecting people who want to rent out […]
Coronavirus outbreak: Google recommends all North America employees to work from home
Alphabet’s Google is recommending all of its North American employees to work from home if their roles permit, the search giant said on Tuesday, aiming to minimize the risk of spreading the coronavirus. The new recommendation is an expansion of a similar guideline it gave to employees in San Francisco Bay area. Most of the […]
Take-home messages from the ‘Why IoT projects fail’ webinar
A recent webinar on Beecham Research’s 100-page “Why IoT projects fail and what to do about them” research report was hosted by IoT Now. Beecham CEO, Robin Duke-Woolley zeroed in on three topics that emerged from interviews with various companies and vendors, as Bob Emmerson reports. The first was IoT’s seemingly obvious reliance on connectivity, […]
Get your business ready for e-invoicing with Xero
The introduction of e-invoicing is a government initiative to improve the way businesses interact with each other to lower the cost of doing business and improve payment times. It is another great step towards digitising Kiwi small business. To understand the point of e-invoicing, let’s think about how invoicing works today. To request payment for […]
A three-step approach to successful IoT adoption
Most would agree that the adoption rate of the Internet of Things (IoT) has fallen well short of predictions. Given the proven benefits that the IoT can deliver, such as preventative maintenance and real-time asset management, it’s confounding that every company isn’t well on its way to leveraging IoT. There are far more attempts to […]
Maharashtra caps Ola, Uber surge pricing at three times taxi fare, but defers rule till April 6
In a mixed bag for Ola-Uber users, the Maharashtra state government has capped the fares of app-based cabs at three times the fare of kaali-peeli taxis. At present, the fare of black-and-yellow taxis is fixed at Rs 14.84/km, so aggregator cab fare cannot surge over Rs 44.52/km even on days of very high demand. The […]
CarTrade plans NBFC foray, may buy small firms to beef up operations
Online car buying portal CarTrade will apply for a non-banking finance company (NBFC) licence, a top company executive said, in a bid to muscle into the $30 billion used car market in the country. The online automobile classifieds firm has also set aside ₹400-₹450 crore to acquire a string of small companies, said Vinay Sanghi, […]
Coronavirus: Top US universities move classes online
Major American universities — including Harvard, Princeton and Columbia — have been forced to cancel classes because of the coronavirus and move lessons online, affecting tens of thousands of students. The US government has refrained from imposing an official ban so the often privately run institutions are each grappling with how best to deal with […]
Small sellers find an online route to customers via tech platforms
Small sellers, which retail mainly through big ecommerce marketplaces such as Flipkart and Amazon, are now trying to directly connect with consumers through technology platforms such as Shopify. This comes at a time when they, led by an online vendors’ group, have intensified the fight against established ecommerce players over alleged predatory pricing and preferential […]