Happy Thursday!
India’s private telecom operators are seeing a new dawn, years after the entry of Reliance Jio prompted consolidation in the industry. Jeff Bezos-led tech giant Amazon is in early-stage talks to buy a stake worth at least $2 billion in Bhart Airtel, Reuters reported.
This follows the $5.7-billion investment by Facebook in Jio Platforms, the holding company of India’s largest telecom operator. Last month, The Financial Times reported that Google is in initial talks to buy a stake of about 5% in cash-strapped Vodafone Idea.
Amazon eyes Airtel stake
Amazon is expected to acquire a roughly 5% stake based on the current market value of Bharti Airtel—India’s third-largest wireless carrier with over 300 million subscribers.
Why it matters
The Covid-19 pandemic has upended economic activity but home consumption of data, usage of digital payments and online shopping has seen a massive spurt in the last two months. Bharti, whose digital platform now has around 160 million active users across Airtel Thanks, Wynk, and XStream, may find synergies with Prime Video and Amazon Music while offering bundled services to customers. Read more.
Google defends takedown of apps
Amid growing anti-China sentiment in India, Google has defended suspension of several applications from its Play Store. It took down Remove China Apps, which promised to remove all Chinese apps. The app had 5 million downloads. Google had earlier removed another popular app Mitron, which was a clone of TikTok, for a number of technical policy violations.
Quote of the day
“When apps are allowed to specifically target other apps, it can lead to behaviour that we believe is not in the best interest of our community of developers and consumers. We’ve enforced this policy against other apps in many countries consistently in the past—just as we did here.”
– Sameer Samat, Vice President of Android and Google Play
Read the full story here.
Edtech hirings
The closure of schools, colleges and coaching institutes due to the nationwide lockdown has boosted demand for online learning. There are currently around 12,000 active openings for permanent job roles across levels at leading edtech companies and over 90,000 contractual or gig positions across these firms.
Top roles in demand include product development, instructors, content writers, UI/UX and app developers, sales professionals and technicians. Some of the top employers are Byju’s, Unacademy, Whitehat Jr, Vedantu and Simplilearn.
By the numbers
- 12,000 permanent job roles
- 80,000-100,000 contractual or gig positions
- Total 181 deals worth $2.28 billion in edtech sector in 2015-2020, according to Venture Intelligence data
US on Tuesday said it will probe the digital services taxes imposed by 10 countries including India under Section 301 of its 1974 Trade Act, which could lead to punitive action. New Delhi, however, downplayed the move, saying the action is against 10 countries and not specific to India.
Why is it significant?
India levies a 6% equalisation levy or the so-called ‘Google tax’ on foreign online advertising platforms to tax companies such as Google, Facebook and Netflix on their online advertising. This year, it expanded its scope to all overseas ecommerce transactions originating from India, but at a reduced rate of 2%. Read more.
Stock footage boom
Video streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hotstar and Zee5 are driving demand for stock footage amid shooting constraints due to the nationwide lockdown. Since stay-at-home orders to stem the spread of the Covid-19 virus outbreak brought all film-shooting schedules to a halt, global stock footage sellers like Getty Images and Shutterstock have seen a spike in demand from India over the last three months.
The demand has been largely driven by streaming sites serving an audience eager to binge-watch content including web series, films and documentaries. Over-the-top (OTT) platforms contributed to 70% of the increased demand, while the rest of the enquiries came from brands actively advertising through the lockdown period. Read more.
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