As TikTok‘s return remains unclear, top creators are moving to rival short-video platforms that have cropped up in the past few months.
Meanwhile, Walmart-owned Flipkart has lost one of its long-term executive ahead of the crucial festive season sale.
TikTokers & exclusivity
With no respite in sight for TikTok nearly two months after the ban, top creators of the ByteDance-owned short-video platform are inking exclusive deals with newly emerged rivals like Gaana’s HotShots, ShareChat’s Moj or MX Player’s TakaTak.
Why does this matter? Attracting top creators is likely to help short-video apps generate more brand awareness and gain sizable market share in a nascent but increasingly competitive market, with more than 100-120 million users up for grabs.
What’s worth keeping a watch is whether followers of these creators also come onboard these new platforms and continue to be active over a long period of time.
While these are early days, things seem good at present. Riyaz Aly, a top TikTok creator with over 43 million followers on TikTok, has crossed over 4 million followers on Gaana’s HotShots within a month, chief executive Prashan Agarwal said. Gaana and MX Player are both owned by Times Internet that also owns ETtech.
Competitive advantage: Some top creators are allowed to post content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram while many are forbidden to cross-post videos on any of the other homegrown short-video-sharing platforms along with a few international rivals, said Viraj Sheth, cofounder of Monk Entertainment, a Mumbai-based talent management and influencer marketing firm.
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Hiring job-ready talent
Bengaluru-based Able Jobs aims to help companies hire entry-level trained professionals in sales, support, and marketing functions. This is done by pre-training candidates with free vocational courses customised for job roles specific to their client needs.
On Wednesday, the startup raised $1.8 million seed financing from investors like SAIF Partners, Y Combinator, and Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal’s Titan Capital among others.
Here’s a quick chat with Able Jobs co-founder and chief executive Ravish Agarwal on how the pandemic has treated the startup and their future roadmap.
How do you build courses tailormade for job roles?
We identify the top three skillsets from the client’s job description and understand what a person does on a day-to-day routine at their job. Our in-house team then creates vocational content with a focus on more practical knowledge.
For example, we will not teach them what is sales or how will you do sales. Instead, we will teach them how to make their first sales call or how to pitch their customer.
What’s in the future roadmap?
More investment in content and new product features for both jobseekers and companies. We will eventually go deeper into different types of sales like agriculture sales.
The plan is also to diversify to other roles like medical representatives and expand to adjacent sectors like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI).
How has the pandemic been for Able Jobs?
We have seen a shift in the hiring trends in the pandemic. Sectors like edtech and online grocery have picked up. People who couldn’t work during the pandemic are transitioning into newer roles of software sales.
For this, they, however, need to reskill themselves since selling a physical product is very different from selling a software product. This has helped our growth in the past few months.
Flipkart loses a long-term exec
Veteran Flipkart executive Anil Goteti has resigned from the company, according to an email sent to employees. He has worked across several roles in his eight-plus years at Flipkart, and was most recently responsible for customer growth and monetisation at the e-tailer.
Role addition: Prakash Sikaria will take on the leadership of the loyalty and Supercoins programme in addition to driving ads and video while Vikas Gupta will continue to lead marketing, research & insights, customer initiatives, and Big Billion Day.
Five new senior VPs: Flipkart promoted five executives to the level of Senior Vice-President (SVP) in May and now has about 14 SVPs who report directly to Group Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy.
Recent Exits: Flipkart Group CFO Emily McNeal left in May this year while Flipkart’s head of fashion and SVP Rishi Vasudev quit the firm to join Lifestyle International as Chief Executive in December 2019.
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Sachin Bansal eyes more acquisitions
Sachin Bansal-promoted Navi Technologies is eyeing more purchases in the life insurance space to bulk up its financial services offerings. The company has held talks with promoters of companies like Future Generali Life Insurance, while it has also looked at DHFL Pramarica Life Insurance, The Times of India reported.
Key Acquisitions: Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal acquired DHFL General Insurance from Wadhawan Global Capital (WGC) for around Rs 100 crore in a likely distress sale in January this year. He also acquired microfinance firm Chaitanya India in September last year while Navi Technologies bought out Bengaluru-based tech consulting firm MavenHive in 2019.
Bansal, among the most active entrepreneur investors, has also backed a host of financial services firms like Altico Capital and IndoStar Finance.
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Reducing dependency on Chinese vendors
Airtel is gearing up to replace Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE with European vendors Nokia and Ericsson in its applications for 5G trials.
This development comes at a time when India is looking to cut down on its imports from countries like China, after a call for “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (Self-reliant India) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
What’s the current status?
- The government has barred Chinese equipment makers like Huawei and ZTE from government contracts.
- Huawei and ZTE have also been barred from supplying equipment to state-run telecom service providers Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL)
- The government has privately said that the two will also not be allowed for 5G deployments even for private operators but no formal communication has been made so far.
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