It's June 01, 2020 at 12:15PM
Sunday, May 31, 2020
India rejects Walmart-owned Flipkart’s proposed foray into food retail business
The Indian government has rejected Flipkart’s proposal to enter the food retail business in a setback for Walmart, which owns majority of the Indian e-commerce firm and which recently counted its business in Asia’s third-largest economy as one of the worst impacted by the global coronavirus pandemic.
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), a wing of the nation’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, told Flipkart, which competes with Amazon India, that its proposed plan to enter the food retail business violates regulatory guidelines.
Flipkart’s proposed food retail business, called Flipkart FarmerMart, cannot be structured on a 100% foreign direct investment, the Indian agency said. Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart, told TechCrunch that the company was evaluating the agency’s response and intended to re-apply.
“At Flipkart, we believe that technology and innovation driven marketplace can add significant value to our country’s farmers and food processing sector by bringing value chain efficiency and transparency. This will further aid boosting farmers’ income & transform Indian agriculture,” he added.
While announcing the plan to enter the nation’s growing food retail market, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart Group CEO, said in October last year that the company planned to invest $258 million in the new venture.
Flipkart planned to invest deeply in the local agriculture-ecosystem, supply chain, and work with tens of thousands of small farmers, their associations, and the nation’s food processing industry, Krishnamurthy said. The food retail unit would help “multiply farmers’ income and bring affordable, quality food for millions of customers across the country.”
Several e-commerce and grocery firms in India, including Amazon, Zomato, and Grofers, have previously secured approval from New Delhi, which earlier permitted 100% foreign direct investment in food and a handful of other sectors, for entering the food retail business.
The Indian government has since revisited the guidelines to clarify that food retail, like any other e-commerce sector, can only operate as a marketplace that allows third-party sellers to engage with buyers — and not offer their own inventories, nor have equity in any of the players who sell on the platform.
Food and grocery are compelling categories for e-commerce businesses in India as it enables them to engage with their customers more frequently. According to research firm Forrester, India’s online food and grocery market remain significantly tiny, accounting for just 1% of the overall sales.
In the most recent quarterly earnings call, Walmart said limited operations at Flipkart had negatively affected the group’s overall growth. New Delhi announced one of the world’s stringent lockdowns across the nation in late March that restricted Amazon and Flipkart from delivering in many states and only sell “essential items” such as grocery and hygienic products.
India maintains the stay-at-home orders for its 1.3 billion citizens, though it has eased some restrictions in recent weeks to resuscitate the economy.
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Singapore’s micromobility startup Beam raises $26 million
Beam, a Singapore-headquartered micromobility firm that offers shared e-scooters, has raised $26 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint in Korea, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.
Sequoia India and Hana Ventures led the two-and-a-half-year-old startup’s Series A financing round, while several more investors from Asia Pacific region participated, Beam said without disclosing their names. The startup has raised $32.4 million to date, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Beam, like Bounce and Yulu in India, offers electric scooters in the aforementioned five markets. Electric and gasoline scooters have become popular in several Asian nations and elsewhere as people look for alternative transportation mediums to move around faster and at less cost.
While these vehicles make inroads into various markets, it’s also not uncommon to find these scooters abandoned carelessly in the streets. Beam said unlike other startups, it incentivizes its riders through in-app offers to park the scooters at predetermined spots.
“I’m really excited about our new technology and its ability to reduce the problems associated with randomly scattered scooters around a city. This helps us to further improve our industry-leading vehicle retention rates, reduce operational costs, and most importantly, benefits communities by keeping city streets neater,” said Beam co-founder and chief executive Alan Jiang.
Beam, which did not disclose how many customers it has amassed, will use the fresh capital to grow its operational and engineering focus and grow deeper in its existing markets, it said. It will also “accelerate” the launch of its third-generation e-scooter, the Beam Saturn, which features swappable batteries, improved build, to more markets, it said.
Abheek Anand, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India, said Beam’s collaboration with regulators, technology, and insights into the transportation landscape stand to give it an edge in the Asia Pacific region.
The startup’s fundraising comes at a time when many young firms, especially those operating in transportation category, in Asia are struggling to raise capital. Beam said it had implemented stringent cleaning and operations practices to limit the possibility of virus transmission to allay riders’ concern.
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Saturday, May 30, 2020
Friday, May 29, 2020
Amid unprecedented growth on its platform, Acorns cuts roles and shuts down an office
Acorns, which helps millions of people invest their spare change in the stock market, has laid off between 50 to 70 people, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources.
The Irvine, Calif.-based company would not confirm the total number of people laid off, but did confirm that there were cuts at the company as a result of broader business changes.
The news emerged days after the fintech company closed its Portland office earlier this week, one of four offices the company maintained. While Acorns offered Portland employees an opportunity to relocate to its Irvine headquarters, some roles were terminated as part of the relocation, the company said.
Employees laid off largely were members of Acorns’ support team. And the internal cuts are related to an external partnership with TaskUs, which out-sources customer care and support needs for other businesses. Acorns will bring on roughly 80 new TaskUs support roles in the next year, which the company said would grow its support team, just not its internal staff.
The internal Acorns support team will handle high-touch customer care situations via phone, while external roles will handle email support.
Beyond support roles, Acorns cut some people from various teams across the company.
Acorns has found unprecedented growth as the coronavirus brings new users into its world of investing and saving money. The company recently hit a milestone of 7 million sign-ups, continuing the trend that trading apps are benefiting from a down market.
At the same time, Acorns also launched a debit card that depends on users spending in order to make sense as a business product. Payment processing is a risky space to play in right now because consumer spending has nosedived due to shelter in place orders. It could be a weak spot for the company at the moment. Earlier today, Brex laid off 62 staff members, just one week after raising $150 million in venture capital money.
So, why does a company like Acorns, that is facing immense growth, need to do layoffs? Even if you’re winning right now, the pandemic and potential of an extended recession is forcing businesses to reevaluate the way they’re spending money. In Acorns’ case, it will have more headcount next year than it does right now. But dig a little deeper, and its choice to outsource roles and shut down an office means that growing right now can come at the cost of slimming down.
Investors in Acorns include PayPal, DST Global, Rakuten, Greycroft and Bain Capital.
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Toyota’s first plug-in hybrid RAV4 Prime priced a skosh under $40,000
When Toyota unveiled the 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime in November, the vehicle garnered a lot of attention because it achieved two seemingly conflicting goals. It was Toyota’s most fuel efficient and one of its most powerful vehicles.
Now, it’s getting praise for managing a base price under $40,000. Toyota said Friday that the standard trim of the plug-in vehicle, the RAV4 Prime SE, will start at $39,220, a price that includes the mandatory $1,120 destination charge.
This plug-in RAV4 will have an all-wheel drive, sport-tuned suspension. When in pure EV mode it has a manufacturer-estimated 42 miles of range — putting it ahead of other plug-in SUVs. Toyota said it has a also has up to a manufacturer-estimated 94 combined miles per gallon equivalent. We’re still waiting on official EPA estimates.
The vehicle has a tuned 2.5-liter, four-cylinder gasoline engine and when combined with the electric motors will deliver 302 horsepower and be able to travel from 0 to 60 miles per hour in a projected 5.8 seconds.
The plug-in RAV4 will be offered in two variants. Toyota equips all of its RAV4 models with its standard active safety systems that includes a pre-collision system with pedestrian detection, full-speed range dynamic radar cruise control, lane departure alert with steering assist, automatic high beams, lane tracing assist and road sign assist.
The cheaper SE comes standard with some notable features like 18-inch painted and machined alloy wheels, heated front seats, a power liftgate, a 3-kilowatt onboard charger and a 8-inch touchscreen along with Amazon Alexa integration and Android Auto and Apple CarPlay compatibility. Some advanced driver assistance features such as blind spot monitor with rear cross traffic alert also comes standard.
There is a weather and moonroof package for an additional $1,665 upgrade, that adds extras like a heated steering wheel, heated rear outboard seats and rain-sensing windshield wipers with de-icer function.
The pricier XSE trim starts at $42,545 (with the destination price included) and offers more luxury touches such as a two-tone exterior paint scheme pairing a black roof with select colors, 19-inch two-tone alloy wheels, paddle shifters, wireless phone charger and a 9-inch touchscreen. There are several other upgrades, of course, including one for the multimedia system that adds dynamic navigation and a JBL speaker system. The daddy of upgrades on the XSE costs $5,760 and covers weather, audio and premium features including a heads-up display, panoramic moonroof, digital rearview mirror, surround-view cameras and four-door keyless entry.
The vehicle is expected to show up at dealerships this summer.
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Zuckerberg explains why Facebook won’t take action on Trump’s recent posts
In a statement posted to Facebook late Friday afternoon, Mark Zuckerberg offered up an explanation of why his company did not contextualize or remove posts from the accounts associated with President Donald Trump that appeared to incite violence against American citizens.
“We looked very closely at the post that discussed the protests in Minnesota to evaluate whether it violated our policies,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Our policy around incitement of violence allows discussion around state use of force, although I think today’s situation raises important questions about what potential limits of that discussion should be.”
Facebook’s position stands in sharp contrast to recent decisions made by Twitter, with the approval of its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, to screen a tweet from the President on Thursday night using a “public interest notice” that indicated the tweet violated its rules glorifying violence. The public interest notice replaces the substance of what Trump wrote, meaning a user has to actively click through to view the offending tweet.
Critics excoriated Facebook and its CEO for its decision to take a hands off approach to the dissemination of misinformation and potential incitements to violence published by accounts associated with the President and the White House. Some of the criticism has even come from among the company’s employees.
“I have to say I am finding the contortions we have to go through incredibly hard to stomach,” one employee, quoted by The Verge, wrote in a comment on Facebook’s internal message board. “All this points to a very high risk of a violent escalation and civil unrest in November and if we fail the test case here, history will not judge us kindly.”
Zuckerberg defended Facebook’s position saying that it would not take any action on the posts from the President because “we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”
Facebook’s chief executive also drew a sharp contrast between Facebook’s response to the controversy and that of Twitter, which has provided a fact check for one of the President’s tweets and hidden Thursday’s tweet behind a warning label for violating its policies on violence.
“Unlike Twitter, we do not have a policy of putting a warning in front of posts that may incite violence because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician,” wrote Zuckerberg.
Twitter explained its decision in a statement. “This Tweet violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today,” the company said.
Twitter Comms
@TwitterComms
We have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @realdonaldtrump. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266231100780744704 …
Donald J. Trump
Replying to @realDonaldTrump….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
“We’ve taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the Tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance,” the Twitter statement continued.
Perhaps, as Zuckerberg suggests, Facebook will have an opportunity to provide some answers to the questions around what the limits should be around allowing the state discussion of incitements to violence. For now, the company’s response only begs more questions.
A link to the full post from Zuckerberg follows below:
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Thursday, May 28, 2020
Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz is out
Magic Leap talked a big game, and few were more responsible for fostering a cult of hype and excitement around its vision of the future than the company’s founder and CEO Rony Abovitz. Today, the CEO announced that the company has indeed secured a new bout of funding, but that the company will be attempting to mount a major turnaround without him at the helm.
The announcement comes after the augmented reality startup announced substantial layoffs earlier this month and announced that it would be pivoting from developing consumer products to fully focusing on its enterprise business.
According to a memo sent to staff, first obtained by Business Insider, Abovitz will continue on with the company through a transition period but that the company has been “actively recruiting candidates” to replace him.
“We have closed significant new funding and have very positive momentum towards closing key strategic enterprise partnerships,” the staff memo reads. “As the Board and I planned the changes we made and what Magic Leap needs for this next focused phase, it became clear to us that a change in my role was a natural next step. I discussed this with the Board and we have agreed that now is the time to bring in a new CEO who can help us to commercialize our focused plan for spatial computing in enterprise.”
Updating
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Wednesday, May 27, 2020
DevOps Your Skill: Submit
This is the last step of our pipeline. Previously we have run a lot of different tests and if everything is ok, it is time to submit our Alexa Skill to certification. It means, we have concluded the Continuous integration part, it is time to Continuous Deployment.
These step are automated in the continuous integration system (CircleCI) and are executed in each new version of the software.
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Choosing the Best Garbage Collection Algorithm for Better Performance in Java
In this article, I’m going to explain how Garbage Collection works behind the scene to free up memory. Java memory management has emerged a lot over the past few Java releases. Understanding the different GC algorithms will help you better to tune it (if required) depending upon the different performance issues we see in many of the Java-based application performance testing. When your Java application runs, it creates objects which take up memory space. As long as the object is being used (i.e referred by the application somewhere), it is going to occupy the memory. When the object is no longer used (for example, when you cleanly close a DB connection), the space occupied by the object can be reclaimed by Garbage collection.
How to choose the best garbage collector for your use case for any Java-based application performance testing? Before we go into that question lets talk some of the below basic concepts.
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How Do Analysts Deal With Offline Analyses More Quickly?
Because of the lack of support of easy-to-use tools, the offline analysis of data analysts is always performed first by a written complex query or data exported from a temporary table after multi-step processing, and then by using vlookup() and filters in Excel. When the data is updated or the scope is expanded, it is necessary to retrieve the data again and operate in Excel again. If there is a desktop tool that can read single table data in real-time, it can not only complete the above complex query and the calculation from multi-step processing to a temporary table, but also replace the calculation action in Excel, and avoid repeated labor, it will be good news for many data analysts.
If you can write SQL or VBA, you are very concerned about the flexibility of multiple calculations after obtaining data, rather than using a graphical interface tool to complete limited calculations, and you don’t want to spend a lot of time to learn python, esProc may be a good choice.
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Designing Hardware With Software: Hardware Description Languages
Here's an idea: Use your software development skills to learn how to define a digital circuit in a hardware description language. You can program your design into a field-programmable gate array, resulting in a fully functional, high-performance custom digital device. Low-cost FPGA prototyping boards contain sufficient logic elements to implement complex modern processor designs such as RISC-V, along with any customized extensions you dream up.
Hardware description languages are not the exclusive province of digital designers at semiconductor companies; even hobbyists can make full use of these powerful, free tools. This article introduces the VHDL language, used widely in the development of FPGA circuit designs.
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A Comprehensive Tutorial to Understand the SAFe Scaled Agile Framework
Even If you have been a part of the project management paradigm for a single second or a lifetime, you’d probably be familiar with the Agile methodology. In the past, we have talked about a lot of things Agile and what the benefits of this amazing methodology are.
In this article, we will talk about the Scaled Agile Framework, how it works, why we should use it, what are the different levels of Scaled Agile Framework and how it is different from other Agile Practices. Let’s start at the very beginning.
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API Security Weekly: Issue #85
Vulnerability: Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Google Cloud Deployment Manager is an infrastructure management service that makes it simple to create, deploy, and manage Google Cloud Platform resources. Ezequiel Pereira found an API vulnerability in Google Cloud Deployment Manager and collected his $31K prize from Google as result.
Pereira found a way to make it invoke Google internal APIs that he was not supposed to invoke:
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Four Of The Most Important Issues When Working From Home In An API Product Company
“When you’re working from home you should try and do it systematically and methodically,” says John Bennett a veteran work-at-homer. “It’s a lot like running a business from home, which is what I do”.
John might know a thing or two about it, since he’s been working from home in southern New Hampshire for the last 15 years. His company, John Bennett Strategic Marketing, has clients that range from big name-brand corporations to startups, and includes Heroku, Dell, Savvius, Yubico and Proofpoint, amongst others.
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Investors say emerging multiverses are the future of entertainment
The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the adoption of new technologies and cultural shifts that were already well underway. According to a clutch of heavy-hitting investors, this dynamic is particularly strong in gaming and extended reality.
Unlike other segments of the startup and tech world, where valuations have been slashed, early-stage companies focused on building new games, gaming infrastructure and virtual or extended reality entertainment are having no trouble raising money. They’ve even seen valuations rise, investors said.
“Valuations have increased pretty significantly in the gaming sector. Valuations have gone up 20 to 25% higher than I would have seen prior to this pandemic,” Phil Sanderson, a co-founder and managing director at Griffin Gaming Partners, told fellow participants on a virtual panel during the Los Angeles Games Conference earlier this month.
Driving the appetite for new investments is the entertainment industry’s bearhug of virtual events, animated features, games and social media platforms after widespread shelter-in-place orders made physical events an impossibility.
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