What's New?: February 2021

Sunday 28 February 2021

Tiger Global may pump $100 million into Groww at $1 billion valuation

If the deal goes through, this will be Tiger Global's second investment in the sector after it backed IndWealth in 2019.

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Rise in the number of women investors since pandemic began: Elearnmarkets

The stock market is largely male dominated, but now women investors are gradually moving towards financial independence and promoting equal representation in this field.

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ETtech Morning Dispatch on March 1, 2021: Govt vs WhatsApp (again)

Here's a look at the top tech news to start your day.

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India’s new social media rules seen echoing globally

India's new social media rules come at a time the US, the UK and Australia—among other nations—have been pushing Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and their ilk to take responsibility for content on their platforms.

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Esports is the new rage in the Indian arena

Viewership of esports in India doubled to 17 million in 2020 while prize money pool grew 25-30%, according to industry estimates.

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How Facebook Oversight Board sees India’s new social media rules

Policymakers and regulators have a valuable role to play on content moderation and issues concerning Facebook, the Facebook Oversight Board says on India’s new social media rules.

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Kuaishou IPO valuation lights up India’s short-video space

Indian short-video apps—from Sharechat’s Moj to MXPlayer’s MX TakaTak—see the blockbuster Kuaishou IPO as underscoring the massive potential that the sector has, and a curtain raiser for more.

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Paytm clocked 1.2 billion transactions across platforms in February

Paytm, operated by Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s One97 Communications, consistently reports third-highest UPI transaction volumes behind PhonePe and Google Pay.

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Indiagold looks to pilot lending against digital gold

Indiagold, a gold loans startup, hopes to get RBI’s approval for scaling up the offering by leveraging its refinery partners to create realtime reserves against digital gold and extend a line of credit to its customers.

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Walmart poaches Goldman Sachs bankers for a new fintech startup

Omer Ismail, head of Goldman Sachs' consumer bank, and one of his top lieutenants David Stark will leave the investment bank for Walmart's fintech startup.

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Friday 26 February 2021

Google pledges $5 million to address disparities in Covid vaccinations

Google has already made a $100 million grant and 50,000 pro bono hour commitment to support Covid-19 relief.

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Facebook launches TikTok-like app for creating, sharing raps

The app makes it easy to create and share raps so that rappers can focus on and experiment with the content

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Robinhood to plan confidential IPO filing as soon as March

The company has held talks in the past week with underwriters about moving forward with a filing within weeks, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public.

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SoftBank reaches deal with WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann

SoftBank Group did not release details of the agreement that puts to rest a bitter dispute emerging from the Japan-based firm's 2019 decision to bail out WeWork, once regarded as a soaring unicorn but which quickly spiralled into deep troubles as it lost cash and cancelled its eagerly waited share offering.

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Social media platforms, news publishers awaiting clarity on rules linked to news and current affairs

A lawyer working for a media company said as per the rules, social media platforms will have to clearly inform news publishers that if needed, they may have to furnish details of their social media handles and users to the ministry.

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New intermediary guidelines put a spanner in telcos' OTT platform plans

The regulations come at a time when the trio are banking on their digital offerings via OTT platforms to generate additional revenue from millions of their subscribers, by driving up data consumption.

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Covid-19 vaccine developers on radar of Chinese, Russian hackers: Intel firm reports

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Uber, Amazon Pay expand partnership beyond payments in India

Uber India and Amazon Pay will install plastic screens in 40,000 Uber Autos across seven cities in India to minimise risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.

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InnoServ Group gets funding from Ganesh Natarajan-led 5F World

The investment from 5F World and IT industry veteran Ganesh Natarajan joining board is a shot in the arm for Innoserv Grup, Chairman Ramachandran Gopalakrishna says in a statement.

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Govt puts significant social media intermedaries threshold at 50 lakh registered users

Significant social media intermediaries are expected to appoint Indian resident chief compliance officers, who shall be responsible for ensuring compliance with the act and rules.

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ETtech Evening Briefing on Feb. 26, 2021: Crypto salaries are a thing

Many Indian techies get paid in cryptocurrency, say it’s faster and easier. India’s income tax department is looking at startup valuations, via a rarely used provision. Twitter is building a paywall and questions are being raised on Google Chrome’s incognito mode.

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New social media rules could increase compliance & help stem misinformation: FB fact checkers

While announcing the rules on Thursday, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said concerns had been raised over the rampant spread of fake news on social media.

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Policy makers and regulators have a valuable role to play: FB's Oversight Board

On Thursday, the government said the rules substantially empower the ordinary users of digital platforms to seek redressal for their grievances and command accountability from platforms in case of infringement of their rights.

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ETtech Deals Digest: Innovaccer, Infra.Market become unicorns, Zomato’s funding spree

The week through 26 February was one of large funding deals, with Tiger Global emerging as a common thread among three of them.

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Many Indian techies get paid in crypto, say it’s faster and easier

Accepting payments in cryptocurrency is a trend on the rise.

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Telegram now offers auto-delete option for messages and invites

Telegram has added new features to its messaging app as its popularity surges in India and other markets amid the ongoing confusion over WhatsApp's new privacy policy.

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PM asks banks to come out with innovative products for startups, fintech

Modi said that although the government's endeavour is to promote the private sector, the public sector still needs to have its presence in banking and insurance to support the poor.

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Maruti Suzuki partners IIM Bangalore to nurture 26 startups in mobility sector

The 26 startups have been shortlisted from over 400 applications received across the country.

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India's ICT industry capable of developing 5G hardware, software architecture, says Rakuten

Rakuten is expanding its research and development (R&D) footprint in India by doubling its workforce in Bangalore.

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Thursday 25 February 2021

Twitter intends to make its content moderation practices more transparent: Jack Dorsey

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the microblogging platform is making a lot of progress in its accountability by "owning our mistakes and correcting, and reliability by following published principles and not wavering".

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US judge in Google case disturbed that even 'incognito' users are tracked

Google has become a target antitrust complaints in the last year filed by state and federal officials -- as well as businesses -- accusing it of abusing its dominance in digital advertising and online search.

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Nasscom says govt must ensure new platform rules don't hurt freedom of expression, creativity

The new rules, which have been in the making since 2018, come close on the heels of a huge stand-off between the union government and micro-blogging platform Twitter.

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Cyber attackers targeting pharma cos for Covid-19 data: Cyfirma

The company said in its report shared with ET that there are currently 15 active hacking campaigns underway.

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Twitter shakes off the cobwebs with new product plans

On Thursday, Twitter went a step further, announcing ambitious plans to expand with new options to pay for exclusive content from certain users, and to launch communities for specific interests.

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TikTok agrees to pay $92 million in privacy lawsuit in US

In 2019, TikTok settled a $1.1 million lawsuit over alleged children's privacy allegations.

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Taxman looks at startup valuations via rarely-used provision

Startups that, despite losing money, sell stocks at steep premiums based on growth projections, being asked to explain valuations

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ETtech Morning Dispatch on Feb 26, 2021: India's new digital media rules

Here's a look at the top tech news to start your day.

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Paytm, Ola and IndusInd Bank team up to apply for NUE license

Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm is expected to play a leading role in the consortium, in which Ola Financial and IndusInd Bank will have significant stakes, three people aware of the matter told ET.

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Messaging apps may lose biggest USP

To enable traceability, firms may have to dilute end-to-end encryption

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Govt notifies new rules governing digital media

The move expected to significantly alter the way social media firms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter as well as streaming services Netflix and Amazon Prime operate in the country

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Coinbase reveals direct listing application with SEC

Coinbase said in December that it had confidentially applied with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public.

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RBI rejects demand of online merchants to store customers' credit card data

"The regulator is of the view that merchants storing credit card data would cause cyber security risks to the consumer and they do not have any locus standi as these norms pertain to payment aggregators and gateways," said an official in the know.

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FarEye brings on board Dropbox’s Suvrat Joshi as chief product officer

Joshi will drive the product vision and accelerate the company’s global product expansion with a key focus on the customer’s needs.

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TikTok removed 6.14M accounts for violating its community guidelines in H2 2020

The company said it prevented 173.2 million accounts from being created through automated means and 3.5 million ads were rejected for violating advertising policies and guidelines.

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Cognizant makes $250 million commitment to global CSR initiatives

Beginning in 2021, Cognizant said that it would expand grant-making in the U.S. and India to new global markets where the company is growing its operations, including Australia, Canada, Germany, and the UK.

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