The 21-day lockdown will lead to a loss of at least $1 billion in gross sales as India’s largest online retail platforms like Amazon and Flipkart stop selling non-essentials till at least the middle of next month, based on current government directives. What’s of further concern is that the online retail players are expected to […]
Archives for March 2020
As Covid-19 cases rise in India, tech-based health surveillance intensifies
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Owing to the rapid rise of COVID-19 cases across the country, state governments and large municipalities are coming up with strict surveillance mechanisms to ensure that those quarantined adhere to the norms, and stay at home. Health surveillance in this context seems to be taking multiple forms — a mixture of human […]
As India connects, data loses speed
Consumers of mobile and home broadband services, especially those in urban areas, have seen their network speeds slow down by around 20% because of a surge in consumption of up to 30% on an average, especially of videos. This is expected to get worse, with speeds likely to slow by another 25-30%, as internet usage […]
Retail Pooling: Online, offline firms share staff to deliver food, groceries
Food and grocery retailers and e-grocers have started to utilise available manpower resources of other e-commerce ventures to augment their last-mile delivery, to tide over an acute shortage of workers. Some e-grocers have also agreed to pick and deliver orders from local kiranas and supermarkets to customers, three industry executives said. Leading national and local […]
Club Factory begins recruiting Indian e-commerce vendors to import essential goods
Chinese e-tailer Club Factory has begun recruiting Indian e-commerce vendors to import essential goods such as masks, hand sanitisers and other protective medical gear from its home country as it looks to seize the large economic opportunity created by a shortage of such products here. Project Ginger, as Club Factory calls it, is asking vendors […]
Covid-19 related searches grow multifold in two months: Report
“Is coronavirus fake or real?”, “Is it an apocalypse?”, “Is it the end of the world?” — these are some of the queries that netizens have searched the most on the Internet over the past one month. N95 masks and their price, mask sizes, children’s masks and their manufacturers were also among common searches, according […]
Zoho’s lawsuit accuses rival Freshworks of stealing client data
Cloud software provider Zoho has accused Sequoia and Accel-backed rival Freshworks of stealing confidential customer data in February that accounts to misappropriation of trade secrets. Zoho, which is among the first of India’s software-as-a-service companies, in a lawsuit said that its customers were sent emails by Freshworks executives to court business. Both companies are US-headquartered […]
Ecomm ops resume but deliveries may move in slow lane
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi India’s top online grocers and e-retailers said they have restored operations in larger cities but are still hobbled by the massive backlog of orders and shortage of workers triggered by the ongoing nationwide lockdown to stem the tide of Covid19 infections. E-grocers BigBasket and Grofers, e-commerce firms Amazon and Flipkart, as well […]
NRAI asks landlords to waive rentals for restaurants till June
The National Restaurant Association of India ( NRAI) has written an open letter to landlords in the foods and beverages space requesting them to waive rents up to June or until the time the lockdown continues, whichever is later. “While this shutdown may continue for a month or two, we will take many more months […]
How tech firms are helping institutions smoothen their sudden transition to online teaching
Sanjana Hira, a graduate student at Ashoka University in Sonipat, has been attending online classes from her Gurgaon home ever since educational institutions across India closed down campuses to contain the spread of coronavirus. “While many of our lectures are being held online through video-conferencing apps like Zoom and Google Hangouts, some professors prefer uploading […]