By Chris HughesSoftBank Group Corp. became vulnerable to activist attack by Elliott Management Corp. because of the harmful noise generated by the Japanese technology investor’s giant Vision Fund. That noise just won’t die down. Sunday brought a report in the Financial Times that Vision Fund head Rajeev Misra is looking to raise a multi-billion dollar […]
Azure Offline Backup with Azure Data Box now in preview
An ever-increasing number of enterprises, even as they adopt a hybrid IT strategy, continue to retain mission-critical data on-premises and look towards the public cloud as an effective offsite for their backups. Azure Backup—Azure’s built-in data-protection solution, provides a simple, secure, and cost-effective mechanism to backup these data-assets over the network to Azure, while eliminating […]
B2B e-commerce firm MaxWholesale raises $3 million in new funds
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi MaxWholesale, a B2B e-commerce platform for kirana (mom-and-pop stores) has raised $3 million led by Indian Angel Network and Al Falaj Investment Company (AFI), an Abu Dhabi based private family office. Existing investor Maple Capital also participated in this round along with Infoedge’s ex-CFO Ambarish Raghuvanshi, Maple Capital’s Abhinav Grover and Biba […]
5 Hot network-automation startups to watch
With the combined challenges of tight IT budgets and scarcer technical talent, it’s becoming imperative for enterprise network pros to embrace automation of processes and the way infrastructure responds to changing network traffic. Not only can automation help address these problems, they can also improve overall application-response time by anticipating and addressing looming congestion. Modern […]
Swedish investor lowers Quikr valuation by 45%
Swedish investment firm Kinnevik has marked down the valuation of Quikr by 45% to about $570 million from more than $1 billion as of September 2019, the firm said in its annual earnings statement earlier this month. The fall in valuation comes as the Bengaluru-based online classifieds and transactions marketplace discovered fraud in its co-living […]
Bezos launches $10B fund to combat climate change
His company is often criticized for its environmental record, but Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world’s richest man, said Monday that he was committing $10 billion to a new fund to tackle climate change. In a post to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram, the e-commerce tycoon said the Bezos Earth Fund would […]
Visa says OTP not needed for ‘routine’ transactions
Global card network provider Visa aims to phase out the twofactor authentication (2FA) process on routine card transactions during digital checkouts and replace the scrutiny layer with a riskbased prompt, where transactions deemed unusual or risky by banks would be vetted through a One Time Password (OTP) check. For this, Visa plans to hold discussions […]
Enterprise blockchain for verifying product authenticity
<!– –> Share this post: 100% extra virgin olive oil. Fair trade coffee. Conflict-free minerals. Most of us are familiar with these terms, and every day we place our trust in labels and our favorite retailers, but how do we know these claims are real? Many products are in fact mislabeled or have misleading labels. […]
A human may never read your resume again
Awesome, not awesome. #Awesome“Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been working to improve the state of global health through his nonprofit foundation for 20 years, and today he told the nation’s premier scientific gathering that advances in artificial intelligence and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead. “We have an opportunity with […]
Digital payments firms Paytm and PhonePe amp up marketing spends
Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Homegrown digital payment companies PhonePe and Paytm plan to spend a combined Rs 2,000 crore on marketing this year, as they look to increase awareness, credibility and promote products to a wider consumer audience, top executives at these firms said. While PhonePe has earmarked Rs 800 crore for marketing, Paytm plans to […]