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bananaipindia · 5 years ago

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Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs,PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company, Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service and more.

New Post has been published on https://www.bananaip.com/ip-news-center/flipkart-and-ficci-to-conduct-e-commerce-workshop-series-for-msmespaypal-acquires-online-deal-finding-company-amazon-echo-will-now-play-spotifys-free-music-service-and-more/

Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs,PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company, Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service and more.

Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs; PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company for USD 4 billion; E-Commerce Sites Top List of Consumer Complaints in India; Shutterstock Offers Affordable Music Licensing for Content Creators; Amazon’s Music Streaming Service is Now Free; Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service; Apple Finally Enters the B2B Streaming Market; Streaming Service Mubi Launches in India; Frozen 2 Release Accompanied by Record 67 Brand Deals in India and more.

Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs

Flipkart, the e-commerce marketplace owned by American retail giant Walmart, has partnered with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) to launch a workshop series aimed at Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME). The workshops, to be conducted across India starting with Ahmedabad in November, will be themed ‘Winning big with e-commerce’, and will aim to help MSMEs understand the e-commerce industry, how it can help them, and how they can build their business and increase brand visibility. According to Flipkart, its representatives will address specific accounting and taxation issues, access to capital, how to identify new opportunities, the importance of brand building online, how to build and scale their brands, and supply chain management and inventory planning for e-commerce. These workshops will then move to other Indian cities, including Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Guwahati, and Nagpur.

PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company for USD 4 billion

PayPal, the American online payment company, is acquiring Honey Science Corporation, a company that operates a deal-finding browser add-on and mobile application, for USD 4 billion, mostly cash. Honey, which has 17 million monthly active users, tracks sales and retailers’ promo codes, provides consumers with the option to browse the best offers, and automatically selects the best cost-saving promo code while checking out on online shopping sites. The company also rolled out a price-tracking feature which informs shoppers of an item’s price history. Honey’s browser extension now works across approximately 30,000 websites, including fashion, technology, travel, and even pizza delivery sites. It claims that its users have saved a total of more than USD 2 billion till date.

With this acquisition, PayPal will now gain a giant foothold in the online shopping market, featuring earlier in the consumer’s shopping experience rather than just on the payment page, where it currently competes against credit cards or Apple Pay, for instance. PayPal has been facing increased competition from giants like Apple, Google, and Facebook, who have recently begun entering the payments market, apart from its traditional competitors in credit card companies.

E-Commerce Sites Top List of Consumer Complaints in India

According to data from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, e-commerce companies topped the list of consumer complaints received on the government’s national helpline, with one in every five complaints directed against an e-commerce company. The list was led by Flipkart, Reliance Jio, and Amazon. More than 100,000 of the 500,000 plus complaints were against e-commerce companies, with banks following with 41,600, and telecom garnering 29,400. A ministry official said that the increase in the number of complaints against e-commerce companies was likely due to the growth in their consumer base. Most of the complaints against the e-commerce companies pertained to spurious products, problems in exchange, and delayed delivery, while those against telecom companies were related to overbilling, data deduction, and connectivity problems.

The government has responded to increasing dissatisfaction among consumers by shoring up its grievance redressal mechanism. The Ministry launched a mobile application where consumers could register their complaints, which would be redressed within 60 days. The government has also published draft e-commerce rules which focusses on e-commerce companies’ obligations and mechanisms of grievance redressal. Another ministry official claimed that companies, however, were responding well to complaints—of 565,000 complaints received last year, 555,000 were resolved, and a similar resolution rate is expected this year.

Shutterstock Offers Affordable Music Licensing for Content Creators

Shutterstock, the American provider of stock photography, is expanding its offerings to include music. It has launched an unlimited music subscription plan for USD 149 per month, giving content creators and digital marketers access to more than 11,000 tracks that can be included in web-based content, like YouTube videos, podcasts, and conference presentations. The Shutterstock Music Library, which will be searchable by genre, mood, or popularity, has been curated by professional musicians, and hundreds of tracks will be added every month. According to Shutterstock, this is a cost-effective feature for marketers lacking the budget and resources to pursue high-end music productions, and “frees them to focus on the creative vision rather than worrying about budget”.

Amazon’s Music Streaming Service is Now Free

Online retail giant Amazon is now offering its music streaming service free, with advertisements. While it previously offered free, ad-supported music streaming to owners of its smart device Echo, it is now expanding a 2 million song catalogue same to all customers. This is the same catalogue offered to those who have subscribed to Amazon’s Prime membership, albeit with advertisements.

This move won’t ruffle any feathers among major music streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music, considering Amazon’s music catalogue is much smaller, and is not supported by personalisation technology as advanced as what drives Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, for instance. Amazon’s move, instead, is aimed at making its Prime subscription more appealing to its consumers, encouraging them to subscribe to remove ads. Amazon’s Prime subscription is one of the company’s major focuses, as Prime members will shop more often from Amazon’s e-commerce site, which is where its profits primarily lie.

Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service

Swedish-American music streaming provider Spotify, whose service previously worked with Amazon Echo only for premium subscribers, has now extended support on the smart device for its free tier users. Similar support will now also be available on smart speakers manufactured by American audio manufacturing company Bose and consumer electronics company Sonos. This news comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement that its own music service would become free across devices. Though Amazon’s limited 2 million song catalogue doesn’t make it much of a competitor to Spotify, which boasts of over 50 million songs as well as powerful personalisation capabilities, Spotify’s stock dropped almost 5% following Amazon’s announcement.

Apple Finally Enters the B2B Streaming Market

Technology behemoth Apple has finally announced its much-anticipated move into the Business-to-Business (B2B) streaming market, with department store Harrods and clothing company Levi’s already using Apple’s music streaming service Apple Music in their stores. While regular Apple Music or Spotify subscriptions do not permit use on commercial premises, providing B2B streaming at additional costs has long seemed an obvious way for streaming services to generate extra revenue.

Streaming services Pandora and Sirius already offer B2B services in the US, while there are companies like Mood Media and Playnetwork whose primary business is providing music to retail clients. Apple seemed to confirm its plans to enter the market when it registered trademarks for Apple Music for Business last year, and Spotify has demonstrated interest in retail-focussed Soundtrack Your Brand, which published a study in 2018 estimating that the music industry was missing out on revenues worth USD 2.65 billion per year by not exploiting B2B streaming to its fullest.

Streaming Service Mubi Launches in India

12-year old movie streaming and rental service Mubi has launched in India. Unlike more well-known streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, Mubi’s primary selling point is its selection of critically acclaimed movies. Mubi also maintains a stark difference from its larger competitors in the market by maintaining a small catalogue of just 30 movies at any given point, with every new title being accompanied by the exit of an existing one; no movie stays longer than 30 days on the platform. Founded in 2007, Mubi initial business plan mirrored that of services like Netflix. However, realising financial constraints, Mubi rerouted itself into its current form of offering a very limited selection, focussing on lesser-known critical gems.

Having amassed 9 million subscribers worldwide, Mubi has launched in India at a much lower price point than in other countries—much like other streaming services. It has also, for the first time, launched a dedicated channel for local movies. With access to both the local and global channels, Indian subscribers will have access to 60 movies. Mubi has appointed Academy Award-winning film producer Guneet Monga, of Gangs of Wasseypur– and Lunchbox-fame, as its content advisor.

Frozen 2 Release Accompanied by Record 67 Brand Deals in India

The release of Frozen 2, Disney’s sequel to its 2013 animated blockbuster, in India has been anteceded by a flurry of merchandising as Disney India has signed sponsorship deals with a record 67 brands, the highest such number for an animated movie in the country. These partnerships involve brands like toy retailer Hamleys, fashion brands Max and Reliance Trends, clothing chain Pantaloons, and e-commerce company Flipkart.

A special Frozen collection has been launched by Pantaloons for young girls, which includes joggers, leggings, sweatshirts, sweater dresses, and footwear. Hasbro, the toy and board games company, will roll out a range of new dolls and playsets inspired by the two protagonists, Elsa and Anna, while multinational conglomerate ITC has launched a line of stationery products including notebooks, geometry boxes, and colouring sets based on the movie. Paint company Asian Paints has introduced a series of wall décor derived from the film, while Flipkart will be selling Frozen themed merchandise across categories. This amassing of deals is symptomatic of a trend of increasing localisation and marketing initiatives by Hollywood studios in India.

Authored and compiled by Param Gupta

The Licensing and E-Commerce News Bulletin is brought to you jointly by the E-Commerce Law and Consulting/Strategy Divisions of BananaIP Counsels, a Top IP Firm in India. If you have any questions, or need any clarifications, please write to [email protected] with the subject: Licensing News.

Disclaimer: Please note that the news bulletin has been put together from different sources, primary and secondary, and BananaIP’s reporters may not have verified all the news published in the bulletin. You may write to [email protected] for corrections and take down.

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/for-big-tech-biden-brings-a-new-era-but-no-ease-in-scrutiny-yourcentralvalley-com-ksee24/

For Big Tech, Biden brings a new era but no ease in scrutiny | YourCentralValley.com KSEE24

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama-Biden administration was a charmed era for America’s tech companies — a moment when they were lionized as innovators, hailed as job creators and largely left alone.

Now Joe Biden is coming back, this time as president. But times have changed. The halcyon days of an adoring Washington are unlikely to return when Biden takes the oath of office in January, with mounting legislative and regulatory challenges to the industry — including stronger enforcement of antitrust laws — nearly certain to outlast the tenure of President Donald Trump.

“The techlash is in full force,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University and co-director of its High Tech Law Institute.

In the years since Barack Obama and Biden left the White House, the tech industry’s political fortunes have flipped. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have come under scrutiny from Congress, federal regulators, state attorneys general and European authorities. Twitter has found itself in frequent run-ins with lawmakers over its policies for moderating content on its platform. And companies have seen their political support in Congress erode.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle champion stronger oversight of the industry, arguing its massive market power is out of control, crushing smaller competitors and endangering consumers’ privacy. They say the companies hide behind a legal shield to allow false information to flourish on their social media networks or to entrench bias.

In steps Biden, who may aim to take a bite out of the dominance of Big Tech and may welcome an opportunity to work with the opposing side to curb the power of a common adversary.

As a presidential contender, Biden said the breakup of big tech companies should be considered. Dismantling the tech giants is “something we should take a really hard look at,” he told The Associated Press in an interview. He said he wants to see quickly crimped the social media companies’ long-held legal protections for speech on their platforms. And he singled out Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for scorn, calling him “a real problem.”

The Biden administration is also expected to press forward with the Trump Justice Department’s new antitrust lawsuit against Google, though its shape likely could be changed.

But if Biden decides to pursue major legislation to overhaul the laws governing tech competition, he’ll have to navigate a tricky congressional and political landscape.

Democratic lawmakers in the House, after a sweeping investigation by a Judiciary Committee panel, called last month for Congress to rein in Big Tech, possibly forcing the giants to break up their businesses while making it harder for them to acquire others and imposing new rules to safeguard competition.

Those kinds of mandated breakups through a legislative overhaul would be a radical step for Congress to take and could be a bridge too far for most Republicans.

Though it hasn’t been settled, Biden faces the possibility of becoming the first Democrat in modern history to take office without his party controlling Congress. Republicans would retain control of the Senate by winning one of two runoff elections in Georgia in January. Democrats have already won the House.

Republican control of the Senate would force Biden to curb his ambitions and pursue a different legislative agenda, one rooted in bipartisanship. Legislation on the tech industry could be one area of possible agreement.

“Biden’s strength as a senator was exactly trying to broker those kinds of deals,” noted Santa Clara University’s Goldman.

But what may emerge in the end is a heavy reliance on executive power through more vigorous enforcement of existing antitrust laws, said Jerry Ellig, a former government official and professor at George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center. Republican lawmakers are likely to hang together in opposing fundamental changes to the tech industry, which also could affect smaller companies, while Democrats could be pulled in different directions.

The Justice Department’s landmark suit last month accused Google of abusing its dominance in online search and advertising to boost profits — the government’s most significant attempt to protect competition since its groundbreaking case against Microsoft over 20 years ago.

Then there’s the issue of legal protection for speech on the social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and Google: another area of agreement between the two parties, though for different reasons.

Momentum has built in Congress toward curbing some of the bedrock protections that have generally shielded the companies from legal responsibility for what people post on their platforms. Republicans accuse the companies of anti-conservative bias that erases those viewpoints on social media while allowing what they describe as extreme leftist and anti-American rhetoric to thrive.

Democrats’ concern focuses on hate speech and conspiracy theories that have sometimes incited physical violence and on the amplification on tech platforms of falsehoods from Trump — most notably allegations of fraud in ballot counting in the recent election.

The social media companies’ CEOs rebuffed accusations of anti-conservative bias at a Senate hearing last month and promised to aggressively defend their platforms from being used to sow chaos in the Nov. 3 election.

Critics in both political parties say the immunity under Section 230 of a 1996 telecoms law enables the social media companies to abdicate their responsibility to impartially moderate content.

Biden has said that Section 230 “immediately should be revoked.”

Given the landscape in Congress and the factions of views on material seen by nearly everyone on the planet, quick action may be difficult.

If consensus legislation does emerge, suggests George Washington’s Ellig, “They’ll make it vague enough so everyone can claim victory.”

___

Follow Gordon at https://twitter.com/mgordonap.

#biden #brings #scrutiny #Technology

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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Reliance Jio & Facebook differ on key issues

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/reliance-jio-facebook-differ-on-key-issues/

Reliance Jio & Facebook differ on key issues

Bengaluru | New Delhi: Facebook could find itself sparring with Reliance Jio in policy debates over how data is collected, stored and shared in India, said legal experts, as the two technology giants differ markedly in their stance on these issues.

The American social media company, which is paying $5.7 billion for a minority stake in the digital arm of India’s largest conglomerate, has opposed the Centre’s demand that data of Indians be stored locally. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, on the other hand, has been unequivocal that data of citizens must be controlled and owned by Indians, and not foreign corporations.

COMPANIES UNLIKELY TO DILUTE STANCE: EXPERTS Facebook and Reliance Jio’s views also diverge sharply on the matter of providing access to private social media data to law enforcement authorities.

Last year, Jio told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) that all over-the-top (OTT) platforms should give full data access — including decryption keys — to Indian law enforcement authorities. However, Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been fighting off requests from the Indian government for tracing origin of messages citing end-to-end encryption. The company believes that breaking encryption would compromise user privacy.

In October, Facebook told the Supreme Court that it was not obliged to share user data with the Indian government.

Experts said that while the two companies may not dilute their stance, especially with respect to encryption or data localisation, they could co-exist in many areas.

DIFFERENCES DISCUSSED A person with direct knowledge of the developments in the runup to the mega deal said the differences (about policy matters) were discussed before inking the agreement. “During due diligence, we had come across such concerns. All litigations that were (ongoing) and the policy positions that both parties have taken were part of the disclosures,” the person said. “But these issues are separate from the deal, which is purely commercial. No policy conflict has come in the way of moulding the deal.”

In response to fresh queries on the issue, a spokesperson for Reliance Jio referred ET to an earlier reply from Anshuman Thakur, Reliance’s head of strategy, who had said that Facebook and Jio are independent entities and “there’ll be areas that we will collaborate in, but there will be areas where we will potentially not agree with each other either”.

“Both the organisations are very conscious about consumer data and just making sure that consumer data is respected. And also, by abiding by all the regulations. There will be things where we’ll have a difference of opinion … but that’s the way it is,” Thakur said.

INDEPENDENT VIEWS Facebook said the intent of its collaboration with Jio Platforms is to enable new opportunities for the millions of micro and small businesses in India. “We will continue to have independent views on a number of topics,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed response.

The Facebook-Reliance Jio deal will go to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for approval amid concerns over control of data, privacy and net neutrality.

Since its launch in September 2016, Jio has emerged as India’s largest telecom company with over 388 million subscribers. Facebook has over 328 million users on its social network and over 400 million users on its WhatsApp messaging platform in India.

Experts believe that while there are areas of contradiction, mutual benefits will outweigh those.

“Facebook is unlikely to change its stance on issues such as end-toend encryption just for India and Jio, because it is a global company and its policies are standard across the globe,” a former top bureaucrat told ET. “(Mukesh) Ambani also has strong views on issues such as data localisation, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out,” the person added.

SETTING PRECEDENT Legal experts feel FB’s stance on allowing access to law enforcement agencies and encryption will not change. “If they start giving law enforcement access in India, it sets a precedent for other countries,” said Vrinda Bhandari, a Supreme Court lawyer.

Last year, without specifically mentioning WhatsApp, Reliance Jio had told the government that many companies were employing end-to-end encryption under the guise of providing better security to users, and India must enable traceability on encrypted platforms. WhatsApp has resisted the government’s demand on traceability for two years now.

Bhandari said that while Reliance Jio may tone down its attack on WhatsApp, it will not back down on its demand that Indian data be stored locally. “Its business interests there are much stronger than Facebook’s investment,” she said.

Anu Monga, partner of Indus-Law, said the companies would have envisaged this issue while finalising the deal. “By lending different views to a debate, I don’t see it as one party losing and the other one winning. But it will be interesting to watch the policy positions presented by them now.”

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growinstablog · 5 years ago

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Facebook Purchases Majority Stake in Indian Internet Provider Jio for $5.7 Billion

If you wanted to know how much value Facebook sees in the emerging Indian market, this deal certainly provides some indication.

After recent reports that Facebook was looking to acquire a stake in Indian internet provider Jio, The Social Network has now confirmed that it has purchased a majority stake in the Reliance-owned venture for a massive $US5.7 billion.

As explained by Facebook:

“Today we are announcing a $5.7 billion, or INR 43,574 crore, investment in Jio Platforms Limited, part of Reliance Industries Limited, making Facebook its largest minority shareholder. The investment underscores our commitment to India, and our excitement for the dramatic transformation that Jio has spurred in the country.”

Launched just three years ago, Jio has quickly become one of the top internet providers in India, with some 388 million customers in the region. Facebook’s involvement will provide Jio with a whole range of new resources, while the acquisition will provide Facebook with a new way into the Indian market, which it’s been looking to gain a foothold in for many years, with varying levels of success.

Most notable for Facebook will be connection to WhatsApp, the most used messaging app in the nation.

As Facebook notes:

“Over the years, Facebook has invested in India to connect people and help businesses launch and grow. WhatsApp is so ingrained in Indian life that it has become a commonly used verb across many Indian languages and dialects. Facebook brings together friends and families, but moreover, it’s one of the country’s biggest enablers of growth for small businesses. And Instagram has grown dramatically in India in recent years as the place where people follow their interests and passions.”

Facebook will be hoping to use its newfound presence in the local market to fuel more business activity via WhatsApp, and Facebook, which will incorporate broader expansion of Indian eCommerce platforms like Meesho, which Facebook also acquired last year.

India, and its 1.4 billion citizens, is the next key battleground for the tech giants, with both Facebook and Google both working to gain a foothold in the Indian market in order to expand their audience base, provide new business tools, and build revenue-generating partnerships that will facilitate significant opportunities to expand their respective empires.

The developing region is on the cusp of hitting the next stage in tech adoption. India is now the world’s second-largest smartphone market after China, while the number of internet users in the nation is expected to top 850 million by 2022. For comparison, the US is expected to reach around 300 million internet users at the same stage.

Given this, the tech company that can best position itself in the Indian market stands to win out big time as Indian users adapt to how they live and work incorporating online means.

Facebook’s deal for Jio is a massive win in this respect, and while past efforts like its Free Basics program haven’t been welcomed by Indian regulators, it would appear that Facebook has found a new opportunity, which will be a key element in the platform’s growth strategy moving forward.

That will also, eventually, facilitate new opportunities for businesses looking to connect with the Indian market, as Facebook moves to provide more business tools.

https://growinsta.xyz/facebook-purchases-majority-stake-in-indian-internet-provider-jio-for-5-7-billion/

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ladystylestores · 4 years ago

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Antitrust experts weigh in on breaking up Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

Gary Reback is perhaps best known as the lawyer who helped convince the U.S. Department of Justice to bring an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s. He watched the majority of the House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Reback still remembers a Senate hearing that put pressure on the government and led to the filing of United States v. Microsoft Corporation in 1998. That’s why he focused more on lines of questioning this week than on answers from CEOs of companies that have amassed unprecedented wealth and power.

“To me, the core turning point was right at the beginning, basically,” he said, pointing to sharp and detailed questioning in reference to a range of documents obtained in the course of the committee’s assessment.

The question on Wednesday was whether tech giants have grown too powerful, and if you watched the hearings, many members of Congress leave no doubt that they believe the answer is yes. In his opening remarks, for example, U.S. House Antitrust subcommittee chair David Cicilline (D-RI) said tech giants enjoy the power to pick winners and losers in the private market and that consumers have “no escape from surveillance” because there are no alternatives. He added “What’s at stake is whether we let ourselves be governed by private monopolies.”

VentureBeat spoke with Reback and other antitrust experts about what stood out during the hearing and what should happen next. Each favors some form of action or legislation to address the litany of anticompetitive practice allegations that emerged over nearly six hours of testimony.

‘We may have run out of options’

During the hearing, a number of Democratic lawmakers argued that Washington needs to take steps to ensure a fair market. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) insisted that existing antitrust law is fine but needs enforcement. Reback pointed out that convoluted antitrust law makes it difficult to bring cases to court. He said Sensenbrenner was correct in the sense that new legislation might not have been necessary if action had been taken earlier, but he stressed that there isn’t much antitrust enforcement happening today.

Reback blamed the outsized growth of tech giants in part on the Obama administration’s failure to take action. Nobody who understands antitrust law would suggest implementing restrictions cavalierly, Reback said, but regulators have already waited so long that it’s tough to see any viable alternative to reform.

“By not doing anything for so long, we may have run out of options,” Reback said. “The way anticompetitive practices work, if you deal with them quickly, if you deal with them in a rifle shot, you fix it and the companies go on competing and everything’s fine. But if you don’t fix it, then market power builds up and builds up and, in the case we have here, there are no competitors basically for at least three of these companies. They bought their competitors, put them out of business, whatever. And so that then is a problem in terms of how you expect a free market to fix this.”

For context: Apple reported nearly $60 billion in profits and became the world’s most valuable company on Friday. On Thursday, Amazon reported revenue up 40% to $88.9 billion, while Google’s parent company Alphabet and Facebook reported revenue above analysts’ estimates.

Each of these companies has been accused of anticompetitive practices that harm democracy, consumers, and small businesses. And each enjoys majority control in a number of industry verticals in the U.S. (and much of the world). Areas of dominance include:

Facebook’s control of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram

Apple and Google’s control of mobile app markets

Google’s control in search

Facebook and Google’s control of online advertising

Amazon’s online shopping platform, which records nearly 75% of online sales

Facebook’s and Google’s control of digital advertising, which has hurt journalism industry revenue

Stacy Mitchell is codirector of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a nonprofit organization that champions distributed, local control over corporate power. She found the committee to be very knowledgeable about how the four companies conduct business and argued that Amazon has a monopolistic hold on small businesses. Last week, Mitchell resigned her position as a fellow at the Yale University Thurmond Arnold Project, a group studying antitrust issues, after finding out that director Fiona Scott Morton is a paid advisor to Amazon and Apple. ILSR also researches Amazon’s anticompetitive practices and advocates breaking the ecommerce giant into separate companies.

Mitchell watched the hearing with interest.

“I found it thrilling, really,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh, this is what it looks like when a democratic government actually addresses fundamental issues of power and control and … takes an aggressive stance toward CEOs and really in some ways alters the power dynamics.’”

She said an exchange between Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) and Jeff Bezos during this week’s antitrust hearing demonstrated the need for this kind of intervention. Under questioning, Bezos confirmed that the Buy Box algorithm favors products shipped with Prime and Amazon fulfillment services. Bezos also said Amazon ties the use of its fulfillment services to winning the Buy Box. Mitchell highlighted the obvious pressure this puts on sellers. “This is a pretty serious matter because effectively what Amazon has done is it has compelled sellers to use Amazon’s fulfillment services in order to get the kind of placement on the site that actually results in sales.”

Scanlon also cited a report ILSR released last week that found Amazon pockets about 30% of sales from independent sellers, up from 19% five years ago. The fee brought in nearly twice the revenue Amazon Web Services did in 2019, and Mitchell said Amazon uses the money to subsidize other company divisions and dominate new industry verticals. That’s part of why ILSR supports breaking major Amazon divisions into individual companies.

“Much of its power, and abuse of its power, comes from it being able to leverage one part of its operation to compel someone to do something in another part of its operation, like we were talking about with the fulfillment. A lot of the abuse lives in the in-between, and I think that’s a pretty powerful case,” Mitchell said.

In testimony Wednesday, Cicilline noted that Amazon internally refers to third-party sellers as “internal competitors.”

Bezos said Wednesday that he “cannot guarantee” Amazon employees have not used data about independent sellers to create the company’s own products, which would be a violation of company policy. Lawmakers argued this practice undercuts small businesses that have no option but to sell their goods on Amazon’s online marketplace. The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Amazon employees used data about individual sellers to create competing Amazon products.

Anticompetitive behavior accusations have also been lobbed at Amazon by startups who participated in its Alexa Fund, including Nucleus, which says Amazon stole its smart display and home intercom concept. AI startup DefinedCrowd and more than two dozen startup founders detailed similar practices last week. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) referred to this practice as an “innovation kill zone” that puts fear into smaller businesses and makes fair competition impossible.

During the hearing, Apple, Facebook, and Google were also accused of stealing ideas from other companies. (Each of the tech giants has growing investment fund arms.)

“Three of the companies [Amazon, Facebook, and Google] basically have the same set of accusations against them, which is that competitors come on your platform, you take their information, you preference your own results, compete against them, drive them out of business, or buy them cheap,” Reback said.

Big tech too big for free markets?

Both Mitchell and Reback repeatedly emphasized the contrast between the tone of the hearing Wednesday and congressional hearings held in 2018 following the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Mark Zuckerberg. In that earlier hearing, members of Congress demonstrated an inability to understand technology or how Facebook applications work.

What seemed to be missing back then, Mitchell and Reback said — but could be seen in exchanges Wednesday — was the ability to ask followup questions. Without a grasp of how a company operates, or its products and services, any line of questioning will yield little beyond the initial question. CEOs can then run out a portion of the five minutes allotted to each elected official by explaining technology or offering platitudes about how much their companies value things like privacy.

Mitchell said the recent antitrust hearing had a different tone. “This clearly was proceeding as part of an investigation … and sort of had the feel of ‘We’ve gathered all this data or information, and the process is that we’re going to give you a chance to answer for it,’” Mitchell said.

Sally Hubbard is director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute and testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust at its first big tech hearing in June 2019.

Last summer, Hubbard testified that Facebook and Google use their digital advertising monopoly in multiple ways to disadvantage independent journalism and newspapers that are deemed competitors. Both companies directly compete with the free press for attention while controlling the main traffic highways of search engines, smartphones, and social media. She said the hearing Wednesday in part restored her faith in democracy and institutions and gave her hope that meaningful action is possible.

“To me, it was the most impressive hearing that I can remember seeing in my lifetime of the members of Congress being so highly prepared, so in-the-know about complex issues, and willing to take on the most powerful companies in America and the world,” Hubbard said.

Break up big tech?

Hubbard said she could see the rollback of acquisitions like Google’s AdMob and DoubleClick or Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp as part of potential solutions, but she pointed out that such measures aren’t the only option. She wants lawsuits filed when anticompetitive behavior like the kind described in the hearing occurs, ongoing monitoring of exclusionary conduct, and scrutiny of mergers, especially acquisitions of small companies that may be viewed as a competitive threat. She also recommended passing legislation to support Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) suggestion that you can own a platform or sell goods on it, but you can’t do both.

Reback agrees.

“If we can’t get antitrust enforcement on [these companies] … we need legislation like the type Elizabeth Warren is suggesting, where if you own the platform then you can’t own anything on it. That would be a big change, but if there’s no way to police the [current] situation so that competitors get a fair shot and you don’t run everybody else out of business by using their data against them, if there’s no way to police that, then you don’t have any alternative but new legislation,” he said.

On the topic of the digital ad market’s negative impact on journalism in the United States, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) talked Wednesday with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai about Google’s AdExchange operating in a way that resembles insider trading, adding in the context of independent news outlets.

There’s nothing revolutionary about stopping a single company from controlling both sides of the market to prevent adverse outcomes that resemble insider trading, and it’s past time to bring the same concepts to the digital economy, Hubbard said.

“The point that I like to make a lot is that the online world somehow has avoided regulation, but it’s not the cute little internet of the ’90s anymore. The online world has basically eaten the offline world, so if we don’t have any rules or regulations governing the online world or fair competition, then you don’t have them in the offline world either,” Hubbard said, adding that the hearing will add momentum to other antimonopoly efforts and will help educate the public.

Mitchell concluded that the hearing itself was just one step in the process and the committee’s final report will convey the actual substance of the debate.

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aiksol-blog · 5 years ago

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Why Facebook Is Betting Big on India

Amid a global economic recession, Facebook made a surprise announcement on Tuesday that it is spending $5.7 billion for a 9.99 percent stake in Jio Platforms, the tech subsidiary of India’s Reliance Industries. The investment - the single largest in Facebook’s history - is a giant bet on India’s online growth.

This deal could help Jeo speed up its evolution from a cellular internet service to a broader one-stop digital universe - perhaps something like China’s WeChat. The news of this deal also sent Reliance Industries’ share price soaring on Wednesday, enabling the chairman, Mukesh Ambani, to once again surpass Alibaba’s Jack Ma as Asia’s richest man.

In short, this is a win-win situation for both the companies. Even though Facebook’s social media services have been extremely popular in India, it has struggled to get past regulatory concerns in India over some of its ambitious projects such as its free limited Internet offering Free Basics and digital currency Libra. On the other hand, Reliance can rely on the popular messaging service to accelerate the building of its marketplace. It is also worth mentioning that this is the largest foreign direct investment in the technology sector in India.

#facebook #jio #facebook jio deal #investment #social media #telecom

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bananaipindia · 5 years ago

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Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs, PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company, Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service and more.

New Post has been published on https://www.bananaip.com/ip-news-center/flipkart-and-ficci-to-conduct-e-commerce-workshop-series-for-msmes-paypal-acquires-online-deal-finding-company-amazon-echo-will-now-play-spotifys-free-music-service-and-more/

Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs, PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company, Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service and more.

Flipkart and FICCI to Conduct E-Commerce Workshop Series for MSMEs

PayPal Acquires Online Deal-Finding Company for USD 4 billion

E-Commerce Sites Top List of Consumer Complaints in India

Shutterstock Offers Affordable Music Licensing for Content Creators

Amazon’s Music Streaming Service is Now Free

Amazon Echo Will Now Play Spotify’s Free Music Service

Apple Finally Enters the B2B Streaming Market

Streaming Service Mubi Launches in India

Frozen 2 Release Accompanied by Record 67 Brand Deals in India

Authored and compiled by Param Gupta

#Intellectual property law #IP Commercialization and Licensing

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dwestfieldblog · 6 years ago

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SPIRITUAL EMERGENCIES

Its been a hard nights day and I've been working like a God...Centring my chi by ( ) in conjunction with a little ( ) on Sundays but don't try this at home unless you have some. Under the influence but not persuaded, with no choice other than to follow my free will. 350 songs recorded in Prague (about a third of them are good enough) over a very long weekend and now ready to go again...Last month I heard my own voice in a dream saying 'Death is my second home', so perhaps another temporary close-down is coming. Hope that paragraph was pretentious enough. If not...meditating on 'The First law of thermodynamics...No energy in the universe is created and none is destroyed'. So all is well...

The recent magnificent Wargames with Russia and China...300 thousand men, (that's a lot) many fields of tanks and nautical miles filled with battleships, necessary because of (according to a joint statement from the protagonists) 'dangerous times' and 'unstable situations'. Reminds me of Bill Hicks quoting George Bush the older (the CIA president) saying 'The world is a dangerous place'...'yeah, thanks to YOU, quit arming the world!'. But this time around, these unstable situations are being more egged on and supported by Russia, gleefully supported as always by all those those make weapons. Trump is not the 'human' being to slow this down. Nature abhors a vacuum and she is rushing now to fill various empty heart/mind and soulless actions made by various leaders with processes of an irreversible...well... nature...Only '12 years' left now to avert climate change disaster...your newborns this year might very well inherit a desert. Well, if it was good enough for the Israelites...

Climate change debates witter on by men in suits flown in at great carbon footprint expense to sit around expensive South American wood tables and agree that time itself is running out. While those that disagree with them only do so because of well paying vested interests in the industries which drain, burn, drill and destroy. Human beings are like gangsters holed up and surrounded by the law, determined to take the hostages and cops with them when they go in a blaze of glory, just so they don't die alone. Reliance on coal continues, the need for oil because of ... 'lifestyle choices'...(ego)... back to RAW again...

'As soon as they find out how to put a meter between us and the sun, only then will we have clean energy.'

There is a very special circle of Hell reserved for the Barons of black gold, where they burn alive forever, lit by oil. And another circle for those mapping the human genome and copyrighting it so they can make billions from various medicines and procedures, holding the masses to ransom. Peace will occur either when it is more profitable than arms dealing or when there is absolute silence of death on the human side. How many people do you know who are neither whore nor pimp? Or both.

The purpose of existence is (NB. seems to me in my current long running reality tunnel to be) evolution...and as with self programming artificial intelligence, there is a type of instinctive logic which suggests that as any chain is as strong as its' weakest link...and the mass of humanity appears to be working against evolving, then nature will just erase us and get on with creating her own new thang without the apes. Quite right too. The universe is (seems to be) 'non simultaneously apprehended events and interacting processing' but until I pick the free crop of magic mushrooms in the mystic forest this late October month, I will just take RAW's cosmic trigger words for it. (The lousy alchemist cook says make sure they are washed and/or dried right. Vomiting mould covered nipple tops before any hallucinogenic gets into the blood proper is very little fun. Learning, or not from experience in the face of common sense is always a hoot. Ask my liver. ) Anyway...let's be Sirius...

'News'...Nick Clegg is to take over the Facebook worries. (Head of Global Policy and Communications in Silicon Valley) Nick Clegg. This shows JUST how much Zuckerberg gives a damn eh? Useless/Hopeless. For those who don't know or remember, some years ago Clegg was the leader of the Liberal Party in Britain who swore he would never allow an increase in University fees if he were ever Prime Minister. After the election 'win' of David Cameron and the Conservatives, (only made possible with the Liberals siding with them) it took about two weeks before he was forced to go back on his word and toe the line of his bigger coalition partner. (Can't have an easily affordable education, that would be dangerous) A weak and easily breakable man. Expect Facebook to go on paying even less tax, abusing your private information and allowing Russia et al free rein to influence the populace.

Nice to see the half a million march against Brexit in London. Will accomplish nothing but good that some people woke up before the face of this bullshit a few days later... 'Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.....a eagle mewing her mighty youth'...Geoffrey Cox QC, the Attorney General invoking Milton at the Tory conference. Winston Churchill defined success as the 'ability to move from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm'. So, well done and three cheers boys..good luck with making Britain Great again. I would truly love to be proved wrong...but...

'In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice...and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta...held not as a votive in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose.' ...V for Vendetta via Hugo Weaving in an Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask. My other favourite quote from that film is.....

'And thus I clothe my naked villainy with odd old ends stolen forth from holy writ and seem a saint when most I play the devil.' Richard III by the real Shakespeare, which covers just about every politician and religious leader, bar a very very precious few. God may be great but he's not as fat as Buddha. And anyway, belief narrows reality tunnels. Which for some people, makes them feel stronger...

In October, Alternative fur (that's fur with an umlaut over the 'u', not the sexy animal hair which is so nice to stroke or be stroked by but I digress. Arf.) Germany... suggested quite firmly that middle school children report to them if any of their teachers said bad things about the new patriotic Nazi swine. Nothing dubious there, no harking back to cruel and better days of the old 'thousand year' Reich and denouncing intellectuals and subversives at all. A month before that, because of hearing shouting, I looked out of my own window one afternoon to see a six foot six skinhead, in army clothes and big black leather boots on a balcony opposite, drunk and rousingly crying out about Deutschland for five minutes in German to his mates in the kitchen behind him as he clasped a beer can. Perhaps he was only joking. Unlikely the grandmother living alone and above his flat thought so. And as for the massive shaven headed Slovak steroid monsters with tattoos on their necks who shout at each other in conversation even when both are sitting two feet away, their biggest insult to their tiny two old kids is to angrily shout 'Little gypsy!' at them when they do something wrong. All together now;Hail Victory! Fnord.

A bad death of a murdered journalist in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey... followed by a lovely picture in the papers of smiling Crown Prince Bin Salman with Jared Kusher (a walking cypher of wrong cleanliness and evil married to Trump's daughter) No wonder it is yet another bastard thing for Trump to hope the connections all vanish from..as he gently damns the killing of a critic of the very royal prince while tweeting endless vitriol against the third estate in the USA. And Donald's glorious tit for tat bollocks about the old nuclear bilateral agreement with Russia... 'Well THEY started it, so we will react...ad infinitum'. Back to the happy days of being able to wipe out the planet seventy times over and rational cold war paranoia...at some point a computer will finally analyse all probable outcomes for the last time and find the one way in which a nuclear war could be won with minimal death on the home side. The computer it will say 'Go for it alpha monkeys'.

'How long o lord, how long? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?' Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. (About Nixon, but ever more relevant by the day.)

Of course the masochistic paranoia of leaders will continue to find new and further devious outlets, displays and new laws...all the usual countries (IE all of them) behaving as if they can get away with murder forever. Forever, these days, is most likely shorter than a generation, unless there is already a dynasty of cruelty in place, where the buck/baton/cattle prod is passed down as an heirloom of death. Communication never gets to the top because underlings are scared to tell their bosses the truth in case the sweethearts are offended and kill them. (Meow and woof.)

*'The machine is running the engineers' Lenin on his deathbed. Communism, huh?

China's 'voluntary' organ donor scheme. Harvested from enemies of the state...70,000 annual operations...Got the money? Need a new liver? Sort you out in a fortnight, NO waiting list. Not suspicious at all, unless you are a doctor from another country looking into the massive amount of operations and the far smaller published donor lists. Hopefully, those rich enough to afford the instant new transplants will be better, peaceful people when they have their new tee total vegetarian Falun Gong organs in place. Whereas those with less to spend will have to make do with their internal workings run by other very involuntary donations made by dissidents who dared the high insult of comparing the 'president for life' to Winnie the Pooh.

Primum non nocere, you bastards. The Hippocratic Oath replaced by a hypocritical medical ideology of murder for profit. The state does not help the healthcare 'system' much, if at all, so the military hospitals with easy access to prisoners can get to work stealing what is needed from living bodies. Those arrested who do not give their names and places of birth for fear of involving their families are simple to vanish. They ceased to exist the moment they were caught. Download the report, written by two Canadians, one a former Crown prosecutor and the other a Human Rights Lawyer and make up your own mind as to the veracity. 'The Middle Kingdom between Heaven and Earth', the land which brought the world Taoism and Confucianism...

www.organharvestinvestigation.net

Take the time and read the report. Then ask yourself, if your children, parents or close friends needed a transplant to save their life (and you could afford a fast Chinese military hospital operation) would you truly care where the organ came from as long as it was healthy? If it was only for you, would you still take it, knowing where it had been stolen from or would you allow your own destiny to be? Desperation is one sure-fire test of the perception of morality.

*Ever notice all those t shirts, sweat shirts and bags with those certain cool slogans on? 'Happy to be an individual', 'My style is my choice', 'My freedom is my world', 'The end justifies the means'. Etc. Take a very cold and realistic guess as to where they are made and by whom and under what conditions. That's right.

I appear to live (temporarily) in a world where a printed sign on the inside of a toilet door needs to say in two languages 'First unlock the door then turn handle'. That's right kids/adults, you have to be able to open a door before you open it. Almost Zen wisdom but hardly rocket science or brain surgery. Stuff you learn at about the age of three. I have lost count (triple figures now) of how many customers in a certain shop I have seen standing next to a big, clearly printed sign on the counter to 'ring for service', watching them get ever more impatient as those who are working hard behind the scenes remain deaf and blind to their existence. And signs on the front door, inside and outside also in two languages, asking customers to please close the door. A third of them never do, even in heavy winter. The evil within me takes a savage glee at the depth of stupidity of these shameless idiots. The pathetic being within rejoices that he is not quite as dumb as these retarded bipeds and the fake existentialist feels a sweeping wave of sheer galactic horror. But...

Back to the litany once again and forever...quality over quantity. I have optimism for the few. They/you WILL make it. You will create it and become it. As long as you understand how to open a f...ing door, you are halfway there.

'Whoever can scare people enough (produce bio-survival anxiety) can sell them quickly on any verbal map which seems to give them relief. i.e. cure the anxiety. By frightening people with Hell and then offering them Salvation, the most ignorant or crooked individuals can 'sell' a whole system of thought that cannot bear two minutes of rational analysis. Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising.

And once the child/adult is afraid enough, they will follow the substitute parent/s, kept pliant and submissive by further shocks administered to their truly nervous system with the promise of support or threat of punishment. Shame forever without mercy on those outside the mainstream of politics and organised religion who maintain such deeply manipulative systems in the pretence of setting the tender initiates 'free'. You should be a positive alternative, not more of the same poison.

'You gave your life to be the person you are now. Was it worth it?' Richard Bach.Running from Saftey.

Onwards and inwards, sidestepping the unnecessary. You are your thoughts,'Reality' is personal, subjective and shaped by Will, the Love you come from and the Love you create. Happy everything/Sol Invictus to you and survive the long winter. Hibernate if needed, stay warm, learning and free...

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legit-scam-review · 6 years ago

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The Race for the Cross-Border Payments Market

Competition in the business of facilitating cross-border payments has just gotten tighter. Until recently, the primary fintech challenger to the reigning SWIFT international payment system has been Ripple Labs and its various products designed for the institutional banking sector. The first week of September saw the game-changing news break, as IBM announced promotion of its DLT-powered payment system, Blockchain World Wire (BWW), from beta to a ready-for-use product.

Operating on the Stellar blockchain, the new financial rail will provide an infrastructure for clearing and settling cross-border payments with finality “in near real-time,” at the same time reducing transaction costs by removing third-party intermediaries from the process. Pervasiveness of IBM-powered solutions in global finance — the company claims to be handling around 60 percent of the world’s transactional systems — provides BWW with a hefty launching pad, immediately propelling it to the top tier of the industry that is poised to grow to a size of $2 trillion by 2020.

IBM and Stellar were first spotted jointly developing cross-border financial solutions in October 2017, when they unveiled a plan to build a transaction infrastructure for the South Pacific region alongside KlickEx, a New Zealand-based payments network. The news of another high-profile deployment of the Stellar blockchain by IBM came this May, when Big Blue teamed up with Veridium Labs to help companies track their carbon emissions on a distributed ledger. Finally, in July, IBM announced the launch of Stronghold USD, a U.S. dollar-pegged stable coin run on the Stellar network, in a partnership with financial services provider Stronghold. The latter move was set to become consequential for the Blockchain World Wire system, which at that time was still in the works.

BWW workflow

The mechanics of the new payment system are fairly straightforward and rely on the notion of a bridge asset — a carrier of value on the network that can be exchanged to any fiat currency on each side of a transaction. As two financial institutions negotiate a payment, they “agree to use a stable coin, central bank digital currency or other digital asset as the bridge asset between any two fiat currencies.” Although this formulation presents a range of bridge asset options, the timing of the Stronghold USD launch suggests that it is the stable coin that is designed to serve as a primary vehicle of Blockchain World Wire transactions.

IBM also stresses that the new financial rail is built to integrate seamlessly with existing payments systems through its API, so banks won’t have to implement sweeping hardware changes in order to start using it. Once the sender’s fiat currency is converted into a proxy digital asset, the system instantaneously turns it into the respective amount of the receiver’s fiat currency. All the transaction details and settlement instructions are then recorded on the distributed ledger.

In an apparent attempt to appeal to the widest possible array of institutional clients, IBM marketers cautiously specify in a footnote that “for those preferring to avoid the use of digital currencies, IBM also provides alternative settlement methods,” without defining, however, what those would be.

The importance of native tokens

Even before setting out to explore the territory that is usually considered within Ripple’s jurisdiction — transactional services for large corporate banks — Stellar was doomed to have all its achievements measured against those of its older sibling. Both Ripple and Stellar protocols are, to a significant extent, defined by the vision of one person — Stellar’s current CTO Jed McCaleb — and as such, share a lot of design features. Yet, unlike Ripple, Stellar is completely open-source and not beholden to a single corporate entity. While Ripple has long been seen mainly as a solution provider for banks, Stellar developed a reputation of being a payment network for individuals.

Ripple’s brisk ascent to the rank of the third largest crypto asset by market capitalization at the turn of last year has been largely predicated on a streak of successful pitches of its services to major financial institutions. The biggest deals that Ripple managed to secure included a foreign exchange service for Santander, as well as a payment app built for a consortium of 61 Japanese banks.

These big wins, however, come with an important caveat: both are based on a technology called xCurrent, which doesn’t make any use of XRP, Ripple’s native token. Meanwhile, the product that does rely on XRP, called xRapid, has been seeing more modest rates of adoption. Particularly, several major money transfer services, including Western Union and MoneyGram, announced earlier in the year that they would start testing xRapid-powered transactions. Several months later, Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek said that the solution hadn’t delivered any significant reduction in transaction cost and was “still too expensive.” The disparity in xCurrent and xRapid’s performance has led some critics to conclude that XRP token doesn’t have any use.

Thus, bringing in a newly-minted stable coin to power cross-border transactions on the Stellar blockchain looks like a smart move from IBM and Stellar. In doing so, they will retain the ‘XRP for the people’ ethos that has developed around Stellar XLM token, and clearly demarcate the boundary between the corporate and community uses of the Stellar ledger. Of course, there are also more immediately practical considerations at play. Jesse Lund, the head of IBM’s blockchain department, noted in a blog post:

“Volatility and inherent risk means that most financial institutions are wary of using cryptocurrencies as the basis for mainstream commercial transactions and why some countries have banned their use entirely… The ‘stability’ of stable coins could translate into improving the entire backbone of international banking operations, giving banks an innovative way to significantly update their core banking and compliance infrastructure while also helping to improve operational efficiency and regulatory transparency.”

Intensifying competition

It remains to be seen if reliance on stable coins will grant Blockchain World Wire a sizeable competitive advantage over Ripple’s solutions. What already does look like a serious advantage, though, is IBM’s stalwart position as a major infrastructure provider for traditional transactional systems: The cost of convincing existing clients to adopt a new technology is by long odds smaller than acquiring new ones.

Judging from what is known about Blockchain World Wire at this point, the system’s design and functionality directly pit it against Ripple’s xRapid rail in the race for global banks’ good graces. Despite the dearth of information on how the two compare in terms of performance, it is possible to pinpoint a few more general product features that might prove relevant as BWW hits the market and the competition ramps up. In addition to the impressive base for adoption already mentioned above, IBM’s solution looks appealing for its versatility. Whereas xRapid utilizes only XRP token as a bridge asset, Blockchain World Wire boasts a range of options, which could potentially open the system up for many fruitful integrations and partnerships.

That said, it is not yet clear when financial institutions will be able to derive practical benefits from adopting IBM’s new product, as it hasn’t even been tested in the field. In contrast, xRapid has been out there for a while, undergoing tests with some of the key players of the money transfer industry for months now.

Also, it is worth noting that the market of cross-national, blockchain-powered financial services is far from a duopolistic arrangement divided solely between Ripple and BWW. In late June, Ant Financial, Alibaba’s financial arm, deployed a remittance solution on blockchain to facilitate transactions between Hong Kong and the Philippines. Meanwhile, Japanese tech giant GMO is equipping its new online banking service with a blockchain-powered transaction system. As some of these and other emerging platforms are likely to achieve a certain degree of regional dominance, on the global scale, years of stiff competition lie ahead.

Blockchain World Wire’s inaugural public presentation will take place in Sydney in late October. Symbolically, it is bound to happen at Sibos — an annual summit for global financial industry hosted by SWIFT.

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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How Facebook is logging into the Reliance Jio ecosystem

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/how-facebook-is-logging-into-the-reliance-jio-ecosystem/

How Facebook is logging into the Reliance Jio ecosystem

BENGALURU/MUMBAI: Among the many things left unsaid in the several statements surrounding the $5.7 billion investment by Facebook in Reliance Industries Ltd.-owned Jio Platforms on Wednesday, was that the social media giant’s messaging service WhatsApp could now be transitioning beyond an app into a “platform”, with commerce and transactions (payments) becoming integral to its strategy, besides communication.

A video by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered a clue of sorts. “India is a special place for us. We are also committing to work together on some critical projects that we think are going to open up a lot of opportunities for commerce in India,” Zuckerberg said in his post. In a way, Facebook, the company, has logged into the Jio ecosystem.

One of those opportunities Zuckerberg mentioned, impeccably timed for a post-pandemic era, could involve the digitisation of retail. Even beyond the kirana stores that RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani referenced in his media address on Wednesday, Facebook and WhatsApp have been trying to court small and medium businesses (SMBs) on their respective platforms over the last two years. Jio too has been onboarding these kirana stores for the last two years with occasional pilots, without a clear go-to-market plan. But this deal, industry sources say, gives it the necessary impetus.

Once kirana stores come on to its “JioMart” (business-to-business) ecosystem, the latter would enable its supply chain, while WhatsApp could likely power the (business-to-consumer) payments offering, with a logistics network or the kirana store ensuring delivery.

JioMart could essentially be a digital storefront which aggregates a mix of Reliance Retail’s distribution centres, its B2B cash and carry business—Reliance Market, the neighbourhood kirana stores, and other organised retail outlets owned by Reliance.

Beyond the specific contours of the deal and WhatsApp strategy, the Reliance-Facebook deal has ensured the creation of yet another high-powered ecosystem. The deal, as Arpan Sheth, partner at Bain Capital says, has allowed Facebook to “get a foothold into a high-performing and valuable telco in India with a strong leadership position.” He adds, “They also have the ability to jointly create interesting ecosystem plays that take advantage of Facebook’s high daily active users or DAUs and extremely engaged customer base and Jio’s platform assets.”

“It is unlikely that Jio will give away real estate on WhatsApp,” says a fintech professional aware of developments surrounding the deal. “It is likely that WhatsApp will remain an open platform,” he adds. This could underline its platform ambitions—with the unification of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, enabling ease of data flow, with a plug and play model, allowing brands and publishers to reach out to consumers directly, for an “access fee” of sorts.

WhatsApp Pay, which was stuck and rolled out in phases due to regulatory reasons and a court case, could be launched as early as next month or June, government sources tell ET. Once launched, WhatsApp could leverage Jio’s Payments Bank, the person quoted earlier adds, as a sponsor bank to power its UPI-based payments—an @jio handle, for instance, instead of the existing @icici handle, owing to a prior partnership.

Jio, on its part, could leverage or bundle WhatsApp for Business to its retailers, with an end-to-end service, unlike now, where they have to go to via Facebook and other third-party companies like Facebook. “These could effectively be one win each for both sides,” the person adds, before saying, “Given Ambani’s track record with telecom, if Jio can guarantee 10 million WhatsApp for business accounts in the next six months, Zuckerberg will be delighted.”

But in the long run, this could fuel Jio’s fintech ambitions—especially around lending and insurance—which until now have been restricted to point-of-service terminals. Providing financial services, sources say, is also on WhatsApp’s radar from a longer-term point of view, given that it was “doubling down on payments, as a first step.” Another person familiar with these developments says, “Once you enable these kiranas on to your ecosystem, it is easier to power fintech on top of this.”

A 360-degree view While all the focus has been on kirana stores, what goes without saying is the inherent data play in this partnership. WhatsApp, through its commercial agreement with JioMart, could provide deeper, richer data to Facebook.

That would mean, granular insights around consumption patterns akin to “who is consuming what” to “how much is someone spending.”

This, according to people closely involved with internet advertising, would give Facebook an “exact pulse of consumer insights”, which will only funnel its already formidable advertising machine, beyond the top 1000 advertisers on digital. “Facebook has been gaining a lot of traction among SMEs because of how easy it is to advertise there,” the person cited earlier added.

But above all, it could give Jio a chance of monetising its 360-million strong subscriber base, and Facebook and the marketers and publishers on its platform, willing to pay to access Jio’s user base.

“Advertising is the holy grail. Jio is sitting on a goldmine since it hasn’t been able to monetise its users,” says Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research. “Besides, Jio can also integrate Facebook’s ad platform into its products on a revenue share basis,” Shah adds.

All of this hinges on how both sides have agreed to share data. “Facebook may get access to Jio’s data, but the other way could also be true, given the changes in discoverability. They could monetise discovery. How do you do that? You feed the data of apparel you likely saw on Instagram, into Reliance Retail’s inventory, which can inform the customer about its availability, and the transaction can be initiated and completed,” says Arvind Singhal, chairman of Technopak Advisors.

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#Technology

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hottytoddynews · 7 years ago

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Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus addresses sailors on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan as it arrives at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Paolo Bayas/Released

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (BA 69) manages a $170 billion budget and is responsible for the well-being of more than 900,000 enlisted personnel stationed on ships or at naval bases around the world. A big job, and whenever the weight of his position gets too heavy for his shoulders, he gazes at six small, round glass jars sitting on a window ledge across from his desk. Each jar holds sand collected from a beach the Marines invaded during World War II.

“It’s a reminder of the importance of what I do,” Mabus says quietly from his office in the Pentagon. “I visited each of those sites. I look at those jars and feel humbled, then awestruck by what those Marines accomplished.”

Asked if he ever feels overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Mabus breaks into a gentle laugh.

“Overwhelmed, no. Amazed, yes. Back when I was governor of Mississippi, I was young and kept expecting someone to come up to me and say, ‘Hey, kid, get out of here, the governor’s coming.’ My secret weapon is I work with the best people in the world. In fact, I have the best job in America.”

Mabus delivers remarks at the 240th Marine Corps Ball in Azerbaijan. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Armando Gonzales/Released

Mabus has been secretary of the Navy since 2009 — the longest-serving leader of the Navy and Marine Corps since World War I and the fifth longest in the 240-year history of the armed forces. Under his watch, shipbuilding increased from five per year to now having 70 vessels under contract. Mabus promotes environmentalism through the Great Green Fleet program and mandated the Navy to develop alternate sources of energy and cut its reliance on fossil fuels in half by 2020.

In recognition of the stress that servicemen and women undergo while on active duty — especially since the second Gulf War — he inaugurated programs such as the 21st Century Sailor and Marine Initiative, which offers counseling programs for personnel in the service who are having difficulties coping with the strain of battle, and career and emotional counseling for those transitioning out of the service.

Bryan Clark, a retired Navy submarine commander and now senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit public policy research group that focuses on national defense, says Mabus “is doing a terrific job focusing on essential missions to improve the Navy, both from within and without. He’s also initiated the role of being an interlocutor between our Navy and the navies of our partners throughout the world. He’s done quite a lot of traveling during his time in office.”

During the last Mideast conflict, Mabus traveled to Afghanistan 12 times to meet with sailors and Marines deployed in combat zones. He continues traveling today, logging more than 1.1 million miles and visiting more than 140 countries since taking office. But no matter where he goes, he takes a little bit of America with him.

“Last year, I watched the Ole Miss football team play Arkansas on my cell phone in Tajikistan,” he says with a grin.

Support for Service Personnel

Clark appreciates that Mabus understands how important it is to improve the personal lives of servicemen and women.

“The challenge facing Navy and Marine Corps personnel at the tail end of our role in Afghanistan was they were dealing with a lot of stress,” Clark says. “There were a lot of suicides in the military, and a rise in sexual assault, drug use and behavioral issues. A decade of war takes a toll on soldiers.”

Mabus speaks with media after the christening ceremony of the future littoral combat ship USS Detroit at Marinette Marine Corp. shipyard in Marinette, Wis. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Sam Shavers/Released

To alleviate some of that stress, the 21st Century Sailor and Marine Initiative is an umbrella program that unites and expands a slew of supportive programs that previously existed as separate entities. New items include the Safe Harbor Program, where wounded personnel (pertaining to both physical wounds and emotional scars associated with post-traumatic stress disorder) will receive both physical and mental health care — even if all the person needs is a ride to a Veterans Affairs hospital or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Under the Transition Assistance Program, people leaving the military can get help seeking education and career training to make an easier transition to the private sector.

“We also want to make the military service more family friendly,” Mabus says. “Women are a valuable asset to the military, and we recognize that we need to do more to keep them in the service.”

To that end, in 2009, Mabus pushed for women having more of a role in combat, including serving on battleships and submarines. That feeling was recently echoed by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who ordered the military to open all jobs to women, including those at dangerous and grueling posts.

“We’d lose a lot of women because they’d want to start a family, or they’d leave to take care of an aging parent or loved one,” Mabus says. “Besides tripling paid maternity leave, we now open child care centers on bases two hours earlier and close them two hours later. We also offer the Career Intermission Program, where people can take up to three years off during their service to take care of personal matters and then return to active duty.”

Another innovative program is the Secretary of the Navy Tour of Industry, where people can spend a year working at a company such as Amazon, Facebook or Google, and later return with both career experience and new skills that can be applied to military life.

Environmental Concerns

Mabus has also paid attention to energy usage not only to protect the environment but also to protect personnel.

“Fuel can be used as a weapon,” Mabus says, explaining why he wants to change the way the Navy and Marine Corps produce and acquire energy. “At the height of the war [in Afghanistan], we were losing one Marine for every fuel convoy brought in. That’s why we need to focus on our energy usage, to make us better fighters.”

In a 2012 speech at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo., Mabus said, “We wouldn’t allow some of the places that we buy fossil fuels from to build our ships, to build our aircrafts or to build our ground equipment. … And yet we give them say on whether those ships sail or whether those aircrafts fly or whether those vehicles run, because we buy fuel from them. Why would we do that if we don’t have to? The less we depend on foreign oil, the more secure we become as a nation.”

Mabus has set a goal of relying on alternative sources to supply at least 50 percent of the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ energy needs by 2020. In 2012, the Navy unveiled the Great Green Fleet, a carrier strike group of which every participating ship and aircraft operates on alternative energy sources such as nuclear energy and biofuels.

“Our newer ships now need to refuel less often,” Mabus says. “They’re cleaner and quieter. And our Marine field teams are using solar and other alternate energy forms to purify water so they can stay out in the field much longer.”

And in an effort to create more efficient energy sources, the goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy at naval bases and Marine Corps installations — that’s 50 percent of total shore energy needed.

Mabus discusses ethics and its importance in leadership with students, staff and faculty during an all-hands call at the U.S. Naval War College. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Sam Shavers/Released

In July 2015, the Navy signed an agreement to build a 210-megawatt direct current solar plant that would feed power to 14 facilities across the country. More than 650,000 photovoltaic panels on ground-mounted, horizontal single-axis trackers will be installed, providing a third of the energy needed to power the Navy and Marine Corps installations. Adding solar power to naval installations will provide long-term cost stability, which ultimately contributes to the Navy’s energy security priorities. The project is slated for completion by the end of 2016.

But security and combat effectiveness aren’t the only reasons Mabus is committed to upgrading the military’s energy use.

“We’re also concerned about climate change,” he says. “We all need to be better stewards of the environment.”

Education First

Mabus grew up in Ackerman watching minor league baseball and Ole Miss football. Though he dreamed of being a major leaguer every time he wore a mitt or donned a helmet, his hero wasn’t a sports star.

“I’ve only had one hero in my life — my father, Raymond (BSCvE 22),” he says. “I was 38 years old when he died, and in those 38 years I never heard him raise his voice. He was always kind and was one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. During the civil rights movement in the ’60s, he always talked about the dignity and the equality of all people.”

After graduating summa cum laude from Ole Miss in 1969 and winning the Taylor Medal in political science the same year, he earned a master’s degree in political science at Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. After Johns Hopkins, Mabus served in the Navy as an officer aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock.

“What I learned at Ole Miss has stayed with me throughout my life,” Mabus says. “Ole Miss offered the type of education everyone should get. People at the school cared about me. They’re the reason I became so interested in public education: Education is the one skill that can guarantee you the opportunity for success. There are no jobs today for people with strong backs and weak minds.”

When Mabus was elected governor of Mississippi in 1988, he made public education a priority by passing the Better Education for Success Tomorrow program, which gave teachers the largest pay raise in the U.S. Fortune magazine named him one of the 10 best “education governors.”

Terry Cassreino (BA 85) was the Capitol bureau chief for the Biloxi Sun Herald during Mabus’ tenure as governor. Today, he teaches English and journalism at St. Joseph Catholic School in Jackson and remembers Mabus as a “down-home nice person who really had the goodness of the state at heart.

“He believed wholeheartedly in public education,” Cassreino says. “He thought an educated populace was the best way to attract business to the state. I was always impressed by him as governor, as I am now in his role as secretary of the Navy.”

Studying at Harvard also reignited Mabus’ love for baseball, and today, the die-hard Boston Red Sox fan claims a record feat — he’s thrown a ceremonial first pitch in each major league ball park. At the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in July 2015, in Cooperstown, N.Y., Mabus named the Navy’s newest warship USS Cooperstown, to honor the 62 Hall of Fame members who have served in the military.

While Mabus is proud of his achievements, the most important aspect of his job is the men and women he is privileged to serve alongside.

“I can’t express the overwhelming feeling of pride I have for every single Marine and sailor I’ve met, whether they’re soldiers on the ground or in the air,” Mabus says. “They’re all volunteers, and every single one is a hero.”

By Benjamin Gleisser

This story was reprinted with permission from the Ole Miss Alumni Review. The Alumni Review is published quarterly for members of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. Join or renew your membership with the Alumni Association today, and don’t miss a single issue.

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vijayanands · 8 years ago

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There is a problem with uncontrolled innovation in an ecosystem. An opportunity is spotted, and there is initial euphoria. Everyone is cautiously optimistic. And one day, one of the players in the market gets funded. And bam! for the next several weeks you hear of clones getting funded and rolling out like cheap sarees dolled out by politicians. There is a race to the bottom and money is burnt in discounts and marketing campaigns, trying to "land grab" customers, to "change behavior". In the end, no one survives. There are some lessons to learn out of both how developed markets work and even how the more mature traditional business sector works in India. I strongly believe if Flipkart wasn't put in a position to be constantly fighting with Myntra, Jabong, Snapdeal, Infibeam etc, they might have had a chance against amazon. And could have won. It is not like company lacked innovation - Payzippy (in a day and age when payment gateways were failing in the higher 40% was a godsend), Flyte, and even their conversations around building a service like AWS etc loomed. But instead of having the mental space to think about that, and expanding their base, they were kept busy fighting over a product being 63Rs on a competitor's website when their site had it listed at 65Rs. That kind of menial focus kills. How do large businesses in India deal with this? They don't. They take an opportunity which is big enough and they know that there are only a handful of family offices and business that can take on this market - so they earmark territories and play within it. Godrej goes after packaged chicken. Reliance does vegetables. Others do Namkeens and Cookies (big market) and everyone is happy. At the end, everyone walks out holding a sizeable pie and a business worth a few thousand crores. This is how I wish we made investments in India - like how it happens in the valley. Sure an entrepreneur comes up with an idea, and soon enough people are talking about it in conferences and startups are popping up all over the place - and as usual, everyone waits for one of the top 4 VC funds to place their bets. The team with the best chance to execute on this is funded. Followed by one more than another one backs. If there is a third bet to be made, the existing investors of the two firms can ask the new investor if he really believes in the market. If he does, offer him a discount to buy-in into the next round of either one of the companies. Not only have you stopped the market opportunity from evaporating, but you have also helped seize capital for the company that you are onboard for, and did them a huge favor - they can stop worrying about fundraising and focus on the business. The Valley/US is more or less a uniform market and it takes effort, but not as much effort as it takes for Indian startups to pan across the country. And hence the top 100 in the valley who make and break the industry do end up doing things like these, to ensure that the opportunity is still sizeable and doesn't get ripped apart by piranhas and over-funding. In India, the model might have to be slightly different. It might not even be a bad idea to make two bets per metro city in the country - and keep in mind that there might be a play to merge all of these state-wise entities one day and make it the mother entity. By that time, the big family offices would back one of their own bets and roll out, or a US entity would step in, but by then hopefully, you'll be ready to take them on. We are terrible at optimizing the market at this point. We throw money all around, leading a super inefficient ecosystem, that has quantity, but very few wins. Remember, nobody wants to sit at the loser's table - and as entrepreneurs, part of our task is to ensure that people win in this ecosystem so that the cycle continues and grows. If you haven't heard by now, I have started a premium newsletter to talk about things like this and a (closed) tribe where we can further discuss these matters in detail. You can subscribe via http://bit.ly/2pndTdq

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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Facebook and Jio to continue oppose each other over internet calls, messages

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/facebook-and-jio-to-continue-oppose-each-other-over-internet-calls-messages/

Facebook and Jio to continue oppose each other over internet calls, messages

Reliance Industries’ telecom arm Jio and social media major Facebook will continue to oppose each other over internet calls and messaging services despite the Rs 43,574-crore investment deal signed between the two companies. Telecom operators, including Reliance Jio, have been demanding “same service same rules” regime which means that mobile applications providing calls and messaging services should also be made to comply with set of rules that are mandatory for mobile service providers.

Mobile app companies providing complimentary calls and messages have opposed the same.

“Both Facebook and Jio are independent companies. We will have our independent views. There will be areas where we will collaborate and there will be areas where we will differ and compete. There is no change in what we think about business. We don’t expect it from Facebook either. So no changes or nothing to really comment on those aspects,” Reliance Jio head of strategy Anshuman Thakur told .

He was replying to a question that whether there will be change in the stance of the company with Facebook coming on the board of Jio Platforms with 9.9 per cent stake.

Facebook too echoed the same thought that differences will continue on the issue of “same service same rules” between both the companies.

“As excited as we are about collaborating, I think we also expect that there will be areas where we compete. We are showing alignment on opportunity to work together to have positive impact for small businesses particularly. I do agree that there will be areas where we disagree as well,” Facebook India vice president and managing director Ajit Mohan said.

Earlier in the day, Facebook announced an investment of USD 5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) to buy a 9.99 per cent stake in the firm that houses Ambani’s telecom arm Jio as the social media giant looks to expand presence in its largest market in terms of subscriber base.

“We have made a minority investments in Jio Platforms. We are excited about that canvas. We do think it will be really good for the ecosystem at large. We also expect that there will be areas where we won’t have same point of view,” Mohan said.

Facebook will get a seat on board on Jio Platforms Ltd, the company it is investing in, along with an observer seat.

Once the investment comes in, Rs 15,000 crore will be retained in Jio Platforms Ltd while the rest will be used to redeem OCPS (optionally convertible preference shares) of Reliance Industries Ltd.

“In that sense, the entire amount does go to reduce the debt of the Group… Jio Platforms Ltd has been valued at an enterprise value of Rs 4.62 lakh crore. The debt in the company is around Rs 40,000 crore. With this investment, Rs 15000 crore will be retained in the company and balance will be used to redeem OCPS investments of RIL in this company,” he said.

In October, Jio Platforms transferred most of the debt to its parent firm Reliance Industries Limited.

The net debt of Jio Platforms will correspondingly reduce because of cash which is retained in the company, Thakur said.

“Jio Platforms now has very little debt which mostly pertains to spectrum liability and some commercial business,” Thakur said.

Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail and WhatsApp have also entered into a commercial partnership agreement to further accelerate Reliance Retail’s new commerce business on the JioMart platform using WhatsApp.

Jio Mart will look at involving local businesses starting with grocery shops before expanding in to other categories like education, health, etc.

RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani after announcement of the deal said that Jio’s digital connectivity platform and Facebook’s relationship with the Indian people will offer innovative new solutions to all individuals in the country.

“In the very near future, JioMart-Jio’s Digital new commerce platform and Whatsapp will empower nearly 3 crore small Indian Kirana shops to digitally transact with every customer in their neighbourhood. This means all of you can order and get faster delivery of day-to-day items, from nearby local shops. At the same time small kiranas can row their businesses and create new employment opportunities using digital technologies,” Ambani said.

Thakur said that the beta version of Jio Mart has already been launched in parts of Mumbai and there is no definite time-line on it becoming completely operational due to uncertainty around the lockdown period.

“We have been working on. Beta phase, in fact we have rolled out to a number of merchants in the new Bombay area and few other places. Things have been impacted because of the lockdown. Trials had to be slowed down. One doesn’t know how the lockdown will be revoked. For now beta trials are going and they are going good. This will be across categories. Grocery is one segment where we are providing service to,” he said.

When asked about who will handle the payment part of Jio Mart app as the government has not yet allowed Whatsapp to carry out digital payments, Thakur said that the app leverages a system developed by Reliance Retail.

“Jio Mart is Reliance Retail business and Jio mart has its own digital platform on which it is enabling customers and merchants to transact. We will work with Whatsapp to use the Whatsapp platform as a means to bring the merchants and customers more seamlessly,” Thakur said.

Facebook is also testing alternate technologies to provide internet services. The company tried to start trials for alternate technologies but could not go ahead because of regulatory reasons.

Mohan declined to comment on testing those alternate technologies on the Jio network but briefly mentioned that 5G technology will be one of the area where both the entities can collaborate.

He said that both the companies are trying to expand the digital ecosystem.

“Why we have invested in Jio is that we are excited about what Jio has done in the last four years and what we can do. If we do bring in that energy we can bring new opportunities. Even without payments we think that the collaboration can bring a lot of value to the people,” Mohan said.

He said that the construct of collaboration around Jio Mart is not an exclusive arrangement between the two companies.

The deal signed between the two companies needs only approval of Competition Commission of India but due to uncertainty around lockdown, Thakur said that definite time to close the deal cannot be committed.

“This one comes under the automatic route for FDI. RJIL is the only licence business where 49 per cent is automatic. Only approval that we require is from CCI. We will soon approach them with our application and then whatever time it takes. They will settle the transaction and let us know,” he said.

With this agreement, Facebook has become the largest partner of Jio on board.

Jio Platforms houses digital services of the group and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, with 388 million subscribers, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms.

The Facebook deal is part of value unlocking by RIL to cut debt. RIL has been seeking strategic partnerships across its businesses while targeting to deleverage its balance sheet.

It has been talking to Saudi Aramco for sale of a 20 per cent stake in its oil-to-chemical business for an asking of USD 15 billion. RIL has already tied up with BP Plc for fuel business as it targets to have a debt-free status by next year.

Jio had also been reportedly talking separately to Google but the fate of those discussions is not known.

The latest deal is a win-win for both Facebook and Jio. It would give Facebook deeper access to India, the second largest internet market after China.

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