Can open networks for digital commerce take on Amazon & Walmart?

 

As per Arvind Gupta, the head of Digital India Foundation, a public stage is something worked around the idea of transparency, standard and trust. It is upheld by the public authority and not by any private substance.
There are around nine stages with billion or more clients each across the world. Five of them are in the US and four in China. What's more, not a single one of them are government supported. With Aadhaar, India assembled the world's first and biggest public computerized stage. It is presently being utilized in banking, KYC and a few different fields. It prompted some kind of computerized upset, similar to the introduction of UPI which finished the duopoly of two worldwide administrators in India. It permits you to send or get cash regardless of the installment stages on which you are enlisted.
What's more, presently, Nandan Nilekani - - who assisted the public authority with making the biometric ID for practically 1.4 billion individuals after helping to establish Infosys - - accepts that Open Network for Digital Commerce or ONDC meets every one of the measures for the following upheaval and interruption in India. It has the public authority's responsibility, the economic situation is overflowing and there is a gigantic shift to internet business after the pandemic.
ONDC looks to make everything fair for little traders in the nation's divided yet quickly developing $1 trillion retail market. While tending to a gathering, Nilekani as of late said that ONDC is basically the same as National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) - - which is additionally a non-benefit area 8 organization....Read More

Top traders body CAIT lauds CCI raids on Amazon sellers Cloudtail, Appario

 

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) which addresses around 70 million brokers in the nation has hailed the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for leading attacks on the workplaces of Cloudtail and Appario, the two merchants of online business monster Amazon.

"It is a much-anticipated welcome advance of CCI which will unquestionably justify the substance of different grumblings made by the CAIT against Amazon and Flipkart," said CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal, while remarking upon the activity of the CCI.

India's antitrust body has apparently sent off assaults against the two top homegrown merchants of Amazon over allegations of having disregarded rivalry regulations. As indicated by the sources, the assaults are connected with CCI's examination requested in January 2020 about claims of against serious direct, for example, giving profound limits on web-based deals of cell phones, and carefully choosing merchants. Different claims included savage evaluating and select associations.

For the beyond three years, the CAIT said it has been mentioning solid criticisms against the acts of neglect of Amazon and Flipkart and documented protests with CCI, other than firmly battling deferring strategies of Amazon and Flipkart in different courts also....Read more

SC directs Amazon, Future to NCLAT for speedy disposal of CCI case

 

The Supreme Court (SC) has guided Amazon and Future Group to move toward National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) for fast removal of the US internet business company's case testing Competition Commission of India's (Cci's) request which dropped its 2019 arrangement with Future Coupons. The SC has recorded the case to be heard next on March 9.

Amazon moved toward SC after Delhi High Court (HC) requested a stay on the Amazon-Future intervention happening before a three-part arbitral council.

"The present SLP (unique leave request) is in one way associated with the result of the request tested before the NCLAT. We direct gatherings to demand the NCLAT to choose the case," SC said in its structure.

The SC case was heard by a seat involved Chief Justice of India, NV Ramana, Justice A S Bopana and Justice Hima Kohli.

The NCLAT on February 25 will hear Amazon's request looking for a between time stay on the request passed by the CCI, which suspended the over two-year-old endorsement of its arrangement with Future Coupons (FCPL).

On February 9, the SC had given notification to Future Group to react to Amazon's SLP which tested Delhi High Court's divisional seat request last month remaining the Singapore International Arbitration Center (SIAC) mediation procedures in the Amazon-Future case.

Govt wants 'origin of products' displayed, calls e-commerce firms for meet

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has called web based business majors, including Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and Paytm, for a gathering on Wednesday to examine the 'showing root of the item' on these stages, as hostile to China conclusion gets in the nation.
This follows the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) stage making it obligatory for its recorded venders to indicate the nation of starting point while enrolling every single new item on the entrance.
The outskirt deadlock among India and China has started a crusade here that is picking up force to blacklist Chinese products.The meeting is being composed on a video conferencing stage, as indicated by individuals up to date.
Service authorities said that this issue has come up before and usage issues for e-commercial centers would be talked about at the gathering on Wednesday.
Among different invitees to the conversation are Pepperfry and The E-trade Council of India.
Online business officials said requesting that dealers top off data about 'nation of birthplace' for new postings of items isn't convoluted. In any case, the test is that the a large number of existing items previously recorded on the internet business stages don't have those subtleties and it would be a very "tedious" process for the venders to check the nation of birthplace for those items. Be that as it may, for certain items, this data is now accessible.

"On the off chance that a dealer has 10,000 postings, for him to experience all that and include information is a major errand," said a senior official at an internet business organization. "The expectation of the administration ought not be to discard those dealers off the stage, that would resemble 'slicing your nose to demonstrate hatred for someone (China) else," said the individual.

April jobs data to show a record-shattering loss of jobs in US: Report

The economic catastrophe caused by the viral outbreak likely sent the US unemployment rate in April to its highest level since the Great Depression and caused a record-shattering loss of jobs.
With the economy paralyzed by business closures, the unemployment rate likely jumped to at least 16 per cent from just 4.4 per cent in March and employers cut a stunning 21 million or more jobs in April, economists have forecast, according to data provider FactSet.
If so, it would mean that nearly all the job growth in the 11 years since the Great Recession had vanished in a single month.
Yet even those breathtaking figures won't fully capture the magnitude of the damage the coronavirus has inflicted on the job market.
Many people still employed have had their hours reduced. Others have suffered pay cuts. Some who've lost jobs won't have been able to look for work amid widespread shutdowns and won't even be counted as unemployed. A broader measure the proportion of adults with jobs could plunge to a record low.
What we're talking about here is pretty stunning, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton.
The shock is unique because the cause is unique. It's such a different animal from anything that we've ever seen.

The government will issue the April jobs report on Friday morning. On Thursday, it will release the latest weekly report on applications for unemployment benefits. It will likely show that about 3.5 million people sought jobless aid last week. That would bring the total number of layoffs to nearly 34 million since the shutdowns began seven weeks ago.

Cybersecurity experts come together to fight coronavirus-related hacking

An international group of nearly 400 volunteers with expertise in cybersecurity formed on Wednesday to fight hacking related to the novel coronavirus.
Called the Covid-19 CTI League, for cyber threat intelligence, the group spans more than 40 countries and includes professionals in senior positions at such major companies as Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc .
One of four initial managers of the effort, Marc Rogers, said the top priority would be working to combat hacks against medical facilities and other frontline responders to the pandemic. It is already working on hacks of health organizations. Also key is the defense of communication networks and services that have become essential as more people work from home, said Rogers, head of security at the long-running hacking conference Def Con and a vice president at security company Okta Inc.
The group is also using its web of contacts in internet infrastructure providers to squash garden-variety phishing attacks and another financial crime that is using the fear of Covid-19 or the desire for information on it to trick regular internet users. "I've never seen this volume of phishing," Rogers said. "I am literally seeing phishing messages in every language known to man."
Phishing messages try to induce recipients to enter passwords or other sensitive information on websites controlled by the attackers, who then use the data to take control of bank, email or other accounts.

Rogers said the group had already dismantled one campaign that used a software vulnerability to spread malicious software. He declined to provide details, and said that in general the group would be reluctant to reveal what it was fighting. Rogers said law enforcement had been surprisingly welcoming of the collaboration, recognizing the vastness of the threat.
Rogers is a UK citizen based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two other group coordinators are American, and one is Israeli. "I have never seen this level of cooperation," Rogers said. "I hope it continues afterwards, because it's a beautiful thing to see."

US court grants Amazon motion for pause in Microsoft's Pentagon deal

Current Affairs
A US judge on Thursday allowed Amazon.com Inc's solicitation to briefly stop the US Department of Defense and Microsoft Corp from pushing ahead on an up-to-$10 billion (£8 billion) distributed computing bargain that Amazon says reflected undue impact by President Donald Trump.
Amazon, which had been viewed as a leader to win the agreement, recorded a claim in November only weeks after the agreement was granted to Microsoft. Trump has openly mocked Amazon head Jeff Bezos and more than once scrutinized the organization. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith gave a fundamental directive however didn't discharge her composed conclusion. She additionally requested Amazon to post $42 million in the occasion the order was given illegitimately.
The Amazon claim said the Defense Department's choice was loaded with "intolerable blunders," which were an aftereffect of "inappropriate weight from President Donald Trump, who propelled rehashed open and in the background assaults" to guide the agreement away from Amazon "to hurt his apparent political adversary" Bezos.
Bezos additionally claims the Washington Post, whose inclusion has been incredulous of Trump and which has as often as possible been an objective of thorns by Trump about the news media. The Pentagon, which had wanted to begin take a shot at the agreement on Friday, said it was frustrated in the decision.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carver, a Defense Department representative, said the Pentagon accepted "the moves made right now superfluously deferred actualizing DoD's modernization system and denied our warfighters of a lot of abilities they earnestly need." It included it stayed "certain about our honor of the JEDI Cloud agreement to Microsoft." ...READ MORE

Macron, Trump agree to extend talks on France's digital tax: Report

Current Affairs
The Indian Railway’s ticketing portal has filed a complaint against a fake website selling tourism packages in its name and even has a copycat digital assistant.The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has warned the website (www.irctctour.com) is duping people with fraudulent transactions.
"The tourism portal is the website of IRCTC where the various tour packages and services of IRCTC are displayed," says the fake website, which copies the design and features of the genuine portal.IRCTC sent an email to its registered users and even had put up a message on its portal about the fake website.
irctctour.com The tourism portal is the website of IRCTC where the various tour packages and services of IRCTC, says the fake website
IRCTC is the only entity authorised by the Indian Railways to provide online railway tickets, catering services to railways and packaged drinking water at railway stations and in trains. It is the world's second-busiest and highest of 1.5 million to 1.6 million tickets every day. Meanwhile, IRCTC Tourism offers tour facilities to over 1.05 million persons annually. The various tourism business segments of IRCTC include luxury train tours, Bharat darshan special tourist trains, rail tour packages, international and domestic air packages, land tour packages, hotel booking, etc. Its official portal is irctctourism.com.

Earlier, IRCTC warned its customers not to disclose any confidential information related to their account number, ATM card, PIN, TPIN, UPI details over phone or through e-mails. It notified users that attempts were being made to fraudulently withdraw money from their accounts. IRCTC also said that it never makes phone calls, sends e-mails/SMS asking customers to give their personal or security information for refunds, TDR or in any other case....Read More

Amazon threatened to fire climate activists, says employee group

Current Affairs
A group of Amazon.com workers who pushed the organization to battle environmental change say Amazon has taken steps to terminate some of them in the event that they keep on standing up against their boss' interior issues.
Two were compromised with end, a representative for Amazon Employees for Climate Justice stated, and a sum of four were told in gatherings that they were infringing upon the organization's strategies on laborers addressing the press and via web-based networking media. Maren Costa, a client experience fashioner, was undermined with end in the wake of addressing the Washington Post, as indicated by an announcement from the gathering. "This isn't an ideal opportunity to shoot the delivery people," Costa said in the discharge. "This isn't an ideal opportunity to quietness the individuals who are standing up."
Jaci Anderson, an Amazon representative, said that the organization's outside interchanges strategy isn't new. Representatives are "urged to work inside their groups," and may recommend "upgrades to how we work through those inner channels."
The tech business has been annoyed by representative activism in the recent years. After Google laborers raised worries about offering on military agreements, the Alphabet Inc. search mammoth pulled out of a US Defense Department ramble program and chose not to offer on an agreement to assemble cloud administrations for the Pentagon. Workers at Microsoft and Salesforce.com constrained officials about their organizations' dealings with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Amazon Employees for Climate Justice in late 2018 started examining approaches to convince their manager to control its commitments to environmental change...Read More

Bombay Shaving Company raises Rs 45 crore in Series B funding round

Election News
Men’s skincare brand Bombay Shaving Company (BSC) has raised Rs 45 crore in Series B funding round led by Sixth Sense Venture Partners. Existing investor Colgate Palmolive Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of consumer goods giant Colgate-Palmolive, participated in the round too.BSC said it has also created Rs 20 crore worth of exit opportunities for 30 angels and early employees. This fundraising has taken the total capital raised by BSC to Rs 80 crore.
“We are thrilled to have Sixth Sense join this journey. They are a top consumer fund with insight into public markets, which is invaluable for us,” said Shantanu Deshpande, founder, and CEO at Bombay Shaving Company. “We don’t believe in large fund infusions, however, exits for angels and early employees is an extremely positive outcome. Wealth creation is what drives us.”
Launched in 2016, BSC started as a direct-to-consumer premium experiential shaving regimen, but has quickly expanded into skin, beard and bath categories. The firm, which also sells its products on e-commerce platform Amazon, has a portfolio of over 45 SKUs (stock-keeping units) across shaving, bath and body, skin, and beard care categories.
The firm plans to use the newly-raised funds in brand building, expand its presence in the larger skincare category and penetrate deeper in shaving. As an omnichannel brand, BSC said it will focus on offline expansion with its current footprint of 3,000 stores to 10,000 stores in the coming months. BSC currently has more than 2.5 lakh customers and aims to become Rs 100-crore brand in the next 12-15 months.

"BSC team has impressed us with the portfolio, brand building, understanding of consumer and digital expertise," said Nikhil Vora, founder at Sixth Sense Venture Partners. “We love to invest in spaces where we believe we can grow with the sponsors for a long period....Read More

E-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon clock bumper sale on Day One

International News
Dispelling the fear that a slowing economy may affect consumer behaviour, e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon India have said they witnessed record transactions on their platforms on the first day of their annual festive sale, which started early on Sunday.
While home-grown Flipkart, which is now owned by American retail major Walmart, said it registered two times more sales on Day One of its flagship sale event Big Billion Days (BBD) over last year, rival Amazon claimed it witnessed the biggest opening day sale ever with a huge surge in participation in smaller towns.
According to Amit Agarwal, senior vice-president and country head, Amazon India, the company also saw the single-largest day of Prime sign-ups, with 66 per cent of Prime members shopping in 24 hours coming from tier II and tier III towns. The company added that 91 per cent of new customers were from smaller cities.
“Whether it is the Diwali festival season or any other shopping event, the primary objective for us is to add as many new customers as we can and convert the existing customer into Prime members. We are relevant to customers, no matter the macroeconomic conditions,” said Agarwal.

 According to Flipkart, it saw huge demand in almost all major categories, including beauty, women’s ethnic wear, kidswear, sports, fast-moving consumer goods, baby care, private labels, and furniture on the first day of the sale. The company saw 3x more transactions happening on its platform during early access (from Flipkart Plus customers), compared to last year. The number of transacting customers in tier II and smaller cities doubled over the same period. “We started this festive season by setting audacious targets. By all indication, this is going to be the biggest festive season that India has witnessed,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer of Flipkart....READ MORE

India should integrate AI with education to become world leader: Sikka

International News
Former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, who has announced a new AI startup with $50 million fund, believes India has the potential to become a world leader in artificial intelligence but the key to this is integrating AI into the country's education system in a massive way.
India is at "an inflection point" when it comes to AI or artificial intelligence, Sikka said.Over the next 20-25 years, AI is going to be "a very, very big disruptor" for the Indian society because what one is seeing now in terms of automation and job losses because of automation is just the beginning, said Sikka, who announced his startup Vianai Systems last week.
"But on the other hand, if we are able to bring AI education, the ability to build AI systems to India at a very large scale, and I'm talking about like billion plus people, then India can really leap frog and become the world's leader in artificial intelligence, in AI skill and AI talent," Sikka told PTI in an exclusive interview.
Doing that requires working on multiple dimensions in parallel, he said.
Last month, at the request of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sikka gave a presentation before the NITI Aayog how to expand the reach of AI to the Indian society in a very big way.
Representatives of some 20 Union ministries were present during his presentation on AI and India. This, he said, required creating necessary infrastructure to bring the talent through institutions, schools and educational institutions, the ability to do AI education at a large scale.

 According to Sikka, the prime minister said he personally saw whenever classes worked into digital classrooms, he was joking that children would sometimes even forget to eat their lunch because they were so engrossed in learning. "It was very encouraging...READ MORE

How to revive India's economy? Encourage ecommerce, says Amazon executive

Current Affairs
India needs to encourage ecommerce and reduce red tape to help small businesses sell online and export goods to help revive sagging domestic economic growth, a senior Amazon.com executive said on Wednesday.
"There is so much opportunity to just let ecommerce thrive versus trying to define every single guard rail under which it should operate," Amazon's India head Amit Agarwal told Reuters, ahead of the launch of Amazon's biggest campus in the world in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, on Wednesday.
India revised its ecommerce rules in early 2019, creating hurdles for Amazon and rival Walmart Inc's ecommerce subsidiary, Flipkart."I feel ecommerce can actually accelerate India's economy in a big way, if it's just allowed to thrive," said Agarwal, whose comments come at a time when India's economic growth has slumped to near five-year lows.
Agarwal said Amazon works with some 500,000 sellers, and has created over 200,000 jobs in India since launching its ecommerce operations in 2013.
He said Amazon's push to get small and medium businesses in India to export has resulted in more than $1 billion in exports and it expects this to exceed $5 billion in the next three years, but red tape is holding some businesses back."Even a seller, who wants to sell out of their state, has to get a tax registration in the new state. How many small business owners would go through the onerous job of doing that?" he said.

"The number of basic paper cut opportunities out there are so many," he said. "I feel we're getting lost in the high level debate around ecommerce and data localization."India's revised ecommerce regulations, along with its push to compel multinationals to store data locally, have irked the U.S...Read More

Amazon is turning 25 - here's a look back at how it changed the world

International News

A quarter of a century ago, on July 5, 1994, a company, which shared a name with the world’s largest river, was incorporated. It sold books to customers who got to its website through a dial-up modem.
It wasn’t the first bookstore to sell online. (Books.com launched in 1992.) But it behaved like a local store, whose shopkeeper knew customers by name – a bell even rang in the company’s Seattle headquarters every time an order was placed.
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, set his sights on making it an “everything store.” The company would go on to become not just an everything store, but an “everything company.”
Today, 25 years later, Amazon has reshaped retailing permanently. It is one of the top three most valuable companies in the world, with a market capitalization hovering around US$1 trillion, greater than the GDP of nearly 200 countries.
If you had bought $100 worth of its IPO shares in 1997, it would be worth about $120,000 today.
Redefining retail
Amazon continually took shopping convenience to newer levels.

 Before 1994, shoppers had to travel to stores to discover and buy things. Shopping used to be hard work – wandering down multiple aisles in search of a desired item, dealing with crying and nagging kids, and waiting in long checkout lines. Today, stores try to reach out to shoppers anywhere, anytime and through multiple channels and devices...Read More

Walmart Q1 operating income declines 41.7% primarily due to Flipkart

Company News

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said its reported international operating income in the quarter declined 41.7 per cent and went down 37.5 per cent in constant-currency terms, primarily on account of Flipkart.

The Bentonville-based company (in Arkansas) is locked in a battle with US rival Amazon for dominance in India’s online retail market through online retailer Flipkart, which it acquired for $16 billion last year in May.

“A large part of the decline was due to dilution from Flipkart, which was expected, partially offset by the deconsolidation of Brazil. The timing of Easter also negatively affected operating income versus last year. The full year earnings dilution related to Flipkart is still in line with expectations,” said Brett Biggs, executive vice-president and chief financial officer, Walmart Inc, about the first quarter of FY20 earnings.

Doug McMillon, president and chief executive officer, Walmart Inc, said he continued to be excited about the opportunity he saw in Flipkart and its digital payments company, PhonePe.
“I got to visit our teams in India and China a few weeks ago. I’m impressed with the team and their ability to innovate for customers with speed,” said McMillon.

He was on a crucial visit to India in April to assess the progress made by Flipkart and discuss the strategy to take on its rival Amazon, according to sources.During the quarter, the company returned $3.7 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Its level of share repurchases increased significantly year-on-year in Q1.


 Walmart’s operating income in the US grew 5.5 per cent because the gross margin rate was better than expected due to several factors including a better merchandise mix in both stores and e-commerce, and less pressure from transportation costs, partially offset by continued price investments.

Amazon hit by extensive fraud: Hackers stole money from 100 seller accounts

Company News

Amazon.com Inc. said it was hit by an "extensive" fraud, revealing that unidentified hackers were able to siphon funds from merchant accounts over six months last year.

Amazon believes it was the victim of a "serious" online attack by hackers who broke into about 100 seller accounts and funneled cash from loans or sales into their own bank accounts, according to a UK legal document. The hack took place between May 2018 and October 2018, Amazon’s lawyers said in a redacted filing from November that can now be made public.

Amazon said it was still investigating the compromised accounts and believed that hackers managed to change details of accounts on the Seller Central platform to their own at Barclays Plc and Prepay Technologies Ltd., which is partly owned by Mastercard Inc., according to the filing. Amazon found the accounts were likely compromised by phishing techniques that tricked sellers into giving up confidential login information.

An Amazon spokesman said the company had finished its investigation of the incident.The case highlights how the world’s biggest online retail platform -- designed to be automated with minimal human input -- can be misused and how difficult it is for Amazon to find perpetrators.


 Lawyers for Amazon asked a London judge to approve searches of account statements at Barclays and Prepay, which "have become innocently mixed up in the wrongdoing.”A spokesman for Barclays declined to comment specifically on the the case, but said the bank tries to quickly close accounts used by criminals to help protect customers. Representatives for Prepay didn’t return emails seeking comment.Amazon needed the documents “to investigate the fraud, identify and pursue the wrongdoers, locate the whereabouts of misappropriated funds, bring the fraud to an end and deter future wrongdoing," the company’s lawyers said in the court filing.

Berkshire Hathaway finally bought shares of Amazon, says Warren Buffett

International News

Warren Buffett said Berkshire Hathaway Inc has bought shares of internet retailing giant Amazon.com Inc for the first time, though he has not been the one doing the buying, CNBC reported on Thursday.

Buffett said the purchase was made by one of his investment managers, Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, and details would be disclosed later this month in Berkshire's quarterly report of its US stock holdings.The purchase marks a U-turn for Berkshire, where Buffett has long praised the leadership of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos.

"Yeah, I've been a fan, and I've been an idiot for not buying," Buffett told CNBC.Buffett's assistant did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amazon did not immediately respond to a similar request.

Shares of companies often rise when Berkshire reveals its support through new stakes, even when the purchases are believed or known to have been made by Combs or Weschler, who together invest about $26 billion.

The initial impetus of the portfolio managers has in the past heralded Buffett's eventual forays into some of their investments, often in big ways.

It was Combs who in 2012 began investing in industrial and aircraft parts maker Precision Castparts Corp. Four years later, Berkshire completed its purchase of that company for $32 billion, in what remains Buffett's largest acquisition.


 More recently, it was either Combs or Weschler who in 2016 began investing in iPhone maker Apple Inc.But it was Buffett who ramped up that stake into Berkshire's largest common stock investment, more than 255 million shares, now worth roughly $53 billion.The Amazon purchase adds an additional bond between Buffett and Bezos, whose companies teamed up last year with JPMorgan Chase & Co to form a new venture, Haven, to reduce employee healthcare costs...Read More

Amazon raises stakes for rivals with 1-day delivery goal after profit surge

Company News

Amazon.com Inc plans to deliver packages to members of its loyalty club Prime in just one day, instead of two days, part of a spending ramp-up that may curb near-term profits and will up the ante for retail rivals such as Walmart Inc.

Shares rose as much as 2 per cent in after-hours trade on Thursday as Amazon said faster shipping will come to customers around the world and said its profit more than doubled in the first quarter, trouncing estimates thanks to soaring demand for its cloud and ad services.
The news marks a costly challenge for competitors that will have to pour money into a logistics problem that even the king of e-commerce has yet to solve. Amazon expects to spend $800 million toward the shipping goal in the second quarter alone.

"There's a lot of error bars around this programme, especially from the cost side," Amazon's Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts on a conference call. "We (are) again, trying to take advantage of the fulfilment capacity and transportation capacity, especially with third-party partners, that we have."

While Olsavsky did not provide a concrete timeline for the program's rollout, he said, "We expect to make steady progress quickly and through the year."

US rivals Walmart and Target Corp have steadily rolled out two-day shipping, albeit on far fewer items than Amazon Prime customers can get at that speed for $119 a year in the United States. Olsavsky said the "vast majority" of Amazon's selection is available in two days, and the company has already expanded the number of goods eligible for same-day and two-hour delivery.


 "Amazon is cranking it up a notch, trying to set themselves apart," said Cathy Morrow Roberson, a former UPS analyst who founded consulting firm Logistics Trends & Insights....Read More

Game of Thrones: Piracy 'better than Emmy' for HBO as it battles Netflix

Company News

Eight years after the first season premiered, the long-awaited winter has finally come – Game of Thrones’ final season is here. The television series created by David Benioff and Daniel Brett Weiss from the books by George RR Martin has built a rich and complex multi-thread plot-knot of epic battles, of the living and the undead, of long owed-debts to be paid, and of the culmination of clan stratagems to win the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms.

But at the end of season seven in the autumn of 2017, it wasn’t the clan warfare that had us cliffhanging, but the thought of the army of undead white walkers and their zombie dragon bearing down on Westeros.

Many millions of fans are waiting breathlessly for the denouement – and it’s a legion of fans that has grown exponentially over the eight-year run. In the US, for example, the audience has grown from 2.5m viewers in the first season (2011) to an average of 10.3m during season seven, which peaked at more than 12m viewers during the season seven finale on August 27, 2017.

According to MUSO, a magazine which specialises in piracy, the first episode of season seven alone was pirated 91.74m times and the season accumulated more than a billion illegal downloads a week after it ended.

So many people viewing outside of the official channels doesn’t just suggest the incredibly large audience GoT can attract, it also demonstrates the growth in illegal downloading of television shows – 11% last year – despite the effort of the streaming technologies to kill off piracy.
Piracy has its rewards


 But this hasn’t necessarily been a problem for HBO. In 2013, the boss of Time-Warner (which owns HBO), Jeff Bewkes, declared that piracy was: “Better than an Emmy” because more people watching the show inevitably led to more people deciding to pay for subscriptions.

One deal at a time: How Mukesh Ambani is trying to take on Amazon in India

Company News

A $2.5 billion spending spree involving more than two dozen deals provides some insight into how Mukesh Ambani is piecing together a strategy to take on Amazon.com Inc. in India.
Asia’s richest man is sharpening his focus on e-commerce with a string of tiny acquisitions and stake purchases to face the world’s largest online retailer, after shaking up India’s telecommunications industry with cheap data and free calls.

The acquisitions represent a new strategy for Ambani’s Reliance Group, whose founder -- his father Dhirubhai Ambani -- built a petrochemicals business and the world’s largest oil-refining complex from scratch. It’s a clear pivot toward consumer offerings in a country that’s becoming a battleground for giants such as Amazon.com and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt.

“The deals may be tiny, but it’s more likely that they are putting together a team of talented people by acquisitions, who can then be invested in to build out larger platform products,” said Kunal Agrawal, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

Ambani is racing to grab a share of an online shopping market that Morgan Stanley estimates will grow to be valued at $200 billion by 2028 from about $30 billion last year. India will have 829 million smartphone users by 2022, according to Cisco Systems Inc., from a projected half a billion this year. That means a potential surge in demand for online services and products from music to food delivery, electronic gadgets and clothes.

‘Shopping Experience’


 Ambani outlined his plan to shareholders in July, saying the effort will involve the group’s unlisted businesses Reliance Retail Ltd...Read More