Copy much? 🤔
Journalism feud, INTC buy, and Dara's love for India.
Hi 👋, Tanvi here.
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Imitation is the best form of flattery 🙌
India’s Jio has come out with a video conferencing app, Jiomeet, which is a word-to-word copy of the global counterpart Zoom. The app is available now on Google Play Store, App Store and for desktop users.
Taking Zoom’s free tier offering a notch higher, JMeet can support upto 100 participants at once with uninterrupted calls for upto 24 hours. The app is absolutely free of cost and does not require codes or invites for the call to begin.
Zoom’s usage began skyrocketing even in India with people working from home this year, but the Ministry of Affairs had promptly warned users of lax privacy practices. With most of Zoom’s engineering team based in China, the anti-Chinese sentiment could help JMeet’s rise. Besides, analysts believe the video-conferencing market is just getting started and there is plenty of room for more winners.
Far as privacy goes, JMeet claims that all the meetings are encrypted. Read more.
Uber is looking at India for jobs 👀
Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi apparently has been pushing engineering jobs slowly to India, in a bid to cut costs, despite pushback from his technology executives. Uber’s India engineering headcount forms 15% of its tech workforce, up from 80 in 2017 to 600 in 2020.
With some serious cost savings in his pocket, the CEO is now keen on moving more jobs to India and this has sparked a debate within the company. Especially given the US’s tightening immigration policies with an agenda to keep jobs locked within its boundaries, Uber might be entering some hot waters with the government as well.
However, Khosrowshahi might have bigger problems to worry about - like Uber’s never ending cash burn. Uber burnt through $5 Billion last year, instead of making any money, and impatient shareholders are demanding improvements.
However, if Dara does push through, the outcome could be hugely beneficial to India, which is hurting from an economic freeze and mass layoffs. In addition to hiring, Uber will likely spend a lot on getting infrastructure ready, including data centers and other buildout such as real estate. Read more.
INTC wants a scoop of Jio 👏
Intel will invest $253.50 Million ( Rs.1,894.50 Crores) in RIL’s Jio, joining other high profile investors including Facebook, General Atlantic and Silver lake that have also backed India’s top telecom operator.
The infusion offers Intel’s investment arm about 0.39% stake in Jio platforms giving the Indian firm a valuation of $65 billion.
Despite being a hardware first company (specifically processing and sensing), Intel has a good history of betting on adjacent software, infrastructure and other ecosystem services throughout the internet boom.
Reliance believes the investment will help “work with Intel to advance India’s capabilities in cutting edge technologies that will empower all sectors of our economy and improve the quality of life of 1.3 billion Indians.” Read more.
Venture capitalists and Tech journalists lock horns 👊
Last week we saw Twitter get into a unique feud, or perhaps not so unique afterall.
A few revered VCs and who’s who of silicon valley took to some public bashing of a renowned New York Times journalist and the broad tech journalism community.
The investors claimed that journalists sometimes have too much power and a captive audience that believes anything they write, and sometimes they use that narrative bending power incorrectly, ruining companies and opportunities in the process.
While the journalists argued about their fairness and how Investors and VCs believe in the press only if the press is cheerleading.
The conversations overflowed to an hour-long discussion on Clubhouse, an invite only audio app. Then the audio was leaked online, adding more fuel to the fire. Read more about what happened here.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
😷 Texas made face masks mandatory starting yesterday - Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Thursday which requires Texans to wear face coverings in public in counties with more than 20 or more COVID-19 cases.
👏 McDonalds hits pause on reopening dining rooms - Due to the rising Coronavirus cases, McDonalds has hit pause on reopening its dining rooms for 3 weeks. MCD in June had reopened over 1000 US restaurants with reduced seating capacity.
👊 Bharti enterprises wins bid for OneWeb - the parent company of Airtel’s wins bid for the defunct satellite startup, with the backing of the UK government. Both UK Gov and Mittal will pump $500 Million each to buy all assets of OneWeb.
🤒 Second wave devastates US - The US reported 55,000 new COVID-19 cases and the daily tally stood at 55,274 late Thursday. This exceeds the previous single day record set by Brazil on June 19 with 54,771 cases. Now the total cases in the US stand at over 2.7M.
🤧 More players test positive - The NBA announced on Thursday that 9 more basketball players have tested positive for the virus. Tests were conducted of 344 NBA players between June 24-29, the total number now stands at 25 which accounts for 7% of the league.
✈️ Ban on international flights extended till July 31st - DGCA on Friday extended the ban on international passenger flights in the country till July 31. However international scheduled flights may be allowed on scheduled flights routes on a case to case basis.
📉 US unemployment falls - After adding a whopping 4.8 Million jobs, the US unemployment rate fell to 11.1% with the job market improving for a second month straight. But with cases on the rise and restaurants and bars reclosing, the layoffs remain elevated.
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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