Uplifting space research 🚀
Whatsapp payments, Autonomy partnership, and fighting e-commerce fraud.
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Stock market summary:
US - S&P 500 up 1.10%
India - Sensex down 0.077%
AMZN launches a counterfeit crimes unit 🧐
Amazon has launched a new unit to turn the heat up on counterfeit products on its website. Comprising data experts, engineers, legal folks etc. the unit will be dealing with investigating, finding and eventually launching legal action and criminal referrals against known and repeated counterfeiters globally.
The objective is also to leverage regulatory and legal tech as much as possible to streamline filing of civil suits, and to aid brands in their own investigations.
"Every counterfeiter is on notice and they will be held accountable to the maximum extent possible under the law regardless of where they attempt to sell their counterfeits or where they're located" said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon's vice president of customer trust and partner support.
Amazon's marketplace is made up of millions of third party sellers and given the sudden surge in demand due to the pandemic, the company’s struggles with counterfeit, unsafe and even expired products have only worsened.
The Trump administration has even placed 5 of Amazon's foreign websites on the White house's annual "notorious market" lists.
After Brazil, Whatsapp thinks about digital payment rollout in India 📱
Just after a week of its launch, the FB owned messaging platform's payment service was suspended in Brazil by the Central Bank there, apparently to “preserve competitive environment”. Following this, Whatsapp is diverting all its focus on launching its payment system in India now, where it had great ambitions right from the beginning.
In fact, Whatsapp’s payment service through India’s UPI payment infrastructure has been stuck in the beta stage for over 2 years due to regulatory hurdles. Permitting a phased launch of the service, NCPI had limited Whatsapp pay to 1 million users in the first trial.
But just last week the messaging platform told SC that it is now fully compliant with RBI’s localisation norms and it is now awaiting the government's green signal for a go ahead. Next up, NCPI will consider letting them go up to 10 million users.
Google pay, PhonePe among others are leading players in this arena, but since Whatsapp’s feature will be inside the chat app, its strategic positioning is ideal.
Auto makers prepare for a new era 🚗
German car maker Daimler, that makes the Mercedes Benz car is tying up with graphic cards and high-speed computing hardware maker Nvidia in a deeper partnership on self-driving cars.
Experts believe that the partnership is in response to Tesla’s rising dominance on the EV and “Autonomy” front. As part of this deal, the two companies will work together to leverage Nvidia’s computing expertise to build software upgradable systems for Mercedes vehicles while Mercedes will lend hand on sensing, detection, and control - its own areas of expertise.
Tesla makes its own hardware, software, and its own electric drive trains while traditional car makers do not yet have the same capabilities to rival their progress. As a result, traditional players have been actively looking for partnerships over the past decade.
Many such have been formed and broken but nothing material has come out so far.
Patanjali under Government scanner over Coronil 🌿
Patanjali has come under a lot of scrutiny of the central government in the last few days over claims of developing an ayurvedic cure to treat patients with the Coronavirus.
The Ayush Ministry said it was not aware of any such developments and sternly warned the company to stop advertising before it goes through requisite permissioning. The government further guided the company to provide details and compositions of the drug along with necessary documents highlighting efficacy studies.
Patanjali has widely been claiming that the drug ‘Coronil” shows 100% results in a trial, with 75% people cured by 3 days and 100% within 14 days.
ISRO body to help private space companies 🚀
India may have missed the boat of key global innovations in the past, but it's clear we are not giving up our lead in the space.
India has now set up a new organization, In-Space, to encourage private companies building satellites and rockets and help them launch in space using existing government infrastructure.
The Indian National Space Promotion and Space Authorization (In-Space) also aims at cutting red tape and giving more clarity on regulatory hurdles startups and innovators need to get through. Also, knowledge sharing and cross-learning from mistakes will be prioritized.
According to ISRO chairman K. Sivan, the private industry is already involved in 80% of the production of satellites and rockets in India and acts largely as a supplier of systems. A more aggressive role is only due. The global private space industry is growing at explosive rates, and Elon Musk’s success with the most recent mission is shining more light on possibilities.
Tweet of the day -
Recession is often a catalyst for innovation. The tweet below sums ups multiple billion dollar businesses that were incubated and solidified in times of abject hopelessness.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🎡 California Disneyland delays reopening - the US is now grappling with a second wave of the coronavirus after certain states were quick in removing lockdowns and opening up their economies. As cases rise, flagship leisure spots like Disneyland as well as retail locations like Apples stores that were planning on opening for peak summer have now postponed reopenings.
🗽 NY, NJ and Connecticut will quarantine visitors coming from coronavirus hotspots - the New York city region was one of the worst hit places globally early on the pandemic, but cases have been brought under control ever since and reopenings have begun. But as cases in the rest of the parts of the US surge, the tri-state area has mandated 14 day quarantine for outside visitors.
🙌 Hindustan Unilever to drop ‘fair’ from fair and lovely - HUL is rebranding its famed cosmetic product following accusations of fomenting racism and the nation’s vile obsession over fair skin. The brand has come under a lot of pressure recently through public outrage on social media after racism took center stage in the western world.
🛒 Online marketplace sells 10 million products in first sale this year - Myntra just concluded its annual mass discount selling event, and on the back of the pandemic, sold nearly 1 crore products. That is certainly impressive.
🍎 Apple acquires Fleetsmith - Interestingly, Apple has acquired a mobile device management startup, Fleetsmith. The startup allows IT teams to manage devices at scale. As usual, Apple is very secretive about the purchase and hasn’t disclosed much but its an interesting acquisition for sure considering the fact that Fleetsmith is 100% focused on B2B device management, which has not been Apple’s game. At least so far.
🖥️ New Netflix feature will allow users to de-clutter watching list - as streaming wars heat up, and as the pandemic drives gigantic volumes of viewership to leading platforms, new features are being developed to keep users engaged. This time, Netflix will update the “continue watching” feature to stop annoying you with shows that you have no interest in seeing anymore.
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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