Vishal Krishna Imagine walking into a retail store and paying through an app, which is recognised by the point of sale system of the retailer and which allows the shopper to instantly check out. Imagine, after morning exercise, a citizen visits his local tea stall and pays through the app. Or imagine this, a citizen wants to open a bank account and goes to the kirana store to do so. The grocer verifies the person with an iris and finger print scanner linked to the Aadhar database and the mobile number becomes the defacto account. Companies like EzeTap, Momoe, NovoPay, MobiKwik and others will eventually be coming together to make virtual banking a reality. Momoe is engaging all local merchants to accept virtual cash. EzeTap has integrated PoS machines to recognise digital wallets and Novo Pay allows customers to open bank accounts with mobile phones and pay virtual cash to merchants. "Its no doubt that banking is going mobile. The numbers are there and banking will be more inclusive because of smart phones," says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and Chairman of PayTM. The payments industry, according to IAMAI, is worth $127 billion in the country. There are 17 million credit cards and less than 200 million bank accounts in the country. The mobile payments industry is very minuscule, say Rs 300 crore, but has tremendous potential because of the rise of smart phone sales in this country. Gartner predicts that India will have 500 million phones being sold by the year 2018. Currently PayTM and Mobikwik dominate the payments space. While these are just linked to bill payments they hope to complete the entire loop of banking, which is to take deposits, allow payments to offline merchants and to increase consumption. "The payments industry needs to sync with Aadhar to make it more effective and scalable," says Srikanth Nadhamuni, Chairman of Novopay. The problem today is the rate of growth of the economy and the rate at which jobs are being created and the loans being disbursed to fuel the economy. With banks still being tight lipped about the Indian economy's fundamentals, only time will tell if consumption will be large enough to correlate to smart phone usage. Just 100 million people consuming on smart phones will drive valuations of startups, which is a good thing. Whether it is going to usher in a change in including 900 million more people in the consumption boom, is a different story all together. However, for a technocrat this is the best time to build a technology stack for Indian consumer banking.
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By Haider Ali KhanPanasonic India has expanded its P-series smartphone with the launch of the P50 Idol and P65 Flash. Both the Panasonic P50 Idol and Panasonic P65 Flash smartphones will be soon available to buy at Rs 6,790 and Rs 8,290 respectively. The dual-SIM smartphone comes with 2,150mAh Li-Ion battery. The smartphone will be available in Fabric Silver and Fabric Gold colour options. Commenting on the launch, Pankaj Rana, Business Head, Mobility Division, Panasonic India, said, “Indian consumers are well aware and perceptive buyers, well informed about technology trends and available offerings in the market. We always keep the consumer behaviour in mind at every step of our smartphone design and manufacturing strategy. With the release of the P50 Idol and P65 Flash, we now offer nearly 30 smartphones at affordable price points for every buyer to indulge themselves or their loved ones this festive season. The new P50 and P65 models have sharper IPS HD displays, dual cameras, and greater battery life. Both devices are supported by the latest Android 5.1 (Lollipop) OS and powered by 1.3GHz Quad Core processors, 1GB RAM, and 8GB internal memory support expandable to 32GB with a micro SD. They support dual cameras with an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash and 720p HD recording as well as 2 MP front facing lens. Equipped with full connectivity packages including advanced A-GPS technology, both dual SIM models offer 3G support. The P65 Flash flaunts a 5.5-inch screen, complimented by a metallic gold or silver finish, with a mega 2910mAh capacity battery for longer operations. With a similarly large 2150mAh battery, the 5-inch P50 Idol comes with stylish contour edges for a sleek profile. The innovative metallic brush-effect on the back panel gives the device a Japanese premium brand look.
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By Simar SinghVerizon Enterprise Solutions has announced plans to expand the footprint of it Secure Cloud Interconnect service by extending its availability to Latin America, as well as additional sites in home ground America and Europe. The New Jersey-based division of American broadband and telecommunication company Verizon Solutions focuses on servicing the company’s business and government clientele around the world. The Secure Cloud Interconnect service offers secure private connections to six cloud service providers—Amazon Web Services, Google, HP, Verizon Cloud, salesforce.com and Microsoft Azure Express Route. The service is also used by data centre providers Equinix, CoreSite and Verison at more that 30 locations across the Americas, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The service essentially provides a secure high-performance environment for cloud computing. It is a software defined network offering that helps enterprises seamlessly connect, manage and secure their cloud environments which often extend across multiple clouds and data centres across the globe. “Verizon’s Secure Cloud Interconnect allows users to connect to applications simply, securely and reliably,” said Shawn Hakl, vice president of enterprise networking and innovation for Verizon. “SCI customers will find our solution delivers an unbeatable combination of performance, security and efficiency to help enable their digital transformation while reducing the complexity often associated with cloud computing.” The company claims that future expansion plans include a significant buildout in the Asia-Pacific region which is slated to be completed this fall.
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Facebook is rolling out a slew of new advertising products aimed at attracting TV advertisers to its monthly active user base of a billion and a half. The new TRP buying tool will allow advertisers to plan, buy and measure Facebook video ads using total rating point (TRP) as the metric.The social media network has witnessed a 25 per cent rise in the number of active advertisers since February 2015 and has about 2.5 million advertisers on the platform.Facebook is now looking to convince TV advertisers that they should support their campaigns with Facebook video ads, as (it said in an official blog post) a Nielsen study shows that this drives incremental reach, increases efficiency and improves effectiveness. This trend was noted even more in millennials, where the incremental reach rose to 37 per cent in the US campaigns. Facebook’s official post stresses that advertisers’ money is better spent on it than on TV. It said that the Nielsen study also highlighted that Facebook impressions were two times more likely to hit the target audience than TV impressions.Besides this, Facebook also announced a couple of updates to its ad products. It introduced brand awareness optimisation bidding that will help advertisers find the audiences most likely to recall their ads.Another interesting feature is the addition of video to the carousel ad formats in Power Editor, and will soon expand to the Ads Create Tool in the coming weeks.Brand BuzzReaching New HeightsInstagram, the image-sharing site by Facebook, is growing rapidly and now has 400 million users on the platform. According to a company blog, about 75 per cent of users live outside the US; more than half of the last 100 million users to join the platform are from Europe and Asia. In fact, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia are the top countries that added the most number of Instagram users.In March 2014, the company had reached 200-million-users mark and it doubled the number in 18 months.Dig The DataFind Them Here!GlobalWebIndex found that 53 per cent of Instagram users follow their favourite brands on the photo- and video-sharing network. And with about 70 per cent of Instagrammers being under 35, the site has a younger audience than any other major networks. What’s more, over 60 per cent log in daily, giving Instagram better engagement figures than any network except Facebook.Holiday PinsPinterest shared data recently about the way people use it for the holi-days, noting that from 2013 through 2014, 92 million holiday pins were saved by 38 million people. It has also seen a 50 per cent year-on-year rise in holiday pins.LEADERHarsh Goenka@hvgoenka Chairman, RPG Enterprises“‘Made in Germany’ stands for reliability, trustworthiness and engineering prowess. Will one unfortunate Volkswagen act change that image?”Kaushik Basu@kaushikcbasu Chief economist, World Bank“If the US had strict gun control laws & some poor nation the laws the US has, we’d refer to the laws of the poor nation as primitive”(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 02-11-2015)
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Mobile payment gateway MobiKwik, has come rolled out updates for its app for iPhones includes iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The latest release of the iOS app - version 5.6 launched on October 11 - with its presses, peeks, and pops, will support the 3D Force Touch feature and iOS 9 users in India. With this, accessing features and offers on MobiKwik becomes Kwik and Easy, as extra taps and clicks are eliminated.Apple has chosen the MobiKwik iOS app for demonstrating 3D Force Touch feature on iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus to customers at Apple Shops and Apple Premium resellers. It is among few apps who support 3D force touch, some others being Instagram, Pinterest, Dropbox,Facebook and Evernote.The 3D Force Touch feature in the newly launched iPhones enables different actions to be triggered depending on the pressure of the touch applied to the screen. Following the update to the MobiKwik app for iOS, this enhancement will be exploited to let users recharge their devices, transfer money, and shop online more kwikly and directly from homescreen of their iPhone 6S and 6S Plus using Quick Actions.Peek And Pop At Features & OffersThe 3D force touch feature enables users to Peek and Pop app screens. So, once the user taps the MobiKwik app, Peek and Pop is activated, which lets users 3D touch shallow press the screen to launch a pop-up window that offers a glimpse of features and offers. By deep press on it, users can either open it, or release it to return to the list.Spotlight SearchOn iOS 9, users can now search for features or offers without even opening the Mobikwik app. They can open Spotlight Search by swiping down on the home screen and typing “recharge” or “offer” and matching MobiKwik titles will appear among the results.Apple watchOS 2 update, changes the way you pay through your wearableThe update via a companion app brings with it support for the Apple Watch. On the wearable, users can now recharge their mobile phones with a tap, as well as browse through top offers, shop and much more. The app for the wearable also brings support for the latest Apple watchOS 2.(BW Online Bureau)
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Samsung has been pushing its home brewed mobile operating platform Tizen for a couple of years now and have also been using it for their smartwear devices including the Gear S and the new Gear S2. While the platform is still not very popular, it took a decent jump when the company announced the Z1 feature phone earlier this year. According to the company, the handset has got a good response and have sold about one million units.
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Paytm users have made over 5000 pre-bookings of Apple iPhone 6s on the launch of its special offer on app and website. The offer allowed Paytm users to pre-book the iPhone 6s to receive the coveted phone on the very day of its launch.Amit Bagaria, Associate Vice President, Paytm said, “The high volume sales of iPhone6s in a limited pre-booking period reflects the strength of the Paytm Platform and its reach. It motivates us to build more creative campaigns for future. While the pre-booking numbers are high, arrangements have been made to ensure that every single customer gets their piece on launch day itself.”Paytm had kicked off the iphone 6s prebook offer recently. Customers could book the variant of their choice by paying upfront a sum of Rs 2000. Paytm in association with banks, is also running a cashback of Rs 2500 to give an additional benefit to its customers. Users making complete payments can avail their handsets at select outlets.(BW Online Bureau)
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By Haider Ali Khan With an eye on expansion, Australia-based online graphic design platform Canva has formally entered the Indian market. Canva is all set to make graphic design simple for everyone, allowing users to create professional quality designs. Canva has presence in more than 179 countries, and more than 1 million designs are created on the platform each week. Canva, which reached 5 million users in the world in just over two years, has 150,000 users already in India. India account for 4th largest market, have already created more than 1 million designs."We are excited to be in India. We see great potential for it to become an even bigger market for us. We will be investing in local marketing, business development and brand partnerships in India. We will also be launching our Canva Experts partnerships in India and working with local firms to help Indian users get the most out of the platform. India is a key market for Canva, and we feel it has great potential for growth, especially considering Indians are known to have a strong design aesthetic, and be early adopters of new technology and applications," said Melanie Perkins, CEO and founder, Canva. The company aims to reach 1 million users in India by the end of 2016. With over 2,000 users signing up in India every day, Canva is seeing exponential growth in the local market, reinforcing its pursuit to become more deeply entrenched in local conversations around design simplicity and the role of the internet in propelling it.Canva recently completed a US$ 15 million series A funding round to expand its platform and is now valued at US$ 165 million. It will use the funding to grow its team, enhance the product and expand globally. The funding was led by investors Felicis Ventures. They were joined by existing investors Blackbird Ventures, Matrix Partners, and new investors Vayner Capital, the investment arm of Gary Vaynerchuk. Hollywood actors Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson have also become investors in the company. Canva now has templates for cards and social media posts to celebrate festivals such as Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali.
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