Walmart CEO's India visit
What's the news?
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon took stock of Flipkart’s initiatives amid a rapidly changing regulatory and competitive environment during a visit to the homegrown e-commerce major’s Bengaluru headquarters.
What's the significance?
McMillon's visit comes at a time when Flipkart is battling Amazon for dominance in India's e-commerce market, apart from facing an impending threat from Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, which is preparing to debut its own online marketplace in the country.
He reviewed the e-tailer’s initiatives over the last six months, across departments including technology, fashion, financial inclusion and policy, sources told ET. Read more.
Skyroot Aerospace aims to hurl small satellites into space
What's the news?
Skyroot Aerospace, a Hyderabad-based startup backed by Curefit founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, is developing a rocket which can be assembled and launched in a day that will be used to hurl small satellites into space
What's the plan?
Skyroot, founded by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists Pawan Kumar Chandana, Naga Bharath Daka and Vasudevan Gnanagandhi, expects to demonstrate its first rocket by 2021, which they say could potentially reduce launch costs by a third.
The company, which is in talks to raise Rs 80 crore from investors, is also developing a family of rockets named after Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of India’s space programme. Read more.
Wipro hires a forensic firm to probe cyber attack
What's the news?
Wipro said it has hired a forensic firm to investigate the cyber attack on its systems. Wipro called the attack a ‘zero-day’ attack, a term that is meant to describe an attack on the same day that a software vulnerability is discovered
What has the IT firm done?
Wipro said it has informed a ‘handful’ of customers in line with its protocol, though costs of the attack were not disclosed. In its annual filing last June with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Wipro had said it was liable in case its network was breached. Wipro also noted that it investigates over 4.5 million security alerts a year and puts employees through training courses. Read more.
Reliance pulls brands from rivals ahead of e-commerce launch
What's the news?
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries has started withdrawing its clothes, shoes and lifestyle products from would-be rival marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart as a precursor to the launch of its own business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplace that will sell everything from food to fashion.
Why is Reliance doing this?
Reliance wants to create exclusivity for global as well as its own brands to attract consumers to its portal. Reliance Trends and Reliance Brands have been asked to expedite the phasing-out process from non-Reliance marketplaces in the coming weeks, sources told ET.
Reliance currently has four dozen joint ventures or master franchisee arrangements with international labels including Diesel, Kate Spade, Steve Madden, Burberry, Canali, Emporio Armani, Furla, Jimmy Choo and Marks & Spencer, most of which are currently available on rival online marketplaces. Read more.
Instagram becoming a hub of fake newsWhat's the news?
Instagram has become a hotbed for fake news and misinformation over the past few weeks, said analytics companies, strategists, and fact-checkers
What's the issue?
Instagram is not mentioned separately in the voluntary 'code of ethics' for general elections issued by EC, raising concerns on whether the Election Commission is adequately scrutinising the Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing social network platform for objectionable political content.
Instagram said the Election Commission has not asked the company to take down any objectionable content so far and that the platform has not removed any accounts or posts linked to fake news and misinformation around political parties and candidates. Read more.