Sharechat content takedown
What's the news?
Sharechat has taken down nearly half a million pieces of content and removed 54,400 accounts since February for spreading fake news, hate speech, spam, and misinformation.
What's the significance?
Sharechat is one of the 5 Internet companies that agreed to the Election Commission of India’s (EC) voluntary code to control ‘problematic content’ and bring ‘transparency in political advertising’. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and ByteDance are the others that agreed to abide by the code.
Some of the posts that ShareChat removed included factually inaccurate statements about the national elections, shared content intended to cause public disorder and create a frenzy among supporters of various political parties and the public. Read more.
OYO China fires staff
What's the news?
OYO Jiudian, the Chinese subsidiary of SoftBank-backed hospitality chain OYO Hotels & Homes, has fired 25 employees, and issued warnings to over 100 more, as the Gurgaon-headquartered company sought to crack down on what it has described as “unethical practices.”
What is the company doing?
OYO has formed an integrity committee to weed out instances of misconduct and unethical practices, while continuing to double down on corporate governance and ensuring compliance across levels.
OYO has also delisted two hotels in the last two months, subject to fulfillment of quality standards and other customer experience checks, as part of its quality assurance program. Read more.
Fintech's lucrative Open Banking opportunity
What's the news?
Fintech startups have started offering a broader set of banking services beyond payments and lending, indicating a deep integration with lenders that could potentially change the way customers access banking products.
What's the use case?
Reconciliation between multiple current accounts of a business through one portal and lending at Point of Sale otherwise meant for payments are some of the ways in which ‘open banking’ is gaining ground. Creation of a common platform for inventory management, payments, and real-time settlements is another use case. Read more.
Investment into Tata CLiQ lags
What's the news?
Tatas have invested Rs 292 crore in FY19 in Tata UniStore, the entity which owns the e-commerce marketplace Tata CLiQ. The capital infusion was made by its two shareholders — Tata Industries, which owns 90%, and the group’s retail arm, Trent, which owns the balance 10%.
What's the competition up to?
In calendar 2018, Amazon India received Rs 9,450 crore, the highest ever capital infusion into the Indian entity in a single year. After Walmart acquired a controlling 77% in Flipkart last August, Flipkart Internet also received over Rs 3,463 crore while the wholesale arm Flipkart India received Rs 2,190 crore. Flipkart India received another Rs 1,431 crore in January. Read more.
Backing tech incubators can qualify as CSR spend
What's the news?
The government panel on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is likely to suggest tweaks to the CSR framework to allow funding to all incubators to be counted towards CSR spend
What's the current scenario?
As per the current provisions, contributions or funds provided to technology incubators located within academic institutions and approved by government qualify as CSR. Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has now sought widening of this definition to include other incubators as well.
Only about Rs 54 crore was spent on technology incubators under CSR during 2014-17, which is meagre compared to spend on education, at Rs 10,651 crore, and healthcare, at Rs 6,671 crore. Read more.