ETtech Evening Briefing on Mar. 4, 2021: WhatsApp calling comes to the laptop

Good night,

You can now make voice and video calls on WhatsApp by its desktop app, the firm mentioned earlier at present, including that these calls, simply as on cell, shall be end-to-end encrypted. This comes after the authorities introduced strict new guidelines for social media and chat platforms final week, and WhatsApp mentioned in response that it “would not bend” on the challenge of privateness.

Elsewhere in at present’s letter:

• 🛒 Flipkart eyes US itemizing through SPAC
• 💰 Razorpay’s ESOPs buyback
• 🍪 Third-party cookies defined

WhatsApp launches voice and video calls from desktop

WhatsApp mentioned it has
launched ‘private’ and ‘secure’ one-to-one voice and video calls on the platform’s desktop app.

The messaging big mentioned it’s doing so since calling on a much bigger display makes it simpler to work with colleagues, see households extra clearly or release palms and transfer round whereas speaking. Just like on cellphones, video and voice calls on the desktop will keep end-to-end encrypted, it mentioned.

Last week, the Indian authorities
introduced new rules to regulate social media platforms. The new norms have a ‘traceability’ requirement, which might require platforms corresponding to WhatsApp and Signal break end-to-end encryption to hint the ‘first originator’ of any message the authorities deems unlawful. WhatsApp mentioned in response that it “would not bend” on the challenge of its customers’ privateness.

Flipkart eyes US itemizing through SPAC

Flipkart is
eyeing a US listing by a merger with a particular objective acquisition firm (SPAC), Bloomberg reported. Flipkart has reached out to a number of SPACs and will search a valuation of at the least $35 billion, the report mentioned.

What are SPACs? One of the hottest traits amongst dealmakers in Silicon Valley, SPACs, typically referred to as ‘blank cheque’ firms, are shell firms created with the sole intention of merging with a personal enterprise. These companies record on the inventory exchanges with none actual enterprise and lift cash from traders. They then sometimes purchase personal companies and assist them go public shortly with out the problem of a standard IPO. A SPAC has two years to discover a firm to purchase or it should return the funds to traders.

Read our explainer on SPACs here.

Tweet of the Day

Google guarantees ‘privacy-preserving’ options to Third-party cookies

Google introduced yesterday that after it phases out third-party cookies from its Chrome browser, it’s going to solely use applied sciences that protect folks’s privateness of their place.

The firm had mentioned final January that it will section out third-party cookies—which can be utilized to monitor particular person customers throughout web sites and goal advertisements—from Chrome inside two years.

• “Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products,” David Temkin, Google’s director of product administration, advertisements privateness and belief, wrote in a weblog.

What are third-party cookies? To perceive that we first want to perceive what a cookie is.

A cookie is a small piece of knowledge your internet browser shops on your pc once you go to a web site. Its objective is to assist the web site hold monitor of your visits and exercise.

For instance, a web-based retailer could use cookies to hold monitor of the objects in your cart as you discover the web site in order that they don’t disappear every time you click on a brand new hyperlink on the web site. They can be used to bear in mind issues that you just beforehand entered into kind fields.

There are broadly two varieties of cookies: first-party and third-party.

First-party cookies are saved by the web site you’re visiting immediately. They permit the web site to gather analytics knowledge, bear in mind language settings, and carry out different helpful capabilities to enhance your expertise.

Third-party cookies on the different hand are created by web sites apart from the one you’re visiting immediately. They are primarily (although not all the time) used for monitoring and online-advertising. These are the cookies that Google plans to section out from Chrome by subsequent 12 months.

Why is Google phasing out third-party cookies? Google’s monitoring of its Chrome customers’ searching habits to ship extremely focused advertisements has been broadly criticised. In its announcement on Tuesday the firm itself cited a research by the Pew Research Center which discovered that 72% of individuals really feel that the majority of what they do on-line is being tracked by advertisers, know-how companies or different firms, and 81% say that the potential dangers they face due to knowledge assortment outweigh the advantages.

Incidentally, Apple started blocking all third-party cookies on its
Safari browser by default final May, whereas
Firefox did so in September 2019.

Razorpay’s ESOPs buyback

Razorpay has
announced its third ESOP buyback programme value $10 million for its 750 workers. The fintech main is certainly one of India’s youngest startups to have facilitated the ESOP programme for the previous three years. All present and former workers of Razorpay who maintain vested shares shall be eligible to promote up to 33% of their vested ESOP shares.

Who’s shopping for? Sequoia Capital India and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, two of Razorpay’s key traders.

On the up: In October 2020, the firm
closed a $100 million financing round co-led by GIC and Sequoia Capital, in the course of turning into the first Indian neo-bank to prime $1 billion in valuation. Last month, ET reported that Razorpay was in
talks with its existing investor GIC, which is Singapore’s sovereign funding fund, and others to increase $150-200 million in a financing spherical that would see its valuation almost double to $2 billion in lower than six months.

ETtech Done Deals

■ E-commerce startup
DealShare has
landed Rs 25 crore in debt funding from Innoven Capital. The firm mentioned it will use the funds to scale its presence to 100 cities by the finish of 2021 and supply customers with a gamified buying expertise.

■ Edtech platform
Questt has
raised $1.35 million in a seed funding spherical led by Chiratae Ventures. AET Fund and angel traders together with Sanpdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, and Razorpay founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar additionally participated in the spherical by Marsshot Ventures. The startup plans to use the funding to develop its attain and embrace all post-kindergarten grades in the coming months.

■
Euler Motors has
picked up Rs 30 crore as a part of its ongoing collection A spherical led by present traders Inventus India and Jetty Ventures. Sujeet Kumar, co-founder of Udaan, participated in the spherical together with new traders Srinivas Anumolu and Ok Ganesh from Growth Story.