Billionaire tech pioneer Nilekani takes on Amazon, Walmart in India

India has become a battlefield for some global retail behemoths that are either shut out of China or are struggling to compete with local rivals there

He co-founded software powerhouse Infosys Ltd., became a billionaire and went on to spearhead a colossal government program to create biometric identification for India’s almost 1.4 billion people. Now 66, Nandan Nilekani has one more ambitious goal. The high-profile mogul is helping Prime Minister Narendra Modi build an open technology network that seeks to level the playing field for small merchants in the country’s fragmented but fast-growing $1 trillion retail market.

Its stated purpose is to create a freely accessible online system where traders and consumers can buy and sell everything from 23-cent detergent bars to $1,800 airline tickets. But its unspoken objective is to eventually curb the powers of Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart, whose online domination has alarmed small merchants and the millions of local mom-and-pop stores, called kirana, that form the nation’s retail backbone…

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are now worth almost half a trillion dollars

The combined net worth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos approached $500 billion on Wednesday

The combined net worth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos approached $500 billion on Wednesday, fueled by the unrelenting rally in Tesla Inc. shares and a broad surge in tech stocks that sent the Nasdaq 100 to an intraday record. The value of the two fortunes — a sum bigger than the market value of Johnson & Johnson and about equal to that of America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co. — is yet another watershed moment in what’s shaping up to be a historic week for billionaires.

A groundbreaking proposal from Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden to tax billionaires on unrealized gains was released in detailed form Wednesday morning only to be dropped in negotiations hours later. Wyden insists the billionaires’ tax plan isn’t dead, but talks have instead moved on to a possible 3% surcharge — on top of the highest income tax rate — for those earning more than $10 million. The combined net worth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos approached $500 billion on Wednesday, fueled by the unrelenting rally in Tesla Inc. shares and a broad surge in tech stocks that sent the Nasdaq 100 to an intraday record.

Siri, is this a win for feminism? Apple’s default voice no longer a woman

Siri has been criticized as embodying several facets of gender bias in artificial intelligence

As of March 31, 2021, when Apple released the iOs 14.5 beta update to its operating system, Siri no longer defaults to a female voice when using American English. Users must now choose between two male and two female voices when enabling the voice assistant. This move could be interpreted as a response to the backlash against the gender bias embodied by Siri

But how meaningful is this change really?

Siri has been criticized as embodying several facets of gender bias in artificial intelligence. Digital sociologists Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy argue that Siri, along with other voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, have been developed in order to “carry out ‘wifework’ — domestic duties that have traditionally fallen on (human) wives.”

Siri was originally only voiced as female and programmed to not only perform “wifely” duties such as checking the weather or setting a morning alarm, but also to respond flirtatiously. The use of sexualized phrases by Siri has been extensively documented by hundreds of YouTube videos with titles such as “Things You Should NEVER Ask SIRI” (which has more than 18 million views)Dated gender references

Apple has been criticized as promoting a sexualized and stereotypical image of women that negatively harms gender norms. A 2019 investigation by The Guardian reveals that Apple wrote internal guidelines in 2018 asking developers to have Siri deflect mentions of feminism and other “sensitive topics.” It’s not clear what the guidelines were for hard-coding flirty comebacks.

Apple cannot block pre-installed apps removal under antitrust reform bill

The proposal is part of a package of bipartisan bills that would impose significant new constraints on how tech companies operate, restricting acquisitions and forcing them to exit some businesses

Apple Inc. would be prohibited under antitrust reform legislation introduced last week from giving its own apps an advantage by preventing users from removing them on Apple devices, said Democratic Representative David Cicilline, who is leading a push to pass new regulations for U.S. technology companies.

Cicilline told reporters Wednesday that a proposal prohibiting tech platforms from giving an advantage to their own products over those of competitors would mean Apple must let consumers decide which apps to use or remove. “It would be equally easy to download the other five apps as the Apple one so they’re not using their market dominance to favor their own products and services,” the Rhode Island Democrat said.

The proposal is part of a package of bipartisan bills that would impose significant new constraints on how tech companies operate, restricting acquisitions and forcing them to exit some businesses. The House Judiciary Committee will mark up the five bills in a hearing next week, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the committee’s chairman, said. Cicilline said the self-prefrencing prohibition would also apply to Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime subscription service because it disadvantages some sellers who rely on the e-commerce platform.

Amazon postpones Prime Day sale in Canada, India due to Covid-19

India, which is suffering severe shortages of medical equipment, on Thursday reported 412,262 new virus cases and 3,980 deaths, both daily records

Amazon.com Inc. is pausing plans for its annual sale Prime Day in Canada and India due to concerns about Covid-19, the company confirmed on Thursday. The pause won’t affect Prime Day in the U.S., which is scheduled for an undisclosed day in June, according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg.

“Based on the increasing impact of Covid-19 in Canada, and the importance we place on protecting the health and safety of our employees and customers, we will pause plans for Prime Day 2021 in Canada,” said the email, sent to Amazon sellers Thursday. The Seattle-based company, in an email, confirmed Prime Day would also be postponed in India, which was reported earlier by CNBC.

Covid-19 cases have risen in Canada in recent months amid a slower-than-expected rollout of vaccinations. Less than 3% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, and Ontario, the largest province, has been under an emergency stay-at-home order for weeks. India, which is suffering severe shortages of medical equipment, on Thursday reported 412,262 new virus cases and 3,980 deaths, both daily records.

Amazon had to postpone its annual sale worldwide last year due to the pandemic. The event is a way to drum up sales during the summer and attract and retain new Prime subscribers, who pay monthly or annual fees for delivery discounts and other services like video streaming.

How Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is fighting door to door to beat Mukesh Ambani

The world’s largest retailer is permeating the complex tapestry of the only billion-people-plus market open to it

If it wasn’t for last year’s extraordinary events, there would be nothing even remotely remarkable about Jayshri Hodkar’s struggle to survive as a single mother of two on the earnings of her tailoring shop, a single machine in one room of a rented house.

It’s one of those tens of millions of tiny businesses you see everywhere in India. Most are so nondescript it’s hard to imagine that together they supply the wheels on which the $2.7 trillion economy runs. Their value only became clear when the wheels came off.

This week last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sudden, complete lockdown. And that’s when the Mahi tailoring center in Indore, a historic city of 3 million in central India, become important to one of the world’s richest men — 7,000 miles away in Seattle. With no customers coming to get blouses stitched, Hodkar came to a conclusion: Her shop couldn’t battle the pandemic on her own. To pay the rent and school fees, she had to hitch a ride with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc.

The world’s largest retailer is permeating the complex tapestry of the only billion-people-plus market open to it. And it’s doing so by tweaking its business models to suit local preferences, practices, quirks — and Covid-19 disruptions. The “I Have Space” partnership Hodkar has signed up for allows entrepreneurs to collect Amazon packages for their area, safe keep them, and go door to door when they know there’ll be someone home to receive the orders. Drop-offs at the doorstep or in the mailbox may be common in the U.S., but they aren’t a workable option in India. Rather than waste money on failed deliveries, it helps Amazon to have a local as its ally. Hodkar tells me she’s making as much as she did before the pandemic for a few hours the 30-year-old spends on the road on her Honda Activa two-wheeler.

Croma, Amazon jointly launch new range of TV with built-in Fire device

Tata Group-owned electronics store chain Croma has entered into a partnership with Amazon to launch a new range of smart TVs with built-in Fire device

Tata Group-owned electronics store chain Croma has entered into a partnership with Amazon to launch a new range of smart TVs with built-in Fire device for customers in India. The new smart LED TV range will come with a built-in Fire TV device and through this strategic partnership, Croma aims to offer an intuitive, simple, and customised experience, the companies said in a joint statement. It brings together all streaming content from across over 5,000 apps, including Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, Disney + Hotstar, Zee5, SonyLiv and many more.

“The proliferation in OTT apps and the consequent fragmentation in viewership is creating a demand for a more seamless browsing experience. The Alexa voice search and the intuitive soft-touch remote control supported by the Fire TV OS offers a different and to my mind, better browsing experience than other Smart TVs,” Croma CMO Ritesh Ghosal said. Amazon and Croma have a history of working together and offering Amazon Devices to customers across India through their offline stores, Head of Amazon Devices India, Parag Gupta said.

“Today, we take this partnership to a new level. The new range of Fire Edition Smart TVs by Croma delivers an incredible user experience, excellent picture quality and immersive sound experience that gets better every day with Alexa,” Gupta added.

Amazon, Google, Facebook vie for a piece of India’s digital payments market

The companies are part of four consortia preparing to apply for licenses to operate retail payments and settlement systems in the country

Technology giants Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Google and credit-card providers Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. are among those vying for unprecedented access to India’s burgeoning digital retail payments market. The companies are part of four consortia preparing to apply for licenses to operate retail payments and settlement systems in the country, people familiar with the matter said. More companies could band together before a March 31 application deadline.

In a market where cash is still king, digital payments are quickly gaining ground as India’s 1.3 billion people are starting to embrace online shopping and services such as online gaming and streaming. With Credit Suisse Group AG predicting $1 trillion in online payments in India in 2023, the companies chosen to enable such transactions stand to reap lucrative commissions.

“India’s mobile digital payments is seeing huge growth in a post-pandemic world,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive officer of New Delhi-based payment provider Paytm. “It’s a good time to open up more diverse payments solutions and keep the momentum going.”

One of the consortia consists of Amazon, Visa, Indian retail banks ICICI Bank Ltd. and Axis Bank Ltd. as well as fintech startups Pine Labs and BillDesk. Another group is led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and its partners Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which together agreed to invest more than $10 billion in Reliance’s digital services unit last year.

Amazon documents reveal its strategy to dodge India’s regulators: Report

Amazon internal documents show 35 of more than 400,000 sellers in India accounted for around two-thirds of its online sales in early 2019

It was early 2019, and senior Amazon.com Inc executive Jay Carney was preparing for an important meeting. The former press secretary to U.S. President Barack Obama, Carney was scheduled to talk with India’s ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C. In Delhi, the Indian government had just announced foreign direct investment regulations that threatened to disrupt Amazon’s business in the world’s second most populous country. Before the meeting, Amazon employees prepared a draft note for Carney. The note, reviewed by Reuters, advised Carney what to say – and what not to say.

He should highlight the fact that Amazon had committed more than $5.5 billion in investment in India and how it provided an online platfForm for 400,000-plus Indian sellers. But he was cautioned not to divulge that some 33 Amazon sellers accounted for about a third of the value of all goods sold on the company’s website. That information, the note advised, was “Sensitive/not for disclosure. Other company documents reveal equally touchy information: Two more sellers on the e-commerce giant’s India platform – merchants in which Amazon had indirect equity stakes – accounted for around 35% of the platform’s sales revenue in early 2019. That meant some 35 of Amazon’s more than 400,000 sellers in India at the time accounted for around two-thirds of its online sales.

All this information was indeed politic

It was early 2019, and senior Amazon.com Inc executive Jay Carney was preparing for an important meeting. The former press secretary to U.S. President Barack Obama, Carney was scheduled to talk with India’s ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C. In Delhi, the Indian government had just announced foreign direct investment regulations that threatened to disrupt Amazon’s business in the world’s second most populous country. Before the meeting, Amazon employees prepared a draft note for Carney. The note, reviewed by Reuters, advised Carney what to say – and what not to say…

Amazon appeals to Supreme Court in Future-Reliance deal dispute: Report

A New Delhi court this week dealt a blow to the U.S. firm by revoking a previous court decision that effectively blocked the deal

Amazon.com Inc has mounted a legal challenge against its partner Future Group’s $3.4 billion retail assets sale in India’s Supreme Court, three sources told Reuters on Thursday, marking the US firm’s latest effort to block the deal. Amazon, locked in legal disputes with Future, alleges the Indian firm violated contracts by agreeing to sell its retail assets to Reliance Industries last year. Future denies any wrongdoing. A New Delhi court this week dealt a blow to the US firm by revoking a previous court decision that effectively blocked the deal, and Amazon has filed an appeal against it in the Supreme Court in the capital city, the three sources said.

Amazon and Future did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The legal fight over Future’s assets has embroiled two of the world’s richest men – Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos and Reliance’s Mukesh Ambani. The final outcome is seen shaping India’s pandemic-hit shopping sector and will determine if Amazon is able to dent the dominance of market leader Reliance.

In the New Delhi court, Amazon had argued that an October decision by an arbitrator who had put the Future-Reliance deal on hold is enforceable. While a Delhi court judge ruled in Amazon’s favour recently, effectively blocking the deal, that decision was overturned by a two-judge bench on Monday.Amazon will argue in its Supreme Court challenge that the arbitration order is valid, one of the sources said. The dispute centres around Future’s decision in August to sell its retail, wholesale and some other businesses to Reliance for $3.38 billion, including debt.