Tech Nuggets with the Technology

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Private equity firm Silver Lake to invest Rs 5,655.75 crore in Reliance Jio Platforms

In April, US social networking giant Facebook said it will acquire a 9.9% stake in Jio Platforms for Rs 43,574 crore https://ift.tt/2W0vmuP https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

10 apps to help you do things you may not know you can with your smartphone's camera

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How to Watch Star Wars Movies in the 'Machete Order'

In honour of Star Wars Day - May the Fourth be with you - we tell you how to watch Star Wars movies in the "Machete Order" (updated for The Rise of Skywalker) and which series (The... https://ift.tt/2VY1Rtt

PE firm Silver Lake announces it will invest $747M in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms, giving it a valuation of $65B, weeks after Facebook invested $5.7B (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
PE firm Silver Lake announces it will invest $747M in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms, giving it a valuation of $65B, weeks after Facebook invested $5.7B — Weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms, private equity firm Silver Lake is following suit.

Flaws in Salt, a server automation and management tool, have been exploited to breach servers belonging to Ghost blogging platform, DigiCert, and LineageOS (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Flaws in Salt, a server automation and management tool, have been exploited to breach servers belonging to Ghost blogging platform, DigiCert, and LineageOS — Ghost platform got hacked via the same vulnerability that allowed hackers to breach LineageOS servers hours before.

JioMart ramps up operations with credit, incentives

Since the rollout of ordering via WhatsApp, JioMart has doubled weekly credit limit and has allocated one executive each for kirana stores to manage orders and inventory https://ift.tt/2YxK2D8 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Bullish Amazon, Flipkart to lease 3 million sq ft of warehousing

E-commerce majors expect demand to surge after the crisis ends and will have new facilities by the year end as they expand their footprint in India https://ift.tt/3c49Yue https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Cryptocurrency exchanges approach RBI seeking clarity on status and taxability

The crypto exchanges have written to RBI and sought clarity on their status as lenders continue to deny banking services to them due to a lack of clear instructions from the regulator. https://ift.tt/2SwQ03f https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Silver Lake to invest $747M in India’s Jio Platforms

Weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms, private equity firm Silver Lake is following suit.

Silver Lake announced on Monday it will be investing 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about $746.8 million) in the top Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms, giving it a valuation of $65 billion.

Reliance Jio, which began its commercial operation in the second half of 2016, upended the local telecom market by offering bulk of 4G data and voice calls for six months to users at no charge. Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries (India’s most valuable firm by market value), has amassed 388 million subscribers in the period, becoming the nation’s top telecom operator.

“Jio Platforms is one of the world’s most remarkable companies, led by an incredibly strong and entrepreneurial management team who are driving and actualizing a courageous vision. They have brought extraordinary engineering capabilities to bear on bringing the power of low-cost digital services to a mass consumer and small businesses population. The market potential they are addressing is enormous, and we are honored and pleased to have been invited to partner with Mukesh Ambani and the team at Reliance and Jio to help further the Jio mission,” said Egon Durban, co-chief executive and managing partner at Silver Lake, in a statement.

In a statement, Mukesh Ambani, who oversees Reliance Industries, said, “Silver Lake has an outstanding record of being a valuable partner for leading technology companies globally. Silver Lake is one of the most respected voices in technology and finance. We are excited to leverage insights from their global technology relationships for the Indian Digital Society’s transformation.”

In the company’s earnings call last week, Ambani said several firms had expressed interest in buying a stake in Jio Platforms.
More to follow…

US travel reservations giant Sabre abandoned a $360M deal to acquire Florida-based Farelogix on Friday after a UK anti-trust watchdog prohibited it (Diane Bartz/Reuters)

Diane Bartz / Reuters:
US travel reservations giant Sabre abandoned a $360M deal to acquire Florida-based Farelogix on Friday after a UK anti-trust watchdog prohibited it — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. travel technology firm Sabre Corp (SABR.O) and software firm Farelogix Inc said on Friday that they would terminate …

The job cuts keep coming at WeWork

After this week's cuts, WeWork will terminate more jobs over the next month. The company also plans to permanently shutter its on-demand effort known as WeWork Now. https://ift.tt/2W03KGb https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Classplus raises $9M to grow its Shopify-like platform for teachers and coaching centers in India

An India-based startup that has built a Shopify-like platform for coaching centers to accept fees digitally from students, and deliver classes and study material online has received the nod — and capital — from a number of high-profile investors.

The business-to-business startup, called Classplus, said on Monday that it has raised $9 million in its Series A financing round led by RTP Global, a prolific investor in early stage startups. Existing investors Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Spiral Ventures, and Strive also participated in the round, said the two-and-a-half-year-old startup.

As dozens of firms bet on hundreds of millions of students — and their parents — to embrace digital learning apps, Classplus, also backed by Times Internet, believes that tens of thousands of teachers and coaching centers that have gained reputation in their neighborhoods are here to stay.

“We are serving these hyperlocal tutoring centers that are present in nearly every nook and cranny in India. Anyone who was born in a middle-class family here has likely attended these tution classes,” said Mukul Rustagi, co-founder and chief executive of Classplus, in an interview with TechCrunch.

“These are typically small and medium setups that are run by teachers themselves. These teachers and coaching centers are very popular in their locality. They rarely do any marketing and students learn about them through word-of-mouth buzz,” he said.

Rustagi described Classplus as “Shopify for coaching centers.” Like Shopify, the service does run a marketplace that offers discoverability to these teachers or coaching centers. Instead, it offers a way for these teachers to leverage its tech platform to engage with customers (in this case, students).

Classplus has on-boarded more than 3,500 coaching centers on its platform, said Rustagi, more than 500 of which started using the service in the month of April after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ordered to shut down schools and other public gatherings in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

Coaching centers use Classplus to digitally communicate with students, deliver video classes and other study material, and accept payments. These coaching centers can engage with their students through Classplus’ mobile app and the website. “Joining the platform is as easy as signing up for a team collaboration app. The whole process takes less than 30 minutes,” said Rustagi.

“According to the Global Teacher Status Index by the Varkey foundation in 2018, India was among the top-10 in the world in respecting teachers, though was in the last-10 in paying them. Classplus is liquidating this imbalance by empowering tutors with full-stack mobile solutions, while maintaining and further improving the high reputation of tutors. We are happy to back the company with this important mission, and have Classplus as our first edutech bet in India,” said Kirill Kozhevnikov, a partner at RTP Global, in a statement.

The startup, which employs about 200 people, aims to have 10,000 coaching centers join its platform by the end of the year. It has a sales team and other members in about 70 cities in India currently. Classplus also plans to introduce additional features for coaching centers on its platform.