Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Amazfit Bip S Smartwatch With Up to 40 Days Battery Life Debuts in India
DOJ memo grants the DEA temporary authority to "conduct covert surveillance" on protestors nationwide for 14 days and share the intel with local law enforcement (BuzzFeed News)
DOJ memo grants the DEA temporary authority to “conduct covert surveillance” on protestors nationwide for 14 days and share the intel with local law enforcement — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been granted sweeping new authority to “conduct covert surveillance” …
Brave says it had 15.4M MAUs, up 125% YoY, and 5.3M DAUs in May, and the number of campaigns using Brave Ads grew from 400 to 1,530 since October 2019 (Brave Browser)
Brave says it had 15.4M MAUs, up 125% YoY, and 5.3M DAUs in May, and the number of campaigns using Brave Ads grew from 400 to 1,530 since October 2019 — Over 1,500 ad campaigns delivered since Brave Ads launched one year ago — This May, Brave saw its monthly active users pass …
Ride-hailing and payments firm Gojek says Facebook and PayPal were participating in its ongoing Series F; Gojek was valued at $10B after raising $1.2B in March (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
Ride-hailing and payments firm Gojek says Facebook and PayPal were participating in its ongoing Series F; Gojek was valued at $10B after raising $1.2B in March — Facebook and PayPal have made investments in GoJek, joining Google and Tencent among other high-profile technology companies …
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Workforce training app developer Poka adds strategic investor Schneider Electric
Poka, a workforce training app and software service for industrial companies, has added SE Ventures, the venture capital arm of the European energy and automation conglomerate Schneider Electric to its roster of backers.
The company has raised over $23 million in funding so far for its application and software services package that provides training and tips for workers on the factory floor.
The company said it would use the new funding to expand its global marketing through new distribution strategies and speed up its product development.
Since 2014, Poka has been selling its services to companies including Bosch, Danone, Mars, The Kraft Heinz Company, Johnson & Johnson and Stanley Black and Decker, the company said.
Previous backers of the Quebec City, Canada-based company include Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Groupe Leclerc, and CDPQ, according to the company.
For Poka, demand is driven by the combination of increasing automation and an aging workforce creating a skills gap in industrial facilities.
“Poka was designed specifically to address the challenges and needs of large global manufacturers — many of whom are clients of Schneider Electric,” said Poka chief executive Alex Leclerc in a statement. “Our partnership gives us global reach within our target markets and provides value to our joint customers by offering them a more complete path to digital transformation.”
For SE Ventures general partner Grant Allen, the replacement of aging technologies around communication and knowledge-sharing in manufacturing facilities represented an obvious investment opportunity. “The tools and systems used to communicate, capture and share knowledge in commercial production facilities are largely outdated, leaving workers without the necessary information to be effective and safe,” said Allen.
Instacart expands sick pay for workers with COVID-19 or who live with someone who tested positive, offers free telemedicine for symptomatic workers in DC pilot (Russell Brandom/The Verge)
Instacart expands sick pay for workers with COVID-19 or who live with someone who tested positive, offers free telemedicine for symptomatic workers in DC pilot — The company will also provide childcare and telemedicine benefits — Instacart will expand its COVID-19 sick pay to include …
Google removes Remove China Apps, which promised to help users rid their smartphones of Chinese apps, from the Play Store; the app had 4.7M downloads in India (Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan/Financial ...)
Google removes Remove China Apps, which promised to help users rid their smartphones of Chinese apps, from the Play Store; the app had 4.7M downloads in India — Remove China Apps reached top of Play Store in India before it was ousted on Tuesday — Google intervened on Tuesday after millions …
Foxconn, Oppo, others may go for Rs 41, 000 cr PLI sops
Facebook and PayPal invest in Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant GoJek
Facebook and PayPal have made investments in GoJek, joining Google and Tencent among other high-profile technology firms that have backed the five-year-old Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm that also offers food delivery and mobile payments.
Facebook, for which it is the first investment in an Indonesia-based firm, and PayPal did not disclose the size of their checks. GoJek told TechCrunch that Facebook and PayPal were participating in its ongoing financing round, which brings it total raise-to-date to over $3 billion.
For Facebook, which in April invested in India’s top telecom operator Reliance Jio Platforms, backing GoJek unlocks a similar opportunity: Helping millions of small businesses.
Matt Idema, chief operating officer at WhatsApp, said the company will work with “indispensable” service GoJek to “bring millions of small businesses and the customers they serve into the largest digital economy in Southeast Asia.”
“The majority of small businesses in Indonesia rely on cash to operate due to the country’s large unbanked population. Digital payments are safer than cash, both for businesses and customers. And digital payments help more people participate in the economy and give businesses access to credit which is crucial for business growth,” he wrote in a blog post.
PayPal, which last year invested in money lender Tala ahead of the startup’s launch in India, said the commercial partnership will enable the global payments giant to “significantly grow” its scope and scale in Southeast Asia.
“This new relationship is another positive step in our journey towards becoming the worldwide payments partner of choice, and helping to fuel global commerce by connecting the world’s leading marketplaces and payment networks,” PayPal said in a statement.
GoJek, which disclosed it had raised $1.2 billion in March to employees and was valued at about $10 billion, said it has amassed over 170 million users in Southeast Asia. In March, the company, which competes with Singapore-headquartered Grab, said it had raised nearly $3 billion over the years.
“We have the opportunity to achieve something truly unique as we aim to help more businesses to digitise and ensure that many millions more consumers are enjoying the benefits that the digital economy can bring,” said Andre Soelistyo, who was appointed as co-chief executive of GoJek last year, in a statement. Gojek founder Nadiem Makarim resigns his top job at the firm to join Indonesian cabinet in October last year.
More to follow…
Google pulls ‘Remove China Apps’ from Play Store
Remove China Apps, an app that gained popularity in India in recent weeks and did exactly what its name suggests, has been pulled from the Play Store.
The top trending app in India, which was downloaded more than 5 million times since late May and enabled users to detect and easily delete apps developed by Chinese firms, was pulled from Android’s marquee app store for violating Google Play Store’s Deceptive Behaviour Policy, TechCrunch has learned.
Under this policy an app on Google Play Store cannot make changes to a user’s device settings, or features outside of the app without the user’s knowledge and consent, and not it can encourage or incentivize users into removing or disabling third-party apps.
The app, developed by Indian firm OneTouch AppLabs, gained popularity in India in part because of a growing anti-China sentiment among many citizens as tension between the world’s two most populous nations has escalated in recent days over a Himalayan border dispute.
Several Indian celebrities in recent days have backed the idea of deleting Chinese apps. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev tweeted a video over the weekend that showed him deleting several apps that had affiliation with China.
Responding to a tweet from an Indian actor deleting TikTok from his phone, Nupur Sharma, a spokeswoman for India’s ruling party BJP, said it was “great to see concerned citizens setting an example” and “we ought to hit them where it hurts most.”
Citing an industry source, Chinese state-run Global Times news outlet reported on Tuesday that if the Indian government allows the “irrational anti-China sentiment” to continue it risks ruining bilateral relations that is “likely to draw tit-for-tat punishment from Beijing.”
The report added that some users in China ridiculed Remove China Apps and urged Indians to “throw away” their smartphones, referring to Chinese smartphone makers’ dominance in India’s smartphone market.
If the sentiment from India persists, it could mean bad news for several Chinese firms such as ByteDance and UC Browser that count India as their biggest overseas market. TikTok, which weeks ago was grappling with content moderation efforts in India, sparked a new debate over the weekend after a popular creator claimed that a video she posted on TikTok was pulled by the Chinese firm.
The video was critical of the Chinese government, she said. In a statement to TechCrunch, a TikTok spokesperson said the platform welcomes diversity of users and viewpoints and said it had implemented a more rigorous review process and reinstated the video.
In April, India amended its foreign direct investment policy to enforce tougher scrutiny on Chinese investors looking to cut checks to firms in the world’s second largest internet market. New Delhi, which maintains a similar stand for investors from several other neighboring nations, said the measure was introduced to “curb the opportunistic takeover” of Indian firms going through distress because of the global pandemic.
India’s Prime Minister Modi has also aggressively promoted the idea of boycotting goods made by foreign firms and advised the nation’s 1.3 billion citizens to look for local alternatives as part of his push to make India “self-reliant” and revive the slowing economy.
Redmi Note 9 Pro Max to Go on Sale in India Today via Amazon, Mi.com
Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)
Financial Times : Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid weste...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
