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6 �THE ECONOMIC TIMES | BENGALURU | TUESDAY | 4 JULY 2017Disruption: Startups & Tech
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The more you get hacked by friendly hackers, the less you get hacked by malicious attackers
MÅRTEN MICKOS@MARTENMICKOS
Tweet OF THE DAY
Brain Training App to Boost Your Memory
A game app developed by researchers at the University of Cam-bridge could help im-prove the memory of patients in the earliest stages of dementia, suggests a study. The researchers tested the effects of memory game app, ‘Game Show’, on patients with amnes-tic mild cognitive im-pairment (aMCI). The results showed that pa-tients who played the game did better in epi-sodic memory. Episodic memory is important for day-to-day activi-ties and is used, for ex-ample, when remem-bering where we left our keys in the house.—IANS
Getting around Great Firewall, the system used by China to con-trol net access, just got harder with a popular virtual pri-vate network forced to cease operations. GreenVPN sent a no-tice to customers that it would stop service from July 1 after “re-ceiving a notice from regulatory depart-ments” . VPNs work by routing traffic to servers that is be-yond reach of Chinese filters. —Bloomberg
Tech Buzz
Great Firewall of China Gets Taller Now
A well-organised col-lection of data which is made accessible on lo-cal & remote servers.
Data BankJargon Buster
Quick Byte ANIRBAN BORA
10,000Number of users that can now be added to a Telegram supergroup
Bengaluru: Amazon is negotia-ting terms with the family offices ofprominent business families in or-der to create more merchant entiti-es that will act as sellers on its India-based marketplace, according tothree people aware of the develop-ment. Among those who have beenapproached are Burman FamilyHoldings, the strategic investmentarm of the Burman family, whichowns consumer company Daburand Infosys cofounder Kris Gopa-lakrishnan’s family office, the sour-ces told ET.
“Talks are continuing with theBurman family and a deal could gethammered out in the next couple ofmonths,” said one person cited above.“Discussions with the other groupshave reached an impasse,” the personadded.
Gaurav Burman, director of DaburIndia declined comment while a re-presentative for Amazon said “we donot comment on speculations”.
In an email response to ET’s queriesKris Goplakrishnan wrote, “I have no
current discussions with Amazon.” The proposed joint venture is expec-
ted to be similar in function to Cloud-tail India, the largest seller on Ama-zon, which is a 100% owned subsidia-ry of Prione Business Services, a jo-int venture of Infosys cofounderNarayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ven-tures and Amazon Asia. This entitywas created in 2014 and enjoys prefe-rential rates and fees on the AmazonIndia marketplace, being the only Pla-
tinum seller remaining on the plat-form.
While the exact structure of the dealis unknown, the announcement ofthe venture is a fortnight to a monthaway, said the sources quoted above.“Until the discussions on GST settledown, Amazon India will not announ-ce the venture,” said a partner at oneof the entities which works closelywith Cloudtail.
Analysts are of the view that the for-
Amazon Opens Door for Family Merchants
Hyderabad: Media mogul RonnieScrewvala plans to infuse .̀ 100crore in the B2B segment of hisonline education startup UpGradin the coming months and anot-her .̀ 100 crore during the next yearfor its international business. EThad reported earlier this year thatScrewvala had committed anadditional .̀ 300 crore of capital forUpGrad, a startup seeded withinhis venture capital firm UnilazerVentures.
“We have already used about athird of the allocated amount of .̀ 300crore towards B2C. This is the yearwe will also spend on B2B and in thenext year we would spend on ex-pansion to international markets,”said Screwvala, who believes thatequity in this startup is valuable,which has refrained him from
turning to external funding.Screwvala is also confident that
UpGrad will cater to close to 6,000students and earn revenues up to.̀100 crore during FY18. The compa-ny clocked .̀ 77 lakh in revenue withaloss of .̀10 crore during FY16,according to the research firmTofler.
“The .̀100-crore revenue trajectoryis based on the courses we havestarted and the response we havereceived. It’s not one of those specu-lative ecommerce projections,” saidthe former CEO of UTV Group.
Screwvala along with MayankKumar, Ravijot Chugh and PhalgunKompalli founded UpGrad in 2015. Itoffers courses ranging from dataanalytics, entrepreneurship, digitalmarketing and product manage-ment. The founders plan to soon addprogrammes on artificial intel-ligence and big data, among others.
The company is also in talks topartner with Nasscom for the in-dustry body’s skilling platform,which is expected to skill andreskill about 1.5-2 million ITsector employees in the next five
years. The recent layoffs in the ITindustry have led to an uptick of300% in applications, said Kumar,managing director of UpGrad.“Applications from the IT industryhave shot up by three to four times.We have also noticed that a lot oftraditional companies are nomina-ting their employees into program-mes being offered by UpGrad,” headded.
UpGrad’s B2B Segment to Get .̀100 cr Amount is part of the .̀ 300 crore committed by Ronnie Screwvala for his online education startup
RONNIE SCREWVALACofounder, UpGrad
Applications from the IT industry have shot up by 3-4 times. We have also noticed a lot of traditional cos are nominating theiremployees for UpGrad programmes
Mumbai: Online movie and eventticketing platform BookMyShow hasacquired struggling Mumbai-basedlocal food and restaurant recommen-dation engine Burrp from Network18in an all-cash deal.
Concluded as a slump sale, the de-al was finalised at a meagre .̀ 6.7lakh, two months after the board ofNetwork18 gave an in-principleapproval to sell Burrp on the backof its paltry revenue contributionto its parent.
The Network18 divestment hasbeen made to Foodfesta Wellcare, asubsidiary of BigTree Entertain-ment which owns and operates Bo-okMyShow.
The deal is a pittance compared tothe .̀ 4.25 crore that Infomedia18 pa-id to buy Burrp in 2009. The 2009buy saw founders Deep Ubhi andAnand Jain moving on to pursuetheir own ventures.
Burrp saw several top-level mana-gement changes from 2010 until 2014when Reliance Industries boughtNetwork18 and relaunched Burrpwith a new management.
The deal with BookMyShow willsee key assets of Burrp, including itsemployees and existing restaurantpartnerships, being absorbed by Bo-okMyShow. “Movie going in India isa social activity and food is an inte-gral part of it. This is where Burrpfits in for us. We are excited to haveBurrp on board and look forward tobenefitting from their experience,technology and partnerships to offera superior and comprehensive offe-ring to our users,” said Mansi Vora,head of mergers & acquisitions atBookMyShow.
Burrp currently lists over 60,000restaurants across 14 cities. In ad-dition to listings, Burrp recentlyventured into offer redemptionand couponing, along with ticke-ting of F&B events which will addsignificant value to BookMyS-how’s allied offerings.
Just a .̀ 6.7-L Burrp for BookMyShow
On the Table Now The divestment has been made to Foodfesta Well-care, a subsidiary of BigTree Entertainment which owns BookMyShow
`4.25cr Amount Infome-dia18 paid to buy Burrp in 2009
Bengaluru: Byju’s, the edtech com-pany, has acquired TutorVista andEdurite from UK-based Pearson. Thepartnership is focused on expandinginternational reach and creating a di-verse product portfolio for Byju’s.
TutorVista is one of the largest onli-ne tutoring brands catering to schooland college students, majorly in theUS. EThad first reported the news inits May 15, 2017 edition.
“This partnership will enhanceour product offerings and give usaccess in some of the new marketswhen we launch our internationalproducts. We are excited to workwith the talented and experiencedteam who will come on-board as apart of this acquisition. With a wi-der bandwidth, we have startedcreating similar products for theinternational markets that furt-her boost our reach as well as pro-duct portfolio,” said Byju Raveend-ran, the CEO of Byju’s.
Pearson acquired a 17% stake inTutorVista from Bengaluru-basedentrepreneur-investor couple KGanesh and Meena Ganesh in 2009.In January 2011, it purchased anot-her 59% holding for .̀ 577 crore be-fore increasing its controlling sta-ke to 80% shortly after. Two yearslater, Pearson acquired the remai-ning 20%.
TutorVista, which was an edtechpioneer provided online tutoringto students across the world as wellas test preparation services, helpwith homework, supplemental tu-toring and expert assistance befo-re tests and exams. TutorVista hadacquired Edurite, an education so-lutions provider, in 2007.
“Edurite and TutorVista are pione-er brands in their respective spacesand enjoy great customer goodwill.We are pleased that a leading onlineeducation company in India sees va-lue in the Edurite and TutorVistabusinesses, brands and employees,”said Deepak Mehrotra, the mana-
ging director of Pearson India.Bengaluru-based Byju’s, founded
in 2011, is already present in theMiddle East and is looking to ex-pand to the US, the UK, South Afri-ca and other African and Common-wealth markets. The edtech star-tup, which has raised around $209million till date, counts Sofina, Se-quoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventu-res, Verlinvest, Aarin Capital andTimes Internet, part of the TimesGroup that publishes The Econo-mic Times, and others as inves-tors.
Byju’s flagship product — Byju’s -The Learning App — has 8 millionusers and around 400,000 annual paidsubscribers, and caters to studentsfrom classes four to 12.
In Next Chapter,Byju’s Acquires TutorVista, Edurite Buys from Pearson create diverse portfolio
NEW DELHI | 12 PAGES | .̀ 10 ONLY SATURDAY, 29 MARCH 2014BENNETT, COLEMAN & CO. LTD.THEECONOMIC TIMES
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ET was the first to report in its May 15, 2017 edition that Byju’s was in talks to acquire TutorVista
First in
BYJU RAVEENDRANCEO, Byju’s
This partnershipwill enhanceour product
offerings and give us accessin some of the new marketswhen we launch ourinternational products
Deal Corner
ments. Whatever time I allocate to
the startup ecosystem will be thro-
ugh Fundamentum and for my
current startups.
Whatever time I have should be
spent to create a few champions. I
don’t want to dissipate my energy.
Will Fundamentum look at
companies you have invested in
for future rounds?
While we can look at these compani-
es, I will abstain if it’s a company I
have invested in, while Sanjeev will
abstain if it’s a Helion company so
that it is done through a new lens.
Since Fundamentum will not
invest in fintech, edutech and
IndiaStack-based startups, do you
think it will lose several
investments?
We won’t invest in companies that
will provide the IndiaStack tech-
nology, or fintech and edutech. I keep
my public policy separate from my
investments. There will be many
other opportunities.
Since you are an advisor to NPCI,
can you give an idea on what UPI
2.0 will look like?
UPI has been extremely successful. It
is growing month-on-month. As
more ecommerce companies use
UPI, it will continue to grow.
UPI 2.0 has very important featu-
res. It supports biometric authenti-
cation.
The other very important feature is
e-mandate, which is like a next-
generation standing instruction.
You were also behind building the
GST Network, which is in charge of
technological infrastructure for
GST. Now that GST has gone live,
what are your thoughts?
My role was head of the committee,
to set up GSTN several years ago. All
the indications are that things are
going well. We will have to wait for
the first cycle of people paying taxes,
input credit getting matched. The
real thing is that for the first time, 8
million businesses will be online and
they will have a digital footprint to
seek credit.
The debate on Aadhaar vs
anti-Aadhaar is heating up...
Aadhaar is here to stay. India is
becoming a highly digital society.
There needs to be a framework for
data security and privacy.
Not just for Aadhaar but also for
GST. Privacy issue is not limited to
just Aadhaar.
Why have you
decided to stop
making angel
investments in startups?
Nandan Nilekani : I will not make any
more investments as an angel but I
will continue in my current invest-
Q&A
My Focus is on Creating Champions
NANDAN NILEKANIChairman, UIDAI
Aadhaar is here to stay.India is becoming a high-ly digital society
STEADY HANDS AT THE WHEEL Investment team will also include more entrepreneurs
ED
GA
R D
EG
AS,
Dan
cers
Ty
ing
Shoes
THE NEXT BIG STEP
Online marketplace approaches Burman Family Holdings and family office of Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan to create joint venturesmation of a captive selling entity willhelp Amazon control inventory andcustomer experience. “Cloudtail hasbeen doing well. These ventures helpAmazon comply with the DIPPnorms and exercise greater controlover inventory, manage customer ex-perience and comply with the regula-tions of GST for tax collection at sour-ce,” said Satish Meena, senior fore-cast analyst at Forrester Research.
In March 2016, the Department of In-dustrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP)capped the sales originating from asingle vendor on a marketplace at lessthan 25%. With GST coming into ef-fect it would be easier to trace the sa-les to the entity and hence creation ofanother entity will aid the marketpla-ces in complying with the norms, saidMeena.
Cloudtail India reported a 300% in-crease in revenues to .̀ 4,591 crore inFY16 while losses fell marginally to.̀ 30.2 crore from .̀ 31crore the previousyear, according to documents filedwith the Registrar of Companies.
“For family offices, this is a better in-vestment opportunity as compared toinvesting in a marketplace directlydue to better returns,” said Meena ofForrester.
SATISH MEENASenior Forecast Analyst, Forrester Research
Cloudtail has been doing well. These ventures helpAmazon comply with the DIPP norms and exercisegreater control over inventory, manage customerexperience and comply with the regulations of GSTfor tax collection at source
The proposed joint venture is expected to be similar in function to Cloudtail India
Cloudtail is a 100% owned subsidiary of Prione Business Services, a JV of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures and Am-azon Asia
CLOUDTAIL’S FY16 NOS
300% Revenue growth
`4,591crRevenue
Bengaluru: Aadhaar architectNandan Nilekani and Helion Ven-ture’s Sanjeev Aggarwal have laun-ched an investment fund calledFundamentum with a corpus of$100 million to back startups loo-king for growth capital.
The corpus may be extended to$200 million if the fund sees moreopportunities, the two founderssaid. The fund, which has so farclosed $50 million, will see one-third of the corpus coming fromNilekani and Aggarwal. Funda-mentum has already brought on-board six entrepreneurs who willalso invest in the fund.
“It will include entrepreneurswho have built unicorns and deca-corns. Many of them are already in-vestors,” Aggarwal said, but did notdisclose the names.
“They will all represent patient ca-pital,” Nilekani said.
Apart from Nilekani and Aggar-wal, Fundamentum’s investmentteam will include entrepreneur As-hish Kumar, who has joined as a
partner, and Prateek Jain, who hadfounded StayGlad (acquired by Qu-ikr). ET was the first to report in itsMarch 24 edition about Nilekaniand Aggarwal’s plans to set up afund.
NILEKANI’S NEW INVESTMENT FORMATNilekani said he will stop makingpersonal investments in startupsbeyond the 12 he has already madeand will only invest through Funda-mentum.
“I have been doing investments forthe past few years, and I have under-stood the ecosystem. The one thing Irealised is that the real challenge isin scaling up,” Nilekani said. “Fun-damentum will offer more than just
capital and provide a 360-degreeapproach from our team of advi-sors,” he added.
Fundamentum will invest only inabout two-three startups in a year,ranging from $10 million to $25 mil-lion, and will mainly focus on con-sumer tech as well as enterprisetechnology startups serving globalcompanies.
The fund will not invest in sectorssuch as financial technology andeducation technology, Nilekani sa-id, citing conflict with his philanth-ropic and other activities. “In edu-tech, I do only philanthropy thro-ugh EkStep and other channels. Infintech, since I am an advisor toNPCI, I don’t want any conflict ofinterest in payments. We will alsonot look at Aadhaar-based or Indi-aStack-based tech companies,” Ni-lekani said.
Nilekani has been among the mostprolific investors in the past coupleof years, with investments in com-panies such as ShopX, TeamIndus,RailYatri (coinvestment with He-lion), angel investment platformLetsVenture, Sedemac and Po-wer2SME.
It has also formed a team of func-tional advisors, which currentlycomprises TN Hari, head of humanresources at BigBasket, who willcontinue at the grocery marketpla-ce, while Sanjay Purohit, who washead of consulting and strategicplanning at Infosys will also adviseportfolio companies on strategiesand scaling up.
Both Nilekani and Aggarwal willnot charge a management fee orcarried interest for the fund.
Fund has so far
closed $50 million;
Nilekani to stop
angel investments
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fund — whose name could notbe ascertained — will not pay2% of the total corpus as annu-al management fee to fund ma-nagers, said the people citedabove. The eventual fund sizecould vary be
Identification Authority of In-dia — has since emerged as aprolific startup investor. Esti-mated to have a net worth of $1.7billion, according toth
Nilekani’s Fund to Set StrongAadhaar for Mid-Stage Startups
Bengaluru:Infosys cofounderand Aadhaar architect NandanNilekani is teaming up withventure capital investor Sanje-ev Aggarwal to set up an invest-ment firm that will back mid-stage startups, according to fo-ur people aware of the plans.
The fund, with a corpus of atleast $100 million, will consistmostly of personal capital poo-led in by the technology titans,who made their fortune in Indi-a’s outsourcing boom. The restwill come from “friends and fa-mily”, the sources said.
“Nandan and Sanjeev are ex-pected to contribute 30-40% ofthe corpus, and they are also lo-oking to rope in a third part-ner,” said one of the people ci-
Infy cofounder, Helion’s Sanjeev Aggarwal plan $100-m series-B fund
$10-15 million$10-15 million
First in
ET was the first to report on March 24 about Nilekani and Aggarwal’s plans to set up a fund
The Fundamentals
$100 mThe Initial corpus
$50mFunds already closed
$200mSize the fund can extend to
One-third of the corpus will come from Nilekani and Aggarwal
SANJEEV AGGARWALCofounder, Helion Venture
It willincludeentreprene-urs who
have built unicorns anddecacorns. Many of themare already investors
Nilekani, Aggarwal Open$100-m Fundamentum
Striking the right chord G
EETA
NJA
LI
7�WWW.ECONOMICTIMES.COM
Disruption: Startups & Tech
AI-based robot fish MIRO, developed by South Korean company AIRO, swimming in a pool during a demon-stration at the Advanced Content Technology Expo, Tokyo. —AFP
Immersive Tech
Source: Statista
App economy is booming. In 2016, it is estimated that global gross consumer spend on mobile
apps was $1.3 trillion. The number will only go up, as it is expected to increase by 385% over the
next five years to a colossal $6.35 trillion.
Global App Economy is Set to Grow 385%!
Total gross consumer spend in the mobile app market in 2016 and 2021 (in $)*
*Estimates/Forecasts. Figures include mobile commerce (inclusive of mobile web), app store, and in-app advertising
China United States Japan United Kingdom
$0.79tn
$0.20tn
$0.07tn
$0.03tn
$2.59tn
$0.82tn
$0.21tn
$0.11tn
$1.31tn
$6.35tn
2016 2021
GROWTH SET TO ZOOM 385%
Globe Trotter
New Delhi: India and Israel are ex-pected to sign an agreement to cre-ate a $40-million research and de-velopment fund for joint innova-tion in areas of agriculture, water,energy and technology duringPrime Minister Narendra Modi’sthree-day visit to the West Asiancountry starting Tuesday.
The two countries will contribute$20 million, or about .̀ 130 crore,each over five years to the fundcalled India-Israel Industrial R&Dand Technological InnovationFund, said a top official aware ofthe development.
“This is going to be a good plat-form for both the countries to cometogether and is expected to besigned between Israel’s InnovationAuthority and India’s departmentof science and technology duringthe PM’s visit,” said the officialwho requested anonymity.
His counterpart Benjamin Neta-nyahu will receive Modi, the firstIndian prime minister to visit Is-
rael, at Ben-Gurion Airport in TelAviv. The Israel prime minister isexpected to accompany Modithrough most of the visit, whichmarks 25 years of full diplomaticrelations between the two coun-tries.
The two leadersare expected tosign a memoran-dum of under-stand-ing
(MoU) for the proposed R&D fund.According to the official quoted
earlier, the fund will be used by in-dustry in both the countries for de-veloping collaborative R&D prac-
tices and joint product devel-opment in areas such as agri-culture, energy, water and ICT.
Given Israel’s lead oncyberse-
curity and startups, these areascould also be potential spots for col-laboration.
While from the Israel side, the In-novation Authority will be imple-menting it, from India the GlobalInnovation and Technology Alli-ance will take it forward. The Alli-ance is a not-for-profit entity incor-porated jointly by industry bodyCII and the central governmentwhere industry holds 51% stake.
“The Alliance is already imple-menting department of scienceand technology’s other bilateralindustrial R&D programmes withcountries like the United King-dom, Spain, Italy, Canada, Koreaand Finland,” said the official.
Last week, Netanyahu had saidgovernments across the world arelooking for cooperation with thecountry in the areas of high techand cybersecurity, and that the up-coming visit of his “friend” Modimarks a change in the country’sstatus.
He had said that because of con-tinuous efforts in the field of cyber-security, around 20% of all privateinvestments are coming to Israel.
India, Israel Ready $40mFund for Joint Innovation
SHAKE ON IT The research and development fund will be used to fund joint innovation in sectorssuch as agriculture, water, energy and technology, as well as cybersecurity solutions
Pune: Enterprise software firmDeskera plans to expand its pres-ence in India, with a data centrein Andhra Pradesh, and officesin Hyderabad, Bengalaru andChennai.
Shashank Dixit, CEO, Deskeratold ET that the companyplanned to invest about 25 mil-lion SGD (`̀125 crore) towardsthis proposed data centre. Thecompany had launched its Indiaoperations last year and had beengrowing rapidly, he said.
“We are currently present infive cities and will expand to 20over the next 6-9 months. We cur-rently employ 350 people andwould be adding another 1,000over the next 12-18 months,” hesaid. The Singapore headquar-tered firm has invested about 20million SGD (`̀100 crore) in its In-dia operations so far. Deskeraprovides cloud-based ERP ser-vices, focusing primarily onsmall and medium enterprises.
It recently announced a collabo-ration with Alibaba Cloud, thecloud computing arm of AlibabaGroup, to provide a SaaS solutionto customers in the Middle East,Africa, India and China. Dixitsaid that the company saw greatpotential in India with the rol-lout of the GST.
Deskara wants to be the Alibabaof the SME market, said Dixit.“The way the company has a playin logistics, payments and mar-ketplace, we would someday liketo be present in all three seg-
ments, but specifically in theSME space,” he said.
This would either be throughstrategic partnership with othercompanies, particularly in the lo-gistics space, or on their own.
Deskera, backed by investorslike Tembusu and France’s Tike-hau Capital, said that its foun-ders still controlled 80% of thecompany.
Co looks to invest`̀125 crore for a data centre in Andhra Pradesh
Building a BridgeBoth countries will put $20 mil-lion each over next five years
collaborative R&D practices
product development
AgricultureEnergyWater
FUNDS WILL BE USED FOR AREAS TO EXPLORE
ICTCybersecurityStartups
THEO VAN RYSSELBERGHE Big Clouds
MAKING SPACE
FIRM IS LOOKING TO EXPAND IN
Andhra Pradesh: DATA CENTREHyderabad: OFFICEBengalaru: OFFICEChennai: OFFICE
`100cr Funds invested in India operations so far
Bengaluru: Xiaomi is strengthe-ning its after-sale service in India,as the Chinese smartphone makerexpands its brand rapidly in thismarket.
“This year, one of our big focusareas was to grow our service to-uchpoint and in the past sixmonths we have more than doub-led the number of service centresin the country," Xiaomi’s India he-
ad, Manu Kumar Jain, told ET.On Friday, Xiaomi opened its
500th service centre in the countryin Bengaluru.
The smartphone maker has amixture of partner-run exclusiveand multi-brand service centres in350 cities and towns.
Jain said the company does astrong due diligence on every sing-le partner before appointing it andprefers to work with relativelysmaller or mid-size partners “sin-ce they tend to be much more invol-
ved and their efficiency levels aremuch higher as compared to bigcompanies.”
Most partners run 8-25 servicecentres, although there are alsosmaller partners who run only onecentre, Jain said.
Xiaomi standardised all its multi-brand service centres last year tosolve the issue of disparity interms of experience to customers.As part of this initiative, thesecentres now use the same opera-ting procedures as Xiaomi’s exclu-
sive stores and the smartphone ma-ker ensures they have sufficient in-ventory of spare parts.
These measures helped the com-pany improve its repair rate signi-ficantly, Jain said.
The smartphone maker now hasmore than 4,000 people working onits service infrastructure thatcomprises two large spare-part wa-rehouses, 26 small warehouses,three repair factories and two callcentres apart from the servicecentres.
Xiaomi Opens 500th After-sale TouchpointChinese smartphone maker has a mixture of partner-run exclusive & multi-brand service centres
Bloomberg
Facebook’s small print may be the nextbig thing in European antitrust aswatchdogs home in on how the world’sbiggest social network collects informa-tion from users that helps generate vastadvertising revenues.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office isexamining whether Facebook essential-ly takes advantage of its popularity tobully users into agreeing to terms andconditions they might not understand.The details that users provide helpgenerate the targeted ads that make thecompany so rich.
In the eyes of the Cartel Office, Face-book is “extorting” information from itsusers, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer atHeuking Kuehn Lueer Wojtek in Ham-burg. “Whoever doesn’t agree to the datause, gets locked out of the social networkcommunity,” he said. “The fear of socialisolation is exploited to get access to thecomplete surfing activities of users.”
The European Union’s antitrust armhas grabbed the limelight with eye-popping penalties for US technologyfirms it found fell foul of anti-compet-itive behaviour. Last year, it orderedApple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.9 bil-lion) in back taxes and last week it finedGoogle 2.4 billion euros for allegedlyskewing search results in its favour. Butlawyers say the Cartel Office’s probe is
testing the boundaries ofantitrust law – withramifications far beyondGermany and Facebookas all kinds of powerfultechnology firms seek tofind new ways to cash inon their trove of custom-er information.
It’s “more radical” than the EU’s Goo-gle case “because it asserts that privacyconcerns can be antitrust concerns” andthat consumers have a broader role thanbuyers of services in an economy, saidAlec Burnside, an attorney at Dechert inBrussels.
The German probe comes as Facebook,
which now has 2 billion members andmade more than $27 billion in revenuelast year, confronts heightened regu-latory scrutiny in Europe. It’s beinginvestigated by numerous privacy au-thorities over its plans to merge datawith the WhatsApp messenger applica-tion, faces a court battle over data trans-fers across the Atlantic and was fined inMay for misleading the EU in a mergerreview of the WhatsApp deal.
Andreas Mundt, the Cartel Office’spresident, said last week he’s “eager topresent first results” of the Facebookinvestigation this year. Like the EU’sGoogle investigation, he said the Face-book case tackles “central questionsensuring competition in the digitalworld in the future.”
Facebook declined to comment on thepossible outcome. The company hasinsisted it operates within applicablelaw and that it would cooperate withregulators.
When the German antitrust regulatordisclosed the review in March last year,it said Facebook collects a large amountof personal user data from varioussources and creates user profiles, allow-ing its advertising customers to bettertarget their ads.
Users must accept the terms while it’shard for them to understand to whatextent they agree to surrender theirpersonal information, according to theCartel Office.
Facebook’s Small Print Could Justbe the Next Big Antitrust Target
In the eyes ofthe CartelOffice,Facebook is“extorting”informationfrom its users
Reuters
London: The world’s leading drug compa-nies are turning to artificial intelligence toimprove the hit-and-miss business of find-ing new medicines, with GlaxoSmithKlineunveiling a new $43 million deal in the field.
Other pharmaceutical giants includingMerck & Co, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofiare also exploring the potential of artificialintelligence (AI) to help streamline the drugdiscovery process. The aim is to harnessmodern supercomputers and machinelearning systems to predict how moleculeswill behave and how likely they are to makea useful drug, thereby saving time and mon-ey on unnecessary tests. AI systems alreadyplay a central role in other high-tech areassuch as the development of driverless carsand facial recognition software.
“Many large pharma companies are start-ing to realise the potential of this approachand how it can help improve efficiencies,”said Andrew Hopkins, chief executive of
privately-owned Exscientia. Hopkins, who used to work at Pfizer, said
Exscientia’s AI system could deliver drugcandidates in roughly one-quarter of thetime and at one-quarter of the cost of tradi-tional approaches.
Big Pharma Turns to AIto Speed Drug Discovery
SHASHANK DIXITCEO, Deskera
The way the companyhas a play in logistics,payments and market-place, we would some-day like to be presentin all segments, specif-ically in the SME space
Enterprise SoftwareFirm Deskera toExpand India Ops
A report says Microsoft isplanning a massive worldwidelayoff to restructure its sales-force. An anonymous sourcetold the site TechCrunch thatthe move would be announcedthis week and involve “thou-sands” of workers around theworld. The reorganisation willinclude a merger involvingMicrosoft’s “enterprise cus-tomer unit and one or more ofits SME-focused divisions,” thereport said. An earlier reportfrom Bloomberg also men-tioned that a reorganisationwas in the works, saying itwould involve a shift towardsadded emphasis in Microsoft’scloud business. “The shifts willbe some of the most significantin the sales force in years,” itsaid. Microsoft didn’t immedi-ately respond to a request forcomment. – BI
Microsoftmay Lay off‘Thousands’
Deliveroo might be worth asmuch as $1.5 billion (£1.1billion) if the world’s biggesttech fund decides to take astake. According to a Sky Newsreport, the $93 billion (£72billion) SoftBank Vision Fund isreportedly in talks to invest inthe food delivery startup. Onesource said that a successfuldeal could make DeliverooLondon’s latest tech “unicorn”,the nickname given to startupswith a valuation of more than£1billion. According to Sky,SoftBank is interested intaking a stake but it might beweeks before the deal isfinalised. Sources said thatDeliveroo would probablyraise a similar amount to itslast round in August, when itraised $275 million (£210million) from private equityfirm Bridgepoint, DST Global,General Catalyst, and Gree-noaks Capital. – BI
SoftBankFund to Investin Deliveroo
7�WWW.ECONOMICTIMES.COM
Disruption: Startups & Tech
AI-based robot fish MIRO, developed by South Korean company AIRO, swimming in a pool during a demon-stration at the Advanced Content Technology Expo, Tokyo. —AFP
Immersive Tech
Source: Statista
App economy is booming. In 2016, it is estimated that global gross consumer spend on mobile
apps was $1.3 trillion. The number will only go up, as it is expected to increase by 385% over the
next five years to a colossal $6.35 trillion.
Global App Economy is Set to Grow 385%!
Total gross consumer spend in the mobile app market in 2016 and 2021 (in $)*
*Estimates/Forecasts. Figures include mobile commerce (inclusive of mobile web), app store, and in-app advertising
China United States Japan United Kingdom
$0.79tn
$0.20tn
$0.07tn
$0.03tn
$2.59tn
$0.82tn
$0.21tn
$0.11tn
$1.31tn
$6.35tn
2016 2021
GROWTH SET TO ZOOM 385%
Globe Trotter
New Delhi: India and Israel are ex-pected to sign an agreement to cre-ate a $40-million research and de-velopment fund for joint innova-tion in areas of agriculture, water,energy and technology duringPrime Minister Narendra Modi’sthree-day visit to the West Asiancountry starting Tuesday.
The two countries will contribute$20 million, or about .̀ 130 crore,each over five years to the fundcalled India-Israel Industrial R&Dand Technological InnovationFund, said a top official aware ofthe development.
“This is going to be a good plat-form for both the countries to cometogether and is expected to besigned between Israel’s InnovationAuthority and India’s departmentof science and technology duringthe PM’s visit,” said the officialwho requested anonymity.
His counterpart Benjamin Neta-nyahu will receive Modi, the firstIndian prime minister to visit Is-
rael, at Ben-Gurion Airport in TelAviv. The Israel prime minister isexpected to accompany Modithrough most of the visit, whichmarks 25 years of full diplomaticrelations between the two coun-tries.
The two leadersare expected tosign a memoran-dum of under-stand-ing
(MoU) for the proposed R&D fund.According to the official quoted
earlier, the fund will be used by in-dustry in both the countries for de-veloping collaborative R&D prac-
tices and joint product devel-opment in areas such as agri-culture, energy, water and ICT.
Given Israel’s lead oncyberse-
curity and startups, these areascould also be potential spots for col-laboration.
While from the Israel side, the In-novation Authority will be imple-menting it, from India the GlobalInnovation and Technology Alli-ance will take it forward. The Alli-ance is a not-for-profit entity incor-porated jointly by industry bodyCII and the central governmentwhere industry holds 51% stake.
“The Alliance is already imple-menting department of scienceand technology’s other bilateralindustrial R&D programmes withcountries like the United King-dom, Spain, Italy, Canada, Koreaand Finland,” said the official.
Last week, Netanyahu had saidgovernments across the world arelooking for cooperation with thecountry in the areas of high techand cybersecurity, and that the up-coming visit of his “friend” Modimarks a change in the country’sstatus.
He had said that because of con-tinuous efforts in the field of cyber-security, around 20% of all privateinvestments are coming to Israel.
India, Israel Ready $40mFund for Joint Innovation
SHAKE ON IT The research and development fund will be used to fund joint innovation in sectorssuch as agriculture, water, energy and technology, as well as cybersecurity solutions
Pune: Enterprise software firmDeskera plans to expand its pres-ence in India, with a data centrein Andhra Pradesh, and officesin Hyderabad, Bengalaru andChennai.
Shashank Dixit, CEO, Deskeratold ET that the companyplanned to invest about 25 mil-lion SGD (`̀125 crore) towardsthis proposed data centre. Thecompany had launched its Indiaoperations last year and had beengrowing rapidly, he said.
“We are currently present infive cities and will expand to 20over the next 6-9 months. We cur-rently employ 350 people andwould be adding another 1,000over the next 12-18 months,” hesaid. The Singapore headquar-tered firm has invested about 20million SGD (`̀100 crore) in its In-dia operations so far. Deskeraprovides cloud-based ERP ser-vices, focusing primarily onsmall and medium enterprises.
It recently announced a collabo-ration with Alibaba Cloud, thecloud computing arm of AlibabaGroup, to provide a SaaS solutionto customers in the Middle East,Africa, India and China. Dixitsaid that the company saw greatpotential in India with the rol-lout of the GST.
Deskara wants to be the Alibabaof the SME market, said Dixit.“The way the company has a playin logistics, payments and mar-ketplace, we would someday liketo be present in all three seg-
ments, but specifically in theSME space,” he said.
This would either be throughstrategic partnership with othercompanies, particularly in the lo-gistics space, or on their own.
Deskera, backed by investorslike Tembusu and France’s Tike-hau Capital, said that its foun-ders still controlled 80% of thecompany.
Co looks to invest`̀125 crore for a data centre in Andhra Pradesh
Building a BridgeBoth countries will put $20 mil-lion each over next five years
collaborative R&D practices
product development
AgricultureEnergyWater
FUNDS WILL BE USED FOR AREAS TO EXPLORE
ICTCybersecurityStartups
THEO VAN RYSSELBERGHE Big Clouds
MAKING SPACE
FIRM IS LOOKING TO EXPAND IN
Andhra Pradesh: DATA CENTREHyderabad: OFFICEBengalaru: OFFICEChennai: OFFICE
`100cr Funds invested in India operations so far
Bengaluru: Xiaomi is strengthe-ning its after-sale service in India,as the Chinese smartphone makerexpands its brand rapidly in thismarket.
“This year, one of our big focusareas was to grow our service to-uchpoint and in the past sixmonths we have more than doub-led the number of service centresin the country," Xiaomi’s India he-
ad, Manu Kumar Jain, told ET.On Friday, Xiaomi opened its
500th service centre in the countryin Bengaluru.
The smartphone maker has amixture of partner-run exclusiveand multi-brand service centres in350 cities and towns.
Jain said the company does astrong due diligence on every sing-le partner before appointing it andprefers to work with relativelysmaller or mid-size partners “sin-ce they tend to be much more invol-
ved and their efficiency levels aremuch higher as compared to bigcompanies.”
Most partners run 8-25 servicecentres, although there are alsosmaller partners who run only onecentre, Jain said.
Xiaomi standardised all its multi-brand service centres last year tosolve the issue of disparity interms of experience to customers.As part of this initiative, thesecentres now use the same opera-ting procedures as Xiaomi’s exclu-
sive stores and the smartphone ma-ker ensures they have sufficient in-ventory of spare parts.
These measures helped the com-pany improve its repair rate signi-ficantly, Jain said.
The smartphone maker now hasmore than 4,000 people working onits service infrastructure thatcomprises two large spare-part wa-rehouses, 26 small warehouses,three repair factories and two callcentres apart from the servicecentres.
Xiaomi Opens 500th After-sale TouchpointChinese smartphone maker has a mixture of partner-run exclusive & multi-brand service centres
Bloomberg
Facebook’s small print may be the nextbig thing in European antitrust aswatchdogs home in on how the world’sbiggest social network collects informa-tion from users that helps generate vastadvertising revenues.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office isexamining whether Facebook essential-ly takes advantage of its popularity tobully users into agreeing to terms andconditions they might not understand.The details that users provide helpgenerate the targeted ads that make thecompany so rich.
In the eyes of the Cartel Office, Face-book is “extorting” information from itsusers, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer atHeuking Kuehn Lueer Wojtek in Ham-burg. “Whoever doesn’t agree to the datause, gets locked out of the social networkcommunity,” he said. “The fear of socialisolation is exploited to get access to thecomplete surfing activities of users.”
The European Union’s antitrust armhas grabbed the limelight with eye-popping penalties for US technologyfirms it found fell foul of anti-compet-itive behaviour. Last year, it orderedApple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.9 bil-lion) in back taxes and last week it finedGoogle 2.4 billion euros for allegedlyskewing search results in its favour. Butlawyers say the Cartel Office’s probe is
testing the boundaries ofantitrust law – withramifications far beyondGermany and Facebookas all kinds of powerfultechnology firms seek tofind new ways to cash inon their trove of custom-er information.
It’s “more radical” than the EU’s Goo-gle case “because it asserts that privacyconcerns can be antitrust concerns” andthat consumers have a broader role thanbuyers of services in an economy, saidAlec Burnside, an attorney at Dechert inBrussels.
The German probe comes as Facebook,
which now has 2 billion members andmade more than $27 billion in revenuelast year, confronts heightened regu-latory scrutiny in Europe. It’s beinginvestigated by numerous privacy au-thorities over its plans to merge datawith the WhatsApp messenger applica-tion, faces a court battle over data trans-fers across the Atlantic and was fined inMay for misleading the EU in a mergerreview of the WhatsApp deal.
Andreas Mundt, the Cartel Office’spresident, said last week he’s “eager topresent first results” of the Facebookinvestigation this year. Like the EU’sGoogle investigation, he said the Face-book case tackles “central questionsensuring competition in the digitalworld in the future.”
Facebook declined to comment on thepossible outcome. The company hasinsisted it operates within applicablelaw and that it would cooperate withregulators.
When the German antitrust regulatordisclosed the review in March last year,it said Facebook collects a large amountof personal user data from varioussources and creates user profiles, allow-ing its advertising customers to bettertarget their ads.
Users must accept the terms while it’shard for them to understand to whatextent they agree to surrender theirpersonal information, according to theCartel Office.
Facebook’s Small Print Could Justbe the Next Big Antitrust Target
In the eyes ofthe CartelOffice,Facebook is“extorting”informationfrom its users
Reuters
London: The world’s leading drug compa-nies are turning to artificial intelligence toimprove the hit-and-miss business of find-ing new medicines, with GlaxoSmithKlineunveiling a new $43 million deal in the field.
Other pharmaceutical giants includingMerck & Co, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofiare also exploring the potential of artificialintelligence (AI) to help streamline the drugdiscovery process. The aim is to harnessmodern supercomputers and machinelearning systems to predict how moleculeswill behave and how likely they are to makea useful drug, thereby saving time and mon-ey on unnecessary tests. AI systems alreadyplay a central role in other high-tech areassuch as the development of driverless carsand facial recognition software.
“Many large pharma companies are start-ing to realise the potential of this approachand how it can help improve efficiencies,”said Andrew Hopkins, chief executive of
privately-owned Exscientia. Hopkins, who used to work at Pfizer, said
Exscientia’s AI system could deliver drugcandidates in roughly one-quarter of thetime and at one-quarter of the cost of tradi-tional approaches.
Big Pharma Turns to AIto Speed Drug Discovery
SHASHANK DIXITCEO, Deskera
The way the companyhas a play in logistics,payments and market-place, we would some-day like to be presentin all segments, specif-ically in the SME space
Enterprise SoftwareFirm Deskera toExpand India Ops
A report says Microsoft isplanning a massive worldwidelayoff to restructure its sales-force. An anonymous sourcetold the site TechCrunch thatthe move would be announcedthis week and involve “thou-sands” of workers around theworld. The reorganisation willinclude a merger involvingMicrosoft’s “enterprise cus-tomer unit and one or more ofits SME-focused divisions,” thereport said. An earlier reportfrom Bloomberg also men-tioned that a reorganisationwas in the works, saying itwould involve a shift towardsadded emphasis in Microsoft’scloud business. “The shifts willbe some of the most significantin the sales force in years,” itsaid. Microsoft didn’t immedi-ately respond to a request forcomment. – BI
Microsoftmay Lay off‘Thousands’
Deliveroo might be worth asmuch as $1.5 billion (£1.1billion) if the world’s biggesttech fund decides to take astake. According to a Sky Newsreport, the $93 billion (£72billion) SoftBank Vision Fund isreportedly in talks to invest inthe food delivery startup. Onesource said that a successfuldeal could make DeliverooLondon’s latest tech “unicorn”,the nickname given to startupswith a valuation of more than£1billion. According to Sky,SoftBank is interested intaking a stake but it might beweeks before the deal isfinalised. Sources said thatDeliveroo would probablyraise a similar amount to itslast round in August, when itraised $275 million (£210million) from private equityfirm Bridgepoint, DST Global,General Catalyst, and Gree-noaks Capital. – BI
SoftBankFund to Investin Deliveroo
7�WWW.ECONOMICTIMES.COM
Disruption: Startups & Tech
AI-based robot fish MIRO, developed by South Korean company AIRO, swimming in a pool during a demon-stration at the Advanced Content Technology Expo, Tokyo. —AFP
Immersive Tech
Source: Statista
App economy is booming. In 2016, it is estimated that global gross consumer spend on mobile
apps was $1.3 trillion. The number will only go up, as it is expected to increase by 385% over the
next five years to a colossal $6.35 trillion.
Global App Economy is Set to Grow 385%!
Total gross consumer spend in the mobile app market in 2016 and 2021 (in $)*
*Estimates/Forecasts. Figures include mobile commerce (inclusive of mobile web), app store, and in-app advertising
China United States Japan United Kingdom
$0.79tn
$0.20tn
$0.07tn
$0.03tn
$2.59tn
$0.82tn
$0.21tn
$0.11tn
$1.31tn
$6.35tn
2016 2021
GROWTH SET TO ZOOM 385%
Globe Trotter
New Delhi: India and Israel are ex-pected to sign an agreement to cre-ate a $40-million research and de-velopment fund for joint innova-tion in areas of agriculture, water,energy and technology duringPrime Minister Narendra Modi’sthree-day visit to the West Asiancountry starting Tuesday.
The two countries will contribute$20 million, or about .̀ 130 crore,each over five years to the fundcalled India-Israel Industrial R&Dand Technological InnovationFund, said a top official aware ofthe development.
“This is going to be a good plat-form for both the countries to cometogether and is expected to besigned between Israel’s InnovationAuthority and India’s departmentof science and technology duringthe PM’s visit,” said the officialwho requested anonymity.
His counterpart Benjamin Neta-nyahu will receive Modi, the firstIndian prime minister to visit Is-
rael, at Ben-Gurion Airport in TelAviv. The Israel prime minister isexpected to accompany Modithrough most of the visit, whichmarks 25 years of full diplomaticrelations between the two coun-tries.
The two leadersare expected tosign a memoran-dum of under-stand-ing
(MoU) for the proposed R&D fund.According to the official quoted
earlier, the fund will be used by in-dustry in both the countries for de-veloping collaborative R&D prac-
tices and joint product devel-opment in areas such as agri-culture, energy, water and ICT.
Given Israel’s lead oncyberse-
curity and startups, these areascould also be potential spots for col-laboration.
While from the Israel side, the In-novation Authority will be imple-menting it, from India the GlobalInnovation and Technology Alli-ance will take it forward. The Alli-ance is a not-for-profit entity incor-porated jointly by industry bodyCII and the central governmentwhere industry holds 51% stake.
“The Alliance is already imple-menting department of scienceand technology’s other bilateralindustrial R&D programmes withcountries like the United King-dom, Spain, Italy, Canada, Koreaand Finland,” said the official.
Last week, Netanyahu had saidgovernments across the world arelooking for cooperation with thecountry in the areas of high techand cybersecurity, and that the up-coming visit of his “friend” Modimarks a change in the country’sstatus.
He had said that because of con-tinuous efforts in the field of cyber-security, around 20% of all privateinvestments are coming to Israel.
India, Israel Ready $40mFund for Joint Innovation
SHAKE ON IT The research and development fund will be used to fund joint innovation in sectorssuch as agriculture, water, energy and technology, as well as cybersecurity solutions
Pune: Enterprise software firmDeskera plans to expand its pres-ence in India, with a data centrein Andhra Pradesh, and officesin Hyderabad, Bengalaru andChennai.
Shashank Dixit, CEO, Deskeratold ET that the companyplanned to invest about 25 mil-lion SGD (`̀125 crore) towardsthis proposed data centre. Thecompany had launched its Indiaoperations last year and had beengrowing rapidly, he said.
“We are currently present infive cities and will expand to 20over the next 6-9 months. We cur-rently employ 350 people andwould be adding another 1,000over the next 12-18 months,” hesaid. The Singapore headquar-tered firm has invested about 20million SGD (`̀100 crore) in its In-dia operations so far. Deskeraprovides cloud-based ERP ser-vices, focusing primarily onsmall and medium enterprises.
It recently announced a collabo-ration with Alibaba Cloud, thecloud computing arm of AlibabaGroup, to provide a SaaS solutionto customers in the Middle East,Africa, India and China. Dixitsaid that the company saw greatpotential in India with the rol-lout of the GST.
Deskara wants to be the Alibabaof the SME market, said Dixit.“The way the company has a playin logistics, payments and mar-ketplace, we would someday liketo be present in all three seg-
ments, but specifically in theSME space,” he said.
This would either be throughstrategic partnership with othercompanies, particularly in the lo-gistics space, or on their own.
Deskera, backed by investorslike Tembusu and France’s Tike-hau Capital, said that its foun-ders still controlled 80% of thecompany.
Co looks to invest`̀125 crore for a data centre in Andhra Pradesh
Building a BridgeBoth countries will put $20 mil-lion each over next five years
collaborative R&D practices
product development
AgricultureEnergyWater
FUNDS WILL BE USED FOR AREAS TO EXPLORE
ICTCybersecurityStartups
THEO VAN RYSSELBERGHE Big Clouds
MAKING SPACE
FIRM IS LOOKING TO EXPAND IN
Andhra Pradesh: DATA CENTREHyderabad: OFFICEBengalaru: OFFICEChennai: OFFICE
`100cr Funds invested in India operations so far
Bengaluru: Xiaomi is strengthe-ning its after-sale service in India,as the Chinese smartphone makerexpands its brand rapidly in thismarket.
“This year, one of our big focusareas was to grow our service to-uchpoint and in the past sixmonths we have more than doub-led the number of service centresin the country," Xiaomi’s India he-
ad, Manu Kumar Jain, told ET.On Friday, Xiaomi opened its
500th service centre in the countryin Bengaluru.
The smartphone maker has amixture of partner-run exclusiveand multi-brand service centres in350 cities and towns.
Jain said the company does astrong due diligence on every sing-le partner before appointing it andprefers to work with relativelysmaller or mid-size partners “sin-ce they tend to be much more invol-
ved and their efficiency levels aremuch higher as compared to bigcompanies.”
Most partners run 8-25 servicecentres, although there are alsosmaller partners who run only onecentre, Jain said.
Xiaomi standardised all its multi-brand service centres last year tosolve the issue of disparity interms of experience to customers.As part of this initiative, thesecentres now use the same opera-ting procedures as Xiaomi’s exclu-
sive stores and the smartphone ma-ker ensures they have sufficient in-ventory of spare parts.
These measures helped the com-pany improve its repair rate signi-ficantly, Jain said.
The smartphone maker now hasmore than 4,000 people working onits service infrastructure thatcomprises two large spare-part wa-rehouses, 26 small warehouses,three repair factories and two callcentres apart from the servicecentres.
Xiaomi Opens 500th After-sale TouchpointChinese smartphone maker has a mixture of partner-run exclusive & multi-brand service centres
Bloomberg
Facebook’s small print may be the nextbig thing in European antitrust aswatchdogs home in on how the world’sbiggest social network collects informa-tion from users that helps generate vastadvertising revenues.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office isexamining whether Facebook essential-ly takes advantage of its popularity tobully users into agreeing to terms andconditions they might not understand.The details that users provide helpgenerate the targeted ads that make thecompany so rich.
In the eyes of the Cartel Office, Face-book is “extorting” information from itsusers, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer atHeuking Kuehn Lueer Wojtek in Ham-burg. “Whoever doesn’t agree to the datause, gets locked out of the social networkcommunity,” he said. “The fear of socialisolation is exploited to get access to thecomplete surfing activities of users.”
The European Union’s antitrust armhas grabbed the limelight with eye-popping penalties for US technologyfirms it found fell foul of anti-compet-itive behaviour. Last year, it orderedApple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.9 bil-lion) in back taxes and last week it finedGoogle 2.4 billion euros for allegedlyskewing search results in its favour. Butlawyers say the Cartel Office’s probe is
testing the boundaries ofantitrust law – withramifications far beyondGermany and Facebookas all kinds of powerfultechnology firms seek tofind new ways to cash inon their trove of custom-er information.
It’s “more radical” than the EU’s Goo-gle case “because it asserts that privacyconcerns can be antitrust concerns” andthat consumers have a broader role thanbuyers of services in an economy, saidAlec Burnside, an attorney at Dechert inBrussels.
The German probe comes as Facebook,
which now has 2 billion members andmade more than $27 billion in revenuelast year, confronts heightened regu-latory scrutiny in Europe. It’s beinginvestigated by numerous privacy au-thorities over its plans to merge datawith the WhatsApp messenger applica-tion, faces a court battle over data trans-fers across the Atlantic and was fined inMay for misleading the EU in a mergerreview of the WhatsApp deal.
Andreas Mundt, the Cartel Office’spresident, said last week he’s “eager topresent first results” of the Facebookinvestigation this year. Like the EU’sGoogle investigation, he said the Face-book case tackles “central questionsensuring competition in the digitalworld in the future.”
Facebook declined to comment on thepossible outcome. The company hasinsisted it operates within applicablelaw and that it would cooperate withregulators.
When the German antitrust regulatordisclosed the review in March last year,it said Facebook collects a large amountof personal user data from varioussources and creates user profiles, allow-ing its advertising customers to bettertarget their ads.
Users must accept the terms while it’shard for them to understand to whatextent they agree to surrender theirpersonal information, according to theCartel Office.
Facebook’s Small Print Could Justbe the Next Big Antitrust Target
In the eyes ofthe CartelOffice,Facebook is“extorting”informationfrom its users
Reuters
London: The world’s leading drug compa-nies are turning to artificial intelligence toimprove the hit-and-miss business of find-ing new medicines, with GlaxoSmithKlineunveiling a new $43 million deal in the field.
Other pharmaceutical giants includingMerck & Co, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofiare also exploring the potential of artificialintelligence (AI) to help streamline the drugdiscovery process. The aim is to harnessmodern supercomputers and machinelearning systems to predict how moleculeswill behave and how likely they are to makea useful drug, thereby saving time and mon-ey on unnecessary tests. AI systems alreadyplay a central role in other high-tech areassuch as the development of driverless carsand facial recognition software.
“Many large pharma companies are start-ing to realise the potential of this approachand how it can help improve efficiencies,”said Andrew Hopkins, chief executive of
privately-owned Exscientia. Hopkins, who used to work at Pfizer, said
Exscientia’s AI system could deliver drugcandidates in roughly one-quarter of thetime and at one-quarter of the cost of tradi-tional approaches.
Big Pharma Turns to AIto Speed Drug Discovery
SHASHANK DIXITCEO, Deskera
The way the companyhas a play in logistics,payments and market-place, we would some-day like to be presentin all segments, specif-ically in the SME space
Enterprise SoftwareFirm Deskera toExpand India Ops
A report says Microsoft isplanning a massive worldwidelayoff to restructure its sales-force. An anonymous sourcetold the site TechCrunch thatthe move would be announcedthis week and involve “thou-sands” of workers around theworld. The reorganisation willinclude a merger involvingMicrosoft’s “enterprise cus-tomer unit and one or more ofits SME-focused divisions,” thereport said. An earlier reportfrom Bloomberg also men-tioned that a reorganisationwas in the works, saying itwould involve a shift towardsadded emphasis in Microsoft’scloud business. “The shifts willbe some of the most significantin the sales force in years,” itsaid. Microsoft didn’t immedi-ately respond to a request forcomment. – BI
Microsoftmay Lay off‘Thousands’
Deliveroo might be worth asmuch as $1.5 billion (£1.1billion) if the world’s biggesttech fund decides to take astake. According to a Sky Newsreport, the $93 billion (£72billion) SoftBank Vision Fund isreportedly in talks to invest inthe food delivery startup. Onesource said that a successfuldeal could make DeliverooLondon’s latest tech “unicorn”,the nickname given to startupswith a valuation of more than£1billion. According to Sky,SoftBank is interested intaking a stake but it might beweeks before the deal isfinalised. Sources said thatDeliveroo would probablyraise a similar amount to itslast round in August, when itraised $275 million (£210million) from private equityfirm Bridgepoint, DST Global,General Catalyst, and Gree-noaks Capital. – BI
SoftBankFund to Investin Deliveroo
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