Electronic giant Sony Corporation announced on Tuesday that it will build a ride-hailing system for Japanese commuters. This ride-hailing system will be launched during this year’s spring season, according to popular website Techcrunch. However, the most noteworthy thing about this ride-hailing network would be that it will be completely based on Artificial intelligence (AI) and Sony will be collaborating with five Taxi companies to pull off this ambitious AI based project. The names of these five taxi companies are as follows: Daiwa Motor Transportation, Hinomaru Kotsu, Kokusai Motorcars, Green Cab and Checker Cab Group. The AI technology, which obviously would…
Author: Girish Shetti
If Richard Branson owned Virgin Hyperloop has its way, then commuter’s traveling time between Mumbai to Pune will reduce to merely 14 – 25 minutes. This is no exaggeration, but a fact that can turn into reality. And to turn this incredible feet into reality, the Los Angeles based Virgin Hyperloop signed a framework agreement with Maharashtra government in the ongoing Maharashtra Magnetic event. The company will start groundwork for this ambitious project after conducting a six-month in-depth feasibility study, which along with analyzing and defining the route alignment, will study environmental impact as well as whether the project is…
Auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) Ltd has infused $27.6 million (Rs 176 crore) in self-drive car rental startup Zoomcar. The investment gives auto major 16% stake in the Bengaluru based startup. M&M’s investment was part of Zoomcar’s series C funding round that also saw participation by some of the existing investors. Overall, the startup managed to raise $40 million (Rs 256 crore) through this round and with it the company has taken its valuation to around $172 million (Rs 1,100 crore). Last month, VCCircle had reported that M&M and Ford Smart Mobility (startup arm of Ford Motors) has signed…
Paytm’s founder Vijay Sharma on Wednesday took to Twitter to denounce what he termed as unfair competitive advantage allotted to WhatsApp, after the latter was allowed to start a payment service without fulfilling many critical mandatory rules. Sharma’s salvo on Twitter comes barely days after the Facebook-owned Whatsapp announced that it would start payment service in India on a trial basis. Sharma minced no words as he accused Facebook of monopolizing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) by the virtue of its money power and clout within the government agencies. “After failing to win war against India’s open Internet with cheap tricks…
India’s ride-hailing Major Ola has finally made its international debut by launching a trail based service in Perth city, capital of Western Australia, according to a statement issued by the company on Wednesday. This marks a new chapter for the cab aggregator firm, which until now offered its services only in major Indian cities. “Ola is offering affordable fares for customers and higher commissions for driver-partners to create a high-quality travel experience for Australia, and is excited to start with the Perth community,” the company said in a statement. As per the trail offer, Ola will be offering Perth customers…
Alibaba is playing a frontal role in integrating services of Paytm Mall, BigBasket and XpressBees. The strategic move may help in increasing the revenue and productivity of all the three firms, in which Chinese e commerce giant Alibaba owns majority as well as minority stakes. Alibaba owns majority stake in Paytm Mall, while it owns minority stake in BigBasket and XpressBees. It led a $300 million round in the online grocery startup BigBasket barely a week ago. As per Alibaba’s integration plan, Paytm Mall will sell Big Basket’s grocery products through an online store on its web as well as…
Chinese internet giant Tencent is in talks with news aggregator startup NewsDog to lead a $35-40 million funding round, according to people close with the matter. If the deal materializes, it will be one of the largest deals in the Indian news content space. Tencent, which has already invested in some of the high profile Indian startups like Flipkart and Ola, has reportedly zeroed on news aggregator space as its latest investment bet. However, the growth of online content and news aggregation space is hindered by revenue concerns, since the online ad space is dominated by big boys like Google…
Online food delivery startup and Zomato’s main rival Swiggy has scooped up $100 million (Rs 640 crore) in its largest ever fund raising round till date. The Series F fund raising round was led by existing investor and South African media giant Naspers, while a new Chinese investor Meituan-Dianping also participated in the funding round. Last year in May, Naspers also led an $80 million fund raising round in Swiggy. However, the latest fund raising round makes for a more noteworthy observation, since it comes barely days after Zomato raised almost $200 million from Chinese e commerce giant Alibaba. These…
Up…up and gone. As Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy successfully lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, the triumphant moment marked a gigantic leap in man’s unending exploration of space. There are many factors that make SpaceX Falcon’s successful launch on Tuesday a truly historic moment. Firstly, SpaceX Falcon is the world’s most powerful operational rocket and more importantly it was completely designed & launched by a private organization (not any government agency). Secondly, the launch marks the most definitive step towards Elon Musk’s insanely ambitious project to create a human colony on the red planet. Following Tuesday’s launch,…
World’s most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin crashed more than 15% on Monday to slump to almost three month low. This is probably the first time that bitcoin’s value declined in double-digit ever since its slide began from the beginning of this New Year. Monday’s crash also comes amid global clampdown on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as concerns continue to swell over legality of digital currencies. Bitcoin’s price dived as low as $6,853.53 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange in early afternoon trading on Monday. The big price erosion comes immediately a day after British’s leading bank Lloyds Banking Group announced that it…
Online restaurant discovery and food delivery company Zomato has raised $200 million from Alibaba’s financial firm Ant Financial, according to Info Edge’s (Zomato’s largest investor) latest filing with the stock exchange. Interestingly, the timing of this investment has almost coincided with Alibaba’s fundraising round for online grocery Big Basket. Whether there is any possible connection between the two events can’t be really ascertained, but it certainly marks Chinese e-commerce giant’s growing interest in the Indian startup ecosystem. Following Alibaba’s investment, Info Edge will divest 6.66% for $50 million in Zomato, bringing its stake from 45% to nearly 31%. Alibaba will…
Social media giant Facebook on Tuesday announced that it will ban all advertisements related to Cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings. With this ban, Facebook has joined the global crusade to rein on the cryptocurrency trading. The announcement was made by Rob Leathern, product management director at Facebook, on social networking site’s official blog post. In his post, Leathern described initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency to be misleading & deceptive promotional practices. Facebook’s backlash comes at a time when prices of Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, have gone down below $10,000 mark. The spiraling downslide in the prices of most cryptocurrencies…