China's Tencent opens cashier-less pop-up store in Shanghai
Chinese Internet giant Tencent has opened its first cashier-less pop-up store in Shanghai in a move to tap into the country's promising unmanned retail industry. At the 300-square meter shop named We Life, shoppers can use WeChat Pay, the proprietary e-wallet of messenger app WeChat, to buy items without paying cash, swiping a card, or interacting with a single human being, according to state-run China Daily.
Customers can use a phone to scan a quick response code at the gate, which enables user identification and automatic payment. All products are equipped with radio-frequency identification tags that use magnetic chips to store information such as price and inventory.
Apple opens its first store in South Korea
Seoul: Hundreds of South Koreans on Saturday waited hours for the opening of Apple's first store in southern Seoul.
About 300 people lined up to be among the first in the country to get inside Apple Garosugil in the affluent southern district of Gangnam.
Choi Ji-eon, an 18-year-old who is preparing to study abroad, said he arrived in front of the new store around 3 p.m. on Friday and later waited in a sleeping bag as he was shivering with cold at night, Yonhap News Agency reported.
AIR ties up with Amazon Echo to let you tune in with just a voice command
NEW DELHI: Listeners can now tune into All India Radio (AIR) by giving a voice command from anywhere in the world, thanks to a recent partnership between the public broadcaster and Amazon Echo service.
With the latest move, AIR looks at expanding its reach with the help of new age technology.
In order to avail the 'voice on demand' service, the listeners need to buy 'Echo' device from the e-commerce platform of Amazon.
"Now, people across the world can access local and global services of AIR through a voice command on Amazon Echo," AIR Director General F Sheheryar said.
With the changing technology, the public broadcaster is trying to meet the media needs of consumers, he said.
JD.com plans to make U.S. foray this year
China's JD.com Inc is preparing to enter the United States by the end of this year, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, in a move that will challenge its Chinese rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and U.S.-based Amazon Inc.
JD.com is seeking funds for its international expansion and is in final talks to sell 15 percent of its logistics arm to shareholder Tencent Holdings Ltd and other investors in an early fundraising round, Bloomberg reported. (https://bloom.bg/2DBxEZw)
Tencent will get about a third of the shares on offer and the deal will be completed by the middle of next month, JD.com founder Richard Liu told Bloomberg in an interview.
JD.com and Tencent were not immediately available for comment.
‘Amazon’s plan is to starve rivals of capital’
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA: Chamath Palihapitiya, co-founder of venture fund Social Capital, is in the middle of building a new investment vehicle that will help private companies go public. Aside of the changes at the fund, the voluble and brash investor was in the news recently when he spoke about being guilty of aiding the growth of his former employer Facebook, which along with other social media platforms he says are distorting the social fabric of society. Palihapitiya, 41, spoke to TOI in an hourlong interview on why he is betting on India’s financial services startups, the Amazon advantage over Flipkart, the founder-investor dynamics in the backdrop of what happened at Uber, and what lies ahead for his fund.
Myntra FY17 turnover zooms 87% to Rs 2,000 crore
Myntra Designs posted a turnover of ₹2,000 crore in fiscal 2016-17, an 87% jump from the previous year, according to a filing with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, sourced through data-tracking platform Tofler.
Of the turnover, 94% had come from trading business, and the remaining 6% from data processing, hosting and related activities and its Web portal.
The filing did not show any profit or loss numbers for the year. The company had posted a ₹816 crore loss in FY16.
E-way bill may fail to deliver the goods, fear etail firms
MUMBAI: With days left for the rollout of the intra-state e-way billon February 1, several logistics and ecommerce companies are seeking clarifications on the new system, fearing operational inefficiencies and supply-chain disruptions.
These companies have written to GST Council, particularly seeking clarity on a notification regarding a second layer of e-way bill generation for goods valued at less than Rs 50,000 — a range that accounts for abulk of all ecommerce shipments.
The e-way bill is an electronic permit with detailed information on the goods being transported.
“In such cases where the consignor has not generated the e-way bill, and the value of that shipment exceeds Rs 50,000, the transporter is obligated to generate e-way bill based on invoice, bill of supply, or delivery challan provided by the consignor,” the companies have said in their letter, which EThas reviewed.
