Used-phone seller Cashify raises $15 million from Olympus Capital
Cashify, a re-commerce marketplace that sells and buys used smartphones and other electronic gadgets, has raised $15 million from Olympus Capital Asia. Olympus Capital will make the investment through Asia Environmental Partners (AEP), its clean energy and sustainability platform. “We are looking forward to accelerating our investment in the electronics reuse and recycling sector and thereby enabling OEMs and consumers to materially reduce their carbon footprint," said Mandeep Manocha, founder and CEO of Cashify. Founded in 2015 by Manocha, Nakul Kumar, and Amit Sethi, Cashify is an online platform to sell used mobile phones for instant cash and offers free home-pickups. The start-up plans to use these funds to expand its footprint in India, through offline retail expansion. “We plan to grow our offline stores from 60 to 150 over the next one and one-and-a-half years, as people like to touch and feel the phone before buying," said Manocha, adding that the pandemic has boosted demand for second-hand smartphones and laptops because of online learning and work from home. From selling 80,000 devices per month in September 2020, Cashify today sells more than 125,000 devices a month and is looking at achieving profitability in the next 6 months.
(LiveMint, Mar 04, 2021)
BlueStacks to revolutionise mobile gaming in India: CEO
BlueStacks, the world's largest Android gaming platform for PCs and Macs, is bullish on India and with over 2 million games across numerous developers, the company is revolutionising the way Android gaming is taking shape in the country, a top executive said on Monday. BlueStacks has over 500 million users globally across more than 200 locations. "India is an extremely large mobile gaming market for us. Last year, the pandemic drove a surge of gamers across the world, including India, which saw a near 100 per cent jump in user base," Rosen Sharma, CEO BlueStacks, told IANS in an interview. A typical BlueStacks user is spending an average of 5 hours playing mobile games every day. According to Sharma, the gaming eco-system in India is majorly driven by mobile games. "With developers coming out with bigger and heavier games, more mobile gamers will play in interruption-free environments and migrate to PC-based platforms. Mobile games are not designed for long gameplay," he noted. The new BlueStacks 5 (Beta), which will support ARM devices, offers significantly faster boot, install and launch times and core gamers can look forward to better gameplay experiences.
(ET, Feb 22, 2021)
Mobile users spend 3 crore hours on Covid message, which holds up distress calls: Consumer Group
India’s billion-plus mobile users spend a whopping 3 crore hours a day listening to a 30-second Covid19 message Kolkata. When’s the last time India wanted to tune out after Amitabh Bachchan started speaking? But when India’s billion-plus mobile users spend hours every day for months listening to 30-second covid messages, then even the famous baritone of the iconic actor, who lends his voice to one of the message variants, can’t prevent fatigue. Voiceover artist Jasleen Bhalla lent her voice to another variant of the covid pre-call announcement. Lately, there's a third variant that starts with a man coughing. Consumer groups say those pre-call covid messages are hugely problematic. They say the message being played across networks is estimated to be causing a wastage of around 1.3 crore man-hours a day, and invariably holds up or delays distress calls from going through during emergencies. Also, it eats up precious bandwidth resources. A leading consumer association has dialed communications and consumer affairs ministries respectively, and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman P D Vaghela, saying the repetitive nature of the pandemic-related messaging has outlived its relevance. And that it has become a source of annoyance, and that mobile users largely ignore it because people are already aware of the criticality of social distancing protocols and usage of masks.
(ET, Jan 15, 2021)
Optic fibre makes a major part of telecom carriers digital infrastructure spend
Optic-fibre cable or OFC contributes a major pie of the Indian telecom carriers expenditure on creating digital infrastructure which is also a backbone to achieve Centre's ambitious Digital India vision, an executive of the country's top fibre maker said. "Telcos are making aggressive investments in digital network infrastructure, and optic-fibre cable holds a major share of telcos’ overall digital infrastructure investment," Anand Agarwal, group chief executive Sterlite Technologies Limited (STL) told ETTelecom. Following the demand triggered by service providers' aggressive Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) strategy, and upcoming fifth generation (5G) networks, the Pune-based predominant optic-fibre producer is planning to invest Rs 300-crore to boost its production capacity, while the second-largest HFCL Limited is also eyeing to increase production capability by at least 33%. "Optical fibre infrastructure is the cornerstone for achieving the goals of Digital India vision. Fibre networks are at the core to address the digital divide in the country," Agarwal added. India's top fibre manufacturers -- Sterlite Technologies and HFCL Limited -- are banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's prestigious Digital India umbrella program that aims to achieve 100% tele-density, broadband for all, and fibre-based national backbone called BharatNet for seamless delivery of public services.
(ET, Jan 14, 2021)
Stars aligned for India’s Internet cos to create value in next 10 years: BofA Securities
The COVID-19 pandemic may have propelled India’s Internet sector into a phase of hyper growth that will result in staggering value creation in the next decade, brokerage house BofA Securities said in a note on Thursday. “We consider the India internet sector to be at an inflection point to witness hyper-growth in the coming years as we see tech companies steadily disrupting the traditional services by eliminating ‘middle men’, delivering faster, cheaper and more convenient products & services,” the brokerage said. The brokerage firm credits the rollout of 4G telecom services by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries in 2017 for the mass adoption of the Internet in India, and believes COVID-19 has accelerated the path towards profitability. A supportive government, tech-savvy young population given more than 60 per cent of Indians are aged below 35 years, ongoing digitization of small businesses and a well-funded private equity ecosystem, suggest that the stars are aligned to create investor value in the coming decade, the brokerage said. BofA Securities is of the view that Reliance Industries remains the best play on the Internet ecosystem as it will garner over 500 million users over the next 3-5 years, offer broadband services to 20-25 million households and cater to 12-15 million small businesses. “RIL’s approach of owning the “pipe” as well as the “services” offered on the pipe should help it earn incremental digital revenues,” the brokerage noted.
(ET, Jan 14, 2021)
LG sees 'window of opportunity' to come back into Indian smartphone market
South Korean electronics major LG is planning to use the “window of opportunity” provided by the anti-China mood in India currently to stage a comeback in smartphones, targeting the sub-Rs 15,000 segment to claw back its way back in an industry now dominated by brands from across the Great Wall. The company is seeking to scale up local manufacturing by 15 times until Diwali and expand distribution. In an interview with ET, Advait Vaidya, business head - mobile communications at LG Electronics, said the brand has seen 10 times increased sales of smartphones in the past two months due to the anti-China sentiment. “The short-term window of opportunity is big enough for us to enter the space and achieve scale,” he said. Diverging from its global portfolio, this year, LG is building an ‘India specific and India first’ product portfolio to cater to unique consumer demands here, Vaidya said. “So, this year, starting August, we will be launching six phones across all segments - starting from the sub-Rs 10,000 category up to the flagship segment. We are ramping up distribution across channels, online and offline,” he said. The company is also targeting corporate sales and foraying into the tablet market by year end.
(ET. July 05, 2020)
