VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

The most coveted enterprise customer summit and award ceremony, the 16th edition of this year's Infotech Forum 2018 recognized the Eminent CIOs of India,Top 25 Most Trusted Companies and 50 Most admired brands in India. The entire event was focused on Cyber security and cyber intelligence in the Indian Fintech Industry. The unveiling of the 7th edition of the Brand Book and live showcase on AI, IoT, ML, DL, Cyber security and Modern DC by tech companies made the event more interactive with the presence of 200 CXOs from various vertices at Hotel Shangri-la, New Delhi . Infotech Forum 2018, a much awaited annual event of VARINDIA held on 25th May 2018 at Shangri La, witnessed the presence 400 CXOs( CIO/CTO/CISO) from government, PSUs, enterprises, IT consultants from various verticals gathered to understand on the Theme on: ‘Disruption – A new Reality’. The forum provided a platform for all to discuss latest technological disruptions that are going on in the Information...

Building on its CAMON series in India, TECNO Mobile has announced its first AI-powered Camera Smartphone CAMON iCLICK. It promises to transform the smartphone photography experience to a whole new level. Available in two colours Mid-night Black and Champagne Gold, CAMON iCLICK is priced at Rs.13,999 and will be available pan India in 35,000+ retail outlets. Commenting on the launch, Gaurav Tikoo, Sr Vice-President – Marketing, TRANSSION India, said, “At TECNO, we believe in offering the best product experience to our consumers that’s gets them hooked. We constantly keep working on consumers’ feedback and suggestions to bring out meaningful products/features and this helps us enhance their smartphone experience. The AI-powered Camera Smartphone CAMON iCLICK is a testament of that. We are thrilled to launch CAMON iCLICK, a sensational, AI-powered Best Anylight Camera, boasts of powerful battery and fascinating design with Full View display, empowering consumers to have a rich s...

On a mission to eliminate the prevailing digital disparity between rural and urban India, iVVO, a latest entrant in the Indian mobile phone market, has launched its dual-SIM smart feature phone Beatz IV1805 for Rs.600. iVVO is a subsidiary of BRITZO, a brand that recently claimed its fame by spearheading multiple state-of-the-art innovations across ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) that are primarily aimed at the rural Indian audience. The latest offering from iVVO has been launched under the product category “Beatz”, which features a wide range of smart offerings developed for music-friendly rural customers. The cost effective smart feature phone boasts of App Store “iVVO Smart Store”, enabling the consumer to download and enjoy a wide range of apps, games, music and videos. The cost-effective smart feature phone even does not compromise in terms of other features and comes loaded with 1.8” display, 1,000mAh battery, MP3 and MP4 players, wireless FM, re...

A big question is about, who is the owner of Internet and the answer is no one unfortunately and secondly if you think of the Internet as a unified, single entity, then no one owns it. There are organizations that determine the Internet's structure and how it works, but they don't have any ownership over the Internet itself. No government can lay claim to owning the Internet, nor can any company but there are many hundreds of root servers at over 130 physical locations in many different countries. There are twelve organisations responsible for the overall coordination of the management of these servers. The recent news on revealing the identity of Kathua minor rape victim,where India has been branded, the Delhi High Court has issue notice to Internet giants Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Bing by taking a strong on it. Says, you have done a great disservice to the nation. It is an injustice to the nation and to the victim’s family. This kind of publication is no...

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the country's Other Privacy Commissioner are investigating Google regarding the claims that it collects user data from Android smartphones. * Google is reportedly collecting around 1GB of data per month from Android devices in Australia, containing detailed location data. * Google’s privacy policy agreement covers data collection for its services, but there are questions about the transparency of the agreement. This comes after US-based software company Oracle apparently discovered that Google may be collecting around 1GB of user data per month from Android phones in Austrailia.  This reportedly includes location information, even where location services are turned off, with no apps installed, and where no SIM card is inserted.Google has mapped IP addresses, Wi-Fi connection points, and mobile towers, which allow it to know where a device is connecting or attempting to connect without using the phone’s lo...

Nokia has announced its Smartpur project that aims to develop 500 digitally-integrated and sustainable villages across India in line with the government’s vision of Digital India. In phase 1 of the project, a pilot has been rolled out in Haryana and Tamil Nadu with Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) as the implementation partner to develop 10 such villages in each state. The pilot in Tain village, Nuh district, Haryana was inaugurated today by the Ambassador of Finland, Ms Nina Vaskunlahti. In phase 1 of the project, 20 villages will be digitally integrated in Haryana and Tamil Nadu in a hub and spoke model. Tain village in Nuh district Haryana and Asoor in Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu will serve as hubs which will host a digital center with telecom connectivity to provide ICT-enabled, primary services across each of the 5 pillars to rural community. The spoke centers will further extend these services to 9 other villages from each hub. In phase 2, the project will be s...

Symantec has announced that it has discovered two new sets of malicious apps on the Google Play Store. The first set is of seven apps and the second set is of 38 apps. However, now the research firm has gotten the malicious apps removed after contacting Google. As per the reports, the apps had over 10,000 downloads. The first app set features the "Android.Reputation.1" malware and loads scam websites on smartphone browsers. They come in the garb of calculators, app lockers, and call recorders. These apps have been re-uploaded on the Play Store with different names (and without any change in code) after they were pulled down earlier.... Read More

Facebook has announced that it had suspended 200 apps as part of its investigation into the potential misuse of personal data on the social network, the latest fallout from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. As per the reports, after Cambridge Analytica fallout, the company is investigating apps that had access to large amounts of data before 2014. The company also said that it had investigated thousands of apps two months after reporting by the Observer and the Guardian revealed that millions of Americans’ personal data was harvested from Facebook and improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy. Ime Archibong, Facebook’s Vice-President of Product Partnerships, said in a blogpost that the company was conducting a “comprehensive review” to identify every app that had access to large amounts of data before the site changed its policies in 2014. When concerns arise, Facebook plans to conduct interviews, request information from the apps “and p...

One97 Communications Limited that owns the brand Paytm has further unified bank transfers for its customers with the new “My Payments” feature on its app. This will enable Paytm users to make recurring, high-value payment and other monthly expenses in an instant. Using the Paytm app, Bank Transfers can be done from any Bank Account to any Bank Account, making it easier for customers to make payments at 0% charge. Even non-KYC Paytm users can avail this facility. With this new addition to its multilingual app, the company is confident of a substantial increase in the Bank Transfers transactions on its platform. Paytm is aiming to process Rs.60,000 crore in monthly Bank Transfers alone by the end of this year. It has been aggressively educating its users to link their bank accounts and experience instant and secure Bank Transfers for a wide variety of regular use-cases like house rent, business payments, fee, salaries and peer-to-peer payments among others, while emerge as a on...

State-run telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and SAP SE have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly offer innovative GST solutions to enterprises across India. The collaboration leverages the capabilities of BSNL as GST Suvidha Provider (GSP) and SAP as Application Service Provider (ASP). BSNL, through its network of approximately 115 million customer base currently connecting 646 districts, 4,519 cities/towns and 6.25 lakh villages across India, will provide enhanced accessibility to companies of all sizes, specifically SMEs, to create, consolidate and file GST returns through SAP’s ASP solution in an easy, secure and smooth manner. The alliance will, thus, help realize the full potential of GST on the back of BSNL’s countrywide reach and SAP’s expertise in providing robust technology offerings. “As an intrinsic part of the Government’s Digital India initiative, we see GST as an important tool in the process for nation building,” said Shri...

One97 Communications Limited that owns the brand Paytm has further unified bank transfers for its customers with the new “My Payments” feature on its app. This will enable Paytm users to make recurring, high-value payment and other monthly expenses in an instant. Using the Paytm app, Bank Transfers can be done from any Bank Account to any Bank Account, making it easier for customers to make payments at 0% charge. Even non-KYC Paytm users can avail this facility. With this new addition to its multilingual app, the company is confident of a substantial increase in the Bank Transfers transactions on its platform. Paytm is aiming to process Rs.60,000 crore in monthly Bank Transfers alone by the end of this year. It has been aggressively educating its users to link their bank accounts and experience instant and secure Bank Transfers for a wide variety of regular use-cases like house rent, business payments, fee, salaries and peer-to-peer payments among others, while emerge as a on...

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced HPE SimpliVity 380 with Microsoft Hyper-V and new SimpliVity integration partner solutions as a Citrix WorkSpace Appliance Partner. The new offerings expand customer hypervisor options and simplify and enhance the ability to provide high-performance virtual applications and desktops, making it faster and easier to deliver secure digital workspaces in today’s hybrid cloud world. HPE SimpliVity 380 with Microsoft Hyper-V provides businesses with an easier IT infrastructure solution, simplifying the data center by converging servers, storage and storage networking into one simple to manage, software-defined platform. The result is increased business agility and economics of the cloud in an on-premises solution. The pre-integrated, all-flash, hyperconverged building block simplifies IT by combining all infrastructure and advanced data services for virtualized workloads, including VM-centric management and mobility, data protection an...

Realme, the new e-commerce sub-brand of smartphone giant OPPO, has launched its first device, Realme 1, targeted at the youth of the country. The phone comes with the world’s first 12nm AI CPU MediaTek Helio P60 together with AI Shot Technology and a huge 6GB RAM+128GB ROM storage version, offering the highest cost to value product in India. The 6.0” FHD+ Full Screen of Realme 1 is complemented by an “Art of Light” design in Diamond black, with exquisite details crafted for young users. Realme 1 will be exclusively available from May 25, 12 noon on India’s largest marketplace, Amazon.in, with the 3GB RAM+32GB ROM version priced at Rs.8,990 and the 6GB RAM+128GB ROM version price at Rs.13,990 in Diamond Black and Solar Red. A third variant of Realme1 with 4GB RAM+64GB ROM, available in Moonlight Silver and Diamond Black priced at Rs.10,990 will go online for sale in June this year.  Realme 1 buyers will be offered a No-Cost EMI on Amazon.in with exciting offers for SBI...

Coolpad has announced that its unit has sued three group firms of Xiaomi for several patent infringements. Coolpad said in a statement that its subsidiary, Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co. Limited has filed a lawsuit against Xiaomi Telecom Technology Co, Xiaomi Technology Co and Xiaomi Factory Co., in a court in Jiangsu province for using its patents without authorization. Yulong demanded that the Xiaomi companies should immediately stop production or offering for sale and current sale of some of the smartphone models, including Xiaomi 6, Xiaomi Max2, Xiaomi Note3, Xiaomi 5X, Redmi Note4X and Mi MIX2. Yulong had filed a similar legal case against Xiaomi in a Shenzhen court in January 2018 as well. The patents involved in this lawsuit are systematic interactions or UI type patents. They all involve basic communication, display and interactive functions of mobile phones, and are difficult to circumvented or replaced. "It is because the IP (...

VMware announced the appointment of Ramkumar Narayanan as the Vice President and Managing Site Director, India. In his new role, Ramkumar will be heading VMware’s R&D Center in India. Niranjan Maka, Vice President (Global Sites R&D and IoT Engineering) said, “We are delighted to have Ram onboard the VMware team. He is an experienced engineering and business leader in data-driven digital product innovation spanning global enterprise and consumer industries. His extensive experience in product development, product management and product marketing will bring tremendous value to our R&D efforts. As an engineering industry veteran with experience as technology advisor to large and small enterprises he will play a crucial role in driving VMware India’s innovation and growth in the years to come.” Based out of Bangalore, Ramkumar Narayanan is a global leader focusing on data driven, digital product innovation spanning consumer and enterprise markets. Before joining...

With the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is become the stressed topic with in the technology companies such as Google, Apple, IBM and others ,there is radical amount of transformation ,which we could find in the works is a "For You" tab that will show nearby points of interest, with a "Your Match" feature attempting to custom-tailor recommendations. Now Google maps to get augmented reality(AR), with VPS (Visual Positioning System). With AR on, a future version of the Maps app will merge its traditional interface with a live camera view. When doing navigation, superimposed arrows will appear at each turn, making it harder to misinterpret directions. The company is even experimenting with inserting animated characters such as a fox, which would remove any doubt and make the app more entertaining. VPS is a related feature, combining the live camera view with Google's data trove to get a better sense of position than possible with just GPS. Th...

Accelerated Mobile Page ( AMP) is a project from Google and Twitter designed to make really fast mobile pages. At its essence, it's basically a stripped-down form of HTML, a diet HTML if you will.  fundamentally, it's an HTML page designed to be super lightweight and critically designs really fast loading. So Google, Twitter, a bunch of other companies have rolled this out — kind of in response to projects like the Facebook Instant Articles project from Facebook and Apple News and so forth. This is designed to be the open response. So it's open source, and there are all kinds of elements of openness to the project. Everyone knows that Google is a giving high priority for Mobile-friendly pages. While everyone was busy in making mobile friendly pages, Google comes up with the great open source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). There are two benefits behind this important initiative is Quick Read Carousel showing up in search engine results and higher r...

It is also true that the phishing email to delivering ransomware. Organizations need to understand how ransomware works and what needs to happen in order for an infection to be successful. Let's break down what the infection process looks like, starting with the most common ways ransomware gets delivered and the steps you can take to reduce your risk. We've heard the horror stories about employees finding USB flash drives in the parking lot and plugging them in. But by far, the two primary, most likely delivery channels for ransomware are email and compromised websites. Email is the most ubiquitous method of communication on the Internet. Email is the most ubiquitous method of communication on the Internet . E-mail was not designed with any privacy or security in mind. There have been many efforts to make email more secure and the lack of email security is also having some surprising collateral damage.For cyber criminals, email serves as a direct line straight to the ...

It is absolutely fact in this digital world that, you understand that your online presence can really help your offline career. Whether you’re a marketer analyzing Super Bowl ads, an investor posting about Bitcoin, or a software engineer explaining the newest technologies, you grasp the power of thought leadership to improve your career. The San Francisco-based startup, which had raised around $40 million in funding from some big-name investors, was acquired by social customer service company Lithium Technologies for a reported $200 million back in 2014. Lithium later launched a product called Reach, powered by Klout, to “put the social back in social media marketing. the Klout deal gave it access to AI and machine learning capabilities, but as a service on its own? - well, that’s a different matter. Klout, the pioneer in using big data to measure online expertise founded way back in 2008. Lithium acquired Klout and the combination brings together the 100 million consum...

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has collaborated with Payso Fintech in a bid to create awareness about digital payments in four cities namely, Mumbai, Pune, Bhopal and Indore. Under the association Finternship, an eight weeks internship program will be organized for about 600 graduates and postgraduates students of prime institutes to make them digitally sound. These students will undergo a certified training program free of cost and post the training they will reach out to merchants in order to help them accept cashless payments. Earlier this week the program was started in Mumbai and it will also be conducted sequentially in Pune, Bhopal and Indore this month. Kunal Kalawatia, Senior Vice President – Marketing & Branding, NPCI said, “We intend to enable over 12,000 merchants with BHIM UPI payments in a span of 8 weeks through this Finternship programme. We are happy to collaborate with Payso Fintech and spread awareness about Bharat Interface for Money –...

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (“Jio”) has announced its new Postpaid offering with a promise to redefine postpaid services in India. The all-new JioPostpaid will be available for subscription starting 15th May, 2018. JioPostpaid marks a paradigm shift in the way postpaid services are offered and consumed, just like Jio did with its prepaid services. With JioPostpaid, Jio has strengthened the service offerings suited to the requirements of postpaid subscribers. It has redefined the postpaid services that Indians have experienced till date by introducing the revolutionary “Zero-Touch” Postpaid. Jio Postpaid brings a differentiated connected living experience to postpaid users and will once again challenge the industry status quo by offering the lowest tariffs in India and abroad to the postpaid users, who end up paying disproportionately higher as compared to the prepaid segment.... Read More

SAP SE has announced that its intelligent cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution SAP S/4HANA Cloud is now available in India. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is an Intelligent ERP with built-in machine learning and AI capabilities and helps to streamline business processes with a simplified user experience, thus helping organizations transform into “Intelligent Enterprises”. The solution combines automation of mundane tasks with pre-emptive decision making, to increase overall business agility. With the S/4HANA Cloud, businesses will be notified of the latest innovations through quarterly updates, granting them access to the latest innovations in areas such as predictive analytics. With conversational AI platforms being the next big paradigm shift in IT, SAP has integrated SAP CoPilot with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The solution is the first true voice-activated digital assistant for enterprises that enables users to to get their work done more qui...

ON Semiconductor Corporation has announced its acquisition of SensL Technologies Ltd ("SensL"). The acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to ON Semiconductor's non-GAAP earnings per share. SensL, based in Ireland, is a technology leader specializing in Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM), Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) and LiDAR sensing products for automotive, medical, industrial and consumer markets. This acquisition positions ON Semiconductor to extend its market leadership in automotive sensing applications for ADAS and autonomous driving with expanded capabilities in imaging, radar and LiDAR. By combining this acquisition in Ireland with previously acquired radar technology and design centers in Israel and United Kingdom, ON Semiconductor is uniquely positioned to provide a comprehensive set of sensor solutions for next-generation highly autonomous vehicles and to solidify its position as a leader in image sensing and ultrasonic park assistance. I...

Citrix Summit 2018 has kicked off with the presence of 2,500 of dignitaries travelled from across the globe to be part of the annual summit in the famous, Anaheim Convention Center , which has been buzzing with conversation. The drone overhead captured some great photos, including this one: The most energetic Citrix President & CEO David Henshall addressed on his vision key note address, the opening keynote session has presented the view of Citrix vision, customer innovation and technology. This is really an eye opening session by delivering the elegant experience and comprehensive security which could help organizations be productive, engage customers, and unlock innovation, which has continued for an hour. To begin with Mark Ferrer, EVP and chief revenue officer, spoke about the evolution of Citrix products into solution sets that really resonate with customers, partners and employees. Mark introduced CEO David Henshall for a look back at 2017 highlights-including...

New Citrix Analytics Service will provide visibility into company-wide user and entity behavior, system security, performance and operations, and simplify IT infrastructure. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect anomalous behavior and potential threats, Citrix is now able to deliver actionable intelligence from the information gathered via our cloud services and on premises products to help customers proactively identify and manage internal and external threats. Citrix Analytics uniquely enables customers to adopt a risk-based security model, allowing them to dynamically balance the needs of users to have rapid access to data with IT’s need to secure and govern the environment.  This new service securely aggregates and correlates user interaction with applications, devices, networks and data across our suite of products and cloud services to help detect and prevent malicious activity and data exfiltration. With an end-to-end view of the location of ...

Absolutely it has proved again by the battleground in the space of e-commerce. It is among the top US based multinationals outside of USA between Walmart and Amazon, each of which lost out on the world’s largest e-commerce market - China. There are other significant shareholders in the company include early investor Accel Partners, South African media conglomerate Naspers and US-based online marketplace eBay. Walmart and Alphabet are seen joining forces once again as they seek to take on Amazon’s growing retail clout, this time in a market outside the US. Walmart will acquire about a 60 percent stake in Flipkart, while Alphabet will get a roughly 15 percent stake in the online marketplace for about $3 billion, one of the sources said. US retailer Amazon is Flipkart’s largest online competitor in India, though Flipkart has the biggest market share. Amazon was also reportedly interested in a Flipkart buyout, which would give it control of around 90% of the market. If the Walmart...

One of the compelling aspects of technology is the pace of innovation and change. Not long ago, a laptop or desktop computer with keyboard and mouse hardwired to the corporate network clearly defined a workspace. In this new era of user-centric computing, where users engage across multiple devices, platforms and clouds, how does IT keep up? Visibility into these heavily distributed and complex environments is difficult. The good news is that Citrix is in the business of helping organizations of all stripes navigate this workspace transformation to achieve their future of work. An essential ingredient for IT pros to help them deliver secure digital workspaces in this fast-paced environment is advanced analytics. Citrix Analytics uniquely aggregates and correlates information across network traffic, users, files and endpoints in Citrix environments to gain a comprehensive view of users, application performance and usage. It provides predictive analytics with prescriptive actions. It...

Today’s users have multiple apps, files, folders and devices they need to access just get their work done, but all that technology doesn’t necessarily equate to improved productivity. In many ways, it makes productivity worse. A person may need to send an important document or an older presentation, but they may not be on the device where they saved that distinct presentation. Or there are a number of SaaS apps that an employee needs to access throughout the day, but each one has its own credentials that the user needs to remember and track independently. IT teams are also challenged with managing a growing application portfolio and securing various devices types and operating systems entering the enterprise. The workspace is about improving productivity and providing a better experience for how people work and where they work — with the right set of apps and files exactly in the moment they need it.” With the mission when we embarked on building the Citrix Workspace app was ...

To expand its Internet of Things (IoT) portfolio and IoT analytics capabilities, and accelerate the development of new IoT applications for key vertical markets, Nokia has acquired SpaceTime Insight. SpaceTime Insight provides machine learning-powered analytics and IoT applications for some of the world's largest transportation, energy and utilities organizations, including Entergy, FedEx, NextEra Energy, Singapore Power and Union Pacific Railroad. Its machine learning models and other advanced analytics, designed specifically for asset-intensive industries, predict asset health with a high degree of accuracy and optimize related operations. As a result, SpaceTime Insight's applications help customers reduce cost and risk, increase operational efficiencies, reduce service outages and more. Bhaskar Gorti, President of Nokia Software, said, "Adding SpaceTime to Nokia Software is a strong step forward in our strategy, and will help us deliver a new class of in...

Virtusa Corporation has announced the appointment of Madhavan Satagopan as Executive Vice-President for Non-Linear Business Strategies. Kris Canekeratne, Chief Executive Officer, Virtusa Corporation, said, "We are delighted to welcome Madhavan to the team, where he will work with the best people in the industry and drive excellence with his leadership ability, passion, and focus. I am confident that Madhavan’s experience and capabilities will add strength to our business leadership as we look to continue our strong growth and cement our role as the go-to partner for digital engineering services.” In this role, Madhavan will be responsible for driving changes in the company’s go-to-market approach towards non-linear business models, enhancing engagement in the partner and startup ecosystem, and improving the quantum and velocity of innovation for Virtusa and its clients. With over 24 years of experience in techno-domain specialization, Madhavan Satagopan brings a rem...

Amit Bhardwaj has been arrested for allegedly scamming investors out of Rs 2,000 crore in Maharashtra alone. One of the biggest Indian names in the digital-currency market, Bhardwaj, ran a slew of ventures, including GainBitcoin, GBMiners, MCAP and GB21.Cyber cell of Delhi Police has arrested founders of bits2btc Kamal Singh and Vijay Kumar for duping 2,500 people for over Rs 100 crore. Bhardwaj, who is often referred to as a Bitcoin evangelist and Bitcoin visionary, is an alumnus of MGM's College of Engineering in Maharashtra and has worked with software major Infosys.Bhardwaj founded GainBitcoin in 2013 as a cloud-based platform for trading and mining of bitcoins.It is my vision to get even the smallest investor to ride the Bitcoin wave. I can say with confidence that our early stage hitches have been ironed out and GainBitcoin is firm on its feet to offer a robust, trustworthy trading environment to our 1,00,000+ customers. We have also witnessed a record 47 percent hi...

There is a literally financial turf war among two world's biggest retail giant of America Walmart's and Amazon in India. Walmart is closed the deal with 75% stake in Flipkart, amidst the speculations of exits of co-founders of the SoftBank-backed e-commerce marketplace.The biggest e-commerce business in India has closed for $15 billion.The sale values Indian e-commerce market leader at around $20 billion. With this India has become the main battleground for Walmart and Amazon, each of which lost out on the world’s largest e-commerce market - China. A question comes why these two global giants are targeting India as a opportunity geography, reason could be of population of 1.3 billion that is expected to surpass China’s in the coming years. Amazon reportedly offered to buy a 60% stake in Flipkart on Monday, a deal that would have included $2 billion to cover the “breakup fee” Flipkart would have had to pay Walmart for pulling out of the deal. Amazon declined to issue a...

Cambridge Analytica and the SCL Group UK based data consulting firm having offices in London, New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Cambridge Analytica, the Political consulting firm has been implicated in major political developments in both the UK and America as well as in India and beyond. Documents made public by whistleblower Christopher Wylie highlighted the “extensive” work conducted by SCL Elections in India, helping parties target audiences based on factors such as caste. It is at the centre of a storm around misuse of Facebook user data, is shutting down and has filed for bankruptcy. It is true that after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there are many opted out for signing up for a Facebook account and it is true. The Facebook scandal is creating a new wave of people are deleting their Facebook accounts, and that’s fine. But fundamentally, thanks to network effects, it is hard to quit Facebook. There are some observations also true that many have...

Chinese smartphone and connected device maker Xiaomi is bringing its blockbuster initial public offering to Hong Kong, where it could raise about $10 billion in the largest listing globally in almost four years, what is expected to be the world’s largest listing since 2014. The IPO plans, filed on Thursday, will be one of the first in Hong Kong under new rules designed to attract tech listings, a major win for the bourse as competition heats up between Hong Kong, New York and the Chinese mainland. The listing could value the company around $100 billion and would be the world’s biggest IPO since Alibaba’s $25 billion debut in 2014. The IPO could be launched as early as the end of June, according to the people close to the process who requested anonymity as the details were not yet public. The prospectus gave investors the first detailed look at Xiaomi’s financial health ahead of the IPO, showing resilience in a slowing global smartphone market thanks partly to a push int...

Euronet Services India Pvt. Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of Euronet Worldwide Inc., a global provider of electronic payment and transaction processing solutions for financial institutions, retailers, service providers and individual consumers, has announced successful launch of its VISA and MasterCard certified online payment authentication Access Control Server (ACS) platform which is available both as a licensed offering or as a hosted service for issuers. Access Control Server facilitates online authentication of the card/instrument holder before the actual online purchase is made. It enables the exchange of data between the merchant, card issuer and, when necessary, the consumer, to validate that the transaction is being initiated by the rightful owner of the account. It is based on 3D Secure protocol, a globally adopted authentication solution designed to make electronic commerce transactions more secure in real time. The Euronet ACS enables users to perform Card-Not-Pre...