VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

Where is Alibaba Founder Jack Ma for 2 Months??:  Jack Ma, Alibaba founder and Chinese billionaire   has reportedly gone missing from the public eye for over two months now following his controversial speech in October in which he severely criticised the regulation system of China and called the banks 'pawnshops'.   The vocal and outspoken business tycoon was set to appear as a judge in the final episode of his own talent show, ‘ Africa’s Business Heroes ’, but mysteriously did not turn up for it and as a consequence, his photographs were removed from the show’s website,   The tech tycoon has not made any public appearance since November 2019. In fact, he did not appear in the final episode of his own talent show, Africa’s Business Heroes, thus deeping the mystery around his whereabouts.   UK’s Telegraph  reported that Alibaba founder was supposed to be a part of the judging panel in the November final but he was replaced by an Alibaba executive. Surprising...

Zuoyebang bags $1.6 billion from investors like Alibaba:  Zuoyebang   has announced raising a $1.6 billion Series E+ from investors including   Alibaba Group . Other participants included returning investors   Tiger Global Management ,   SoftBank Vision Fund ,   Sequoia Capital China   and   FountainVest Partners .   Zuoyebang’s latest announcement comes just six months after it announced a $750 million Series E led by Tiger Global and FountainVest. The latest financing brings Zuoyebang’s total raised so far to $2.93 billion. The company did not disclose its latest worth, but Reuters reported in September that it was raising at a $10 billion valuation.   One of Zuoyebang’s main competitors is Yuanfudao, which announced in October that it had reached a $15.5 billion valuation after closing a $2.2 billion round led by Tencent. This pushed Yuanfudao ahead of Byju as the world’s most valuable edtech company. Another popular online learning a...

Alibaba A.I. Labs is raising the stakes in the cutting-edge industry with the announcement of launching service robots for the hospitality sector starting in October. The news was made at The Computing Conference 2018, which is scheduled for four days till September 22 in Hangzhou, China, the site of Alibaba’s headquarters. Alibaba A.I. Labs is the department leading consumer AI product development at Alibaba. Hotels have until now depended entirely on human labour. But the Labs' service robot – from delivering meals to taking laundry to guests – demonstrates what guests can expect at hotels in the future. Guests talk to the robot via voice command, touch and hand gesture, and its responses are driven by AliGenie, the software that powers Alibaba A.I. Labs’ smart speaker, Tmall Genie. Lijuan Chen, General Manager of Alibaba A.I. Labs, says, “We are excited by this tremendous development that is helping us bridge the gap between guest needs and the response tim...

Alibaba Group Holding has laid out its development roadmap for frontier technologies, including quantum computing and AI chips, on the opening day of the Cloud Computing Conference 2018. The conference, which is being attended by technology leaders, experts and industry luminaries, is scheduled for four days through September 22 at Alibaba’s home base of Hangzhou. Alibaba DAMO Academy, a global initiative by Alibaba to lead technology and science research, has unveiled plans to develop disruptive technologies over the next five years. The technologies are developed to support the firm’s rapidly growing cloud and IoT businesses, as well as to explore new commercial applications in various industries – from logistics, materials to pharmaceuticals – that require greater computing power to achieve technology breakthrough – · Quantum Computing: The Academy has embarked on developing its own quantum processors. The Hangzhou-based quantum hardware team is developing high-precision...

According to a report, Alibaba co-founder and chairman Jack Ma plans to retire from his Chinese e-commerce firm to devote his time to philanthropy and focus on education. Ma has told that he plans to step down from the company on Monday - his 54th birthday - referring to his departure as "the beginning of an era" rather than an end. Born into a poor family in Hangzhou, eastern Zhejiang province, Ma became a university teacher but gave up the job after discovering the internet. After being knocked back by US venture capitalists in 1999, a cash-strapped Ma persuaded friends to give him USD 60,000 to start Alibaba, which operated out of an apartment in Hangzhou. In an interview earlier he has hinted on his retirement plans, saying he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He has quoted that he had learnt a lot from Bill Gates. He can never be as rich, but one thing he can do better is to retire earlier. Ma is among China...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE India’s e-commerce industry is transforming to the next era of transformation. It is like who can take maximum attention of the prospective buyer by using various technology tools. The war is between two super powers – USA and China and among Amazon, Alibaba and Walmart. To make the shopping experience more convenient, brick and mortar developers are focusing on enhancing the convenience of shopping centre automate mode. Experts say that India is poised to become one of the largest and fastest e-commerce growth markets in the next decade. The Government of India is also supporting this growth wave by permitting foreign retailers to own stakes of as much as 51% in multi-brand retail ventures, after securing government approval. The online retail sector is expected to grow at 30% a year to reach a gross merchandise value of $200bn by 2026. With 1.3 billion population, India sees a rapid growth of internet users, with 430 million peop...

The proposed acquisition of MoneyGram by Alibaba’s Ant Financial might come to a stop with the U.S. Government disapproving the $1.2 billion deal. Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate announced the deal to buy Nasdaq-listed MoneyGram in April 2017. It initially bid for MoneyGram in January 2017 as a means to develop its cross-border payment network into the U.S., and major corridors including India and the Philippines. “The geopolitical environment has changed considerably since we first announced the proposed transaction with Ant Financial nearly a year ago. Despite our best efforts to work cooperatively with the U.S. government, it has now become clear that CFIUS [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] will not approve this merger,” MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes said in a statement.... Read More

As the Indian economy is growing at a very fast rate, two sectors that are seeing tremendous uptrend are the banking sector and e-commerce. We see a huge surge in demand for finance from small-scale and large-scale enterprises alike. Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions are extending loans and advances to individuals and small businesses. There is a huge collection and recovery process that is generally outsourced by most of the banks.  Most of the banks have automated Core Banking functions. Their collection process grossly remains manual, maybe because it is outsourced to collection agencies and they have not been deploying technology because of the rising project expenditure.  At the same time, the B2C e-commerce market in India has exhibited rapid growth and is expected to reach $60 billion by 2017. The online channel is expected to grow at a much faster rate vis-a-vis more established channels and is expected to account for 10.1 per ce...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE Alibaba.com is to host the third edition of the India offline sourcing event in Gurgaon to provide additional global trade opportunities for Indian small and medium enterprises. Indian suppliers attending the event is said to have the opportunity to interact and work with leading retailers from across the world including Target Australia, retailer for apparel and homeware, Dorel Juvenile Group, world-leader in the child products industry, Sears Holdings Corporation, leading broadline retailer, Auchan Group, the second largest hypermarket chain in France and Kmart, one of Australia’s largest discount department stores. The day long sourcing event, to be organised on 13 October, 2011, is aimed at providing Indian suppliers with an offline extension of the Alibaba.com online marketplace to promote made-in-India products to the North American, European and Australian markets. Alibaba.com will host an orientation session to offer the attending Ind...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE Alibaba Cloud Computing has unveiled that it is to release an English version of its mobile operating system this month. AlibabaWang Jian, Alibaba Group's Chief Architect & President, Alibaba Cloud Computing said, "Eventually all our services will be delivered on mobile. People will spend less time in front of their computer screens and more time in front of their smartphones. English mobile OS would be available via upgrade." For More Details See www.varindia.com