VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

Narayana Murthy & Jeff Bezos decide to end their controversial e-commerce joint venture Cloudtail:  The seven-year-old joint venture, called   Prione Business Services Pvt ., will end operating from mid-2022, the companies announced on Monday. The JV called Prione set up a fully-owned unit   Cloudtail   that sold goods online alongside independent shops & grew to be one of the largest sellers on   Amazon . The Joint Venture has enabled over 300,000 sellers and entrepreneurs to go online and enabled 4 million merchants to use digital payments. There was continuous allegation from the local retailers that the giants had abused their dominance through deep discounts, exclusive ties and cheap support from certain vendors. This puts pressure on Amazon and Murthy, and decides to end their collaboration, which has been criticized for breaking the spirit of India’s e-commerce laws. It is a potential setback for the e-commerce giant as the country’s online market...

Amazon extends work-from-home period until January 2022:  Due to the surge in COVID-19 cases across the nation because of the more contagious delta variant,   Amazon   has delayed its return-to-office date for technology and corporate workers until January.   Before returning to office Amazon will not mandate employees receive the  COVID-19 vaccine . The company said that the employees who are not vaccinated will be required to wear masks in the office.   The surge of the delta variant of the coronavirus has upended many companies’ plans to bring office workers back this fall, a drive already complicated by efforts to accommodate widespread employee preference for flexible remote work policies, and debates over how to handle vaccine and masking policies.   Companies like  Microsoft ,  Google ,  Twitter , Lyft etc. have postponed the plans of reopening offices.   As per news source, Amazon earlier set September 7 as return date and t...

Kotak Mobile Banking App seals partnership with Amazon.in:  Amazon   announced its sealed collaboration with   Kotak Mahindra Bank   and also that it will allow Kotak Bank customers to shop on Amazon.in from the Kotak mobile banking app using any payment mode they wish for such as credit card, debit card, net banking, or UPI. The new deal also includes customised offers and rewards for Kotak Mahindra Bank customers sponsored by Amazon India that will be available over and above the ongoing deals and offers announced by the e-commerce company.   The Amazon.in in-app integration on Kotak Mahindra Bank app available for both Android and iOS users can be found under the ‘KayMall’ tab within the app. This partnership allows Kotak customers to seamlessly shop across categories such as consumer electronics, groceries, fashion, books, home products and many more on Amazon.in.   This development comes as a part of Kotak’s digital banking strategy and in its journey ...

Jeff Bezos steps down as Amazon CEO, to focus on other things:  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos   has announced his retirement from his post and is making way for his successor   Andy Jassy .   Bezos, 57, founded Amazon in 1994 and has since morphed the one-time online bookstore into a mega-retailer with global reach in a slew of different categories from gadgets to groceries to streaming. Amazon surpassed a $1 trillion market cap under Bezos’ leadership in January of last year - it’s now worth more than $1.6 trillion.   Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 and has led Amazon’s Web Services cloud team since its inception. AWS continues to drive much of Amazon’s profit.   “I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Bezos said in a letter to employees. “In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the comp...

The  Pentagon  is reconsidering its awarding of a major cloud computing contract to  Microsoft  after rival tech giant  Amazon  protested what it called a flawed bidding process. U.S. government lawyers said in a court filing this week of March 13, 2020 that the Defense Department “wishes to reconsider its award decision” and take another look at how it evaluated technical aspects of the companies’ proposals to run the $10 billion computing project. The Pentagon’s process for awarding a highly lucrative cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of Amazon was in line with legal and government purchasing standards, a government watchdog agency said Wednesday. The Defense Department inspector general found no evidence of White House interference in the contract award process. But the report said investigators could not fully review that aspect of the matter because the White House would not allow unfettered access to witnesses. The contract,...

In define newer opportunity,  Facebook  is trying the luck in it’s  marketplace ,  where the users in America can now pay for their purchases directly on the platform and then get their goods shipped to anywhere in the country. "People will soon be able to ship Marketplace items anywhere in the continental US and pay for their purchases directly on Facebook. For sellers this means reaching more buyers and getting paid securely, and for buyers this means shopping more items - near or far. Currently, Marketplace has a local classified focus, but the new payment and shipping option brings the service into competition with  Amazon  and  eBay marketplace . Buyers can browse the service and then make an offer and specify whether they want the item shipped. The seller has 24 hours to accept. If they do, the buyer can pay with their card or  PayPal  details stored with Facebook and get the item delivered. With a vast customer bas...

The US e-commerce Giant  Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN)  has decided to plan for buying  stake in Kishore Biyani’s  Future Group , instead of the  new FDI policy implemented this month. The company now a days is analyzing the damage done by new FDI rules and will not go ahead with the plans until it gets more clarity to expand its offline presence, said sources close to the development. It is also reassessing plans to buy More retail after getting clarity on FDI norms. Things were moving as planned and Amazon was to close the deal in the first quarter of 2019 but FDI came into effect and e-tailer has now to change its plan, sources said to a report. Amazon had kept aside $2 billion to invest in retail chains the report said. In August last year, Amazon had signed a term sheet with the Future Group to buy a stake between 10 and 15 percent for up to $700 million. It was touted as a probable third investment for the e-tailer. In October 2017, Jeff Bezos-led firm...

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...