Researches reveal that many firms that employ H-1B workers directly, including some of the biggest names in the technology industry such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, Salesforce and Uber, pay a large share of their H-1B workers at one of the two lowest wage levels, Level 1 or Level 2.
The Lok Sabha contest in Thiruvananthapuram is shaping up to be a significant battle involving key candidates like Shashi Tharoor, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and Panniyan Ravindran. This three-cornered fight highlights the political dynamics in Kerala's capital city, with each candidate bringing their own vision and promises for the region's development, notes Rajeev Srinivasan.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for rolling out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its UPI-based payments services in India -- a global first -- with about a million users.
The new mantra was to align Apple's ambition with the government's, focusing on Modi's favourite themes of Make in India, employment generation and India as a high-tech export hub.
WhatsApp on Wednesday said it expects to facilitate the purchase of "affordable sachet-sized" health insurance through its platform by the end of the year as part of its efforts to provide users in India with greater access to financial solutions. The Facebook-owned company noted that its 'Payments' feature is now available to users across the country (currently up to 20 million users) with support from banking partners - State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI and Axis Bank.
This year, PhonePe is focussed on bringing more partners across categories, including travel, commute, food, hyper-local, retail and entertainment on the platform.
Unique benefits, work-life balance, and fair share of profits were the top three areas where MNCs fared better over Indian companies
Mobile application vulnerability detection start-up, Appknox is in talks to raise funds from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, along with a slew of angel investors including Google India head Rajan Anandan.
Elon Musk's decision to drop the idea of acquiring Twitter over purported under-reporting of fake accounts due to the use of bots has opened a can of worms on what is a growing and crucial problem - advertisers who put in money based on these falsified numbers (which is the mainstay revenue of these platforms) are making losses; they are paying for bots in the guise of viewers. mFilterIt - a global digital and advertising (ad) fraud detection and protection company in India - says search engines like Google have the lowest average ad fraud rate of 10-12 per cent, based on the inference arrived at while working with clients that use these platforms. This means 10-12 per cent of the ad viewership is generated by machines.
India's mutual fund (MF) industry had barely any retail footprint when it completed 50 years in 2013. MFs had Rs 7 trillion in assets under management (AUM) in March 2013, of which around Rs 5 trillion was in institution-focused debt funds. By comparison, bank deposits in the country stood at Rs 67.5 trillion around the same time.
Those on H-1B visas have to find a new job within 60 days or head back to India.
Tech giant Apple has stopped accepting payments via debit and credit cards in India. Apple has stopped accepting cards for subscriptions, and purchases using credit cards issued by banks in India. Apple will also not accept payments for ad campaigns on Apple Search using credit cards issued by Indian banks. All campaigns will be put on hold from June 1.
'Any entrepreneur who wants to create companies on blockchain will have to move outside India.' 'A ban will also wipe out the entire asset investing class that has built up in India.'
What all global leaders need to understand is that no Generative AI regulation will work unless they start with the basics, which is data collection, asserts Prosenjit Datta.
Yes Bank customers will be able to access full banking services from Wednesday evening, as the moratorium will be lifted earlier. The RBI had on March 5 put a moratorium on Yes Bank restricting withdrawals to Rs 50,000 per depositor till April 3. However, the government in a notification on Saturday said the moratorium will be lifted by 18:00 hrs on March 18.
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) move to ban Mastercard from issuing new cards for not complying with the local data storage guidelines may hit five private banks, a non-bank lender, and a major card-issuing company. The impact is expected to be felt for a few months as these players transition to other card networks. According to Nomura Research, RBL Bank, YES Bank, and Bajaj Finserv are the ones most impacted by the ban as all their credit card schemes are allied to Mastercard. Among others, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank have 35-40 per cent of their credit card schemes tied to Mastercard, the report said.
During the trip, check your bank account and credit card statements regularly for unauthorised transactions.
Agriculture, social services, education, defence and so on will be brought into the digital fold and every gram panchayat will be connected to the internet.
'India missed the software products revolution (and now is in danger of missing the platform revolution), complacent that we are the software experts of the world based on IT services prowess,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
Experts say the new guideline is likely to hurt foreign players more, especially card companies such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express who process and store credit card transaction data outside of India.
The increasing involvement of Big Tech in the financial system could give rise to concentration risk and there are potential spillovers, which call for closer attention, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Tuesday. "...enormous amounts of consumer data is being generated and leveraged upon by a few entities (the so-called Big Tech) by virtue of their huge customer base. "Such developments raise concerns on concentration risk and potential spillovers as their level of engagement with the financial system strengthens in the years to come," Das said at the Global Fintech Fest 2022.
Jiophone Next will be available from Diwali for Rs 6,499 per unit for customers wanting to buy the smartphone without financing option, Jio and Google said in a joint statement on Friday. Jio is also giving a finance option for the Jiophone Next where users can make an upfront payment of Rs 1,999 and pay the rest in easy monthly instalments spread across 18-24 months, the company said in a statement. "This is the first time that a phone in the entry-level category is getting a financing option.
Over the last 12 months, thanks to bold bets by venture capital firms like Sequoia, SoftBank Vision Fund, and foreign strategic investors like Naspers, pipeline of start-ups with potential to achieve $1 bn in valuation is at an all-time high.
For years it has been evident that fibre and DTH would give tough competition to cable in India where regulatory overload has mutilated an already warped industry structure. OTT added fuel to the fire. From Rs 27,000 crore in 2010, cable's share of subscription revenues is now estimated at Rs 13,000 crore.
Monetising online readership, a deeper focus on content and getting revenue from the reader are ways to make the business future-proof, observes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
Their startup investments number 13 so far, compared to 17 deals in 2020.
Cos ask US treasury to discuss data localisation norms with Indian officials at all platforms the two countries would meet, including G-20, US-India Strategic Dialogue, and IMF Annual Meet.
21 banks have launched United Payments Interface application.
OMCs' Digital India move is likely to have an impact on more than 80.3 million Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana consumers, majority of whom are not exposed to digital transact.
India conceding ground to bring only top 100 digital companies like Google, Facebook, and Netflix into the global taxation pact may have revenue implications. This will mean that New Delhi will have to withdraw the contentious 2 per cent equalisation levy on e-commerce operators by 2023. This may have revenue implications for India, experts pointed out, as the equalisation levy has a much lower annual revenue threshold of Rs 2 crore (euro 0.2 million) as against euro 20 billion agreed by 130 countries at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). India, along with other developing countries, was pitching for at least euro 1 billion threshold to cover at least 5,000 global entities. India collected Rs 2,057 crore from the equalisation levy in 2020-21, an 85 per cent growth over Rs 1,136 crore in the previous fiscal.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said the entry of big tech firms into the financial sector poses systemic concerns like overleveraging at the borrowers' ends.
Ramping up globally, the Indian restaurant search service is going as local as possible in its markets to improve its brand's stickiness.
The 0.5 per cent Krishi Kalyan Cess (KKC) on all services increases the total tax chargeable on services to 15 per cent, making it expensive to dine out or travel.
'If I were to say, I had the best vegetarian food in my life in Vietnam, nobody would believe me.' 'When I proclaimed this to my friends, they didn't believe me. I had to show them the pictures and make them drool!!'
Users well-versed in privacy laws or those concerned with their data would be worried; it could well be that many of us have already accepted the end user agreement without ado, points out Ashish Narsale.
An interview with Sridhar Ramaswamy,Senior vice-president, ads and commerce, Google.
The e-auction of television and digital rights, a first in cricket, was not concluded but the Indian board (BCCI) received a bid of 44.4 billion Indian rupees ($683 million) for consolidated global rights from an unidentified bidder.
Having grown swiftly since the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart in 2018, it was looking at a valuation of $10 billion. However, factors such as lack of diversification, new e-commerce and data policies, as well as the overall investment environment, have slowed the process.
The exponential number of downloads can be attributed to a call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking people to have the app on their mobiles, combined with the government's push for downloading of the app through other channels, reports Neha Alawadhi.
After a gruelling 24 hours, the PhonePe team has fully restored UPI on the payment platform. The app is up and running again with ICICI Bank as its new partner with all payment instruments enabled.