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Electric scooters startup from India secures $1.6 million in funding

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Twenty-two motors, never heard of it before? Probably because they were busy developing more affordable and smarter electric vehicles tailored specifically for the young India. This Gurgaon based EV startup recently came out in limelight announcing a successful fund raise of $1.6 million in its first pre-series, a funding led by Haryana Industries CEO Ishwar Singh. The company plans to launch its first smart scooter at next Auto-Expo in February 2018.

The company was incorporated in August 2016 by Parveen Kharb, an automation engineer with an experience of 15 years in the sector and Vijay Chandrawat, an IIT Delhi graduate with 14 years of experience spanning across strategy, technology and operation domain. Taking inspiration from challenges involved and accomplishments of Tesla in USA, the duo took the decision to enter electric vehicle sector. Farhaan Shabbir, former director of Harley-Davidson was also one of the founding members and is currently a part of their 15-member team.

Talking about how the funding will be used, Vijay elaborated “The investment will be used meticulously to build and prove the product apart from strengthening the startup’s human resource capabilities. Broadly, the investment will be channeled for, testing, strengthening the team, prototype vehicle development, component development, and factory setup. The investment certifies our potential and is expected to provide exponential growth to the company.”

Twenty-two motors believe that electric vehicle technology in India is neither affordable nor progressing fast enough to catch up with the major players in the league. With a year of development and testing they claim to have successfully developed the basic tech-prototype and battery management system (BSM). As per their claims, they have tackled the key challenges in electric mobility- short life span of batteries and recharge-ability.

Their Li-ion batteries are light weight, removable and can be easily charged using any five-pinned socket eliminating the need of charging stations. If there is a power socket around (not much of a problem in urban India), you are good to go. Only time will tell if they can pull it off without compromising the power or charging time.

“The battery can be taken out of the scooter and charged anywhere. You don’t need a special plug to charge it,” said Kharb.

Moreover, the scooter will remain connected to rider via mobile app allowing remote access and control from anywhere. AI assistance, utilizing electronic sensors, will also be there to guide you through different routes depending upon elevation and co-ordinates of the road. “It will include information regarding bridges, roads and flyovers which the rider can take or must avoid depending on the battery condition and target location,” added Kharb.

The scooter will be launched in two variants with the top model ranging between Rs. 55-65k. Initially, around Rs. 50,000 scooters are going to be available in Delhi, Pune and Bengaluru region in first quarter of 2018.

eBay India acquisition and fund raising by FlipKart

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India’s largest and most successful e-commerce platform Flipkart has finally put all the rumors to rest on Monday by confirming a successful fund raise of USD 1.4 billion at a post-transaction valuation of  $11.6 billion, a notable drop of 3.6 billion from its May 2015 valuation. Although, not completely in Flipkart’s favor, the move surely strengthens their arsenal with big names like strategic investor Tencent, ebay and Microsoft. With Alibaba’s speculated entry in India by the end of this year, Flipkart has already started preparations  for a battle among giants; Amazon, Alibaba and Flipkart.

Tencent, a Chinese Investing firm and owner of wechat, has already invested in Indian messaging platform Hike and healthcare startup Practo. But, this deal of $700 million is their largest investment in India. India being the fastest growing internet market, with studies estimating online population in India to reach 450-465 million by June 2017, involvement of huge firms does align with the opportunity. Tencent joins as a strategic investor, bringing experience in linking social networking with e-commerce.

“This strategic partnership enables Tencent to participate in the exciting opportunities in e-commerce and payments in India. We look forward to helping Flipkart to deliver compelling experiences to users throughout India, and to contribute to the development of the internet ecosystem there,” said Martin Lau, Tencent President.

The eBay deal comes with a $500 million cash investment along with eBay taking $200 million in stocks for handing over its Indian platform ebay.in to Flipkart. But, eBay will continue to function as an independent entity separate from Flipkart. There is also a cross-border agreement between two companies to promote each other’s operations. As a result, eBay users will be able to access inventories from Flipkart sellers and vice-versa, providing a wider global presence to both the firms.

“We are delighted that Tencent, eBay and Microsoft — all innovation powerhouses — have chosen to partner with us on their India journey. We have chosen these partners based on their long histories of pioneering industries, and the unique expertise and insights each of them bring to Flipkart. This deal reaffirms our resolve to hasten the transformation of commerce in India through technology,” Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal said in a statement.

On its way towards monopoly, Flipkart has already acquired firms like Myntra, Jabong and now ebay India. All of this to stand strong against Amazon. A news about Snapdeal’s acquisition by Flipkart  following its struggle to generate profits is also doing rounds.

WhatsApp in the realms of Digital payment

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When it comes to messaging apps, the popularity of WhatsApp overshadows all with a user base of around 1.2 billion. That said, the grip is even stronger in India with user count going over 200 million. Facebook Inc. was quick to grab the opportunity when it bought WhatsApp for 22 billion $ in 2014. And after 3 years of its acquisition, the time is here to capitalize on that move.

Going by the report of India-based media company The Ken, WhatsApp is planning to introduce peer-to-peer digital payment in India within next six months. It may be a UPI based service, a cross-bank transaction system supported by Indian government, but nothing can be said for sure. Keeping in mind the changes Indian commerce is going through, the move makes sense “contributing more to India’s vision of completely digital economy”

In January 2017, there were in total more than 262 million transactions through digital payment services worth some $1.3 billion, according to the Reserve Bank of India — up from 100 million transactions last October. This was followed by the demonetization of old currency notes to crack down on tax evasions and counterfeits. Due to lack of hard cash, consumers as well as retailers had to make the major shift of choosing online mode of payment. And they did! Fear brought the change in this case and everyone seems impressed by the efficiency and ease of use these digital platforms provide resulting in this boom.

Facebook recently incorporated support for digital payment in its Messenger app. But, the update was not available for Indian users. WhatsApp is way more popular in India and with the kind of reach it has, such a move might be the most influential step in transforming India. There are some new players in this game as well. Truecaller responded fast enough to the opportunity. Just a week back, the company officially announced its tie-in with ICICI bank, utilizing UPI to bring peer-to-peer transactions on their platform.

Analysts Neil Shah told the Financial Times that the app is already used for selling goods, although informally. “I’ve seen people selling baby clothes, medicines, art and craft supplies — it’s become a Craigslist type of offering,” said Shah.

 

Aren’t we ready for self-driving cars?

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Letting an AI control your car while you are chilling in the back seat or making last moment changes in the final presentation sounds really great in every sense. Even better, who doesn’t want a quick nap in the rides back home after a tiring day at office. A bit scary! Believe it or not, but that’s how we are going to travel in near future. Autonomous driving or self-driving is the next big thing and with some successful implementations already on the road, it’s no more a sci-fi dream. Every auto manufacturer and tech firms like Google, Uber are working for a piece of the pie.

Few months back in last year, Uber launched its first fleet of self-driving Volvo XC90s in Pittsburgh. You could almost hear the auto industry’s collective jaw drop after that. Suddenly, a company providing taxi service was offering a vision of future autonomous transportation.

Following its almost perfect execution in Pittsburgh, Uber decided to expand its territory of self-driving taxis to Arizona. And that’s where things went wrong. On 24th March, one of the Uber’s self-driving car got involved in an accident in Tempe, Arizona. The news spread like wildfire accompanied by an image showing one of the Uber’s Volvo flipped on one side and a dented Honda CV-R. The authenticity of news and image was confirmed by an Uber spokesperson.

“We saw the [Honda] car, it was coming fine on her end, but the other person just wanted to beat the light and kept going,” a witness wrote in the police report. “All I want to say is it was good on the end of the [Honda] driving toward us, it was the other driver’s fault [Uber] for trying to beat the light and hitting the gas so hard.”

Was it actually the car’s fault? Surprisingly, no! It performed in the way it was programmed for the situation. It was cruising at 38mph as it should do over a Yellow signal when Honda’s driver decided to take a turn 3 lanes across shielded by a fleet of cars in 2 of the lanes blocking the sensors of Uber taxi. Although the Uber employ behind the wheels saw the car in last moments, but it was too late and the collision took place.

The whole incident raises an interesting thought: a real driver might have approached the yellow light differently seeing someone troubling with directions. He might have slowed down, way before, seeing a crowded road.

Joshua Brown was killed last year when his Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode collided with a truck. Although Tesla came out clean showing it was more of Brown’s fault for not using brakes although he had 7 seconds to do so. Probably, he grew confident about Autopilot’s ability.

That’s the problem here, the self-driving technology is not yet completely developed. At present, it’s more of an assistance than a completely reliable alternative to manual driving. But the major question still remains; will a computer ever be able to completely replace a seasoned driver?

 

Truecaller adds support for video calling and e-payments

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Truecaller, the Sweden-based startup, is quite popular among smartphone users as an alternative to their boring default dialer app. The ability to identify and filter out spam calls makes it the first choice for million of smartphone users worldwide. On Tuesday, at its first annual ‘Stay Ahead’ event in Delhi, Truecaller announced its intention of transforming the brand from a service oriented app to a platform by launching its completely redesigned Android App- Truecaller 8.

At the event, company representatives openly spoke about their future goals highlighting their partnership with Google and ICICI, an Indian Bank in order to integrate video calling and e-payment functionality into new Truecaller app. Alongside these tie-ins, Trucaller decided to integrate its True messenger app with their dialer to bring spam free messaging functionality to its customers.

According to Alan Mamedi, chief executive officer and co-founder, Truecaller: “Spam SMS account for 15% of all SMS messages sent globally, and represents 1.2 trillion spam messages each year. On average, every spam call is about 40 seconds long, so we will help save a lot of time.” On top of it, now users can send flash messages-from a pre-written text library-in just 2 steps. This will be extremely helpful in situations when you are busy or stuck somewhere; just in 2 seconds you can send a flash message to inform someone.

Truecaller Pay is an addition to the list of features as a result of their partnership with ICICI in India. This allows Truecaller India users to send and receive money electronically via their android smartphones. ICICI Bank is providing the technology required to for such services.

“This is based on the feedback received from the market that users wanted to be able to make a transaction straight from their Truecaller app”, said Nami Zarringhalam, CSO and co-founder Truecaller.

The company also tied up with Google to integrate Google Duo, a video calling service, with the app itself. This functionality will be available in next few months for both Android and iOS users. According to Google, the deal aligns with their aim to make video calling simpler, faster and available to everyone.

Truecaller has also launched extended the caller identification for Indian subscribers of telecom operator Airtel where even people with feature phones would be able to use caller ID feature some other features. Airtel’s non-data users will also be able to identify spam calls with this new feature informing them by a flash message prior to the call. This unique way of extending services allows users to get online experience without subscribing to a data pack or buying a smartphone.

Truecaller is not the only company attacking e-payment opportunity in India. In his last visit to India, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton revealed his plans to tap into commercial messaging and digital payment whenever it’s the right time. Hike is another major player in the game with a strong focus on improving quality messaging supplemented with support of regular news, games and stickers.

All You Need To Know About The iCloud Hack Story

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It’s a real tough to hack into an iPhone or Apple ID and that’s well established. But hackers find a way to do it anyways. On March 21st, a group of hackers going by the name of ‘Turkish Crime Family’ claimed to have access to a large cache of iCloud and other Apple email accounts. The hacker group contacted Vice Blog Motherboard demanding $75,000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum, another form of popular crypto-currency, or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards in exchange for deleting the alleged cache of data.

“I just want my money and thought this would be an interesting report that a lot of Apple customers would be interested in reading and hearing,” one of the hackers told Motherboard.

They also shared a screenshot of their communication with Apple security team member and it seemed legit. There was a message in which security team member demanded for a sample of data set. In response, hackers uploaded a YouTube video accessing an old women’s iCloud account. As of now, they claim to have access to 559 million Apple emails and iCloud accounts in total and if their demands are not met, all the user data will be wiped out remotely by April 7.

In response to the threat, Apple contacted Motherboard assuring control of the situation and told: “There have not been any breaches in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud and Apple ID. The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services.

We’re actively monitoring to prevent unauthorized access to user accounts and are working with law enforcement to identify the criminals involved. To protect against these type of attacks, we always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites and turn on two-factor authentication.”

Since there was not much evidence proving the claim of hackers, so ZDnet decided to reach out to them. The Turkish Crime Family provided them a small sample of 54 IDs from their alleged 500 million or so. To check the validity of IDs, ZDnet tried contacting people linked with the accounts and found 10 passwords out of 54 were in use at present.

There was nothing common among the 10 verified accounts. The people were using different cellular networks and owned different Apple devices including, iPhones, Macs, iPads. This indicates that the data was not obtained from a particular network and was also not limited to single product line.

Although most of the them used same password for their iCloud account and other services, but there were few who assured that their iCloud password was unique and was not used anywhere else. So, in this case Apple’s statement “obtained from previously compromised third-party services”, might not be completely true.

After all this, one thing is for sure that with the advancement in security measures, hackers too are going a step ahead. It doesn’t matter how the hackers got all those credentials, you should take some measures for your own data security. Anyone with an Apple ID should change their passwords immediately to something that is more secure and complex and enabling two-factor authentication would be a good step. Go ahead and take the measures before something bad happens.