Amazon Pay Acquires Personal Assistant Platform Tapzo In A Part Stock And Part Cash Deal

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Content platform MissMalini Entertainment has raised 10.4 crore from Orios Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates, the pre-series A fundraise coming six years after the firm secured angel funding from investors including Google’s Rajan Anandan.
The multi-media and multi-platform content firm was launched in 2008 and was among the first to make a mark in India’s blogging landscape. The firm has over 10 million unique monthly followers across platforms, with some channels giving it an outreach of almost 40 million a month.

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MissMalini Entertainment functions as a distributor platform, creating different styles of millennial-focused lifestyle and entertainment content for platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, also covering audio podcasts like those on music streaming platform Saavn. The firm has also produced five seasons of TV-based content shows since 2014. “As a millennial content firm, we offer a direct platform across multiple social media channels so as to create maximum impact. We are in talks with firms for our next TV show, which we are considering in a (direct-to-consumer) or (over-the-top) format,” CEO Nowshad Rizwanullah told .

The deal which is valued at between $40-45 million including the stock component will give a cash-out to investors while co-founders of Tapzo Ankur Singla and Vishal Pal Chaudhary will get some cash along with shares in Amazon, according to two people aware of the deal. The deal was completed last week, said one of them. Tapzo’s founders are likely to get on board Amazon Pay’s team in India. Tapzo CEO Ankur Singla did not respond to the queries.

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While Amazon declined to comment on the acquisition in specific, the firm underlined its intent to enable digital payment offerings with maximum outreach. “Our commitment to the vision of a less-cash India remains the same. Our goal is to make it easier than ever before for customers to make digital payments by improving the customer experience, affordability and daily routines,” said a spokesperson ofthe company.

Toyota Motor Corp will invest $500 million in Uber Technologies Inc to jointly work on developing self-driving cars, the companies said on Monday, a bid by both to catch up to rivals in the hotly competitive autonomous driving business. Toyota, one of the world’s largest carmakers, and Uber , the leading ride-hailing service, are widely seen as lagging the competition in developing self-driving cars. Their deal deepens an existing relationship and reflects CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s strategy of Uber developing autonomous vehicles through partnerships, rather than on its own.

The deal also breathes new life into Uber’s self-driving business. Since a self-driving Uber SUV killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March, Uber has removed its robot cars from the road, laid off hundreds of test drivers and shuttered operations in Arizona, its autonomous testing hub. The investment values Uber at $72 billion, matching the valuation Uber received in a deal with Alphabet Inc self-driving unit Waymo this year. Uber will combine its autonomous driving system with Toyota’s Guardian technology, which offers automated safety features such as lane-keeping but does not enable a vehicle to drive completely autonomously. The combined technology will be built into Toyota’s Sienna minivans, to be deployed on Uber’s ride-hailing network starting in 2021, Uber said.

Express logistics company Spoton has been acquired by a consortium of investors led by homegrown private equity fund Samara Capital and Xponentia Fund Partners for Rs 550 crore in cash. With this, PE firm India Equity Partners has completely exited Spoton, the logistics company announced on Monday. Spoton’s acquisition is a part of Samara’s plan to create a retail ecosystem that the Mauritius-based PE firm would require if it is successful in acquiring the More supermarket chain from Aditya Birla Group, said a person familiar with the firm’s strategy. It is reported that Samara was teaming up with Amazon and Goldman Sachs to try to acquire More, the country’s fourth largest supermarket operator. “Spoton will continue to run independently while seeking Samara’s help to build out the next phase of growth,” said Abhik Mitra, chief executive of Spoton Logistics. “We plan to add air express cargo by March/April and also plan to tap into potential opportunities in the 3PL (third-party logistics) space.

Finnish telecom network equipment maker Nokia has secured a 500 million euro ($572 million) loan from the European Investment Bank to step up development of next-generation 5G technology capable of faster speeds, wider coverage and more stable connections. 5G mobile networks, which are still at an early stage, will offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks and serve as critical infrastructure for a range of industries, such as driverless cars.

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We have to understand that China and the U.S. have moved fast with the 5G. It is very important to have European companies going in for this competition,” EIB vice president Alexander Stubb, a Finn himself, told the online edition of Helsingin Sanomat.

The bank had earlier this year signed a 250 million euro loan deal with Nokia’s Swedish rival, Ericsson, but EIB noted that the terms of the agreements were different. Local language health information platform myUpchar has raised $5 million in a series A round from Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network and Shunwei Capital. The company will use the newly infused funds to further strengthen its voice, video and virtual reality interfaces along with the development of newer interfaces.

myUpchar, currently accessed by more than 10 million people, aims to solve for healthcare awareness and access across a wide socio-economic spectrum of India. The company’s aim is to serve more than 500 million aspirational Indians who want quality information and services but are unable to access them because they are not available in local languages.

Our focus over the next couple of years is to address this gap via technology and content,” said Rajat Garg, chief executive of myUpchar. “As our technology gets smarter and smarter, we will personalize every user’s experience to enhance our ability to have a real impact on their health outcomes.

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