Category: India

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India Journalism

Mobile Money Heats Up in India as Google Doubles Down

That’s the headline of my most recent story, which came out yesterday. It begins:

NEW DELHI–Alphabet Inc.’s Google is raising its mobile-payments game in India with new functions and services as global players race to woo the nation’s legions of consumers who are skipping credit cards and transacting on smartphones instead.

A day after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said it had invested in the parent company of India’s largest digital-payments firm, called Paytm, Google said it is expanding its mobile money service in the South Asian nation. It is partnering with several local banks to offer consumer loans from within its app in the coming weeks, aiming to assist users seeking cash to cover expenses such as school fees.

Google is also expanding its tie-ups to more online merchants as well as to physical retail shops such as India’s ubiquitous mom and pop stores.

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Categories
India Journalism

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Invests in India Mobile-Payments Firm

That’s the headline of my most recent story, which came out yesterday. It begins:

NEW DELHI—-Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is getting into the mobile-payments business.

The Omaha, Neb., conglomerate said Monday it invested in One97 Communications Ltd., the parent company of Paytm. The Noida, India-based company is India’s largest mobile-payments firm. It makes a popular smartphone app that can be used to pay for everything from movie tickets to auto-rickshaw rides.

Mr. Buffett’s assistant Debbie Bosanek said that Mr. Buffett wasn’t involved in the deal. She didn’t immediately confirm the size of the investment. Berkshire was in talks to invest 20 billion to 25 billion rupees ($285 million to $357 million), according to a person familiar with the matter.

Paytm, which says it has more than 300 million users, saw its usage skyrocket in 2016 when India’s government nullified its largest-denomination notes, a bid to root out tax evasion and corruption that triggered a cash shortage.

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Categories
India

New Delhi Snapshot: Goats in a Passenger Van

The things you see in New Delhi traffic. Never a dull moment 🙂 🐐

Previous Delhi/goat-related goodness:

  • Delhi Snapshot: Goat Eating a Paratha (Sept. 2016)
  • Delhi Snapshot: Family of Four — Plus a Goat — on a Motorbike (June 2018)
    • Categories
    India Tech

    New Delhi Snapshot: Intriguing Gadget for Washing Dogs

    Putting the “dog” in the Japanese term “chindōgu” (珍道具).

    Spotted at Khan Market here in Delhi. Sadly, I didn’t inquire as to the price.

    Something tells me Ginger would not abide.

    Categories
    India

    New Delhi Snapshot: Connaught Place, Seen from Above

    Here’s one of New Delhi’s most bustling areas as glimpsed from Parikrama, a rotating restaurant 24 stories high.

    Not a view you get to take in every day.

    Categories
    India Journalism Tech

    India Looks to Curb U.S. Tech Giants’ Power

    That’s the headline of my most recent story, which came out Monday and was in Tuesday’s print Wall Street Journal. 

    It begins:

    Indian policy makers are looking for ways to tamp down American tech behemoths, a shift that could crimp growth potential in one of the biggest remaining open markets for their expansion.

    India wants to slap new rules on Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc. and other firms, using a page from China’s playbook to take control of its citizens’ data and shelter homegrown startups.

    The proposed rules, which have emerged in recent weeks in a series of private, draft government policies, have U.S. tech companies concerned, according to   familiar with the matter. American firms are betting billions on the Indian market because, unlike China’s, it has been relatively open to foreign competitors. That might be about to change.

    “It is unprecedented and it needs to be taken very seriously,” said Vinay Kesari, a Bangalore-based technology lawyer specializing in regulatory matters who has worked with U.S. tech firms. “It could have huge implications.”

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    Categories
    India Tech

    Somehow I Missed this Bill Gates Quote

    Bill Gates quote

    Here’s a photo of a poster I recently spotted for sale by a sidewalk vendor here in New Delhi’s Connaught Place.

    Yes, it has the billionaire Microsoft founder and now famed philanthropist Bill Gates saying:

    “If you born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor it’s your mistake.”

    Hmm…

    Categories
    India

    Delhi Snapshot: Family of Four — Plus a Goat — on a Motorbike

    Spotted this here in New Delhi a while back and meant to share here.

    Yes, this appears to be a dad driving a motorbike, with his son in front and his daughter behind him.

    Then on the back is the mom. With a goat on her lap.

    Fun for the whole family (including pet and/or working animal and/or dinner).

    Categories
    India

    Delhi Snapshot: Transporting Eggs

    carrying eggs in delhi

    Think your job is tough?

    Spotted recently on a major New Delhi thoroughfare.

    This guy must have nerves of steel given the city’s chaotic traffic and crazy drivers. Much respect.

    Categories
    India Journalism Tech

    Think American Elections Are Bad? Indian Voters Get 1,000 Texts a Day

    2018 05 16whatsapp

    That’s the headline of my most recent story, out yesterday, which I wrote with a few colleagues. It begins:

    For Gurupad Kolli, a 40-year-old lawyer who lives in a remote Indian village, the torrent of WhatsApp messages surging to his phone a few weeks ago meant one thing: election day was near.

    They’re at turns strident, angry, buoyant, informative, misleading, gripping and confusing, he says. Some days he received as many as 1,000 of them through the popular messaging service. Pleased to no longer “depend on the mass media like newspapers,” the resident of Ramapur village in the southern state of Karnataka nonetheless also conceded “there’s so much false and fake news going around.”

    He isn’t alone in his bewilderment. The rapidly falling cost of smartphones and mobile data in the world’s second-most-populous nation has turbocharged the spread of WhatsApp, where it is growing far faster than other social media and messaging platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

    India is home to more WhatsApp users than any other country, accounting for more than 200 million of the 1.5 billion monthly active global users. That rivals the popularity in India of Facebook Inc., which owns WhatsApp. Tens of millions of Indians of all ages have made the messaging service, which is simple to join and use, their entry point to the world of digital communication, especially in poor, remote areas where users are flocking to the internet for the first time.

    Click through to read the rest.