Reliance, its portfolio Viacom18 and Disney are merging their media businesses in India, creating the largest media entity in the South Asian market.
Reliance will control and own 16.34% of the joint venture, which it has valued at $8.5 billion.
Reliance, which is India’s most valuable firm, said it sees an opportunity to expand and streamline its presence in the Indian fast-growing market by merging its media assets with Disney India.
Reliance, which owns more than 60% in Viacom18, plans to invest $1.4 billion into the joint venture for its growth strategy.
The “strategic” merger of Reliance and Disney India also unites two leading Indian streamers, JioCinema and Disney+Hotstar.
Crypto fund Asymmetric Financial is creating its Bitcoin DeFi Venture Fund I to focus on investing in the blockchain’s nascent space with a target raise of $21 million.
The fund will be spearheaded by general partner Dan Held, former director of growth at Kraken and long-time Bitcoiner.
Many Bitcoin-focused VCs ignore DeFi because it’s speculative, and broader crypto VCs see it as a “dead boomer rock,” he added.
Much of this activity has centered on the Ethereum blockchain, but Held believes Bitcoin’s blockchain has tons of future potential as an ecosystem.
“It will be a Bitcoin DeFi renaissance.”“Bitcoin is worth more than every other crypto asset combined,” Held added.
Hyped AI startup Humane has announced plans for its first international market, inking a deal with South Korean carrier SK Telecom.
The announcement comes shortly after the San Francisco-based company revealed it was pushing back the shipping date of its Ai Pin device from March to mid-April in its domestic U.S. market.
The Ai Pin costs $699 up front, with a recurring $24 monthly subscription that gives the user a phone number and unlimited data to power as many AI-powered queries they like.
And just yesterday, SK Telecom announced a partnership with AI search engine Perplexity to bring its premium “Pro” plan to SK Telecom’s 32 million subscribers.
It’s also not yet clear when the Ai Pin might make it to market in South Korea, but given the delays currently surrounding its U.S. launch we maybe shouldn’t expect it too soon.
But the Ring Car Camera?
You do have to know who your customers are, though, and that’s where the Ring Car Camera found itself straddling multiple domains without a clear foothold in any.
Ring Car Camera did have some exciting innovations.
Moreover, discontinuing the Ring Car Camera may prompt a reassessment of consumer expectations regarding dash cams and automotive security devices.
The discontinuation of the Ring Car Camera is likely the final nail in the coffin of that project, too.
A few years ago, setting up shop in Europe was the soup du jour for North American VCs.
North American VCs, understandably, want a piece of that market, but setting up a successful, long-term strategy in the region hasn’t proved easy.
The European startup market comes with nuances that make it a difficult one for North American investors.
It’s no wonder then that North American investors have struggled to find a secure footing as they try to straddle the Atlantic.
The American guys will enter anyway at the Series A or B.”Reason to keep tryingDespite all those challenges, though, North American firms are still trying to plant roots in the region.
Google’s proposed “Findings of Fact” filing documents the history of search competition, including Google’s own beginnings, its innovations, the competitive landscape, Google’s search ads business, distribution agreements, and more.
When shareholders sold stock to various VC firms, those funds were not used to improve the search engine, the filing argues.
But it contradicts this point, too, noting that a third of DuckDuckGo’s 50 employees in 2018 were working on improving the search engine, for example.
The search engine receives only about 2.5% of general search queries in the U.S., despite estimates that 10% of people in the U.S. claim to be users.
This, DuckDuckGo’s leadership had explained, is due to the fact that people often use its search engine for some, but not all of their search queries.
The company’s iPhone revenue in India jumped 42% year-on-year in 2023 to $8.7 billion, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note on Friday.
India’s iPhone business is now larger than any standalone country in the European Union, Morgan Stanley added.
This compares to China iPhone shipments, which represented 20% of iPhone shipments and revenue in CY23 (down 1-2 points Y/Y, respectively),” the analysts wrote.
The average iPhone sold in India last year had around 260GB of memory, a 26% increase over 2022, Morgan Stanley said.
Morgan Stanley estimates the tech giant’s India revenue will reach $40 billion by 2032.
This week, the Financial Times reported the EC will issue its first-ever fine against the tech giant for allegedly breaking EU law over competition in the streaming music market.
It reads:We’re happy to support the success of all developers — including Spotify, which is the largest music streaming app in the world.
In the case of the EU complaint, the concern is that Apple’s App Store distorts completion in the music streaming market.
“There are other rivals to Apple Music — there are Deezer, there are Soundcloud.
A rep for the EC declined to comment on news related to Spotify’s complaint or any pending fines.
Google said Thursday it plans to roll out the SoundPod, its portable speaker designed to instantly validate and announce successful payments, to small merchants across India over the coming months.
The Google Pay expansion in India, where the company is among the mobile payment market leaders, comes even as the firm winds down some of its payments apps in the U.S.
The sound-box was invented to serve small Indian merchants unable to afford regular point-of-sale devices but accepting of UPI payments.
The company said merchants who use SoundPod to process 400 payments in a month will get $1.5 in cashback.
Reliance, India’s largest firm by market cap, also began testing a similar device at its campus last year, TechCrunch earlier reported.
A growing roster of vertical AI startups is emerging in Southeast Asia to serve sectors ranging from seafood to finance.
Within verticalized AI, different trends are emerging in each country.
Since funding structures are different in Southeast Asia than the rest of the world, BorderDollar used their own training data to build a credit scoring system.
Building a vertical AI startup comes with its own challenges.
But once a vertical AI startup comes together, Salovaara says they can build a very deep competitive moat.
