There is no doubt the e-commerce has changed the way people shop, and in fact, changed the way some of the biggest companies in the world conduct their business. In this regard, it needs to be remembered that one company which is responsible for this revolution is Amazon. However, once an industry grows at such a pace, there are certain problems that creep into the whole thing, and one of the biggest problems for Amazon is the sale of counterfeit products on its platform. Since, at end of the day, Amazon earns from the sale of those products as well, it is their responsibility to help stop such malpractices.

In a new development, it has now emerged that the company’s anti-counterfeit tool known as Transparency, which was only ever used in some markets, is not going to be expanded substantially and will be made available in Europe, Indi, and Canada. Those are some of the biggest markets for the company, and it is not a surprise that Amazon is ready to take steps to tackle the problem head-on. The tool in question helps in serializing all products on the Amazon platform and then a QR- code type scanning needs to be performed in order to figure out whether the product is genuine or not. It is a sound step, considering the fact that there are plenty of third-party sellers who ply their trade on the platform and over the years, many of them have been caught selling counterfeit items at the price of the genuine ones.

The VP of Customer Trust and Partner Support at Amazon, Dharmesh Shah, spoke about the ways in which the availability of Transparency might help everyone. He said,

“We created Transparency to provide brands with a simple, scalable solution that empowers brands and Amazon to authenticate products within the supply chain, stopping counterfeit before it reaches a customer.”

Although the tool has not yet grown at the pace at which Amazon may have desired, the expansion into the new markets might help it a lot.

IBM, the tech giant company, has finally sealed a deal with Red Hat. IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion and marked as the second biggest technology deal in the world ever made by any firm in the history. The deal will eventually set IBM-US based company on the right path to fight with leading software providers in the cloud business.

IBM is a 108-year-old company. IBM stands for International Business Machines; the company was once identical with mainframe computing, has been facing problems to use cloud technologies and is attempting to provide computing and other software products and services across the internet meanwhile catching up to its competitors like Microsoft and Amazon Inc.

IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty has risked her legacy over the deal developed to protect the tech company from irrelevancy. It is considered as a big movement.

During an interview Rometty mentioned, the deal is regarding hybrid cloud and it is the future technology, it is the final aim of the cloud. This market is worth of trillion dollars, is developing and it’s very much appealing to me that the news you listen to everyone is speaking of it too.

IBM revealed about the deal in October and on Tuesday the company mentioned in a statement that IBM provided $190 for each share of Red Hat in cash. The overall equity is valued at $34 billion.

IBM already lack in the public cloud and it is playing big on hybrid cloud, which enables firms to execute programs in parallel on their internal servers and also on large public cloud suppliers such as Amazon Web Services and Azure of Microsoft. IBM is positioning itself as a collaborator for these companies instead of a competitor.

IBM’s Cloud Revenue

IBM has noticed declining revenue for nearly 6 years from the last 7 years and this new hybrid cloud method might help IBM to increase its growth, Anurag Rana, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst mentioned.

Currently, cloud revenue of IBM has increased by 25 percent of overall revenue. In 2013 the cloud revenue accounted for 4 percent, New York-based firm, Armonk stated. Within 12 months through Q1 of 2019, cloud revenue of IBM soar over $19 billion. The acquisition of IBM will add compound annual revenue growth’s two points to IBM for 5 years, the company stated.

IBM shares were slightly altered at $139.90 in New York. The company achieved around 12 percent from the time they announced about Red Hat deal.

Concerns over acquisition

The acquisition deal was noticed as an acceptance that the existing cloud strategy of IBM was not functioning. Few experts questions if Red Hat will safeguard it. However, it is believed that Red Hat will increase profit margins of IBM and will lead IBM ahead into the hybrid cloud business. Meanwhile, the acquisition deal will not make IBM a significant player within the public cloud.

Open hybrid cloud technologies of Red Hat will be paired with sales team, industry analyst of IBM across more than 175 nations, IBM mentioned. Both the groups will able to develop a ‘next-generation hybrid multi-cloud platform,’ that relies on open source technologies, for example, Linus and Kubernetes.  The new hybrid platform will enable tech companies to deploy and control their applications and data over on-site, on private and numerous public clouds.

Amit Daryanani, Evercore ISI expert in a statement informed investor on Tuesday,

“From a strategic point of view, we think the acquisition will position IBM as a formidable player in the hybrid IT market.”

As everyone knows, the eventual success of a startup almost always depends on the sort of money it can raise and how long the company’s investors can keep going before a viable business model can take shape. In other words, it is a long game and it takes years before a company can be deemed enough for an IPO. More often than not, many of the company’s do not get to that stage either, but if startup investment dries up, then the failure of a company is inevitable. Startups in China are currently going through such trouble as investment capital at some of the bigger private equity seems to have dried up amidst economic troubles in the country. It has emerged that Beijing Missfresh E-commerce Co. or simply Missfresh, which is involved in the grocery business, has struggled to attract investment from its backers.

The company is primarily backed by Chinese tech royalty Tencent Holdings, but other backers like Tiger Global Management and Goldman Sachs Group are equally high profile. According to sources in the company which is close to the developments, Missfresh is looking to raise capital in the range of $300 million and $500 million and that too at a valuation of $4 billion. At this point of time, many startups are struggling, they are also struggling to raise cash that could allow them to grow their businesses quickly and many are currently seeking a new injection of capital from their backers. However, things have not proven to be as easy as it used to be for large startups even a year or so ago when raising capital used to be relatively straightforward.

Currently, there are other factors at play that has dried up the coffers of many of the biggest startup backers in China. The trade war with the United States has been a severe strain on the revenues of many of these companies. In addition to that, the slowdown in the Chinese economy has also proven to be a drag on the bottom line of many startups and that in turn has made life difficult for the backers as well.

Crypto based startup companies’ tries to secure funding in order to offer advanced services to its customers and to expand its business. Some startup companies manage to secure funding while few fail to secure funding.

Now Wala, a South African based crypto payment firm, is facing funding issues and has decided to close its business.

Wala, a fintech startup company, had expected to launch its own digital currency across the country but won’t be able to carry out this initiative as Wala failed to secure essential funding. This eventually made the company to take a bold step of shutting down its business.

Wala has finally been closed.

Wala, a 4-year-old company, started in 2015 initially offered access to loans and insurance, remittances and transactional banking. The startup firm uses to work with professional service providers to provide a complete set of financial services to customers.

Wala initially was not a crypto-powered company. It started focusing on crypto services in 2017. In the same year, Wala for the first time released Dala- utility crypto-based token. The startup firm believed that Dala would support in globalization and further development of growth and also support blockchain powered financial platforms for new markets. Wala achieved this by generating funding from investor Newtown Partners and later via token sale received additional of US 1.2 million.

Wala attracted more than 150,000 users within a few months, and they widely live in Uganda. The startup firm also received the Zambezi prize in 2018. However, the CEO and founder of Wala Tricia Martinez mentioned that the firm experienced problems.

She mentioned rewards drew the attention of scammers or users who discovered how to take benefits of a rewards system. This made the company to modify the rewards model numerous times, and it was necessary to remove customers who were misusing Wala’s system.

She added,

“The biggest problem we ran into was the infrastructure. Our partners’ systems would regularly turn off due to internet problems or their own poor infrastructure, which meant our users were unable to transact, which was the biggest use case for Dala. This crushed our user engagement and most importantly trust in our system. It also forced us to expand the scope for Dala. We had to build even more infrastructure than we anticipated at the start.”

One of the main reasons that made the firm to shut the business was funding.

Martinez stated Wala has little funding and minimum resources in order to deal with huge global issue. Wala has more than 150,000 Dala wallet users, and several associates were interested in working with Wala, the company had more on its plate but with minimum resources.

Wala failed to raise fund, but its team members believed that Wals’s strong growth might attract investors.

Wala started taking big steps by removing the maximum of its team employees and also closed deposits. On June 24^th, finally, Wala closed its app completely.

Martinez told, during the beginning of the crypto winter, she started to raise fund, but it did not help the startup. Maximum of investors were not willing to support a crypto-based firm.

“For eight months, I traveled across the globe, pitching investors in blockchain, fintech, impact, African-focused… I met and engaged with over 100 investors, and despite our early growth numbers, we couldn’t secure the necessary financial support we needed to continue growing and operating.”

There used to be a time when self-driving or autonomous cars used to be the stuff of science fiction films, but that has now changed dramatically as the advancements in technology have made many pipes dreams a possibility. One of those is self-driving cars, and it is very much a possibility now with many companies having created self-driving cars of their own. However, the fact remains that it remains to be seen whether those cars can be mass produced and how long it is going to take before it can be run like a business. To that end, many of the world’s biggest car manufacturing companies have started working, and in a new development, BMW and Daimler have teamed up to work on a self-driving car project.

BMW and Daimler are two of the biggest car manufacturing entities in the world, and collaboration between them is surely one of the biggest developments for the future of the self-driving car industry. As everyone knows, technology is the most important factor when it comes to self-driving cars, and the two companies are going to work on technology that is theoretically better than the available ones. Additional features like automated car parking and automated cruise control are also expected to be added to the cars. In this regard, it is important to note that the technology that the companies will be working on is aimed at making these cars fully self-driving. If the project is successful, then the cars in question will not need any human touch at all during a journey.

However, it is important to note that such a project will take a lot of time, patience and money for it to be successful. Hence, the two companies have announced that it would not be before 2024 that the results of the collaboration are going to be revealed to the public. That being said, the collaboration between two of the biggest car brands in the world is definitely a step in the right direction for all self-driving car enthusiasts.