Cloudtail India to Cease Operations from May 2022

Chaitali Chakravarty & Writankar Mukherjee reporting for the Economic Times:

One of Amazon India’s largest sellers Cloudtail India is going to stop operations from May 2022 with the company’s joint venture partners Amazon and N.R. Narayana Murthy-owned Catamaran Ventures will not renew the seven years old partnership when it comes up for renewal next year.

Cloudtail India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Prione Business Services. Prione is a joint venture between Catamaran and Amazon. The two partners are going to exit from the business at a time when there is stricter surveillance on the operations of the foreign e-commerce marketplaces in the country.

The two partners have mutually decided to not continue their joint venture beyond the end of its current term ending on May 19, 2022.

I really hope Appario Retail survives.

August 9, 2021 ✚ Permalink

Games The Shop Brings Official Nintendo and PlayStation Merch to India

Mikhail Madnani, writing for The Mako Reactor:

This merchandise includes mugs, glasses, water bottles, and more. Pre-orders for all the items are also live on Games The Shop with shipping beginning next month as revealed on the product pages.

That official PlayStation glass looks good.

August 9, 2021 ✚ Permalink

WhatsApp Files Lawsuit Against the Indian Government

Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times:

The lawsuit, filed by WhatsApp in the Delhi High Court, seeks to block the enforceability of the rules that were handed down by the government this year. WhatsApp, a service owned by Facebook that sends encrypted messages, claimed in its suit that the rules, which were set to go into effect on Wednesday, were unconstitutional.

Yes, Facebook is evil, but the current Indian Govt. is riding the same boat. It’s good to see WhatsApp challenging these ridiculous new rules (may even be unconstitutional), and I hope other companies join the suit.

That said, this doesn’t absolve WhatsApp from their new Privacy Policy changes. Scumbags.

May 26, 2021 ✚ Permalink

BMC to Start Six More Vaccination Centres Today in Mumbai

The BMC said it is starting six more vaccination centres today. Matoshri Sports Club at Sundar Nagar HP (JVLR), BMC Community Hall (Jogeshwari), Aadhar Kendra (Vile Parle), Gadkari HP Videocon Atithi (Chembur), Yoga Kendra (Ayodhya Nagar), and Najambaug (Dongri) are the centres. Apollo Spectra in Deonar and Saifee Ambulance in Bhendi Bazar are two private vaccination centres that will also start today.

We really need more vaccination centres for 18-44 north of Jogeshwari

May 6, 2021 ✚ Permalink

Twitter Expands Engineering Team in India

Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director of Twitter India and Nick Caldwell, VP of Twitter Engineering, writing on the Twitter Blog:

Expanding the team in India aligns with our overall belief that having more employees at Twitter, living and working in places that are representative of all perspectives and cultures, and sharing local context about these conversations will help us build a better service and company. By committing to hire and develop local engineering talent, we will play an important role in the company’s journey to become the world’s most diverse, inclusive, and accessible tech company. The engineering team in Bengaluru, which has expanded rapidly over the past two years, will continue to focus on building more daily utility for new and existing audiences, with capabilities ranging from product development, research and design as well as data science and machine learning.

April 20, 2021 ✚ Permalink

Vodafone India's BGP Hijack Takes Down Several Global Networks

Ax Sharma, writing for BleepingComputer:

A large BGP routing leak that occurred last night disrupted the connectivity for thousands of major networks and websites around the world.

Although the BGP routing leak occurred in Vodafone’s autonomous network (AS55410) based in India, it has impacted U.S. companies, including Google, according to sources.

You should also read Anurag Bhatia’s fantastic analysis here.

Time and again, these companies prove that initiatives like this one and this one need to be taken a lot more seriously for the Internet to become a better place.

April 19, 2021 ✚ Permalink

Apple Developer Program Enrollment Through Developer Now App Available in India

Apple today announced that it’s not possible to enroll into the Apple Developer Program through the Developer app on iPhone & iPad using local payment methods in Canada, France, India, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, and Spain.

Developers can start and finish their membership purchase with local payment methods on iPhone or iPad. And since membership is provided as an auto-renewable subscription, keeping it active is easy.

I still remember the days when you had to FAX a enrollment form to the US to enroll into the membership.

April 9, 2021 ✚ Permalink

Apple's Service Program for AirPods Pro

Apple has announced a Service Program for AirPods Pro that exhibit sound issues such as crackling/cracking sounds or similar issues.

My AirPods Pro, which I purchased in December 2019, developed this issue in early May and due to the ongoing pandemic and associated lockdowns, finding an appointment at an Apple Authorized Service Center was ridiculously difficult. Thankfully, I managed to get one in October 2020. Although both the AirPods Pro had the issue, Apple only replaced one of them and somehow “fixed” the other one.

Apple says that the program covers affected AirPods Pro for 2 years after the first retail sale of the unit, so I’m glad I can get them replaced again if the issue comes back. There have been far too many of these issues I’ve seen on Twitter, so I’m guessing it won’t be long before I have to run to the ASC again.

November 2, 2020 ✚ Permalink