Week in Review – Top 10 News Updates from the Startup-verse

It can be tough to keep up with all the startup news released every week. But you’re in luck — Inc42 takes care of that for you, serving you with the hottest news updates about revenues, collaborations and a lot more for the coming weekend.

Scroll down and Enjoy!

1. Canonical to crowdsource $32 Mn – Building A Ubuntu Super Smartphone

Canonical, a UK based software development company responsible for Operating System Ubuntu has announced that the company is looking forward to raise USD 32 million from Indiegogo, a crowdsourcing website for online fundraising campaigns. The company is planning to raise the money in 30 days online campaign to manufacture a limited batch of 40,000 mobile devices that will run both Android and open source Ubuntu Touch operating systems, known as Ubuntu Edge, converging mobile convenience with desktop power in a single device.

The campaign has been running for just a week and it has raised a whooping $7 mn already.

2. Apple to acquire navigation startup Hopstop

Seems Apple has tightened its goal to improve its mapping services along with providing additional features to the users. As just after acquiring the crowdsourced location startup Locationary, Apple is now looking to acquire a navigation startup Hopstop.

Hopstop has iPhone, Android and Web applications that provide detailed door-to-door transit, walking, biking, and taxi directions in almost 600 cities including New York City, Philadelphia, Moscow and Paris. It shows real-time data from a variety of sources to help users find featured businesses.

3. SlideShare introduces New Infographics Player

In an announcement yesterday, SlideShare (acquired by LinekdIn in May 2012) has introduced a new infographics Player. The new player automatically detects an infographic upon upload, includes it in the infographic directory and displays it. Previously, the infographic needed to be saved and uploaded in a one-page PDF format. With this upgrade, also comes in another update on the SlideShare Pro Side where users can see how many views, downloads and embeds their infographics have garnered.

4. Television Network NDTV’s E-commerce Portal For Apparels & Accessories Launched

Delhi based television network NDTV’s ecommerce portal Indianroots.com has gone live without much fanfare.

The website is in beta for now and will be launched officially by the end of next week. The ethnic wear website by NDTV group features 80 designers and 300 brands. Work of three designers has been made available currently with others being added gradually. E-tailer ships globally and has no cash on delivery option.

5. Cleartrip partners with redBus, Travelyaari to offer bus ticketing

Cleartrip.com, has started offering bus ticketing on its site. For the same, the company has partnered with bus ticketing sites redBus and Travelyaari. The OTA already offers bookings for hotels, flights and trains. For revenues, the company will possibly look at commissions for every booking done via its site, since it doesn’t actually offer booking facility and instead redirects the user to redBus or Travelyaari at the last step of the booking to process the payment.

In India, Cleartrip competes with homegrown majors such as NASDAQ-listed MakeMyTrip, Via, Yatra and Goibibo.com. Interestingly, redBus was recently acquired by the South African media conglomerate Naspers’ Indian arm ibiboGroup (MIH India) which runs Goibibo.

6. Facebook surprises Wall Street with 53 percent increase in revenues

Facebook Inc. has given its investors a reason to celebrate with the recent announcement of its Q2 earnings performance results, reporting a 53% increase in revenue to $1.81 billion from $1.18 billion in the second quarter of 2012.  Also, the maximum revenue is being generated by its advertising business representing 88% of total revenue and a 61% increase from the same quarter last year.

The Q2 results have shut the critics of Facebook down who ever doubted about it’s advertising strategy. However, with 819 million monthly active users and an average 469 million daily active users on mobile, it seems that the Facebook’s continuous push to build its mobile traffic is paying off both in terms of users and advertising revenue.

7. Aircel partners with Wikimedia Foundation to offer free access to Wikipedia

Telecom service provider Aircel Ltd has signed a three-year agreement with Wikimedia Foundation to offer free access to Wikipedia on mobile phone to Aircel’s 60 million subscriber base. As part of the partnership, Aircel subscribers will be able to access zero.wikipedia.com (text only) and m.wikipedia.com (mobile version) for free on their internet-capable phones in 17 languages, including English, Hindi and Tamil.

Aircel had earlier introduced various data products like ‘pocket internet smart’ and ‘pocket internet 24’ that offers internet at less than 1 rupee a day to users; hence adding a service like Wikipedia to its internet offerings makes sense.

8. Amazon Inc. with USD 7 mn loss in Q2 hints serious investment in growth and competitive pricing

Amazon Inc., has been quite in news with its recent foray into the Indian market and opening of Amazon app store in over 200 countries. However, it seems that the world’s largest online retailer is stuck between the thin lines of profit and loss. With its Q2 results out for current financial year, Amazon Inc. reported a net loss of $7 million, a 360 degree turnaround from $7 million net profit for the same quarter last year.
Despite of the struggling quarter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, seems to continue with company’s low operating margin strategy, currently working at only 0.5% operating margin of net sales and having more than 2 million worldwide active seller accounts. With financials for Q2,2013 falling  behind the expectations of the analysts for giants like Amazon, ebay and Google, there is not much hope left to see a strong quarter in financial terms.

9. Infoedge gains high in Q1 FY14, write off INR 2.6 crores in Nogle Technologies

Infoedge, a major investor in companies such as Zomato and Meritnation has recently disclosed its Q1 earnings result for FY14 reporting net sales of INR 121 crores, a 14 % increase over Q1 previous year. Deferred sales revenue has increased to Rs. 131 crores vs Rs. 121 crores as of March 2013 and is at an all-time high. The increase in revenue is also added by the gain in paid listings at 4.3 lakhs in comparison to 3.4 lakhs last year.

However, the company also suffered from losses in this quarter on account of its online portals 99acres and Jeevansathi.com, making a total loss of INR 6.4 crore at EBITDA levels on both.

For Q1 FY14, Infoedge reported Profit after tax of INR 32 crores excluding the write off of INR 2.6 crore, on behalf of one of its investee companies, Nogle Technologies, running an information sharing platform, Floost.com.

10. Google reveals two new products, Nexus 7 and Chromecast

Battling with Apple in the smartphone market, Google on Wednesday, at a press event in San Francisco has revealed a sleeker, lighter (290g) and more powerful version of its Nexus 7 tablet device. Powered by the latest Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, the device offers a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with 2GB of RAM, with a price tag of $229 for a 16GB wifi enabled device. It offers a HD screen resolution with a front and rear cameras (1.2- and 5.0-megapixel, respectively) and of course, a 7-inch screen.

Also on Wednesday, Google released an online video streaming device “Chromecast” – a two-inch dongle that can be plugged into a television and controlled by a smartphones, tablets or a laptop. Making it easier for people to access online content on their TVs, Choromecast can be easily connected to a TV’s HDMI port. On a price of $35, which already is quite cheap as compared to Apple TV’s set top boxes that cost up to about $100 or other media streaming devices, Google offers three months of free Netflix service.

Hope you enjoyed this edition of ‘Week in Review– Top 10 updates from the Startup-verse’. See you until the next weekend!

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