ITV

Tag: App

  • Taki introduces official app on Google Play Store to improve user experience

    Taki introduces official app on Google Play Store to improve user experience

    Mumbai: Global web3 social networking platform Taki has announced the launch of its Android app to further boost its expansion. This development comes at a time when Taki claims to have surpassed the milestone of having half a million users globally. Taki is aiming to further increase its audience by making its services more accessible and user-friendly. With the launch of its Android app, users can access their Taki account on Android smartphones. As part of this, Taki has released important features to improve the user experience. These features strengthen the platform’s security and make it simple to follow the movement of user coins, known as $UCOIN.

    Taki co-founder Sakina Arsiwala said, “Our constant endeavour to make our platform more user-friendly motivated us to introduce an Android app for Taki. We aim to provide our users with a platform that offers a streamlined user interface, a fast load time and the ability to customise the content.”

    Taki has introduced coin profile pages to track any user’s coin performance under multiple metrics such as the share of owners, annual percentage rate (APR), coins in circulation, the total number of supporters, etc. Another key addition is the new interface on Taki, which showcases a top coin leaderboard. It highlights the top 10 users who are holding the coins with the highest value against $TAKI over the previous seven days. Fellow community members and creators on the platform can now reward both a content creator’s post and the related comments with a gold Taki. Overall, it enhances the engagement level on the platform and provides additional motivation for community members to demonstrate appreciation for their favorite content creators’ posts.

    Taki is offering the opportunity for people to own their unique and desired $UCOIN (usercoin). They can now access Taki without delay to register before anyone else takes their desired name. A $USERCOIN will be created once a particular individual completes verification on the platform. The company claims over 4,68,541 unique user coins have been generated so far with an active user base of 5,59,705 active users.

    “Seeing such a positive response from the community has been rewarding. The user experience drives us to keep improving the product. We believe that Taki will be the first-of-its-kind in bridging the gap between the everyday internet user and Web3, especially with India’s ever-growing potential in the crypto ecosystem,” said SuperLayer Venture Partner Saad Rizvi.

  • Zoom switches from a video calling, meeting app to a UCaaS platform; bolsters business

    Zoom switches from a video calling, meeting app to a UCaaS platform; bolsters business

    Mumbai:  Zoom, a collaboration platform, set up its office in India back in 2019. Due to Covid and the popularity of video conferencing, the company experienced rapid expansion. The company is trying to switch from a video, meeting calling software to unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform as businesses return to the office, either fully or partially. As more individuals return to the workforce and the amount of WFH (work from home) increasingly decreases, it seeks to redefine and reimagine the workplace.

    Zoom general manager and head of India & SAARC region Sameer Raje stated during a media briefing at a Zoom Rooms Experience Day that the Zoom India team has significantly expanded since beginning operations in India in 2019.

    He stated that India is a significant market both within the Asia Pacific region and globally, but avoided discussing business objectives. “India forms a large part of our business. The idea was to provide video first collaboration for companies when it first launched back in 2011 abroad. It became the go-to choice for enterprises. Now Zoom aims to be a complete UCaaS platform in the country. Our aim is to move beyond being just a meeting app to offering a suite of services. These components have been built onto the platform. We had tremendous growth during the pandemic but that was video meeting growth. Now we are seeing growth from a collaboration platform aspect. People install Zoom and rework their workplace. The growth in India continues but in a different format.”

    Raje continued the brief by noting that one of the components of Zoom moving towards being a UCaaS platform is Zoom Phone and the company is working with Indian regulators to bring it to the country. “We have Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinar. We recently acquired Solvvy, a conversational AI Zoom that has also introduced its own conversational and AI platform.”

    The company, which had earlier launched Zoom Contact Centre, is counting on the solvvy acquisition to help them redefine the contact centre category with unified communications. The goal is to accelerate its contact centre roadmap to create a concierge-level experience for customers.

    He explains that Zoom also launched a service that allows clients to analyse their meetings. The final component in the move to being a UCaaS platform is Zoom Rooms. It can be used to elevate the customer experience across industries from education to BFSI. “People are thinking of changing the office environment. People do not want to do the same thing in the office that they do at home.”

    He mentions features like Workspace Reservation, Virtual Receptionist, Smart Gallery and Zoom Whiteboard and their aim is to empower happy and connected teams to stay productive. “We are reimagining, redesigning the workplace. Integration into the workplace is key. We are bringing in a whole lot of services, features and functionality. You can interact with a remote receptionist or reserve your workplace for instance. With Zoom Rooms Kiosk mode, team members can engage face to face with a virtual receptionist anywhere an in-person receptionist could be – office, hotel, lobby, or other location. Organisations can brand the display and customise the message to match the environment and purpose.”

    Remote meeting attendees may find it difficult to see people clearly when other meeting participants are in a Zoom Room. To address this issue, Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery displays multiple video feeds from a single conference room. This allows the Zoom Room cameras to focus more closely on groups of participants and display these people more clearly to remote attendees. Effective collaboration between remote attendees and Zoom Room participants can be enhanced by the face-to-face meeting experience.

    Speaking on the challenges, Raje added, “The good part is that Zoom was built for handling areas that have low bandwidth. It also works with old devices. Also if you have built a service or a function for one purpose Indians will use it for 10 other purposes that you have not thought of. It is mind-boggling. Someone did a video shoot on Zoom. It was a photo shoot. We work through these unique challenges. One roadblock in India is language. India has so much geographical diversity it is difficult to cater to. We have just introduced live translation into international languages. Now a part of my job is to convince executives in Zoom to facilitate the same for Indian languages. Whether this will happen or not time will tell. ”

    On the security and privacy front, he said that people who work from home often have children. Those children are their own chief information security officers. If children are on a mobile device one never knows what kind of content pops up. Now Zoom being a collaboration platform operates in a closed environment. So education is important be it for children or the end-user. “If it is an enterprise or an organisation they need to watch their back. So Zoom educates users through programmes that run on a regular basis. Zoom creates awareness programmes in conjunction with non-profits and governments. Then Zoom ensures that certain functions are pushed like enforcing password protection.”

    Zoom also fixes bugs in the system by inviting ethical hackers to find issues. For that, a bounty is paid. This is a Bug Bounty Programme and it runs globally including in India. One challenge is that security parameters differ depending on the industry. So what works for banking will not work for FMCG for instance. He said that Zoom is the only collaboration platform to offer 256bit GCM encryption. “This is state of the art, the best encryption that you can get. This move is a part of our aim to stay ahead.”

    When he was asked about the marketing plan of Zoom, he noted that it does online marketing. Then it has a partner ecosystem. It works with Savex and they have multiple partners who take Zoom to their customers. Tata Teleservices is another distribution partner of Zoom. Last year Zoom And Tata Teleservices had announced a tie-up to offer a communications solution to enterprises and individual customers. Then there is a direct sales team that interacts with customers.

  • News9 Plus is an out-of-the-box idea: TV9 Network CEO Barun Das

    News9 Plus is an out-of-the-box idea: TV9 Network CEO Barun Das

    Mumbai: The multi-lingual national media network TV9 Network recently launched its prime offering, News9 Plus – India’s first video magazine OTT service. News9 Plus is a unique service platform that will operate at the intersection of impeccable journalism, world-class presentation, and next-in-class technology..

    It will showcase narratives, news, and debates with in-depth analysis and production qualities. There will be unique storytelling techniques through the OTT platforms. After the foray of the network into the digital news domain, TV9 is constantly growing and expanding its horizons in different mediums. The platform is destined to be the go-to app for nuanced news-based content produced with the best in class audio-visual storytelling formats.

    News9 Plus is the first pureplay subscription-driven, and on-demand news product. In a press statement, TV9 Network CEO Barun Das said the company is committed to bringing about a qualitative change in the news genre landscape. 

    “The best is yet to come,” Das affirmed, adding that, “News9 Plus is one such out-of-box idea that promises to radically change the art of story-telling in news media.”

    TV9 Network group editor B V Rao said News9 Plus is an audacious attempt to take the news to the OTT space. “A generation brought up on watching the best of content on Netflix, etc, won’t settle for anything other than the best-produced news content. News9 Plus will cater to this Genflix – or the generation that lives on Netflix,” Rao added.

    TV9 Bharatvarsh, which has just scripted history to become India’s top Hindi news channel, celebrated its third anniversary on Wednesday.  

    According to the data shared by the network provided to them by Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) India, TV9 Bharatvarsh has emerged as the leading Hindi news channel in week 10 (5-11 April) in terms of market share. According to the data, TV9 Bharatvarsh leads the Hindi-speaking market (HSM) with 16.9 per cent market share for the target audience 15+ all adults.

    “We are extremely pleased to receive a resounding thumbs up for our sterling performance. For us, any celebration is incomplete without the participation of all those who have seen us through our journey to the top. We salute the verdict of viewers with a promise that we shall always endeavor to serve them without fear or favor,” Das said in a statement.

    Talking about the number one status achieved by TV9 Bharatvarsh, TV9 Bharatvarsh news director Hemant Sharma said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable. We owe our success to our viewers. We have a responsibility to ensure we continue to earn their trust.”

    “It is a dream come true for me,” commented TV9 Bharatvarsh editor Sant Prasad Rai. “My team has given their 100% to end the legacy of 22 years and become the top Hindi news channel.”  

    TV9 Network promotes marquee leader news brands that include TV9 Kannada, TV9 Telugu, TV9 Marathi, TV9 Gujarati and TV9 Bharatvarsh. Its digital assets include TV9 Hindi, News9live, and Money9. 

  • Flipkart Grocery nudges Indian households to not compromise on quality

    Flipkart Grocery nudges Indian households to not compromise on quality

    Mumbai: Homegrown e-commerce marketplace Flipkart has announced the launch of its latest digital campaign for Flipkart Grocery – a category that continues to see exponential year-on-year growth. With this latest campaign titled ‘Aapki Pasand pe Super bachat’, Flipkart aims to establish the marketplace platform as the “best destination” for buying groceries online.

    Flipkart conducted extensive research ahead of the campaign launch, which determined how one of the key factors for a seamless e-grocery buying experience is high-quality products coupled with value-driven constructs.

    The campaign starts with a homemaker in an Indian household with a ‘well-kept secret’ on how she procures the best quality of daal that she uses. It further shows how the homemaker understands everyone’s taste and ensures that she is bringing the best groceries in her house which are considered the favorite by her whole family. Through the campaign, Flipkart establishes that grocery purchases affect everyone in the household and hence, the ‘secret’ should be to ensure that the household has access to a range of their choice of high-quality products at affordable prices.

    Flipkart Grocery VP Smrithi Ravichandran said, “Understanding the requirements of Indian consumers and catering to them is what Flipkart is known for. With this latest campaign, we want to highlight how our platform is able to bring the highest quality of products that undergo stringent quality checks, over and above the mandatory checks, to consumers across the country. Today, not just in metro cities but consumers from over 1,800 cities have access to e-grocery services that meet their standards of shopping while giving them a value-driven experience.”

  • Gaana surprises listeners with new feature ‘AutoQueue’

    Gaana surprises listeners with new feature ‘AutoQueue’

    Mumbai: Music streaming app, Gaana has unveiled its latest product feature ‘AutoQueue’ that promises to offer personalised music listening to its users.

    The newly introduced feature is powered by a machine learning algorithm that factors the probability of songs being heard together (past behavior) as well as similarity of music, tempo/bpm, etc to predict possible songs a user would like to hear after they have manually played one song. The algorithm analyses thousands of signals and data points to come up with personalised song suggestions.

    The feature enables consumers to hit up a song and indulge in seamless streaming while Gaana plays similar songs on its own. The benefit is that it will dramatically reduce the time spent in manual searching & solves the problem of “listener’s block” (where one struggles to think of the next song to play). Autoqueue also makes the discovery of new music easier, as listeners get served apt songs they might not know of on their own.

    Gaana CEO Sandeep Lodha said, “In the last year and a half, audio streaming has played a major role in people’s lives and consumption is on the up. With AutoQueue we are going one step further to hyper-personalise each user’s app experience making it effortless to listen to great music. The feature is born of Gaana’s user research & tech capabilities and gives personalised endless background track to the lives our users live in the foreground.”

    The brand has also released an ad film to communicate the ease & joy of music listening with AutoQueue. The lighthearted commercial shows two girls going for a short drive that turns to a never-ending long drive, as Gaana AutoQueue keeps playing surprisingly apt songs that they love.

  • COVID-19 impact: Smartphone usage spiked during the lockdown, says report

    COVID-19 impact: Smartphone usage spiked during the lockdown, says report

    KOLKATA: In the wake of the second wave of COVID-19 and lockdown across India, people relied more on their phones to beat boredom. InMobi’s Second Wave Lockdown Audience Insights Report says that, mobile phone usage went up as users searched for entertainment, gaming, music, and social networking while staying indoors.

    According to the report, 2021’s lockdown saw users relying on their smartphones specifically around weekends, compared to weekdays in 2020. Students, working professionals, and mothers were among the most engaged during the second wave lockdown. 

    However, the users’ app consumption behavior varied for each group. Students relied more on music, gaming, and OTT, compared to working professionals who consumed news, OTT, productivity, social, and shopping, while mothers invested their time on gaming, lifestyle, and education apps.

    “We have witnessed a drastic acceleration of the mobile-first consumer economy since the onset of the pandemic. With the second wave, we see that these “new normal” mobile-first consumer habits and preferences have become more mainstream,” said InMobi Asia Pacific managing director Vasuta Agarwal.

    With states reporting all-time high Covid cases, the report observed that 25-35 years old stayed indoors the highest during the lockdown, mostly due to the limited vaccination opportunities. Interestingly, people in the 35-44 age groups were seen stepping out the highest.

    As per the report, hospitals, clinics, and medical stores witnessed a spike of 597 per cent compared to 398 per cent last year. Supermarkets and essential stores saw an 89 per cent spike against 44 per cent last year, as consumers visited local stores to meet their daily needs. While a lot of consumers found cooking as a hobby last year, this year witnessed an increase in footfalls in restaurants from 7 per cent to 23 per cent.

    This was a result of relaxed lockdowns where takeaways and deliveries were allowed, helping consumers break the monotony of home-cooked meals by occasionally eating out. The footfall at each of the above places of interest during the lockdowns in 2020 & 2021 was indexed against overall footfalls observed across the above-mentioned places of interest and supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, and flea markets.

    Despite transport being open to the public in the second lockdown, travel and transport hubs saw an all-time low during the second wave from 9 per cent last year to 4 per cent now. While rail travel had started to pick up until June, the new cases reported in India again forced people to shelter at homes. While footfall at movie theaters was at a decline, visits to lodging reduced further by 15 per cent, mounting on the already low footfalls due to the fear of the pandemic.

    “Social distancing, work from home, and lock-down regulations have boosted consumer mobile consumption as people rely on mobile entertainment spanning games, social media, and video streaming. With the second wave hitting us, consumers have adopted to the online world already and are well versed with this,” Agarwal added.

  • IKEA enters Bengaluru with eCommerce & mobile shopping app

    Mumbai: Swedish home furnishing retailer IKEA on Thursday announced the launch of its eCommerce services and mobile shopping app in Bengaluru. The people of Bengaluru will now be able to choose from over 8,000+ functional and sustainable home furnishing products and solutions from the furnishing giant’s website.

    This announcement comes soon after the brand opened its second IKEA India store in Navi Mumbai in December 2020, and the recent online entry into Gujarat. IKEA’s much awaited Bengaluru market entry, led by eCommerce and mobile shopping app is the first step in entering the market and marks a significant milestone in the Swedish retailer’s new retail direction which aims to bring it closer to where people are, focusing on both digital and physical formats with an omnichannel approach.

    IKEA already has an online presence today in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat, and Vadodara.  

    The IKEA online store will provide solutions, inspiration and ideas which reflect the home furnishing needs of the many people in Bengaluru. The newly launched IKEA mobile shopping app features product recommendations, ratings, and reviews, along with easier searching and browsing experience. The app also allows customers to add the products to their shopping list even while physically browsing through the products in the store. Customers can also find a built-in barcode scanner which will help them learn more details about the products, including materials and dimensions.

    IKEA India CEO & chief sustainability officer Peter Betzel said, “Karnataka is a very important market for IKEA and Bengaluru is one of the largest home furnishing markets in India. We will bring a complete omnichannel offer to the market and are excited to take the first step now with the launch of our eCommerce channel and meeting the many people in Bengaluru with their aspirations and dreams for a better life at home. IKEA will also open a big IKEA store, close to 400,000 sq. ft. in Nagasandra within a year. The store will be connected to the Nagasandra metro station, supporting faster and greener commute for the many people to the IKEA store. Over time, we will also open a city centre store within Bengaluru to be even more accessible and connect with many more people.”

    Over the next five years, across different IKEA businesses in Bengaluru, the company plans to engage around 2500 workers directly with 50 per cent diversity across all levels and will generate close to 1200 indirect jobs linked with its business operations. IKEA works with nine Home Furnishing suppliers in Karnataka including a social entrepreneur engaging 1200 local artisans, thereby increasing its local sourcing footprint in the state. 

  • Short-video app Changa ropes in Abhay Ojha as CEO

    New Delhi : Tech firm BITCS has roped in Abhay Ojha as the CEO of its short video app, Changa.

    According to the company, Ojha’s main role will be to scale up the platform and bolster its content offerings.

    Ojha has worked with Star India and ZEEL in the past, after which he set up a company called the Audit Next Research Services India in December, 2017.

    Before that, he was the co-founder and chief business officer of Fearless Media, which had launched the Marathi news channel – Maharashtra1.

    “The platform has ten million active users, with two million users generating content every day,” said Ojha.

    The platform has recently introduced some AR features, filters and face mark stickers. The app had recorded over four download within days of its launch. It also provides the option to share the short videos on WhatsApp.

  • McDonald’s India – north and east offers special deals for vaccinated customers

    New Delhi: Fast-food chain McDonald’s announced on Tuesday that its restaurants in north and east India will offer special deals to its customers who are vaccinated.

    The announcement is part of its initiative- ‘We Care’ aimed at encouraging its customers to join the fight against COVID-19 and get themselves vaccinated. Customers can avail the limited time offer by uploading their vaccination certificate on McDonald’s mobile app under the ‘Got Vaccinated’ tab, along with basic details. Post this, they will receive a unique code via SMS that can be redeemed through Getmcdonalds.com. Customers can opt for contactless delivery or contactless take away/in-store, wherever allowed by the local authorities.

    Last month, McDonald’s started employee vaccination covering more than 5,000 employees in its corporate office and restaurants across 11 states in north and east India. “Vaccination is an important step in our country’s fight against the pandemic, one that requires all of us to work together and do our part, including encouraging others to get vaccinated. As a brand with a deep connection with people, we are glad to contribute towards the greater cause in our unique way for the people we serve,” said Connaught Plaza Restaurants’ chief operating officer, Rajeev Ranjan.

    Meanwhile, the fast-food chain is continuously making changes under its global Safety+ program. Hand sanitizers are available at all restaurants all the time for everyone to use. Front counters have been fitted with protective screens and contactless ordering, payment, and contactless delivery options are available for customers to minimize human contact. 

  • Amazon to pull the plug on Prime Now globally

    Amazon to pull the plug on Prime Now globally

    New Delhi: E-commerce giant Amazon has decided to pull the plug on its standalone Prime Now delivery app globally. The platform was launched in 2014. Its two-hour delivery options will now be integrated on its main app and website.

    It is important to note that Amazon has already moved the Prime Now experience to Amazon in India, Japan and Singapore and retired the Prime Now app and website. It is now suspending the operations in all other countries as well. “To make this experience even more seamless for customers, we are moving the experience from a separate Prime Now app onto the Amazon app and website so customers can shop all Amazon has to offer from one convenient location,” it said in a blog post.

    Now, there will be one convenient app for shopping, tracking orders and contacting customer service.   

    “In the US, we began making two-hour delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market available on Amazon in 2019. Globally, we’ll move our third-party partners and local stores to the Amazon shopping experience before the Prime Now app and website are retired later this year,” said Amazon vice-president of grocery, Stephanie Landry, adding that the platform will be completely shut down by the end of 2021.

    The company said that the feedback from customers who have shopped for two-hour delivery on Amazon has been overwhelmingly positive and it’s a natural next step to simplify the ultrafast delivery experience globally. In the US, customers can now easily add items from their Alexa shopping list to their Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market shopping cart.