Category: Asia

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India’s MX Player expands to US, UK and other markets in international push

MX Player, the on-demand video streaming service owned by India’s conglomerate Times Internet, is expanding to more than half a dozen new international markets including the U.S. and the UK to supply more entertainment content to millions of people trapped in their homes.

The Singapore-headquartered on-demand video streaming service, which raised $111 million in a round led by Tencent last year, said it has expanded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Nepal in addition to the U.S. and the UK.

Like in India, MX Player will offer its catalog at no charge to users in the international markets and monetize through ads, Karan Bedi, chief executive of the service, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The streaming service, which has amassed over 175 million monthly active users in India, is offering locally relevant titles in each market, he said. This is notably different from Disney’s Hotstar expansion into select international markets, where it has largely aimed to cater to the Indian diaspora.

MX Player is not currently offering any originally produced titles in any international market — instead offering movies and shows it has licensed from global and local studios — but the streamer plans to change that in the coming months, said Bedi.

Even as the expansion comes at a time when the world is grappling with containing and fighting the coronavirus outbreak, Bedi said MX Player had already been testing the service in several markets for a few months.

“We believe in meeting this rapidly rising demand from discerning entertainment lovers with stories that strike a chord. To that end, we have collaborated with some of the best talent and content partners globally who will help bring us a step closer to becoming the go-to destination for entertainment across the world,” said Nakul Kapur, Business Head for International markets at MX Player, in a statement.

Times Internet acquired MX Player, an app popular for efficiently playing a plethora of locally-stored media files on entry-level Android smartphones, in 2018 for about $140 million. In the years since, Times Internet has introduced video streaming service to it, and then live TV channels in India.

MX Player has also bundled free music streaming (through Gaana, another property owned by Times Internet) and has introduced in-app casual games for users in the country.

Bedi said the company is working on bringing these additional services to international markets, and also looking to enter additional regions including the Middle East and South Asia.

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Y Combinator-backed Kosh is a neobank for blue-collar workers in India

Dozens of startups have stepped up in India in recent quarters to improve banking experience for millions of users and businesses in the country. As a result, tens of thousands of people who could not get a loan or a credit card from a bank can now secure both from fintech startups.

But this push to bring financial inclusion to everyone still has many areas to cover. Blue-collar workers, for instance, are still facing challenges in availing some basic banking services.

Kosh, a Y Combinator-backed startup (W20), is beginning to tackle this challenge. It groups three or as many as ten blue-collar workers and gives them a loan.

“When a user logs into our Android app, they are able to apply for a loan. But before they do that, they need to add some of their colleagues and friends who are also looking for a loan,” explained Aayush Goel, co-founder of Kosh, in an interview with TechCrunch.

This way of banding together people allows Kosh to charge a lower rate of interest on the loan, said Goel.

“We have borrowed this from the world of microfinance. Essentially, we have a joint liability model. Let us say there were three people who were looking for a loan. We band them together and instead of giving each of them a separate loan, we give the group one loan” he said.

Aayush Goel (pictured above), and Sahil Bansal co-founded Kosh in March last year

In each group, at least one member is credit-worthy in the traditional sense, he explained. The startup also uses alternative data such as information gleaned from text messages to determine a person’s eligibility.

Such an arrangement has traditionally seen fewer people default (or fall behind paying their debt) because of social pressure from their colleagues and friends, as all of them are liable.

Kosh started to disburse loans in December. It currently offers loans up to twice the salary of an individual and over a tenure of up to 10 months, said Goel. The startup has disbursed close to 150 loans worth $35,000. It works with a Noida-based non-banking financial company to fund these loans.

The startup said it plans to broaden its neobanking offering this year by creating bank accounts for its customers. “There is a general lack of discipline in how these people spend their money. Having access to a bank account that works for them could prove very useful,” said Goel.

In recent years, a handful of startups such as Bangalore-based Open and NiYO Solutions have developed neobanks or alternative banks to serve businesses and individuals. In January, two former Google Pay executives announced their own neobank startup that aims to serve millennials.

GIGI Benefits, another Y Combinator-backed startup (W20), offers insurance and savings — perks that only full-time employees typically have — to gig-economy workers and freelancers.

“We help each worker set aside part of a paycheque to cover their costs of insurance, short-term expenses, and plan for their retirement,” said Sowmya Rao, founder and chief executive of GIGI Benefits, in a post.

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YC-backed EduRev wants to democratize online learning in India

As edtech startups emerge and expand in India, millions of students in the country now have an additional option to choose from when they prepare for competitive exams.

But despite the proliferation of cheap Android handsets and availability of some of the world’s cheapest mobile data plans, online learning platforms in India are struggling to appeal to the masses because their offering is too expensive for many.

EduRev, a Y Combinator-backed startup (W20), thinks it can address this. The two-year-old startup offers an all-you-can watch catalog in a Netflix-esque fashion that costs between $20 to $50 a year — compared to anything between $300 to $4,000 that other platforms charge.

The startup has partnered with teachers around the country to make their classes — aimed at primary school to high-school and to students preparing for undergraduate-level course — available on the platform.

Students can come and consume some of this content — which includes notes, previous year exam papers, mock tests, and class videos — for no charge, but access to full-course and additional catalogs requires becoming a subscriber, explained Kunaal Satija, co-founder of EduRev, in an interview with TechCrunch.

“Most of the classes in India are not efficient. The vast majority of students are not really learning much. There is also a severe lack of good teachers in the country. And if offline to online transition did not already have a learning curve attached to it, it is also expensive,” he said.

To replicate the traditional learning experience, EduRev also has a social aspect to it. Students can follow their friends and track their progress and participate in helping other students clear their doubts and pose their own questions. These features are available to non-paying users as well.

The price and wider-catalog availability, Satija said, has helped the startup gain millions of users. The platform has amassed over 450,000 monthly active users.

He declined to share how many paying users EduRev currently has, but said the startup has been operationally profitable for last four months.

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Amazon rolls out Alexa-powered voice shopping experience in India

Amazon today rolled out an Alexa-enabled voice-powered shopping feature in India as the e-commerce giant looks for new ways to engage with customers in one of its key overseas markets.

The American giant said the feature, currently rolling out to Android users, is available “primarily in English,” though it understands proper nouns and regional words across various languages.

“As we brought this functionality to Indian customers, we built custom functionality to cater to India’s unique requirements. We built this keeping the Indian customer at the center, optimizing for myriad accents and products relevant to the Indian customer,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This is the first time Amazon is bringing this feature outside of the U.S., the spokesperson said.

Customers will be able to use Alexa to search for items on the e-commerce platform, add them to the cart and proceed to checkout — by saying commands such as “Alexa, show me sarees,” “Alexa, add saree to my cart” and “Alexa, go to checkout.”

Once the order has been placed, users can check the whereabouts of the order through voice as well, by asking “Alexa, where is my delivery?”

Amazon has claimed in the past that its voice-enabled shopping feature is gaining traction, but according to one 2018 report, most users were not showing great appetite for this experience.

But India, where the company has vast presence and has invested over $5.5 billion in local businesses, may provide the company with some breakthrough.

As hundreds of Indians came online in the last decade, many have gravitated toward voice to engage with apps and internet services and make searches, as they are not comfortable with typing in English. Last year, Google reported that voice queries had grown by 270% over a year in India.

“Recognizing the opportunities, several well-known brands have enabled voice-activated search, including ride sharing apps, e-commerce sites, telcos, and car brands, to name a few,” it wrote in a blog post.

Amazon’s Alexa now speaks Hindi

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PC shipments expected to drop this year because of coronavirus outbreak

The coronavirus outbreak could result in at least a 3.3% drop — and as high as a 9% dip — in the volume of PCs that will ship globally this year, research firm Canalys reported Thursday evening in its revised projections to clients.

PC shipments will be down between 10.1% to 20.6% in Q1 2020, the firm estimated. The impact will remain visible in Q2, when the shipments are expected to drop between 8.9% (best-case scenario, per Canalys) and 23.4% (worst-case scenario), it said.

In the best-case scenario, the outbreak would mean 382 million units will ship in 2020, down 3.4% from 396 million last year.

The worst case makes a deeper dent, stating that about 362 million units will ship this year, down 8.5% from last year.

“In the best-case scenario, production levels are expected to revert to full capacity by April 2020, hence the biggest hit will be to sell-in shipments in the first two quarters, with the market recovering in Q3 and Q4,” the firm said.

“Thus, worldwide PC market shipments are expected to decline 3.4% year on year in 2020, with Q1 2020 down by 10% and Q2 2020 by 9%. PC market supply will normalize by Q3 2020. On a yearly basis, Canalys expects the worldwide PC market will slowly begin its recovery starting in 2021.”

The worst-case scenario assumes that production levels will not return to their full capacity by June 2020. “Under the assumptions of this scenario, production and demand levels in China will take even longer to recover and Q2 will suffer a decline on a par with Q1 as a consequence. It will be as late as Q4 2020 until we see a market recovery.”

In either of the scenarios, China, one of the world’s largest PC markets, will be most impacted. In worst-case scenarios, “the Chinese market will suffer heavily in 2020 under this scenario, with a 12% year-on-year decline over 2019, and subsequent stabilization taking even longer, with 2021 forecast shipments lagging 6 million behind the best-case scenario. The expected CAGR between 2021 and 2024 in China is 6.3%,” Canalys stated.

China, the global hub for production and supply chain, moved to contain the impact of coronavirus by first extending the official Lunar New Year holidays, which was followed by stringent travel restrictions to keep citizens safe. “This resulted in a significant drop in offline retail traffic and a dramatic fall in consumer purchases,” Canalys analysts said.

The outbreak has also resulted in supply shortages of components, such as PCBs and memory in China and other markets. “Likewise, channel partners have received notifications from key PC vendors over the last two weeks that their PC shipments and replacement parts can be expected to arrive in up to 14 weeks – over three times the usual delivery time – depending on where partners are located,” the firm said.

“Technology vendors and channel partners in the Asia Pacific region face the unexpected challenge of coping with the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus). The crisis was largely unforeseen, even in mid-January. Most leaders this year were anticipating disruption from political instability and natural disasters, not an epidemic,” wrote Sharon Hiu, an analyst at Canalys in a separate report.

The outbreak has impacted several more industries, including smartphones, automobiles, television, smart speakers and video game consoles.

Foxconn, a key manufacturer for Apple, said on Thursday that its 2020 revenue will be impacted by Wuhan coronavirus. The firm said its factories in India, Vietnam and Mexico are fully loaded and it is planning to expand overseas.

Earlier this month, Apple said it does not expect to meet revenue guidance for March quarter due to constrained iPhone supply and low demand due to the store closures in China.

The U.S. giant is expected to miss its schedule for mass producing a widely rumored affordable iPhone, while inventories for existing models could remain low until April or longer, Nikkei Asian Review reported on Wednesday.