Flipkart said on Tuesday it has expanded its hyperlocal service to six new cities, seeking customers for doorstep delivery of daily essentials during the coronavirus pandemic.

Flipkart Quick is now available in Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Noida, Hyderabad and Pune and will go to other cities this year gradually, said the company.

“Hyperlocal capabilities are invaluable in enhancing the online shopping experience for consumers and boosting supply chain operations for e-commerce companies,” said Sandeep Karwa, vice-president, Flipkart. “It is important to explore ecosystem partnerships to strengthen such capabilities and accelerate faster, reliable deliveries to customers.”

He said Flipkart remains committed to creating solutions that will not only deliver greater value to the customers but also boost local farmers and suppliers apart from providing a fillip to entrepreneurship.

Flipkart Quick was launched in Bengaluru in 2020 to widen the accessibility of products and enable quick delivery for consumers who order products from Flipkart hubs in their location. The service offers an assortment of more than 3,000 products in categories such as fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat, grocery, mobiles, electronics and baby care.

Flipkart Quick leverages the company’s investment in Ninjacart and strategic partnerships with other local vendors to build an end-to-end ecosystem that enables customers to get the best quality fruits and vegetables at a great value. Shadowfax,

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Short video app Chingari said on Monday it has partnered with streaming platform Biiggbang Amusement, which focuses on content for users that matches well with their schedule.

“At Biiggbang Amusement, our constant endeavour is to present stories that can teleport the audience to another world and satisfy their need of entertainment regardless of the time crunch. Curating and getting content from around the world to add it to the Indian milieu is what we thrive on and I firmly believe, this collaboration with Chingari aligns perfectly with what we are trying to achieve. Also, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce our tagline – ‘Jab Bhi Kare Mann, Entertainment Dan Dana Dan’, as this exclusive partnership will help us achieve exactly that,” said Sudip Mukherjee, Founder and CEO, Biiggbang Amusement.

With carefully curated content from award winning directors to fresh stories, Biiggbang Amusement boasts of a prominent content library, including some of the most notable short films that have been screened at film festivals across the globe.

“At Chingari we have always strived to add more stickiness to the platform through our innovative offering and tie-up. We believe this new and exclusive collaboration with Biiggbang Amusement will be a great value add for our customers and will also help us in attracting new customers,” said Sumit Ghosh, co-founder, and CEO, Chingari app.

Chingari is one of the most popular short video apps in India. The content creators on the app are spoilt for choice and the company continues to add premium, engaging content to facilitate its users to keep making interesting content day after day. It is thus not surprising to note that the average engagement time on Chingari is better than many established platforms like SnapChat and Facebook.

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Infosys, Facebook, Genpact, Cognizant among others have reached out to employees and offered support in different ways as the second wave of Covid cases sees an exponential rise.

Companies are advising employees not to venture out of their homes and give prominence to the health and safety of the family. This is of significance as several IT and Tech firms were going to take a call of work-from-home scenario from June and had plans to allow some employees to come back to offices. But that seems to be now extended.

In an email to employees on Monday, titled “Stay Safe from the Covid-19 Second Wave,” Infosys chief operating officer U B Pravin Rao cited the enormous number of fresh cases being reported daily, and said, “I write today to request you all put your health and that of your family members above everything else. Do not leave your homes without wearing a protective mask, practice social distancing, and avoid crowds and closed spaces… We request you not to venture out unless its an emergency.”

ALSO READ: Monday Blues: Second Covid-19 wave stings indices as markets drop 1.8%

Infosys has also asked all staff to work from home unless they have to report to work as part of a business continuity plan team.

Facebook India has announced three company-wide paid holidays “to give people additional time to rest and recharge”.

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Apple said it has reached an agreement with the right-wing social app Parler that could lead to its reinstatement in the company’s app store.

Apple kicked out Parler in January over ties to the deadly January 6 siege on the US Capitol.

In a letter to two Republican lawmakers in Congress, Apple said it has been in substantial conversations with Parler over how the company plans to moderate content on its network.

Before its removal from the app store, Parler was a hotbed of hate speech, Nazi imagery, calls for violence (including violence against specific people) and conspiracy theories.

Apple declined to comment beyond the letter, which didn’t provide details on how Parler plans to moderate such content.

In the letter, Apple said Parlor’s proposed changes would lead to approval of the app.

Parler did not immediately respond to a message for comment. As of midday Monday, Parler was not yet available in the app store and Apple did not give a timeline for when it will be reinstated.

According to Apple’s letter, Parler proposed changes to its app and how it moderates content. Apple said the updated app incorporating those changes should be available as soon as Parler releases it.

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By Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON (Reuters) – What do you do with a $69 million artwork that doesn’t physically exist?

That’s the question faced by the Singapore-based investor calling himself Metakovan, who made headlines last month when he bought the digital artwork “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” by the American artist Beeple at Christie’s.

The work is a non-fungible token (NFT) – a new type of virtual asset that has its ownership status and authenticity verified by blockchain. NFTs have exploded in popularity in 2021, with prices skyrocketing.

Metakovan, real name Vignesh Sundaresan, plans to put the artwork on display in four virtual world environments. He is working with architects to design gallery complexes that the public can enter via web browsers or virtual reality technology.

But art is just one part of a new economy of blockchain-based virtual worlds where land, buildings, avatars and even names can be bought and sold as NFTs, often fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars. In these environments, referred to as the metaverse, people can wander around with friends, visit virtual buildings and attend virtual events.

Metakovan’s plans are an ambitious undertaking, but he says he is the world’s biggest NFT investor. His collection of NFTs and other crypto assets, the Metapurse fund, is valued at $189 million, according to NonFungible.com, a site that aggregates sales history data from NFT marketplaces.

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A 2021 remake of Get Shorty might not have much use for John Travolta’s Miami mobster character. The debt collector role could go to a bot.

You can test this hypothesis in a most unlikely place to roll out a new technology: the Indian countryside. The setting is perhaps not as odd as it seems, with about 5% to 10% of the country’s farmers not repaying their tractor loans on time. The explanations for tardiness range from failed crops to medical emergencies and strategic defaults in anticipation of state-mandated debt waivers, a regular feature of the political economy.

But delinquency often stems from more mundane reasons: Borrowers forget their due dates, or fail to withdraw cash to pay the nonbank financiers who provide the bulk of loans for farm equipment purchases.

Like in most emerging markets, these last-mile hurdles pose a frustratingly complex challenge to India’s creditors. They also increase the overall risk premium for rural advances.

Of late, three things have changed. First, the world’s cheapest data prices have made smartphones ubiquitous. Second, a strong push for financial inclusion has seen more than 400 million no-frills savings accounts opened in the last seven years. Finally, banks are now on a nationwide mobile payment network that is fast, convenient and supports apps like Google Pay and Walmart Inc.’s PhonePe. Google has even recommended the architecture to the U. S. Federal Reserve.

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HSBC Holdings Plc has scrapped the executive floor of its Canary Wharf headquarters in London and turned the private offices of its top staff into client meeting rooms and collaborative spaces.

Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn and other senior managers have been kicked out of their offices on the 42nd-floor and will hot desk on an open-plan floor two storeys below, Quinn told the Financial Times in an interview. The offices were empty half of the time because senior staff were traveling around the world, which was a “waste of real estate,” he said.

Quinn told the newspaper that he won’t be in the office five days a week, saying “it’s unnecessary” and “the new reality of life.” A representative for HSBC confirmed the FT report to Bloomberg News.

The London-based bank, which expects to eventually shrink its property footprint by 40%, doesn’t plan to renew many of its city-center leases due in the next three to five years, Quinn said. The lender is also shifting to a policy of about two employees per desk, excluding branches, he said.

Last year’s abrupt shift to remote working has sparked a debate across industries about future demand for office space, prompting a number of global banks and other large firms to rethink how employees operate. Standard Chartered Plc this month formalized hybrid working for staff across its global operations after 84% of employees asked to keep the flexible arrangements pioneered during the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, not all banks are embracing a permanent shift to working from home. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said in February that remote work was “an aberration that we are going to correct as quickly as possible.”

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US space agency NASA is set to launch SpaceX Crew Dragon second flight to the International Space Station on April 22, it said.

The Crew-2 with four astronauts on board, will lift-off at 6:11 a.m. EDT on April 22, from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Crew-2 flight will carry NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur — whoa-will serve as the mission’s spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively — along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronauta-Akihikoa-Hoshidea-and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomasa-Pesquet, whoa-will serve as mission specialists to the space station, the space agency said in a statement.

The mission is the second of the six certified, crew missions NASA, and SpaceX will fly as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Programme. Crew-1 successfully docked into the ISS in November, last year.

The Crew-2 astronauts will remain aboard the space station for approximately six months as expedition crew members, along with three crewmates who will launch via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The increase of the full space station crew complement to seven members — over the previous six – will allow NASA to effectively double the amount of science that can be conducted in space, NASA said.

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Smartphone maker OPPO on Friday said that it is all set to launch A74 5G in India on April 20.

According to the company, the upcoming smartphone is going to be company’s first 5G-ready phone under Rs 20,000.

The brand has been consistently working to bring in customer-centric meaningful innovations and advanced technologies across its portfolio, the company said in a statement.

This is OPPO’s first phone with 5G compatibility in the pocket friendly segment, it added.

The upcoming smartphone will a 90Hz refresh rate.

According to GizmoChina, the smartphone might feature a 6.5-inch IPS LCD screen that delivers an FHD+ resolution.

It is likely to be powered by Snapdragon 480 chipset and paired with 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage.

OPPO A series phones have time and again proved expertise in delivering futuristic state-of-the art technology innovations, user-friendly design aesthetics, trendy and fashionable form factor and all this at a competitive price point, the company said.

The Chinese smartphone maker recently launched a new smartphone under its F series, F19, for the India market.

Priced at Rs 18,990 for the sole 6GB+128GB storage variant, OPPO F19 comes in two colour variants — prism black and midnight blue.

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Apple is all set for its first event of the year on April 20 and media reports suggest that new iPads with 5G support and Apple TV upgrades along with a deep dive into iOS 14.5 are on the anvil.

Called ‘Spring Loaded,’ the Apple event will showcase some exciting new products and features.

According to The Verge, new iPad Pros will reportedly get a 5G support, speed boost with a new chip similar to Apple’s M1, a Thunderbolt port for faster transfers and compatibility with more devices, and support for 5G.

“The larger 12.9-inch Pro may also be the first Apple device to feature a Mini LED display,” the report said on Thursday.

The iPad mini is also likely to receive some fresh upgrades, like a larger display and updated internals.

The long-awaited ‘AirTags’ could also be revealed at the event.

“Apple may have a new podcast strategy, the Apple Pencil could get a redesign and MacBook Pro might finally get its ports back,” according to the report.

The Apple TV, last updated in 2017, is likely to get support for 120Hz displays and a new processor.

Apple announced the iPad Pro in March last year and the latest models for 2021 are expected to arrive soon.

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