Author: Shweta Srivastava

Key Highlights

• As part of the transaction, existing shareholders of Flipkart Singapore and PhonePe Singapore purchased shares in PhonePe India directly
• This is a process that started earlier this year. It completes the move to make PhonePe a fully India-domiciled company
• More than one in four Indians are now using PhonePe with over 400 million registered users

Flipkart has announced that the digital payments platform PhonePe will now be fully owned separately. The e-commerce giant Flipkart and PhonePe are now established as separate entities following the partial separation announced in December 2020, the company said in a statement. The Flipkart Group acquired the PhonePe group in 2016.

Existing shareholders in the Walmart-led Flipkart Singapore and PhonePe Singapore purchased shares in PhonePe India as part of the deal. According to the company, this completes a process started earlier this year to make PhonePe a wholly India-based company.

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CEO of Flipkart Group, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, said, “We are confident PhonePe will continue to scale and achieve its vision of providing financial inclusion to millions of Indians.”

According to a TechCrunch report, Flipkart has no plans to re-enter the consumer payments market after splitting from PhonePe. PhonePe had already announced that it wanted to become an independent entity in 2020.

The majority shareholder in both business groups will continue to be Wallmart. More than one in four Indians are now using PhonePe with over 400 million registered users.

Since its launch, PhonePe has digitized more than 35 million offline merchants spread across tier 2, 3, and 4 cities, and beyond.

Sameer Nigam, Founder and CEO at PhonePe, said, “We are looking forward to the next phase of our growth as we invest in new businesses — like insurance, wealth management, and lending, while also enabling the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India.”

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Key Highlights

• Netflix collaborates with Nike to stream workout videos
• People of all fitness levels have a variety of options with the Nike Training Club app
• These videos will be distributed in two batches by Netflix and will be available in a variety of languages

It has been announced that Netflix and Nike Training Club would collaborate. On December 30, the streaming platform will make Nike fitness videos available to all Netflix customers on iOS and Android devices. Users will be guided through their wellness plans and exercise routines by these videos.

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These videos will be available in several languages and will be released in two batches. In two different batches, it will perform 30 hours of fitness sessions that will be accessible to all Netflix subscribers in a variety of languages. Users will be able to access the classes by searching “Nike” once they are live. The episodes—a total of 30 hours of content—that will be available on Netflix are mentioned below.

The first batch is reportedly set to begin on December 30 and the second round is set to begin in 2023. According to reports, the initial batch will consist of 45 episodes and feature programs like Feel-Good Fitness, HIIT & Strength with Tara, Fall in Love with Vinyasa Yoga, Kickstart Fitness with the Basics, and Two Weeks to a Stronger Core.

For the unversed, with guidance from Nike’s experienced trainers, the Nike Training Club app provides “a variety of activities for people of all fitness levels, including strength training, yoga, and high-intensity exercises.” It was introduced in 2009, and Apple Watch support began in 2018. It solicits users’ fitness objectives and provides them with customized training videos, advice, and inspiration to meet those objectives. Exercises for people with disabilities were also added to the app earlier this year.

Netflix has previously made investments in healthcare content. It debuted a Headspace feature on mindfulness and meditation last year. With the introduction of Netflix Games a few months ago, Netflix expanded its testing beyond healthcare to the gaming industry.

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Key Highlights

• Google aims to make badly handwritten prescriptions readable
• Google Lens will develop an AI tool that can translate poorly written medical notes
• The company hasn’t given any details on when it plans to release this feature to everyone

Nobody, not even a doctor, can read a doctor’s handwriting – it’s an evergreen joke. Well, doctors rush through writing prescriptions since they work long hours and attend to many patients each day. But after that, it becomes quite challenging to comprehend or even recognize the medications listed in the prescription. In order to make that task quick and easy, Google is developing a model that will accurately read your doctor’s poorly handwritten prescriptions.

The search engine giant said it could use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to allow individuals to recognize and highlight medications in handwritten prescriptions. The feature is still being worked on, so users might not see it for a while.

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The company hasn’t given any details on when it plans to release this feature to everyone. Google says it’s working with pharmacists to help people better understand their prescriptions.

The feature is still in the research prototype stage and is not yet accessible to the general public. According to what we do know, though, users will be able to upload a snapshot from their photo library or take a picture of the prescription they want to have decoded. The Google app will identify and highlight the medications listed in the prescription once the image has been uploaded.

Google Lens will develop an AI tool that can translate poorly written medical notes. The feature was presented by the company during the “AI for India” event. Google said, “Much work still remains to be done before this system is ready for the real world.” The tech company’s Lens feature can be used to translate languages and detect objects (such as plants and animals).

In the upcoming months, we ought to have more clarity on this. Google has noticed that Indians around the world mainly use Google Lens for different use cases. This may have motivated the company to provide users with more AI solutions for great convenience.

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Key Highlights

• Google is working on an Android answer to Apple’s Find My network
• This will allow users to track their lost or stolen gadgets
• They can be easily connected to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth

This month, Google released version 50.22 of the most recent Play Service upgrade. The latest Play Store upgrade has also recently started rolling out by the tech giant. Both of these updates come with a number of new improvements including support for digital car keys and an improved ID verification process among other things. The most recent changes to the Google Play Store and Services have also given some hints that the tech giant is working on an Android version of Apple’s Find My network.

According to a report by GizmoChina, Google is likely getting ready to roll out its own version of Apple’s Find My network since references to it have been found in the most recent Google Play upgrades. The most recent updates to Google Play mention an encrypted last-known-location report and a “privacy-centric framework.” These references imply that the company is developing an Android-specific Find My Device network.

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Android Apple-like Find My Network: How Will It Work?

This network, like Apple’s Find My network, will enable users to locate their lost or stolen devices even when they are not Bluetooth or Wi-Fi enabled and even while they are switched off.

Google was first said to be developing such a network earlier, in 2021. Since then, no additional network progress has been announced.

Google Play Updates: Other Improvements

Apart from Android’s guessed Find My network tips, the new Google Play update also includes some other improvements. Android devices have a new feature that automatically accesses apps when storage space is low.

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Key Highlights

• Google announces YouTube courses in India
• This will be another subscription-based model for YouTube creators
• YouTube offers several other monetization opportunities, including advertising and paid sponsorships

On December 19, YouTube made the announcement that it would permit certified creators in India to offer both free and paid courses to users starting next year. With this move, YouTube will compete directly with domestic educational technology companies like Byju’s, Unacademy, and PhysicsWallah, all of which got their start on the Google-owned platform.

Although there has been educational content on YouTube for several years, this will enable artists to provide viewers with a more thorough, organized learning experience. In exchange, creators will get a brand-new revenue stream in addition to subscriptions, channel memberships, and advertising.

Creators can also provide users with other content like documents, photos, and PDFs Via the YouTube app.

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The platform will share revenue using the “same kind of principles,” according to YouTube’s India Director Ishan John Chatterjee, with a majority of the revenue paid out to the creator. However, the precise percentage has not yet been made public. 55 percent of YouTube’s ad revenue is typically distributed to producers, with the other 45 percent going to its partner program.

The program will launch in the beta phase in the next months with producers including LearnoHub, Speak English With Aishwarya, and Telusko offering a range of academic and professional courses in several Indian languages.

YouTube will initially concentrate on three main areas during the beta stage: digital skills (such as coding languages), professional and entrepreneurial skills (how to establish a business, how to perform well in an interview), and individual passions (Photography). In response to comments from both authors and spectators, it plans to gradually extend these sections.

The timing of this launch, however, coincides with a slowdown in demand for Indian edtech companies as a result of students returning to traditional offline learning methods as schools, colleges, and physical tutoring facilities are all reopening.

The declining demand for online learning, coupled with a lack of funding, has forced many education technology companies to resort to aggressive cost-cutting initiatives such as mass layoffs, closing non-core industries, and shelving expansion plans.

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