Apple makes about Rs 1.5L every second, Microsoft pockets Rs 1.1L

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Apple makes about Rs 1.5L every second, Microsoft pockets Rs 1.1L

Do you know how much profit Apple makes every second? It is a staggering over $1,820 (over Rs 1.48 lakh), making the iPhone maker the world’s most profitable company — generating about $157 million (more than Rs 1,282 crore) a day.

Fellow tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet (the parent company of Google), as well as Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, also draw in more than a thousand dollars each second, which works out at over $100 million a day, according to new research by Tipalti, an accounting software financial technology business.

At the second spot, Microsoft makes about $1,404 (Rs 1.14 lakh) per second, and Berkshire Hathaway $1,348 (about Rs 1.10 lakh) a second.

“To put this into context, the average worker in the US is projected to earn $1.7 million in their lifetime, meaning the average American will earn less in their lifetime than every company on this list earns an hour,” according to the research.

The average annual salary in the US is $74,738, or $1,433.33 per week, meaning that Apple makes $387 (27.01 percent) more per second than the average American worker makes in a whole week.

While Alphabet makes $1,277 per second at the fourth spot, Meta Platforms generates $924 in profit every second.

At the other end of the scale, Uber Technologies made a huge loss of $6.8 billion in 2021, equating to $215 every second. Despite being the world’s largest ride-hailing app, Uber has famously never turned a profit.

General Electric saw the biggest increase in year-on-year profits of $10.68 billion, while Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) is close behind with a profit increase of $10.66 billion, according to the research.

Online retail giant Amazon saw the third largest increase in profits, making $9.74 billion more in 2021 than it did in 2020.

Samsung nurtures 426 tech startups via C-Lab programme

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Samsung nurtures 426 tech startups via C-Lab programme

Samsung has helped nurture a total of 426 startups — 182 in-house firms and 244 outside ones — through its Creative Lab (C-Lab) Outside programme since 2018, and the 244 outside startups have secured an accumulative investment of 430 billion won from various institutional investors.

When Joung Ji-won, the founder and CEO of Algocare Lab, decided to apply for a venture incubator programme of Samsung Electronics last year, her startup was in its third year of operation and already recognized for its innovative ideas for personalized nutrition management.

Still, she found it challenging to run and grow her startup in a country where big conglomerates continue to dominate the economy and are often seen squashing or acquiring nascent, small players.

“The most difficult thing was to hire talented people,” Joung told Yonhap News Agency during a press event of Samsung’s Creative Lab (C-Lab) Outside on, a startup acceleration programme to help encourage competently, prospective entrepreneurs outside the tech giant.

“Since joining the (Samsung) programme, it became much easier to recruit good talent,” she said, adding, “New hires said their parents are proud of them.”

Samsung, the world’s largest mobile phone and memory chip maker, began its in-house C-Lab program in 2012 to incubate creative ideas, turn them into business opportunities and stimulate the country’s startup ecosystem.

In 2015, Samsung introduced a spin-off programme for successful in-house startups to encourage employees’ entrepreneurship and go-for-it spirit.

Encouraged by positive responses, the tech giant, in 2018, began C-Lab Outside to nurture external, innovative tech companies younger than five years old by providing them with financial assistance of up to 100 million won ($73,700), office space, mentoring, and business consultation and cooperation.

“The purpose of C-Lab Outside is not about making financial gains, but quickly discovering promising young innovators and helping them firmly take root and grow into a big tree,” Hahn In-Kuk, head of Creativity & Innovation Center at Samsung Electronics, said during the event.

Hahn said Samsung is planning to “scale up” the program starting next year, where it will continuously check up on the growth of the program’s former participants, even after the one-year program ends, and make an investment, if necessary.

Lee Sang-min, CEO of Nobility, which makes autonomous delivery robots, said he found Samsung’s counseling service most helpful for running his five-year-old startup.

“There are many critical moments when a strategic decision needs to be made timely, and it was a huge relief that I could get help and mentoring services from Samsung,” said Lee, a graduate of mechanical engineering at Yonsei University.

He said his nascent venture was neither well-organized nor had the necessary manpower before participating in the program.

“We hadn’t even had a chief financial officer up until we had about 30-40 employees,” he said.

Neubility, founded in November 2017, successfully secured an investment total of 23 billion won this year, with the help of Samsung. The company now employs 75 people.

A pioneer in developing self-driving delivery robots in South Korea, the company has teamed up with Samsung Welstory, a Samsung catering subsidiary, to launch food delivery by robotic couriers in golf clubs.

Already 54 such autonomous robots, called “Neubie,” which are equipped with a camera system that enables them to perceive their environment and detect obstacles, are in service around the country. The startup is set to sign a deal to launch an additional 100 robots at golf courses, according to Lee.

Tax-filing websites sending users’ financial data to FB: Report

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Tax-filing websites sending users’ financial data to FB: Report

Major tax-filing websites such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer in the US are reportedly sending sensitive financial information to Facebook.

The information received by Facebook could be used by the company to improve its advertising algorithms, no matter whether the person using the tax filing service has an account on Facebook or other platforms operated by Meta, reports The Verge.

Users of the well-known service TaxAct, for example, are required to provide personal information in order to calculate their returns, such as their income and investment information.

A pixel on TaxAct’s website sends some of that information to Facebook, including users’ filing status, adjusted gross income, and refund amount.

Tax preparation website H&R Block also uses Meta Pixel which is embedded on its site. It collects data on users’ use of health savings accounts and the grants and costs associated with dependents’ college tuition.

TaxSlayer is another widely used filing service that sends personal information to Facebook as part of the social media platform’s “advanced matching” system. It collects data on website visitors in an effort to connect them to Facebook accounts.

“We take the privacy of our customers’ data very seriously,” Nicole Coburn, a spokesperson for TaxAct, was quoted as saying in the report.

Why Prosus’ $578 mn fair value doesn’t put BYJU’S valuation at $6 bn

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Why Prosus’ $578 mn fair value doesn’t put BYJU’S valuation at $6 bn

Global investment group Prosus has put the fair value of its 9.67 percent stake in BYJU’S at $578 million, which technically puts the current valuation of the edtech major at nearly $6 billion — last valued at $22 billion — but this is not the case as Prosus has changed its accounting treatment for BYJU’S.

In its September quarter results, Prosus classified BYJU’s as a non-controlling financial investment rather than an associate, as its shareholding dropped below 10 percent.

Prosus told Media in a statement on Wednesday that the investment group has changed the accounting treatment for BYJU’s and in the subsequent reporting periods, “the company will be accounted for as an investment”.

Prosus hasn’t sold any of its stake in BYJU’S, which reported a Rs 4,500 crore loss in FY21 due to accounting change (or Rs 12.5 crore loss daily), but “made Rs 27 crore in revenue per day in FY22”.

“The provision of BYJU’S audited financials did not align with the timing of the close of our financial reporting periods, so we did not have sufficient information to make fair assumptions for our Group’s financial statements. The fair value of the group’s BYJU’S investment was determined by a third-party firm,” a Prosus spokesperson informed.

According to industry experts, this is more of an accounting issue than a valuation markdown for BYJU’S.

“In September 2022, the group lost significant influence in BYJU’S as it no longer exerts significant influence over the financial and operating policies of the entity. The group recognized a gain on disposal of the associate of $22 million, including a reclassification of the accumulated foreign currency translation losses of $55 million,” Prosus said in its quarterly earnings report.

“The group accounts for its 9.67 percent effective interest in BYJU’S at fair value through other comprehensive income. The fair value of BYJU’S investment, subsequent to the loss of significant influence, is US$578 million,” it added.

BYJU’S has said it has embarked on a path to achieve group-level profitability by March 2023 with a three-pronged approach. It has consolidated all its K10 India subsidiaries into one unit to leverage its synergies.

Last month, the tech major took an unsecured loan of Rs 300 crore from its subsidiary Aakash Educational Services, which it acquired for more than $950 million, to bolster its “principal business activities”.

BYJU’S also raised $250 million from its existing investors in a fresh round of funding in October.

Proses said that macroeconomic conditions have changed in the several months preceding “our half-yearly financials, generally resulting in significant declines in company valuations across the technology sector”.

“Prosus Edtech retains its board representation and continues to support BYJU’S in their vision to expand access to quality education in India and beyond,” it added.

Google alerts users about 5 key holiday season scams

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Google alerts users about 5 key holiday season scams

Google has alerted Gmail users about five key scams and spams during the holiday season.

The company advised users to avoid gift card and giveaway frauds, charity-related scams, demographic targeting scams, subscription renewal frauds, and crypto scams.

The tech giant protects users from around 15 billion unwanted messages a day and blocks more than 99.9 percent of spam, phishing, and malware, the company said in a blog post.

Gift cards and giveaway frauds are common during the peak holiday season. Scammers may try to fool victims into buying a gift card for them, by pretending to be a recognized contact or offering a free present in exchange for their credit card number.

Moreover, if a giveaway seems too good to be true, it can be a scam.

Charity-related scams and phishing attempts are harmful to both the victims of the frauds and the charities that would have benefited from the donations.

Keep a look out for identity-based malicious emails, which may impersonate local parent-teacher association’s (PTA) board members or target certain age groups with fake emails, the company said.

Scams involving membership renewal may create fake antivirus services in an effort to attract victims with the promise of increased security.

Even though some scammers are highly skilled at making their messages appear believable, users should always check the sender’s email. If something seems wrong, it might be fake.

Crypto-based frauds frequently come in the form of variations, one of which attempts to extort money from a victim by threatening them.

1 in 2 Indians want loss limit of Rs 50-500 per game for fantasy gaming

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1 in 2 Indians want loss limit of Rs 50-500 per game for fantasy gaming

As the debate on online gaming heats up in India, more than one in two Indians (54 percent) want a loss limit of Rs 50-500 per game for online and fantasy gaming, a report said on Tuesday.

While platform operators term fantasy games as games of skill, most citizens believe they are a game of chance with financial risks involved.

While the Supreme Court has upheld its position and the position of the Punjab High Court in 2017, ruling that fantasy sports are a game of skill, the public view continues to differ, according to the online community platform LocalCircles.

LocalCircles conducted a nationwide survey which received over 33,000 responses from people from 322 districts.

For 65 percent out of 9,507 respondents, online fantasy sports are akin to gambling/wagering or a game of chance with risks in contrast to the position of the Supreme Court.

Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi on October 1 approved the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Ordinance, 2022, banning online gambling and regulating online gaming in the state.

This was the second attempt by Tamil Nadu to regulate this industry after the first law, passed in 2020, was struck down by the Madras High Court in August 2021 deeming it unconstitutional to ban “games of skill”.

Last week, the All India Gaming Federation moved Madras High Court challenging this ordinance. The petitioner before the court has contended that games like poker and rummy should not come under the ambit of “betting and gambling” as they are games that require skills.

According to the report, some citizens have equated these games to state lotteries of the late eighties and early nineties where people lost money regularly but a select few called them a game of skill, using probability theory.

Nearly 91 percent of respondents also want a ban on unsolicited spam promoting online and fantasy games.

“People are concerned about unsolicited messages being sent from online gaming and fantasy sports platforms and 92 percent want such unsolicited communication to be prohibited. The telecom regulator, TRAI, must act to enforce the same,” said the report.

Meta rolls out new privacy updates for teens on Instagram, Facebook

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Meta rolls out new privacy updates for teens on Instagram, Facebook

Meta has rolled out new privacy updates for teenagers on Instagram and Facebook, to protect them from online harm.

Starting now, anyone who joins Facebook under the age of 16, or under the age of 18 in some countries, will automatically be placed in more private settings, the company said in a blog post.

The company is also testing methods to prevent teenagers from messaging suspicious adults they are not connected to, and the platform won’t display them in the People You May Know recommendations.

It also created a number of tools for teens to inform the company if something makes them feel uncomfortable while using the applications.

Meta is also developing tools to prevent the online spread of self-generated intimate photographs.”We’re working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to build a global platform for teens who are worried intimate images they created might be shared on public online platforms without their consent,” the company said.

Additionally, Meta is working with Thorn and their NoFiltr brand to create educational materials which will help teenagers reduce the shame and stigma surrounding intimate images.

Twitter is done with layoffs, ready to hire again: Musk

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Twitter is done with layoffs, ready to hire again: Musk

After firing about two-thirds of the micro-blogging platform’s 7,500 employees in only three weeks after his take over, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that the company is done with layoffs and is hiring again.

At a meeting with employees, Musk also claimed that Twitter is now actively hiring for positions in engineering and sales, reports The Verge. He also asked the staffers to recommend potential candidates.

The micro-blogging platform does not currently have any open positions advertised on its website, and Musk did not name the specific engineering or sales posts for which the company was seeking.

“In terms of critical hires, I would say people who are great at writing software are the highest priority,” the report quoted Musk as saying.

According to the CEO, there are “no plans” to have the company’s headquarters in Texas, as he did with Tesla, although it would make sense to have “dual-headquartered” offices in Texas and California.

“If we want to move the headquarters to Texas I think it would play into the idea that Twitter has gone from being left-wing to right-wing, which is not the case,” Musk told employees.

“This is not a right-wing takeover of Twitter. It is a moderate-wing takeover of Twitter,” he added.

Google introduces new AR features to shop for beauty products, shoes

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Google introduces new AR features to shop for beauty products, shoes

Google has introduced new ways to shop in AR (Augmented Reality) on Google, including a photo library for users to find their foundation shade and a way to see sneakers in their space.

Foundation is the most-searched category within makeup. It’s also one of the most personal products you can buy — a slight change in color or tone can make a huge difference, Google said in a blog post.

With assistance from beauty brands, Google’s new photo library features 148 models representing a range of skin tones, ages, genders, face shapes, ethnicities, and skin types.

To use this feature users will need to search for a foundation shade on Google across a range of prices and brands, like “Clinique Even Better Foundation”, according to the blog post.

Users will then see what that foundation looks like on models with a similar skin tone, including before and after shots, to help them decide which one works best for them.

Moreover, the new feature also allows users to try out products in 3D and AR.

Users can spin, zoom and see the shoes in their space as they decide if the color, laces, tread or sole fit their style.

Users will need to search for a sneaker type, like “Shop blue VANS sneakers,” and tap “View in my space”, the blog post added.

Zomato plans to lay off 3% of its workforce

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Zomato plans to lay off 3% of its workforce

Online food delivery platform Zomato on Saturday said it is planning to lay off nearly 3 percent of its workforce on account of cost-cutting efforts and to turn profitable.

The decision comes after many tech giants and social media sites announced layoffs.

Zomato stated that layoffs will be based on regular performance.

“There has been a regular performance-based churn of under 3 percent of our workforce, there’s nothing more to it,” said a Zomato spokesperson.

The company currently has nearly 3,800 employees.

In May 2020, Zomato laid off about 520 of its employees, or 13 percent of its staff, in response to a slump in business following the Covid pandemic.

Meanwhile, Zomato’s co-founder Mohit Gupta quit the organization on Friday.

Moreover, the food delivery platform announced earlier this week that Rahul Ganjoo had ended his 5-year tenure as Head of New Initiatives.

Earlier in the month, Zomato’s Vice President for global growth Siddharth Jhawar announced his departure as well.

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