Also in this letter:
■ Adobe looking to integrate AI into all products
■ More countries could implement Aadhaar-like system
■ IPL was India’s first unicorn with a $1.1 billion valuation: D&P
Government working on tightening ecommerce rules for frauds by sellers
The consumer affairs ministry is working on tightening ecommerce rules to make online retail platforms liable for fraud committed by sellers and attaching “fallback liability” to them as intermediaries, said a senior official.
Details: The rules will be formulated after the ecommerce companies respond to queries related to the issue sent to them by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), said a ministry official. MeitY’s note, which was sent last week, asked ecommerce companies to clarify their role “as an intermediary.”
More responsibility: Ecommerce platforms or marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal are intermediaries that connect buyers and sellers and are protected by safe harbour provisions in Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. However, under the proposed rule changes, the government plans to attach more responsibility to their role as intermediary.
Quote, unquote: “We are in the process of restructuring the ecommerce rules to ensure that consumer interests are protected adequately in this emerging digital economy. We plan to make marketplaces liable if goods sold on their platforms are found to be faulty,” the official said.
Netflix expects to continue growth momentum in India this year
Netflix India is increasing its investments in content and has planned an exceedingly ambitious content lineup for 2023, according to Monika Shergill, VP of content. The streaming giant has experienced its highest net subscriber growth worldwide in 2022, outpacing other countries, thanks to an aggressive pricing strategy launched in December 2021 and supported by a strong lineup of Indian originals and licenced movies.
India numbers: As per financial data sourced by Tofler, Netflix Entertainment Services India reported gross revenues at Rs 1,529.36 crore, for FY21. Moreover, Netflix India witnessed a 25% year-on-year increase in revenue and a 30% year-on-year growth in total viewing hours.
The growth was driven by a drop in its mobile pricing, to Rs 149 per month from Rs 199 per month.
Quote, unquote: According to Shergill, Netflix India is doing well on all three key parameters of consumer engagement, revenue and profit. “Our engagement has grown by 30%, and our revenue has increased by 25% because we recalibrated our price and worked on providing more value to our customers through constant, big, entertaining stories across genres,” she said.
Newly added titles: In the first three months of 2023, Netflix has already launched seven titles, including Mission Majnu (film), Class (series), Trial by Fire (series), Rana Naidu (series), The Romantics (a documentary), Mumbai Mafia: Police vs. The Underworld (documentary), and Caught Out: Crime. Corruption. Cricket. (documentary).
IPL was India’s first unicorn with a $1.1 billion valuation: D&P
The Indian Premier League (IPL), which became a decacorn recently with a $10.9 billion valuation, was the country’s first unicorn in 2008 at $1.1 billion in valuation at inception, said an analysis by D&P Advisory, a leading provider of consulting, advisory and valuation services.
Unicorn before the unicorns: Titled ‘IPL-The Pioneer of Indian Unicorns’, the analysis considers the media rights, title sponsorship, and associate sponsorship values of the IPL ecosystem to predict its total value over the years prior to 2014.
Jump in valuation: According to D&P analysis, the valuation of IPL surged to $1.7 billion in 2009 followed by $2.2 billion in 2010 when 60 matches were played. Beginning in 2011, when the number of matches increased to 74, the league’s valuation jumped to $2.7 billion.
By the numbers: D&P noted that the IPL’s broadcast rights fetched Rs 486 crore in 2008 while the title and associate sponsorship rights brought in another Rs 36 crore and Rs 48 crore, respectively. Since then, there has been no looking back as the league’s valuation has scaled up on the back of higher broadcast and sponsorship fees payout every year, the consulting firm stated.
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Adobe wants to integrate AI into all its products, says India MD
Prativa Mohapatra, vice president and managing director of Adobe’s India operations, said that the global content and cloud software conglomerate will integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into all its product offerings instead of creating separate tools that rely on these technologies.
New AI model: On Tuesday, the company announced the beta release of its new generative artificial intelligence model, Firefly, that is specifically designed to generate images and text. The beta model is currently available to the public on a limited basis and has been trained using Adobe’s stock images and images where the copyright or intellectual property has expired.
The company achieved a revenue of $4.66 billion in the first quarter of FY23, and hopes that the infusion of these technologies will help the company shore up more revenue across product categories.
ET Ecommerce Index
We’ve launched three indices – ET Ecommerce, ET Ecommerce Profitable, and ET Ecommerce Non-Profitable – to track the performance of recently listed tech firms. Here’s how they’ve fared so far.
More countries could implement Aadhaar-like system after Philippines, Morocco: official
The Philippines and Morocco have already implemented an Aadhaar-like system and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has already received interest from around eight to 10 more countries, a senior government official told ET on Wednesday.
Which countries are interested? The countries that have shown interest include Kenya, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and Egypt, the official said, adding, “sharing knowledge on India’s digital economy and digital public infrastructure is one of the pillars of the G20.” The official said the countries are reaching out to understand and discuss what Aadhaar is all about but it is “not necessary that all of these countries will take it up.“
Quote, unquote: “As of now, the number of countries who have good legal identity for all are still very limited. So that’s why the interest of all these countries. And Aadhaar is a digital legal identity. So it goes one step further. And that also means that it is so much more flexible and usable to a higher degree,” the official said.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Nazara’s Sportskeeda buys NFL-focused platform Pro Football Network: Nazara Technologies on Wednesday informed the exchanges that it has acquired Pro Football Network (PFN) through its subsidiary Absolute Sports, the parent firm of Sportskeeda.
Healthcare startup Sukino raises Rs 50 crore funding from Stakeboat Capital: Sukino Healthcare Solutions has secured an equity investment of Rs 50 crore from Stakeboat Capital.
Global Picks We Are Reading
■ A US Agency Rejected Face Recognition—and Landed in Big Trouble (Wired)
■ TikTok caught in US-China battle over its powerful algorithm (Financial Times)
■ Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow (The Verge)
