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SoftBank Investment in Paytm Parent Gets Approval From Competition Commission of India

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

SoftBank Investment in Paytm Parent Gets Approval From Competition Commission of India

HIGHLIGHTS

  • CCI has approved SoftBank’s 20% stake purchase in Paytm’s parent company
  • Paytm operates under its parent company One97 Communications
  • In May, SoftBank had invested $1.4 billion in Paytm

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s 20 percent stake purchase in One97 Communications, which operates digital payments platform Paytm, has been approved by the Competition Commission.

In a tweet, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) said that it has approved “acquisition of 20 percent stake in One97 Communications Ltd by SoftBank Group Corp”.

As per a notice submitted by SoftBank to the fair-trade regulator, the combination involves the acquisition of equity shares of One97 Communications Ltd (OCL) by SoftBank Group Corp through SoftBank Group Capital.

In May, SoftBank said it has pumped in $1.4 billion (over Rs. 9,079 crores) in Paytm, marking the largest fund infusion by a single investor in an Indian startup.

SoftBank Group Capital is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp.

OCL is a mobile Internet company and also provides telecommunications value added services. The firm’s product segments include mobile payment services and network component services, among others.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]
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Internet

Google Parent Alphabet Shutters Titan Internet-Delivering Drone Project

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Google Parent Alphabet Shutters Titan Internet-Delivering Drone Project

Google parent company Alphabet on Wednesday confirmed that it is opting for balloons instead of drones in its quest to deliver Internet service from the sky.

Alphabet, which not only owns Google but also Google X, which is devoted to creating world-changing new technologies, told AFP that it gave up on its Internet drone project, called Titan, about a year ago.

Its staff moved elsewhere at X, including a project called Loon focused on creating a network of high-altitude balloons that would provide internet service to people on the ground no matter how remote.

Some people from the team also shifted to Project Wing, which is creating delivery drones, according to an X division spokesperson.

“The team from Titan was brought into X in late 2015,” the spokesperson said in an email to AFP.

“We ended our exploration of high altitude UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for Internet access shortly after.”

The economics and technical feasibility of balloons are seen as a more promising way to connect rural and remote parts of the world to the internet, according to X.

Leading online social network Facebook is continuing to develop an Aquila drone for beaming Internet connection from the sky.

[Source:- gadgets.ndtv]

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Education

Academy rejects call for parent governors

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Justine Greening

An academy chain which has already scrapped all its parent governors, says it has no intention of reinstating them, despite the education secretary saying schools should have them.

Justine Greening told MPs on Wednesday that she was ditching plans to allow academy chains to operate without any parent governors.

She said academy chains should not think they did not need them.

But the E-Act chain says it has no plans to return to parent governors.

Speaking to the Education Select Committee, Ms Greening announced she wasabandoning her predecessor’s plan, which would have allowed academy trusts to operate without any parent governors, either in individual schools or on the board of trustees.

“I don’t think we should be saying that MATs [multi-academy trusts] don’t need to have parent governors,” she said.

“I think parent governors play a vital role. I was a governor, I’m not any more, but I was a governor for 15 years, maybe more, and parents played a vital role on the governing body.”

She told MPs she would not proceed with allowing trusts to have no parent governors, saying that “parents are part of how success gets delivered”.

Head teachers’ leader Russell Hobby backed the education secretary’s decision to drop the plan to remove parent governors, saying “common sense has prevailed”.

‘Ambassadors’ not governors

The plan to allow trusts to remove all parent governors is part of the White Paper on academies, published before the latest plans for another change of direction in the Green Paper on grammar schools.

But under existing academy rules, chains are not required to have parent governors in individual schools.

E-Act, which operates 23 schools across England, has already scrapped all its parent governors in schools.

These were replaced by parent “ambassadors” who do not have the powers of scrutiny held by governors.

They have a role “celebrating the academy’s achievements” rather than holding the school to account.

E-Act had itself faced questions over standards, when in 2014 the academy chain lost control of 10 of its schools after Ofsted inspectors raised serious concerns about their performance.

The levels of scrutiny of academy chains has remained controversial.

Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has called for the education watchdog to be able to inspect academy chains, in the way that local education authority education services can be inspected.

E-Act said that the current arrangements improved “parental involvement” in their schools and that there were no plans to reintroduce parent governor roles that were removed earlier this year.

“One of the principal drivers of the changes we made to how our academies are governed was to enhance parental involvement in the life of our academies. This model is working,” said an E-Act spokesman.

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Parent governor role won’t be scrapped – Greening

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Justine Greening

Education Secretary Justine Greening says she will not be pushing forward with moves to scrap the parent governor role from schools in England.

She told the Commons Education Committee parent governors often played a “vital role” in school improvement.

The proposal to remove the need for academies to have elected parents on governing bodies emerged in March in plans to make all schools academies.

It sparked an outcry from MPs, schools and teaching unions.

‘Build from outside’

Answering a question about the issue from Labour’s Stephen Timms, Ms Greening said: “One way we can ensure that schools who are doing a less good job improve is getting parents more involved.

“Often, and I’ve seen this as a constituency MP, when schools turn around it’s when parents become more engaged and more invested in the school’s success and that helps build the school from the outside as well as the hard work teachers are doing on the inside.

“It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years to do but parents are part of how success gets delivered so I do not think we should proceed with that.”

The planned removal of the parent governor role, in the Education for All White Paper, was widely criticised, with Jeremy Corbyn calling it an attack on parents.

David Cameron defended the plans, saying it did not mean that parents would be removed from governing bodes.

‘Freedom’

The White Paper said academies, including those already open and those that will be converted, should have the “freedom” not to have parent governors.

It said: “We will no longer require academy trusts to reserve places for elected parents on governing boards.

“We will offer this freedom to all open and new academies, and as we move towards a system where every school is an academy, fully skills-based governance will become the norm across the education system.”

Liberal Democrat education spokesman John Pugh said: “This will undoubtedly be the first of many climbs down from a Secretary of State left to defend the indefensible.

“The government’s education policy is all over the place.

How can you consult on a grammar schools green paper, when everything could be changed by the academy White Paper? It’s a shambles.

“Recognition of the pivotal role of parents in running schools is the sort of common sense which does not suit the ideologues framing government educational policy.

Ms Greening also said she supported her predecessor’s plans for a fully academised school system, where all state schools become run by independent organisations.

But she said she was looking at ways to improve the financial accountability of these privately run but state-funded schools.

[Source:- BBC]

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Internet

Jabong Parent Gets EUR 300 Million in Funding From Rocket Internet

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Jabong Parent Gets EUR 300 Million in Funding From Rocket Internet

Global Fashion Group (GFG), parent company of online fashion portal Jabong, has secured a funding of EUR 300 million (about Rs. 2,282 crores) from Rocket Internet.

While the German tech startup investor Rocket Internet will underwrite around EUR 100 million (about Rs. 760.7 crores) of the financing, it will invest around EUR 85 million (about Rs. 646.7 crores), including the conversion of an existing investment at the terms of the financing.

The transaction values GFG at EUR 1 billion post the transactions, Rocket Internet said in a statement.

“The financing will provide GFG with the necessary capital to continue to execute its strategy of building out its leading position in the online fashion sector in emerging markets,” GFG Chief Executive Officer Romain Voog said.

During the first quarter of 2016, GFG reduced loss from operations meaningfully compared to the year-ago period, resulting in an improvement of the adjusted EBITDA margin by over 10 percentage points.

“This is in line with GFG’s plan to deliver an accelerated path to profitability across its regional businesses while continuing to capture the significant market opportunity available,” he said.

Founded in 2014, GFG combines six regional brands – Dafiti in Latin America, Lamoda in Russia and CIS, Namshi in the Middle East, The Iconic in Australia, Jabong in India and Zalora in South-East Asia.

“We continue to be very excited about the prospects of GFG, which has successfully built out leading market positions in key emerging markets. We are looking forward to continuing to work with the GFG team as well as Kinnevik and the other GFG shareholders to support GFG,” Rocket Internet CEO Oliver Samwer said.

Rocket Internet also has investment in FoodPanda in India. Jabong MD and CEO Sanjeev Mohanty said the funding will help the firm enhance business operations.

“We have had success over the past few months, with Jabong recently recording its best month in terms of revenue… GFG sees good progress with Jabong in India and this trust will help us strengthen our operations in the country,” he added.

Jabong narrowed down its gross loss to Rs. 46.7 crores for 2015 on the back of lower level of discounts from Rs. 159.5 crores in 2014. In India, fashion is one of the largest and fiercely contested categories in e-commerce space.

Launched in 2011, Jabong offers more than four lakh products. It was merged with GFG in 2014.

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