Flipkart’s OnePlus 3 Sale, Rs. 340 Crores Rewards for Digital Payments Adoption
Flipkart got into a bit of a controversy today as it announced that it will soon sell the Amazon-exclusive OnePlus 3, baffling even the co-founder of OnePlus, while the government announced that it will give rewards and cashbacks to the tune of Rs. 340 crores for digital payments adoption in the country. Here’s a look at these and other important tech news of the day in your 360 Daily round-up.
Flipkart teases OnePlus 3 launch, OnePlus co-founder says ‘What’s this?’
Flipkart today teased the sale of OnePlus 3 during its Big Shopping Days sale, a rather surprising announcement considering the smartphone is exclusively available on Amazon. The announcement prompted OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei to tweet to Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal, asking him, “What’s this? We’re exclusive with Amazon.” Though Bansal did not reply to the tweet and Flipkart gave a vague response, OnePlus in a statement reiterated that its smartphones are exclusively available on Amazon, and advised buyers to purchase from official channels only.
Rs. 340 crores awards, cashback for digital payments
The government has announced that it will provide daily, weekly and monthly awards worth Rs. 340 crores for consumers and merchants adopting digital payments starting December 25. The initiative will focus on promoting digital payments to the poor, lower middle class and small businesses, and will cover small transactions between Rs. 50 and Rs. 3,000. There will be daily rewards of Rs. 1,000 each (as cashback) to 15,000 winners from December 25 to April 13. Apart from this, there will be weekly prizes of Rs. 1 lakh, Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 10,000 for consumers using digital payments.
Paytm says it was cheated by customers
The CBI has registered an FIR against 15 Paytm customers on the company’s complaint for cheating it for around Rs. 6.15 lakh. Paytm found 48 cases where customers were refunded money for orders that was successfully delivered to them. The amount refunded was to the tune of Rs. 6.15 lakh, and the fraud happened in 2015-16. Most of these customers took deliveries of products at common or similar addresses in Delhi’s Kalkaji, Govindpuri and Saket areas.
CEO Travis Kalanick expects Uber India to be profitable soon
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says he expects the company’s India operations to become profitable soon, but did not give a timeline. The company operates in 29 cities in India, among the world’s fastest growing taxi markets, and had invested $1 billion in the country till last year. Kalanick added that both Uber and its biggest rival in India Ola are largely foreign-owned, in response to Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal’s recent statement about foreign companies making inroads into the market.
PayPal accuses Paytm of using ‘deceptively similar’ logo
PayPal has accused Indian payments company Paytm of using a logo that is deceptively similar to the US company’s logo. It has sought to block Paytm’s application to trademark its logo on the grounds of deceiving the customers with a confusingly similar logo. PayPal trademarked its logo in 1999 and has been using it in several countries, including India. PayPal also said in its appeal to Indian authorities that Paytm has “slavishly adopted” its two-tone blue colour scheme “in its entirety.”
Kickass Torrents is back online
Kickass Torrents, which was shut down earlier this year, has been brought back online with the help of its original staffers. The website is now fully operational, with the team reportedly saying that it faced several issues in bringing it back up. The Kickass Torrents team also said that its major uploaders are back onboard, and that it will not store copyrighted material on the website now. Instead, it is keeping only “safe elements” on the site now.
Instagram user base crosses 600 million
Instagram today said that its global user base has grown to over 600 million. The company in June this year announced that its user base stood at 500 million, meaning that it added 100 million new users in roughly 5 months. In a battle with Snapchat, Instagram has introduced several new features over the last few months, such as disappearing photos, Stories, live videos, and stronger safety tools.
Videocon Ultra30 with VoLTE support, 4000mAh battery launched at Rs. 8,590
Videocon has launched the Ultra30 smartphone, which supports VoLTE and packs a 4000mAh battery with fast-charging, in the Indian market at Rs. 8,590. Available only on Snapdeal, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow-based Videocon Ultra30 smartphone has a 5-inch HD screen, 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB inbuilt storage, up to 64GB microSD card support, 13-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash, and 5-megapixel selfie camera with LED flash.
