Fusion Inc

In a world that’s moving so fast, there’s something happening in every corner almost every minute. And it’s necessary for any person to be updated and abreast with the information about what’s going on around him. Newspapers and news channels are the primary means of information to most people. With television sets now in every household, news channels that provide fast, easy access to current affairs are a hit among people. Many households dedicate hours to news channels so they can get every information on every issue. News channels have upped their game and introduced the variety of programs ranging from fast headline news to full coverage of worldwide news in a time of half-an-hour. News channels are constantly competing to make the news reach people faster and be the first ones to provide the news to viewers. With live talk shows, political debates, and some additional lifestyle, Bollywood-related news programs, all the news channels are trying to garner attention from...

Piggybank, a subscription-based loyalty program launched by Zomato seems to be a hit product of the Alibaba-backed company. Within 2 days (or 48 hours), the premium membership program has received 200,000 sign-ups. This is a jaw-dropping figure for the membership program which was made available for select users on the iOS and Android platforms. Zomato also claims that Piggybank has 6 times more traction than its previous premium subscription-based model within first 48 hours. According to the company’s press statement, one of the fastest selling premium membership programs Zomato Gold has over 400,000 subscribers. The above figure clarifies that Piggybank subscription has already reached half the number as its Gold membership program. With the growing appetite of the consumers and expected mass rollout, Piggybank looks to break all the previous records of a subscription-led loyalty program by any foodtech company in India. The development comes against the backdro...

Hotstar remains  India ’s most popular  OTT  video streaming platform, according to data from mobile advertising and Internet service provider  Jana .  Hotstar  is controlled by 21st Century Fox and operates on the freemium model, offering VoD users some content free of charge, and some paid for by annual subscription. Jana’s report uses app installations as its yardstick. It shows that in the first quarter of 2018, Hotstar enjoyed 70% of video streaming app downloads. SonyLIV doubled its share from 5.9% three months earlier, to 13%. Viacom 18’s Voot was in third place with 11%, while Amazon Prime Video had a 5% share and Netflix 1.4%. The nascent Indian  OTT  video market is currently valued at $109 million and is expected to double to $218 million by 2020, according to a recent Deloitte report. U.S.-based Jana was launched in 2009 and has raised $93 million in investment. The company is a leading provider of free Internet in eme...

To curb fake or artificial transactions in order to get cashbacks, NPCI has taken a serious action and decided to halt this practice on its payments platform UPI. From August 1, payments transfer within same account or UPI ID (where the payer and the payee account are actually the same) will be blocked by the umbrella organisation for all digital payments in India. The payments regulator has issued a circular and strictly prohibiting those transactions from the aforementioned date to avoid unnecessary load on the system. The circular further added that NPCI had asked payment service providers and banks to block such transactions at their end. NPCI also explained that these transactions are being done between same UPI accounts or in some case from the UPI ID to the account number, but the underlying account remains the same and thirdly by sending money to another UPI ID but connected to the same bank account. At a time when digital payments platforms are fighting to g...

In the past one year, platforms offering over-the-top (OTT) content have grown substantially in India. Hotstar, Voot, Amazon Prime Video, Sony Liv, and Netflix are the top OTT platforms in the country. In the list, Netflix has the most curious case of growth, which successfully acquired over 5 million subscribers in a year. Though the figure might be in a few million, it is unique. The company, which offers video content at the premium subscription cost at Rs 500-800 per month, has managed to persuade the Indian users — who prefer to consume content for free — to pay a premium. x From this stage, the US-based video content company is aiming to capture the next  million subscribers  in India. The Company on optimizing the gap in India where Indian TV Production value is much lower than the rest of the world. By December end last year, Netflix had 117.6 million subscribers worldwide. It is gaining ground in the international market at a very fast pac...

It seems that TV viewing in India has finally moved online as people are moving online to watch their TV shows. According to the recent survey, the percentage of consumers in India who prefer watch TV shows on television sets has plummeted by 78% over the past years. The number of people who prefer to watch TV shows on television sets have declined to just 10% from 47% a year earlier. This signals an increasing shift in the digital video market consumer behavior. The survey further said that consumers increasingly prefer to watch TV shows on devices such as laptops, smartphones and desktop personal computers. Around 42% would view the TV shows on laptops or desktops from 32% last year. While 13% said that they prefer to watch their TV shows on their smartphones from 10% last year. Besides this, the report said that smartphone has nearly doubled to 41% in 2017 from 23% in 2014 in preference for watching video clips. A reason why content creators from TV broadcasters to VOD/...

India’s 4G download speeds are slower than that of Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Myanmar 4G is the talk of the town, but buffering is still a reality in India! The average 4G LTE data speed in India has remained static for more than a year — at about 6.1Mbps — which is almost a third of the global average of about 17 Mbps, making it among the slowest countries on this metric. Even as the big telcos step up  4G deployment , brace for 5G and talk of offering fibre-based home broadband at starting speeds of 100 Mbps soon, however its still not working well. India’s 4G download speeds are even slower than that of neighbours Sri Lanka (13.95 Mbps), Pakistan (13.56 Mbps) and Myanmar (15.56 Mbps), according to UK speed tester OpenSignal. They are much lower than developed markets such as the US (16.31 Mbps), UK (23.11Mbps) and Japan (25.39 Mbps). US data speed tester Ookla has ranked India 109th — almost at the bottom in its list of 124 nations — on overall mobile int...

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has got cracking on the bad loans problem of the Indian banking system, but can it clean up the mess? India: As the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) completes its second anniversary, it is proving to be every bit the game changer it was hailed to be. Some of the largest and most complex cases in the banking system are in the process of being resolved, with the lenders expecting to make significant recoveries, albeit with a haircut. As things stand, there is a clear visibility on the resolution of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) so-called dirty dozen, a group of 12 corporate defaulters, which accounted for the single-largest share of non-performing assets, amounting to ₹2.77 trillion. In May, debt-laden Bhushan Steel Ltd earned the distinction of being the first successful resolution under the IBC, when it was acquired by Tata Steel. The NCLT on Thursday approved the bid of AION Capital-JSW Steel to acquire Monnet Ispat & Energ...

Trai asks telcos to use distributed ledger tech to control the flow of commercial communication on their networks The telecom regulator has asked operators to adopt blockchain technology to ensure only registered telemarketers have access to phone databases and that user consent to receive such communication is explicitly recorded. The regulator has asked telecom service providers to use the distributed ledger technology to control the flow of commercial communication on their networks in its Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018. The rules were made public on Thursday. A distributed ledger, or Blockchain, is essentially a collection of records where every person who accesses it also has a copy. But participants have to agree to make a change in the database. Since blockchain secures information cryptographically through the use of ‘keys’ and signatures to control who can do what within the shared ledger, only registered telemarketers w...