Tech

India won’t enforce market share cap on UPI until 2025 in a win for Google and Walmart

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India won’t enforce a cap on the market share for players operating on the homegrown payments network until December 31, 2024 in a surprising move that analysts say is a major a win for Google Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe. The National Payments Corporation of India, the payments body that oversees the Unified Payments Interface payments … Read more

LineupSupply updates its app to generate Instafest-styled posters via your Spotify

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In the last week or so, a web app named Instafest went viral. Instafest lets you generate festival posters from your Spotify listening history. Millions of people started generating their own festival posters before the official Spotify Wrapped dropped earlier in the week. In order to take advantage of the trend, the LineupSupply app — … Read more

Elon Musk is Elon Musk-pilled

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[cash register noise] | Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge Programming note: This will be the last This Week in Elon this year. In 2023, I will return with something delightful for you that is not just about Musk shenanigans — but we will have occasional chats when there is too much Elonning going … Read more

Shein jumps on the third-party brandwagon with Alibaba veteran

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Shein, the ultra-fast fashion giant that’s taken the globe by storm, has brought on another heavyweight executive to help steer its ship. It lately onboarded Jessica Liu, former co-president at the Southeast Asian ecommerce giant Lazada, as its vice president of global brand operations. Liu will be responsible for “global brand partnerships,” according to Shein’s … Read more

Twitter-backed ShareChat to shut down fantasy sports app Jeet11, eliminate some jobs

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Indian social media startup ShareChat, backed by Twitter, Tiger Global and Temasek, is shutting down its fantasy sports platform Jeet11 and has laid off some employees. People familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the startup sent an email to its affected employees last month. The platform was operational at the time of writing. ShareChat … Read more

Kenya’s Uncover raises $1M to expand skincare product enterprise across Africa

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Africa’s beauty and personal care market is growing accelerated by its growing young and fashion conscious population, increasing spending power, and urbanization. The market’s potential has in recent years attracted major brands, with Fenty Beauty by Rihanna and LVMH being the latest entrants. Niche local brands are also emerging to offer tailored beauty and skin … Read more

Mozilla acquires Active Replica to build on its metaverse vision

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An automated status updater for Slack isn’t the only thing Mozilla acquired this week. On Wednesday, the company announced that it snatched up Active Replica, a Vancouver-based startup developing a “web-based metaverse.” According to Mozilla SVP Imo Udom, Active Replica will support Mozilla’s ongoing work with Hubs, the latter’s VR chatroom service and open source … Read more