In no particular order, here are MediaNama’s top 10 stories of the week ended 30th July 2017
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Mobile Wallet transactions dropped by 79.2M in May 2017
For the month ending May 2017, number of transactions using Prepaid Payment Instruments (Mobile Wallets and PPI Cards combined) declined by 21% to 278.08 million as compared to 352.23 million in April 2017, and grew 292% compared to 70.95 million in May 2016, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India. The amount transacted went up 3% month on month to Rs 10,669 crores from Rs 10,371 crores, while grew 114% year on year from Rs 4,995 crores in May 2016. Read it here
Some Indian ISPs are violating Net Neutrality with fast lanes
Even as TRAI moves closer to making recommendations on Net Neutrality, with an Open House Discussion on the consultation scheduled for Tuesday in Bangalore, some broadband providers are violating Net Neutrality with fast lanes, and in some cases, advertising these violations openly. Broadband provider Ortel, for example, offers separate speeds for regular Internet traffic, and web content that the ISP caches in servers that it maintains. Read it here
27,482 cyber security threat incidents in India till June 2017: CERT-In
India witnessed more than 27,000 cyber security threat incidents in the first half of 2017, according to Minister of State for Electronics and IT P P Chaudhary’s reply in Rajya Sabha. Read it here
Between 48k-68k fraud Wallet and PPI card transactions between March and May 2017
The Reserve Bank of India has started maintaining provisional data of fraudulent transactions using Mobile Wallets and PPI Cards (together called PPI’s), and last week, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Minister for IT, disclosed in Parliament that the fraud rate for Mobile Wallets and PPI Cards ranged between 0.005% to 0.007% for the months of March, April and May 2017. Read it here
Airtel adds 5.2M mobile Internet users in Q1FY18, Data usage up 109% QoQ; Charts
Airtel’s mobile Internet user base increased by around 5.2 million, up 4.5% QoQ to 62.6 million from 57.4 million during the quarter ended June 31st, 2017 (Q1 FY18). The telco seems to be slowly recovering from the intense competition after losing around 7 million users in Q3 FY17, which was the quarter after Jio’s launch. The company however recovered in Q4 FY17 by adding 2.45 million customers. Read it here
Byju’s Learning secures funding from China’s Tencent
Bangalore-based education technology startup Byju’s Learning, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Chinese Internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings. The fresh funding will help Byju’s to accelerate product development for new markets and for acquisitions. A VCCircle report pegged the size of the investment at $35 million at a valuation of $776 million. Read it here
Axis Bank buys Freecharge for $60 million cash; Our take
Axis Bank has bought Freecharge for $60 million (Rs 385 crores) in cash, the bank has informed the stock exchanges. This deal, and the amount, had been reported by The Economic Times yesterday, but at that time, was unconfirmed. Read it here
Pune based ad-tech firm Sokrati acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network
Pune-based advertising technology and analytics company Sokrati has been acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network, reports Exchange4Media. Post-acquisition, Sokrati will be rebranded as Merkle Sokrati, which will further help to scale Dentsu Aegis India’s data and performance marketing solutions. Read it here
Paypal reports 210 M active customer accounts in Q2-2017; Payments OS
Paypal reported 210 million active customer accounts (of which 17 million were merchant accounts) for the quarter ended 30th June 2017 (Q1-2017), adding 6.5 million net new active accounts for the quarter. The company had targeted 20 million net new adds for the year, and now has increased its guidance to 25 million. Read it here
Idea Cellular lost 4.2M data connections in Q1FY18; net loss at Rs 617Cr
Idea Cellular lost a total of 4.21 million mobile Internet connections during the quarter ended June 2017 (Q1FY18), down to 38.12 million from 42.23 million data connections last quarter. Comparing this to the same quarter last year (Q1FY17), Idea had 49.05 million data connections. Read it here
