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Facebook has parked an investment of $5.7 million (Rs 43, 574 Crore) in Reliance Jio, making it the largest minority shareholder in Jio Platforms Ltd. The investment will translate into a 9.99% equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis. As per the reports, the investment has valued Jio platforms at a whopping $65.95 Billion (Rs 4.62 Lakh Crore) pre-money enterprise value. Facebook is said to be mainly targeting to leverage the service of Jio Platforms for WhatsApp, which is one of the popular applications in India owned by Facebook. Meanwhile, Reliance Industries founder Mukesh Ambani has become Asia’s richest man recently, surpassing Jack Ma, Founder, and CEO of Alibaba Group.

Spotify Launches Fundraising Feature for Artists
As part of their COVID-19 relief efforts, Spotify has launched artists fundraising feature “Artist Fundraising Pick”. The feature allows artists to raise funds for themselves, their crew, or any other verified music relief initiatives which are vetted by Spotify. The streaming platform has collaborated with several applications like Cash App, GoFundMe, and Paypal.me to roll out the initiative. The primary focus of the feature would be to target artists in the UK and the US. However, Spotify users across the world can donate the fund from anywhere. Users can download the app, visit the Artist Dashboard, and click on the “Get Started” button on the banner at the top to submit the fundraiser.

Amazon India launches ‘Local Shops on Amazon’

The e-commerce giants Amazon has launched a first of its kind initiative in India ‘Local shops on Amazon’, where it will enable the physical mortar stores and retailers to sell products online as they struggle in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon will enroll these shops and help them discover customers through their last-mile reach program, stated Gopa Pillai, Vice President of Amazon India’s seller services. He went on to add that the feature will also benefit the customers with better selection, fast delivery, and additional value-added services. The initiative is rolled out after a six-month pilot program run with over 5000 local shops across the 100 Tier -1 and Tier – 2 cities. Amazon has also pledged Rs 10 Crore to scale the program on an immediate basis.

Corona Impact – Zoom’s Userbase Witness 50% Surge

As organizations have resorted to working from home to resist the Corona pandemic, Zoom – one of the popular video conferencing applications has witnessed a sharp surge in their user base, stated Eric Yaun, CEO of Zoom in one of the recent webinars. As of April 21 statistics, the app’s user base has grown 50 percent to touch 300 million users. However, Zoom has been subject to scrutiny over security and privacy issues over a period as several reports against the apps started to appear on the internet. Earlier, the National Cyber-Security Agency had warned against the security vulnerability of the application and issued safety measures for the users. But against the odds, the application has managed to achieve significant growth in this lockdown period.

Google to Verify the Identities of all its Advertisers

Google has announced that it will extend the norms of the identity verification policy for all the advertisers. In order to run paid promotions on the platform, advertisers will need to verify their identity and place of origin. The policy extension was previously rolled out for political ads in 2018 to bring transparency and authenticity. With the change in the norms, Google hinted directly at their efforts to contain the scams and false information spreading across the channel about the novel coronavirus pandemic. In the first stage, users will start seeing disclosures with their ads. Google will start rolling out of the new policy initiatives in the US and slowly expand the rest of the world.