In 2019 beginning, Verizon communication, one of the largest communication technology firm was searching buyers for one of its leading internet financial news hub ‘Yahoo Finance,’ three people familiar with the news informed Reuters over this week.

However, the communication company managed to end its search recently, and refused to reveal the buyers’ names as the matter was private.

On Thursday, Verizon media firm made a statement and said,

“We do not comment on rumors and speculation. Yahoo Finance is integral to Verizon Media’s growth strategy. We continue to invest in the expansion of live programming, audio programming and the recently launched Yahoo Finance Premium product.”

Yahoo has become an integral part of the Verizon Media communication firm and also the main focus of its plans. Verizon plans to save Yahoo Finance, considered as one of the dominant set of internet assets which has been shrinking from 2000.

The two biggest brands under Verizon Media are Yahoo and AOL. Verizon Media also acquires Techcrunch and Engadget – the technologies based news websites and HuffPost-news publication, it also acquires Tumblr – a social media website.

US-based wireless service carrier never introduced a formal sales process but secretly emphasized willingness in Yahoo Finance despite restructuring its media section. Earlier the company was named as Oath and recently changed its name to Verizon Media.

Yahoo Finance was once considered as the most visited website by users across its business and finance news section in May 2019. Yahoo Finance attracted more than 100 million users across the world in 2019 and a strong competitor to its rivals. It outperformed leading financial news and business websites such as Forbes and CNBC, comScore- a media analytics firm revealed the information.

Despite the tremendous loss of value and usage of Verizon’s businesses, Yahoo Finance still holds a powerful position in the market.

The sources say, Verizon received spontaneous interest in Yahoo Finance business but failed to consider the discussions.

Earlier in 2015 and 2017, Verizon Media invested around $9.2 billion to acquire Yahoo and AOL.  Verizon Media faced difficulties with decreasing usage and revenue. Back in 201 Verizon net book value of its media assets was $4.6 billion.

Yahoo was founded in 1995 and was the beginning of the internet world. The company’s value during its highest level in the 1990s was estimated to more than $125 billion.

AOL revealed deal to purchase Time Warner by paying $165 billion in 2000 and the combined value of ALO after the announced was estimated to more than $340 billion.

It’s not clear how much Verizon was planning to get through Yahoo Finance sale. However, other publication deals might offer a standard for evaluation.

In June 2019, Yahoo Finance introduced a premium subscription to customers that will provide enhanced portfolio features, investment plans, and research report. Customers can avail this service by paying $50 every month.

An analyst, Walt Piecyk mentioned, Verizon is dedicating more towards its wireless business and less towards is media section ever since Verizon appointed new CEO in 2018, Hans Vestberg.

Piecyk stated,

“Whatever Verizon is able to sell (Yahoo Finance) for will not move the needle for the business.”

The Indian startup ecosystem used to be one of the most vibrant in Asia even a couple of years ago, but in recent months space has gone through a bit of churn due to a range of factors, starting from drying up of investment capital to changes to the tax structure. However, it seems that things are now changing for the better as startup investment major Tiger Global Management has gone in aggressively into the Indian startup ecosystem and decided on investing in a range of companies as it tries to broaden its footprint in one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The hedge fund, which has investments worldwide, is known to be extremely secretive in nature and the startups in which it has invested is still unknown.

That being said, there are certain reports which state that some of the investments are in the enterprise software solution and Fintech space. In this regard, it needs to be said that the tech industry in India has been a target for investment from globally renowned investment vehicles for quite some time, but Tiger Global Management has actually made a series of deals and that makes these developments so important.

It is also important to note that the prospects of investing in startups in China have deteriorated considerably over the course of the past months due to a slowdown in the local economy and the trade war. In such a situation, it is only prudent for investors to bet on the second biggest economy in Asia. There is also a belief among investors that the Indian economy and the investment climate have matured considerably over the past few years. As a consequence, the country has now become a far more promising investment destination for many overseas investors. The Chief Executive Officer of one of the Indian startups stated,

“Investors are excited to see India’s transition from an IT services powerhouse to a rising B2B solutions hub. Not just Tiger — other global investors too are waking up to the exciting surge of B2B startups coming out of India.”

There is no doubt the e-commerce has changed the way people shop, and in fact, changed the way some of the biggest companies in the world conduct their business. In this regard, it needs to be remembered that one company which is responsible for this revolution is Amazon. However, once an industry grows at such a pace, there are certain problems that creep into the whole thing, and one of the biggest problems for Amazon is the sale of counterfeit products on its platform. Since, at end of the day, Amazon earns from the sale of those products as well, it is their responsibility to help stop such malpractices.

In a new development, it has now emerged that the company’s anti-counterfeit tool known as Transparency, which was only ever used in some markets, is not going to be expanded substantially and will be made available in Europe, Indi, and Canada. Those are some of the biggest markets for the company, and it is not a surprise that Amazon is ready to take steps to tackle the problem head-on. The tool in question helps in serializing all products on the Amazon platform and then a QR- code type scanning needs to be performed in order to figure out whether the product is genuine or not. It is a sound step, considering the fact that there are plenty of third-party sellers who ply their trade on the platform and over the years, many of them have been caught selling counterfeit items at the price of the genuine ones.

The VP of Customer Trust and Partner Support at Amazon, Dharmesh Shah, spoke about the ways in which the availability of Transparency might help everyone. He said,

“We created Transparency to provide brands with a simple, scalable solution that empowers brands and Amazon to authenticate products within the supply chain, stopping counterfeit before it reaches a customer.”

Although the tool has not yet grown at the pace at which Amazon may have desired, the expansion into the new markets might help it a lot.

IBM, the tech giant company, has finally sealed a deal with Red Hat. IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion and marked as the second biggest technology deal in the world ever made by any firm in the history. The deal will eventually set IBM-US based company on the right path to fight with leading software providers in the cloud business.

IBM is a 108-year-old company. IBM stands for International Business Machines; the company was once identical with mainframe computing, has been facing problems to use cloud technologies and is attempting to provide computing and other software products and services across the internet meanwhile catching up to its competitors like Microsoft and Amazon Inc.

IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty has risked her legacy over the deal developed to protect the tech company from irrelevancy. It is considered as a big movement.

During an interview Rometty mentioned, the deal is regarding hybrid cloud and it is the future technology, it is the final aim of the cloud. This market is worth of trillion dollars, is developing and it’s very much appealing to me that the news you listen to everyone is speaking of it too.

IBM revealed about the deal in October and on Tuesday the company mentioned in a statement that IBM provided $190 for each share of Red Hat in cash. The overall equity is valued at $34 billion.

IBM already lack in the public cloud and it is playing big on hybrid cloud, which enables firms to execute programs in parallel on their internal servers and also on large public cloud suppliers such as Amazon Web Services and Azure of Microsoft. IBM is positioning itself as a collaborator for these companies instead of a competitor.

IBM’s Cloud Revenue

IBM has noticed declining revenue for nearly 6 years from the last 7 years and this new hybrid cloud method might help IBM to increase its growth, Anurag Rana, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst mentioned.

Currently, cloud revenue of IBM has increased by 25 percent of overall revenue. In 2013 the cloud revenue accounted for 4 percent, New York-based firm, Armonk stated. Within 12 months through Q1 of 2019, cloud revenue of IBM soar over $19 billion. The acquisition of IBM will add compound annual revenue growth’s two points to IBM for 5 years, the company stated.

IBM shares were slightly altered at $139.90 in New York. The company achieved around 12 percent from the time they announced about Red Hat deal.

Concerns over acquisition

The acquisition deal was noticed as an acceptance that the existing cloud strategy of IBM was not functioning. Few experts questions if Red Hat will safeguard it. However, it is believed that Red Hat will increase profit margins of IBM and will lead IBM ahead into the hybrid cloud business. Meanwhile, the acquisition deal will not make IBM a significant player within the public cloud.

Open hybrid cloud technologies of Red Hat will be paired with sales team, industry analyst of IBM across more than 175 nations, IBM mentioned. Both the groups will able to develop a ‘next-generation hybrid multi-cloud platform,’ that relies on open source technologies, for example, Linus and Kubernetes.  The new hybrid platform will enable tech companies to deploy and control their applications and data over on-site, on private and numerous public clouds.

Amit Daryanani, Evercore ISI expert in a statement informed investor on Tuesday,

“From a strategic point of view, we think the acquisition will position IBM as a formidable player in the hybrid IT market.”

As everyone knows, the eventual success of a startup almost always depends on the sort of money it can raise and how long the company’s investors can keep going before a viable business model can take shape. In other words, it is a long game and it takes years before a company can be deemed enough for an IPO. More often than not, many of the company’s do not get to that stage either, but if startup investment dries up, then the failure of a company is inevitable. Startups in China are currently going through such trouble as investment capital at some of the bigger private equity seems to have dried up amidst economic troubles in the country. It has emerged that Beijing Missfresh E-commerce Co. or simply Missfresh, which is involved in the grocery business, has struggled to attract investment from its backers.

The company is primarily backed by Chinese tech royalty Tencent Holdings, but other backers like Tiger Global Management and Goldman Sachs Group are equally high profile. According to sources in the company which is close to the developments, Missfresh is looking to raise capital in the range of $300 million and $500 million and that too at a valuation of $4 billion. At this point of time, many startups are struggling, they are also struggling to raise cash that could allow them to grow their businesses quickly and many are currently seeking a new injection of capital from their backers. However, things have not proven to be as easy as it used to be for large startups even a year or so ago when raising capital used to be relatively straightforward.

Currently, there are other factors at play that has dried up the coffers of many of the biggest startup backers in China. The trade war with the United States has been a severe strain on the revenues of many of these companies. In addition to that, the slowdown in the Chinese economy has also proven to be a drag on the bottom line of many startups and that in turn has made life difficult for the backers as well.

Crypto based startup companies’ tries to secure funding in order to offer advanced services to its customers and to expand its business. Some startup companies manage to secure funding while few fail to secure funding.

Now Wala, a South African based crypto payment firm, is facing funding issues and has decided to close its business.

Wala, a fintech startup company, had expected to launch its own digital currency across the country but won’t be able to carry out this initiative as Wala failed to secure essential funding. This eventually made the company to take a bold step of shutting down its business.

Wala has finally been closed.

Wala, a 4-year-old company, started in 2015 initially offered access to loans and insurance, remittances and transactional banking. The startup firm uses to work with professional service providers to provide a complete set of financial services to customers.

Wala initially was not a crypto-powered company. It started focusing on crypto services in 2017. In the same year, Wala for the first time released Dala- utility crypto-based token. The startup firm believed that Dala would support in globalization and further development of growth and also support blockchain powered financial platforms for new markets. Wala achieved this by generating funding from investor Newtown Partners and later via token sale received additional of US 1.2 million.

Wala attracted more than 150,000 users within a few months, and they widely live in Uganda. The startup firm also received the Zambezi prize in 2018. However, the CEO and founder of Wala Tricia Martinez mentioned that the firm experienced problems.

She mentioned rewards drew the attention of scammers or users who discovered how to take benefits of a rewards system. This made the company to modify the rewards model numerous times, and it was necessary to remove customers who were misusing Wala’s system.

She added,

“The biggest problem we ran into was the infrastructure. Our partners’ systems would regularly turn off due to internet problems or their own poor infrastructure, which meant our users were unable to transact, which was the biggest use case for Dala. This crushed our user engagement and most importantly trust in our system. It also forced us to expand the scope for Dala. We had to build even more infrastructure than we anticipated at the start.”

One of the main reasons that made the firm to shut the business was funding.

Martinez stated Wala has little funding and minimum resources in order to deal with huge global issue. Wala has more than 150,000 Dala wallet users, and several associates were interested in working with Wala, the company had more on its plate but with minimum resources.

Wala failed to raise fund, but its team members believed that Wals’s strong growth might attract investors.

Wala started taking big steps by removing the maximum of its team employees and also closed deposits. On June 24^th, finally, Wala closed its app completely.

Martinez told, during the beginning of the crypto winter, she started to raise fund, but it did not help the startup. Maximum of investors were not willing to support a crypto-based firm.

“For eight months, I traveled across the globe, pitching investors in blockchain, fintech, impact, African-focused… I met and engaged with over 100 investors, and despite our early growth numbers, we couldn’t secure the necessary financial support we needed to continue growing and operating.”