WhatsApp's new feature may take away screenshot privileges; Why VMware India wants to work with startups

Wednesday April 17, 2019 , 3 min Read

India has over 20 unicorns now, and they are hiring! According to a recent report, these companies are responsible for an estimated one million indirect and over 60,000 direct jobs. In fact, OYO Rooms and Udaan have seen a 100 percent growth in employment in their engineering and IT functions in the last one year. Today, the country's startup ecosystem has turned out to be one of the main drivers of formal and informal employment. What is fuelling this hiring?

Messaging app WhatsApp had announced a new security feature (in its beta version) that would allow users to lock the app using the fingerprint sensor of their smartphones. But, there's a catch. Enabling this fingerprint authentication feature could effectively block a user from taking screenshots of chats.

This year, IPL has garnered a viewership of 267 million on Hotstar within the first three weeks itself, including a global live-streaming record of 12.7 million concurrent viewers on March 28. The Disney-owned service crossed its own past record of 11.2 million concurrent viewers that it hit during the India-New Zealand T20 match in February.

VMware may be a publicly traded software virtualisation company, but it continues to think like a startup. It has also learnt a lot by collaborating with startups. That’s why its global innovation team was in India recently to scout for innovation in the Indian startup ecosystem. In a video interview, VMWare VP and Managing Director for India Arun Parameswaran reveals more about the company's journey and proffers advice on how startups can scale.

Hike wants to change the way friends communicate with each other over chats and reduce dependency on the keyboard. To do this, the company has launched Hike Sticker Chat. It currently has 30,000 pre-loaded stickers across English and more than 40 Indian languages. By the end of the year, the company plans to up this number to 200,000.

American entrepreneur and celebrity investor Kevin Harrington has announced his very first investment in India in The New Shop, run and owned by Delhi-based ProductX Ventures. The “original shark” from reality TV show Shark Tank is also the founder of As Seen on TV, and claims to be the “inventor of the infomercial”. In a conversation with YourStory about his first foray into India 25 years ago, his latest (and first in India) investment, and his future plans for India.