Flipkart hires Google’s Surojit Chatterjee to head consumer experience & growth

Flipkart is hopeful of becoming profitable in the next 2-3 years and expecting to launch its IPO in 2-5 years.

BENGALURU: E-commerce giant, Flipkart has appointed Surojit Chatterjee, former Google product management director, as senior vice president and head of consumer experience and growth. In his role, Surojit will be responsible for all consumer experience across desktop and mobile, and will report to Punit Soni, chief product officer, Chatterjee will leave Mountain View for Bengaluru this month.

Chatterjee's latest role at Silicon Valley's Google office was heading the mobile search advertising and AdSense for Search (AFS). He was a founding member of Google's mobile search ads and helped make mobile search ads a growth engine for Google, developing it into a multi-billion dollar business. Previously, he led payment products for Google in the Asia-Pacific and mobile products for Google India. Prior to Google, Chatterjee worked as a senior product manager at Symantec Corporation and senior engineer at Oracle and IBM.

"Millions of people in India are connecting to the internet for the first time every month thanks to mobile technology - a transformation that is revolutionizing Indian society. I'm incredibly excited to join Flipkart to help shape India's bright future," said Chatterjee.

Chatterjee holds a BS in Computer Science from IIT Kharagpur, an MS in Computer Science from SUNY Buffalo and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He has 33 granted US patents to his name.

Mukesh Bansal, head, commerce platform, Flipkart said, "Surojit's experience helping build and scale a multi-billion dollar business from scratch, deep knowledge of product management, global ecommerce and tremendous expertise in mobile advertising will help Flipkart. He will be part of the leadership team and help innovate and improve all the ways we serve our customers."

Facebook Starts Letting You Add A 7-Second Looping Video As A Profile Pic

To keep its decade-old social network lively, Facebook is introducing five big changes to user profiles which are viewed 4 billion times per day: 1. The option to pin Featured Photos to the top of the profile, 2. Temporary profile pics, 3. Easier visibility controls for About info including a new 100 character Bio field, 4. A mobile eccentric design with centered profile photos plus big sections for photos and friends, and most importantly, 5. The ability to use a 7-second looping video as your profile pic. The features begin rolling out and testing today for some users.

Together, these changes should make Facebook more visually stimulating and addicting. As other networks like Twitter introduce auto-play video like Facebook did, and Snapchat adds animated selfie lenses and its own profile GIFs, Facebook has to stay a step ahead in the graphic arms race.

Meanwhile, Facebook wants to cement its profile as the center of your web presence. Snapchat hardly has a profile, and Twitter’s is basically just your most recent tweets. If Facebook can do more to let you customize how you represent yourself, you might be more willing to link back and send traffic to your profile. Facebook’s project manager on the new profile Aigerim Shorman tells me it’s designed to highlight “what’s going on in their life, what’s important to them now in more expressive ways.”

And finally, putting biographical info more front and center could get people to keep this information more up to date, which is critical to powering Facebook’s advertising engine. A similar overhaul of the web profile in 2010 scored Facebook immense amounts of data on where people live, where they went to school, and where they work, which has fueled its ad targeting ever since.

Profile Videos

Soon you’ll be able to click on your profile pic to upload a new profile video. You tap the record button and can shoot for up to 7 seconds with sound. The looping video will auto-play without sound (unless clicked) on your profile and the feed story about you uploading it. A still cover image you select will appear everywhere else, such as the small thumbnail that appears next to your News Feed stories.

Shorman tells me “Earlier this half [year] we were having a brainstorm, and sometimes you find a gem. One of my designers called me over [to look at an engineer’s] Facebook At Work account. But his profile pic was moving. I thought ‘this is going to be a great expression opportunity’. It brought the profile to life. You got to know the person better. So we got inspired to create an option to create a profile video.” She insists the Snapchat Profile GIFs that launched in July weren’t even discussed in the feature’s creation.

In the examples, you’ll see Facebook employees dropping hats onto their heads, blowing their faces with air, or cracking a slow a subtle smile. The profile videos feel a bit like the Harry Potter newspapers, where photos suddenly come alive. They’re sure to unlock a ton of creativity from the user base.

Featured Photos

The next biggest feature is a new option to select up to 5 Featured Photos that will appear pinned to a section at the top of your profile. This is designed to let you give people considering your friend request or who just met you a better clue to your identity. They could show your favorite after-work activities, your pets, or just some extra selfies. Think of them as the extra photos in your Tinder profile. They’re not your main profile pic, but they’ll be used to judge you.

Temporary Profile Pics

The temporary profile pic feature I spotted Facebook testing a few weeks ago is now getting an official roll out. It lets you select a profile pic, but have yours revert to your old pic after a set number of hours, days, or weeks. It’s useful for promoting a cause, like the the 26 million people who set their profile pic rainbow in support to the right to gay marriage.

Visibility Controls And Bio

Facebook is a now adding in-line privacy controls to the big About information fields that appear at the top of your profile. Those set to public will now appear immediately on the profile below your profile pic, rather than buried in the About section. You’ll also be able to describe yourself in words with a new 100 character Bio field, which could also help people figure out if they want to be your friend, as long as you keep that section public.

Mobile Design

Rather than just port the more left-aligned web profile to mobile, Facebook has built a mobile-first design. It makes the profile pic/video bigger and puts it in the center of the screen. Below, rather than small panels that open to reveal details on friends and photos, Facebook is giving both their own big sections pinned below the profile pic and above the timeline.

Google registers two new drone designs with the FAA: Reports

Google might be working on two new styles of delivery drone, according to FAA filings. These two new UAVs could possibly be tested by the company’s experimental division Google X.

According to a report by Engadget, the two aircrafts have been named M2 and B3. The M2 made the FAA registry on October 2 while the B3 was listed on October 7. Each of these have been registered with the FAA as a ‘fixed wing multi-engine’ electric aircraft and weigh less than 55 pounds. The report further states that both drones are registered near to the company’s Boulder, CO office, rather than its main campus in Mountain View, CA.

This goes in line with the information uncovered by The Guardian which suggested the craft would “weigh less than 25kg (55lbs), using multiple electric engines to fly at up to 100mph and as high as 120 meters.”

In addition, Astro Teller, Head of Google X, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that the company was already working on a design that “moves away from the single-wing-based approach.” Teller had already stated that he plans an update on the drone program at some point this year.

Look’s like we will find out more about the company’s drone/drones sooner than expected!

Israeli engineer designs grounded drone delivery service

Israeli industrial designer Kobi Shikar has come up with the concept of a parcel delivery drone that will never get off the ground – and that’s just fine with him.

The Transwheel Delivery Drone is a sensor-packed motorized unicycle that Shikar says could be an earthbound alternative to Amazon’s futuristic plans to use drone multicopters to deliver packages to your front door.

With a package held on its ‘head’ by two robotic arms, the Transwheel delivery robot – still largely a concept, with no financial backers – would steer its way to its destination, where its Internet-connected camera, tapping into social media sites, would identify the recipient. It’s a compromise, Shikar believes, between the need for speedy delivery and the dangers of flying drones encroaching on commercial airspace.

A series of on-board cameras would help it avoid obstacles and negotiate traffic.

Shikar’s concept video clip showing Transwheel zipping down the road on a delivery run has captured imaginations, receiving thousands of views and shares on has been viewed and shared thousands of times on video site YouTube.

“I worked on a concept that is a robotic autonomous wheel that is directed by GPS and has photography systems and facial recognition with the purpose of transporting packages,” said Shikar, 28, who invented the concept for his graduate project at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

In his workshop at Shenkar College, Shikar researched the evolution of the wheel and jotted down sketches. His first prototype was a simple cardboard wheel wired up to communicate with a toy remote control.

Using a balancing mechanism similar to the one that keeps a Segway upright, Transwheel drones could be programed, Shikar believes, to work as a group to carry large loads. Multiple Transwheels could work together to deliver larger parcels. His concept video shows 12 scooters hauling a full-size shipping container.

He envisages a pilot program in which the robots could be put to work at airports or military air bases, and notes that the battery-powered technology is non-polluting.

“Moving to robots, to this type of transportation, can also limit human accidents that happen on roads due to extended driving and also create perseverance,” he said during a summer break at Shekar college. “The pace does not change. It remains the same as opposed to people who often simply need the rest.”

Gilad Davidy, a Shenkar lecturer who rides a personal transporter similar to Shikar’s conceptual robot, said his student’s vision is not science fiction.

“The concept is realistic,” Davidy said. He added: “Today there are drones, there is Google’s project that are all in the same territory, a vehicle, transportation tool, in the air, sea and ground that transports based on data from satellites and from all different kinds of social networks”.

Shikar now hopes to gain financial backing to develop the robot from concept to reality.

Twitter to layoff 8 percent of its global workforce, says CEO Jack Dorsey

Twitter has finally announced to cut eight percent of its global workforce – nearly 330 jobs – to strengthen the micro-blogging site that is facing slow user growth amid tough competition from the rival social media platforms.

In a letter sent to employees on Tuesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced several moves including layoffs to get the once fast-growing social media service back on track, Wall Street Journal reported.

“We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce,” Dorsey wrote.

The job cuts would mostly affect its product and engineering teams in an effort to “organize around the company’s top product priorities and drive efficiency”.

Over the past year, the company’s workforce grew 24 percent to 4,100 employees, about half of whom are engineers.

However, Twitter’s monthly user growth climbed just 2.6 percent to 316 million in the quarter ending June 30.

In the same time, Facebook has more than doubled the strength of employees but nearly five times as many active users.

Twitter also announced that it expects revenue and a measure of its adjusted earnings to come in above the high end of its previously forecast range for the third quarter.

In his letter, Dorsey said the coming roadmap will entail “a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work”.

Micromax invests in music streaming service Gaana

Micromax, the country’s second largest handset maker, has said that it has invested in Gaana, one of the leading India music streaming services owned by Times Internet. No financial details were disclosed.

Under the deal, Gaana will be available on all Micromax smartphones, enabling users to seamlessly enjoy mobile music, a statement issued by Gaana said.

New users of Micromax smartphones will also receive free trials to Gaana+, allowing unlimited downloads without advertising.

“India is a music loving country and today’s youth is hooked on music for at least 2-3 hours a day through their smartphones… we are proud to announce our partnership with them to provide our new users an uninterrupted access to latest tunes and transcend them into the world of music,” Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma said.

He added that the investment is part of the company’s efforts to build an ecosystem of connected devices in a connected world.

Previously, the Gurgaon-based firm had said it will invest in startups across segments like healthcare, entertainment and gaming as part of its plans to strengthen services portfolio as it looks to stay competitive against rivals like Samsung and Xiaomi.

“In partnership with Micromax, we will strengthen our footprint, helping us reach our goal of 100 million Indian users,” Times Internet CEO Satyan Gajwani said.

Previously, Micromax has invested in travel search engine Ixigo, HealthifyMe and comparison platform Scandid as part of its plans to develop strategically relevant deployments of software that leverage its consumer footprint.

Gaana has a library of over 10 million songs with ad supported streaming in over 45 languages. It has over 20 million active users and has seen over 30 million downloads.

In May this year, Gaana was in news after the site’s user database was breached by a Pakistani hacker.

Flipkart sells half a million mobile handsets in 10 hours

Flipkart claims to have sold half a million mobile handsets in the last 10 hours since sales of mobile phones opened on midnight of Wednesday, 14th October in the ‘The Big Billion Days’ sale. This sets a record for the highest number of mobile phones sold in India within a short period of 10 hours in any platform, either online or offline.

The Big Billion Days also set the new benchmarks of 4G adoption in India as 75 percent of the phones sold during the ten hours period were 4G phones. While metros like Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai were the leading cities in terms of the sales, Flipkart also saw huge surge of interest from Tier 2 cities with Nagpur, Indore, Coimbatore, Vishakhapatnam and Jaipur leading in sales.

The exchange offers put out by Flipkart also saw great customer interest as 25 percent of the buyers used this opportunity to upgrade to a new phone. Bank offers from YES bank, Standard Chartered and Citi Bank offered additional discounts and reportedly saw huge traction with 50 percent of customers availing of the bank offers, says Flipkart.

Mukesh Bansal, Head of Commerce Platform, Flipkart said, “It has been a blockbuster beginning for our mobile category sale.  We are truly humbled by this overwhelming response from the people of India. With Big Billion Days, we have completely re-defined the online shopping space in India. Indian mobile revolution has truly come of age and the half a million mobile handsets sale record is truly a testament to the growing demand for smartphones in India.”