Gamezop operated by Advergame Technologies Private Ltd was founded by brothers Yashash and Gaurav Agarwal in 2015. Prior to this investment, the company raised $ 350,000 in 2016.

BITKRAFT is the world’s largest esports fund and co-owner of the publicly-traded esports ETF. Velo Partners is a global real money gaming fund and early backer of Adda52 and Junglee Rummy.

The company licenses HTML5 games from top developers and embeds them in over 1,600 popular apps – including Myntra, Grofers, ShareChat, MX Player, Glance (InMobi), and PhonePe – enabling users of these apps to play games casually or competitively for cash.

This way, the multi-game platform piggybacks on the distribution network of these partner apps and acquires users without any spending. The partner apps see an average 40 percent boost in engagement time through games, in addition to getting a 50 percent share in revenue made by the company.

Gamezop’s partner apps are free to choose between two integration options: mobile esports, where users compete on skill-based games in live tournaments to win cash prizes; and free-to-play games, where users play games casually. The company will use the investment to grow the mobile esports format and establish a presence in select overseas markets through its piggybacking model.

Commenting on this CEO and co-founder, Yashash Agarwal said “Growth of mobile esports is truly democratizing the access to competitive gaming and the ability to win real rewards. We decided to take it one notch further by going HTML5 and eliminating the need to force app sideloads – saves us a lot of money and our users a lot of friction,”

He added “BITKRAFT is the clear thought leader when it comes to esports, gaming, and immersive entertainment. They were at the top of our list when we began to look for investment partners to help us grow the business.”

“We have been looking to enter the Indian gaming market for a while and with Gamezop, the factors that excite us the most came together nicely – proven model ready to scale, extreme capital efficiency, solid product moat, and an unfair advantage in user acquisition. That company could scale to over 34 million users in a highly competitive space while being profitable and with minimal external capital highlights the team’s capabilities to be a major internet company,” commented, Malte Barth, founding general partner, BITKRAFT.

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According to what Triller says as “first of many announcements to come from these two digital powerhouses,” JioSaavn will have a prominent button to “Make a Triller Video” on the main screen of the platform.

Every video watched within the JioSaavn app will automatically be a Triller music video. This collaboration is expected to grow users and usage for the Los Angeles-headquartered firm.

The rush for local startups to fill the void created from the ban of TikTok and 58 Chinese apps due to cybersecurity concerns and border tensions between the two nations.

Bobby Sarnevesht, Executive Chairman of Triller and co-owner of Proxima said, “We couldn’t be more pleased to have partnered with not only the biggest company in India but one of the biggest and most important companies in the world.”

He added that it is an honor to become the backbone music video streamer of JioSaavn as well as such a prominent position within its app and that they will make sure to provide its users with unparalleled and best of class service.

Rishi Malhotra, Co-Founder, and CEO of JioSaavn said, “As we grow, we are committed to advancing our world-class product – always at the intersection of music and entertainment. Connecting creators to millions of fans are at the core of everything we do. Our cross-platform collaboration with Triller enables artists to create and express our culture in the most innovative ways. We are confident that this partnership will exponentially grow both companies.”

In the view of this partnership, what is even more interesting is that Reliance Industries which runs the Jio platforms, was said to be in talks with ByteDance to invest in TikTok’s Indian operations.

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Indian-made short video sharing app Chingari has raised funding of $ 1.3 million (almost Rs 10 crore) in a seed round led by a clutch of investors including AngelList India, Utsav Somani’s iSeed, Village Global, LogX Ventures, and Jasminder Singh Gulati of NowFloats.

Chingari came into prominence after the ban of Tiktok amid anti-Chinese sentiment. It recently emerged as the top winner in the “Social” category of “AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge” which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 4 with the aim of showcasing India as one of the leading app developing countries globally.

The AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge showed that many Indian app developers are now bracing the challenge of developing globally competitive apps.

This fund will be primarily used to hire more talent to accelerate product development, ramp up the platform’s reach and consumer engagement, the company said in a statement on Sunday. “We’re delighted that investors saw the immense potential in our vision and chose to join the Chingari journey,” said Sumit Ghosh, Co-founder, and CEO, Chingari App, said.

“Sumit and team Chingari has shown how to ship product features at a pace that I have not come across before,” Utsav Somani, Partner, AngelList India, said. “They have their ears to the ground, listening to users, and are engaging with them on all channels to translate that into the best short video content experience for Bharat’s demanding users.”

Every Chingari user can download and upload videos, chat with friends, interact with new people, share content, and browse through feed, among many other things. Chingari also allows its users to get creative with WhatsApp status, videos, audio clips, GIF stickers, and photos, and become popular.

Besides English and Hindi, the app can be used in multiple Indian languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

“While Chingari has grown at breakneck speed, it also suggests that India always had the ability to build our own. With Chingari winning the Atma Nirbhar App Innovation Challenge, we have reached a tipping point in the adoption of homemade products. For Bharat by Bharat, was delayed initially, but won’t be denied anymore,” Jasminder Singh Gulati, Founder, NowFloats said.

Chingari CEO Ghosh said the company is in talks with music labels for music licensing and reaching out to celebrities to get them on board on the platform. As of today, Chingari said to have a 25-million strong user base and records more than 3 million active daily users. The company says, Chingari pays it’s content creators a 30% cut in what it makes from brands.

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Amid the Indian government’s decision to ban 59 Chinese apps, the debate and demand for homegrown have increased. People everywhere started to look for possible replacements for some of these popular apps.

A unique, multilingual app designed and made in India has come close to fulfill these needs. Spark.Live, a short video sharing and live video consultation app is a premium platform owned by Home Screen Network.

Since its inception, it has already clocked 1.5 million downloads, 100 thousand daily visitor count, and 70 million monthly video views and still growing.

Spark.Live, perhaps the first-ever vernacular platform in India that provides consultancy in multiple Indian languages. It is a live video consultation and booking platform that offers a range of expert services delivered in top spoken Indian languages such as Hindi, Bangla, Kannada, Tamil, and English.

Soum Paul, founder, and CEO of Home Screen Network said that “‘From India to the World’ is the motto with which we have operated from the very start. Our unified platform enables users from India and around the world to watch, follow, message, video chat, and consult any of the experts in the heartland of India – expert yoga and fitness gurus, dance and music teachers, therapists and counselors, dietitians and Ayurveda doctors and many more.”

The application also adopts the best practices in user data protection and in facilitating a secure payment interface as those Chinese apps are banned because they are prejudicial to the “sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of the state and public order.”

The reach and scope of Spark.Live can be viewed as substantial. Apart from being a worthy replacement for Chinese apps, Spark.Live also provides crucial opportunities to individuals from every nook and corner of the country to earn their livelihood using this platform in their own language.

Mr. Paul added, “We are facilitating income generation for experts from home, who are able to seamlessly run their business even during the time of this crisis.” During this critical period, when India battles the COVID-19 outbreak and a massive loss of jobs, the Prime Minister has embarked on Indians upon a mission to be self-reliant and Spark.Live is turning out to be the ideal platform.

The app provides individuals an opportunity to become not only self-reliant but also to fight back the odds with the help of homegrown tech. It has provided its platforms to many such experts whose commercial activities suffered a major blow during the lockdown period, with many losing their regular clients. The platform provides a seamless expert-client experience without the need for physical proximity.

The services offered by Spark.Live has also benefited users immensely. It is not a fun video viewing platform but actually getting real-time mental and physical health advice, diet and nutrition guidance, attending regular fitness/yoga classes or dance/music lessons, receiving astrology/reiki/meditation guidance from the comfort of one’s home, at affordable prices.

Spark.Live also offers many free informative interviews and Live events and classes with doctors and experts, as well as partnerships with notable organizations such as CRY denoting its commitment to help people.

The team believes that information is power and should not be subjected to gatekeeping, especially based on language. Spark.Live’s driving force is to be the architect of the democratization of online content in India. This can be termed as an app of “Bharat” comprising rich diversity of our languages and cultures, along with providing users a safe, secure platform to engage with a wide range of experts, professionals, and specially curated content.

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An IT company in Bengaluru has developed an application capable of capturing an individual’s vital health statistics through mobile phone. According to the ministry of science and technology, it will determine an individual’s proneness to Covid-19 infection and can potentially play a vital role in early detection of the disease and risk assessment of the infected population.

This application creates an individual’s Covid risk assessment profile called Lyfas Covid score. Lyfas is different from AarogyaSetu which works by contract tracing and requires an individual to feed symptoms. But this is a proper medical screening test which purely depends upon test results.

Lyfas has been developed by a startup, Acculi Labs in association with the Union government’s CAWACH (Centre for Augmenting WAR with Covid-19 Health Crisis) initiative.

This new medical screening technology has the potential to detect possible infection in an asymptomatic individual which in turn helps to prioritise the conventional testing queue as well as in risk assessment of those individuals to establish if they can become symptomatic apart from assistance in risk assessment for recovery.

Generation of Lyfas Covid score has been achieved through repurposing Lyfas; a clinical-grade, non-invasive, digital functional biomarker smartphone tool for screening, early detection, root cause analysis, acute event risk assessment, prognosis, and home monitoring of chronic diseases.

A statement from the Science and Technology department, Government of India says “Lyfas is an Android application in which, when one keeps the index finger on the rear camera of a mobile phone for 5 minutes, captures the capillary pulse and blood volume change and derives 95 biomarkers with proprietary algorithms and signal processing techniques. It uses the power of smartphone processors and smartphone sensors to capture a bunch of body signals.”

The captured signals are then processed on the principle of Photoplethysmography(PPG), Photo Chromatography(PCG), Arterial Photoplethysmography(APPG), mobile spirometry, and Pulse Rate Variability(PRV).

The statement added “Lyfas then provides cardio-respiratory, cardio-vascular, haematology, hemorheology, neurology based parameters that are capable of tracking minute pathophysiological changes in the body. These changes are further profiled into organ system-wide response.”

The accuracy of this technology has been proved to 92%, specificity of 90% and sensitivity of 92% according to a study conducted with Medanta Medicity Hospital.

The government statement also says “Witnessing the success of the study, the Medanta ethics committee has approved it for a larger population study. This study is currently registered in Clinical Trials Registry- India (CTRI) and is acknowledged by the World Health Organisation (WHO).”

CAWACH is supporting market-ready innovations for control of Covid-19 and startup ideas to address associated challenges. Acculi Labs was selected after several rounds of screening for a solution towards mass screening.

Lyfas has received a grant of Rs 30 Lakh from DST and is now virtually supported by IIT Madras, Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre (HTIC), MedTech Incubator.

The clinical trials and regulatory proceedings for Lyfas Covid Score are expected to be completed by the end of September, after which the testing facility will be made public.

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Amazon is keen on pushing its music service through its voice-controlled, intelligent personal assistant Alexa. Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers use Alexa for voice control.

Amazon will begin by offering music in ten languages like English, Hindi, Tamil

Amazon will begin by offering music in ten languages like English, Hindi, Tamil, without any additional costs for Prime members who pay a subsidized annual fee of Rs 999. Users can also download songs without any additional charges and enjoy ad-free listening, said Sean McMullan, head of international expansion for Amazon Music. He told that voice-controlled devices like Alexa were transforming the way people consumed music. We are moving from streaming music on our mobile phones to voice-based streaming, he said. Amazon Music will be made available on Android, iOS, Amazon Fire TV an Echo devices.

Amazon India captured the streaming media market in India with the launch of Prime Video in India. Amazon’s Prime Video was included with the Prime membership which offers free shipping, one-day and two-day deliveries, among others.

The Prime Music service will provide access to unlimited ad-free music streaming across various genres and languages. With this, the Amazon Prime can be termed as one of the best value for money proposition when it comes to media streaming services.

The launch of the Prime Music service in India comes just after Amazon increased the price of Prime membership from ₹499 to ₹999 — after an introductory period of about one year.

In the last few years, global players like Apple Music, Google Music have entered the India market

Along with Gaana, another domestic music streaming service, which is largely dependent on advertising revenue, is Saavn, backed by Tiger Global and other investors. In the last few years, global players like Apple Music, Google Music, and now Amazon have entered the India market which charge a subscription fee. Amazon Music is a paid product in the US where it competes with the like of Spotify. It is available across 30 countries globally.

In terms of music streaming services, Amazon ranks third globally, with over 16 million paid subscribers. Indian operation will surely help Amazon to garner more subscribers.

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HMD Global, a Finnish startup which has licensed to design Nokia brand of phones, once the invincible leader of the global mobile phone markets, has announced four new Android-powered smartphones — Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia 7 Plus, new Nokia 6 and Nokia 1 — at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday.

In addition to these models, the company has also relaunched its iconic slider phone Nokia 8110, with 4G connectivity, and apps including Google Assistant, Google Maps, Google Search, Facebook and Twitter.

Three new Nokia smartphones — the Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia 7 Plus and the new Nokia 6 — join the Android One family, powered by new AI features. Each of the new phones comes with a limited number of pre-installed apps.

The Nokia 8110 phone, one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, comes with a familiar and easy-to-use interface and features intuitive tactile mechanics, with slide to answer and end calls.

Surprisingly, the model comes with a revamped version of Snake.

With two colours to choose from, traditional black and banana yellow, the Nokia 8110 will be available from May this year and will retail for a global average retail price of €79 (INR 6,310 or USD 97.48), excluding taxes and subsidies.

“This time last year, we started our journey with huge expectations from fans and a massive responsibility to deliver on the legacy of one of the most innovative brands in our space. Since the,  we have reintroduced well-loved icons, forged partnerships with friends old and new and delivered our pure, secure and up-to-date Android experience across our smartphone portfolio. Last year we shipped over 70 million Nokia phones,” said Florian Seiche, CEO of HMD Global.

Nokia 8 Sirocco will be available from early April for a global average retail price of €749. Nokia 7 Plus will be available from early April for a global average retail price of €399. New Nokia 6 will be available from May for a global average retail price of €279.

Nokia 1 will be available from early April for a global average retail price of $85. Xpress-on covers, sold separately, are available from $7.99 in Azure, Grey, Yellow and Pink. Nokia 8110 will be available from May for a global average retail price of €79. All prices exclude taxes and subsidies.

1 EURO=USD 1.23 or INR 79.88

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Times Internet’s TLabs Accelerator has announced a partnership with Facebook to strengthen the mobile startup ecosystem in India.

Delhi-based TLabs and the social media giant will build on the knowledge and learnings of in-house senior mentors to engage and educate budding entrepreneurs in the country.

As part of this  tie-up, the duo will co-host multiple events for solving startup issues around user experience, analytics, app installs, and monetisation.

Facebook will also provide FbStart referral codes to TLabs for use by the latter’s mobile portfolio startups. For the uninitiated, FbStart is a global programme designed to help mobile startups build and grow their apps. Startups with a live mobile app on Google Play/iOS stores or a working Messenger bot can apply for the FbStart programme and membership is awarded to selected startups, post a review from the Facebook team.

These startups will receive ad credits from Facebook and benefits from more than 30 partners, including AWS, Dropbox, SalesForce and MailChimp. Additionally, startups in the FbStart programme will also get support and mentorship from Facebook’s product experts and join an exclusive community of global startups.

TLabs COO Abhishek Gupta said: “It’s an incredible step by Facebook for the mobile ecosystem, and startups would be highly benefited from being a part of the Facebook global community.”

Satyajeet Singh, Head (Product Partnerships) at of Facebook India said that partnering with TLabs was a progressive decision towards creating an empowered startup ecosystem in the country.

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