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آگوست 22, 2022

No renewals or new patrons: Zomato takes Pro off menu

Food tech platform Zomato is recalibrating its loyalty programs, and has closed new sign ups and renewals for its flagship program Zomato Pro, The Indian Express has learnt. The company had already shut down the more premium iteration Zomato Pro Plus earlier, and revised the terms of its co-branded credit card with RBL Bank.
The Gurgaon-based company launched Zomato Pro in 2020 and Zomato Pro Plus in 2021. The Zomato Pro program replaced the Zomato Gold membership offering. Pro members get discounts while ordering food online from or dining out at partner restaurants.
In a message to users trying to renew their expired Pro membership, Zomato says: “Thank you for being a part of the Zomato Pro program. The membership is unavailable for renewal as we are working on a new and better experience for you. We request you to check the Zomato app to stay updated on the latest offerings.”
Confirming the development in response to queries sent by The Indian Express, a Zomato spokesperson said: “While Zomato Pro and Pro Plus have been loved tremendously by our customers and merchants, we want it to be even more beneficial, especially for the most engaged customers and merchant partners.”

“We are taking feedback and working closely with our customers and restaurant partners to craft a new program. Meanwhile, we are not onboarding new members and merchant partners to Zomato Pro and Zomato Pro Plus. While active members can continue to get their benefits as promised, they will not be able to extend/renew their memberships once their membership tenure expires,” the spokesperson added.
In a separate message to the users of Zomato’s co-branded credit card, RBL Bank and the food tech platform said that September 20 onwards, it was capping the cashback from orders placed on the app using the co-branded credit card to 500 Edition Cash a day (1 Edition Cash is redeemable as Re 1 for subsequent Zomato orders).
Zomato offers 5 per cent cash back on spends done on its app. Under the new conditions, the company has also added spends done on the Blinkit app to the cashback scheme. Zomato recently acquired quick-commerce platform Blinkit, formerly known as Grofers.

ExplainedEye on newer use casesThe decision to pause onboarding of new members as well as to renew the membership of existing ones on Zomato Pro comes amid the company’s strategy of introducing newer use cases, focused more on dining out. These plans are unfolding as Zomato attempts to further narrow its losses.

These recent decisions are in line with Zomato’s new strategy of looking beyond loyalty programs to drive customer frequency. In its earnings call for the April-June quarter earlier this month, Zomato’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal said, “I think if you have to go from where we are today and meaningfully increase customer frequency, we will have to look beyond these loyalty programs and look at introducing newer use cases, which perhaps leads to a lot of the current offline spend on restaurant food moving on to our platform.”
The company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 186 crore for the three-month period ended June, compared with Rs 359.70 crore in the March quarter and Rs 360.70 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2021. This, even as its topline grew to Rs 1,413.90 crore in April-June this year, against Rs 844.40 crore in the same period last year.
The company said food delivery business grew 15 per cent sequentially and saw a break-even in adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) — a measure of its operating margins.
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Zomato’s chief rival in the food tech space Swiggy too runs its loyalty program Swiggy One, which was launched in November last year.
Swiggy operates this program as a common membership for the bouquet of services it provides, including food delivery, quick-commerce and local door-to-door package delivery.
The Swiggy One program offers the app’s users unlimited free deliveries from select restaurants and unlimited free delivery from Instamart on orders greater than Rs 99 in value, in addition to other discounts and no surge fees.

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آگوست 21, 2022

Enrolling in Medicare? Here are three key things you need to know

andresr | E+ | Getty ImagesMedicare may seem like a maze when you first try to navigate it.After all, there are different “parts” to the federal health insurance program, which provides coverage for about 56.5 million individuals in the 65-and-older crowd. And, whether you’re reaching the eligibility age of 65 or you are older and switching from workplace insurance to Medicare, there are some important factors to consider that affect your wallet.First, however, it’s worth knowing the basics: Original Medicare consists of Part A (hospital coverage) and Part B (outpatient care).More from Investor Toolkit:
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Investors are flocking to green energy fundsSome beneficiaries choose to get those benefits delivered through an Advantage Plan (Part C), which typically includes prescription drug coverage (Part D). Others stick with original or basic Medicare and, possibly, pair it with a standalone Part D plan and a so-called Medigap policy.Here are three key things to be aware of as you prepare to enroll.1. It’s going to cost youMedicare is not free.”This comes as a surprise to so many beneficiaries who have paid [payroll] taxes throughout their working lifetimes and assumed this would mean Medicare would be ‘paid up’ by the time they turn 65,” said Danielle Roberts, co-founder of insurance firm Boomer Benefits.”Those taxes will mean no premiums for Part A, but Parts B and D have premiums that beneficiaries pay monthly throughout their retirement years,” Roberts said.Premium-free Part A is available as long as you have at least a 10-year work history of paying into the system via payroll taxes. If not, monthly premiums could be as much as $499 in 2022, depending on whether you’ve paid any taxes into the Medicare system at all.Spouses without their own work history may qualify for premium-free Part A as well.Part A also has a deductible of $1,566, which applies to the first 60 days of inpatient hospital care in a benefit period. For the 61st through 90th days, beneficiaries pay $389 per day, and then $778 per day for 60 “lifetime reserve” days.Meanwhile, Part B’s standard monthly premium is $170.10 this year. However, some beneficiaries pay more through income-adjusted surcharges.”Many of my high-income earners are shocked at how much Medicare premiums will cost them in retirement,” said Elizabeth Gavino, founder of Lewin & Gavino and an independent broker and general agent for Medicare plans. The government uses your tax return from two years earlier to determine whether you’ll pay extra. To request a reduction in that income-related amount due to a life-changing event such as retirement, the Social Security Administration has a form you can fill out.Part B also has a deductible: $233 in 2022. Once that’s met, beneficiaries generally are responsible for 20% of covered services. Part D premiums, deductibles and copays depend on the specifics of the coverage. The average premium this year is about $32, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And, as with Part B, higher earners are charged extra through IRMAAs.2. Missing key deadlines can mean paying extraIf you’re planning to sign up for Medicare as soon as you’re eligible at age 65, you get a seven-month “initial enrollment period” that starts three months before the month of your 65th birthday and ends three months after it.Meanwhile, if you delayed signing up at age 65 because you continued to work and your employer coverage was acceptable (according to Medicare standards), you get eight months to enroll once your workplace plan ends.Regardless of the enrollment rules your subject to, missing the deadline to sign up for Part B can result in a life-lasting late-enrollment penalty. For each full year that you should have been enrolled but were not, you’ll pay 10% of the monthly Part B standard premium.”Many of my high-income earners are shocked at how much Medicare premiums will cost them in retirement.Elizabeth GavinoFounder of Lewin & GavinoPart D also has a late-enrollment penalty if you miss the deadline. For people signing up during their initial enrollment period at age 65, you get the same seven months for Part D as you do for Part B. However, if you’re beyond that window and your workplace coverage is ending, you get two months to enroll in Part D, whether as a standalone plan or through an Advantage Plan.The penalty is 1% of the national base premium for each month you didn’t have Part D or creditable coverage and should have.3. Supplemental insurance may make senseThe various costs associated with basic Medicare may be different if you have supplemental coverage.One option is to enroll in an Advantage Plan. While you would generally continue to pay your Part B premiums, many plans have a low or zero premium. And in addition to usually including prescription drug coverage, Advantage Plans also may offer extras such as dental, vision and hearing. Advantage Plans come with a cap on out-of-pocket spending, unlike basic Medicare. Their cost-sharing structures — i.e., deductibles, copays or coinsurance — also are different and vary from plan to plan.However, the annual maximum out-of-pocket can be high: in 2021, it averaged $5,091, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. You also may be required to use certain doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.”These plans have networks of providers and some plans will require you to choose a primary care physician and get referrals to see certain providers and prior authorizations for many of the more expensive procedures, tests and surgeries,” Roberts said.Your other option is Medigap, which picks up some cost-sharing associated with basic Medicare, such as the Part A deductible or Part B copays. These policies are offered by private insurance companies as well, but are generally standardized — same-named plans offer identical benefits no matter which insurer sells it. Available Medigap policies are designated A, B, C, D, F, G, K, L, M and N and each offers a different level of coverage.However, they can be pricey, depending on the insurer and where you live. A 65-year-old woman in Dallas might pay under $100 monthly for Plan G, while in New York that same person would pay $278, according to the American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance. And, generally speaking, those premiums rise over time.Choosing between an Advantage Plan or Medigap (or neither) can involve things that go beyond cost and depend on the specifics of your situation. This makes it worth consulting with either an experienced Medicare agent or your local State Health Insurance Assistance Program, otherwise known as SHIP, and neither would cost you anything for guidance.”There are many factors to consider when choosing between these two options,” Gavino said. .

آگوست 19, 2022

5G launch in sight: Telcos issued spectrum assignment letters

In what could significantly reduce timelines of network deployment by telecom operators, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued the spectrum assignment letters to telcos just 17 days after the auctions for 5G spectrum was concluded. Comparatively, in the previous auctions last year, these letters were issued more than a month after bidding ended.
Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw tweeted on Thursday morning, “5G update: Spectrum assignment letter issued. Requesting TSPs (telecom service providers) to prepare for 5G launch.”
Bharti Airtel said it was provided with an allocation letter for the designated frequency bands it purchased at this year’s 5G spectrum auctions “hours after” it submitted its first tranche of upfront dues towards the airwaves to the DoT, said Bharti Enterprises founder & chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal. Calling it an example of ease of doing business, he said this has never happened in this three decade long experience with the DoT.

“No fuss, no follow up, no running around the corridors and no tall claims. This is ease of doing business at work in its full glory. In my over 30 years of first-hand experience with the DoT, this is a first. Business as it should be…” Mittal said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the DoT received Rs 17,876 crore as upfront dues from four entities that bought spectrum in the auctions that ended earlier this month. Bharti Airtel paid the highest amount of Rs 8,312.4 crore, followed by Rs 7,864.7 crore from Reliance Jio, Rs 1,679.98 crore from Vodafone Idea and Rs 18.94 crore from Adani Group arm Adani Data Networks.
As per DoT’s rules for receiving payments from the spectrum auctions, companies have the option to pay dues in 20 equated annual instalments.
However, they are also free to pay the entire amount or part of it upfront, with the minimum duration for upfront payment being two years.
On August 5, the Department had issued demand notices to all the four companies to pay up their spectrum payments in 10 days, with Wednesday being the final day.
Analysts tracking the field said that before this year, spectrum assignment was typically a months’ long process. For instance, in last year’s auctions, which ended on March 2, telecom operators had submitted their first upfront dues by March 18. But the spectrum assignment happened on April 16, almost a month later after the payments were made. In 2021, the amount of spectrum sold was worth Rs 77,814.80 crore, almost half of what was sold this year.
“Allocation of spectrum post auctions is an administrative and bureaucratic task, and it shows that the government was well prepared in this year’s auctions. Even the earlier decisions that have been taken regarding this, including issuing the Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for the auctions that was released right after the Cabinet cleared the country’s biggest ever spectrum auctions so far, shows that everything was already in place. It points towards the government making a conscious effort to cut bureaucratic slack. Sunil Mittal is right to highlight this change,” telecom analyst Mahesh Uppal said.
Bharti’s Mittal said that the government also has assigned the company E-band spectrum “as promised”. The E-band spectrum, which is radio waves in the 70-80 GHz band, are pegged to play a major role in helping the telcos with backhaul, which will help smoothen data on their network. Last month, the DoT had agreed to provisionally allot E-band airwaves exclusively to mobile operators via the administrative route in circles where they hold 5G spectrum.
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Airtel and Jio have unveiled their 5G rollout plans, with the former saying that it will start rolling out the service this month itself and, by 2024, is expecting to cover large parts of the country, including in rural areas. Airtel has also prepared detailed network roll-out plans for 5,000 towns in India. Jio, meanwhile, has completed 5G coverage planning in 1,000 cities.
India’s biggest ever spectrum auction for 5G airwaves had ended on August 1 with bids upwards of Rs 1.5 lakh crore coming in after seven days of bidding spread over 40 rounds, belying initial expectations that the auction process would be wrapped up in under three days.
Jio emerged as the largest spender in the 5G spectrum auction, acquiring almost half of all the airwaves sold for more than Rs 88,000 crore, and was also the only one to have acquired spectrum in the premium 700 MHz band. Airtel, shelled out Rs 43,084 crore to acquire a total of 19.8 GHz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 3,300 MHz and 26 GHz bands. Vi spent Rs 18,799 crore and bid for certain medium and high frequency bands. Adani Data Networks acquired spectrum only in the 26 GHz band and spent Rs 212 crore.

آگوست 19, 2022

How WhatsApp grew from near-failed app to Meta’s next monetization push

In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.Following the launch of the iPhone in 2009, Former Yahoo! employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum had the idea to create an app that would allow users to update statuses on their contact list, which would then signal to their contacts where they were, or what they were up to at the moment. Koum recruited the services of iPhone developer Igor Solomennikov, and they created their first prototype. Among its first users, however, the app proved to be unpopular, and was riddled with connectivity issues and crashes. It was beginning to look like a failed concept, and Koum debated abandoning the project altogether and pivoting to a different job. But then, Apple launched push notifications, and that changed everything for what is now the most popular messaging app worldwide — WhatsApp.Push notifications, which allowed automated messages to be sent by an application without the app needing to be open, provided the potential for a more interactive model of Acton and Koum’s idea.Subsequently, the company altered the app’s function to then send push notifications out when a user changed their status. Quickly, the small circle of the founding team’s friends that used the app began to ping each other with custom statuses throughout the day, serving more as instant messaging than the originally intended status markers.Leaning into this trend, they redesigned the app, and released WhatsApp 2.0 in August 2009, focusing on the instant messaging component — which quickly became the app’s defining feature. The newly redesigned app immediately got attention, and the number of active users grew to 250,000 in what seemed like overnight. Soon after, Acton persuaded former colleagues at Yahoo! to invest $250,000 in seed funding. After months in beta, the iPhone application was released on the App store in November 2009, with Blackberry and Android versions following soon after. It also switched from a free service to a paid one, charging $1 a year to cover the cost of sending verification texts to users. Over the next few years, WhatsApp continued to rapidly grow, supported by over $50 million in investment funding from Sequoia Capital. In February 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook (now Meta) for $22 billion, making it the largest acquisition of a venture capital-backed company to date. Following that, WhatsApp became the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users. Several major changes also followed, including web capabilities, voice calling, and a removal of the $1 annual subscription fee. Just as WhatsApp had capitalized off of the emerging trend of push notifications, it did the same with encryption. WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption to every form of communication on its service, meaning that no one, even WhatsApp employees, could access the data that was sent across its network.Ultimately, WhatsApp’s success was found within its emphasis on user experience, embellished by the priority of privacy and a disdain for advertisements. WhatsApp democratized phone-based communication and kept user interest at the forefront of their decision making. “Behind every product decision,” the company stated, “is our desire to let people communicate anywhere in the world without barriers.” This was the reason behind ending the $1 annual subscription fee, in order to remove the barrier faced by users without payment cards. And it was also the reason they stood firm in not employing third-party advertisements on the app, which would have inevitably cluttered the interface for users. When WhatsApp was acquired by Meta, the company infamously promised, “No ads, no games, and no gimmicks.” To founders Acton and Koum, this phrase represented the ethos of the company.”You can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication,” Koum said at the time. “There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product.” Yet, in 2016, that promise was revoked, when the company launched a major update to its privacy policy that announced it would start sharing user information and metadata with Facebook. Although the company’s end-to-end encryption continued to protect the content of user communication, the update allowed WhatsApp to share a myriad of other user information with Facebook, including users’ phone numbers, app use frequency, information on how users interacted with one other, IP address, language, mobile network, and even location information, cookies, and payment data. Not long after this update, both founders Acton and Koum stepped down from WhatsApp and Facebook. “At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton told Forbes. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. I live with that every day.”But while WhatsApp’s commitment to users’ best interests, including data privacy, helped the company become one of the most ubiquitous apps in the world, it also prevented it from ever really becoming profitable. With no ads — which accounts for 97% of Meta’s revenue — WhatsApp has maintained little profitability.Today, Zuckerberg is hoping to change that, particularly by focusing on WhatsApp Business, which first launched in 2018. He recently drew comparisons to how the company monetized Facebook and Instagram after building large audiences in a conversation with CNBC’s Jim Cramer.”WhatsApp is really going to be the next chapter, with business messaging and commerce being a big thing there,” Zuckerberg told CNBC earlier this month.WhatsApp Business currently has two components, the free WhatsApp Business app for small businesses, which allows businesses to communicate directly with customers, and the WhatsApp Business platform, an API for larger corporations, that charges companies for every conversation after the first 1,000. Aiming to boost advertising revenue, stay relevant with small businesses and gain incremental revenue from the premium services offered, WhatsApp will soon roll out a premium service to small businesses that focuses on ‘click-to-message’ advertising, which allows consumers to click on a company’s ad and immediately be directed to a conversation with that business on WhatsApp. “We think messaging in general is the future of how people are going to want to communicate with businesses and vice versa. It’s the fastest and easiest way to get things done,” a WhatsApp spokesman said.This comes at a time of great uncertainty, as Meta recently missed on both the top and bottom lines for Q2, and gave a troubling forecast for the next quarter.Whether or not it can successfully monetize the more than 2 billion people that use WhatsApp today is yet to be seen. One thing is certain, however — that Zuckerberg and Meta is betting that WhatsApp Business will be an essential component of the company’s future.”Click-to-message is already a multi-billion dollar business for us and we continue to see strong double-digit year-over-year growth,” outgoing Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. It “is one of our fastest growing ad formats for us.” Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders. .

آگوست 17, 2022

GM reveals new GMC Canyon premium midsize pickup, starting at $40,000

DETROIT — General Motors on Thursday revealed its redesigned GMC Canyon as a more premium offering than the current midsize pickup, including a new off-road AT4X model that will expand the vehicle’s pricing range.The new AT4X model features off-road performance parts as well as unique interior and exterior styling. It will launch alongside a standard AT4 off-road pickup, premium Denali model and an entry-level Elevation trim that will start at about $40,000. The company will also offer a limited “AT4X Edition 1” vehicle for the first year of production, starting at $63,350. Starting pricing for the current model tops out around $50,000.Amid pent-up demand and record high prices, automakers have been adding more off-road and performance variants to their lineups to beef up profit margins before they transition more to electric vehicles, which can offer high performance but have lower margins than gas-powered vehicles.GM started offering AT4 vehicles with its full-size Sierra pickup in late 2018. It has since expanded to the entire GMC lineup. AT4 currently accounts for about a third of Canyon sales, according to officials.The Canyon is a sibling vehicle to the recently unveiled Chevrolet Colorado midsize pickup, but the company has greatly differentiated the designs of the new vehicles. However, both pickups share the same platform and “bones” and are exclusively powered by a 2.7-liter four-cylinder engine that produces up to 310 horsepower and 430 foot-pounds of torque.GM expects to begin producing the 2023 Canyon early next year, with AT4X models beginning in spring 2023. GM opened reservations for the 2023 GMC Canyon AT4X Edition 1 on Thursday.Each 2023 Canyon is higher and wider than the current generation. It’s also longer but offers about the same interior space as the current vehicle. The new design is more aggressive than the outgoing model, including a large rectangular grille and a new iteration of the brand’s signature C-shaped front lights.Midsize pickup trucks are important to the automaker, but their sales are far lower than GM’s larger full-size pickup trucks. For example, GMC sold only about 13,700 Canyons through the first half of this year compared with more than 70,000 Sierra light-duty pickups during that time.GM’s U.S. sales were down about 18% through the second quarter as the global automotive industry continues to manage through supply chain problems, including a shortage of semiconductor chips. .