Pete Johnston&#8217;s plan to build &#8220;the world&#8217;s most badass recruitment engine&#8221; could put a dent in Microsoft&#8217;s plans to wring money from LinkedIn&#8217;s 500 million users.
Johnston, a former designer for Google and ad giant M&#038;C Saatchi in London, and his backers, including PayPal co-founders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, are betting that managing contract workers will one day become as valuable to corporations as hiring and paying their own staff.
The start-up, formerly known as Lystable and now renamed Kalo, charges 3 percent of what its customers pay to contractors they hire through the platform. It&#8217;s a bet on the growth of the freelance economy.
A report out this month from consulting firm McKinsey suggested that the gig economy will be here sooner than later. The study said 20 to 30 percent of workers in the U.S. and Europe already do &#8220;independent work.&#8221;
For his part, Johnson said that &#8220;we know who they are, what they worked on and have access to their financial data.&#8221;
But before he and his 50-person start-up take on the world&#8217;s largest software maker, Johnston first has to get used to a new name for the company, which until last week was called Lystable.
That name had an air of exclusivity — as in, you needed special qualifications to be &#8220;listable&#8221;—and Johnston wanted to move away from that. So the company asked the 50,000 freelancers registered on its website to come up with ideas. Johnston also hired a consulting firm that came up with another 30 names.
Yet the company&#8217;s new moniker came not from either of those sources, but from a much more serendipitous process.
Johnston earlier this month looked out onto San Francisco Bay, and saw two ships passing each other. As they crossed, the name of one was truncated to Kalo — and the proverbial light bulb went on.
&#8220;It was an emotional decision,&#8221; says Johnston.
Managing freelancers is a mess
He got the idea for the company while sitting in his Dublin apartment in 2014. He&#8217;d been working for a Google design unit in London that had just seven staff employees, but used more than 150 freelancers per year.
The process, run on a platform made by &#8220;a large enterprise software company&#8221; he declined to name, was worse than cumbersome.
Workers often were not paid quickly — and thus not exactly happy when Johnston and his co-workers asked them to come back for another project.
At first, the software was designed to identify workers and assign them tasks.
But those two steps weren&#8217;t enough, Johnston said, as &#8220;the (freelance) process would then go into this dark place&#8221; when it came time to pay them.
So the company, then based in London and still called Lystable, built a payment module, started charging a fee, and began signing up customers including Google, Airbnb, Expedia and The Economist.
Soon Johnston, a native of Belfast in Northern Ireland, moved to San Francisco, convinced two marquee investors to back him, and opened a new office in this city&#8217;s Financial District early this year. 
 
Microsoft&#8217;s LinkedIn deal as validation
&#8220;This is the sweet spot,&#8221; Johnston told CNBC, while pointing to a group of silos he&#8217;s drawn on the white board of the only conference room in Kalo&#8217;s new headquarters.
The silos represent various back-office functions now run largely by software from tech giants like SAP, IBM and Microsoft.
Putting together back-office data on contractors &#8220;is the key to building the world&#8217;s most badass recruitment engine,&#8221; said Johnston.
His talk of silos echoed one of the rationales given by Microsoft when the software giant acquired the professional social network LinkedIn for $26 billion last year.
&#8220;Today, all the information a professional needs to be successful are in silos,&#8221; according to a presentation Microsoft prepared to explain the deal.
&#8220;By connecting all these apps and data, we can create more connected, intelligent and productive experiences,&#8221; Microsoft said.
Yet Johnston believes that managing contract workers will become more valuable as their ranks grow, and that &#8220;any company that tries to manage them like staff workers is going to run into problems&#8221; like those he saw at Google&#8217;s London office.
He added that Microsoft&#8217;s LinkedIn&#8217;s deal validates his business model, but is confident Kalo can measure up.
&#8220;Do I think they&#8217;ll attack the freelance market and build a module as fast as us? No,&#8221; Johnston said.

This ex-Googler is building a LinkedIn killer

The idea that the economic “pie” can grow indefinitely is alluring. It means everybody can have a share without limiting anybody’s greed. Rampant inequality thus becomes socially acceptable because we hope the growth of the economy will eventually make everybody better off.
In my <a href="http://panmacmillan.co.za/catalogue/wellbeing-economy/">new book</a> “Wellbeing Economy: Success in a World Without Growth” I point out that the “growth first” rule has dominated the world since the early 20th century. No other ideology has ever been so powerful: the obsession with growth even cut through both capitalist and socialist societies.
But what exactly is growth? Strangely enough, the notion has never been reasonably developed.
For common sense people, there is growth when – all things being equal – our overall wealth increases. Growth happens when we generate value that wasn’t there before: for instance, through the education of children, the improvement of our health or the preparation of food. A more educated, healthy and well-nourished person is certainly an example of growth.
If any of these activities generate some costs, either for us individually or for society, we should deduct them from the value we have created. In this logical approach, growth equals all gains minus all costs.
Paradoxically, our model of economic growth does exactly the opposite of what common sense suggests.
<h2>Negative values of growth</h2>
Here are some examples. If I sell my kidney for some cash, then the economy grows. But if I educate my kids, prepare and cook food for my community, improve the health conditions of my people, growth doesn’t happen.
If a country cuts and sells all its trees, it gets a boost in GDP. But nothing happens if it nurtures them.
If a country preserves open spaces like parks and nature reserves for the benefit of everybody, it does not see this increase in human and ecological wellbeing reflected in its economic performance. But if it privatises them, commercialising the resources therein and charging fees to users, then growth happens.
Preserving our infrastructure, making it durable, long-term and free adds nothing or only marginally to growth. Destroying it, rebuilding it and making people pay for using it gives the growth economy a bump forward.
Keeping people healthy has no value. Making them sick does. An effective and preventative public healthcare approach is suboptimal for growth: it’s better to have a highly unequal and dysfunctional system like in the US, which accounts for <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/">almost 20% of the country’s GDP</a>.
Wars, conflicts, crime and corruption are friends of growth in so far as they force societies to build and buy weapons, to install security locks and to push up the prices of what government pays for tenders.
The earthquake in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown">Fukushima</a> like the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/20/deepwater-horizon-key-questions-answered">Deep Water Horizon oil spill</a> were manna for growth, as they required immense expenditure to clean up the mess and rebuild what was destroyed.
<h2>Disappearing growth</h2>
Against this pretty grim depiction, you may ask yourself: where is the good news? Well, the good news is that growth is disappearing, whether we like it or not. Economies are puffing along. Even China, the global locomotive, is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/20/chinese-economic-growth-dips-to-67-the-slowest-for-26-years">running out of steam</a>.
And consumption has reached limits in the so-called developed world, with fewer buyers for the commodities and goods exported by developing countries.
Energy is running out, particularly fossil fuels, and even if polluting energy sources were endless – as some supporters of shale gas, or fracking, suggest – global agreements to fight climate change require us to eliminate them soon.
As a consequence, mitigating climate change forces industrial production to contract, thus limiting growth even further. What this means is that, on the one hand, growth is disappearing due to the systemic contraction of the global economy. On the other, the future of the climate (and all of us on this planet) makes a return of growth, at least the conventional approach to industry-driven economic growth, politically and socially unacceptable.
<h2>Window of opportunity for change</h2>
Even the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/imf-fears-global-economy-is-suffering-secular-stagnation-10161154.html">International Monetary Fund</a> and mainstream neoliberal economists like Larry Summers agree that the global economy is entering a “<a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2017/05/25/secular-stagnation-even-truer-today-larry-summers-says/">secular stagnation</a>”, which may very well be the dominant character of the 21st century.
This is a disastrous prospect for our economies, which have been designed to grow – or perish. But it is also a window of opportunity for change. With the disappearance of growth as the silver bullet to success, political leaders and their societies desperately need a new vision: a new narrative to engage with an uncertain future.
In my new book, I argue that as we begin to recognize the madness behind growth, we start exploring new paths. These include: forms of business that reconcile human needs with natural equilibria; production processes that emancipate people from the passive role of consumers; systems of social organisation at the local level that reconnect individuals with their communities and their ecosystems, while allowing them participate in a global network of active change makers.
This is what I call the “wellbeing economy”. In the wellbeing economy, development lies not in the exploitation of natural and human resources but in improving the quality and effectiveness of human-to-human and human-to-ecosystem interactions, supported by appropriate enabling technologies.
<h2>Fulfilling lives</h2>
Decades of research based on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Lessons-Science-Richard-Layard/dp/0143037013">personal life evaluations</a>, <a href="http://www.springer.com/cn/book/9783319391007">psychological dynamics</a>, <a href="http://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/">medical records</a> and <a href="http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.html">biological systems</a> have produced a considerable amount of knowledge about what contributes to long and fulfilling lives.
The conclusion is: a healthy social and natural environment. As social animals, we thrive thanks to the quality and depth of our interconnectedness with friends and family as well as with our ecosystems. But of course, the quest for wellbeing is ultimately a personal one.
Only you can decide what it is. This is precisely why I believe that an economic system should empower people to choose for themselves. Contrary to the growth mantra, which has standardised development across the world, I believe an economy that aspires to achieve wellbeing should be designed but those who live it, in accordance with their values and motives.
This article is part of a series to be published following the release of Lorenzo Fioramonti’s <a href="http://panmacmillan.co.za/catalogue/wellbeing-economy/">new book</a>: Wellbeing Economy: Success in a World Without Growth (MacMillan South Africa).

Op-Ed: Growth is dying as the silver bullet for success. Why this may be good thing

Amazon’s latest revelations showcase how it wants to own a sector worth trillions. But we have the technology to innovate in the pharmaceutical space before Amazon comes and does it for us, writes Nnamdi Oranye.
Amazon’s disruption in the retail and logistics space is unprecedented and in need of no introduction. However, in its typical style, while everyone has been focusing on what we perceive to be its core business, it has quietly been thinking of swallowing a completely different industry – in this case, pharmaceuticals.
I have the great privilege of being invited to conferences and think-tanks all over the world, and towards the latter end of 2016 I started noticing Amazon making certain moves that made me reiterate several times and in several places that it will be moving into this space. I was met with some scepticism. After returning from the Forum on Public-Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago, where I raised the point again, I opened up my news sources the day after landing back in South Africa to find CNBC had just confirmed what I suspected all along. Amazon had announced that it will be hiring a general manager to pave its path for entering into the pharmaceutical space. The report revealed that, apparently, entering into this space had been in Amazon’s discussions for a number of years. That means you can believe it has a serious plan it place.
This all makes perfect sense and to be honest we shouldn’t really be surprised anymore. Silicon Valley wants to connect everything, and Amazon certainly has a track record of wanting to own just about everything. One of the reasons why Silicon Valley has gone this way, in my opinion, is it has assimilated a vision of connecting industries and innovations together. Since the early days as just a bunch of professors and students at Stanford with a vision, Silicon Valley has nurtured this sort of thinking – finding ways to connect their innovations to existing industries. That’s what made the original “outfit in a garage”, Hewlett Packard, so successful. And today they continue to do the same.
<h3>Last mile of logistics</h3>
Here’s why Amazon moving into this space makes a lot of sense. It has been relentless in trying to solve the ‘last mile of logistics’ problem. With drone technology, it can literally deliver to pretty much anywhere in the world. Why wouldn’t it look to deliver pharmaceuticals as well? It has already been in this market in some ways, selling equipment and medical supplies, and interestingly offering cloud services to the biotech and pharmaceutical industry.
An example of Amazon’s vision comes from rural Africa, actually. Here we have an obvious challenge with the “last mile” problem — the movement of goods from the supply depot to the consumer’s home, or wherever the consumer may be. Amazon has been exploring drone technology for a long time, and the truth is so have we, but in unexpected places. For some time, UNICEF has been piloting a project in Malawi, with the aim of delivering medical supplies and picking up blood samples. This has obvious tremendous benefit to rural communities. Through the use of a smartphone, health workers can call a drone to drop off or collect supplies – and with a simple swipe of the screen ensure location services are on, so it can use their GPS location. When the drone arrives, they just tell the drone where to go on the phone, and off it goes. It can carry up to one kilogram of goods. In Tanzania and Ghana, the drones are also being used to carry off birth registration forms from rural areas to the nearest Home Affairs.
I find it interesting that a humanitarian organisation that focuses on developmental assistance to children and mothers is developing and piloting this project – and is actually looking for commercial investors to get involved. Pharmaceuticals, in my opinion, should be among the first to get involved. Home-grown companies involved in that supply chain should be getting in there now, as far as I’m concerned. There is no need to reinvent or come up with technology – everything requires is there already. But, it seems to me, Amazon will beat them to the punch.
<h3>Red tape and regulations</h3>
Amazon is already selling certain kinds of health equipment and medicine already. While it is true that the distribution of medicine comes with legitimate red tape and regulations that would all be new for Amazon, I am sure they will find a way. I can already imagine legitimate systems that would work &#8211; say, an app a doctor or health worker can download via a medical aid such as Discovery Health. Instead of writing you a prescription, the doctor just accesses the app, taps on the medicine he is prescribing, and the transaction goes through your health insurance at the same time as an order goes to Amazon. No need to go to a pharmacy. No need to ask the doctor to write another prescription if you lose the original &#8211; or need more medicine (he can obviously create a recurring prescription, or could put a future prescription on standby, or just create another prescription if you need it, and run it all through the app). Or if you don’t have health insurance, he could put the prescription through to Amazon who asks for your Amazon account details, and then send you a confirmation you just have to tap to purchase. Amazon’s ‘one-click’ buying system, and its ability to make payment almost invisible, will make this all seem a pleasure for us as consumers. Whatever the case, your medicine could be on your doorstep by the time you get home; or it could just get delivered to wherever you are, if you turn location services on and let its drone track your GPS signal. So if you’re away on a business trip or at a holiday home, or live out in a rural village, Amazon will find you and deliver to you your medicine.
Think about how such a simple system could work – using existing technology. It’s only the legalities standing in the way. Steve Kraus, a health tech investor with Bessemer Venture Partners, and expert in the field, is confident that Amazon could break open the pharmaceutical space. In his view, reports CNBC, every major technology company should have a play in health care, an estimated $3 trillion sector. The news of Amazon’s foray into this industry saw pharmacy stocks in other companies drop by the next day, but as Kraus says, it’s not just pharmaceuticals who should be worried. In the future, Amazon could work directly with manufacturers, become a distributor, negotiate discounts, and have such big buying power that most of us will just rather buy there as it will be so much cheaper. &#8220;In Amazon style,” Kraus said to CNBC, “it will want to own the consumer&#8217;s mind and wallet.”
<h3>Thinking without borders</h3>
In my opinion, this is how our innovators ought to be thinking. How do we own the consumer’s mind and wallet? How do we think without borders? We might not be able to compete with Amazon and Silicon Valley companies head-on, and in fact, if Amazon brings the kind of solution I’ve highlighted above to Africa, it will benefit us greatly. Having said that, however, we need to make sure we have the right framework in place so that Amazon’s role on our continent in pharmaceuticals sees us benefit economically as well as from a health point of view. Otherwise, it is just monopolising. It will cannibalise whole industries, supply chains, and expertise before we even realise it.
UNICEF’s example shows we can do this. We just need to invest, move quicker, get the right innovators involved, and think how we can connect it all together. Amazon has a few years to work out the red tape in its own context in the States and other places, but we can work out our own red tape here in Africa before they come. In fact, maybe we could even help them and then have a stake in it all – if we could just get a move on.

Amazon poised to disrupt pharmaceuticals

Problems at one of its suppliers has forced German carmaker BMW to halt production in Leipzig and some of its plants in China and South Africa.
German magazine Focus reported in its online edition that production in Munich was also reduced for two days last week.
In a statement from BMW Group, South Africa the car manufacturer said its supplier BOSCH is not currently able to provide it “with a sufficient number of steering gears for the BMW 1 Series, 2 Series, 3 Series and 4 Series.
“This means that only limited vehicle production is currently possible at various BMW Group plants in Germany. Plant Tiexi in China and Plant Rosslyn in South Africa have extended or pulled-forward planned interruptions to production. The situation is unlikely to change this week.
“MINI production and production of BMW X models and our larger model series, the BMW 5 Series, 6 Series and 7 Series, is not affected.
“The relevant purchasing and production departments are doing everything possible to find a solution as quickly as possible. We are taking advantage of the flexibility of our processes to minimise economic damage”. 
Focus said the disruptions would cost BMW double-digit millions of euros a day, without saying where it got its information from.

Supply problems hit production at BMW, these are the BMWs impacted

London&#8217;s Heathrow Airport said early on Monday that there were still some disruptions to British Airways flights from the airport following a global computer system failure at the airline.
BA said on Twitter it would run a full schedule at London&#8217;s Gatwick on Monday and intended to operate a full long-haul schedule from Heathrow along with a high proportion of short-haul service.
The airline resumed some flights from Britain&#8217;s two biggest airports on Sunday, but hundreds of passengers were still waiting for hours at London Heathrow.
&#8220;We have mobilized additional Heathrow colleagues to assist passengers at the terminals and give out free water and snacks,&#8221; Heathrow said in a statement on Twitter.
The airport said earlier that further delays and cancellations of BA flights were expected on Sunday and told passengers not to travel to the airport unless they were rebooked on other flights.
BA canceled all its flights from Heathrow, Europe&#8217;s busiest airport, and Gatwick on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centers and website.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Britain’s Heathrow says BA still experiencing some disruptions

Nqobile Dludla | JOHANNESBURG
South Africa&#8217;s Naspers&#8217; pay-television subsidiary has agreed to pay an accumulative fine of 180 million rand ($13.97 million) for price fixing, the competition commission said on Thursday.
&#8220;DStv Media Sales (Pty) Ltd has admitted to price fixing and the fixing of trading conditions in contravention of South Africa&#8217;s Competition Act,&#8221; the commission said in a statement.
DStv, a digital satellite service, is owned by MultiChoice, which is a unit of Naspers, the biggest listed firm on the continent.
The matter relates to a November 2011 investigation, which found that through the Media Credit Co-Ordinators (MCC), various media companies agreed to offer similar discounts and payment terms to advertising agencies that place advertisements with MCC members.
&#8220;The Commission found that the practices restricted competition among the competing companies as they did not independently determine an element of a price in the form of discount or trading terms,&#8221; the commission said.
As part of the consent agreement filed with the Competition Tribunal, which makes the final ruling, DStv Media Sales will pay an administrative penalty of over 22 million rand and pay 8 million rand to the Economic Development Fund over three years.
DStv Media Sales will also provide 25 percent in bonus airtime for every rand of airtime bought by qualifying small agencies for three years, the commission said.
MultiChoice and Naspers could not immediately be reached for comment.
($1 = 12.8846 rand)
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; editing by Susan Thomas)

South Africa’s Naspers pay TV unit agrees to $13 mln fine

Loucoumane Coulibaly | ABIDJAN
Ivory Coast plans to build a 25-megawatt solar power plant in the north of the country as it seeks to bolster a strained power grid with renewables, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.
The 23.6 billion CFA franc ($40 million) plant will be built by Korhogo Solaire, a subsidiary of Morocco&#8217;s Nova Power, and is expected to be operational by 2018, Bruno Kone told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
It could be one of the first solar power plants in Ivory Coast which until now has depended mostly on gas- and oil-fired thermal plants to produce power and has only a small number of planned solar projects.
&#8220;The realization of this&#8230;plant will improve the balance of the energy mix, which requires an increasingly strong integration of renewable energy,&#8221; Kone said.
Ivory Coast, the world&#8217;s top cocoa producer, is one of Africa’s rising economic stars, but rapid growth has strained the power sector in the West African country, which also exports electricity to Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana, Mali, Togo, and parts of Liberia.
Demand for electricity is increasing by about 10 percent annually and the government hopes to attract enough investment to double output to 4,000 megawatts by 2020.
($1 = 587.7600 CFA francs)
(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly, editing by Edward McAllister and Elaine Hardcastle)

Ivory Coast to build 25 MW solar power station

CAPE TOWN, May 24 (Reuters) &#8211; Six South African telecom companies, including MTN Group <a href="reuters://REALTIME/Verb=FullQuote/ric=MTNJ.J">MTNJ.J</a> and Vodacom <a href="reuters://REALTIME/Verb=FullQuote/ric=VODJ.J">VODJ.J</a>, will be able to keep their in-demand broadband spectrum until their licences expire in 2028 after agreeing to buy at least 30 percent of the government&#8217;s new Wireless Open Access Network (WOAN), the communications minister said on Thursday.
Minister Siyabonga Cwele told journalists an agreement was reached with operators on May 19, after they initially opposed a government plan forcing them to ditch their broadband spectrum and share a national network.
Creating a single open-access network is at the heart of a government goal to roll out broadband access in Africa&#8217;s most industrialised economy.
In a statement mobile operator Telkom says it welcomes the study proposed by Cwele, to investigate, amongst other things, the amount of spectrum to be used by the planned national WOAN.
Adding that WOAN, &#8220;proposed as a policy intervention must be given an opportunity to succeed to level the playing field within the sector.
&#8220;This will ensure that barriers to entry for small players are lowered, which will result in increased competition. 
We are, however, weary of proposals to allocate the unused spectrum through an auction as this will further entrench the current duopoly and may have a negative effect on the consumer.
&#8220;The minister and the regulator must recognise that Telkom does not have the Sub 1 GHz Spectrum, which inhibits our ability to compete fairly. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency&#8221;.

S.Africa allows telecoms operators to keep broadband spectrum until 2028

Eustance Huang | CNBC
Once known as the next frontier for tech investments, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/india/" target="_self">India</a> has seen many of its top start-ups seem to be going through a bit of a rough patch lately.
According to News Corp VCCEdge&#8217;s quarterly deal report for 2017&#8217;s calendar year first quarter, the value of start-up deals in India faced the worst quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2013 — with 165 deals made at a value of $237 million.
<blockquote>&#8220;Unicorns in India are facing issues related to profitability and (a) slowdown in funding,&#8221; said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research.
<div id="attachment_122356" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-122356" class="wp-image-122356 size-large" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/start-up-shutterstock-1024x738.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="461" />Photo: Shutterstock.</div></blockquote>
Meena told CNBC that most of the companies, especially those in online retail, are struggling to bring profitability into their business as a result of over-expenditure on customer acquisition following Amazon&#8217;s entrance into the Indian market in 2013.
Furthermore, Meena said, the problem has been exacerbated by an increasingly challenging regulatory environment — with more rules on discounts — and the government&#8217;s push for demonetization in November 2016, making it difficult for start-ups to realize aggressive targets.
Echoing Meena&#8217;s statements, Marcelo Ballvé, research director at CB Insights said &#8220;several of India&#8217;s prominent e-commerce and food delivery unicorns have not fared well recently.&#8221;
As a result, multiple high-profile unicorns have faced a reduction in valuation and fund raising efforts and the sector has seen an increase in consolidation.
For example, Ballvé cited the recent fundraising round for India&#8217;s largest e-commerce retailer Flipkart, in which the company&#8217;s overall valuation slid despite raising more than $1 billion.
Just a month before, its rival Snapdeal announced that it was laying off up to 600 employees due to over-expansion and diversification. In recent weeks, rumors have even started spreading about the possibility of an acquisition between the two companies, <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.vccircle.com/snapdeal-flipkart-may-ink-merger-next-week/" href="https://www.vccircle.com/snapdeal-flipkart-may-ink-merger-next-week/" target="_self">with VCCircle reporting</a> that the deal could happen as early as this week.
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<div class="group">
Ballvé also added that food delivery unicorn Zomato was &#8220;losing millions every year and has not raised in nearly 600 days.&#8221;
On the transportation front, a recent Economic Times article reported that transportation application company Ola suffered losses of Rs 2,313.66 crore (about $356 million) in the financial year of 2016 — nearly 3 times what it lost in the last previous financial year. The losses were a result of fierce competition from a foreign rival — Uber.
CNBC has reached out to Flipkart, Snapdeal, Zomato and Ola for comments regarding their recent performance, but has yet to receive a reply.
</div>
</div>
<div class="group-container ">
<h4 class="subtitle">The uncertain way ahead</h4>
<div class="group">
As with start-ups in many countries, India&#8217;s unicorns are fighting to survive in a rapidly changing environment after enjoying years of venture capital funding.
&#8220;The reality is that India is by no means an immature market for VC,&#8221; Ballvé said. &#8220;It may soon be time to put up or shut up as the market has not done a great job generating venture-level exits.&#8221;
There have only been four exits valued at more than $500 million in the last 2 years in India, and none of them came from VC-backed companies, he said.
Ballvé did, however, offer some signs of hope, suggesting that investor sentiment remains positive as Flipkart&#8217;s down round was backed by big names like Tencent, Microsoft and eBay. Flipkart even folded eBay India under its umbrella.
Ballvé also highlighted bootstrapped software as a service company Zoho, an Indian company officially headquartered in the U.S. which he said was &#8220;reported to be doing $310 million per annum in revenue.&#8221; Also of note was payments unicorn One97 Communications, which was &#8220;seemingly doing very well,&#8221; Ballvé added.
At present, only two out of India&#8217;s 10 known unicorns have achieved profitability.
<div id="attachment_121636" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-121636" class="size-full wp-image-121636" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Innovation_Flickr.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" />Photo: Flickr.</div>
They are data analytics firm Mu Sigma — which was the county&#8217;s first unicorn to achieve profitability and has been profitable for a number of years — along with InMobi, the mobile advertising platform which announced to the Times of India last month that it has been profitable since June 2016.
Despite the struggles of many Indian start-ups, some observers say the sector is simply getting started. On the mobile front, smartphone penetration in India lags well behind fellow unicorn-incubator China.
The latest research by the Pew Research Center reported that in 2016, smartphone ownership in India stood at 18 percent — up from its 12 percent figure in 2013. China, meanwhile, has smartphone ownership of about 68 percent and has been growing at a steady rate from 37 percent in 2013.
&#8220;The e-commerce market in India has a lot of room to grow as the market is still in the early stages with low penetration and not well-established online shopping behavior,&#8221; said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner.
Sounding positive on the future of e-commerce in India, Shen said consumers were likely to benefit in the form of better services as a result of increased competition. She added that competition from global players was likely to import the latest technologies and best practices from abroad, hastening the learning process for India&#8217;s startups.
&#8220;The market is big enough to accommodate at least three major players. Of course, e-commerce is a scale game, so whoever gets bigger faster will also win big.&#8221;
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Are India’s top start-ups losing their sheen?

Ehab Farouk | CAIRO
Egypt has prepared the wireless frequencies needed for telecommunications companies in the country to deliver 4G mobile broadband networks, a key step in the long-delayed introduction of high speed telecoms services.
<blockquote>&#8220;We are now ready to hand over 4G mobile frequencies to any company that is ready &#8230; we are waiting for companies to finish preparations to receive the frequencies,&#8221; Communications Minister Yasser al-Kadi told Reuters on Sunday.</blockquote>
Egypt sold four 4G licences in 2016 as part of a long-awaited plan to reform the telecoms sector and raise dollars for stretched government finances.
The country&#8217;s three mobile operators &#8211; Vodafone Egypt, Orange and Etisalat &#8211; acquired licences.
Orange Egypt agreed to a provision that half the licence fee be paid in dollars.
Egypt&#8217;s state-owned landline monopoly Telecom Egypt said in July it would offer 4G services within a year of obtaining frequencies.
(Reporting by Ehab Farouk; Writing by Tom Finn; Editing by Mark Potter)
&nbsp;

Egypt’s 4G wireless frequencies ready for use – minister

The dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. 
Africa is standing before a small window of opportunity to grow future-ready leaders equipped to take on a new era of industry. It will be our ability to come together and develop those leaders that will determine whether we fly or fall. 
The tough reality is that radical disruption to skills requirements in the workplace is headed our way as we edge towards the next Industrial Revolution.
Research presented at the World Economic Forum on Africa shows that in South Africa alone, 39% of the core skills required across industries will be completely different in three years’ time. 
Yet, the Forum also brought forward concerning statistics which paint a picture of a continent that is struggling to develop skills for today, never mind tomorrow.
Indeed, WEF’s Human Capital Index reveals that sub-Saharan Africa currently captures just 55% of its human capital potential, when compared with the global average of 65%. 
On the one hand, employers say an under-skilled workforce is holding their businesses back – as many as 41% of all firms in Tanzania and 30% in Kenya. But on the other hand, just 50% of Africa’s school-age children are enrolled in secondary school, and a startlingly low 7% in tertiary education. 
The gap between skills required and administered is greater in Africa than in any other region in the world. 
Radical intervention is needed.
It’s simple, if we fail to adequately upskill our youth, we will be guilty of throwing away the future of an entire continent.
By ‘we’ I don’t just mean the government or education providers, but you and I, the people and private entities who wake up each morning on this vibrant continent we call home. 
The opportunity
The good news is that every challenge also presents an opportunity. While the next Industrial Revolution brings a massive wave of disruption, it also brings the promise of completely new job descriptions which will call on dynamic and exciting skills sets.
According to findings from WEF, our continent will need young individuals who can combine digital and stem skills with more traditional skill sets. Africa is going to need significant numbers of digital-mechanical engineers and business operations data analysts, to name a few. 
How do we get there?
The million dollar question is: how do we grasp hold of this golden opportunity to see our continent transition into a new industrial era? I believe the answer lies in the stories that belong to remarkable young individuals like Ken Gitonga. 
Ken is the administrator of the Samsung Engineering Academy in Nairobi. The Academy, which was launched in Nairobi in 2014, revolutionises traditional education by providing technical and vocational training for school learners, tertiary students and employed youth. 
As will become evident from Ken’s story, the strength of the Academy lies in its ability to provide talented individuals like Ken, not only with the skills they need to succeed, but also to invest back into their communities.
Ken has been making things from as young as six years old, when he built himself a toy car out of wire and wood. He would use sticks, wires and just about any empty household item he could find, to create his own ‘gadgets’. As he didn’t have a lot of money growing up, these gadgets were his toys. 
When he was given the opportunity to develop his considerable skills at the Academy, he was able to use his talents to help grow the skills of the next generation. 
His analytical mind serves him well in this pursuit. Through his planning and logistical genius, he has created a bespoke work station programme that enables students to effectively learn about a particular electronic device. Every day, Ken prepares the course materials needed by the Academy’s lecturers and helps deliver course content when needed. 
His is just one of the many stories currently unfolding as Samsung continues to drive the development of skills-for-employability amongst the youth in Ethiopia, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria through the Engineering Academy Initiative.
As a continent of individuals and entities, both private and public, we need to come together to push forward initiatives like these so that we can grasp hold of the unique opportunity that stands before us; growing a generation of talented young individuals ready to take the continent forward. 
Together, we can be unstoppable. 
 
*Sthe Shabangu is Lead: Public Relations, Public Affairs and Corporate Citizenship, Samsung Africa Office

Op-ed: Africa’s future hangs in the balance – we dare not fail

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love shopping and those who would rather watch paint dry than step foot into a mall. I fall into the latter group. For me, shopping is a mission.
The process usually goes like this:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-124374 aligncenter" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/AI_Retail-300x174.png" alt="" width="300" height="174" />
No, thank you.
I would much rather shop online, even though it has its own drawbacks: I can’t try on anything I buy and I might have to wait a day or two to receive my order, which is not ideal in an age of instant gratification.
But I might still be converted.
New and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cognitive computing – underpinned by big data and advanced data analytics – could completely transform the shopping experience as we know it. While still in its infancy in South Africa, a handful of retailers are testing some pretty cool technologies in an attempt to improve the shopping experience and better serve their customers.
Research by <a href="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/in-depth/ecommerce/online-shopping-shifting-purchasing-realms/">World Wide Worx</a> found that online shopping in South Africa is expected to reach just 1% of overall retail spend in 2016, constrained by challenges such as high data costs, a lack of trust in e-commerce and a large unbanked population who do not have the means to transact online.
The adage that online is killing the brick-and-mortar store might be true for more developed markets but, for now, South Africans still flock to the more than 2,000 shopping malls across the country, limiting their online activities to window shopping and price comparison.
If this trend continues, then South Africans could be in for a real treat when these new technologies make it to our shores.
<h2>The store of the future</h2>
Imagine the store of the future: facial recognition technology detects when you walk through the doors. The retailer already has an idea of the type of clothing you like based on past purchases and the parameters you’ve provided them with, like your height, weight, etc. You stand in front of a mirror and AI technology immediately “dresses” you in an outfit based on your preferences and unique style. You easily flip through colours and styles without once seeing the inside of a dressing room. You make your decision and a robot brings you your purchase. You thank him or her or it and walk out the store – no standing in queues to pay. In fact, the physical act of paying is completely redundant. The retailer already has your card details and your account has been debited for the purchase. It’s instant gratification on a whole new level.
The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc">Amazon Go</a> concept is a perfect example of this.
The idea behind these smart stores is to replace certain tasks that humans perform today – like stocking shelves, ringing up purchases, etc, with real bots, chat bots and other artificial intelligence. While there is still a long way to go before this becomes reality, bots will be able to understand what we’re asking them, process that information instantly and move us along the purchasing journey quickly, efficiently and with a greater degree of accuracy and customer satisfaction.
The ultimate goal is to replicate human thought processes but instead of telling the machine what it is doing right and wrong – like we do today – the machine will continually and automatically learn from new data and inputs without any guidance from humans. We’re still in the trial-and-error phase. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes not, but humans are still playing a large role in AI applications and we’re not ready to hand over full control to the bots just yet.
<h2>Retailer benefits</h2>
The idea that we could all one day have our own personal shopping assistants and stylists probably excites a lot of us. But how does the retailer benefit from investments in these new technologies?
Quite substantially.
Waste, inefficient supply chains, poor stock management and products that are priced out of the market are just some of the reasons retailers could be haemorrhaging cash and losing customers.
AI, cognitive computing and machine learning could completely change the game for retailers. When machines learn about demographics, weather patterns, buying trends and GDP growth for a particular area, they can tell a retailer which products to stock and how to price them for maximum sales.
Machines will know that summer clothes will move off the shelves in areas where it starts to get warmer sooner and that the retailer can reduce the price of its winter clothes in that store. However, it might still be chilly in another province, meaning it’s a good idea for the retailer to keep its winter clothing prices unchanged for maximum revenue.
Machines will know that people living in area X are prepared to spend more on a loaf of bread than those living in area Z. They will know to stock bigger sizes of certain items in one area because demographics show that the population is generally larger there.
Of course, humans can do all of this but it’s labour intensive and we don’t always get it right. But if retailers are prepared to hand the reins over to the machines, never again will they run out of stock, have too much stock, have the wrong stock for a particular area or sit with incorrectly priced stock. This will allow them to completely optimise their supply chains so that they get the best prices from their suppliers based on real demand, not guesswork.
In essence, demand planning and optimisation allows retailers to have the right mix of products, for the right customers, at the right store, at the right price, at the right time.
<h2>Speedbumps in the journey</h2>
While some retailers in developed markets are already benefitting from AI, machine learning and cognitive computing, South Africa still has a long way to go. The biggest challenges to implementing these technologies locally are skills shortages, poor data quality, challenges with analytical modelling and the fact that analytics has not yet been fully automated and is still a manual process. South African organisations are still coming to terms with basic analytics, although some retailers are applying AI to certain segments of the customer experience and are seeing impressive results.
It’s going to be a journey of trial and error. As with most new technologies, there will be tinkerers and early adopters, there will be <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/04/the-first-wave-of-corporate-ai-is-doomed-to-fail">massive failures</a>, and there will be those who will take a wait-and-see approach. But, as with cloud computing and other ubiquitous technologies of today, eventually AI will become commonplace and those who do not embrace them will be at a distinct disadvantage.
Those organisations that will rise above the rest are the ones that reward innovation and that support the tinkerers from the executive level. They understand that risk and failure are part of the journey but that they are also part of the learning process, if we are to get it right.
And when we do get it right, retailers will realise massive cost savings, which they can pass on to their customers and combine those savings with personalised recommendations to create the ultimate shopping experience.
I, for one, cannot wait.

How artificial intelligence will change the retail game

Microsoft plans to deliver intelligent Microsoft Cloud, for the first time, from data centres located in Africa. The technology firm says it is part of its mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more, and a recognition of the enormous opportunity for digital transformation in Africa.
Microsoft will deliver cloud services, including Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365, directly from data centres located in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa with initial availability anticipated in 2018. The new cloud regions will offer enterprise-grade reliability and performance combined with data residency to help enable the tremendous opportunity for economic growth, and increase access to cloud and internet services for organisations and people across the African continent.
Jon Tullett, research manager of IT Services at IDC Africa, says &#8220;this is a significant announcement as none of the top-tier cloud providers has [sic] traditionally had a data centre footprint in Africa. It, therefore, gives Microsoft an enormous first mover advantage on the African continent&#8221;.
“We’re excited by the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and the ability of the cloud to act as a catalyst for new economic opportunities,&#8221; said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft Corp. “By delivering the Microsoft Cloud from within Africa, cloud services ranging from intelligent collaboration to predictive analytics will spur entrepreneurship and innovation, fuel growth for businesses of all sizes, and enable government organisations to better serve the needs of their citizens.”
&#8220;This development broadens the options available to us in our modernisation journey of Government ICT infrastructure and services. It allows us to take advantage of new opportunities to develop innovative government solutions at manageable costs, as well as drive overall improvements in operations management, while improving transparency and accountability,&#8221; says Dr. Setumo Mohapi, chief executive officer at SITA.

Microsoft to open hyperscale data centres in Africa

Rwanda&#8217;s telecom industry regulator has fined MTN Rwanda, a division of South Africa&#8217;s MTN Group 7 billion francs ($8.5 million) for running its IT services outside the country in breach of its licence.
The regulator said in a ruling posted on its website that MTN Rwanda was hosting its IT services hub in Uganda, which it had prohibited.
&#8220;They are punished for relocating their IT services outside Rwanda, and this was deliberate,&#8221; Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority Spokesman Anthony Kulamba said.
MTN Rwanda says it is the central African country&#8217;s leading mobile operator, with 4 million subscribers. It is 80 percent owned MTN Group while the remaining 20 percent is listed on the Rwanda Securities Exchange.
MTN Group said it had also received a notification about the fine.
&#8220;MTN has been engaging with the regulator on this matter over the past four months. MTN Rwanda is currently studying the official notification and will continue to engage with the regulator on this matter,&#8221; it said in a statement.
Last year, MTN, which operates in 20 countries, set aside $600 million to pay a fine imposed by the Nigerian government for not disconnecting unregistered SIM cards. It paid 30 billion naira ($95.24 million) of this in March.
Other telecoms companies operating in Rwanda are Tigo, a unit of Millicom and Airtel Rwanda, a unit of India&#8217;s Bharti Airtel.
($1 = 826.2200 Rwandan francs)
(Reporting by Clement Uwiringiyimana; Editing by George Obulutsa and Jane Merriman)
&nbsp;

Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority  fines MTN US$ 8,5M

Christina Farr | @chrissyfarr
<ul>
<li>Each year, Amazon holds an annual meeting to discuss whether it should break into the pharmacy market, said a source familiar.</li>
<li>This year, it is getting more serious and is looking to hire a general manager.</li>
<li>Industry experts say this could be a multibillion market opportunity for the e-commerce company.</li>
</ul>
<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/AMZN" target="_self" data-gdsid="9399" data-inline-quote-symbol="AMZN">Amazon</a> is hiring a business lead to figure out how the company can break into the multibillion-dollar pharmacy market.
For the last few years, Amazon has held at least one annual meeting at its Seattle, WA headquarters to discuss whether it should enter the pharmacy business, says two people familiar with the company&#8217;s plans.
But this year, with the rise of high-deductible plans and the trend towards consumers paying for health care, it is ready to get more serious.
Two people said that it&#8217;s not a done deal that Amazon will move into this space, given the complex web of established players. But it is bringing on a new general manager to lead the team and formulate a strategy, and is deep in discussions with industry experts. That hire would sit under the consumables business, the source said.
Another person said it&#8217;s started to recruit more broadly from the pharmacy space.
The company recently started <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Supplies-Equipment-Health-Care/b?ie=UTF8&amp;node=3775161" href="https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Supplies-Equipment-Health-Care/b?ie=UTF8&amp;node=3775161" target="_self">selling medical supplies and equipment</a> in the U.S., and <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/jobs/529509" href="https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/jobs/529509" target="_self">is hiring for its</a> &#8220;professional health care program&#8221; to ensure that the company is meeting regulatory requirements. It also hired Mark Lyons two months ago from Premera Blue Cross. A source said that Lyons is tasked with building an internal pharmacy benefits manager for Amazon employees, which might be later scaled out.
Amazon declined to comment.
<a class="inline_asset" title="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/19/business/amazon-launches-same-day-delivery-service-for-food-and-medicine/" href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/19/business/amazon-launches-same-day-delivery-service-for-food-and-medicine/" target="_self">Japan Times reported</a> in April of this year that the company expanded its Prime Now delivery service to include drug and cosmetic sales, with the support of local partners. Amazon&#8217;s category page on its Japanese site now includes &#8220;pharmaceuticals,&#8221; and sells drugs to patients with approval from a pharmacist.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-123879" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/amzn-pharmacy-japan.530x298.png" alt="" width="530" height="298" />
Amazon often tests new product lines in non-U.S. markets, before it assesses whether to roll it out in the domestic market. The company tested its secret drone-delivery program in Canada, for instance.
In the United States alone, more than 4 billion prescriptions are ordered every year. In 2015, patients, insurance companies and other payers spent an estimated $300 billion on prescription drugs.
For Amazon, it&#8217;s a lucrative market that would require navigating a variety of existing players. For consumers with a high dollar deductible, Amazon could someday be a go-to destination to shop for drugs.
&#8220;I think Amazon would introduce a lot of transparency to what drugs really cost,&#8221; said Stephen Buck, a health entrepreneur and co-founder of <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.goodrx.com/" href="https://www.goodrx.com/" target="_self">GoodRx</a>, a service that promises to save consumers on the price of prescription meds. Buck sees a slew of potential opportunities for Amazon, including a product that competes with pharmacy benefits management or PBM giants, like <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/ESRX" target="_self" data-gdsid="16738" data-inline-quote-symbol="ESRX">Express Scripts</a> and <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/CVS" target="_self" data-gdsid="14561" data-inline-quote-symbol="CVS">CVS Health</a>.
Buck estimates that it&#8217;s a $25 to $50 billion market opportunity for Amazon, if executed well. But the company would also face challenges entering a regulated market it. &#8220;Prescription transfer laws and e-prescribing make a little bit more difficult than putting something in a cart and checking out,&#8221; he said.
Amazon previously backed a &#8220;dotcom&#8221; darling called Drugstore.com in the late 1990s, with CEO Jeff Bezos taking on a director role. At that time, it was speculated that Amazon could carve out a huge chunk of the prescription and over-the-counter drug sales market. Drugstore.com later sold to Walgreens, which eventually shut it down.

Amazon is hiring people to break into the multibillion-dollar pharmacy market

Arjun Kharpal
<ul>
<li>The WannaCry ransomware hackers have received around $50,000 worth of bitcoin so far.</li>
<li>The amount the hackers will demand is expected to double from $300 to $600 on Monday.</li>
</ul>
<div class="group-container ">
<div class="group">
Hackers who locked files on 200,000 computers globally and asked for a <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/BTC%3D-USS" target="_self" data-gdsid="76662810" data-inline-quote-symbol="BTC=-USS" rel="noopener">bitcoin</a> ransom payment to unlock them, have only made around $50,000, an industry source told CNBC, despite the large scale of the attack.
On Friday, a <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/14/cyber-attack-hits-200000-in-at-least-150-countries-europol.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">virus known as WannaCry</a> infected machines across 150 countries. It&#8217;s known as ransomware which is a malicious piece of software that encrypts a user&#8217;s files then demands them pay money to unlock them. In this case, the hackers asked for $300 worth of bitcoin.
James Smith, CEO of Elliptic, a London-based start-up that helps law enforcement agencies track criminals using the cryptocurrency, said his company had uncovered that since Friday, around $50,000 worth of bitcoin payments have been made to the hackers by 7 a.m. ET on Monday. This was up from $45,000 at 4 a.m. ET.
&#8220;We have seen the number of payments start to go up today,&#8221; Smith told CNBC Monday.
After 72 hours from when the attack started on Friday, the hackers said the fine would double to $600, and after seven days, the files would be permanently locked.
&#8220;We think over the course of today as we approach the first deadline where fines double we will see a bigger increase (in bitcoin payments),&#8221; Smith added.
The amount paid so far is still a small amount despite the global nature and scale of the attack. Security experts and government agencies have been urging people not to pay the ransom.
</div>
</div>
<div class="group-container ">
<h4 class="subtitle">Why payments have been slow</h4>
<div class="group">
One of the major reasons for the slow payments is perhaps because many people wouldn&#8217;t know how to obtain and pay in bitcoin.
&#8220;If a business is told it needs to pay this amount of bitcoin, most companies will be asking what bitcoin is … it&#8217;s not straightforward,&#8221; Smith explained.
Obtaining large amounts of the cryptocurrency might take some time, and then setting up an account via a bitcoin wallet and exchange would also require a long onboarding process.
</div>
</div>
<div class="group-container ">
<div class="group-container ">
<div class="group">
At the same time, researchers have seen no evidence that paying the cybercriminals necessarily unlocks your files.
&#8220;The decryption process itself is problematic, to say the least,&#8221; cybersecurity firm Check Point said in a blog post on Sunday.
&#8220;Unlike its competitors in the ransomware market, WannaCry doesn&#8217;t seem to have a way of associating a payment to the person making it. Most ransomware … generate a unique ID and bitcoin wallet for each victim and thus know who to send the decryption keys to. WannaCry, on the other hand, only asks you to make a payment, and then … wait.&#8221;
</div>
</div>
<div class="group-container last">
<h4 class="subtitle">Tracing bitcoin</h4>
<div class="group">
Hackers who deploy ransomware often ask for payments in bitcoin as it is often believed to be completely anonymous. But law enforcement agencies, working with companies like Elliptic, have figured out ways to trace this.
It traces so-called bitcoin addresses back to people. These addresses are required to make payments to other people or organizations. At the moment, Elliptic is working on trying to trace the payments, but Smith said this would become clearer when the hackers try to withdraw their bitcoin in fiat currency.
&#8220;The attackers haven&#8217;t moved it. In previous cases we have been able to work with law enforcement to see where the funds move because ultimately the attacker wants to turn it back into a currency they want to spend,&#8221; Smith explained.
</div>
</div>
</div>

Hackers who infected 200,000 machines have only made $50,000 worth of bitcoin

Can a mobile application that uses artificial intelligence become a useful tool in the fight against online bullying?
Bark, a mobile safety app created by a startup founded by a Twitter alumnus, is hoping to do just that. The software employs machine learning to detect signs of negative behavior on a teen&#8217;s phone, including cyberbullying, sexting, depression and suicidal thoughts.
Parents initially sign up through Bark&#8217;s website, then get their children to connect their social media accounts. The software will read the accounts, but will not store or share any of the data.
Founder and CEO Brian Bason got the idea for Bark while still working for Twitter, which had acquired his previous start-up called Niche. With two kids just old enough to have phones, he felt that even though he worked in technology, he didn&#8217;t know how to keep track of them online.
&#8220;Our view is that there are a lot of tools out there that just expose all of the kids&#8217; activity,&#8221; Bason told CNBC. &#8220;This preserves the child&#8217;s privacy and builds trust.&#8221;
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the second leading cause of deaths for young adults and adults ages 15 to 34. In recent years, the problem of teen suicide has taken on a new dimension because of the proliferation of technology.
The stakes are high, as parents search for new ways to safeguard their children from the harmful side effects of online interaction. In popular culture, a new Netflix show, &#8220;13 Reasons Why,&#8221; has stoked more discussion by tackling the prominent role of social media and cell phones in teenagers&#8217; lives — and their impact on teen psychology.
&#8220;We teach our kids to look both ways when they cross the street. Don&#8217;t talk to strangers. We need to do the same thing for children with digital uses,&#8221; said Bason. &#8220;The scope has expanded. As a parent, it opens up what you have to consider. The vast majority of kids have internet-connected devices.&#8221;
Bark&#8217;s app doesn&#8217;t give parents full access to their children&#8217;s social activity, but it monitors for potential issues and identifies language that may be of concern. Codes like &#8220;CD9&#8221; or &#8220;9&#8221; — which stands for &#8220;parents are nearby,&#8221; or &#8220;53X&#8221; for &#8220;sex&#8221; are examples of what the software tags in its search.
&#8220;We keep our ear close to the ground. We have a youth advisory council to understand trends,&#8221; Bason told CNBC.
The app lets the machine learning algorithm do all the work, operating in the background of apps and mining for red flags. It also works with most social platforms, such as Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, YouTube, and Kik, among others.
Bason mentions that in the past few months, the company has flagged at least two dozen potentially fatal, suicide-related situations. In those instances, parents said they weren&#8217;t aware anything was going on, but the app allowed them to step in and intervene.
Bark monitors tens of millions of messages per month with kids on the platform, sending about 500 messages a week and on the higher end 1,000 a day. It costs $99 a year per family and supports an unlimited number of children and connections.
Bark has pulled in $3 million in venture funding.
&#8211; Reporting by Deborah Findling	| @dfindles

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This ex-Googler is building a LinkedIn killer

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Amazon is hiring people to break into the multibillion-dollar pharmacy market

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