Spotify expands Premium Duo subscription tier aimed at couples to U.S., India, dozens of other markets

Spotify today announced it is expanding Premium Duo, a feature that allows two people who live at the same place — say couples or flatmates — to share one subscription plan while maintaining their own individual accounts, to dozens of new markets. 

Premium Duo is a remarkable concept from Spotify, which it first began testing in March last year and expanded to 19 markets months later. Starting Wednesday, Spotify Premium Duo is now available in 55 markets. 

The new subscription offering is remarkable mostly because it’s solving a problem that very few people face today. At a glance, it appears that Premium Duo is designed to help people save money and gain access to a shared playlist that represents music they both cherish. 

Two people can split the cost by joining Premium Duo, and it would save them a few bucks had they subscribed to the music streaming service individually. The problem is that if you are looking to save money, you can save even more by subscribing to Spotify’s family plan that supports six members in a group.

In the U.S., Premium Duo is priced at $12.99 a month. In India, it’s priced at Rs 149 a month ($2). (In India, subscriptions to Spotify, Apple Music, Apple TV+ and a vast range of services are more affordable generally.) 

Spotify says it also creates a special Duo Mix playlist for participating members of a Premium Duo tier that will comprise songs both listeners like. But it offers a similar feature for members of the family plan as well. 

I think I have figured out why Premium Duo exists. On its website, Spotify says that “with two separate accounts you can both enjoy your own music without having to take turns.” Couples, Spotify will really appreciate if both of you got your own paid accounts instead of listening to the streaming service from one account.

Alex Norström, who is Spotify’s “Chief Freemium Business Officer” said in a statement that the streaming giant was proud to launch Spotify Premium Duo. “With two individual Premium accounts, you can both listen independently, uninterrupted and get all of your personalized playlists and features tailored just for you. We are thrilled to bring this unique Spotify Premium plan to even more markets around the world.”

TikTok goes down in India, its biggest overseas market

A growing number of internet service providers in India have started to block their subscribers from accessing TikTok a day after New Delhi banned the popular short-video app and 58 other services in the world’s second largest internet market over security and privacy concerns.

Many users on Airtel, Vodafone and other service providers reported Tuesday afternoon (local time) that TikTok app on their phone was no longer accessible. Opening TikTok app, users said, showed they were no longer connected to the internet.

For many others, opening TikTok app promoted an error message that said the popular app was complying with the Indian government’s order and could no longer offer its service. Opening TikTok website in India prompts a similar message.

Earlier on Tuesday, TikTok app became unavailable for download on Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store in India. Two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that ByteDance, the developer of TikTok, had voluntarily pulled the app from the app stores.

The vast majority of other apps including Alibaba Group’s UC Browser and UC News as well as e-commerce service Club Factory that India blocked on Monday evening remain available for download on the marquee app stores, suggesting that Google and Apple are yet to comply with New Delhi’s direction.

TikTok, which has amassed over 200 million users in India, identifies Asia’s third-largest economy as its biggest overseas market. Nikhil Gandhi, who oversees TikTok’s operations in India, said the firm was “in the process” of complying with India’s order and was looking forward to engage with lawmakers in the nation to assuage their concerns.

This is the first time that India, the world’s second largest internet market with nearly half of its 1.3 billion population online, has ordered to ban so many foreign apps. New Delhi said nation’s Computer Emergency Response Team had received many “representations from citizens regarding security of data and breach of privacy impacting upon public order issues. […] The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India.”

The surprising announcement created confusion as to how the Indian government was planning to go about “blocking” these services in India. Things are becoming clearer now.

TikTok, which was blocked in India for a week last year but was accessible to users who had already installed the app on their smartphones, said last year in a court filing that it was losing more than $500,000 a day. Reuters reported on Tuesday that ByteDance had planned to invest $1 billion in India to expand the reach of TikTok, a plan that now appears derailed.

More to follow…

TikTok goes down in India, its biggest overseas market

A growing number of internet service providers in India have started to block their subscribers from accessing TikTok a day after New Delhi banned the popular short-video app and 58 other services in the world’s second largest internet market over security and privacy concerns.

Many users on Airtel, Vodafone and other service providers reported Tuesday afternoon (local time) that TikTok app on their phone was no longer accessible. Opening TikTok app, users said, showed they were no longer connected to the internet.

For many others, opening TikTok app promoted an error message that said the popular app was complying with the Indian government’s order and could no longer offer its service. Opening TikTok website in India prompts a similar message.

Earlier on Tuesday, TikTok app became unavailable for download on Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store in India. Two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that ByteDance, the developer of TikTok, had voluntarily pulled the app from the app stores.

The vast majority of other apps including Alibaba Group’s UC Browser and UC News as well as e-commerce service Club Factory that India blocked on Monday evening remain available for download on the marquee app stores, suggesting that Google and Apple are yet to comply with New Delhi’s direction.

TikTok, which has amassed over 200 million users in India, identifies Asia’s third-largest economy as its biggest overseas market. Nikhil Gandhi, who oversees TikTok’s operations in India, said the firm was “in the process” of complying with India’s order and was looking forward to engage with lawmakers in the nation to assuage their concerns.

This is the first time that India, the world’s second largest internet market with nearly half of its 1.3 billion population online, has ordered to ban so many foreign apps. New Delhi said nation’s Computer Emergency Response Team had received many “representations from citizens regarding security of data and breach of privacy impacting upon public order issues. […] The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India.”

The surprising announcement created confusion as to how the Indian government was planning to go about “blocking” these services in India. Things are becoming clearer now.

TikTok, which was blocked in India for a week last year but was accessible to users who had already installed the app on their smartphones, said last year in a court filing that it was losing more than $500,000 a day. Reuters reported on Tuesday that ByteDance had planned to invest $1 billion in India to expand the reach of TikTok, a plan that now appears derailed.

More to follow…

Facebook launches Avatars, its Bitmoji competitor, in India

Facebook Avatars, which lets users customize a virtual lookalike of themselves for use as stickers in chat and comments, is now available in India, the social juggernaut’s biggest market by users account.

The American firm said Tuesday it had launched Avatars to India as more social interaction moves online amid a nationwide lockdown in the world’s second largest internet market. The company said Avatars supports a variety of faces, hairstyles, outfits that are customized for users in India.

Avatars’ launch comes to India at the height of a backlash against Chinese apps in the country — some of which have posed serious competition to Facebook’s ever-growing tentacles in Asia’s third-largest economy. On Monday evening, New Delhi ordered to ban TikTok and nearly 60 other apps developed by Chinese firms.

The social giant’s Avatars, a clone of Snapchat’s popular Bitmoji, was first unveiled last year. The feature, which Facebook sees as an expression tool, aims at turning engagements on the social service fun, youthful, visually communicative, and “more light-hearted.”

Users can create their avatar from the sticker tray in the comment section of a News Feed post or in Messenger. Facebook has expanded Avatars, initially available to users in Australia and New Zealand, to Europe and the U.S. in recent weeks.

Scores of companies including Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi have attempted to replicate Bitmoji in recent years — though no one has expanded it like Snapchat.

Earlier this year, Snapchat introduced Bitmoji TV, a series of 4-minute comedy cartoons with users’ avatars. At the time, Snapchat said that about 70% of its daily active users, or 147 million of its 210 million users, had created their own Bitmojis.

Snapchat is preparing to launch the Spectacles, its AR glasses, in India. The California-headquartered firm has so far struggled to gain ground in India, where it had about 30 million monthly active users last month, according to mobile insights firm App Annie, data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch. Facebook has amassed over 350 million users in India and its instant messaging service WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in the country.

Indian ride-hailing giant Ola adds tipping option to its app globally

You can now tip your Ola driver. The Indian ride-hailing giant said on Tuesday that it has rolled out this feature to its users in India, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom — all the nations where it currently operates.

Ola said riders in each market will see a range of denominations they can pick as the amount they wish to tip digitally. It plans to allow riders to pay a custom amount of their choice in a few weeks, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

All of Ola’s 2.5 million driver partners globally — from those who operate two-wheelers to four — can receive tips, the nine-year-old ride-hailing giant said.

The addition of this feature comes as Ola looks to broaden its efforts to help its driver partners who have been financially hit in recent weeks after New Delhi and several other governments across the globe enforced a lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Uber first introduced the tipping feature in some states in the U.S. in 2017 and has since expanded to it many more states and nations. It rolled out tipping feature to its users in India early this year.

Driver partners on both the platforms have long expressed the need for a tipping feature after both the companies gradually reduced the incentives they had offered in the early years.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, our driver-partners have worked tirelessly to enable essential travel for all those in need, despite facing their own challenges. As services resume, they continue to personally invest in ensuring the safety of their customers and deliver a comfortable ride experience,” said Anand Subramanian, a spokesperson at Ola.

“Linking rewards to higher-quality services, we invite our customers to join us in sharing our appreciation and supporting them during these trying times. Not only will the new functionality provide an opportunity for drivers to increase their earnings but will also showcase how a small gesture of solidarity and support from customers will drive our driver-partner community to go a long way,” he said.

In recent months, Ola has announced a range of relief packages including exempting lease rental to assist its driver partners. It has also committed to provide driver partners with a few hundred dollars if they or their family members test positive for Covid-19. Uber has yet to offer any significant aid to its driver partners in India.

Like their driver partners, both Ola and Uber have been hit with the global pandemic as well. Ola said last month it was cutting 1,400 jobs, or 35% of its workforce in India. Days later, Uber said it was eliminating 600 jobs, or 25% of its local workforce, in the nation. India is a key overseas market for Uber.

India bans TikTok, dozens of other Chinese apps

The Indian government on Monday evening said it was banning 59 apps developed by Chinese firms over concerns that these apps were “engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, and security of state and public order” in what is the latest standoff between the two most populated nations in the world.

ByteDance’s TikTok, which counts India as its biggest market, Community and Video Call apps from Xiaomi, which is the top smartphone vendor in India, UC Browser, UC News, Shareit, CM Browser, Club Factory, ES File Explorer are among the 59 apps that India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT have ordered to ban.

“The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has also received many representations from citizens regarding security of data and breach of privacy impacting upon public order issues,” the Indian government agency said.

More to follow…

Amazon eliminates single-use plastic in packaging in India

Amazon said on Monday it has eliminated all single-use plastic in its packaging across its fulfillment centers in India, delivering on a pledge it made last year to achieve this goal by June.

The American e-commerce group said it had replaced packaging materials such as bubble wraps with paper cushions and was also using “100% plastic-free biodegradable” paper tapes. All of Amazon’s 50-plus fulfilment centers in India were complying with the new guidelines, the company said.

Flipkart, which had made a similar pledge last year, said last month that its reliance on single-use plastic across its supply chain had dropped by 50%. Last year, the Walmart-owned marketplace said it intended to move entirely to recycled plastic consumption in its supply chain by March 2021.

Amazon’s announcement Monday follows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s directive last year, when he urged Indians to put an end to usage of single-use plastic by 2022.

India has been grappling with a major plastic waste problem for several years. Asia’s third-largest economy is struggling with disposing of the 9.4 million tons of plastic waste it generates each year.

Dozens of nations across the world have in recent years moved to address this challenge by imposing curbs and levies on use of single-use plastic.

Amazon said today that it still uses some plastic in packaging material, but those are 100% recyclable through available collection, segregation and recycling channels. The company said it is continuing to educate sellers who fulfil customer orders to join in this nationwide change in packaging.

“Our aim is to minimize environmental impact while elevating customer experience. While navigating through unprecedented challenges with the lockdown and pandemic in the last few months, we have continued to take progressive steps towards ensuring that we meet our commitment,” said Prakash Kumar Dutta, Director of Customer Fulfilment & Supply Chain at Amazon India, in a statement.

Earlier this month, Amazon expanded Packaging-Free Shipping (PFS), an India-first initiative that sees fulfilment centers either deliver products that are completely packaging-free or have significantly reduced packaging, to over 100 cities in India. The company said more than 40% of its orders in India today are already using PFS.

Additionally, Amazon said it is also collecting and recycling plastic waste equivalent to its usage at a national level from September 2019, and has identified collection agencies to help collect equivalent 100% plastic waste generated from usage across the Amazon fulfilment network.

Earlier this month, Amazon announced it was launching a $2 billion internal venture-capital fund focused on technology investments to reduce the impact of climate change. The new fund, called The Climate Pledge Fund, will invest in firms across a number of industries, including transportation, energy generation, and manufacturing. Through the program, the companies aim to reach a goal of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2040.

Indian startups diversify their businesses to offset COVID-19 induced losses

E-commerce giant Flipkart is planning to launch a hyperlocal service that would enable customers to buy items from local stores and have those delivered to them in an hour and a half or less. Yatra, an online travel and hotel ticketing service, is exploring a new business line altogether: Supplying office accessories.

Flipkart and Yatra are not the only firms eyeing new business categories. Dozens of firms in the country have branched out by launching new services in recent weeks, in part to offset the disruption the COVID-19 epidemic has caused to their core offerings.

Swiggy and Zomato, the nation’s largest food delivery startups, began delivering alcohol in select parts of the country last month. The move came weeks after the two firms, both of which are seeing fewer orders and had to let go hundreds of employees, started accepting orders for grocery items in a move that challenged existing online market leaders BigBasket and Grofers.

Udaan, a business-to-business marketplace, recently started to accept bulk orders from some housing societies and is exploring more opportunities in the business-to-commerce space, the startup told TechCrunch.

These shifts came shortly after New Delhi announced a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The lockdown meant that all public places including movie theaters, shopping malls, schools, and public transport were suspended.

Instead of temporarily halting their businesses altogether, as many have done in other markets, scores of startups in India have explored ways to make the most out of the current unfortunate spell.

“This pandemic has given an opportunity to the Indian tech startup ecosystem to have a harder look at the unit-economics of their businesses and become more capital efficient in the shorter and longer-term,” Puneet Kumar, a growth investor in Indian startup ecosystem, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Of the few things most Indian state governments have agreed should remain open include grocery shops, and online delivery services for grocery and food.

People buy groceries at a supermarket during the first day of the 21-day government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Bangalore on March 25, 2020. (Photo by MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP via Getty Images)

E-commerce firms Snapdeal and DealShare began grocery delivery service in late March. The move was soon followed by social-commerce startup Meesho, fitness startup Curefit, and BharatPe, which is best known for facilitating mobile payments between merchants and users.

Meesho’s attempt is still in the pilot stage, said Vidit Aatrey, the Facebook-backed startup’s co-founder and chief executive. “We started grocery during the lockdown to give some income opportunities to our sellers and so far it has shown good response. So we are continuing the pilot even after lockdown has lifted,” he said.

ClubFactory, best known for selling low-cost beauty items, has also started to deliver grocery products, and so has NoBroker, a Bangalore-based startup that connects apartment seekers with property owners. And MakeMyTrip, a giant that provides solutions to book flight and hotel tickets, has entered the food delivery market.

Another such giant, BookMyShow, which sells movie tickets, has in recent weeks rushed to support online events, helping comedians and other artists sell tickets online. The Mumbai-headquartered firm plans to make further inroads around this business idea in the coming days.

For some startups, the pandemic has resulted in accelerating the launch of their product cycles. CRED, a Bangalore-based startup that is attempting to help Indians improve their financial behavior by paying their credit card bill on time, launched an instant credit line and apartment rental services.

Kunal Shah, the founder and chief executive of CRED, said the startup “fast-tracked the launch” of these two products as they could prove immensely useful in the current environment.

For a handful of startups, the pandemic has meant accelerated growth. Unacademy, a Facebook-backed online learning startup, has seen its user base and subscribers count surge in recent months and told TechCrunch that it is in the process of more than doubling the number of exam preparation courses it offers on its platform in the next two months.

Since March, the number of users who access the online learning service each day has surged to 700,000. “We have also seen a 200% increase in viewers per week for the free live classes offered on the platform. Additionally there has been a 50% increase in paid subscribers and over 50% increase in average watchtime per day among our subscribers,” a spokesperson said.

As with online learning firms, firms operating on-demand video streaming services have also seen a significant rise in the number of users they serve. Zee5, which has amassed over 80 million users, told TechCrunch last week that in a month it will introduce a new category in its app that would curate short-form videos produced and submitted by users. The firm said the feature would look very similar to TikTok.

The pandemic “has also accelerated the adoption of online services in India across all demographics. Many who would not have considered buying goods and services online are starting to adopt the online platforms for basic necessities at a faster pace,” said venture capitalist Kumar.

“As far as expansion into adjacent categories is concerned, some of this was a natural progression and startups were slowly moving in that direction anyway. The pandemic has forced people to get there faster.”

Roosh, a Mumbai-based game developing firm founded by several industry veterans, launched a new app ahead of schedule that allows social influencers to promote games on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, Deepak Ail, co-founder and chief executive of Roosh, told TechCrunch.

ShareChat, a Twitter-backed social network, recently acquired a startup called Elanic to explore opportunities in social-commerce. OkCredit, a bookkeeping service for merchants, has been exploring ways to allow users to purchase items from neighborhood stores.

And NowFloats, a Mumbai-based SaaS startup that helps businesses and individuals build an online presence without any web developing skills, is on-boarding doctors to help people consult with medical professionals.

Startups are not the only businesses that have scrambled to eye new categories. Established firms such as Carnival Group, which is India’s third-largest multiplex theatre chain, said it is foraying into cloud kitchen business.

Amazon, which competes with Walmart’s Flipkart in India, has also secured approval from West Bengal to deliver alcohol in the nation’s fourth most populated state. The e-commerce giant is also exploring ways to work with mom and pop stores that dot tens of thousands of cities and towns of India.

Last week, the American giant launched “Smart Stores” that allows shoppers to walk to a participating physical store, scan a QR code, and pick and purchase items through the Amazon app. The firm, which is supplying these mom and pop stores with software and QR code, said more than 10,000 shops are participating in the Smart Stores program.

Indian edtech giant Byju’s in talks to acquire Doubtnut for more than $125M

Byju’s is in advanced stages of talks to acquire Doubtnut, a two-year-old education learning app, as the Indian edtech giant looks to expand its reach in smaller cities and towns in the world’s second largest internet market.

Three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the acquisition offer from nine-year-old Byju’s values the younger startup between $125 million to $150 million. The talks haven’t finalized yet and its terms could change or the deal could fall apart, the sources said.

A separate source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Facebook-backed Unacademy also held preliminary talks with Doubtnut but they are no longer engaging while some investors have suggested the startup to remain independent.

Byju’s and Unacademy declined to comment. One of Doubtnut’s founders did not respond to a text message sent to them Friday afternoon. Sequoia Capital India, one of the investors in Doubutnut, also declined to comment.

The sudden interest in Doubtnut comes as the two-year-old New Delhi-based startup’s app has attracted millions of new users in recent months, most of whom live in smaller cities and towns across India.

Byju’s, which has over 55 million registered users, has a better hold on urban Indian cities. The startup sees Doubtnut as a way to expand its reach in tier 2 and tier 3 Indian markets and tackle the online learning opportunities in a more comprehensive way.

Doubtnut, which has raised $18.5 million to date including $15 million in its Series A financing round earlier this year, allows students from sixth grade to high-school solve and understand math and science problems in local languages. Doubtnut app enables students to take a picture of the problem, and uses machine learning and image recognition to deliver the answers through short-videos.

A student can take a picture of the problem, and share it with Doubtnut through its app, website, or WhatsApp and get a short video that shows the answer and walks them through the procedure to tackle it.

In late January, Doubtnut said it had amassed over 13 million monthly active users across its website, app, YouTube, and WhatsApp channels. More than 85% of its users at the time came from outside of the top 10 cities in India, the startup said in a statement then.

Byju’s currently leads the online edtech market in India. The startup announced on Friday that it had raised additional capital from Mary Meeker’s Bond. The new deal valued Byju’s at $10.5 billion, TechCrunch reported earlier today.

Mary Meeker’s Bond backs Indian online learning startup Byju’s

Indian online learning startup Byju’s has added one more high-profile name to the list of its backers: Bond.

In a statement on Friday, Bangalore-based Byju’s said it had raised an undisclosed amount from the VC fund co-founded by Mary Meeker. The one-year-old firm’s new check valued the nine-year-old Indian startup at $10.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.

TechCrunch reported early last month that Byju’s was in talks with some investors to raise money at $10 billion valuation.

“Endorsed by millions of students, Byju’s has emerged as a clear leader in education technology,” said Mary Meeker, General Partner at BOND and author of the widely influential Internet Trends Report. “We are excited to support a visionary like Byju and his team in their quest to continue to innovate and shape the future of education.”

Through its app, tutors on Byju’s help all school-going children understand complex subjects using real-life objects such as pizza and cake. The app also prepares students who are pursuing undergraduate and graduate-level courses.

Byju’s said it has amassed more than 57 million registered users, more than 3.5 million of whom are paid subscribers. After New Delhi ordered a nationwide lockdown in late March, which forced all schools to close, Byju’s and scores of online learning platforms including Facebook-backed Unacademy have introduced new classes free to students.

“This crisis has brought online learning to the forefront and has helped parents, teachers and students alike to experience and understand the value of it,” said Raveendran Byju, the co-founder and chief executive of the eponymous startup.

“We have the opportunity to positively influence how teachers teach, students learn and school’s function. The ‘Classrooms of Tomorrow’ will have technology at the core, empowering students to cross over from passive to active learning. The result will be a combination of the best of both online and offline educational offerings.”

Investment by Bond is a “testament to the role that Byju’s is playing in helping students learn better by customizing our platform to their abilities. It also demonstrates the rising global interest in education technology as digital learning becomes increasingly accepted and embraced,” he said.

Friday’s announcement comes months after Tiger Global and General Atlantic invested between $300 million to $350 million into the nine-year-old startup.