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Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

Cher Wang: A Brilliant Entrepreneur & Contributor in the Rise of Wireless Devices

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

HTC is a renowned name in the smartphone manufacturing industry and is also emerging as one of the leaders in the field of virtual reality. The company headquarter is based in Taiwan and was founded in 1997. It was founded by Cher Wang, H. T. Cho and Peter Chou, as an original laptop and computers, designing and manufacturing company.

The company is known for its innovation, and so is its female co-founder Cher Wang. Cher Wang is one of the most successful woman entrepreneurs in the world and is successfully breaking into this male-dominated industry.

Early Life

Wang was born on 14 September 1958, in Taipei, Taiwan. Her father was a businessman who ran a business of plastic until he died at the age of 92.

Wang completed her high school education from The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California and pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981.

cher wang
Image Source: talkandroid.com

In 1980, her sister had co-founded a motherboard manufacturing company, named as First International Computer (FIC). Wang joined the company and started her first job in 1982. During her job in FIC, she got the opportunity to travel to several new countries in the world, where she was marketing the motherboard for personal computers.

Founding HTC

While pitching the motherboard features in front of the foreign traders, Wang realised the need of a portable computer system as the desktop computers were big and wired, so taking them to any other place was not that convenient.

After a lot of brainstorming, she thought of an idea to start a computer manufacturing business and founded HTC along with her co-founders H. T. Cho and Peter Chou. In the beginning, the company started with manufacturing Notebook laptops. In 1998, the company was building one of the world’s first touch and wireless hand-held devices.

Initial years were tough, but having the blood of businessman in her veins, Wang was able to foresee the upcoming success, hence invested a huge amount of money in the business. With time, she realized that the laptop manufacturing business is not working according to the plan, and she decided to switch her focus from building laptops to mobile phones. So, HTC started partnering with other companies to build Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones.

In 2007, HTC acquired Dopod International, and in the next year the company launched its first GSM mobile phone, named HTC Max 4G. In the same year, the company also released its first Android Smartphone, the HTC Dream.

In 2009, the company rolled out its first touch screen smartphone powered by Windows OS, the HTC HD2, and also released its first user interface the HTC Sense.

In 2010, HTC sold over 24.6 million handsets. In 2011, Luxgen adopted the HTC smart technology to build the ‘Think Ahead’ feature for its vehicles such that the software would capture road conditions and potential hazards to its drivers.

In 2011, HTC won the “Device Manufacturer of the Year” in the Global Mobile Awards. In the same year, the company became the third-largest smartphone manufacturer, after Apple and Samsung. In the third quarter of the same year, HTC became the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S. ahead of Samsung and Apple.

The year of 2012 was challenging for the company, earning the lowest profits of all time, but in 2013, the release of HTC One the changed the scenario. In fact, it became the best phone of the year, winning various industry awards. In 2014, the company changed its marketing strategies, and with the launch of HTC One (M8), the company started selling the phones online, resulting in a rise in its sales.

In 2015, HTC partnered with Valve Corporation and launched its first virtual reality head-mounted display, Vive. After suffering by huge losses in the Smartphone industry due to the raised competition, it was Vive, that helped the company survive.

In 2017, Google acquired half of HTC’s staff that had worked on HTC’s design and research, by paying US$1.1 billion to the company. Google employed the HTC manpower in the manufacturing of Google’s Pixel smartphone.

Currently, the company is expanding in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) and virtual reality. In 2018 HTC partnered with the games and apps developer and publisher Animoca, such that to work in the field of games, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Personal Life

Cher Wang is married to Wen-Chi Chen, the CEO of VIA Technologies. The couple has two children. In 2011, Wang and her husband were named as the wealthiest person in Taiwan, with a net worth of US$8.8 billion by Forbes. Wang was also listed in The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women at #56 in August 2012, and 54th most powerful woman in the world in 2014, by Forbes.

Wang is also active in charity and philanthropy works.

Hiroshi Mikitani : Founder of Japan’s Largest eCommerce Marketplace, ‘Rakuten’

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

A degree from a famous business school, and a 9 to 5 corporate job, the dream of every parent for their child. And, there is no denying the fact that most of the youngsters want this settled life for themselves, too. But not every child is interested in the comfortable 9 to 5 race as some are who wants to make their own identity, and do not want to work for others but themselves. A similar situation goes to the success story of Hiroshi Mikitani, who got perfect education and even a perfect job, but his dream of entrepreneurship encouraged him to take the leap and fulfil his dreams.

Early Life

Mikitani was born on 11 March 1965, to Ryoichi Mikitani and Setsuko Miktani, in Kobe, Hy?go Prefecture, Japan. His father was an economist and was Japan’s first Fulbright Scholar to the US, and his mother worked for a trading company. His father even taught at Yale University, so the family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, from 1972 to 1974. He has two siblings, a brother who is a professor of biology at the University of Tokyo and a sister, who is a is a physician. Mikitani’s grandfather was also an entrepreneur and founded Minolta. In 1928.

Hiroshi Mikitani
Image Source: hbs.edu

Mikitani graduated with a commerce degree from Hitotsubashi University in 1988. He, later, completed his master’s degree in business administration from the famous Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1993.

Career

As soon he graduated from Hitotsubashi University, Mikitani was recruited by the Industrial Bank of Japan, in 1988. In 1993, he was transferred to the US, where he took two years of break from his bank job to pursue a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School. Along with his education, he started a consulting service, his first official business.

In 1995, his birthplace, Kobe suffered from great loss due to the 20 seconds destructive earthquake. The incident was very heart-wrenching and led Mikitani to move back to his country to help revitalize Japan’s economy, and leave his job.

Founding Rakuten

After coming back to Japan, Mikitani did not want to start over with a corporate job. Instead, he started looking at the different business model to start his own new business. At the time, the internet was revolutionising the various industries and had initiated the inception of e-commerce businesses. Netscape was working as an e-commerce website, and Amazon was just starting up its own.

The step was risky, but Mikitani was inspired to set up his own e-commerce website. So he founded a company named MDM, Inc. with three co-founders on 7 February 1997 and launched Rakuten, an online marketplace. The website helped many small shop owners to reach new customers and with the growth of their business, charging a small monthly fee from them. The platform also helped the farmers sell their goods online. All the four co-founders invested a total of US$250,000 from their own money. In 1999, the company was renamed to Rakuten Inc. Just in three years of its inception, Rakuten went public on JASDAQ in 2000. The website became popular in no time and had grown to 2,300 stores and 95 million page views per month.

The next year, the company launched Rakuten Travels, an online hotel reservation platform. In 2004, Rakuten started its financial services and launched a Rakuten credit card in 2005. It soon became the largest tech giant operating Japan’s largest Internet bank and third-largest credit company.

As Mikitani’s prime reason to go back to Japan was to help in its economy and infrastructure, in December 2005, Rakuten established the Rakuten Institute of Technology in Tokyo. In 2008, the company began to expand outside Japan, and in 2011, the company invested in Pinterest. By 2012, the company had established its online services in Austria, Canada, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, France, China, Hong Kong, Korea, etc.

In March 2015, the company started trading in Bitcoin. The company also made some acquisitions, earning more profits in the overseas business including Buy.com, PriceMinister, e-book service Kobo, Ebates, and also the messaging app Viber. By 2017, Rakuten had over 14,000 employees, over 42,000 shops on its e-commerce sites, and sales of nearly US$6 billion, with over 100 million members in Japan.

Peesonal Life

Mikitani married Haruko in 1993 and have two children with the marriage. In 2012, Mikitani received the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard Business School. He was awarded the rank of Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour by the French government in 2014. He was also awarded the Spain-Japan Business Contribution Award by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in 2017.

Apple Giving 10% Cash Bonus to its Users to Make Purchases for Apple Services

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According to a report from MacRumors, Apple is sending emails to its App Store and iTunes users about the bonus Apple is offering to its users when they add money to their Apple ID account. According to the news, these offers have been made available from 10th March and will be over as soon as 14th March.

apple
Image Source: slashgear.com

The offers will be applied to the direct transactions of money through a credit or debit card while making purchases on iTunes, App Store and iCloud. For now, the users will get a 10 per cent discount on the transactions, and the offer will be valid for only a single purchase per user.

The money can be easily added from the settings of the Apple Account. The users need to go to the Settings, tap on their Account Name, then select the iTunes and App Store option. After that, they can choose the “Add Funds to Apple ID” option from the selected Apple ID. In this option, the various options of amounts to be added will appear on the screen. Here the users need to add the money.

The money can also be added to the Apple Account directly from “Add Funds” options on the iTunes Store or by clicking on the Apple ID on App Store. The offer is also available for Desktop users.

The new bonus offer from Apple is applicable to any purchase amount between the US $1 to the US $200. So the greater the amount, the greater will be the discount.

The offer currently, is not valid for the users in the UK, Australia or Canada. And, for countries like Germany, the discount rate is set to 15 per cent. The money added to the Apple Account is used to purchase paid apps, music on iTunes, and to purchase storage space on iCloud. So when the users will add money to their Apple Accounts in the given dates, they will get 10 per cent extra money to pay for Apple services.

7 Most Influential Women Making Their Own Space in the Tech World

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8th March, the International Women’s Day, a day to observe the contribution of women to the world, that many women rejoice with lots of excitement and as a proud woman, and some clearly say that every day is a women’s day. Even we think the same, but what is bad in celebrating it together on the day, which internationally has been reserved for every woman.

Women's day

Today, as a recognition to the contribution of women to the world, as a daughter, mother, wife, sister, a homemaker, an entrepreneur and what not, we are writing down a list of few of the most influential women in the tech world:

1. Lynda Weinman, Founder Lynda.com: Online learning and training have become quite popular these days, but over twenty years ago, it was not that of a common thing. It was Lynda Weiman, who founded one of the first online training websites Lynda.com, in 1995. The website offers a variety of courses for online software training as well as for learning creative, and business skills. Lynda has won the San Francisco Women on the WebTop 25 Women award in 1999.

2. Melanie Perkins, Founder Canva: Melanie Perkins is the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Canva, which was founded in 2012, as an online tool to build beautiful graphic designs. The platform facilitates million of photographs, graphics and fonts, that people use to create awesome designs.

Perkins founded Canva in 2015, and in just four years, the company has raised to over 200 employees. According to 2018 reports, the company is valued at $1 billion. Melanie Perkins is one of the youngest female CEOs in the tech industry.

3. Lara Setrakian, Founder News Deeply: From a journalist to an entrepreneur, Lara Setrakian is the founding CEO and Executive Editor of News Deeply. It is journalism and technology-based digital platform that hosts world news, discussions and knowledge exchange. She was among the top 9 most influential Young Professionals in Foreign Policy under 33 list by The Diplomatic Courier.

4. Limor Fried, Founder Adafruit: Being the only female entrepreneur among 15 finalists for the “Entrepreneur of the Year” list might be a great feeling. Limor Fried is that ‘only female’ who gave competition to the other 14 male entrepreneurs for the title in 2012.

Fried was studying electrical engineering at MIT when she founded Adafruit, the company which sells electronic kits, components, and tools, mainly for the hobbyist market. Her leadership skills can be estimated with the fact that Adafruit sold more than $3 million worth of product while having a team of only eight employees in 2010.

5. Rashmi Sinha, Founder Slideshare: An Indian-American businesswoman, who is the CEO and founder of SlideShare, the biggest presentation sharing platform, was named the No. 8 on its Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs list by Fortune in 2008. Rashmi Sinha was also among the World’s Top 10 Women Influencers in Web 2.0 by Fast Company.

6. Meredith Perry, Founder uBeam: Perry is a Paleobiology graduate from the University of Pennsylvania. She founded uBeam as a project for an invention competition. uBeam is a device that solves the problem of wired chargers, emitting power through which people can roam in a room with their laptops without connecting it with a charger.

Perry also performed zero gravity experiments at NASA Ames Research Center as a student ambassador.

7. Tracy Young, Founder Plangrid: A civil engineering pass out who opted to go to the site build buildings, instead of sitting in an office and make plans and designs. After gaining some experience, Young came to the conclusion that technology must get into construction, too, and built Plangrid. The app enables contractors and architects to collaborate on plans via their iPads.

Although this is a small list of women and only in the field of technology, there are millions of women having their influential part to every field, whether it is sports, education, journalism, architecture, entertainment, or any other field that exists.

On this special day, we wish all the Women out there a Happy Women’s Day.

Airbnb Confirms its Plans to Buy Last-minute Hotel Booking App ‘HotelTonight’

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In January, the Wall Street Journal had reported that Airbnb was planning to acquire the hotel-booking application HotelTonight, but the negotiations for the transaction had “gone cold”. But, on Thursday, the company confirmed in a statement, that it is going to acquire the last-minute hotel booking business HotelTonight.

airbnb
Image Source: abc.net

The HotelTonight is a hotel booking app that allows its users to find and book good and affordable hotels even at the last minute. The app is specially designed to help its partners to sell their unsold rooms, and similarly, it is beneficial for the people, too, who are always on the go or for the ones who are in the need of last-minute arrangements.

This acquisition will help the Airbnb users to easily book hotels for their immediate plans, and they will have the freedom to travel without months-long planning. HotelTonight, currently, is operating in America, Europe and Australia. It also offers great discounts to entice more users. The company was recently valued at $463 million in the private market.

After treehouses and the boutique hotels, this is another progressive step for Airbnb towards growth. Last year, with the introduction to boutique hotels, the company claimed to have gained raised profits, and with the success of the boutique hotels, even the company has doubled the number of those hotels.

Airbnb has not disclosed the terms and the sum of the deal. Also, even after the deal, HotelTonight will operate as a separate entity and will work collaboratively with the Airbnb President Greg Greeley.

“We started HotelTonight because we knew people wanted a better way to book an amazing hotel room on-demand, and we are excited to join forces with Airbnb to bring this service to guests around the world,” Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO of HotelTonight said in a statement. “Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb can give guests more choices and the world’s best boutique and independent hotels a genuine partner to connect them with those guests.

Airbnb has been working on expanding its services and acquiring other hotel booking services in order to grow bigger. Also, the start of the year for Airbnb was with the acquisition of Danish startup Guest. A platform which provides the facility to book venues for meetings and other work-related events.

Tesla Launches New V3 Supercharger to Slash the Waiting Time for its Users

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Tesla hosted a customer event at its Fremont, California headquarters on Wednesday evening, where it launched its latest third generation V3 Supercharger charging stations. The new V3 Supercharger is specially designed to reduce the charging time for the electric vehicles and can charge some of the Model 3 at a rate of 250kW, making the vehicle capable of running at a speed 75 miles in 5 minutes of charging.

tesla-supercharger
Image Source: inverse.com

Due to the high demand of the Tesla cars, especially the Model 3, the requirement for the charging station has also increased. Due to the lesser number of charging stations and with lesser power chargers, the waiting time for the vehicles has been the biggest concern for the Tesla owners.

The company is also going to the update the battery system for its vehicle, such that the battery will be able to warm up before charging, such that the battery will be charged at its peak point for the maximum time, in order to slash the wait time.

The new V3 Supercharger is a completely different device from its predecessor and includes a 1 MW power cabinet and a liquid-cooled cable design. According to Tesla, after charging a vehicle for an hour, the vehicle can run to up to 1,000 miles.

The new V3 Supercharger has also been improved at the charging rates for Model S and Model vehicles, and it takes 50 per cent lesser time to charge the mentioned vehicles.

For now, the first few V3 Superchargers have been installed in Fremont available to members of Tesla’s “early access program”. These are few of the Tesla car owners who are allowed to participate in the testing of the latest software and hardware updates from the company.

For the other users, the V3 Superchargers will be available only in April, and according to Tesla, by the end of this year, the Supercharger network will be capable of serving more than twice the vehicles, it currently provides services to, per day.