Your Tech Story

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.

MobiGarage : The Online Garage to Get Your Smartphone Repaired

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

The emergence of mobile, or we shall say, the Smartphones has added another luxury expense to our lives. Smartphones are no more just calling equipment, but it has become that one thing we can’t think of living without. The constant enhancement in the features of those smartphones is leading to an increase in its demand, and we are compelled to buy new phones to get those new features. Eventually, spending more money on the same thing.

But spending so much on Smartphones also make us sceptical about what if the phone or its software breaks down. How much will it cost to repair the phone, or will it recover the injuries? And, we often see, the same thing happening after the warranty period is over. In such cases, people often go buying new phones rather having repaired their broken phones, as it is difficult to find trusted repair person, and it is quite inconvenient as well as expensive, to go to the authorised service centres, where people barely understand the real problem and instead make you take rounds of the centre multiple times.

MobiGarage
Image Source: MobiGarage

This is where the mind of the founder of MobiGarage, Vaibhav Kapoor, hit the idea of launching a website (i.e. mobigarage.com) that would provide people with online and offline assistance, for reliable mobile repair and spare-part services at their doorsteps.

The Founders

Vaibhav Kapoor, the Director and CEO of MobiGarage, is an engineer having experience in working with Fortune 500 companies, including Accenture Strategy and ZS Associates, in India and abroad. At MobiGarage, he is responsible for creating the roadmap, business and go-to-market strategy and leads MobiGarage – B2C online mobile repair and spare unit of the company.

Kapoor started the company with other three co-founders Pulkit Kapoor (Director, Product and Services), Abhinav Mahajan (Director, Operations) and Ujjwal Sehgal (Director, Procurement/Supply Chain).

Like Vaibhav Kapoor, all three of them are engineering graduates. Before MobiGarage, Pulkit Kapoor worked as a manager at Reliance Industries Limited.

From the beginning of his career, Abhinav Mahajan had that thing about entrepreneurship, and after working with ZS Associates for a few years, he settled up his first start-up Helfis Technologies for Preventive Healthcare.

Founding MobiGarage

The four co-founders founded MobiGarage in 2017. The idea behind starting such a business was to help people with their mobile repair needs, at affordable prices and with most of the comfort. The company headquarter is situated in Delhi, India, and currently, it offers its services to 15,000 zip codes across India.

MobiGarage has seen a prominent increase in the revenues and the number of clients since its commencement. Currently, the company is fulfilling over 3000 orders in a month and has seen a 100x boost in its users, since its inception, including a 500% increase in its enterprise clients, from the last year. MobiGarage has projected its revenue to get 5 folds to 2.5Cr, in this fiscal year and a 400% growth compared to the last fiscal year.

Just in one year, the company has made its own place in the Smartphone repair industry, with a 100% growth rate for the Q3-2018, as compared to Q2-2018. For the past more than a year, it has been catering to most of the top repair and refurb companies as well as to more than 150+ brands.

MobiGarage is one of the fastest growing companies among its contemporaries and based on a unique concept, the company has got the reasons to be on the top.

Google Reveals its 2019 I/O Conference Dates Through a Fun Puzzle

News, Tech News / By
google-io-2019
Image Source: indianexpress.com

Google has admitted that it is going to organise its upcoming I/O 2019 Developer’s conference at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California from May 7 to May 9. Like every other year, the company is all set to showcase its new products and innovations at the conference.

On January 25, the company twitted a puzzle, an cryptic, 12-line block of a tweet along with a URL and an enigmatic video, having the narration for the tweet in it, from Google’s Google Developers Twitter account. The tweet hid the date and the venue of the event for the Twitterati, such that the netizens would decode it, like every other year.

Google, every year, put up such fun, puzzle tweets so that the netizens will do some brainstorming and find out the details about the I/O events.

Although a Twitter user, named Till Kottman, took only a few hours to solve the puzzle after the tweet was uploaded. Kottman spotted an early tweet from a now-deleted account, @internaltest189, that had posted a JSON code and had hidden Google I/O event dates in it.

After Kottman tweeted the right dates, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, also tweeted regarding the same confirming the dates and the venue of the event.

Although, the date and the place for the event are not much of surprise for people, as last year too, the conference held at the same place and during the first two weeks of the same month. Most of the times, the conference’s dates have been ensuring the same time of the month.

Last year, the company came across with its new OS, Android P, in beta, improved Google News, and even revealed its Duplex AI project, in the event. Google has not given any hints on what it may unveil on the conference, but we already have got an idea about a few things including the Android’s next emphasis, the Android Q, an updated Google Assistant, Google Lens, Maps, and News, etc.

The company is also anticipated to reveal the Pixel devices including, Pixel 3 Lite and Pixel 3 XL Lite. Google might also discuss its controversial Duplex project in the event.

Wattpad, the Online Storytelling App to Launch its Own Publishing Imprint Wattpad Books

News, Tech News / By

Wattpad, the Toronto-based Digital publishing company, has just announced that it is going to launch a new publishing division, Wattpad Books. Wattpad Books will be a digital imprint, that will publish selected stories from the Wattpad site.

The online community was founded in 2006, as a global storytelling social platform. The company has got a huge collection of original stories and fanfiction, from millions of users from around the world, few of which have become the basis for many streaming hits. The Netflix’s ‘Kissing Booth’ and Hulu’s ‘Light as a Feather’ are ones of those fiction stories that have been taken from Wattpad and was a huge hit among the youngsters.

wattpad
Image Source: theodysseyonline.com

Noticeably, Wattpad is quite popular among young adults, and the headcount of the member of this community is estimated to be 70 million, with an average screen timing of 22 billion minutes per month.

The company has aimed at publishing six titles under the new publication, Wattpad Books, by the fall of this year. The six titles include:

1. ‘The QB Bad Boy & Me’ by Tay Marley (having over 26.3 million reads),

2. ‘Trapeze’ by Leigh Ansell (having 2.5 million reads),

3. ‘What Happened That Night’ by Deanna Cameron (having over 1 million reads),

4. ‘Cupid’s Match’ by Lauren Palphreyman (having 46.4 million reads),

5. ‘Saving Everest by Sky Chase’ (having 17.2 million reads),

6. ‘I’m a Gay Wizard by V.S. Santoni’ (having 404,000 reads).

The first book and the most popular one, The QB Bad Boy & Me, will be out soon after August 20, 2019, followed by other five publishes within September and October, at retailers across North America, with Macmillan (U.S. distributor), and Raincoast Books (Canadian distributor).

The company stated in its press release, “Readers will find new genres, category-bending spins on traditional genres, narratives that tackle the experiences and struggles of marginalized communities, and stories that speak to the diversity of Wattpad’s global community online.”

The company has already worked with various publications and entertainment companies, before, who have adopted many of the Wattpad stories and turned them into books and movies. But, this time launching its own publication, Wattpad has taken an initiative, which might bring a revolution in the publishing and media industries.

Hulu Updates Per Month Subscription Prices Soon After Netflix’s Price Hikes

News, Tech News / By

The American entertainment company, Hulu, has announced that it is going to cut down the prices for the base subscription plan of its monthly streaming service. The announcement has just come after a week of its rival company Netflix increased the prices for all of its subscription plans.

hulu
Image Source: engadget.com

Hulu, which is an ad-supported streaming service, has reduced the cost of its base plan, to $5.99 per month, down from the current cost, i.e. $7.99. Previously, for the purpose of promotion of its internet streaming service, the company was offering the same plan for this same price, and we must say that it was a brilliant strategy to drag more consumers towards. Now again, when one of the top streaming services, Netflix, has increased its prices, Hulu might take the advantage from it, by reducing the prices.

Netflix last week escalated the prices of all its subscription plans, starting with its most popular HD streaming plan, which is now $13 per month. Even having owned one of the prime streaming services worldwide, the company shared a fell just under 1 per cent, soon after the price increase on Wednesday.

Though Hulu is an ad-based service, having subscribers half of the Netflix’s, the prices it is offering to its customers is making them abandon cable and satellite services in favour of streaming.

Last year, the company reported that it had over 25 million subscribers, and it was a good number as, the number of subscribers had increased by 48 per cent, as compared to the number of users it had in 2017.

Although the company is lowering the prices of the base plan of the streaming service, it at the same time, is also hiking prices across its other subscription tiers. It has announced to is boost the prices of Hulu Live TV, a cable-TV-like a package, by $5 more per month at $44.99. Why such wide gap between the two? Hulu explained that the Hulu Live TV is offering more channels and services, including the full on-demand product, as compared to its internet streaming service.

Still, to overcome the gap, Hulu is lowering its fees for the live TV service’s optional add-ons, including the DVR and expanded multiscreen viewing packages. Now the company will offer the two at a price $9.99 per month.

For the new subscribers the new prices will take effect from February 26, and the older consumers will automatically be shifted to the new subscription prices in their next billing cycle after February 26.

Peter Beck : The Rocket Man from New Zealand

start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

There has always been a debate between people about the need of education to get successful in life. Some are who really stress over completing the education to achieve the goals, and some are who can’t wait to get to their dreams for so long so that they just skip the higher education. But in the success story of this Kiwi startup entrepreneur, Peter Beck, the case was a bit different.

Beck, who was a sharp student, had to quit education after high school, as there was no such curricular course that could lead him to his targets. This engineer from New Zealand is just not one of the best visionary rocket scientists but also a skilled businessman, who knows how to sell his idea to the right people.

Early Life

Beck was born and brought up in Invercargill, New Zealand, to a gemologist father and a teacher mother. As a teen, he became interested in machines and rockets, as his family was also in love with machines. While growing up, he decided that he wants to create rockets and satellite.

peter beck
Image Source: spaceflightnow.com

According to one of his interviews, one day the career counsellor from his high school administration called his parents up and told them that the school did not have any courses that could fit to help Beck achieve his dreams, rather his goals were “absurdly unachievable”.

Career

Since it was clear that there was no relevant educational course for Beck in school, just after finishing high school, Beck moved to East Tamaki, New Zealand, where he joined Fisher & Paykel for an apprenticeship, at the age of 17. He not only became familiar with the top of the line machinery and materials there but also kept on experimenting with his mini rockets at the workshops.

In 2001, he started working at the Industrial Research (now Callaghan Innovation). This was the place where he met one of the future investors of Rocket Lab, Stephen Tindall.

Founding Rocket Lab

His passion for rockets led him to work hard and found his start-up company Rocket Lab, in 2006. As the name suggests, the company was dedicated to building rockets and satellites. The company received its seed funding from New Zealander internet entrepreneur, Mark Rocket. Beck became the CEO and the CTO of the company and appointed Mark Rocket as its co-director.

It was in 2009 when Beck successfully launched the company’s first suborbital sounding rocket, named ?tea, becoming the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space.

In 2010, Rocket Lab received a contract from the U.S. government, under which, the company had to study a low-cost space launcher to place CubeSats into orbit. The contract was under NASA, meaning that the Rocket Lab could use all its resources as per the requirement.

In 2013, Beck entered the Silicon Valley, to raise funding for Rocket Lab’s next big project, a two-stage launch vehicle, the Electron. Beck had a time of three weeks, and he knew to whom pitch for the investment. Rather than going to every other venture capitalist, he focussed on the ones who had already invested in such projects and had known about it. Finally, he managed to secure A-round funding from Khosla Ventures, the venture capitalists, who have already invested in a few so projects.

The first commercial launch of Electron occurred on 11 November 2018, from Mahia Peninsula. It carried satellites for Spire Global, GeoOptics, a CubeSat built by high school students, and a prototype of a drag sail to the orbit.

The company has received funds worth $25m from the New Zealand government over the past few years. But still, the company has got more investments from the Silicon Valley companies including Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Data Collective, Promus Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Stephen Tindall’s K1W1, making it legally a U.S. company.

Personal Life

Beck is married and has two children. His wife is also an engineer.

Royal Aeronautical Society, awarded Beck the Meritorious Medal for service of an exceptional nature to New Zealand aviation and a Cooper Medal. In 2014, he was awarded the Innovation in Design and Engineering Award at the NZ Innovators Awards. In 2016, he was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year.

Viacom Agrees to Acquire Ad-supported Streaming Service Pluto TV

News, Tech News / By

Viacom, on Tuesday, has revealed that it has agreed to buy the Los Angeles-based, video streaming service, Pluto TV, and will be paying $340 million in cash for the acquisition.

The streaming service was founded by Pluto Inc. in 2013, which is a multiplatform service. It works like an app and runs over devices like Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku, and PlayStation consoles. The Internet-based service does not require any cable connection and streams more than 100 channels. It also supports on-demand content like movies, sports, news, comedy, cartoons, gaming, etc.

viacom
Image Source: utaunhp.info

The acquisition of this ad-supported service is an initiative from Viacom, through which the company will enter into the wireless video streaming business and cut the cord for the consumers. With the takeover, the company will also get the chance to negotiate with the other pay-TV distributors and expand its own presence in the streaming TV business as well.

The owner of MTV, Comedy Central and VH1, Viacom, has seen a fall in its profits by 50% in the past five years, so the decision to acquire a streaming service might prove as great help for the company, since right now it needs to be relevant to the current trends to remain in the business.

The CEO of Viacom, Bob Bakish, said in a statement, “As the video marketplace continues to segment, we see an opportunity to support the ecosystem in creating products at a broad range of price points, including free.”

Having over 12 million monthly active users, Pluto TV, automatically, will provide Viacom with direct access to millions of consumers. After completion of the acquisition, the company also plans to add a premium, free service for broadband-only and other subscribers.

Pluto TV will be operating as an independent subsidiary of Viacom, and the current CEO of the company, Tom Ryan, will serve as the same, even after the acquisition. The transaction may close in the first quarter.