Facebook has invested in India’s Meesho. Meesho is “an online reseller network of housewives and SMBs [small and medium scale businesses], who sell products within their network on social channels. The company is creating … e-commerce distribution channel via homepreneurs selling on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram”. Simply, Meesho makes it possible for anyone to resell for brands through its networks on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. The innovation here is making it possible for people to start their online stores via social channels, and earn income.

As Facebook  explores ways to generate revenue from WhatsApp, the company is now turning to a startup that already has a lead. The social juggernaut said today it has invested in social-commerce startup Meesho in what is the first time the firm takes equity in an Indian startup.

Neither Facebook nor Meesho,  which prior to this announcement had raised about $65 million from a number of investors, including DST Partners, RPS Ventures and Shunwei Capital, shared financial terms of the deal. A source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the capital was “very significant.”

Meesho, a Y Combinator alumnus, is an online marketplace that connects sellers with customers on social media platforms such as WhatsApp. The four-year-old startup claims to have a network of more than 2 million resellers who largely deal with apparel, home appliances and electronics items.

This business model is just simple and can be run nationwide in a place like Nigeria. Simply, the customer pays the shipping cost while Meesho or the supplier ships. A supplier is the person that owns the goods to be sold. This is how that supplier is brought into the platform.

The Resellers – Those Selling for Suppliers

When suppliers post their wares, the resellers help them share across the social media. Then, buyers buy and pay. This is like turning everyone possible into a sales agent, online.

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

“Someone should get a Nigeria version”.. I know our guys are really working hard back at home and hopefully they can come up with something close or near.

Meesho, is an Indian-origin social commerce platform founded by IIT Delhi graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in December 2015.
What i want to take from here is ” Founded by IIT Delhi Graduates” There is a lot of motivation for people that go to this school due to its strategic location in Delhi, which is more quite close to one of indian’s Silicon Valley.

Notable people have graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi is a public engineering institution located in Hauz Khas, Delhi, India, hence there is always some influence and preference in products that comes out from someone from this institution.. I can name top ten people in the industry what we use their product daily.
Lagos State University school of Engineering in Epe. With all the tech companies in Lagos Island and Lekki axis while we can also tag the location as Silicon valley replica, Why can’t they take LASU Engineering school as their Product innovating Hub?

Capital vs. Knowledge – which one rules? This is a chicken and egg debate which I thought was already settled until a debate began today. Follow below…

Background

This is the article written by Nnamdi. Here is a quote from the article.

Now, there is a debate based on the two on LinkedIn.

Nam: I have to respectfully disagree with my namesake Nnamdi Odumody. Capitalism has always depended on talent as talent has always been one of the distinguishing factors to establishing competitive advantages of nations. As such, the world has always been defined by talentism. Daily, however, talents are becoming easier to define. Which makes the world ever more capitalist because it remains challenging to protect and convert talent to results without capital. For this reason many with and of talents are daily exploited by those with capital. The larger the company the larger the cases. The bigger the country, the more frequent the cases.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe: You are reading it literally Nam. Today, we are in a knowledge economy where knowledge is seen as a factor of production beyond the old ones by classical economists. Capital remains as a factor of production; it will always be. But the reality is that unlike few decades ago, you do not need tons of capital to create value (no one said you do not need any, you still need). So, companies like Uber, Airbnb, Facebook etc even though they need capital are winning by talent (i.e. knowledge).

Check, most of the largest 10 companies in the world, they were built on knowledge, not just capital. Those heavy-asset companies are making way. So, if you want to change the world, while you need capital, the key is talent (knowledge) because capital does not give that old competitive advantage it used to offer. Yes, you need it but you still need knowledge.

Jumia is more valuable than GTBank despite having asset base that is a fraction of GTBank. GTbank is the most valued bank in Nigeria!

Nam: Ndubuisi Ekekwe, Nnamdi made two assertions: 1) talents will become more important than capital, 2) world is shifting from capitalism to talentism. I disagreed with both because both premises and conclusions are flawed.

If what he had said is that it now takes less capital to create more value, I would have agreed.

What is true, and has always been true, is that talent is required to put capital to good use. But both work hand in hand.

All the brands you mentioned required millions and, in all but one case, billions of dollars to be built into multi-billion dollar brands. So while it takes less capital to get started, it takes o’ so much more capital to scale, plateau and sustain. Talents alone cannot do that; nor can capital.

The fact is that talents and capital work hand in hand–always have, always will. Trying to shrink the relationship down to a quote is tough. So, while the story has merit, the quote requires work.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe: Nam – you actually made the point on this line “So while it takes less capital to get started”. In the old industrial economy, you need Capital to begin at huge level and that was a problem. Today, you just need to have an idea, and you can start with very low capital. So, because what can get you on the signpost is not HUGE capital but brilliant idea (powered by subscription cloud), the driver is idea. So, the importance of capital has shifted to idea – that does not mean capital is not important.

Facebook sold 10% to Thiel for $500k. FB was already a business then – he might have started with say $50k. If you want to build a seaport in Nigeria today, you need $1 billion to begin. For that age of seaport, CAPITAL was king since without it, no progress. In our time, capital remains important but is just part of the equation. That “age” is not time but sectoral evolution

What is the future of work? There are many perspectives to that question. But one thing I can tell you is that gig economy is here, and will be part of the future. Yes, independent contractors of one-man (and -woman) company will drive our future. As technology reduces barriers into many sectors, reducing capital for formation of entities even as it makes it possible to manage disparate distributed “workforces”, the notion of firms will evolve. Uber has distributed workforces irrespective of what it classifies them for remuneration purposes. Airbnb has amalgam of landlords working for it in a solidly designed symbiotic relationship. So, it is not surprising that Wall Street welcomed Fiverr with 90% sipke on its IPO debut. The expected structural dislocation of labour, arising from AI and robots, will make companies like Fiverr and UpWork part of the empires of the future.

Freelance marketplace Fiverr had a good first day on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company priced its IPO at $21 per share last night, raising around $111 million. It then started trading this morning at $26, with shares climbing for most of the day and closing at $39.90 — up 90% from the IPO price.

Fiverr is one of the most well-known companies facilitating the so-called gig economy. When it filed to go public last month, the company said it has facilitated 50 million transactions between 5.5 million buyers and 830,000 freelancers.

Fiverr is an online marketplace for freelance services. Founded in 2010, the company is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and provides a platform for freelancers to offer services to customers worldwide. As of 2012, over three million services were listed on Fiverr.

Organically Regenerative Web Companies

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

These kind of companies will play key roles in the future of work, because not many people will be willing to spend a decade in a particular organisation. And with technology breaking many geographic boundaries, you do not need to keep the entire workforce in defined locations.

We cannot talk about ‘sharing economy’ without ‘sharing talent’, so expect great talents to be working for different organisations at the same time.

A serious dislocation on company’s culture is on the way, many things will be reimagined and recalibrated.

Google’s mobile operating system has gone from zero to hero in the last decade or so. What was once called a copy of iOS has today become pretty much the only OS you see on every handset that’s not built by Apple – today, Android has a market share of more than 80% globally, and no competitors to speak of. This year, the operating system reaches a landmark – its 10th full version will be released (it’s already available for beta testers globally). Let’s see some of the coolest and most exciting features it will come with.

“Dark mode”

Unlike traditional LCD screens, OLED panels don’t use power when showing “true black” pixels – this makes them not only lighter but also more power-efficient. That, of course, if “true black” is indeed shown on the screen. Many apps and websites have implemented such themes, ranging from Messenger and YouTube to the Betway online casino, among others, but a systemwide dark theme was missing from Android – even though the users have demanded it for years. With Android 10, this will become a reality.

The “Dark theme” will become a feature in Google’s upcoming mobile OS that can be turned on easily from the Display menu. On the phones with OLED displays, this will contribute a lot to power saving – on those with LCD screens, in turn, it will definitely look better.

Faster updates of some software components

One of the biggest problems of the Android ecosystem today is that it’s incredibly fragmented. According to Google’s own distribution dashboard, just about 10% of all active smartphones run Android 9, with Android 8 (Oreo) running on the largest percentage of phones (a little over 28%), followed by Android 7 (under 20%). Around 10% of all active devices are still running Android 2.3 to 4.4, though. To reduce this fragmentation – at least when it comes to certain software components – Google will switch to a new way of updating them through the Play Store. Some components will be delivered as APK or APEX files (APEX is a new file format that loads during the early booting process) so it will be able to push updates to critical components without them having to go through the filters of OEMs (manufacturers).

App timers

How many times have you lost yourself to browsing updates on Facebook or Instagram and neglected more important tasks? This will be a thing of the past with Android 10’s new “App timers”. The new Android will allow you to set a time limit to your usage of any app for each day – say, you can set it to only allow you to use Instagram for 30 minutes each day – and then block it once the time is up. Of course, the timers reset at midnight each day. So, say good-bye to procrastination on your phone (even though this won’t stop you from wasting your time on a computer).