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There is an abundance of exquisite enterprise possibilities in Africa. And the success stories you’re about to examine show just how much those possibilities are well worth.
According to the IMF’s recent World Economic Outlook, six of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world are in Africa. And via 2050, the continent’s economic system could quadruple its cutting-edge size and be really worth as much as $29 trillion.
Like China and India, Africa’s journey to monetary prosperity will create loads of huge winners. And, alas, a whole lot of losers too.
The huge distinction is that most of the clever marketers who are building a fortune in Africa proper now — like the marketers inside the achievement memories you’re approximately to study — have a completely unique attitude at the continent.
All of them are clearly succeeding because they see Africa in another way.
You see, whilst most human beings have a look at Africa, all they see are issues and demanding situations: hunger, disease, unemployment, illiteracy, waste, monetary exclusion, insufficient electricity, and a protracted list of others.
If you’re a sufferer of the one-sided poverty tale of Africa that the mainstream media continuously feeds us, you ought to be familiar with the photo.
Strangely, while maximum humans are angry and pissed off by means of those issues, the marketers who’re constructing a fortune and impacting lives in Africa are excited and inspired with the aid of these tough issues.
Because they see problems differently, the entrepreneurs who’re succeeding in Africa observe their creativity and innovation to resolve hard issues in a way that makes money, creates jobs, and undoubtedly affects humans’s lives.
Africa is a marketplace that overwhelmingly rewards trouble-solvers. Therefore, the larger the issues you may solve, the better the ability rewards you get.
As bizarre as it sounds, that is the name of the game at the back of all of the success tales you’re about to read.
This article is a snippet of over one hundred of the maximum thrilling business possibilities in Africa proper now.
The business opportunities you’re approximately to learn do no longer belong to the ‘old-school’, traditional and uninspiring industries – like crude oil, gold, wooden, agricultural commodities, and diamonds.
Rather, you’re approximately to witness some of the most progressive and clean possibilities that clever entrepreneurs are currently exploring throughout the African continent.
The fulfillment testimonies you’re about to read prove that there may be a goldmine of wealth and sudden success whilst you’re taking on tough issues.
Let’s meet the top commercial enterprise possibilities in Africa:
1. SoleRebels (Ethiopia)
Bethlehem Alemu, Founder of SoleRebels, Republic of Leather, and Garden of Coffee
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu grew up in Zenabwork, a terrible village within the suburbs of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
She came across an interesting commercial enterprise possibility after years of noticing how artisans in her community remained jobless and poor, despite their awesome craftsmanship and ability to make outstanding-searching and brilliant shoes.
What those artisans lacked was get entry to to a rewarding marketplace. And as opposed to blame and criticize the scenario, Bethlehem determined to discover a market.
In 2004 she commenced her corporation, SoleRebels, by way of efficaciously elevating capital of $10,000 from own family contributors.
By using regionally-sourced, hand-loomed and natural fabrics blended with recycled materials like antique car tyres and uniforms, she created a unique green logo of shoes products that have become one of the most popular African shoes brands within the global.
Today, SoleRebels, sells its ‘eco-friendly’ emblem of shoes in extra than 50 nations round the world, including the united states, Canada, Japan and Switzerland.
Some years in the past, SoleRebels have become the first footwear organization inside the international to be licensed by the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO).
By the use of nearby craftsmen, Bethlehem has built a international logo and a highly a hit commercial enterprise that has created jobs and improved livelihoods in her nearby community.
Today, the employer has greater than one hundred personnel and almost two hundred neighborhood raw cloth providers, and has opened numerous standalone stores in North America, Europe and Asia.
Despite its very humble beginnings, SoleRebels makes up to $1 million in income annually.
Buoyed via her success with SoleRebels, Bethlehem is applying the same commercial enterprise model to Ethiopia’s large leather enterprise.
In 2014, she launched Republic of Leather, a new enterprise that makes and exports luxurious leather merchandise like bags, belts and other non-shoes leather add-ons.
And she is doing the same element for her united states’s espresso industry.
In 2016, Bethlehem launched Garden of Coffee, a coffee retail chain that specializes in Ethiopia’s mythical hand-roasted espresso recipes that would grow to be the ‘Starbucks of Africa.’ The chain plans to confide in a hundred coffee shops in China by way of the yr 2022.
By transforming local Ethiopian merchandise into appealing international brands, Bethlehem has not best created wealth, jobs and enjoyable paintings.
By successfully exploring three distinctive commercial enterprise possibilities in Africa, she has also earned worldwide popularity for her work and has made her united states immensely proud.
Bethlehem changed into decided on because the Young Global Leader of the Year 2011 on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and changed into a winner on the Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship in the same yr.
Bethlehem and her inspiring achievement tale have been featured severally on Forbes, the BBC and CNN.
2. Africa Felix Juice (Sierra Leone)
Production staff at paintings on a fruit sorting facility at Africa Felix Juice manufacturing facility, Sierra Leone
Due to its vicinity in the tropics, Africa is one of the biggest producers of culmination inside the international. However, due to bad processing and garage skills, a massive portion of the fruits harvested in Africa each year is wasted.
In some international locations, this situation is so awful that culmination and concentrates are imported from foreign places regardless of their nearby abundance.
For instance, did you already know that Nigeria, which produces oranges in large quantities, still spends millions of dollars to import orange concentrates for its fruit juice enterprise?
As a end result of this massive problem, Africa is losing out within the huge and rapid-growing international demand for uncooked and dried fruits, concentrates, juices, flavorings, and a wide sort of fruit-primarily based products.
In West Africa, a business enterprise in Sierra Leone has created a profitable opportunity out of this trouble.
Africa Felix Juice is a Sierra Leone-based totally employer that produces juice concentrates from mangoes and pineapples which might be harvested throughout the u . s . a ..
The employer buys mangoes from more than 4,000 small farmers in Sierra Leone.
It collects the end result and takes them to its processing facility in which they are processed (sorted, washed and crushed) into juice concentrates, the primary component for making fruit juices.
By shopping for fruits from neighborhood families and farmers, the business enterprise is growing price from thousands and thousands of mangoes that in any other case rot away and go to waste every 12 months.
The agency’s mango and pineapple juice concentrates are particularly exported to Europe in which they’re used to make fruit juices and flavorings for the food industry.
These concentrates have been the first most important export from Sierra Leone because it got here out from a devastating civil struggle almost ten years ago.
three. Paystack (Nigeria)
Co-founders off Paystack: Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi
Compared to the relaxation of the sector, charge systems in Africa in large part run on a guide and coins-based totally version.
More than 60 percent of adults at the continent do now not have get admission to to formal financial services. And most transactions are nonetheless performed in cash, which may be very inconvenient.
But there’s a much larger and exciting trouble.
With a big market of over 1.2 billion people and some of the fastest-growing economies within the world, Africa affords a promising market for e-Commerce, much like India and China.
However, poor get admission to to virtual bills systems provides severe technical and financial problems to heaps of traders who want to promote on-line in Africa.
After running at beer massive Heineken for two years, two younger Nigerian marketers – Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi – decided to expand a strategy to the payments hassle.
Their solution became Paystack, a smart and exceptionally easy app that lets in Nigerian traders to just accept a wide range of neighborhood and international online payments. And to process transactions, Paystack prices very competitive costs – best 1.five% of the transaction fee for nearby transactions, and 3.9% for global.
This creative answer led to Paystack’s attractiveness into the prestigious Y Combinator Accelerator program in Silicon Valley, USA — making it the primary Nigerian startup to ever join the program.
By 2018, Paystack had processed over $20 million in monthly transactions for greater than 17,000 companies in Nigeria.
After elevating $1.three million from a group of global traders in 2016, the enterprise raised a further $eight million in 2018 from a team of investors that blanketed global bills massive Stripe and Visa.
And in December 2020, Paystack changed into received by means of Stripe for a whopping $2 hundred million.
4. Anna Phosa (South Africa)
Anna Phosa with pigs on her big-scale incorporated pig farm
With a populace that is expected to double in length to over 2 billion human beings with the aid of 2050, Africa can have the fastest growing population in the world over the subsequent 30 years.
And with some of these mouths to feed, meals can be one in all the largest business opportunities in Africa as we enter the future. This includes the whole thing from grains and meat, to vegetables and processed meals.
The World Bank projects that Africa’s agribusiness zone will be a $1 trillion opportunity by way of 2030. And in step with the UN’s forecasts, call for for meat, milk and eggs in Africa will almost quadruple by using 2050.
However, currently, Africa spends over $35 billion on food imports yearly. This trouble gives an interesting commercial enterprise opportunity for neighborhood producers who can produce meals that can substitute those high priced imports.
That’s exactly what Anna Phosa is doing with red meat in South Africa.
Before hitting the limelight, Anna became an normal entrepreneur who made a livelihood from her small vegetable farm business in Soweto.
She became added to pig farming via a near friend and immediately developed a liking for the task.
In 2004, Anna invested 1,000 South African Rand (approximately $a hundred) to buy 4 pigs which she used to begin up her own small pig farm.
A little less than 4 years later (in 2008), Anna changed into reduced in size by way of Pick n’ Pay, the South African grocery store and retail chain, to supply its stores with 10 pigs consistent with week.
Due to growing marketplace demand, the order speedy grew to twenty pigs in keeping with week. And in 2010, Anna signed a panoramic agreement with Pick ‘n Pay to supply a hundred pigs in keeping with week over the following 5 years below a 25 million Rand deal (roughly $2.five million at the time).
With a settlement in hand, Anna acquired investment from ABSA Bank and USAID to buy a 350-hectare farm property. From just 4 pigs, her new farm holds nearly 4,000 pigs at a time and elements more or less a hundred to 120 pigs per week to retailers in South Africa.
As Africa’s population grows and the demand for meat booms, possibilities like those will open up throughout the continent for predominant meats consisting of pork, red meat and chicken, as well as area of interest meats such as snails, rabbits, and bugs.
5. Takamoto Biogas (Kenya)
A glad biogas person and consumer of Takamoto Biogas in Kenya
Over seven hundred million Africans still rely on cooking fuels like firewood, charcoal and kerosene.
Apart from being grimy polluting fuels that make a contribution to international warming and fitness problems, the manufacturing of firewood and charcoal takes a whole lot of time and energy, and has induced the destruction of vast wooded area regions.
Also, the price of kerosene, any other dirty fuel, may be very susceptible to the unpredictable price swings of crude oil at the international market.
To solve these problems and nevertheless meet the power wishes of its big and speedy-developing populace, Africa needs cooking fuels that are renewable, green, broadly available, and less costly to most humans.
That’s exactly what biogas presents: one of the maximum promising business opportunities in Africa.
Founded by a team of American and Kenyan marketers, Takomoto Biogas has created a device that allows rural dairy farmers to transform cow dung (animal waste) into a easy and reasonably-priced fuel (biogas) that is used for cooking, lighting fixtures and heating.
Takamoto Biogas affords Pay-As-You-Go biogas structures to its clients, particularly smallholder farmers, who pay a small fee to put in the biogas device and then pay small monthly installments for the biogas they use.
Takamoto video display units the biogas device through a GSM-linked smart meter that sends records concerning the maintenance of the unit and client charge popularity.
In addition to the biogas gadget, Takamoto offers biogas family appliances.
By supplying a easy and less expensive biogas solution, this enterprise has discovered an modern manner to clear up a extreme economic and environmental trouble, and make a variety of cash too.
6. Omega Schools (Ghana) and Bridge International Schools (Kenya)
The standard and nice of training in many parts of Africa is in very bad form.
On a continent with over 50 percentage of its human beings beneath the age of 25, and one in each 3 kids out of school, it’s far predicted that more than 60 million African youngsters may attain childhood lacking even the most basic literacy and numeracy competencies.
But is it viable to provide great schooling to negative humans and nonetheless make money? Could it end up one of the possible commercial enterprise opportunities in Africa?
Yes, it’s very possible and some marketers are already doing it.
Two for-income groups, Omega Schools (in Ghana) and Bridge International Schools (in Kenya) are changing the face of schooling in Africa thru an revolutionary and pretty powerful low-value primary training version.
Both agencies have come to be a hit social organizations and feature acquired diverse awards for superb social effect.
Omega Schools, based in Ghana, is a series of low-price personal faculties that gives fundamental number one schooling to kids from bad families for an incredibly low and affordable fee (less than $1 a day in keeping with student).
Co-based in 2009 with the aid of Ken Donkoh, a Ghanaian entrepreneur, and British professor James Tooley, the pay-as-you-examine schooling version for Omega Schools changed into advanced with the aid of Donkoh all through his MBA software.
Bridge International Schools, a chain of low-value personal faculties in Kenya, Liberia and Nigeria, uses a similar low-price version to provide cheap training to thousands of kids in East Africa for much less than $five in keeping with month according to student.
Pupils at Bridge colleges constantly carry out above the national average in Kenya, and a observe by the United Kingdom’s DFID determined that Bridge faculties in Nigeria offer equality in getting to know, no matter a toddler’s socio-monetary history.
Before those wonderful organizations commenced, maximum human beings notion it turned into impossible to provide excellent-exceptional education to negative kids at a earnings. It’s a problem billions of greenbacks in charity and resource hasn’t been capable of solve for many years.
But today, both non-public faculty chains are instructing over 2 hundred,000 children in East and West Africa, maximum of them from poor homes.
7. Patrick Ngowi (Tanzania)
Access to energy is a big trouble is many components of Africa, mainly in rural regions.
Even in huge towns, most households and groups must depend upon backup strength turbines which can be noisy and produce poisonous fumes that make a contribution to global warming.
On the other hand, Africa is the house of free all-year-spherical sunshine. That’s why it’s bizarre the continent suffers serious energy troubles.
With extra than 320 days in line with year of light in most elements, Africa has access to sufficient sun capability to energy the complete world with clean, renewable and dependable electricity.
This is one of the commercial enterprise opportunities in Africa that Tanzania’s Patrick Ngowi has efficaciously built a thriving agency on.
He first started out a profitable enterprise that sold Chinese-made mobile phones. But then he discovered that only a tiny fraction of his clients had get entry to to strength to rate their cellphone batteries.
He persevered journeying to China, but rather than cell phones, he centered on solar electricity supply hardware and set up structures.
Today, his company, Helvetic Solar Contractors, has established more than 6,000 small rooftop sun structures in Tanzania and four other East African international locations – Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
Although renewable power makes up approximately one percent of Tanzania’s power sources, Patrick’s organization already boasts of excessive profile customers just like the United Nations, the Tanzanian authorities, World Vision and the Tanzanian Army.
To date, Helvetic Solar Contractors has established several solar water heating structures in authorities establishments and several UN tasks which include colleges, hospitals and inns.
In 2013, his enterprise made more than $five million in revenues and the company was valued at $15 million by using KPMG!
His astounding achievement story has attracted pretty plenty of media interest.
A few years ago, Patrick became featured through Forbes Magazine as one of the “10 Young African Millionaires To Watch.” His corporation changed into also ranked on the top of KPMG’s East Africa’s Survey of Top a hundred Mid-Sized Companies in Tanzania.
8. AgriProtein (South Africa)
Workers at a maggot processing station on Agriprotein’s facility in Johannesburg
Waste is a huge hassle round the sector, including Africa.
Every day, we produce lots of meals and organic waste from families, markets, farms, eating places, accommodations, markets, parks and faculties.
Naturally, flies feed on those natural waste and lay billions of eggs in them. The maggots that hatch from the eggs feed fat from the waste and play a critical position in waste decomposition.
But what if I instructed you that it’s possible to construct a profitable enterprise from maggots? Yes, maggots.
Founded by way of brothers, David and Jason Drew, AgriProtein is a business in South Africa that has discovered an modern and profitable manner of solving the world’s natural waste trouble by means of producing maggots which are used as animal feed.
The corporation breeds billions of flies on a farm to lay eggs and convey maggots. The maggots are fed on natural waste cloth (which includes human and animal waste, leftover food, and blood from slaughtered animals in nearby abattoirs).
After the maggots are fed and fattened on the organic waste, they’re washed, dried and grounded to provide animal feed meal that is very excessive in protein.
This high-protein meal has proved to be a herbal and cost-powerful alternative to fish meal that is used for feeding chickens, fish and pigs.
AgriProtein’s maggot-based totally animal feed is more than 15 percentage inexpensive than other alternatives and has been verified to be exceptionally nutritious for livestock.
And more importantly, AgriProtein’s maggot-primarily based protein meal will store heaps of tons of small fish which are caught inside the international’s oceans each yr for fish meal production.
The company attracted extra than $10 million in capital to construct extra fly farms in South Africa. AgriProtein become also presented a million Euros to set up a fly farm and maggot production plant in Germany.
In 2018, Agriprotein raised a whopping $one hundred and five million for international enlargement into the Middle East and Asia.
The organisation is now operating on its first-generation fly factories that could take up and recycle as much as 250 tons of waste in line with day.
More enterprise possibilities in Africa…
The enterprise possibilities in this newsletter represent only a teaser of the maximum thrilling and modern approaches to make money in Africa.
We have put together one of the maximum comprehensive guides ever written on the pinnacle enterprise opportunities in Africa and the success testimonies of marketers that show their worth.
These commercial enterprise opportunities in Africa and the success stories you have got just study are only some of the one hundred and one opportunities profiled and explained in this ebook.
If you’re trying to inspire your self with clean ideas, exciting commercial enterprise possibilities and interesting achievement memories of real marketers who are earning profits and impact in Africa, this e book offers a wealthy source of information, data, tips, and resources that will help you discover and refine your personal specific business thoughts.
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I stay up for sharing your own African fulfillment story in some years.


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A: in the world of finance, the automotive sector represents the financial performance and economic variables related to automobile manufacturers, dealerships,. The end of of australia's car manufacturing industry is approaching and it will be brutal it is shaping as an extinction event of australian jobs, an. The united states has one of the largest automotive markets in the world, and is home to many global vehicle and auto parts manufacturers in 2017 alone, us. Car manufacturing in australia ceased this week when holden follows ford's there is not a car factory in the world that can survive on such small volumes,. Europe's biggest automotive market germany is europe's number one automotive market in production and sales terms account- ing for around 30 percent of.
The decline in the numbers of cars made in australia is caused by a the automotive manufacturing industry will make over 70 million. Background in 1908 henry ford began production of the model t automobile based on his original model a design first manufactured in 1903, the model t. The automotive industry is the technological trend setter among manufacturing industries it keeps evolving on fast pace and is now on the verge of a new era:. Australian innovation will be hurt in other sectors by departure of the car manufacturing industry, says abbas valadkhani.
The auto manufacturing industry is considered to be highly capital and labor intensive the major osts for producing and selling automobiles include: labor. The north american motor vehicle market remains the most open major market in the world, and thus, it is the target market for foreign manufacturers who wish.

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Ansell Lighting Joins Prestigious EW Awards Alumni
The Electrical Wholesaler Awards returned to the venue where it all began on Thursday 10th May, as the fifth iteration of the industry awards scheme celebrated the outstanding achievements and services of electrical wholesalers and manufacturers at London’s Tower Hotel.
After a rigorous decision-making process – which saw a panel of experts carefully review every single entry and industry professionals pledge their support through an online vote – the winners were decided and the big reveal was placed in the capable hands of the evening’s host, critically acclaimed comedian Sean Collins.
On the night, Ansell Lighting had plenty of reason to celebrate, as our #Ansell25 campaign claimed the top spot in the Best Marketing Campaign category and we also took home the coveted Best Overall Supplier award.
The #Ansell25 campaign ran through September and October of 2017 and saw 25 amazing prizes given away to celebrate 25 years of Ansell Lighting. To take part in the competition, entrants had to take a selfie with our S11 catalogue and upload it to social media using the hashtag #Ansell25. The competition saw hundreds of entries and winners received prizes ranging from sports tickets, iPads, vouchers, TVs and more.
The Best Overall Supplier Award went to the supplier who most excelled in the areas of customer service, innovation, products ranges, training for electrical wholesalers, marketing initiatives and more.
We were also nominated for Best Product for our PRISM Fire Rated LED Downlight and Best Customer Service, both of which we were highly commended for.
Following the success of the evening, divisional manager Mike Gammon says: “This year’s entries were of an extremely high calibre – everyone that made the shortlist should be congratulated, but in particular tonight’s winners who really stepped up the game to clinch their Awards. It’s great to see how supportive everyone in the industry is of their colleagues and competitors, and it really shines on nights like this.”
We would like to thank everyone for voting for us, for supporting our products and we would also like to thank the event’s organisers for organising such a wonderful event.Return to News & Events


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Glamour magazine has taken the biggest hit to its sales figures among the women’s paid-for monthly titles, dropping by a quarter year-on-year, according to the latest ABC figures.
The fashion and beauty-focused lifestyle magazine sold more than 248,000 copies (94 per cent of which were actively purchased) over the six months to December, down from 350,000 in the same period the year before.
Three other titles – Healthy, Look and Women’s Fitness – saw sales drop by at least a fifth.
Sales of Marie Claire, Grazia, Candis, Spirit & Destiny and Health & Fitness magazines all fell by at least 10 per cent year-on-year.
Hello! magazine’s sales were down by 16 per cent year-on-year, from 267,000 to 180,000 copies.
Meanwhile, Good Housekeeping saw the biggest rise in sales, up 11 per cent year-on-year to more than 441,000.
Sales of Cosmopolitan have leveled off after rocketing in the last period due to a reduced cover price. Along with Vogue, sales were even year-on-year, while Elle had a small increase (2 per cent).
All sales figures include combined print and digital output.
Women’s lifestyle magazine sales figures for six months to December. Source: ABC
|Title||Total combined circulation||YoY% change||% actively purchased|
|John Lewis Edition||457,490||-20.1||FREE|
|Woman & Home||311,651||-4.3||98|
|HELLO! Fashion Monthly||73,687||-19.4||99.9|
|Top Sante Health & Beauty||39,149||-5.8||81|
|Spirit & Destiny||31,189||-12.3||99.9|
|WM The Womans Magazine||21,830||9.2||FREE|
|Health & Fitness||11,004||-16.4||99.7|


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WhatsApp Yearly Subscription Model To Come To iOS In 2013
Users of Apple’s iOS platform who are utilizing popular instant messaging application WhatsApp could be looking at subscription fees headed there way this year if reports prove true.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum recently revealed in his statement to a Dutch journalist Alexander Klopping that the service will be introducing annual paid subscriptions to its iOS app this year. Once it takes effect, users will have to pay annually to use the app instead of paying a single download fee at the outset. The new subscription model will only apply to new users, and not to existing users.
Currently, one of the perks to owning iOS is that WhatsApp for iOS is a onetime payment of $0.99. Other platforms like Blackberry, Windows Phone and Android get to download the app for free, but after a year they are expected to pay $0.99 in subscription fees every year. It’s not a very huge fee but ultimately it could cost more than its iOS counterpart.
Koum hasn’t identified an exact date on when the subscriptions would begin, nor did he clarify much on why WhatsApp decided to change its pricing model, although a likely cause could be increased competition with the likes of LINE, Kik Messenger, and KakaoTalk, along with a number of other apps, most of which have exceeded 100 million users total with the exception of KakaoTalk, who had 57 million registered users as of August 2012, and is likely coming close to the 100 million mark.
For those waiting on a desktop version of WhatsApp to be used with Windows 7, Windows 8, and Mac devices, Koum revealed that, unfortunately, a desktop version is not in the pipeline:
“We get that question asked a lot. We feel strongly that the world is moving to mobile and … we want to be mobile-only. Your phone is with you all the time, and desktop is to many becoming a secondary experience. … our answer is no, not anytime soon.”


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A new worldwide standard will change the release day for new music in the U.S. from Tuesday to Friday.
In an effort by the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) -- the global representative of the recording industry -- to minimize illegal downloading in the era of digital music and "unify all new music release days worldwide," it will implement New Music Fridays starting July 10.
Historically, new music was released to fans on different days in different countries -- France and the U.K. hosted Monday releases; Canada and the U.S., Tues.; and Australia and Germany, Fri.
In a statement, IFPI Chief Executive Frances Moore said New Music Fridays "is about getting new music to fans at the same time they most want to enjoy it, whether in physical stores or online. It's also an opportunity to recreate excitement around the release of music -- the message is 'Think Friday, Think New Music.'"
The global release day is also a means to minimize the allure of piracy by releasing new music everywhere at the same time. Moore explained that it will help "artists, labels and retailers by limiting the time between releases in different countries and thus narrowing the gap on piracy."
New Music Fridays is largely embraced by industry leaders like Concord Music Group, Entertainment Retailers Association, Warner Recorded Music, Sony Music, Music Biz, Universal Music Group and more. However, some independent labels in the U.S. and elsewhere, according to sources, didn't believe Friday was the ideal day of the week.
Digital Music News reports that some independent labels, like the U.K.'s Beggars Group and the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) were less than enthusiastic about the change.
"Whilst I acknowledge the needs of a digital world for coordination, it seems to me to be crazy to throw away one of the trading week's two peaks, and the ability to re-stock and rectify errors before the week's second peak," Beggars Group founder Martin Mills said, according to DMN.
A2IM shared similar sentiments, saying although it supports a "Global Street Date," a series of "business reasons" make Fridays "less than an optimal date for the United States marketplace and Independents in particular."
A manager from Canadian record label Paper Bag Records told CBC news that "Friday was a weird day."
Dina Young continued to say that her company doesn't even release press releases that day "because we get less clickthroughs. And Fridays, I don't think, have traditionally been a great day to have a track premier."
Although opinions about New Music Friday vary, the fact is that it will most likely become the new normal. Some of the first artists to release new music on the designated day are Owl City, Tyrese and Veruca Salt.


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- Realme Narzo 30 Pro and Narzo 30A India launch is set for later today
- The launch event will be live-streamed on YouTube
- Realme Narzo 30 Pro and 30A prices are expected to start around Rs 10,000
Realme Narzo 30 Pro and Narzo 30A price in India, specifications, and first sale date will be officially announced today when the phones are launched in India. The two phones will come as successors to last year’s Narzo 20 Pro and 20A. Realme will also be launching Buds Air 2 — confirmed to arrive with Active Noise Cancellation and a familiar design with in-ear silicone tips — at the same stage. There are reports suggesting the young brand may also introduce Narzo-branded gaming accessories, such as a gaming mouse and mousepad, at the event.
The Realme Narzo 30 Pro and Narzo 30A specifications were tipped last week, revealing MediaTek chipsets, LCD panels, multiple cameras, and beefy capacity batteries. Similarly, their prices in India were also tipped just yesterday. If you are curious about the upcoming phones too, then watching online the Narzo 30 series India launch event must be at the top of your list. So let’s dive straight into the details!
How to watch Realme Narzo 30 Pro, Narzo 30A India launch event online
Realme Narzo 30 and Narzo 30A launch in India is scheduled to start at 12:30pm IST. The company will be live-streaming the event on its YouTube channel as well as its official website and social media channels. We have embedded the YouTube link of the live stream here so you can watch the Narzo 30 series India launch event online:
Realme Narzo 30 Pro and Narzo 30A specifications
Realme Narzo 30 Pro is confirmed to come with the MediaTek Dimensity 800U chipset, similar to Realme X7. The handset is tipped to arrive with a 120Hz display, a 5,000mAh battery, 48MP triple rear cameras, and 30W fast-charging support. It is said to come with Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res Audio. The TENAA listing suggested it will come with a 6.5-inch display and Android 11 OS with Realme UI 2.0 custom skin on top. The Realme Narzo 30 Pro specifications are expected to be similar to Realme Q2 5G.
The Realme Narzo 30A is said to sport a 6.5-inch display with a waterdrop notch for the selfie camera. It is said to be powered by the MediaTek Helio G85 SoC and sport dual cameras at the back with a 13MP primary sensor. The phone may house an 8MP snapper on the front for selfies and video chats. A 6,000mAh battery with 18W fast-charging support fuels the phone. It is said to have a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and come in Black and Light Blue colours. Unfortunately, other specifications of the phone remain under wraps, for now.
Realme Narzo 30 Pro and Nazro 30 prices in India (expected)
Realme Narzo 30A price in India will be Rs 8,499 for the 3GB + 32GB variant according to one tipster, while another claims its 4GB + 64GB option will cost Rs 9,999. Similarly, the Realme Narzo 30 Pro India prices are said to be Rs 15,999 and Rs 17,999 for the 6GB + 64GB and 8GB + 128GB configurations, respectively. may start at around Rs 10,000.
Leaks aside, the Narzo 30 Pro price will be lower than that of the Realme X7 (which starts at Rs 19,999), as teased by the company’s CEO, Madhav Sheth.


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I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about kids and devices. It’s mostly as market research for my new business (more about that later) and, luckily for me, it’s also really interesting. I knew that devices were big with kids, but honestly, I didn’t know just HOW big. So I thought I’d share a bit about what I’ve been learning, in case, like me, you haven’t been keeping up-to-date on the trends…
One of the things that surprised me is that the rate of iOS and Android device adoption has surpassed that of any consumer technology in history. Compared to recent technologies, smart device adoption is being adopted 10X faster than PCs were in the 80s, 2X faster than the internet in the 90s and 3X faster than recent social network adoption. That last bit in particular blew my mind because remember how Facebook just seemed to explode? And to think that the adoption of mobile devices is three times that?? Wow.
Now, of course, that’s mobile devices in general, not specifically with kids. Well, it gets even better. It turns out that in October, 2011, 52% of kids ages 0-8 yrs had access to mobile devices at home. And that was over a year ago. Imagine what it is by now, especially given what was topping kids’ holiday gift lists this year: you guessed it, devices. In fact, the iPad was the number one request for kids aged 6-12 yrs (48%) and consumers aged 13+ years (21%) according to Nielsen. And looking at the wish list of kids aged 6-12, in particular, here is what Nielsen reports:
You probably noticed that four of the top five requests are mobile devices. And the interest in the iPad, for this age group, is up from 44% in 2011. It will be interesting to see how many of these kids actually received devices as holiday gifts this year, but what we do know is that research firm NPD’s latest report (1/3/2013) estimates that there are currently more than 31.8M tablet devices in US homes. Considering the 2011 Census reported approximately 114M US households, that’s a pretty healthy penetration.
You’re probably convinced, just from your own experience, that device use by kids is growing like crazy. But if you’re not, maybe some of these data about educational app downloads will seal the deal. Strategy Analytics reported that in 2011 there were 270M educational app downloads, up from 25M in 2009. That is a more than tenfold increase in those two years. Again, we don’t yet have the data for 2012, but I feel pretty comfortable extrapolating that the number of educational app downloads was, ya know, high.
And even though I don’t yet have the data to support that opinion, it seems clear that app developers must agree that the opportunity in educational apps is huge. Because when I checked the recent app store numbers two days ago I found that there are now more than 115,000 educational apps, between the iTunes and Google Play app stores. I was stunned. When I looked at the stores in the late spring of 2012, the number loomed somewhere near 50,000. And I’m not even looking at Kindle, Nook or Microsoft app stores at this point. (I’m a little bit afraid!)
I mentioned earlier in this post that I’ve been doing a lot of this reading as market research for my new business, Balefire Labs. With more than 115,000 educational apps out there I can’t even imagine how parents and teachers are going to make sense of it all and find what they need for their kids. We have our work cut out for us at Balefire!
What is your experience? Did your kids ask for and/or get mobile devices this past holiday season? And how’s the hunt for educational apps going?
If you’re interested in being notified when Balefire Labs launches this spring, please sign up on our website.
- Facebook Mobile User Counts Revealed: 192M Android, 147M iPhone, 48M iPad, 56M Messenger (techcrunch.com)
- Mobile Devices Becoming Preferred Portal To The Internet – IDC (misco.co.uk)
- You and your new Android device – a getting started guide (androidauthority.com)
- If 2012 Was “The Year Of Mobile,” 2013 Will Be “The Year Of The Tablet” (marketingland.com)
My nearly 6 year old got a kindle for Christmas. I haven’t looked for educational apps yet because currently he only receives 30 minutes of angry birds and some other skiing game on the kindle a day and that is only if he does Headsprout and reads a book. Once HS Early Reading is done (or whatever they have renamed it) I doubt he will be ready for HS Reading Comprehension and at that point I will need to find educational apps. Otherwise his access on the kindle is only to books. Once I start looking, I will let you know.
Great, report back! I’ve heard that the Kindle store is good for books, but that they’re still behind the curve in apps. (That wouldn’t be surprising, given the head start that iTunes and Google Play had.) Let us know!
Pingback: Video Killed the Radio Star…or Did It? | disrupt learning!


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RossTour will announce the termination of the tour operator’s activity
RossTour Company plans to complete the work of the tour operator but continue to play as tourist agency. This was announced by the company's general director Alexander Nedopolts. According to the head of RossTour, the company plans to announce the termination of the tour operator’s activity on Friday, October 5, or Monday, October 8. Now the company is engaged in the analysis of legal formalities. An official statement, according to the company's general director, is necessary for RossTour to activate the financing contingency mechanism (the company worked mainly as a booking center). All the data, available at the moment, says that RossTour performed tours, formed by other tour operators. This is confirmed by tourists themselves, who published scans of contracts in social networks, and by travel agents. The tourist and insurance players have serious doubts that the share of RossTour's own tourist product has at least a significant part of its volume of sales. And this is very important. According to Mr. Nedopolts, after completing the work as tour operator, RossTour plans to save the agent’s sphere. The company has its offices. Air ticket offices can also continue to operate. Earlier, RossTour has already informed its partners that the air ticket offices are included in a separate legal entity - LLC RT-Center.


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Max targets Rs 3,000 cr revenue by FY18
Dubai-based retail and hospitality conglomerate Landmark Group's Value fashion brand Max, is targeting a revenue of Rs 3,000 crore by 2017-18 and plans to add around 100 stores in India in the next three years, a top company official said.
"We are growing at 35 per cent CAGR. This year we will be crossing Rs 1,800 crore. We are planning to become Rs 3,000 crore company in the next two years (FY18)," Max Fashion India Executive Director Vasanth Kumar told PTI.
Max, mostly a family-format store, is a $1.6 billion brand across 17 countries. It operates 140 stores across 50 cities in India and plans to take the total to 250 stores by 2018-19.
"We are expanding at the rate of one every two week, around 25 to 30 stores per year. We added 30 stores this year. We should be around 250 stores in the next three years," he said.
The average size of a Max store is 10,000-12,000 sq ft and each store entails an investment of around Rs 5 crore. Max operates in a mid-market industry which is estimated to be around Rs 80,000 crore, largely dominated by organised players.
This is the fastest growing segment in the apparel industry, growing at 10-12 per cent.
In Bengaluru, Max is opening 60 per cent of the stores in high-street and 40 per cent in malls. High-street stores account for a third of the brand's business, Kumar said.
Twenty five per cent of the revenue comes from men's wear, 20 per cent western wear (women), 18 per cent ethnic women's wear, 25 per cent kids wear and 12 per cent footwear and accessories.
The brand gets 30 per cent of business from the youth in its regular store format. (SH)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India


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There's no doubt the Apple iPad has taken the market by storm. Although tablets have been around for some time, no other manufacturer has managed to create the same level of demand for a tablet like Apple has created for the iPad. These days, it seems everyone wants an iPad—kids included. Of course, other manufacturers aren't going to let Apple be the only competitor in this hot market. There are a number of tablets in the works, many of which will run on Android, the first solid competitor it seems, to Apple's iOS.
Today, we're going to take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab. This 7-inch tablet is doesn't have the same amount of screen real estate as Apple's iPad, but its smaller screen also makes it more portable. Running Android 2.2 (Froyo), the Galaxy Tab also offers support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1, which Apple's iPad lacks...
Samsung Galaxy Tab Review
|Apple Spurs User Outrage Forcing iTunes...||11|
|Confirmed: Microsoft To Acquire...||8|
|Microsoft To Announce $2.5B Minecraft...||8|
|Acer Announces 28-Inch XB280HK Monitor...||6|
|New Radar Gun Technology Will Allow...||6|
|Netropolitan Is Facebook For The Rich,...||6|
|Tables Turn: Samsung Disses Apple iPhone...||6|


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Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), Portugal’s largest bank, has partnered with engagement-banking technology provider Backbase to accelerate its digital innovation and consumer engagement.
The collaboration will enable the Portuguese bank to create new digital banking channels across all its business lines.
The goal is to achieve a seamless customer experience, starting with SME customers, the companies said in a release.
With the support of Backbase technology, CGD will launch a range of new initiatives, including building Portugal’s first-ever fully digital SME onboarding solution.
By replacing legacy systems and bringing together previously siloed banking channels, CGD will be able to improve its customer experience across all touch points.
Seeking cost reduction and technology gains
Leveraging a holistic platform approach across multiple business lines and countries will allow CGD to significantly decrease the time to market for launching new digital banking solutions.
The Lisbon-based bank will also be able to reduce its customer acquisition costs and benefit from more reliable and robust technology.
The partnership with Backbase underscores CGD’s dedication to providing seamless banking experiences to all its customers, the bank said.
These experiences include frictionless self-service and digital onboarding, it added.
The collaboration also demonstrates how the bank is rapidly innovating to meet changing customer demands in today’s digital-first world, according to CGD.
“A holistic platform that connects all business lines and reduces spend”
“Our technology journey will allow us to provide all our customers with competitive advantages, guaranteeing the excellent service and efficiency they expect,” Rui Negrões Soares, Head of Digital at Caixa Geral de Depósitos, said.
Matthijs Eijpe, Regional Vice President for EMEA at Backbase, added:
“By providing a holistic platform that connects all business lines and reduces spend, we’re empowering Caixa Geral de Depósitos’ to innovate more freely and effectively. By creating huge efficiencies, our platform empowers banks to focus on meeting the needs of their digitally savvy customers.”


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Apple said it will loosen the famously strict rules on payments inside the iPhone’s App Store, making it simpler for more modest developers to control clients toward alternative payment methods as they hope to avoid the tech monster’s stiff fees.
In a fractional concession as it scrambles to settle a class-action claim from app developers who have blamed it for mishandling monopolistic market power, Apple said that while developers will stay banned from pitching alternative payment methods through their apps.
Simultaneously, be that as it may, they’ll presently be permitted to gather contact data, for example, email addresses, then, at that point recommend alternative payment methods through those channels.
“Developers can utilize communications, like email, to share data about payment methods outside of their iOS app,” Apple said in an explanation late Thursday. “As usual, developers won’t pay Apple a commission on any buys occurring outside of their app or the App Store.”
Apple likewise said it will adhere to its guarantee last year to cut its grandiose, 30% commission on app incomes to 15 percent for developers who are making under $1 million in yearly income.
The company added that it will lay out $100 million to set up a “Designer Assistance Fund” that will give out somewhere in the range of $250 and $30,000 to developers whose deals were under $1 million every year between June 2015 and April of this current year. Around almost 100% of developers will quality, as indicated by the plaintiffs.
The settlement — which actually should be approved by a federal judge in northern California — addresses a slight loosening of Apple’s control over developers that could be additionally changed when a decision is given over the different, intently watched Apple versus Epic suit, which likewise revolves around Apple’s payments rules. That administering could go inside weeks.
The move may likewise be expected to soothe concerns raised by administrators who have pummeled the company’s App Store payments policies as essential parts of its monopoly power.
Since Apple got a revealed $22 billion from App Store commissions last year, any change to the company’s payments strategy could have costly outcomes.
Be that as it may, Apple’s faultfinders don’t appear to ease up.
“The present move just adds to the force and further uncovered wild anticompetitive maltreatments in the app markets,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told the media. “The fox guarding the hen house the norm will stay until there are clear and enforceable rules for Apple and Google to play by.”
Prior in August, Blumenthal presented a Senate bill close by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn that would banish Apple and Google from requiring app developers to utilize their payments frameworks. A comparative bipartisan bill focusing on the organizations’ “extremely tight grip” has been proposed in the House.
Jason Kint — the top of a trade group representing digital media organizations including the Associated Press, NBCUniversal and New York Post parent company News Corp. — said the progressions Apple reported Thursday were more style than substance.
“Apple needs this to be large information,” Kint composed on Twitter. “I’m processing however surely appears as though their favored result and endeavor to utilize proactive PR to make this disappear.”
Spotify likewise pummeled Apple’s proposition, saying it neglected to address even the most essential parts of the App Store’s “anticompetitive and unfair” practices.
“They are endeavoring to occupy policymakers and controllers and dial back the force that is working all throughout the planet to address their conduct,” said the company’s chief legal officer, Horacio Gutierrez. “Apple has been permitted to mishandle their prevailing situation for quite a long time, and we keep on looking for genuine changes to guarantee that organizations can enhance and contend genuinely, on a level battleground.”
However, lawyers for the developers who sued Apple outlined the proposed settlement as a major success for the little man.
“This hard-won settlement will carry significant upgrades to US iOS developers who appropriate their digital wares through the App Store, particularly for those little developers who bring such a lot of innovativeness and energy to their work,” said Steve Berman, who addressed the developers.


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Coronavirus Update: China’s Lunar New Year celebrations raise concerns about COVID spread, while officials say peak is past
Chinese consumers are eager to travel during the nation's biggest annual holiday, but a wave of cases is making people nervous.
|Date:||Jan. 25, 2023 2:39 PM ET|
|Link:||Read more at MarketWatch|
|Source:||MarketWatch.com - Top Stories - marketwatch.com|
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A convoy of the Mexican Armed Forces patrol along Avenida Revolución, in downtown Tijuana, as a trio of banda musicians belt out a tune for passersby. ‘La Revo,’ as Avenida Revolución is known by Tijuanenses, used to be the heart of Tijuana’s tourist district, with thousands of college students flocking to the street to enjoy cheap booze and an 18-and-up drinking age. As Tijuana became of no-go zone for Americans with México’s surging narco violence, the street was abandoned by tourists and boarded up storefronts were all that remained.
In the gringos’ absence, the street in the heart of Tijuana is now being reclaimed by Tijuanenses, and is slowly being transformed by the ‘reawakening’ turned revival downtown. While out of touch Baja California tourism officials still can’t envision the street’s future as anything but a destination for tchotchke-searching American daytrippers and tequila swilling underage Aztecs from SDSU, a new generation of hip entrepreneurs are re-imagining Avenida Revolución. Several clubs and restaurants catering to Tijuana’s hip set have recently opened up in the spaces formerly dedicated to American tourists, and the famed Caesar’s restaurant—birthplace of the Caesar salad—was bought and restored by the Plascencia clan of restauranteurs. Recently, while sipping local wines from the Valle de Guadalupe on the patio Caesar’s, a friend remarked, ‘If you told me a few years ago that I would be drinking wine on a patio restaurant on Avenida Revolución, I wouldn’t have believe you.’ While the reclamation of Avenida Revolución for Tijuanenses is far from complete, as many empty storefronts remain and little support has been offered from the clueless officials in either of the recent municipal administrations, it is well underway. With the Americans gone, in larger and larger numbers, Tijuanenses have started to frequent their own no-go zone—Avenida Revolución.


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Dropping Freemium: How One Company Killed Its Free Plan and Grew 40% — And You Can, Too
For most SaaS companies, offering free trials and freemium plans is a no-brainer. But according to one SaaS entrepreneur, going in the opposite direction might actually do more for your bottom line.
In most SaaS circles, conventional wisdom suggests that in order to have any hope at rapid growth, SaaS businesses must offer freemium plans and free trials that entice prospective customers to give a product a try before they actually decide to pay for it.
So, for the first 18 months of running his online survey software company PopSurvey, SaaS entrepreneur Josh Pigford bought into that strategy. “If you’re running a SaaS company, it’s kind of a given that you offer some sort of freemium option,” Pigford says. “So that’s what we did.”
Not surprisingly, that freemium strategy worked — to a degree.
PopSurvey’s free plans were attracting tire kickers, but they weren’t delivering the long-term results that Pigford and his team wanted to see. Customer churn was higher than Pigford thought it should be, and the business was having trouble convincing trial users to convert into paying ones.
“We’re not a huge survey tool like Survey Monkey that allows customers to make these massive surveys with super complex questions,” Pigford says. “We built our product to appeal to a very specific segment of customers. So when people came to us looking for something like Survey Monkey, they didn’t hang around. That didn’t seem like a very productive process to me.”
So, Pigford decided to try something radical. He dropped PopSurvey’s freemium plan, eliminated its trial period, and doubled the prices of its other plans.
The result? A 40 percent increase in revenue in the first month.
Dropped our free plan, dropped the trial period, dropped our cheapest plan and doubled our prices. Result? 40% increase in revenue.
— Josh Pigford (@Shpigford) May 20, 2013
Standalone Occurrence or Repeatable Model?
Pigford admits that PopSurvey’s incredible results could very well represent a flash in the pan. But that doesn’t mean he thinks that success should be written off as pure happenstance.
“At a high level, giving SaaS customers a free trial or a freemium option makes logical sense,” Pigford explains. “But what’s the real value of those free signups if they don’t convert?”
By not offering the free trial, Pigford believes that PopSurvey has forced prospective customers to do more research before they sign up. Ultimately, that allows the business to attract a higher quality batch of educated customers whose expectations better align with what PopSurvey’s product delivers.
“In my mind,” Pigford explains, “that’s not some sort of rogue idea that will only work for our company. It’s a very reasonable, quality-driven customer acquisition strategy that I think many SaaS businesses could benefit from.”
“Our early returns are showing that customers who give us their credit card up front are much more likely to stick around.”
The reality, Pigford says, is that some SaaS businesses don’t need to — and probably shouldn’t — market themselves to any and everyone with an e-mail address. Instead, they should be trying to appeal to the customers whose specific pain points align with the company’s value proposition.
“From there, you can make your pitch and ask them to pay,” Pigford says. “If you can quickly and compellingly state why your product is worth the investment, serious customers will gladly give you their credit card information.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that SaaS companies should force prospective customers to take all of the risk. PopSurvey still provides some insurance to its customers with a 60-day money back guarantee. But Pigford says that he’s found that strategy to be much more effective than the freemium one.
“Our early returns are showing that customers who give us their credit card up front are much more likely to stick around,” Pigford says. “And that makes customer acquisition a much more efficient process. It removes the need to constantly beg non-paying customers to convert to premium plans and allows us instead to focus on meeting or exceeding paying customers’ expectations.”
Why You Need to Evaluate Your Situation Before Dropping Your Freemium Model
Before you rush off to copy PopSurvey’s strategy, Pigford suggests heeding this warning: Don’t do anything until you’ve considered your market’s competitive landscape, and factored in the expectations of customers you’re trying to attract.
“If you’re in a super competitive space and your product isn’t much different than everyone else’s, then offering a free trial or freemium plan might be the right thing to do,” Pigford says. “And if every other comparable service in your market offers a free trial, you’d be taking a significant risk by not offering one, as well.”
That being said, Pigford says SaaS entrepreneurs should not be so afraid to ask customers to pay for a product that they believe adds real value.
“So many early-stage SaaS companies operate with this mindset that they can’t charge too much for their product or they’ll scare everyone away,” Pigford explains. “The reality is that any substantial business will gladly spend the money if your solution relieves their pain. Some of our bigger customers — FedEx, Foursquare, and Whole Foods — could spend thousands of dollars a month and not think twice about it. So if your product legitimately solves those types of businesses’ problems, why give it away for free or undercharge for it?”


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Sony BMG senior VP and GM of U.S. digital sales Adam Mirabella is leaving the record label, Billboard has learned, to take a post at mobile phone manufacturer Nokia.
On Oct. 13, Mirabella will begin his new position as director of global digital music retail. He will be based in Nokia’s White Plains, NY campus, and will report to Liz Schimel, Nokia’s head of global music.
Nokia on Thursday released the full details of its much-anticipated Comes With Music initiative, which includes the cost of a year’s music subscription into select devices. Nokia also operates an a la carte music download service as part of its Ovi entertainment services platform, and has emerged as a key player in the nascent mobile music distribution space.
At Sony BMG, Mirabella was responsible for managing the label’s relationships with all U.S. digital and mobile distribution partners.


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Purplle raises a Series A round to bring the $9 billion offline grooming market online
Beauty and grooming eCommerce platform Purplle has raised over $5 million in its Series A round from IvyCap Ventures (though the company statement didn’t disclose the quantum of funding but YourStory’s sources indicate that they raised more than $5 million). The money will be used for growing its marketing efforts and fulfillment capacity. Purplle is an online platform for beauty enthusiasts and professionals, offering personal care products including salon and spa services.
Launched in 2011 Purplle.com has been an early mover in the online beauty space and earlier secured an undisclosed amount of investment by a consortium of Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and The Chennai Angels.
Speaking to YourStory, Manish Taneja, CEO, Purplle.com said, Purplle has clearly demonstrated cost efficient scale up in our beauty products market place business and are making rapid inroads into the beauty services market .With this round of funding, we are confident we will establish ourselves as India’s top destination for beauty.”
Previous calendar year was eventful for the Mumbai based company, “2014 was a great learning experience I would say. We did our fair share of mistakes and thankfully have come out stronger. We have grown by 4 times in our beauty product marketplace business and by 10 times in our salon and spa finder business,” added Manish.
Purplle hit one million users mark in February last year and started accepting online payments for salons and spa services. “Traffic from tier II and III cities increased to 50% and currently mobile contributes to over 70% of traffic on our salon and spa platform,” revealed Manish.
Beauty products and services Market is about USD 8 – 9 billion, out of which at present online contributes less than 1%. Purplle is trying to bring it online. Internationally beauty and wellness has been fertile grounds for the creation of several billion dollar start-ups in recent years – Jumei.com (China), Sephora, Birchbox being a few.
Speaking about his reason behind the investment, Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner of IvyCap Ventures said “We strongly believe several eCommerce verticals remain relatively untapped in India, and that niche players with rich content and in-built intelligent discovery features are going to be the next wave of value creation, especially in the Indian context. Against this backdrop, beauty and wellness is of particular interest, as it is a fast growth sector with inherent loyalty characteristics far beyond many other verticals”.
The Mumbai based venture plans to achieve $40-50 million GMV run rate this year. “We aspire to have 25000 products, 50,000 salons and spas listed on Purplle platform,” said Manish. As far as competition is concerned the company rubs shoulder with horizontal marketplaces and niche players like Nykaa.
Brainchild of investment-banker-turned entrepreneur Falguni Nayar and her banker husband Sanjay Nayar - Nykaa secured undisclosed amount of funding from private investors, including high networth individuals and non-residential Indians.


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Han Jingyi, right, vice-mayor of Xiamen, meets with the United Arab Emirates ambassador to China June 1. [Photo/fo.xm.gov.cn]
Further cooperation on culture and tourism was discussed between the vice-mayor of Xiamen and the United Arab Emirates ambassador to China during a meeting June 1.
Han Jingyi briefed the ambassador on the basic facts of Xiamen's economic and social development.
The vice-mayor said that Xiamen has always sought to take part in the Belt and Road Initiative and he hoped that the two sides could seize the important opportunity to strengthen their cooperation on trade, culture and tourism.
The ambassador described Xiamen as the Garden of Eden, and said he was impressed by its beautiful environment and achievements in economic and social development.
He said he is willing to advance cooperation with Xiamen under the Belt and Road Initiative to bring benefit to the peoples of the two sides.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), renowned for its huge oil reserves, is a federal absolute monarchy sovereign state in Western Asia. The UAE is China's largest export market and second-largest trade partner in the Arab world. Trade cooperation between Xiamen and the UAE has maintained steady growth in recent years.
A delegation headed by the chairman of the Hong Kong Promotion Association of International Cooperation visited Xiamen King Long United Automotive Industry Co, a leading public vehicle manufacturer in China, on June 4.
Zsolt Pava, mayor of Pecs in Hungary, visited Xiamen and a local private company on May 27.


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For many, Google Glass and other wearable devices might appear to be the latest overhyped fad. However, when smartphones first arrived, few would have suspected they'd become such an integral part of...
Both IDC and Gartner concur that PC sales rose strongly in the second quarter
Australian scientists claim it could be a much more energy-efficient approach
Grouply.io Chrome extension allowed sensitive data to be accessed by marketers
Ironically, Watson could replace the HR department


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The San Francisco-based company's mission is to transform the way we eat by replacing the animal products in our food with ingredients that can be made from plants.
It all began with a product called "Beyond Eggs," a pea-based egg-replacement that can be used for baking but not eaten alone. Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick, a long-time vegan, portrayed the product as the first of a long line of products that would eventually turn our food system — which he calls "completely broken" — upside down.
"We're trying to take the animal totally out of the equation," Tetrick told NPR in 2013.
Tetrick is right that our food system isn't sustainable — producing a half-pound of beef results in roughly 7 and a half pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, or the equivalent of driving nearly 10 miles. Producing the same amount of potatoes, on the other hand, requires about a tenth of that CO2. Decreasing the amount of meat Americans consume could make a big difference for the planet.
Hampton Creek's message has resonated with consumers. Six years after the company was founded, it has raised more than $220 million and currently is valued at $1.1 billion. Since debuting the pea protein-based "Beyond Eggs" in 2013, the company has released a line-up of plant-based alternatives to foods that rely on animal products, including cookies, dressings, and a popular eggless mayonnaise that's sold in stores like Wal-Mart and Whole Foods.
In 2015, Hampton Creek was named a "Technology Pioneer" by the World Economic Forum; that same year, its revenues grew 350%. Its products are now served in more than 3,000 K-12 schools and 500 universities as well as in stadiums, corporate cafeterias, and government agencies.
But Hampton Creek still hasn't cracked the eggless egg — at least not one that can be cooked and eaten on its own.
Peas — in the form of pea protein isolate — are the centerpiece of "Just Mayo", while the company's "Just Cookies and "Just Dough" feature sorghum. But neither of those ingredients have yielded a stand-alone egg substitute. Various test versions of an eggless scrambled egg product, which Tetrick said might eventually be called "Just Scramble," have repeatedly failed to hit the mark. Alice Park, a science writer for TIME, wrote in 2014 that one version of the scramble tasted more like tofu than eggs.
But Hampton Creek has kept at it. Their latest version of the scramble (which is not yet on the market) is made with mung beans; Tetrick and other staff members have taken to simply calling it "Jack" or "the magic bean."
On a recent tour of the company's headquarters, we gave it a taste. Ben Roche, one of the company's heads of product development and a Michelin-starred chef, poured some of the yellowish liquid into a frying pan.
After a few minutes, the scramble began to look, well, like scramble. Along the bottom of the pan, a soft layer of what looked like perfectly-beaten eggs began to solidify, and as Roche stirred, the mixture started to take on a more defined shape. Again, it all looked like typical egg behavior.
Roche scooped the finished product into a small bowl for me and sprinkled it with a bit of sea salt. The product certainly looked like eggs — it had the texture and the characteristic pastel-yellow color, and it was steaming like a hot plate of scrambled eggs normally would.
I shoved a forkful of the scramble into my mouth. It didn't taste like eggs. But it wasn't bad, either.
Next, Joshua Hyman, Hampton Creek's head of culinary programs, introduced me to the company's latest iteration of the eggless egg: patties. These don't have an official name yet, but Hyman told me envisions them being sold in schools and universities much like their egg replacement product.
Hyman slid what looked like an egg sandwich towards me — the egg patty (which is the same as the scramble, but formed into a patty shape) was inside a toasted bialy smeared with a light dusting of "Just Mayo".
I tried a small bite of the sandwich — which had preemptively been cut into quarters as though in acknowledgement of my skepticism — and was blown away. The texture was perfect and the taste was distinctly egg. It didn't seem like it could be the same product, but perhaps all the "Just Scramble" needed was a bit of crispiness and a smidge of creamy pea protein. As we talked, I ate three more pieces. Running out of time, I put the fourth in a bag to take home.
Hyman told me that he envisions the patties being sold as an alternative to the scrambled eggs that normally go in foods like egg sandwiches and breakfast burritos.
In addition to the scramble and patties, the company is testing out a healthier version of their original mayo product and an ice cream and butter made with mung bean as the base ingredient. Tetrick also told me they're "close" to producing lab-grown meat, something the company first unveiled they were working on in June. The product will be in the avian family, according to Tetrick, but our guess is that it will be chicken.
"Right now if a really great burger was a 10 and a McDonald's burger was a 6, this is a 4. We're not there yet," he said.


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Media coverage about Wilhelmina International (NASDAQ:WHLM) has trended somewhat positive recently, Accern Sentiment Analysis reports. The research group identifies positive and negative media coverage by analyzing more than 20 million news and blog sources in real-time. Accern ranks coverage of public companies on a scale of negative one to positive one, with scores nearest to one being the most favorable. Wilhelmina International earned a media sentiment score of 0.08 on Accern’s scale. Accern also gave media coverage about the technology company an impact score of 44.3602677166379 out of 100, indicating that recent media coverage is somewhat unlikely to have an effect on the company’s share price in the next few days.
Wilhelmina International (WHLM) opened at $6.70 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.26, a current ratio of 1.26 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07. Wilhelmina International has a 12 month low of $5.67 and a 12 month high of $8.73.
Separately, ValuEngine upgraded shares of Wilhelmina International from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Friday, December 1st.
In other Wilhelmina International news, major shareholder Ralph Bartel bought 10,107 shares of Wilhelmina International stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 21st. The stock was acquired at an average cost of $6.50 per share, with a total value of $65,695.50. Following the completion of the acquisition, the insider now owns 880,862 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,725,603. The purchase was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, Director Dieter Esch sold 7,302 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, December 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $6.41, for a total transaction of $46,805.82. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders acquired 62,300 shares of company stock valued at $401,642 in the last 90 days. 64.70% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.
ILLEGAL ACTIVITY NOTICE: “Wilhelmina International (WHLM) Given Coverage Optimism Rating of 0.08” was first posted by The Lincolnian Online and is the property of of The Lincolnian Online. If you are viewing this report on another publication, it was stolen and reposted in violation of international trademark & copyright law. The correct version of this report can be read at https://www.thelincolnianonline.com/2018/01/14/somewhat-positive-media-coverage-somewhat-unlikely-to-impact-wilhelmina-international-whlm-stock-price-updated-updated.html.
About Wilhelmina International
Wilhelmina International, Inc is engaged in fashion model management. The Company provides fashion model and talent management services, specializing in the representation and management of models, entertainers, artists, athletes and other talent to various customers and clients, including retailers, designers, advertising agencies and catalog companies.
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American football helped strengthen video ad performance across screens and drive total video ad opportunities by 81 percent, according to a newly released infographic by Adap.tv.
Like the holiday shopping season, football provides marketers a great opportunity to engage consumers with video content that interests them. Breaking down the overall improvement in video ad inventory, smartphones saw a robust growth of 127 percent, followed by desktops (120 percent) and tablets (22 percent).
Meanwhile, people are more likely to engage with video advertising during football season. Video ad clicks (per thousand impressions) rose 90 percent and completion rates increased nine percent.
Football is also the main driver of cross-screen ROI and showed large growth in viewer engagement with video ads (measured by click-through rates) compared to before the season began. Interestingly, different days of the week showed higher engagement as opposed to others across devices – tablets on Monday were most popular with a 161 percent growth in engagement, desktops on Sunday saw a 200 percent rise, and smartphones on Thursday saw a 270 percent uplift.
Adap.tv conducted this analysis based on data from mid-August to late-September. You can view all the important statistics in the infographic below.


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At a time when sustainability is being actively removed from the government's economic stimulus packages, new research from the US shows green means go for business. AT Kearney the management consulting firm reports on a study of 99 companies in a Sustainability Index and the Goldman Sachs Sustain Focus List.
The analysis found that in 16 of the 18 industries studied, companies committed to sustainability outperformed industry averages by 15% over the six months from May through November 2008. From a market capitalization perspective, this superior performance averages out to $650 million in protected market capitalization per company.
“Our study indicates that the market rewards specific companies,” said Dr. Daniel Mahler, author of the study. “We find common characteristics among the leading companies that show that sustainability goes far beyond the narrow definition of being environmentally friendly.”
These characteristics include:
- A focus on long-term strategy, not just short-term gains
- Strong corporate governance
- Sound risk-management practices
- A history of investment in green innovations
The study contains discussions of each of the 18 industries studied, as well as examples of best practices from a variety of industries. Together with the macro analysis, these case studies provide a map for companies looking to be proactive in terms of protecting their market capitalization.
While green measures that produce immediate cost-savings such as reducing packaging material and decreasing fuel use will become increasingly common in a cash-strapped economy, Sustainability and the Financial Crisis suggests that investing in sustainability for the long term may be the best way to protect a company’s value through the months — and years — ahead.
Idealog has been covering the most interesting people, businesses and issues from the fields of innovation, design, technology and urban development for over 12 years. And we're asking for your support so we can keep telling those stories, inspire more entrepreneurs to start their own businesses and keep pushing New Zealand forward. Give over $5 a month and you will not only be supporting New Zealand innovation, but you’ll also receive a print subscription and a copy of the new book by David Downs and Dr. Michelle Dickinson, No. 8 Recharged (while stocks last).
Idealog is part of ICG. We work with clients like Woolworths New Zealand, All Good, Huffer, Liquorland, Resene, Citta Design, TVNZ, Spark and FCB on their event activations, in-store, in-office or out-of-home signage, content creation and vehicle wraps.


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Ever since the streaming device maker made its debut on Wall Street in September 2017, Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) stock has been one of the market’s hottest stocks.
It’s IPO price? $14 per share.
The price tag today? Over $300.
That’s a whopping 2,040% return in just over three years, which is by all measures, insanely impressive.
On the heels of such a large rally, many investors are doubting that there’s much fuel left in the tank. After all, the average sell-side price target on Wall Street for ROKU stock is $250 — about 15% below today’s current price.
But such fears are grossly overblown and unnecessarily short-sighted. In the big picture, Roku is a $100 billion-plus company in the making thanks to the streaming TV revolution, and the ROKU stock price has visible runway toward $1,000 in the long run.
The implication? For long-term investors, ROKU stock is a buy-and-hold situation.
Here’s a deeper look at why.
All TV Ad Dollars Will Shift to Streaming TV
The first big component of the “ROKU stock to $1,000” bull thesis is that all TV ad dollars will eventually and inevitably migrate into the streaming channel.
The reasoning is simple.
Ad dollars chase eyeballs. All eyeballs are going from linear TV to streaming TV, because streaming TV offers superior convenience, pricing and connectivity. The only reason many of us still subscribe to linear TV is because streaming TV services historically have not featured live sports or news. But a new generation of streaming services — headlined by YouTube TV, Sling and fuboTV (NYSE:FUBO) — include this content.
Thus, over the next decade, we’re all going to cut the cord. By 2030, your average household will get all the movie and TV content they need from some mix of YouTube TV, Netflix, Disney+, etc.
As all the eyeballs in the world migrate from linear TV to streaming TV, all the TV ad dollars in the world will make a similar transition into streaming TV.
This is not a small transition. More than $160 billion are spent every year on TV advertising. All $160 billion of those dollars will eventually be spent in the streaming TV channel, because the linear TV channel will one day be extinct.
So, in essence, the Great CTV Ad Shift is a $150 billion-plus shift.
Roku Is Protected by Marketplace Effects
Roku has established a positive growth flywheel, which ensures that the company will forever remain the most commonly used “cable box” of CTV.
Roku is a marketplace that connects streaming services with consumers, and consumers with streaming services. As is true with any other marketplace, the core value prop of Roku to streaming services is to connect them with as many consumers possible, while the core value prop to consumers is to connect them to as many streaming services as possible.
With that in mind, here’s the growth flywheel that ensures dominance for Roku as the ubiquitous “cable box” of CTV for the foreseeable future.
- Create a big base of users.
- Leverage that base to attract streaming services looking for users.
- Use streaming service wins to attract more users looking for more streaming services.
- Lather. Rinse. Repeat. All the way to market dominance.
Breaking that down, Roku already is the biggest CTV software ecosystem on the planet, with nearly 50 million active accounts. So, if you’re a media company and you are launching a new streaming service, you are going to have to launch that streaming service through Roku.
Once you do that, Roku now has another streaming service in its library, which increases the attractiveness of the platform to users, so more users buy Roku sticks or TVs. That increases the size of the user base, so when the next media company launches a new streaming service, they are going to have launch that service through Roku.
Pretty simple, right?
So long as this growth flywheel continues to spin, Roku will remain at the epicenter of the great CTV ad spending shift — and ROKU stock will project as a long-term winner.
Roku Stock to $1,000?
The calculus for ROKU stock to hit $1,000 isn’t too hard to imagine.
Here’s the back-of-the-envelope math.
The number of streaming TV households globally is marching toward 450 million. Roku will likely close this year with around 50 million active accounts. Those numbers give Roku ~11% market share.
Roku’s market share of streaming TV households globally has been growing rapidly. It will continue to grow rapidly thanks to the aforementioned marketplace effects and general growth of streaming TV services.
But, for the sake of being conservative, let’s say Roku’s share tops out at 10%. Let’s also say that all $160 billion TV ad dollars migrate to streaming, and that Roku’s user market share translates one-to-one to the ad dollar market, for 10% streaming TV ad dollar share.
That would imply $16 billion in ad revenues by sometime in the next 10 to 15 years. Assuming 35% operating margins — which is pretty standard for scaled up digital ad businesses — that implies $5.6 billion in operating profits. Taking out 20% for taxes, you’re left with $4.5 billion in net profits, or about $33 per share based on last quarter’s diluted share count.
A 25X multiple on that implies a long-term price target for ROKU stock of $825.
That’s assuming just 10% streaming TV ad market share (a conservative assumption) and does not include any upside from the TV and device maker hardware business.
Adjusting those two things, it’s easy to see how ROKU stock could race toward $1,000 in the long run.
Bottom Line on ROKU Stock
Forget the near-term noise. Let’s make things simple.
Everybody is shifting from linear TV to streaming TV. Ad dollar chase eyeballs. So, all ad dollars are shifting to streaming TV, too. Roku is emerging as the foundational “cable box” of streaming TV, with very strong marketplace effects in place to protect its market-leading position. The company will win a big chunk of streaming TV ad dollars at scale.
Add it all up, and in numbers, you get to a $1,000 price tag for ROKU stock in the long run.
Thus, for long-term investors, this is a buy-on-dips and hold-for-the-long-haul situation.
On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
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WordPress 4.5.2 Patches more XSS Flaws
WordPress has already released three security updates this year alone with the latest version for the content management system coming as recently as last Friday. This brings current users to version 4.5.2. WordPress also in April turned on free encryption for custom domains hosted on the platform. The latest update is a security release affecting all versions including 4.5.1. Continue reading this story here.


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The iPhone 14 release date is fast approaching. We’re expecting four new iPhone 14 models this year, and they’ll likely be available for pre-order in just a few months. Head below for details on everything we know about the release date, potential for delays, and more.
iPhone timelines over the years
While the first models were usually unveiled in the first half of the year, Apple has since moved to a consistent schedule of announcing and releasing new iPhone models in September. Here is a brief timeline of the last few years of iPhone releases:
- iPhone 13: September 23, 2021
- iPhone 12: October 23, 2020
- iPhone 11: September 20, 2019
- iPhone XS: September 21, 2018
- iPhone X: November 3, 2017
- iPhone 8: September 22, 2017
- iPhone 7: September 16, 2016
As you can see, the iPhone release schedule has become relatively consistent, but with two major exceptions. The iPhone 12 series was delayed for a month due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The iPhone X was announced in September, but was not released until November. As you may recall, the iPhone X featured an all-new design and was the first iPhone with Face ID.
iPhone 14 Release Date Information
The iPhone 14 lineup is expected to bring camera upgrades, a redesign for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, and more. For example, the Pro models should feature a perforation + a pill-shaped cutout. The front camera is expected to be updated, a new purple color could be offered, and there are rumors of an always-on display.
This year, everything points to the iPhone 14 being on track for a September announcement and release. This includes iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Max, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max. This is the whole range of new iPhone models that we expect this year.
If history is any indication, Apple typically holds its annual special event to announce new iPhone models on the first or second Tuesday in September. This year it would be September 6 or 13. Since Labor Day is September 5 in the United States, the most likely date for a commencement speech this year is September 13.
That said, we still cannot entirely rule out the possibility of delays. As we’ve discussed many times, a host of issues are affecting the supply chain right now, from shortages to shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
So far, we’ve only seen one report that the iPhone 14 is facing production delays. And even that report said the lags affected the iPhone 14 Max, not the other three modes. Ming-Chi Kuo said the iPhone 14 lineup is still on track for a September launch and release. He noted, however, that the iPhone 14 Max was “falling behind” but the situation was “under control”.
Apple, however, will always prioritize iPhone production over its other products. The iPhone is the company’s most important product, generates the most revenue and is what Wall Street investors are most concerned about. If more supply chain issues surface, we’d likely see more products delayed before the iPhone 14 gets delayed.
Do you plan to upgrade to iPhone 14 this year? What change are you most looking forward to seeing? Let us know in the comments below.
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Comet retail chain moving into administration
Leaves DSG as sole UK electronics retail group
Comet, one of the UK's largest electronics retailers, has confirmed it will enter administration next week. The 240-store chain is the highest-profile high street casualty facing closure since Woolworths shut up shop during the height of the financial crisis. If Comet closes, 6,000 jobs will be lost.
With online shopping giant Amazon putting pressure on high street retailers, chains such as Comet have been struggling for some time - the company was sold for £2 in 2011 and has been operating without sales insurance, which normally guarantees suppliers they will receive payment for supplying stock to stores.
A comet spokesperson said the company was "urgently working" on a plan to secure the future of the company, with all signs pointing to administrators looking for a buyer to save the business.
Customers with gift cards and vouchers or outstanding orders have been told it's "business as usual until further notice" and that the company plans to fulfil deliveries for purchased products, but we recommend anyone with leftover store credit use it now in case the promise gets rescinded at the demands of the administrators.
If you're worried about an order you've placed, you can get in touch with the Comet customer care team on 0844 8009595.


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Round Rock, TX, April 8, 2021 – Toppan Photomasks, Inc. announced today that it has received the 2020 Supplier Excellence Award from Texas Instruments (TI). The award recognizes the exceptional commitment and performance of an elite group that meets TI’s high standards of excellence from its more than 12,000 suppliers.
“In a year filled with unprecedented challenges, Toppan Photomasks, Inc. demonstrated your commitment to the highest level of ethical behavior, as well as exceptional performance in cost, environmental and social responsibility, technology, responsiveness, assurance of supply and quality,” said Rob Simpson, Vice President of Worldwide Procurement and Logistics for TI. “We look to Toppan Photomasks, Inc. to help us serve our customers, achieve our priorities, and ultimately become a company that we are personally proud to be a part of and one we would want as our neighbor.”
“On behalf of the Toppan photomask group, we are honored to receive this award from Texas Instruments for the fifth time in the past ten years,” said Michael Hadsell, CEO of Toppan Photomasks, Inc. “Being engaged with an innovation and technology leader in the global semiconductor industry such as TI helps drive all of Toppan’s products, including our photomasks, FC-BGA packaging substrates, display components and design services to provide superior quality and value. We appreciate this recognition and will continually strive to improve and perform in an exceptional fashion for our customers.”
About Toppan Photomasks
Toppan Photomasks, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. a diversified global company with revenue in excess of US$13 billion in 2019. Toppan Photomasks is part of the Toppan group of photomask companies. As the world's premier photomask provider, the Toppan photomask group operates the industry's most advanced and largest network of manufacturing facilities and offers a comprehensive range of photomask technologies and research and development capabilities to meet the increasingly sophisticated and divergent product and service requirements of the global semiconductor industry. Toppan Photomasks is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.
For more information, visit www.photomask.com.
Toppan is a leading global provider of integrated solutions in the fields of printing, communications, security, packaging, décor materials, electronics and digital transformation. Serving customers in every sector of business and industry, Toppan’s global team of more than 50,000 employees offers optimal solutions enabled by industry-leading expertise and technologies to address the diverse challenges that businesses and society face in today’s rapidly changing market.
For more information, visit https://www.toppan.com/en/ or follow Toppan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/toppan-printing/.
Toppan Photomasks, Inc.


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Online voting will start on September 10
Tokyo-based publisher Gakken has started accepting online entries for the three categories of "Moe Chara Grand Prix 2016" today. The moe character contest is held to commemorate the 35th anniversary of its Animedia magazine and the publication of the 200th issue of its Megami Magazine. The three categories are: local moe chara, company/organization moe chara, and "my girl" (personal) moe chara.
Anyone or company/organization that owns its moe character who has her own Twitter account is allowed to entry. Entries will be accepted till September 30. The Grand Prix winners for each categories will be chosen by online votes, and it will be accepted from September 10 to 30, then the winners will be announced at the AniTamaSai event in Saitama prefecture on October 9.
Some of the moe characters who have already joined the contest:
Kizakura Sui (Yurihonjo-city, Akita prefecture)
Tohoku Zunko (Tohoku region)
Kitano Kamui (Hokkaido)
Boude Miu & Midorigawa Sakura (Hannan-city, Osaka)
Matsumoto Izumi (Izumi Product Company)
Kiramikado Mikoto (Nakajima acupuncture clinic)
Source: press release