Articles by Richard Adhikari

Supermarket uber-chain The Kroger Co. on Wednesday launched Kroger Ship, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform. Ship debuted in four markets: Cincinnati; Houston; Louisville, Kentucky; and Nashville, Tennessee The service will be rolled out to additional markets over the next few months....

Freshworks on Tuesday announced it has secured US$100 million in funding from Accel and Sequoia Capital India with the participation of CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) That brings the total amount of capital raised since the San Bruno, California-based firm's 2010 launch to $250 million. CapitalG, Sequoia, and Access all participated in previous...

Lenovo's Smart Display with Google Assistant hit the market on Friday There are two versions of the device, one with an 8-inch full HD screen and the other with a 10-inch full HD screen, priced at US$200 and $250 respectively....

EverString, a San Mateo, California-based startup that offers artificial intelligence software for business-to-business sales, marketing and operations teams, on Wednesday released FIRE, a four-point strategy to improve sales performance The FIRE methodology is designed to unite and simplify the goals of sales and marketing teams....

eBay and Square Capital on Tuesday announced a partnership to provide eBay sellers in the United States with access to business financing of up to US$100,000. The funds can be made available in as little as one day Square Capital will email select eBay sellers invitations to apply for a loan in Q3, the companies said. Square will determine eligibil...

Openprise on Wednesday announced new partnerships and a new service designed to streamline marketing automation and account-based marketing operations The newly announced third-party data partners for the Openprise Data Marketplace are Dun & Bradstreet, Oceanos, DiscoverOrg, KickFire, Acxiom, Cognism and People Data Labs. They join ZoomInfo, Inside...

Samsung plans to launch a foldable-screen smartphone early next year, according to a Wall Street Journal report, possibly priced at US$1,500 The company was making progress on the foldable phone, DJ Koh, CEO of Samsung's mobile division, told Cnet at the Galaxy S9 launch earlier this year....

Sonobi and San Francisco-basedLiveRamp, an Axiom company, on Tuesday announced a partnership to help marketers improve targeting of potential customers The partnership will let brands and agencies build media packages using the Sonobi JetStream multichannel ad platform and LiveRamp's identity resolution system....

A national debate over civility erupted after Stephanie Wilkinson, a co-owner of a Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her premises. However, that wasn't the only consequence of the incident. In its aftermath, restaurant owners in various parts of America whose businesses had the words ...

Apple on Thursday announced updated MacBook Pro 13- and 15-inch notebooks with a Touch Bar, 8th-generation Intel Core processors, support for up to 32 GB of DDR memory in the larger notebook, a True Tone display, and an improved third-generation keyboard for quiet typing The 15-inch model comes with 6-core Intel Core i7 and i9 processors rated at u...

MaritzCX on Tuesday unveiled preconfigured business-to-business customer experience templates that monitor key financial indicators; metrics for customer touchpoints, including Net Promoter Score and Overall Satisfaction; business-specific outcomes; and overall account performance. The dashboards are integrated into the MaritzCX Technology Platfor...

The United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce has written Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Apple CEO Tim Cook demanding information on their companies' practices with regard to third-party access, audio and location data collection Members want answers to the following questions:...

Small businesses use social media extensively, suggest the results of a recent Clutch survey of 351 United States firms with fewer than 500 employees Overall, 71 percent of the respondents used social media for business purposes, and those affiliated with firms owned by women reported heavier use....

B2B customer support firm TeamSupport on Tuesday announced the addition of sentiment analysis technology, powered by IBM's Watson, to its customer relationship platform The new tech provides automatic text analysis of email or chat responses to assess how a customer feels, so customer support teams can prioritize and personalize their outreach effo...

Small and mid-sized e-commerce businesses are likely to be hit hard by the United States Federal Communications Commission's repeal of Net neutrality earlier this month The move will let Internet service providers block and manipulate Internet usage and discriminate against users at will, according to critics....

The healthcare industry has been moving toward medical equipment connectivity to speed up data entry and recording, as well as improve data accuracy. At the same time, there has been a shift toward incorporating consumer mobile devices, including wearables, so that healthcare providers can monitor patients' health more closely and improve treatment...

Amazon this week expanded Prime Wardrobe to all Prime members, after beta-testing the service on an invitation-only basis for a year Prime Wardrobe is included in Amazon Prime memberships at no additional charge. The service is available to paid and 30-day trial Amazon Prime members; paid and six-month trial Amazon Prime Student members; and member...

The European Union's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) on Wednesday voted in favor of a directive on copyright in the digital single market, a proposal it has been wrestling with since its introduction in 2015 News of the vote kicked off a storm, as Article 13 of the directive effectively requires online content-sharing service providers evaluate all ...

Large corporations are not the only businesses governed by the European General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which became effective last month Small and mid-sized businesses also are subject to its provisions....

Mobile sales and business-to-business e-commerce platform Handshake has teamed up with Square to provide easy B2B ordering and payments via an app that enables a seamless workflow between the two companies' products. The app, which is available now on the Square App Marketplace, offers the following capabilities:...