Amazon has revealed a new camera-equipped home robot that can patrol homes and investigate activity on your orders in a move that the billion-dollar tech giant is calling “a breakthrough for security and convenience.” The “Astro” robot as Amazon calls it is roughly 60cm tall and weighs around 9kgs. The motorised device can map out the floor plan and layout of your home and obey commands to go to a specific place to take a closer look using its telescoping camera.
“Now when you are away, you can use it to proactively patrol your home and investigate the activity,” Amazon executive Dave Limp said in a product launch clip.
Amazon executive Dave Limp
Astro can work together with Amazon’s Alexa digital home assistant and can be taught to recognise faces and learn the habits of household members.
The little robot is being marketed as a remote security camera system. When users are away, they will most likely receive notifications of strange activity that Astro picks up through its camera. Then a user will be able to send it to view the activity remotely using a mobile device.
While a very cool sci-fi innovation was brought to life, Astro’s real-world usability is questionable. There are much faster methods to investigate strange activity in your home remotely, such as smart home camera systems that connect to your mobile devices through apps.
However these methods are more expensive, and while the price point of Amazon Astro has yet to be revealed, it will likely be cheaper than the installation of a full smart home camera system. It boils down to if people like the gimmick of having their house robot check if the front door is still closed or not.
Amazon says that Astro could also be useful to help remotely check on elderly relatives or deliver reminders for certain activities.
Another concern that has been raised by digital watchdog groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation, is that hackers may be able to potentially use Astro to see into people’s homes.
“There are some scenarios in which (Astro) could be useful; there are some scenarios in which a surveillance camera on your house could be useful, too,” Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
“But the problem is that you need to know that it comes off with a trade-off of vulnerability,” he added.
Limp, who oversees Amazon’s devices and services, has said that the company has foreseen this and is implementing features that will guard against such abuses. He said that users will be able to shut down Astro’s cameras and microphones whenever they wish. Another feature to safeguard users is a set of messages and warnings that will go off in Astro’s display when someone is trying to gain access to its cameras remotely.
“If somebody hacked your account or something, and that could be a bad person obviously, we want to notify anyone that might be at home,” Limp said.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Africa’s largest mobile money provider Safaricom is in talks with the world’s biggest retail outlet Amazon, over the use of its mobile money service M-Pesa on Amazon’s eCommerce platform. This move is said to be part of the Kenyan telco’s efforts to recover from a year of disappointing profits.
CAK Director-General, Francis Wang’ombe Kariuki
“M-Pesa accounts for about a third of Safaricom’s revenue, and East Africa’s largest company sees the financial-technology product as the key to future growth. The carrier already has partnerships with a unit of China’s Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and PayPal Holdings Inc.”
According to PYMNTS, this isn’t the first time these two giants have partnered, “as the two already partner on web services, and the Kenyan company runs cloud sales for Amazon”.
Calls for Safaricom to Share Telco Infrastructure by Kenya Competition Authority
The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has approached Parliament with new laws that would require the country’s telco’s – mainly Safaricom – to share their private infrastructure on a commercial basis.
“The authority’s view is that ab initio infrastructure provisions in the sector should have been separated from the mobile network operators. Primarily regulations should have been developed to ensure that third parties provide the infrastructure. Unfortunately, this did not happen,” says CAK Director-General, Francis Wang’ombe Kariuki.
“It is with this reality that we opine regulations should be promulgated and enforced in regard to infrastructure sharing on a commercial basis and in case of dispute, the sector regulator [Communications Authority of Kenya] may act as the arbiter.”
Sources say that Safaricom has the broadest national coverage, was the first to launch the cutting-edge 5G technology and has been spending more than Sh30 billion each year on its infrastructure – more than any of its competitors.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
American retail giant Amazon last week announced that it would be opening its first African office in South Africa with a real estate investment of over 4 billion rand ($280 million). The headquarters would reside on 70,000 square metres (17.3 Acres) of land on the outskirts of the city centre. The building project is expected to roll out in phases, with construction set to take place over a period of three to five years. The project is expected to create up to 19,000 indirect and induced jobs.
Amazon
Over the last decade, Amazon has also boosted its customer service capacity centre in South Africa. In 2020, Amazon announced that it would hire an additional 3,000 people in South Africa – almost doubling its local staff to 7,000 – to provide 24-hour support to customers in North America and Europe.
Amazon has also increased its local listings over the years. In 2019, Amazon Web Services (AWS) in South Africa had just 50 jobs listed. In 2021, this has increased to around 118 opportunities in the web service division and an additional 38 jobs in customer service, corporate development, human resources and kindle content.
At the time of this publication, Amazon’s South African career portal listed 156 jobs, most of which are full-time and based in Cape Town. About 80% of the job opportunities are in AWS operations with the remaining spread over customer service, the Kindle program, human resources, business development and students program.
The AWS operations positions require a Bachelor’s Degree in either information science or information technology, engineering science, computer science or any related field or equivalent experience in a technical position as a minimum.
Amazon’s customer service roles are entry-level positions that require applicants to have a matric certificate (NQF Level 4), minimum service industry experience, reliable internet connection at home and strong communication skills. Almost all these jobs are referred to as Virtual Customer Service (VCS) positions, which allow applicants anywhere in South Africa to apply.
Amazon also offers several internship programmes for students or recent graduates of computer science, computer engineering, or related fields.With 200 million paid prime members and over 300 million customers globally, Amazon serves 200+ countries and territories but its eCommerce services are not available in Africa. Could the announcement of its African headquarters and its increasing job listing be a hint that Amazon might be revisiting its eCommerce play in Africa?
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Amazon has named Ukonwa Ojo the new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Prime Video and Amazon Studios. She takes over the position from Andy Dorkin, who is to be transitioned to a yet to be disclosed position at Amazon. She previously worked as the CMO of beauty industry giant MAC Cosmetics.
Ukonwa embarked on her new duties this September. She will report directly to the Senior Vice President of Prime Videos and Amazon Studios, Mike Hopkins. SVP, Mike Hopkins said in an internal memo, “As an award-winning marketer, Ukonwa has a fantastic two-decade track record as a builder of top global brands.
Her wide-ranging experience will give us a broader perspective on how to connect customers to the Prime Video brand and grow our business by marketing our content in innovative ways to develop an even stronger emotional connection with our audiences.”
He added, “Ukonwa comes to us from M∙A∙C Cosmetics, where she served as Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for championing M∙A∙C’s brand positioning and increasing its presence and appeal to a global consumer in growing markets around the world. She helped drive customer engagement strategies and delivered breakthrough product innovation in order to maximize consumer connection to the iconic brand.”
Ukonwa attained a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina and has an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) will showcase the rewards that innovation and investment in IoT, hyperscale cloud and associated industry products are delivering. The Summit will take place on 11 July at the International Convention Centre in Cape Town, and will feature global IoT cellular connectivity specialists Eseye.
Supported by MTN, and joined by SolarNow, Eseye will present as part of the ‘Modernizing Your Business’ stream, providing insights into the latest, simplest way IoT devices can be deployed onto AWS.
Eseye’s team, led by co-founder Paul Marshall, will be joined on stage at the summit by Herman Dijkslag, SolarNow’s Product Development Manager, to demonstrate how a new and advanced use of cellular for AWS is disrupting IoT’s traditional deployment models.
Together, the team will demonstrate one of the most advanced and simplified cellular IoT use cases in the field today. Jeremy Potgieter, Regional Head: SADC, Eseye says: “If you are considering an IoT project this is your opportunity to see a real-life example of Eseye’s single global AnyNet Secure SIM for AWS in action. And how, with SolarNow, IoT is becoming easier and driving better insights into customer device usage, prolonging device lifecycle and improving business performance.”
During the SolarNow session, Paul Marshall will launch Eseye’s newest product, the AnyNet IRIS, a gateway App for AWS services to go live on 1 August. The new App is an administration tool that is designed to enhance the user experience and work with the upgraded AnyNet Secure for AWS IoT global cellular solution.
“AnyNet IRIS transforms the way our AWS Marketplace integration installs, from a run once script to a clear graphical interface that enables customers to select the features they want and to add services as they are needed or become available. AnyNet IRIS also provides a new level of user experience with a view of connectivity performance without having to write a line of code,” says David Thompson, Eseye’s Marketing Director.
He says that the AnyNet IRIS App has a new range of features for AWS customers that are accessed directly on their AWS Marketplace account: “These include a simplified launch process, enhanced visibility of the IoT estate through an action audit log and customer App update notifications.” This launch is version one of the App, with a version two planned for later in the year, with more features added.
In a joint IoT announcement at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, MTN and Eseye, aligned with the AnyNet Federation in support of significant global growth of cellular services onto AWS Cloud. “We are partnering with MTN and look forward to collaborating at the Summit and offering advice to customers who want to learn how to deliver African regional and global IoT deployments onto AWS cloud services,’ says Potgieter.
To mark the event, applications are being invited for a limited number of cellular IoT developer kits worth $130 USD each. These are a great way to experiment with technology for an upcoming IoT project and applications in person at the AWS Summit on stand #G7, or online at https://www.Eseye.com/AWS-Summit-cape-town/.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.
Nothing lasts forever, goes the saying. For the Baby Boomers and Generation X who existed without the internet, it was a shock that the traditional, physical retail business model could fade away, to be replaced by the business at the click of a button.
Today, Amazon Effect means that traditional, physical retail shops continue to wind down and call it a quit, giving in to the stiff competition from Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Jumia and online shops. For emerging markets and developing countries, what remains for these physical shops to be completely rendered to ruins is trust.
Chinese billionaire, Jack Ma, understood this early enough. In 2016, Jack Ma started a revolution he called the ‘New Retail’ that would itself redefine what commerce really means for all of us. Jack Ma is the 21st richest man in the world and the number one richest man in the most populous nation on Earth— China.
He is piercing the heart of commerce and extracting what has fueled commerce over the course of thousands of years ago — human beings. Through new retail trade, he is relaunching the whole idea of technology in commerce and trade itself to the people that originally own them — human beings, consumers.
“Commerce as we know it is changing in front of our eyes. E-commerce” is rapidly evolving into “New Retail.” ,” Ma wrote to Alibaba shareholders in a letter sent ahead of the New York-listed company’s annual shareholders in 2016. ”The boundary between offline and online commerce disappears as we focus on fulfilling the personalized needs of each customer. We anticipate the birth of a re-imagined retail industry driven by the integration of online, offline, logistics and data across a single value chain. This is why we are adapting, and it’s why we strive to play a major role in the advancement of this new economic environment.”
This may sound more Utopian than realistic, but in China where the concept was formed, Hema Supermarket, an arm of Alibaba that specializes in new retail, has opened 64 Hema stores in 14 cities, with over 10 million customers shopping at these supermarkets since the beginning of 2016.
On average, for a Hema Supermarket that has been open for at least 1.5 years, daily average sales are upwards of 800,000 yuan (US$116,500) — about 60 percent of which comes from online orders. Based on Alibaba’s data, offering a combination of online and offline shopping options results in an increase in average monthly spending by customers. Consumers who shopped both online and offline at Hema spent an average of 575 yuan monthly, compared to under 300 yuan for purely online, or purely offline shoppers.
Pinduoduo, the $1.5B Chinese startup is also another Chinese e-commerce company, engaged in new retail. The startup is challenging the giant Alibaba in China’s towns and villages. In January, Pinduoduo had 114 million active users, surpassing that of New York-listed Chinese discount retailer Vipshop. Currently, the startup has captured a projected 7.0% of all retail e-commerce sales in China this year, not a bad showing for a firm that launched in 2015. In three short years, Pinduoduo has emerged as one of China’s fastest growing shopping startups, with as many as 55 million users accessing the site per day.
Pinduoduo’s idea of new retail comes by way of offering group discounts.
Here Is How The Idea of New Retail Works
The idea of new retail lies in thinking beyond the boundaries of the two-party system of retail operations, that is, e-commerce and legacy brick-and-mortar retailing. New retail, instead, focuses on employing an entirely new operating system for reaching and inspiring consumers to shop.
‘‘New Retail trade is trying to solve two particular core challenges in the industry,’’ Emmanuel Elem, an advocate of Sairui, Africa’s new retail startup said. ‘‘The first challenge is the challenge of cold war between offline and online malls. Shoprite is an offline multi-billion dollar shopping mall, for example. On the other hand, Jumia is an online mall. These two different malls are doing things differently and the truth is that they are struggling for the same customers.’’
Now, there are people who have sworn [or who are so internet phobic] that they cannot buy or make payment on the internet because they cannot see the person they are buying from. There are also people that say they don’t have the time to go to Shoprite and begin to buy things [be in the queue and waste their time?] when they have Jumia that can get them what they want in their houses while they wait patiently for delivery to be made. So what new retail is trying to do is to bring a marriage between online malls and offline malls.
By new retail, it will no longer be about online shopping malls. They will also have offline shopping malls or offline distribution centers where people can go, select what they want, pay online and if they don’t want to pay online, they can go to the mall offline and make payment and collect the goods, with the coupon they present to the owner of the shop.’’
He says new retail trade represents a system that blends the best of what both offline and online worlds have to offer. Apart from that, it also offers the best of an entirely new mix of human, digital and physical experience design, giving consumers a new means of inspiration, selection, immediate gratification, physical sensation and convenience, and that ultimately renders the distinction of digital vs. physical irrelevant.
Sairui, The First African New Retail Option Is Gaining Momentum
Although launched this year, March, Sairui is on course to change the idea of internet retail trade. Modeled after Chinese Pindoudou, the startup, which has its Africa headquarters in Accra, Ghana sells everything from clothing to hardware and other commodities and offers large discounts to purchasers. The startup has a strong presence in Nigeria and is also extending to other Africa countries like Cameroon, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, and other places.
‘‘We are doing this simultaneously,’’ said Elem. ‘‘Sairui is all about supporting grassroots entrepreneurship. Sairui shows people the possibility of starting to build a business no matter how small they have because with as small as less than 10,000 naira, they can become a business build through Sairui. This is exactly what it’s called pure grassroots entrepreneurship. Sairui also has bigger packages for those that don’t want to start with such small amounts of money.’’
The startup says it has multiple certified safeguard mechanisms, genuine licensed goods at lower prices and more reliable quality.
The Major Changes The Startup Is Bringing To The Table Are In The Logistics And The Customer Experience Areas
The startup offers large discounts to its online shoppers, bringing on-board an entirely new way of buying and selling.
‘‘What Sairui has brought in is the possibility of online and offline shoppers becoming business owners while also shopping. This has nothing to do with network marketing,’’ Elem said. ‘‘Network marketing is a different ball game altogether. Sairui has variety of products.’’
Elem said to handle logistics, the startup has physical shops where the online shoppers can go, present their coupons and redeem their goods or simply make new purchases.
‘‘Sairui is not opening up physical shops on its own. Sairui is opening up these physical shop through partnership or mini-franchising. These shops are called service centers. The centers are there to service our customers who can come and pick up these products. It is either you pay the company online or through these service centers. You can select your products online or you go to the service centers, give them your cash and carry your products. But the simple truth is that the products are going to be very affordable.Right now, we have about three physical malls in Nigeria through what we call Service centers. We service our customers through our customers centers there. We have centers in Cameroun. We have in South Africa. Right now, we have in about seven African countries.’’
For a startup that is just three months old, this appears a great streak of success, but the startup believes its incorporation of Jack Ma’s concept of new retail trade into its business strategy doesn’t just stop at setting up physical locations to enhance internet commerce experience but also that the strategy means consumers on the platform would get a chance to develop business interests from their purchasing or consumption needs.
‘‘Sairui is not a B2B company. Sairui deals directly with end users. We are dealing directly with the end users; people that are consuming these products. We are not dealing with business owners . We are making the end users business owners and also consumers linking them up directly with the manufacturers of these products, removing the middle person involved,’’ Mr. Elem said.
But it does appear that even the B2B middlemen would still have a say after all since the aim is to turn your consumption cost into instant profitability.
‘‘If you do some shopping on a $100 product on Sairui, for instance, we are giving you a discount of 60% on each product, meaning you’re getting a chance to buy two more products. Now, Sairui will help you sell those two discounted products you bought through its wholesale store,online or offline, free of charge. Sairui will sell each of them on your behalf at $100 each, the initial retail price at which you bought them.’’
The startup boasts it would sell off the products on behalf of its customers within a 7 to 10 days period, leaving customers with some unexpected side profit, long hours after they have made their first purchases.
‘‘We are the pioneer of this kind of system,” Elem said. ‘‘It may be strange to African markets, but the simple truth is that over 20,000 e-commerce companies are already using new retail to run their businesses in China. You can trade as many times as you want with one-time principal.’’
Elem said offering discount does not represent any loss for the startup because of a direct partnership with manufacturers of the goods sold by the startup. He said Sairui mall is an open market place just like Amazon, and as such, anything is bound to happen.
‘‘It is just like asking people why they drink water from a clean cup,’’ he said. ‘‘Nobody would see what is good and wouldn’t want to go for it. The general ideology of new retail is encouraging grassroots entrepreneurship. Sairui is a unique opportunity that anyone shouldn’t miss, even though not for the sake of profit, but for the sake of buying things affordable prices and getting free products from its online or offline shops.’’
Getting Started With Sairuimall Africa
To learn more about how to be part of the Sairui value chain, contact the startup’s country director on +2348039421770
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
The world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos has his latest piece of advice for anyone starting a business. When asked what advice he would give to anyone looking to start their own business at Amazon’s re: Mars conference in Las Vegas this week, Bezos told them to be ready to take big risks and fail.
“Take risk. You have to be willing to take risk. If you have a business idea with no risk, it’s probably already being done,” he said, according to an Amazon transcript. “You’ve got to have something that might not work. It will be, in many ways, an experiment. Many of those experiments will fail, but “big failures” are a necessary part of the journey toward success.’’
“We take risks all the time, we talk about failure. We need big failures in order to move the needle. If we don’t, we’re not swinging enough. You really should be swinging hard, and you will fail, but that’s okay,’’ he said.
In addition to taking the risk and failing, Bezos advised startups to also be passionate:
“You’ll be competing against those who are passionate,” he said.
Above all, he said, entrepreneurs should be “customer-obsessed.”
“The most important thing is to be customer-obsessed. Don’t satisfy them, absolutely delight them.”
In 1995, already a highly successful employee, with fat pay packages and bonuses, David Shaw, lead partner of D. E Shaw & Co could not understand why Jeff Bezos would want to gamble his life away, to ‘do this crazy thing’ called internet market, which was supposed to be a better idea for somebody who didn’t have a job or any financial security. Maybe they would have to go for a walk, said David. But after two hours of such walk along Central Park, Jeff had never been more convinced that he was ready to resign from his role at D.E Shaw &Co.
Here was Jeff who just become D.E Shaw & Co’s youngest Senior Vice President, at the age of 30, with all the financial security of one of America’s top hedge funds, leaving to swim in the tides of what he was not sure of.
‘I knew that when I was eighty,’ said Jeff, ‘there was no chance that I would regret having walked away from my 1994 Wall Street bonus in the middle of the year. I wouldn’t even have remembered that. But I did think there was a chance that I might regret significantly not participating in this thing called the internet, that I believed passionately in. I also knew that if had tried and failed, I wouldn’t regret that. So, once I thought about it that way, it became incredibly easy to make that decision,’’ Jeff was quoted as saying in Get Big Fast by Robert Spector.
From just 10 employees in 1995 when it was started, Jeff has since turned Amazon into one of the most valuable public companies in the world, with a market capitalization of nearly $860 billion.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Jobs are going, and are gone for some of Amazon’s workers. The company is bent on making profit. Human costs are being eliminated, and that includes anything that has a human touch to it. The company is rolling out machines that would be boxing up customers’ orders.
Amazon’s strategy is to install automated machines at warehouses which would kill at least job 24 roles previously done by humans at each warehouse. Everything being equal, more than 1,300 job cuts across 55 U.S. warehouses are expected. Amazon expects to recover the costs of installing these machines in these warehouses in two years, at $1 million per machine.
“We are piloting this new technology with the goal of increasing safety, speeding up delivery times and adding efficiency across our network,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement. “We expect the efficiency savings will be re-invested in new services for customers, where new jobs will continue to be created.”
The New Machines Can Pack Four To Five Times Faster Than Humans
Called the CartonWrap and manufactured by the Italian firm CMC Srl, the new machines can pack 600 to 700 boxes per hour making it four to five times faster than humans. All that is needed is one person who loads customer orders and another person who stocks cardboard and glue and a technician who fixes jams on occasion.
Completely Replacing Its Workforce?
Amazon does not have a plan of laying off all its workforce now. However, the game is that one day it will stop recruiting people to package its ordered goods for customers. In fact, Amazon has more workers than Microsoft, Google, and its employee base is one of the largest in the United States, with ranging from an average of $58,578 to $147,825 a year.
Amazon also maintains some hiring deals with governments which often favours it. For instance, for the 1,500 jobs Amazon announced last year in Alabama, the state promised the company $48.7 million over 10 years, its department of commerce said.
Amazon is also asking employees to quit and is offering them help starting their own delivery businesses. Amazon said it would cover up to $10,000 in startup costs, as well as three months’ salary, for employees accepted into the program. So, in many ways, it is still retaining the human touch, but gradually gnawing at its human workforce.
In A Battle To Eliminate Losses And Boost Profit, E-Commerce Companies In The US Are Turning To Automation.
Walmart started 3.5 years ago and has since installed the machines in several U.S. locations.
The boxing machines are already proving helpful to Amazon. The company has installed them in busy warehouses that are driving distance from Seattle, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, Manchester and elsewhere.
Source: Amazon financial reports and Digital Commerce 360
Interest in boxing technology sheds light on how the e-commerce companies are approaching one of the major problems in the logistics industry today: finding a robotic hand that can grasp diverse items without breaking them.
These machines are not without flaws. The machines can only box so many per year. However, they need a technician on site who can fix problems as they arise, a requirement Amazon would rather go for.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
