Tencent Music faces a lawsuit, Verizon is cutting its workforce and Google acquires a train-tracking app. Here's your Daily Crunch for December 10, 2018. 1. Tencent Music sued by investor ahead of $1.2 billion US IPO Chinese investor Hanwei Guo accused Tencent Music's co-president of using misinformation, threats and intimidation to compel him to sell his equity stakes in Ocean Music, which eventually became part of TME after a merger in 2016. Han has filed a motion for discovery in the US seeking information that the investor plans to use in an arbitration underway in China. He's also requesting that TME co-president Guomin Xie Guo and other parties return percentages of his equity stakes in the music vehicle and compensate him for economic losses. 2. Verizon announces 10,400 employees will voluntarily leave the company This is part of an effort to trim the telecom giant's workforce ahead of its push towards 5G. (Verizon owns TechCrunch.) 3. Google has acquired one of India's most popular train tracking apps The app claims 10 million registered users and, as the name suggests, it helps commuters track arrivals and departures as well as buying seats. That's no small job given that India is estimated to operate some 14,000 trains on a daily basis across the country. 4. Alexa gains support for location-based reminders and routines, calling features & more These features were previously introduced this fall at Amazon's Echo event in Seattle. However, they had yet to roll out to Alexa device owners. 5. How Uber will become an ad company, starting with Eats Pool We got our first glimpse of this future last week when we reported that Uber Eats was offering restaurants in India additional visibility in a Specials section, if they'd offer discounts on meal bundles to Uber's customers. 6. Waggel launches 'fully digital' pet insurance Founded by Andrew Leal, and Ross Fretten (a contestant of The Apprentice 2017), the company wants to offer more transparent cover for your pet, where you'll know exactly how much you're paying and for what provision, as well as offer rewards for improving the care of your animal. 7. It's Podcast Monday! This week, the team at Equity discussed Lyft's plans to go public, while Original Content reviewed the Netflix movie "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs." |