Brands
NCR, Bengaluru lead mobile phone sales: #FlipTrends2016 annual report
BENGALURU: Indian eCommerce major Flipkart said that sales on its platform were led by shoppers from the NCR region closely followed by metros Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad in 2016 in its annual #FlipTrends2016 report. Among the tier-2 cities, Guwahati and Jorhat in North East India were first time entrants to the top gainers list; amongst other tier 2 cities Mysore, Salem, and Tirupur from South India led sales in the smartphones category. South India emerged yet again as the most tech-savvy region, accounting for over 35 per cent sales, while North stood at 28 per cent, West at 22 per cent, and East India at 15 per cent.
Flipkart Head – Mobiles Ajay Yadav said, “The popularity of smartphones in India, as clearly indicated by #FlipTrends, highlight the shift consumers are making towards 4G enabled smartphones. Today consumers are opting for brands and models that could not just offer them the features, but were smart on the pocket as well.”
Yadav further added, “More of our customers are choosing Flipkart as their preferred platform of choice when it comes to shopping for mobiles. Industry-first innovations such as No Cost EMI and Easy Product Exchange, along with exclusive brand partnerships and flash sales, have helped us to maintain the market leadership in this segment.”
The IOT category of smart bands and smart watches saw tremendous growth of over 500 per cent from 2015 reveals the report. Top sellers in this category were Apple, Motorola, and Samsung.
Attributing more than 50 per cent of its sales to mobile phones because of affordable 4G smartphones from national and international brands, the report says that the smartphones category in India continues to be one of the most hotly contested arenas in online shopping. Redmi 3S Prime, Redmi Note 3, Moto E 3 Power, and Lenovo K5 and Samsung J5 were the top 5 bestselling mobile phones of the year says the seven point annual report. Lenovo, MI, Samsung, Motorola, and LeEco remained the most favourite brands.
Analysing online shopping of over 10 crore or 100 million customers across India, #FlipTrends2016 recorded data collected from online shoppers over 2016 across all Flipkart-owned platforms.
Brands
UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
