Sri Lanka's 55-year-old scientist Yasantha Rajakarunanayake was world's richest man Jeff Bezos' classmate at Princeton University in 1980s. A PhD from California Institute of Technology, he has received 54 patents in the US and serves as a senior director for MediaTek. Bezos revealed he realised he couldn't be a physicist after Yasantha solved an equation he couldn't, 34 years ago.

Google has updated the privacy policy of its Indian digital payments app Google Pay after Paytm complained the tech giant is utilising user data for advertising purposes. Google Pay's privacy policy had said it could "collect, store, use and/or disclose" personal data for "any communications made through Google Pay". However, the word "disclose" was later dropped from its privacy clause.

Amazon on Friday unveiled a microwave that can be controlled by users by giving commands to the company's voice-based assistant Alexa. The users only need to give commands like, "Alexa, reheat my coffee" or "Alexa, defrost a potato" and the microwave will begin working on its own. Amazon has priced the microwave at $59.99 (over ₹4,300).

An Indian-origin man named Oniel Kurup and his son were unhurt after a plane crashed into their Tesla X car in the US on Thursday. "Not a scratch on us...I saw my life flash in that minute. A second is all it takes," Kurup wrote on Facebook. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the incident, saying, "Wow, glad they're ok!"

World's richest man Jeff Bezos has revealed that he realised he was never going to become a theoretical physicist after a Sri Lankan friend at Princeton University solved a problem within minutes. "I was working on an equation for three hours and got nowhere," Bezos said. "He stared it for a while and said cosine was the answer," added Bezos.

Flipkart's current and former employees will get richer from their stock options as the e-commerce startup announced in a letter that they will be able to liquidate their ESOPs at $126-128 a unit. Walmart is obligated to buy 6,242,271 shares from Flipkart's ESOP pool of 11,947,026 shares, a regulatory filing said. The worth of Flipkart's total ESOP is $1.5 billion.

E-commerce major Amazon reportedly loads empty packages with fake labels on trucks to catch drivers who steal. An error is displayed when the fake package is scanned and so drivers could choose to keep it, as it wouldn't show on Amazon's systems if undelivered. However, the "trap is meant to check integrity of the driver", a former logistics manager said.

Alibaba's billionaire Co-founder Jack Ma at the World Economic Forum on Thursday said, "I don’t want to die in my office, I'd rather die on the beach." Ma said he wouldn't return as Alibaba's Executive Chairman after he steps down next year. "At 54, I'm a bit old in the internet industry, but quite young for other sectors," he added.

Gurugram-based HR chatbot-focused startup Leena AI has raised $2 million in seed round from investors including Elad Gil and Snapdeal Co-founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. The startup's CEO Adit Jain said the seed money is about scaling the startup and gaining customers. Founded in 2015, the startup offers an AI-powered cognitive conversation platform to resolve HR service queries faster.

Paytm has written a letter to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) saying that the government's data localisation policy will be beneficial for the Indian startup ecosystem. Further, on IAMAI's stand against certain provisions of the draft data protection Bill, Paytm said the industry body's views were not in line with the interests of Indian startups.

When asked about looking to scale down its Point of Sale (PoS) business, online payments startup PhonePe's Co-founder Rahul Chari has said, "The PoS business is my pet project. I can definitely confirm that there are no such plans." Adding that the deployments have been slower, he further said, "There is no effort to slow down or kill the business."

Hillhouse Capital, a Chinese investment company which backs firms like Tencent, Baidu, and Airbnb has raised $10.6 billion for a new fund, making it Asia's biggest private equity capital raising. The fund plans to invest in healthcare, consumer, technology, and services sectors. The new funding surpassed KKR & Co which raised $9.3 billion in the biggest fundraiser of 2017.

Amazon plans to open as many as 3,000 of its cashierless 'Amazon Go' convenience stores by the year 2021, according to reports. Amazon currently has three Amazon Go stores open in Seattle and another one opened in Chicago earlier this week. The stores use ceiling-mounted cameras to identify customers and track what items they select, eliminating the need for billing.

US-based coding platform GitLab has become a unicorn after raising $100 million in funding at a valuation of over $1 billion. The round was led by Silicon Valley fund ICONIQ Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures and Alphabet's GV. Founded in 2014, the startup competes with GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft in a $7.5-billion deal earlier this year.

Amazon India's flagship campaign 'Apni Dukaan', to connect with customers in the remotest parts of the country, is facing a copyright issue. The name 'Apni Dukaan' is same as Pune-businessman Ravi Jain's domain 'apnidukaan.com' that he registered in 2007. "As we own the trademark of Apni Dukaan, we're going to request Amazon to remove references to Apni Dukaan," Jain said.

Bengaluru-based grocery startup DailyNinja has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by Matrix Partners. The round also saw participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Saama Capital. Founded by Sagar Yarnalkar and Anurag Gupta in 2015, the startup provides subscription-based delivery of daily essentials including milk, fruits and bread to users.

Tesla is said to have lost its fifth senior executive after a report suggested that its Vice President of global supply management, Liam O'Connor, has resigned. This comes after its Chief Accounting Officer and heads of human resources and communications had earlier resigned. Last week, Tesla said its Vice President of worldwide finance Justin McAnear would leave in early October.

US-based on-demand trucking startup Convoy raised $185 million in a round led by Google parent Alphabet's venture capital fund CapitalG at a valuation of $1 billion. The round also saw participation from investors including T. Rowe Price and Lone Pine Capital. The round brings Convoy's total capital raised to over $265 million.

After launching operations in Southeast Asia and China, Gurugram-based hospitality startup OYO has announced that it is venturing into Britain. It plans to invest around $53 million for starting operations in 10 UK cities through a smartphone-based service for franchise owners and guests. OYO has started operations with four properties in London.

Former General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, in an interview with CNBC, said that Tesla is "an automobile company that is headed for the graveyard." "They will never make money on the Model 3," he added. "He's got 9,000 people in that assembly plant producing less than 150,000 cars a year. The whole thing just doesn't compute," he further said.

Veteran NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has offered help to SpaceX's billionaire passenger Yusaku Maezawa for Elon Musk's Moon mission. "Good luck on your trip and if you need someone with a little experience to go with you, my schedule is wide open in 2023," he said. It comes after Maezawa said he had purchased every seat on SpaceX's BFR rocket.

Gurugram-based smart parking technology startup Parkwheels has raised ₹1.2 crore in seed funding from investors including former Vice President of Paytm, Amit Lakhotia. The round also saw participation from existing investors as well as co-working platform 91springboard. Founded in 2015 by Dhananjay Rathore and Sumit Jain, the startup provides smart parking solutions through automation.

US-based ride-hailing startup Uber is said to be in talks to buy UK-based billion-dollar food delivery startup Deliveroo, according to reports. The value of the deal is not yet known. The startup, which was founded in 2013 by Will Shu, raised over $300 million from investors including Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price Group in 2017.

Productivity app Evernote has fired 54 employees, roughly 15% of its workforce, the startup's CEO Chris O'Neill announced. It comes a month after Evernote lost its executives, including CTO Anirban Kundu, CFO Vincent Toolan, CPO Erik Wrobel and head of HR Michelle Wagner. Earlier, reports claimed Evernote's user growth had been flat for the last six years.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted an image showing SpaceX's BFR launch vehicle's concept base, captioning it "Mars Base Alpha." Last year, the Tesla CEO had announced plans to launch two BFR cargo missions to Mars by 2022. Musk said it will "probably" take the company until 2028 to build a base.