FLF showcased sturdy 4QFY19 performance with robust revenue/EBITDA boom. Revenue 
grew 29% YoY to INR13.8b (five% beat), driven by means of 8.6% overall SSSG, healthy footprint additions and boom in FLF’s manufacturers. EBITDA grew 28% YoY to INR1.2b (nine% beat) due to the strong sales increase. But, margins have been flat YoY at eight.9%, a drop in gross margins (attributed to growth within the low margin Brand Factory (BF) layout) had been offset by running leverage advantages. PAT at INR560m become up 166% YoY; however, adjusting for reversal of excess tax provision of ~INR350m, PAT stood flat YoY on excessive depreciation and occasional different income. FY19 revenue/EBITDA/PAT grew 27%/27%/50% YoY. BF driving increase: BF’s sales share zoomed to ~35% (v/s ~27% YoY); even as revenue jumped sixty-one % YoY to INR4.8b because of healthy thirteen.1% SSSG (thirteen.7% YoY, est. At eleven.1%) and four store additions (est. At 9 stores). Central’s sales too grew at a wholesome 14% YoY to INR7.2b sponsored by using 6.Five% SSSG (1% YoY); revenue percentage dropped to ~52% (v/s ~fifty nine% YoY).
Over the past 12 months, a crew of as many as 260 settlement workers in Hyderabad, India has plowed via hundreds of thousands of Facebook Inc images, popularity updates and other content material published because of 2014.
The workers categorize objects according to five “dimensions,” as Facebook calls them.
These consist of the concern of the post – is it food, for example, or a selfie or an animal? What is the event – a normal interest or important lifestyles occasion? And what is the author’s goal – to plan an occasion, to encourage, to make a shaggy dog story?
The paintings are aimed toward understanding how the types of things users publish on its services are changing, Facebook said. That can assist the organization increase new functions, potentially growing utilization, and ad revenue.
Details of the effort were furnished by way of more than one employees at outsourcing company Wipro Ltd over several months. The workers spoke on the circumstance of anonymity due to fear of retaliation with the aid of the Indian firm. Facebook later confirmed much information about the assignment. Wipro declined to comment and referred all questions to Facebook.
The Wipro work is amongst about 200 content material labeling tasks that Facebook has at any time, employing lots of humans globally, corporation officials informed Reuters.
Many initiatives are aimed toward “education” the software program that determines what appears in customers’ information feeds and powers the synthetic intelligence underlying many different functions.
The labeling efforts have now not previously been stated.
“It’s a core part of what you want,” said Nipun Mathur, the director of product control for AI at Facebook. “I do not see the want going away.”
The content labeling application may want to improve new privacy troubles for Facebook, consistent with criminal professionals consulted by means of Reuters. The employer is facing regulatory investigations international over an unrelated set of alleged privacy abuses concerning the sharing of consumer data with commercial enterprise partners.
The Wipro employees stated they advantage a window into lives as they view a vacation photograph or a put up memorializing a deceased member of the family. Facebook mentioned that some posts, together with screenshots and people with remarks, might also encompass person names.
The organization stated its prison and privateness groups ought to sign off on all labeling efforts, including that it recently brought an auditing system “to make certain that privacy expectancies are being followed and parameters in the location are operating as anticipated.”
But one former Facebook privateness supervisor, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed unease approximately customers’ posts being scrutinized without their express permission. The European Union’s yr-old General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has strict rules approximately how agencies collect and use personal facts and in lots of instances calls for precise consent.
“One of the important thing portions of GDPR is a motive limitation,” stated John Kennedy, a companion at law company Wiggin and Dana who has labored on outsourcing, privacy, and AI.
If the reason is asking at posts to improve the precision of services, that ought to be stated explicitly, Kennedy stated. Using an outside supplier for the work can also require consent, he stated.
It stays uncertain precisely how GDPR may be interpreted and whether or not regulators and clients would see Facebook’s internal labeling practices as complicated. Europe’s top statistics privateness professional declined to touch upon feasible concerns.
A Facebook spokeswoman said: “We make it clean in our statistics policy that we use the facts people provide to Facebook to enhance their revel in and that we would paintings with service vendors to assist on this system.”
U.S. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and main critic of social media, advised Reuters in a declaration that massive platforms increasingly more are “taking increasingly statistics from customers, for wider and greater a ways-attaining uses, with none corresponding reimbursement to the user.”
Warner stated he is drafting a law that might require Facebook to “reveal the fee of customers’ facts, and inform customers precisely how their facts are being monetized.”
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