One Thing Today in Tech

Venture capital funding for India’s startups fell from $38.5 billion in 2021 to $25.7 billion in 2022, according to the latest report on the sector by Bain and Company, a consultancy, and Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association. However, more early-stage deals were struck in 2022, helping the overall deal volume to be marginally higher, according to the report, released yesterday. Also in this brief, the Indian IT services sector has become a less significant recruiter, according to a staffing company.

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Venture capital funding for India’s startups and other ventures in the country fell from $38 billion in 2021 to $25.7 billion in 2022, according to the latest report on the sector by Bain and Company, a consultancy, and Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association. However, more early-stage deals were struck in 2022, helping the overall deal volume to be marginally higher, according to the report, released yesterday.

There were 1,611 deals in 2022, which was 1.1x the number in 2021, led by an expansion in seed to series B deals. Further, series A deals maintained an average deal size of ~$11 million, cementing a step shift in early-stage dealmaking in India, according to the report. Average series A deals hit the coveted $10 million mark for the first time in 2021.

The decline in total funding was driven mostly by a big reduction in the average deal size from $25 million in 2021 to $16 million in 2022. A significant drop in $100 million+ “mega-rounds” (from 92 to 48 over 2021–2022) was a key factor in deal size compression, with global investors exercising caution on large-ticket size deals.

The year 2022 also had some positive trends, such as venture funding continuing to go beyond Bengaluru, Mumbai and NCR. Emerging startup hubs received ~18 percent of the funding and accounted for 9 of 23 unicorns added in 2022, according to the report.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and fintech continued to see momentum relative to 2021, growing from ~25% of total funding to ~35% in 2022. Consumer tech, however, saw a 55 percent drop, from more than $20 billion in 2021 to less than $10 billion in 2022.

In more venture news from around the world, one of the world’s biggest fintech startups Stripe, a payments processor in the US, raised $6.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation, a sharp discount from its record valuation of $95 billion in 2021, CNBC reports.

And finally, here’s some IT services sector news that I missed from earlier this month.

The IT industry put out 33 percent fewer job openings in February 2023 compared with the same period last year, according to the active jobs report of Xpheno, a staffing company, Moneycontrol reported on March 6.

According to Xpheno, the active jobs demand in the sector — at 75,000 available jobs — saw an uptick of 15 percent month-on-month mostly because of a lower base in January 2023 when 65,000 jobs were available.

Overall, the IT sector’s share of available jobs has continued to trend downward, according to Xpheno. The share of the sector, which used to be the dominant recruiter, has gone from 80 percent of available jobs in 2021 to below 50 percent in the last five months, and the share of non-tech sectors has continued to rise, Moneycontrol reports.

The internet-enabled services and startup segments had 17,000 job openings at the end of February, as against 15,000 in January 2023.

Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms will lay off 10,000 more workers and incur restructuring costs ranging from $3 billion to $5 billion, the company announced Tuesday, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning economic instability could continue for “many years,” CNBC reports. Also in this brief, OpenAI releases GPT-4, the latest version of its large language model AI; and Infosys sees a second big exit in 2023, as Mohit Joshi, a president and 22-year veteran at the Bengaluru company, is named CEO-designate at smaller rival Tech Mahindra.

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Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms will lay off 10,000 more workers and incur restructuring costs ranging from $3 billion to $5 billion, the company announced Tuesday, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning economic instability could continue for “many years,” CNBC reports.

The company will also close 5,000 additional open roles that it hasn’t filled yet. In an SEC filing announcing the cuts, Meta also said it anticipated lowered total expenses in 2023, ranging from $86 billion to $92 billion.

India’s Enforcement Directorate is investigating several crypto cases for money-laundering schemes and has seized Rs. 953.7 crore or about $115.5 million to date in such crimes, TechCrunch reports, citing the Ministry of Finance.

The ministry’s statement was in a written response to a question in the country’s parliament, which was published on the Lok Sabha’s website on March 13.

OpenAI, yesterday, announced the next version of its primary large language model, GPT-4 which it says exhibits “human-level performance” on many professional tests, CNBC reports.

GPT-4 is more accurate than the previous versions GPT-3 and GPT-3.5, according to OpenAI. It performed at the 90th percentile on a simulated bar exam, the 93rd percentile on an SAT reading exam, and the 89th percentile on the SAT Math exam, according to the company.

However, the company warns that the new software is far from perfect or reliable in many scenarios. It still has a major problem with “hallucination,” or making responses up, and is still prone to insisting it is correct when it is wrong.

And in some IT services news, I bring you the update, a little belatedly, that Mohit Joshi, last week, resigned as president of Infosys, to be named managing director and CEO-designate at Tech Mahindra.

Mohit will take over as MD & CEO on Dec. 20, as the long-time incumbent CP Gurnani retires on Dec. 19, according to the Mumbai-listed company’s stock exchange filing and a press release on March 11. Mohit is expected to join much earlier to facilitate a good transition.

Mohit’s 22-year tenure at Infosys will come to an end in June and till then he will be on leave, MoneyControl reports. This is the second big exit for Infosys in 2023, after Ravi Kumar S, also an Infosys President at the time left to become CEO of larger US-based rival Cognizant Technology Solutions, in January.

Before Infosys, where he worked from the year 2000, Mohit worked with ABN AMRO and ANZ Grindlays in their Corporate and Investment bank. Mohit has lived and worked in Asia, America and Europe and currently lives with his wife and two daughters in London, according to the press release.

The year 2022 saw women-led startups in India increase their share of venture capital investments and do better than the overall startup ecosystem in the country, even as the so-called funding winter descended on the sector amid worsening global macroeconomic conditions. Marquee investors such as Sequoia Capital and Accel as well as accelerators and incubators such as CIIE backed more women entrepreneurs, according to data from Tracxn, a Mumbai-listed private markets intelligence provider. Also in this brief, Spotify hit half a billion active users, the Swedish company said at its Stream On event.

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Apple is backing a music startup launched by one of its former executives, Reuters reports.

The company, called Gamma, is the brainchild of former Apple Music Global Creative Director Larry Jackson and veteran music executive Ike Youssef. It positions itself as an alternative to traditional record labels, according to Reuters.

Gamma says it will support content creation including music, video and podcasts, and provide audio and video distribution through Vydia, a company it acquired in December 2022.

Meanwhile, Spotify Technology said on Wednesday it crossed 500 million monthly active listeners, Reuters reports. The Swedish company will roll out new features like smart shuffle and previews of podcasts and music playlists on its audio streaming platform and announce a new user interface at its annual Stream On event.

Slice, an Indian fintech unicorn, acquired a 5 percent stake in North East Small Finance, a Guwahati-headquartered small finance bank, in September, for $3.42 million, TechCrunch reports, citing a regulatory filing.

Slice, privately valued at $1.55 billion, counts Tiger Global, Insight Partners, Blume Ventures and Axis Bank among its investors.

Staying on the topic of startups, and looking specifically at women-led ventures, meaning startups with at least one woman among the founders, data from Tracxn shows that almost one in five of all funded startups in India is now a woman-led startup.

Funded startups in India with woman founders and co-founders accounted for 18 percent of all funded ventures in 2022. Overall, women-led startups accounted for 8.3 percent of all startups in India, according to Tracxn, a Mumbai-listed private markets intelligence provider.

The number of active investors investing in women-led startups has seen a steady increase since 2010, with a sharp year-on-year jump of 42 percent in 2021 – which was also a year in which funding went a bit crazy, overall.

However, a significant data point seems to be that funding for women-led startups declined by only 11 percent in 2022 versus 2021, compared with a 37 percent drop for the overall startup ecosystem in the same period, according to Tracxn.

And, the share of funding garnered by women-led startups, as a percentage of overall total funding, increased to 16 percent in 2022 from 11 percent in 2021.

If one looks at a funding-stage-by-funding-stage breakdown as well, women-led startups have outperformed the overall Indian startup ecosystem in 2022, according to Tracxn.

Out of the approximately 2,200 women-led startups in India that have received funding, 36 percent have progressed to the Series A stage, and 24 percent have gone on to the Series D stage or beyond.

Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest contract manufacturers, said on Saturday that there was no definitive agreement about investment in India, the French news agency AFP reported. This came after a report from Bloomberg on Friday last that Foxconn will invest about $700 million to build a new plant near India’s tech capital Bengaluru. Also in this brief, Universal Hydrogen, a hydrogen fuel cell technologies company, last week, conducted the first test of a 40-passenger regional airliner aircraft, using hydrogen fuel cell propulsion.

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Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest contract manufacturers, said on Saturday that there was no definitive agreement about investment in India, the French news agency AFP reported. This came after a report from Bloomberg on Friday last that Foxconn will invest about $700 million to build a new plant near India’s tech capital Bengaluru, in Karnataka.

“Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) has announced a major investment in Karnataka. 300 acres of land has been identified for this purpose near the Bengaluru International Airport, in Doddaballapura and Devanahalli taluks,” a statement from the government of Karnataka read, on March 3.

The statement didn’t mention Apple or say how much money Foxconn would be investing. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, said Foxconn will build an iPhone parts plant on the 300-acre site.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s union minister of state for electronics and information technology, also tweeted the Bloomberg report and added “apple phones to be built in new 300-acre facility in Karnataka.”

Foxconn said in a statement on Saturday that no deals had been finalised, while confirming that chairman and CEO Young Liu visited India from February 27 to March 4, according to a report by the French press agency Agence France-Presse, that was carried by Mint.

“Foxconn has not entered into binding, definitive agreements for new investments during this trip,” the statement said.

Arm, the British chip designer owned by Japan’s SoftBank, is looking to raise at least $8 billion from what is expected to be a blockbuster US stock market launch this year, CNBC reports, citing people familiar with the plan.

Arm is expected to confidentially submit paperwork for its initial public offering in late April, according to CNBC. The listing is expected to happen later this year and the timing will be determined by market conditions.

Universal Hydrogen, which as the name suggests, is a hydrogen fuel cell technologies company, last week, flew a 40-passenger regional airliner using hydrogen fuel cell propulsion, according to a press release from the Los Angeles-based venture.

The aeroplane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, flew for 15 minutes, reaching an altitude of 3,500 MSL. The flight, conducted under America’s FAA Special Airworthiness Certificate, was the first in a two-year flight test campaign expected to culminate in 2025 with entry into passenger service of ATR 72 regional aircraft converted to run on hydrogen.

In this first test flight, one of the aeroplane’s turbine engines was replaced with Universal Hydrogen’s fuel cell-electric, megawatt-class powertrain. The other remained a conventional engine for the safety of flight.

Amazon announced on February 24 that it will integrate its logistics network and SmartCommerce, a suite of SaaS products built on Amazon Web Services, with the government of India-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). Ericsson has announced the largest layoff in the telecom sector in the current economic slowdown, Reuters reports. Also in this brief, Nokia has announced the G22 – a smartphone with a backplate made from recycled plastic that can be removed easily for DIY repairs; and the latest on how India is stepping up its semiconductor efforts.

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Amazon will integrate its logistics network and SmartCommerce, a suite of SaaS products built on Amazon Web Services, with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the open networks-based ecommerce protocols backed by the Indian government.

“This will be Amazon’s initial collaboration with ONDC as we continue to explore other potential opportunities for stronger integration between the two in future,” the company said in a press release on Feb. 24.

In some smartphone news, Nokia has designed one of its next phones to make it easy for repairs, with a design that harkens back to the early years of mobile phones.

The Nokia G22, developed by Finnish manufacturer HMD Global, is a standard smartphone with a 6.5-inch screen and a 50-megapixel main camera, but it’s the phone’s outer shell and insides that make it special, CNBC reports.

The handset includes a recyclable plastic back which can be easily removed to swap out broken components, according to CNBC.

With tools and repair guides from hardware repair advocacy firm iFixit, a user can remove and replace the phone’s cover, battery, screen and charging port.

More on Scandinavia, Telecom equipment maker Ericsson will lay off 8,500 employees globally as part of its plan to cut costs, Reuters reported on Feb. 24, citing a memo sent to employees and seen by the news agency.

While technology companies such as Microsoft, Meta and Google have laid off tens of thousands of employees citing economic conditions, Ericsson's move would be the largest layoff to hit the telecoms industry, according to Reuters.

In some semiconductor industry news, India’s minister of state for electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said last week that India Semiconductor Research Centre (ISRC), a private, industry-led research centre, will soon be launched and the existing Semiconductor Laboratory is being modernised and pivoted into a research fab that will be co-located with the ISRC.

The minister was speaking at the opening of the second Semicon India FutureDESIGN Roadshow, on Feb. 24, in Bengaluru.

The Government plans to introduce an educational curriculum as part of the Future Skills programme, Chandrasekhar said. “It has been developed in collaboration with industry experts and academics. A large number of colleges will have new degrees, new electives, and new certification programs in VLSI.”

“We are actively working with fab companies to create on-the-job training type of internships for students in the semiconductor space,” he said, according to a government press release.

Google has started to support third-party billing for Google Play Store purchases in India as the Android maker begins to comply with local rules, after its challenge to a diktat from India’s Competition Commission was initially rejected by the country’s top courts, but remains pending, TechCrunch reports. Meanwhile, C.E. Info Systems, better known for its geospatial software tech products under the brand MapMyIndia, which competes with Google Maps, for example, yesterday launched a new line of navigation and entertainment hardware products for cars and two-wheelers.

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Google has started to support third-party billing for Google Play Store purchases in India as the Android maker begins to comply with local rules, after its challenge to a diktat from India’s Competition Commission was initially rejected by the country’s top courts, but remains pending, TechCrunch reports.

Google said on a support page yesterday that it is offering all developers serving users in India the option to use an alternative billing system and outlined the steps developers need to follow to use the option. The change is in “response to recent regulatory developments” in the South Asian market, the company said, according to TechCrunch.

Back home in the US, Google is facing more anti-trust scrutiny. The latest development, according to Reuters, is that US Justice Department lawyers say that Google destroyed internal corporate communications and have asked a federal judge to sanction the company as part of the government's antitrust case over its search business.

The DOJ asserted in a court filing unsealed in a Washington, D.C., federal court yesterday that Google failed to timely suspend a policy allowing the automatic, permanent deletion of employees' chat logs, according to Reuters.

The government said Google “falsely” told the US in 2019 that it had suspended “auto-deletion” and was preserving chat communications as it was required to do under a federal court rule governing electronically stored information, according to Reuters.

Google has refuted the US justice department’s accusations, and also denied the underlying allegations that it abused its power in the internet search market. The US DOJ's sanctions bid marks at least the second time in the case that the government has sought to punish Google, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, here in India, C.E. Info Systems, better known for its geospatial software tech products under the brand MapMyIndia, which competes with Google Maps, for example, yesterday announced the launch of its new line navigation and entertainment hardware products for cars and two-wheelers.

The products, branded Mappls Gadgets, taking on the same name as the Mappls consumer app of MapMyIndia, include advanced Vehicle GPS trackers, Dash Cameras, In-Dash Navitainment Systems & Smart Helmet Kits, the Mumbai-listed company said in a press release.

Mappls Gadgets are available direct from the company at www.mapplsgadgets.com, as well as offline through approved genuine accessory showrooms of various OEMs. They can be shipped and installed pan India, with prices ranging from Rs. 4,990 to Rs. 38,990.

The Mappls software is integrated into these devices and works on Android, including Android Auto, and iOS, including Apple Carplay.

India and Singapore have linked their digital payments systems, UPI and PayNow, to support instant and low-cost cross-border payments. The system went live yesterday. Capgemini forecast weaker revenue growth and said it would slow down hiring in 2023 amid a global economic slowdown, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, Wipro is asking some recruits to join at lower pay, according to Economic Times. Also in this brief, the US Supreme court is hearing an important case against Google; and a British trial of four-day work weeks results in many participants sticking with it.

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America’s Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in a case against Google that some feared could alter an important US law, with implications for free speech on the internet, CNBC reports. The country’s top judges, however, expressed hesitation in changing the fine balance set by the current rules, according to CNBC.

The case is known as Gonzalez v. Google, brought by the family of an American who died in a 2015 terrorist attack in Paris. The petitioners argued that Google and its subsidiary YouTube did not do enough to remove or stop promoting ISIS terrorist videos seeking to recruit members, which they argue is a violation of America’s Anti-Terrorism Act.

India and Singapore have linked their digital payments systems, UPI and PayNow, to support instant and low-cost fund transfers in a major push to disrupt the cross-border flow of money between the two nations that amounts to over $1 billion each year, TechCrunch reports.

The linkage between the two systems went live yesterday, officials from the two countries' central banks said at a press conference, according to TechCrunch. Eight banks including DBS, Liquid Group, Axis Bank and State Bank of India from Singapore and India are currently participating in the collaboration, they said.

Indians and Singaporeans can use their local payments systems to send money across in real-time, according to the officials, TechCrunch reports. For now, an Indian user can remit up to Rs. 60,000 or about 1000 Singapore dollars a day, the Reserve Bank of India said in a press release yesterday.

The plan for this linkage was first announced in 2021.

Wipro has asked fresh recruits holding job offers from the company to join at half the salary that was originally offered, Economic Times reports, citing an e-mail from the company to the job seekers.

The recruits – for roles such as project engineer – had originally been offered Rs. 6.5 lakh as annual compensation and they are now being asked to join the company at a salary of Rs. 3.5 lakh, according to ET.

Larger rival Capgemini, yesterday, forecast weaker revenue growth and said it would slow down hiring in 2023 amid a global economic slowdown, Reuters reports.

Capgemini's shares ended down 2.78 percent yesterday on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.

Capgemini expects 2023 revenue to grow between 4 percent and 7 percent in constant currency, compared with 16.6 percent last year.

Several British employers trialling a four-day working week have mostly decided to stick with it after a pilot, hailed as a breakthrough by campaigners for better work-life balance, Reuters reported yesterday.

Tata Group’s Jaguar Land Rover said on Tuesday it is opening three new engineering hubs in Europe to develop autonomous vehicle technologies as part of its partnership with Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company Nvidia, Reuters reports. Also in this brief, several countries, last week, agreed on a call to action over the use of AI in warfare; and Freshworks, yesterday, named Sandie Overtveld as the Senior Vice President and general manager for its Asia-Pacific, Japan, and Middle East and Africa markets.

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A global Summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain was held last week in the city of Hague, where several countries signed an agreement to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda, Techspot reports.

With their joint call to action, the participating countries and other stakeholders underlined the need to put the responsible use of AI higher on the political agenda and to further promote initiatives that contribute to this respect, the government of the Netherlands said in a statement on Feb. 16.

Luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover said on Tuesday it is opening three new engineering hubs in Europe to develop autonomous vehicle technologies as part of its partnership with Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company Nvidia, Reuters reported earlier today.

The hubs in Munich, Bologna and Madrid will develop self-driving systems for JLR's next generation of luxury vehicles. JLR already has six global tech hubs the United States, China and Europe.

JLR, a unit of India's Tata Motors, said the locations were chosen because of the local availability of digital engineering specialists and will create almost 100 engineering jobs focused on developing driver assistance systems and artificial intelligence for self-driving cars of the future, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, Uber Technologies said on Monday it will introduce electric vehicles in India for ridesharing, with plans to introduce 25,000 EVs over three years.

Uber's fleet partners will buy the EVs from Tata Motors, India's biggest electric carmaker, Prabhjeet Singh, president, Uber India and South Asia, told Reuters in a phone interview yesterday.

In some IT services news, Infosys, India’s second biggest IT services company, named Shaji Mathew as Group Head of Human Resources, to take over from Krish Shankar who retires on March 21, 2023, the Bengaluru company said in a press release on Feb. 17.

Mathew will take on the new role from March 22. Currently, he is Infosys’ global head of delivery for Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare and Life Sciences. He is also the chair of the company’s committee for diversity, equity, and inclusion in India.

Moving on to software products, Freshworks, a Chennai and Silicon Valley software company, yesterday, named Sandie Overtveld as the Senior Vice President and general manager for its Asia-Pacific, Japan, and Middle East and Africa markets.

Sandie will be based in Singapore, where he’s previously overseen large sales operations at Freshworks’s larger rivals Zendesk, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. Before joining Freshworks, he was heading the Apac and Japan operations at WalkMe Inc., which sells digital adoption platforms, according to a press release.

Microsoft’s announcement of its Bing AI last week was received with much fanfare, which even prompted Google to rush through its botched announcement. The experience of some early testers, however, hasn’t been very good, and the whole thing could backfire. Also in this brief, Tesla is recalling more than 360,000 cars over safety concerns related to its driver-assistance software. And scientists in India have developed a non-toxic nanocomposite coating to prevent bacterial infections at the site of surgical wounds that is superior to existing commercial products.

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Tesla has issued a recall of its Full Self-Driving software, an advanced driver-assistance system that America’s federal safety regulators say could allow vehicles to act unsafe around intersections and cause crashes.

Tesla said it is recalling certain 2016–2023 Model S, Model X; 2017–2023 Model 3; and 2020–2023 Model Y vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) software or those pending installation. The recall, which was posted on the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website, affects as many as 362,758 vehicles equipped with the software, according to the notice.

Tesla will release an over-the-air software update, free of charge, to fix the issue.

Microsoft’s announcement of an AI-powered Bing search last week was received with much fanfare, which even prompted Google to rush through its botched announcement.

The experience of some early testers of the new Bing, however, hasn’t been very good though and the whole thing could backfire. Over a million people have signed up to test the chatbot, CNBC reports.

But beta testers have quickly discovered issues with the bot. It threatened some, provided weird and unhelpful advice to others, insisted it was right when it was wrong and even declared love for its users. And testers have discovered an “alternative personality” within the chatbot called Sydney, according to CNBC.

Scientists and engineers at ARCI, an autonomous institute under India’s Department of Science and Technology, have developed a nanocomposite coating that prevents bacterial infections at the location of wounds from surgical cuts.

The “biocidal” coating was tested at the Translational Health Science Technology Institute (THSTI) and LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI). Early results show that the coating, called ATL by its inventors, is superior to commercially available products today in that it is more effective and non-toxic, according to a press release by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched the G20 Digital Innovation Alliance to showcase innovative solutions bringing together startups, investors, mentors, and institutions building digital public goods/innovations, the government said in a post.

Startups building tech-led solutions in six areas – education, health, Agriculture, Finance, Secured Digital Infrastructure, and Circular Economy – from the G20 member countries and the invited non-member countries will be recognized and supported as part of this alliance.

The ministry is launching a series of events, expert sessions, webinars, and capacity-building workshops around the six selected themes.

You can find the details on how to apply to be a part of this alliance on the website www.mygov.in

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took a vacation to French Polynesia to “detox” himself from gadgets and other digital distractions, the entrepreneur told The New York Times, Business Insider reports – the original piece is behind a paywall. Benioff took a vacation after firing 10 percent of the cloud-based CRM provider’s staff. Meanwhile, fintech darling Stripe burned through half a billion dollars in 2022, The Information reports exclusively, as its revenue rose much more slowly than the previous year’s pandemic-driven frenzy that saw every business shifting more work online.

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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took a vacation to French Polynesia to “detox” himself from gadgets and other digital distractions, the entrepreneur told The New York Times, Business Insider reports – the original piece is behind a paywall. Benioff took a vacation after firing 10 percent of the cloud-based CRM provider’s staff.

“We are so addicted to our devices (at least I am) it's very freeing to leave them all behind for a while!” he texted The Times in a series of interviews.

Salesforce workers knew at the beginning of the new year to expect cuts to thousands of jobs, according to Business Insider. On January 4, Benioff announced that Salesforce was planning to cut around 10 percent of its 84,000 staff over the following weeks.

Stripe, a global fintech darling, burned through more than $500 million of cash last year as its revenue growth rate fell sharply, The Information reports exclusively, citing people familiar with the matter.

The previously undisclosed figures paint a clearer picture of how quickly the payments giant lost steam after a pandemic-fuelled growth frenzy, according to The Information. Stripe’s net revenue growth slowed to about 18 percent in 2022 to just over $2.8 billion from roughly 85 percent in 2021, according to the tech news and analysis site.

The rest of the story is behind a paywall on The Information’s website. A Wall Street Journal report from Jan. 26, offers some perspective and context.

The Journal reported at the time that Stripe had approached investors about raising at least $2 billion in fresh cash at a valuation of $55 billion to $60 billion, a sharp decline from its last private fundraising nearly two years ago when it was valued at $95 billion.

In some startup funding news in India, Venwiz, a SaaS-enabled marketplace in the Capex and MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) services domain, has raised $8.3 million in Series A funding, led by Sorin Investments with participation from previous investors, Accel and Nexus Venture Partners, the Bengaluru company said in a press release.

JAFCO Asia, Riverwalk Holdings and Force Ventures also participated in this round, as did several angel investors. The company had earlier raised $3 million in seed funding, bringing the total capital raised to $11.3 million. The funds will be used for product enhancement and team expansion.

Venwiz is digitalising capex and industrial services procurement, focusing on the manufacturing industry. Buyers on the demand side are large enterprise clients with manufacturing plants, having industrial services requirements.

On the supply side, the companies that offer these industrial services are MSMEs, with a specialised scope of projects such as mechanical, civil, automation, and turnkey jobs. Venwiz has so far onboarded more than 10,000 vendors on its platform across 40+ service categories.