One Thing Today in Tech

The Reserve Bank of India has asked Paytm Payments Services Limited to resubmit the application to operate a payments aggregator business, barring it from adding online merchants while the approvals remain pending, Mint reports. Satellite ventures in India step up their efforts in India. Pixxel in Bengaluru and Dhruva in Hyderabad together sent three more satellites on an ISRO rocket last week, adding capabilities from amateur radio to hyperspectral earth imaging for climate change mitigation.

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The US is banning the sale of communications equipment made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE and restricting the use of some China-made video surveillance systems, citing an “unacceptable risk” to national security, Associated Press reports.

The five-member Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to adopt new rules that will block the importation or sale of certain technology products that pose security risks to America’s critical infrastructure.

Tesla is recalling more than 80,000 cars in China over software and seatbelt issues, CNBC reports, citing the Chinese market regulator.

The recall of these models is due to a software issue that affects the battery management system of the cars. Tesla will upgrade the software on these vehicles free of charge.

Amazon will shut down its food delivery business in India by the end of the year, leaving a $20 billion vertical it entered less than three years ago, TechCrunch reports.

Amazon will shut down the food delivery business, called Amazon Food, on December 29 in India. It launched this service in India in May 2020 in parts of Bengaluru and later expanded it.

The closure announcement is part of Amazon’s broader restructuring in India, according to TechCrunch. Amazon announced earlier this week that it will be shutting down its edtech service, Amazon Academy in the country next year.

The Reserve Bank of India has asked Paytm Payments Services Limited to resubmit the application to operate a payments aggregator business, Mint reports. The banking regulator has barred Paytm from adding more online merchants while the approvals remain pending.

One97 Communications, which operates under the Paytm brand, had proposed to transfer the payment aggregator services business undertaken by it to Paytm Payments Services in December 2020 to comply with payment aggregator guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India but the banking regulator rejected its application, according to Mint.

Pixxel, a Bengaluru startup building an earth imaging satellite constellation, launched its hyperspectral imaging technology-demonstrator satellite, named Anand, on November 26 on a rocket made by the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO.

The PSLV C54 mission was launched from the Sriharikota Launch Complex in Andhra Pradesh. Anand has been built for earth observation applications, primarily in the agriculture, energy and climate sectors, Pixxel said in a press release.

Two nanosatellites, built by Dhruva Space, called Thybolt-1 and Thybolt-2, were also sent to space onboard ISRO’s PSLV C54, Dhruva, a Hyderabad-based space tech venture, said in its press release.

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Amazon will be shutting down Amazon Academy, an online learning platform it launched in India for high-school students last year, TechCrunch reports. Ultraviolette Automotive, an EV technologies company, yesterday announced the commercial launch of its first product, a high-performance motorcycle called F77, starting at an ex-showroom price of Rs. 3.8 lakh. And Transition VC plans to raise Rs. 400 crore for its first fund.

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Amazon will be shutting down Amazon Academy, an online learning platform it launched in India for high school students last year, TechCrunch reports.

Amazon will wind down the edtech service in a phased manner starting August 2023. Those who signed up for the current academic batch will receive a full refund, according to TechCrunch.

India’s first roundtable on the changing dynamics between big tech and digital media starts online today, with the Digital News Publishers Association as the event host, The Hindu reports.

During the webinar, the event’s keynote speaker will be Rod Sims, an economist and former chair of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. The session will largely cover antitrust issues concerning the world’s biggest tech companies, and explore how they affect digital media professionals.

The Dialogues aim to bring together stakeholders from diverse sectors to help Indian news publishers understand how other governments have addressed the market dominance of big tech companies in their jurisdictions, according to The Hindu.

Ultraviolette Automotive, an EV technologies company in Bengaluru, yesterday announced the commercial launch of its first product, a high-performance motorcycle called F77, starting at an ex-showroom price of Rs. 3.8 lakh.

The bike is powered by an integrated 10.3 kWh Lithium-ion battery architecture in the top variant, the F77 Recon, that produces 95 Nm of peak torque and 29 kW (38.9 HP) of peak power, the startup said in a press release.

The bike offers a range of 307 km per charge under test conditions, currently the highest for any electric two-wheeler in India, according to Ultraviolette.

The bike is on offer in three colours and detailing, Airstrike, Shadow, and Laser. Deliveries of the F77 will start in January 2023, starting with Bengaluru.

Earlier this week, the company also announced that it was expanding its series D funding round to include investments from Qualcomm Ventures and Lingotto. The money will help Ultraviolette ramp up its presence in India, develop its tech further and expand into international markets, the company said in a press release.

Transition VC, an energy transition-focused venture capital firm has launched its first fund with a target corpus of Rs. 400 crore, including a green shoe option of Rs 200 crore, the firm said in a press release.

Transition VC will make seed investments in startups in sectors such as e-mobility, green hydrogen, energy storage, net zero solutions for buildings, and climate tech.

Founded last year by a group of entrepreneurs and professionals in Bengaluru, Transition VC will make investments ranging from $500,000 to $1 million to support up to 40 early-stage startups over the next three years.

Before launching Transition VC, these investors have backed startups including Charge+Zone, a charging point network provider, and Exponent Energy, which is making EV batteries.

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Amazon Web Services yesterday announced the launch of its second Indian data centre facility in Hyderabad, called the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region. The first was opened in Mumbai in 2016. Britain’s top competition authority will launch an investigation into the Apple-Google duopoly in the web browser market after many developers and businesses in the country complained of harmful restrictions imposed by the tech giants. And SaaS broadcast tech provider Amagi has acquired Streamwise, a company in the US.

Notes:

Amazon Web Services yesterday announced the launch of its second Indian data centre facility, which it calls an infrastructure region, in Hyderabad.

The new data centre facility, AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, “is part of our long-term investment in the country since opening our first office in 2011,” Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at Amazon Data Services, said in a press release.

Amazon established its first Indian data centre facility in Mumbai, in 2016.

AWS plans to invest an estimated $4.4 billion (about Rs. 36,300 crore) in India by 2030 through the new Hyderabad facility.

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement yesterday that it will launch an investigation into what it called the “stranglehold” that Apple and Google have on the internet browser market.

The UK’s top competition authority consulted on launching a market investigation alongside its Mobile Ecosystem Market Study report, which found that Apple and Google have an effective duopoly on mobile ecosystems that allows them to exercise a stranglehold over operating systems, app stores and web browsers on mobile devices, according to the statement.

Responses to the consultation, which were published yesterday, reveal substantial support for a fuller investigation into the way that Apple and Google dominate the mobile browser market and how Apple restricts cloud gaming through its App Store, according to the statement.

Web developers have complained that Apple’s restrictions, combined with suggested underinvestment in its browser technology, lead to added costs and frustration as they have to deal with bugs and glitches when building web pages, and have no choice but to create bespoke mobile apps when a website might be sufficient.

Sarah Cardell, interim Chief Executive of the CMA, said in the statement: “Many UK businesses and web developers tell us they feel that they are being held back by restrictions set by Apple and Google.”

“When the new Digital Markets regime is in place, it’s likely to address these sorts of issues. In the meantime, we are using our existing powers to tackle problems where we can. We plan to investigate whether the concerns we have heard are justified and if so, identify steps to improve competition and innovation in these sectors,” she added.

Amagi, a SaaS technology provider for the broadcast and connected TV businesses, has acquired Streamwise, an early-stage data aggregation and reporting platform for content distributors, the company said in a press release.

Streamwise specializes in automating and standardizing data collection for streaming platforms. The acquisition will help Amagi enhance its data solutions capabilities with comprehensive reporting and dashboards, it said in the release.

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India has released a framework to curb fake and misleading reviews on ecommerce platforms and portals offering tour and travel services, restaurants, eateries and consumer durables, TechCrunch reports. HCL Technologies is launching a climate change course to get its 220,000-strong workforce to reduce its carbon footprint. And hyperspectral imaging satellites company Pixxel plans to send its next satellite up on an ISRO PSLV later this week.

Notes:

India has released a framework to curb fake and misleading reviews on e-commerce sites offering tour and travel services, restaurants, eateries and consumer durables, TechCrunch reports.

The government announced these new guidelines will come into force from November 25. The Department of Consumer Affairs has created a standard titled “IS 19000:2022” that will be managed by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

HCL Technologies has launched a Sustainability School and a climate literacy learning series, developed by Axa Climate, to raise awareness of the impact of climate change among the IT services company’s 220,000 employees.

The learning series will educate employees on how each of them can contribute to the efforts of governments, NGOs and enterprises to address the causes of climate change, the Noida-based company, India’s third biggest IT services provider, said in a press release.

Pixxel, a Bengaluru startup that is building a constellation of earth imaging satellites, expects to launch its third hyperspectral imaging satellite, named Anand, on an ISRO PSLV on November 26 from the Sriharikota Launch Complex in Andhra Pradesh.

Anand is a hyperspectral microsatellite which weighs <15 kg and has a total of 150+ wavelengths to see our planet in a lot more detail than today’s non-hyperspectral satellites with not more than 10 wavelengths, Pixxel said in a press release.

ReshaMandi, which operates a farm-to-fashion online commerce platform for natural fibres in India, has launched an app for iOS devices. Presently, 34,000 users have installed the app with 40 percent of them using the app’s payment system and receiving payment acknowledgements on the app.

The iOS app is available in five Indian languages – Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi, besides English, the Bengaluru company said in a press release.

Bonatra, a doctor-led IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) startup for men’s health issues, has raised Rs. 5.5 crore in a pre-seed round led by ITI Growth Opportunities Fund and several angel investors.

The money will be used to expand technology and product offerings, build the company’s team and grow its customer base, according to a press release.

ProcMart, a B2B procurement marketplace, has raised $10 million in series A funding, led by Sixth Sense Ventures, the company said in a press release.

ProcMart was started in 2015 by Anish Popli, a first-generation entrepreneur with experience in procurement and project management from BHEL and Energo Engineering. The company is an enterprise-focused maintenance, repair and operations aggregator with a tech-enabled digital platform. Its customers include Colgate, Mondelez, Harman, Dana, and Vedanta.

The company will use the money for international expansion, strengthening vendor partnerships and upgrading technology and warehousing capabilities.

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India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has released a draft bill, titled ‘The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022’ for public feedback. The last date to provide feedback, via the ministry’s website, is Dec. 17. This brings India a step closer to formulating rules that will govern the individual rights of the ‘digital citizen’ and the need to process data for lawful purposes. And deep tech startups in the country need much more money at various levels to thrive, Debjani Ghosh, president of Nasscom, India’s main tech lobby, said last week.

Notes:

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has released a draft Bill, titled ‘The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022’ for public feedback, the ministry said in a statement last week.

The purpose of the draft Bill is to provide for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognizes both the right of individuals to protect their data and the need to process personal data for lawful purposes, according to the statement.

The feedback on the draft bill in a chapter-wise manner can be submitted at https://innovateindia.mygov.in/digital-data-protection/ by December 17, 2022.

India’s Central Depository Services Limited, or CDSL, the country’s leading central securities depository, said its systems have been compromised by malware, TechCrunch reported on Friday.

The securities depository said in a filing with India’s National Stock Exchange that it detected malware affecting “a few of its internal machines.”

“As a matter of abundant caution, the company immediately isolated the machines and disconnected itself from other constituents of the capital market,” the filing said.

CDSL said it continues to investigate the breach and that it has so far “no reason to believe that any confidential information or the investor data has been compromised” due to the incident, according to TechCrunch.

Mohit Gupta, a top executive at Zomato, who was elevated to the status of co-founder in 2020, has quit, Economic Times reports. Mohit held various positions at Zomato including being the chief executive of its food delivery unit and head of its new initiatives, according to ET.

That makes for the third top-level exit in the Mumbai-listed loss-making food delivery services provider, according to ET. Rahul Ganjoo, head of new initiatives, resigned earlier this week while Siddharth Jhawar quit the company as vice president and head of intercity legends service earlier this month.

Lenskart, the online retailer of eyewear, has raised $39.6 million in Series I funding from Chiratae, DSP Mutual Fund and Axis Growth, according to data sourced from private markets intelligence provider Tracxn.

This takes Lenskart’s total funding to $1.05 billion and post-money valuation to $4.26 billion, according to Tracxn data.

India's deep tech startups need higher levels of seed and early-stage funding to grow faster, but currently, only 11 per cent of technology-related funds reach this ecosystem, Debjani Ghosh, president of Nasscom, said on Friday, Press Trust of India reports.

Speaking at a workshop on ‘Startups and Entrepreneurship: Vision India@2047,’ Ghosh called for encouraging 10,000 deep tech startups in India by 2030.

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India ranked eighth on the annual climate change performance index, jumping two positions since last year, Carbon Copy reports. India is among the high-performing countries in the index, preceded by Denmark, Sweden, Chile, and Morocco, while the first three positions for “very high” performance remained empty, according to the report. And Meta Platforms is appointing Sandhya Devanathan – with 22 years in the industry with multinational experience from finance to gaming – as the Vice President of Meta India.

Notes:

India ranked eighth on the annual climate change performance index, jumping two positions since last year, Carbon Copy reports. India is among the high-performing countries in the index, preceded by Denmark, Sweden, Chile, and Morocco, while the first three positions for “very high” performance remained empty, according to the report.

Released by Germanwatch, NewClimate Institute and Climate Action Network, the Climate Change Performance Index 2023 (CCPI), evaluated and compared the climate protection performance of 59 countries and of the European Union (EU), which together are responsible for more than 90 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The CCPI assessed countries’ performance in four categories: GHG emissions, renewable energy, energy use, and climate policy. India earned a high rating in the GHG emissions and energy use categories and a medium one for climate policy and renewable energy.

The index said that the country is on track to meet its 2030 emissions targets, compatible with a well-below-2°C scenario. However, the renewable energy pathway is not on track for the 2030 target.

Meta Platforms is appointing Sandhya Devanathan as the Vice President of Meta India. Devanthan will focus on bringing the organisation’s business and revenue priorities together and supporting the long-term growth of Meta’s business in India, the company said in a post yesterday.

Sandhya, who will move back to India, will transition to her new role on January 1, 2023, and will report to Dan Neary, Vice President, Meta APAC and will be a part of the APAC leadership team.

The traditional PC market in India, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations declined by 11.7 percent year-over-year in Q3 2022 after eight consecutive quarters of growth despite strong shipments of 3.9 million units, according to new data from the International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.

Amadeus, the largest technology provider for the travel industry, is expanding its operations with the opening of a new Engineering and R&D centre in Pune. The launch in Pune will be Amadeus’ second R&D and engineering site after Amadeus Labs in Bengaluru, which is the second largest engineering site for Amadeus worldwide.

Gallabox, a conversational commerce platform provider, which helps Small and Medium Businesses increase their sales through WhatsApp has raised $1.2 million in seed funding. The funding was led by Prime Venture Partners with participation from 100x Entrepreneur Fund, the company said in a press release.

Founded in 2021 by Karthik Jagannathan, Yogesh Narayanan and Yathin Panchanathan, Gallabox has more than 500 paying customers including PVR, ShipRocket, Pickyourtrail, Credit Mantri, and Goireland. Its customers come from areas including D2C, Education, Health & Wellness, and Financial and Travel services in India and 20 other countries.

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Tata group’s iPhone components factory in Hosur, near Bengaluru, is set to employ 60,000 workers, with a large proportion being women, Press Trust of India reports, citing Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. SoftBank Group is set to sell part of its 12.9 percent stake in Paytm in a transaction that will fetch the Japanese telecom and internet investor at least $200 million, Mint reports. And Microsoft and NVIDIA have teamed up to build a supercomputer to train AI models.

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The biggest factory to manufacture Apple iPhones in India is coming up at Hosur near Bengaluru, which will employ around 60,000 people, Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday, Press Trust of India reports.

The minister was speaking at a ceremony that was part of India’s ongoing celebrations of tribals, the Janjatiya Gaurav Divas.

“Apple's iPhone is now getting made in India and it's the biggest plant in India, being set up at Hosur near Bengaluru. 60,000 people work in a single factory. The first 6,000 employees of these 60,000 employees are our tribal sisters from places nearby Ranchi and Hazaribagh. Tribal sisters have been trained to make Apple iPhone,” the minister said, according to the report.

Apple has outsourced the manufacturing of iPhone enclosures to Tata group, which has a plant at Hosur, where the Indian conglomerate was previously reported to be hiring 40,000 workers.

SoftBank Group will sell a third of its stake in One97 Communications Ltd, the owner of the Paytm payments app, through a $200 million block deal, Mint reports, citing deal terms it has reviewed.

SoftBank, the Japanese internet and telecom investor that owns 12.9 percent of Paytm, plans to sell 29 million shares or 4.5 percent of the fintech company on Thursday, according to Mint.

The shares are being offered to institutional investors at ₹555-601.45. At the lower end of the band, it is a 7.7 percent discount to the closing price of ₹601.3 on Wednesday. If completed, the sale will fetch SoftBank at least ₹1,628.9 crore or $200 million.

Microsoft and NVIDIA yesterday announced a multi-year collaboration to build one of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world, combining Azure’s advanced supercomputing infrastructure and NVIDIA GPUs, networking and AI software.

These new computers will help enterprises train, deploy and scale AI, including large, state-of-the-art models, NVIDIA said in a press release.

As part of the collaboration, NVIDIA will use Azure’s scalable virtual machine instances to research and further advance generative AI, an emerging area of AI related to foundational models involving unsupervised, self-learning algorithms to create new text, code, digital images, video or audio.

Evernote, the notetaking and task management app founded over 20 years ago, whose elephant icon was familiar to millions of users, has been acquired by Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons.

In a post on Evernote’s newsroom, Evernote CEO Ian Small said that Bending Spoons will take ownership of Evernote in a transaction expected to close in early 2023, TechCrunch reports. For Evernote, the acquisition — the terms of which weren’t made public — marks the end of a roller coaster of a journey, TechCrunch notes.

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Tata Consultancy Services has won a contract from TAP Air Portugal to modernise the airline’s IT systems and business processes to improve customer experience, as part of which it will establish a digital centre for innovation that will eventually serve other airlines in the region as well. Google has added UPI Autopay as a payments option for subscriptions on its Play app store. And content management system provider ContentStack nearly doubles its funding.

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Google has added Unified Payments Interface, or UPI — India’s most popular payments method – in its Google Play app store. Users can now use UPI Autopay to pay for subscriptions on Google Play, Google said in a post on Tuesday.

UPI Autopay helps people make recurring payments using any UPI application that supports the feature. To use this method on Google Play, after selecting a subscription plan for purchase, tap on the payment method in the cart, select “Pay with UPI”, and then approve the purchase in your supported UPI app.

WhatsApp’s India head Abhijit Bose and Meta’s public policy head for the country Rajiv Aggarwal have both quit — just days after Meta’s India head Ajit Mohan left the company to join rival Snap, TechCrunch reports.

Meta confirmed the departure of both executives yesterday, according to TechCrunch. The company also announced the appointment of Shivnath Thukral as its director of public policy in the country — replacing Aggarwal, who joined the company only last year from Uber.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway disclosed yesterday that it had purchased a $4.1 billion stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, one of the world’s largest chipmakers, CNN reports.

TSMC accounts for an estimated 90 percent of the world’s super-advanced computer chips, supplying tech giants including Apple and Qualcomm.

Tata Consultancy Services has won a contract from TAP Air Portugal to modernise the airline’s IT systems and business processes to improve customer experience.

TCS will establish an Airline Digital Centre (ADC) in Portugal, staffed with consultants with deep domain knowledge of the airline industry, solution architects and technology experts, the Mumbai company said in a press release.

ReNew Power, a subsidiary of ReNew Energy Global, yesterday, signed a Framework Agreement with the Government of Egypt to set up a Green Hydrogen plant in the Suez Canal Economic Zone with an investment of $8 billion and a targeted annual production of 220,000 tons of green hydrogen.

The Framework Agreement follows a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in July, the company said in a press release.

Contentstack, a Silicon Valley and Mumbai SaaS company, which says it’s India’s biggest content management system provider, yesterday announced $80 million in Series C funding.

Georgian and Insight Partners co-led the round with participation from Illuminate Ventures, according to a press release. All three firms continue to grow their investment with Contentstack, contributing to a $169 million total raised thus far.

Contentstack’s customers include global brands like Chase, Holiday Inn, Levi’s, Mattel, McDonald's, Mitsubishi, and Shell. The Company will use the money to add people in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune and Virar-Mumbai, as it expands its operations, according to its press release.

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Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as early as this week, in what would be the largest job cut in the company’s history, New York Times reports, citing people who know about the plan. Billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate has received the go-ahead for an open offer for broadcaster NDTV’s shares. And LTI and Mindtree became LTIMindtree, India’s fifth biggest IT company by market cap, yesterday.

Notes:

Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as early as this week, in what would be the largest job cut in the company’s history, New York Times reports, citing people who know about the plan.

Separately, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to give away the bulk of his wealth, currently at $124 billion, during his lifetime, he told CNN in an exclusive interview. Bezos will devote much of his wealth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions, he said.

Bezos and his partner Lauren Sánchez also announced a $100 million grant to American country music singer Dolly Parton as part of her Courage and Civility Award.

In more billionaire news, India’s Gautam Adani’s conglomerate Adani group received regulatory approval to float an open offer for a further 26 percent stake in New Delhi Television, or NDTV, Bloomberg reports.

This is a crucial milestone in a takeover battle between Adani, Asia’s richest person, and NDTV’s founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, according to the report.

Adani group triggered a hostile takeover bid for NDTV after it acquired an indirect 29.18 percent stake in August.

Samsung is planning to reduce its smartphone shipments by 13 per cent next year IANS reports, citing news from Gizmochina.

The Korean tech giant was not able to sell as many smartphone units as it had expected because of multiple reasons, including supply-chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Although Samsung was able to raise its market share in terms of shipments during the third quarter of this year compared with the second quarter, the company had an overall decline of about 8 per cent year over year, according to Gizmochina, IANS reports.

L&T group’s IT services companies Larsen & Toubro Infotech and Mindtree will now operate as one company, LTIMindtree, effective Nov. 14, after receiving regulatory approvals, the company said in a press release yesterday. The Mumbai and Bengaluru benches of the National Company Law Tribunal have approved the merger, according to the press release.

LTIMindtree has a client portfolio of more than 750 leading global enterprises from all the important industry verticals, and nearly 90,000 employees, operating in more than 30 countries, although the bulk of the IT services outsourcing provider’s workforce is in India.

The company will become the fifth-largest IT services company in India in terms of current market capitalization.

As part of the merger, all shareholders of Mindtree will be issued shares of LTI in the ratio of 73 shares of LTI for every 100 shares of Mindtree. The parent company, L&T, will hold 68.73 percent of the merged entity.

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Crypto startups in India are not barred from any innovation but must adhere to the country’s laws on foreign exchange, IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Inc42 in an interview, according to a report from the startup news and analysis site. And SaaS action continues in India, with Lentra raising $60 million in Series B funding that includes Citi Ventures’s first investment in an Indian fintech company, valuing the Mumbai startup developing AI-based embedded finance solutions at more than $400 million, TechCrunch reports.

Notes:

Crypto startups in India are not barred from any innovation but must adhere to the country’s laws on foreign exchange, IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Inc42 in an interview, according to a report.

For a startup, whether you are innovating for crypto or blockchain or Web3, there is absolutely nothing in the law that prevents you from doing it. There is nothing in the IT Act that stops you from doing it. We welcome any investor or startup to innovate in crypto or Web3, the minister said, according to Inc42.

The restrictions involve exchange control. Some startups have made the mistake of becoming full-blown crypto brokerages and exchanges without getting the required permissions from the RBI and SEBI, he said, according to the report.

Australia is considering banning the payment of ransoms to hackers, following recent cyberattacks affecting millions of Australians, Reuters reports, citing the country's Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil.

Australia's biggest health insurer, Medibank and Optus, Australia's second-largest telco, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, and at least eight other companies, have been breached since September, according to Reuters.

The country has also bolstered its cyber police, with a new joint task force, according to Reuters.

Apple is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly harvesting iPhone user data even when the company’s own privacy settings promise not to, Gizmodo reports.

The suit, filed on Nov. 10 in a California federal court, comes days after Gizmodo exclusively reported on research into how multiple iPhone apps send Apple analytics data, regardless of whether the iPhone Analytics privacy setting is turned on or off, according to the report.

The problem was spotted by two independent researchers at the software company Mysk, who found that the Apple App Store sends the company exhaustive information about nearly everything a user does in the app, despite a privacy setting, iPhone Analytics, which claims to “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether” when switched off.

Lentra, a Mumbai startup developing AI-based fintech solutions, has raised $60 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch reports. The investment values the startup at “over $400 million,” D Venkatesh, the founder and CEO of the startup, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Susquehanna International Group led the round with participation from Citi Ventures, a subsidiary of Citigroup, according to TechCrunch.

This is Citi Ventures’ first investment in a fintech from India. Lentra, founded in 2018, is profitable and offers tech solutions to commercial banks for their digital loan services. HDFC Bank, Federal Bank, Standard Chartered and IDFC First Bank are some of its customers.

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