One Thing Today in Tech

Netcore Cloud, a marketing technologies provider and one of India’s biggest SaaS companies, has put off its initial public offering, Economic Times reports, citing founder and group managing director Rajesh Jain. Amagi, a media tech SaaS company in Bengaluru, shows that an ‘up round’ is possible even in current macro conditions. And Sequoia burns but the tip of its pinkie as another high-flying crypto company comes crashing down.

India’s first privately developed rocket (Vikram-S) is undergoing final preparations at the ISRO’s launchpad in Sriharikota, ahead of a launch likely as early as this weekend. The mission named ‘Prarambh’ (beginning) was unveiled by ISRO Chairman, S. Somanath in Bengaluru on Nov. 7, after the technical launch clearance from the Space regulator IN-SPACe. The rocket is set to carry two payloads from India, and one from an overseas customer. And Facebook parent Meta Platforms is laying off 13 percent of its staff worldwide.

Notes:

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced the company is laying off 11,000 employees, accounting for about 13 percent of its workforce, in a cost-cutting measure.

This “last-resort” measure has become necessary because the prediction, at the beginning of Covid, that the accelerated shift to online would be permanent, has turned out to be wrong, Zuckerberg said in a blog post.

“Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he said.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced the launch of the BHIM App open-source license model under which the source code of BHIM App will be licensed to regulated entities participating in the UPI ecosystem, who do not have a UPI app of their own, to help them launch their own UPI app, according to a press release.

India’s first privately developed rocket, Vikram-S, is poised to create history as it undergoes final launch preparations at the ISRO’s launchpad in Sriharikota, ahead of a launch likely as early as this weekend.

The mission named ‘Prarambh’, meaning ‘the beginning’, signifying a new era for the private space sector in India and the first mission for Skyroot Aerospace, was unveiled by ISRO Chairman, S. Somanath in Bangalore on November 7, 2022, after the technical launch clearance from the Space regulator IN-SPACe.

A launch window between November 12 and 16 has been notified by authorities, the final date will be confirmed based on weather conditions, Skyroot said in a press release.

“We could build and get our Vikram-S rocket mission-ready in such a short time only because of the invaluable support we received from ISRO and IN-SPACe,” and the technology talent the space tech venture has developed, co-founder and CEO, Pawan Kumar Chandana, said in the release.

Skyroot’s launch vehicles are named ‘Vikram’ as a tribute to the founder of the Indian Space programme and renowned scientist Vikram Sarabhai.

Naga Bharath Daka, COO and Co-Founder of Skyroot Aerospace said “The Vikram-S rocket getting launched is a single-stage sub-orbital launch vehicle which would carry three customer payloads and help test and validate the majority of the technologies in the Vikram series of space launch vehicles.”

The rocket is carrying two Indian and one foreign payload, Press Trust of India reports.

Spacekidz, a Chennai-based aerospace startup, will fly Fun-Sat, a 2.5 kg satellite developed by students from India, the US, Singapore and Indonesia on the sub-orbital flight onboard Vikram-S, according to PTI.

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One of the latest climate finance initiatives in India comes from Merak Ventures, a venture capital firm, and Huddle, an accelerator-led fund that have teamed up to launch ClimAct – a Climate Tech accelerator programme for startups in India. The programme will back startups in India in agriculture wastage and supply chain efficiency, mobility and transport, climate finance, carbon accounting and sequestration, and digital solutions. And Indian SaaS icon Zoho announces expansion plans, crossing $1 billion in annual revenue.

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Snap, maker of photo and video sharing app Snapchat, yesterday announced the India launch of the Snapchat Sounds Creator Fund - a grant program designed to recognize emerging, independent artists in India.

Starting mid-November, Snap has partnered DistroKid to facilitate and distribute $50,000 divided into payments of $2,500 to up to 20 artists per month.

Amazon yesterday got the go-ahead from a South African court to build its planned offices in Cape Town, on a plot that is considered a heritage site, in a setback for the indigenous people attempting to stop the development, Bloomberg reports.

As world leaders meet in Egypt for the COP 27 annual summit on climate change, John Kerry, the US climate envoy and Democratic Party stalwart, said a Republican win in today’s midterm election in America would cut the flow of climate finance to poorer countries, Bloomberg reports.

Speaking at a panel discussion on climate adaptation, Kerry delivered a stark warning about the potential for the US to deliver billions in its share of international climate finance. “If what I think will happen in today’s elections happens and the House is gone, you’re not going to see that money,” he said, according to the report.

Merak Ventures, a sector-agnostic, early-stage venture capital firm, and Huddle, an accelerator-led fund for India's early-stage ventures, yesterday announced the launch of ClimAct – a Climate Tech accelerator program for startups in India.

The program aims to accelerate and fund early-stage Climate Tech start-ups in India working in areas such as agriculture-wastage and supply chain efficiency, mobility and transport, climate finance, carbon accounting and sequestration, and digital solutions.

ClimAct is open for applications, and the first cohort will kick off in February 2023, Merak and Huddle said in a press release. The program will run for four months through June 2023.

The selected companies will gain access to an upfront Pre-Seed capital of $200,000 per startup, with the potential for follow-on investment of up to $1.5 million post the 4-month program.

Zoho, India’s best-known and biggest software company, has hit $1 billion in annual revenue, seeing more uptake for its unified approach to business software with products such as Zoho One.

“Fundamentals matter now more than ever, and our industry has to learn to lower the friction of technology so that technology becomes far more affordable,” Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO of the Chennai company said in a press release.

“We have also crossed an important milestone of $1 billion in annual revenue. While growth has slowed down quite a bit in 2022 over 2021, our diversified product portfolio and the fact that we save money for customers has helped us so far.”

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United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned world leaders at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt that humanity will have to urgently work together or face annihilation, in the fight against global warming. In particular, the US and China must join forces to make a “historic” pact happen between rich emitters and emerging to hold the rise in temperatures to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era that most experts believe today is a lost cause without drastic action.

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Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, in the first broad headcount reduction in the company’s 18-year history, Wall Street Journal reports, citing people aware of the plans.

The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is expected as early as Wednesday, according to the Journal.

Meanwhile, Twitter is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return as they are needed for crucial jobs, Bloomberg reports.

Apple is telling customers they’ll have to wait longer to get its latest iPhone models after anti-virus restrictions were imposed on a factory run by Foxconn, a major contractor, in central China, Associated Press reports.

“We now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated. Customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products,” according to AP.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned world leaders gathered at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt that humanity will have to urgently work together or face annihilation, in the fight against global warming.

He called for a “historic” pact between rich emitters and emerging economies that would see countries double down on cutting emissions, holding the rise in temperatures to the more ambitious Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era.

Current trends would see carbon pollution increase by 10 percent by the end of the decade and Earth’s surface heats up by 2.8C.

“Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible,” he said. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

The UN chief asked countries to agree to phase out the use of fossil fuels and coal, the most carbon-intense fuels, by 2040 globally, with members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) hitting that mark by 2030.

The world must resist the temptation to put climate change on the backburner because of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the global economic slowdown and inflation, the UN Chief said.

The science is clear: any hope of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees means achieving global net zero emissions by 2050. But that 1.5-degree goal is on life support – and the machines are rattling. We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return, Guterres said.

In particular, the US and China must join forces, he said. “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact.”

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Apple will continue to source modem chips from Qualcomm for the 2023 iPhone 15 lineup, MacRumors reports, citing Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Meta Platforms’s India chief Ajit Mohan has stepped down and will join rival social networking company Snap, Economic Times reports. Wipro yesterday named Amit Choudhary, a former Capgemini executive, as a chief operating officer and member of the Bengaluru IT services company’s executive board.

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Apple will continue to source modem chips from Qualcomm for the 2023 iPhone 15 lineup, MacRumors reports, citing Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Qualcomm said it is set to provide the "vast majority" of modem chips for Apple's devices, despite earlier expectations that it would provide just a fraction of modem chips.

Qualcomm in November 2021 said that it expected to supply 20 percent of Apple's modem chips in 2023, signalling a potential shift to Apple's modem chips. Apple has been working on its modems and purchased Intel's modem chip business to get a head start.

Initial rumours pointed to 2023 as the year Apple would be ready to transition, but it looks like it will take a bit longer for Apple to end its reliance on Qualcomm, according to the report.

WhatsApp yesterday announced that its communities feature will start rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone over the next few months.

The new feature, touted as a major update, allows the creation of sub-groups, multiple threads, and announcement channels. WhatsApp is also rolling out polls and video calling for up to 32 people at a time, according to a press release.

To get started, users can tap on the new communities tab at the top of their chats on Android and the bottom on iOS. From there, users will be able to start a new Community or add existing groups. Once in a community, users can easily switch between available groups to get the information they need, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the community.

In more news about Meta Platforms, the parent company of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, the company’s India chief Ajit Mohan has stepped down and will join rival social networking company Snap, Economic Times reports.

Mohan joined Meta in 2019, then Facebook, from Hotstar, and served as a vice president and managing director of the India business for the social media company.

Wipro yesterday named Amit Choudhary, a former Capgemini executive, as a chief operating officer and member of the Wipro Executive Board.

Amit will be responsible for improving organizational operational efficiency, helping drive sustainable growth, the Bengaluru IT services company, India’s fourth biggest, said in a press release.

At Capgemini, Amit was the Chief Operating Officer for the Financial Services Business Unit, as well as a member of their Executive Committee. Before Capgemini, Amit held various leadership positions at Boston Consulting Group and Cadence Design Systems and consulted with Boards and CXOs in industries including financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and industrial goods.

Amit is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur, and the Indian Institute of Management – Calcutta. He is based in New York.

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India’s Tata Group is planning to multiply the number of employees at its electronics factory in southern India that makes iPhone components, adding tens of thousands of workers as part of a push to win more business from Apple, Bloomberg reports. And India’s SaaS darling Freshworks is facing a class action lawsuit in the US, for allegedly withholding information about obstacles to its business in the lead-up to its IPO last year.

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India’s Tata Group is planning to add tens of thousands of women employees at its factory in southern India that makes iPhone components, as part of its efforts to win more business from Apple, according to a Bloomberg report that was carried in Business Standard yesterday.

The plant, in the industrial town of Hosur, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, will hire as many as 45,000 women workers within 18 to 24 months as it sets up new production lines, according to the report. The factory, which produces iPhone housings, currently employs about 10,000 workers, most of them women, according to the report.

A senior Microsoft executive said yesterday that thousands of businesses will fail to meet pledges to combat climate change unless they start training employees on sustainability.

"We have to move very quickly to start to bring our emissions down, and the ultimate bottleneck is the supply of skilled people," Microsoft’s President Brad Smith told Reuters, ahead of a report the company released.

The report is based on a study by Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group, which found that many corporate environmental leaders, about 68 percent, in fact, were internal hires whose team members lacked sustainability-related degrees more often than not. The findings primarily stemmed from interviews and surveys with Microsoft and eight other large companies in sectors such as finance and consumer goods, according to Reuters.

Freshworks, India’s first SaaS company to list on the Nasdaq, is facing a class action lawsuit in the US that says the company knew its business was facing “obstacles” but withheld that information leading up to its IPO last year.

Scott+Scott, which describes itself as an international shareholder and consumer rights litigation firm, has filed a securities class action lawsuit against Freshworks and some of its directors and officers, and the underwriters of the company’s September 2021 listing, according to a press release on Nov. 1.

The firm is asking people who purchased Freshworks’ common stock to get in touch and join the class action.

According to the complaint filed in the US District of California, Northern District and captioned Sundaram v. Freshworks, the company’s IPO documents were false and misleading and omitted to state that, at the time of the offering, the Company’s business had encountered obstacles.

Byju’s, India’s most valued unicorn that is haemorrhaging money and sacking staff, has initiated discussions to raise $250-300 million from private equity group TPG to capitalise the business further, Economic Times reports, citing people aware of the discussions.

The company recently raised $250 million from existing investors, including Qatar Investment Authority and Tiger Global.

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Google has temporarily halted enforcing its Google Play app store rule that developers use its proprietary billing system in India after the country’s Competition Commission ruled the practice anti-competitive, last month. Freshworks beat its guidance for fiscal Q3 revenue with a 37 percent increase in constant currency. The company raised its full-year projection, although the December quarter growth is expected at a slower, 27-28 percent range.

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Google has temporarily halted enforcing its Google Play app store rule that developers use its proprietary billing system in India after the country’s Competition Commission ruled the practice illegal, last month.

“Following the Competition Commission of India's recent ruling, we are pausing enforcement of the requirement for developers to use Google Play's billing system for the purchase of digital goods and services for transactions by users in India while we review our legal options,” Google said in an update on its support page.

Elon Musk said he will give “power to the people” by offering verification through Twitter Blue for $8 a month, CNBC reports, citing a thread of tweets by the world’s richest person, who bought the microblogging platform provider last month.

Musk said participants will get priority in mentions, replies and search, receive half as many ads and will be able to tweet long videos and audio, according to CNBC.

Freshworks, a Silicon Valley and Chennai-based cloud software provider for customer support, beat its guidance for its fiscal Q3 revenue which rose 37 percent in constant currency. The company raised its full-year projection, although the December quarter growth is expected at a slower, 27-28 percent range, according to a company press release.

Sales for the three months ended Sep. 30 rose to $128.8 million, a 33 percent increase in reported terms, year-on-year, and 37 percent growth in constant currency terms, which eliminates the effect of fluctuating currency rates. Freshworks had projected an increase of 31-33 percent in August.

The company is projecting a slower 27-28 percent growth for the current quarter but still expects to grow 36-37 percent for the full year, which is a 100-basis-point higher than its August projection of 35-36 percent.

Volocopter, a German startup building electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, has secured $182 million for the second signing of its Series E round. That’s on top of the $170 million Volocopter raised for the same round in March at a $1.87 billion post-money valuation, TechCrunch reports.

Volocopter is currently testing its two-seater VoloCity air taxi based on the requirements set by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. The fresh funds will help the company accelerate testing and get closer to certification and commercialisation, TechCrunch reports.

Modl.ai, a Danish startup building automated testing software for game developers, has raised $8.4 million in a series A funding, in a round led by Griffin Gaming Partners and Microsoft’s M12 venture fund, VentureBeat reports.

Modl.ai seeks to automate processes like debugging and quality assurance testing for game developers.

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India will set up multiple grievance appellate committees to oversee content moderation decisions of social media platform providers in the country, as the government looks to reign in content it deems unlawful. At Twitter, which is in a legal battle with the Indian government over orders to take down various accounts and tweets, new owner Elon Musk has plans to form a council to oversee content moderation, CNBC reports. Twitter may also charge a fee for user verification, according to the tech newsletter Platformer.

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India will set up multiple grievance appellate committees to oversee content moderation decisions of social media platform providers in the country, as the government looks to reign in content it deems unlawful.

This change was inserted into the country’s rules on internet intermediaries that were published in February last year, according to a notification in the government’s official gazette, on Oct. 28.

These committees will have the power to overturn the decisions made by grievance officers appointed by the social media platforms. Each committee will comprise a chairperson and two whole-time members appointed by the government.

The rules on intermediaries that came into effect last year required the social media platforms to name local nodal contact persons – to be available round the clock – and local grievance officers in India to hear feedback and complaints from users.

Individuals will be allowed to file their appeal within 30 days from the date of receipt of communication from the grievance officer. The designated committees will also be required to deal with such appeals expeditiously, within 30 days, according to the government’s notification.

“We are doing this very reluctantly and because we have an obligation and duty to the digital citizens that their grievances should be heard by someone,” India’s information technology minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told reporters in a conference on Oct. 29, Economic Times reports.

Meanwhile, at Twitter, one of the biggest social media platforms that sees India as its third largest market by users, new owner Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is planning to form a “content moderation council,” CNBC reports.

Musk – who has previously said he would reinstate former US president Donald Trump’s Twitter account – now says he will not make any “major content decisions” or reinstate any accounts that were previously banned before the council convenes, according to CNBC.

Musk, the world’s richest person, bought Twitter last week after months of wrangling. For now, he is short on details about how his content moderation council will work and how much power it will have, according to CNBC.

In India, Twitter is fighting a legal battle with the government over orders to take down several accounts and tweets.

Twitter will also revise its user verification process, Musk said in a tweet yesterday.

"Whole verification process is being revamped right now", Musk said in his tweet.

Twitter is considering charging for the coveted blue check mark verifying the identity of its account holder, Reuters reports, citing a technology newsletter, Platformer.

Users would have to subscribe to Twitter Blue at $4.99 a month or lose their "verified" badges if the project moves forward.

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Apple’s restrictive app store rules might be the reason that audiobooks are no longer available for purchase on Spotify’s iOS app, a month after the music streaming company launched them in the US, The Verge reports. Meanwhile, European anti-trust regulators are investigating Google's Play Store, Reuters reports. And Meta has lost more than two-thirds of its value this year, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg chases the Metaverse, Bloomberg points out.

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Apple reported its fiscal fourth quarter results yesterday, beating analysts’ estimates and avoiding a slowdown that other big tech companies including Google and Meta Platforms are seeing as the global economy begins to stall.

Overall sales were up 8 percent for the three months ended Sep. 30, from the prior year at $90.1 billion, a record, Apple said in a press release.

Apple saw “very strong double-digit growth in India, Southeast Asia and Latin America,” CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.

Investors are pleasantly surprised, but not everyone is cheering. Apple’s app store rules might be the reason that audiobooks are no longer available for purchase on Spotify’s iOS app, a month after the music streaming company launched them in the US, The Verge reports, after an update for Spotify’s iOS app released yesterday.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek accused Apple of “doing serious harm to the internet economy, choking competition and the imagination of app developers” at every turn, in a blog post on Oct. 25.

Apple enforces its proprietary billing system on which it levies a 30 percent cut on in-app sales of digital goods, such as audiobooks, for example. Last year, South Korea became the first country to ban this via legislation that extended to other app store providers as well, including Google, which charges a similar fee.

It is worth noting that Apple also sells individual audiobooks within its own Books app which doesn’t face the 30 percent cut, The Verge Points out.

Meanwhile, European anti-trust regulators are investigating Google's Play Store, the company said in a regulatory filing, a move that could expose the internet search giant to another billion euro fine, Reuters reports.

India’s Competition Commission is also investigating these practices by Apple and Google. On Oct. 25, the country’s competition authority fined Google Rs. 936.44 crore for its anti-competitive behaviour concerning the Play store in India, it said in a statement.

For investors, Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms may have the worst problems. Meta’s shares are down about 25 percent, Bloomberg reported yesterday, after the company’s disappointing results came out on Oct. 26, and Zuckerberg called for patience from investors. The shares have plunged $677 billion this year, according to Bloomberg.

SiMa Technologies, a fabless semiconductor startup focused on machine learning at the embedded edge, has extended its Series B1 round to $67 million with new participation from MSD Partners, the Silicon Valley company said in a press release.

The company had previously raised $30 million, and the $37 million extension includes participation from existing investors as well.

The money will help SiMa expand “more aggressively than we originally planned,” including in locations outside the US, founder and CEO Krishna Rangasayee said.

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UK’s new prime minister Indian-born Rishi Sunak reimposed the government’s ban on fracking, which had been lifted by his predecessor, Liz Truss, in her short-lived premiership, The Guardian reports. Apple has confirmed future iPhones will be equipped with USB-C charging ports after the EU made it a common standard, Wall Street Journal reports. And IBM’s India head has warned staff against moonlighting, according to Economic Times.

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UK’s new prime minister Rishi Sunak reimposed the government’s ban on fracking, which had been lifted by his predecessor, Liz Truss, in her short-lived premiership, The Guardian reports.

Fracking will, in effect, remain banned under Rishi Sunak’s government, as the new prime minister was committed to the policy in the ruling conservative party’s 2019 manifesto.

Apple has confirmed it will follow European Union legislation that sets a common charging standard for mobile phones and other portable electronic devices, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Obviously, we’ll have to comply,” Greg Joswiak, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said on Oct. 25 while speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, the paper reports.

Separately, Apple, yesterday, asked its global supply chain partners to take more steps to address their greenhouse gas emissions and take a comprehensive approach to decarbonisation, the company said in a press release.

IBM’s India head has warned its Indian employees against moonlighting, saying critical client data and commercial assets could be at risk, Economic Times reports.

“While an IBMer's time outside of work is their own, it also requires them to avoid engaging in activities that create a conflict of interest,” read an internal note from India managing director Sandip Patel sent to the employees, according to ET.

Walmart’s Indian ecommerce company Flipkart is considering raising $2 billion to $3 billion at a valuation of more than $40 billion to expand its product range in India and challenge rivals, the Mint reported on Tuesday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The world's biggest retailer is keen to bring in strategic investors for the Indian company but is also open to selling to large pure-play investment firms, according to the report which is behind a paywall but was picked up by Reuters.

WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox), a Hong Kong startup offering a customer and sales engagement tool, has raised $23 million in series B funding, led by Tiger Global, the company said in a press release. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, and new investors DST Global Partners and Shopify joined in.

Devtron, a startup that provides an open-source internal DevOps platform for Kubernetes adoption, has raised $12 million in new funding led by global software investor Insight Partners, according to a press release. Devtron will use the new capital to scale its team, drive adoption of its platform and expand into new markets.

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