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, ad...

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...

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 restrictio...

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 s...

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 purpo...

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 y...

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...

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 manag...

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, I...

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 c...

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 cr...

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...

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 s...

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...

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 s...

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...

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 gr...

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 m...

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...

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 moonligh...

The Competition Commission of India has imposed a penalty of a little under Rs. 1338 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in the Android mobile device ecosystem, apart from issuing a cease-and-desist order. The Commission, which has been investigating Google’s market practices since 2019, also directed Google to modify its conduct within a defined timeline, accordi...

IBM yesterday beat analysts’ estimates for its fiscal third quarter across software, consulting and infrastructure segments, and raised its growth projection for the full year, CNBC reports. The Competition Commission of India has pulled up MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and Oyo for anti-competitive behaviour, fining them $47 million in total; and mid-sized Indian IT services companies are reporting strong g...

Apple yesterday released a new iPad with its A14 chip, and an iPad Pro running on its M2 processor. Microsoft is laying off some staff, Wall Street Journal reports, and the company is planning a new data centre in India, according to Economic Times. Cloud startup funding in Europe, the US and Israel fell significantly in the September quarter, global VC firm Accel said in a report. And electric sc...

Reliance Jio Infocomm, the wireless business of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries and the country’s biggest mobile carrier, has chosen Nokia as a major 5G supplier, the Finnish telecom equipment maker said yesterday, Reuters reports. Biocon is looking to tap a $700 million market via a Japanese alliance for two of its biosimilar products. And Flipkart is launching a metaverse space called Fl...

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, yesterday, launched 75 Digital Banking Units (DBUs) in 75 different districts across the nation, as the government moves to bring banks to the doorsteps of citizens in far-flung areas. These units are brick-and-mortar outlets that will offer a variety of services to customers—all digitally. They will also inculcate digital financial literacy and awareness of c...