One Thing Today in Tech

Infosys, yesterday, raised the lower end of its revenue projection band for the current fiscal year, but lowered the upper bound of its operating margins – capturing an industry-wide trend amid a potential recession in the Indian IT services companies’ biggest markets. Overall digital technologies related services continued to grow strongly, but the company also saw strong demand for its core IT o...

HCL Technologies, yesterday, beat fiscal second-quarter revenue expectations and increased its guidance for the full fiscal year, signalling demand remains strong for its services in cloud, engineering, and digital technologies amid a global economic slowdown. At Wipro, Q2 revenues matched street expectations, but profits for the September quarter fell nearly 10 percent versus the same period a ye...

The International Monetary Fund is downgrading its outlook for the world economy for 2023, citing multiple factors including Russia’s war against Ukraine, chronic inflation pressures, punishing interest rates and the lingering consequences of the Covid pandemic. Indian American entrepreneur-led Icertis, a contract LCM SaaS specialist, has tapped Infor’s Deanna Lanier as chief strategy officer. And...

Tata Consultancy Services reported quarterly earnings yesterday that show India’s biggest IT services company is still seeing strong demand for its services with an order book of more than $8 billion garnered during its fiscal second quarter. The rate of growth, however, seems to have moderated, with the more than 600,000-strong company growing at less than half the pace at which it grew last year...

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT services company, will be first off the block in reporting fiscal second-quarter earnings results when it reports its numbers after markets in Mumbai today. Analysts at brokerages in India expect growth to continue, and the high staff churn too in the sector. The rate of growth, however, definitely seems to be headed for a slowdown. Infosys, India’s se...

Apple is asking suppliers to move some AirPods and Beats headphone production to India for the first time, as it attempts to step up the diversification of its global supply chain that is currently almost entirely dependent on China, Nikkei reports. Wipro has asked staff to turn up for work at the office at least three times a week, Business Standard reports. NetSPI, with $410 million from KKR, pl...

Prosus, the Dutch-listed global consumer and technology investor, has terminated its agreement to buy India’s BillDesk, ending a deal worth $4.7 billion. Google yesterday announced a list of 20 startups with women founders or co-founders for the first batch of an accelerator programme in India, specifically aimed at encouraging women entrepreneurs. And Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist is this ye...

Reliance Jio will launch a budget laptop, called JioBook, priced at Rs. 15,000 (about $184) with an embedded 4G sim card, Reuters reports. The Indian conglomerate has partnered with Qualcomm and Microsoft for this project. Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off the latest version of the company’s humanoid robot, named Optimus, last week. And Tulsi Tanti, an Indian entrepreneur best known for his wind ener...

Apple is gearing up to make India and Vietnam global manufacturing hubs for its products, with India contributing 25 percent of all iPhones by 2025, according to analysts at JP Morgan, TechCrunch reports. Wipro terminated the services of 300 staff members who were found to be working for its competitors while still being on the company’s payroll, Economic Times reports. And KPIT Technologies takes...

KKR, a global investment firm, and Hero Future Energies, the renewable energy arm of the Hero Group, yesterday announced the signing of definitive agreements under which KKR and the Hero Group will invest $450 million in the Company. OneWeb, the Bharti Enterprises-backed UK company building a LEO satellite constellation, yesterday announced the arrival of 36 satellites at an ISRO launch facility....

European customers of India’s IT services providers in multiple sectors are taking longer to finalise outsourcing contracts because of the energy crisis in the region and the global economic slowdown, Economic Times reports. Starlink now covers every continent, billionaire Elon Musk, who is building the LEO satellite constellation-based internet service, said in a tweet yesterday. And Ola has fire...

Adobe shares fell 17 percent yesterday, its biggest fall in 12 years, after it said it will buy design software rival Figma for $20 billion in cash and stock, CNBC reports. Investors are concerned that Adobe is paying too much, according to CNBC. DotPe, a payments service provider and commerce platform backed by Google, has raised about $54.5 million in a new funding round led by Temasek, Inc42 re...

By fiscal year 2026, at least 12 percent of the free-on-board value of Apple’s global iPhone shipments could be made in India, Inc42 reports, citing a report by Business Standard that is behind a paywall. Byju’s, India’s most-valued startup, yesterday, reported losses of Rs. 4,589 crore for the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2021, which is close to a 20-fold increase over the Rs. 231.69 crore ad...

India’s finance ministry has formed an expert panel, led by former SEBI boss M Damodaran, to suggest ways to increase the inflow of venture capital and private equity investments into the country. Apple plans to sell more ads. And data analytics cloud company Thoughtspot plans to invest $150 million in expanding its Indian operations over the next five years. Notes: India’s finance ministry has fo...

Google is looking to move some Pixel phone production out of China and into India, The Information reports. The company is seeking bids from contract manufacturers for production in India. Apple has already stepped up its efforts to make more of its iPhones in India as geopolitical tensions between the US and China rise. Sachin Bansal’s Navi Technologies gets its IPO go-ahead. And Peer Robotics, a...

India’s finance ministry has decided that loan apps need to get government approval to be listed on online app stores, predominantly those operated by Google and Apple. The ministry’s officials and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met last week to discuss rising concerns over loan apps running rampant and the illegal practices adopted by some of the outfits providing loans. Central banker Reser...

Apple yesterday announced the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max smartphones, featuring a pill-shaped cutout that shows useful information and can be used to bring up apps quickly. Apple calls the cutout, Dynamic Island. It can show important alerts, notifications, and activities. It maintains an active state to allow users easier access to controls with a simple tap-and-hold. Apple also released...

India and China have cleared separate needle-free Covid vaccines, one a spray in the nose and the other inhaled through the mouth, Associated Press reported yesterday. Regulators in India have authorized Bharat Biotech’s nasal version as an option for people who haven’t yet been vaccinated. Apple’s September iPhone event is later today and its priciest smartphone yet is expected. Notes: India and...

Google has started a “user choice billing” pilot of alternative payment systems in its Play store, in some markets, including India, as pressure mounts on the search giant over the fees it takes for in-app sales by developers. India’s Competition Commission has approved PayU’s proposed acquisition of payments gateway BillDesk, paving the way for the Prosus-controlled fintech operator to become one...

For the first time, there are more iPhones in use in the US than Android-based smartphones. Apple has overtaken Android devices to account for more than half of smartphones used in the US. And Amazon is lagging rival Flipkart in India on several important metrics, according to investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein. Notes: For the first time, there are more iPhones in use in the US than Android-base...

One 97 Communications, one of India’s biggest digital payments companies, which operates under the brand name Paytm, has appointed GS Sundararajan, former group director of Shriram group as an independent director on its board, the company told the stock exchanges on Aug.27. Byju’s, after 17-month delay is set to report FY21 financials on Sep. 6. And some details may have emerged about Apple’s lon...

Tinder-owner Match Group has filed an antitrust case against Apple with the competition regulator in India, accusing the iPhone maker of "monopolistic conduct" that forces developers to pay high commissions for in-app purchases. And OmniX Bio, an initiative from VC firm Omnivore to fund early-stage agri-science startups has picked its second venture in Loopworm. Notes: Tinder-owner Match Group has...

Apple will make and release its latest smartphone, the iPhone 14, in India two months after it comes out in China, narrowing the gap between its main production facility and the small but growing one in India. Meta is rolling out its metaverse accounts and profiles. And Fidelity International has picked up a 5 percent stake in Zomato, the global investment firm told stock exchanges in Mumbai. Note...

Sequoia Capital, yesterday, named the next batch of its accelerator programme Surge, in India and Southeast Asia, picking entrepreneurs who are finding opportunities in tackling a range of problems from climate change and agritech to Web3. Many of the founders are women, and several have rich prior experience in their sectors – from finance to aerospace. Some have started straight out of college a...

Shareholders of One97 Communications, which operates the fintech platform Paytm, voted almost unanimously for founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s reappointment as managing director and CEO for another five years, at the company’s annual general meeting last week. Nandan Nilekani’s VC firm Fundamentum has raised $227 million for its second fund. And some Tesla drivers tested the ‘self-driving’ feature o...