Moneycontrol: Sources: India-based Slice, which has transitioned from a credit card-led fintech to a small finance bank, raised $100M at a ~$450M valuation, down from ~$1.4B — The downround, which marks a nearly 70% correction from Slice's earlier valuation, comes after funding talks with Accel …
Moneycontrol: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's enterprise push with PE firms poses a new competitive threat to India's IT industry, as services become increasingly automatable — On Wall Street, the announcements sounded like the next phase of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom: frontier model companies …
Bhavya Dilipkumar / Moneycontrol: Q&A with Replit CEO Amjad Masad, who says India is Replit's second-largest market by active users, on integrating Razorpay's tech, AI's impact on SaaS, and more — The AI coding wars are heating up. As tech giant and AI upstarts race to redefine how software is built …
Moneycontrol: Prosus invests ~$146M in Indian travel app ixigo for a 10.1% stake; sources say Prosus plans to buy more shares from other investors to raise its stake to 15% — Peak XV Partners will sell about 3 percent to Prosus and Elevation Capital will sell another 2 percent to Prosus …
Danish Khan / Moneycontrol: Sources: Apple is ramping up efforts to source manufacturing machinery in India, essential for making iPhones locally, and is working with around 17 suppliers — Around 17 companies have directly started working with Apple in India for capital equipment and tools over the last 20-24 months and the number is only expected to go up
Chandra R Srikanth / Moneycontrol: Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham, one of India's most prominent SaaS founders, announced he will step down as executive chair effective December 1, 2025 — Mathrubootham's exit marks the end of an era for one of India's most prominent SaaS founders and angel investors.
Moneycontrol: Indian software services provider Tata Consultancy Services plans to cut 2% of its global workforce, or about 12,000 employees, by March 31, 2026 — In an interview with Moneycontrol, TCS CEO K Krithivasan described the decision as one of the toughest he has faced, calling it a necessary step to build a stronger, future-ready company.
Moneycontrol: Bengaluru-based ShopOS, whose AI agents help automate content creation, marketing, and site management for e-commerce brands, raised $20M from 3State Ventures — The Flipkart co-founder is betting on a new AI-native OS for brands, built by his former team at Scapic and Flipkart Labs
Moneycontrol: Nasscom-Zinnov: Indian tech startup funding surged 23% YoY to $7.4B in 2024, with the number of deals up 27% YoY and newly founded startups more than doubling — DeepTech startup funding increased by 78%, reaching $1.6 billion, while deal volume surged by 24%. — Representative image.
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Snap says 375K+ creators have built over 4M AR lenses for Snapchat; CTO Bobby Murphy says Indian creators are now the top source, growing 50%+ in two years — India is Snap's second-largest market for the AR developer community. A few developers are already building experiences for the Spectacles AR glasses that run on Snap OS.
Moneycontrol: Q&A with Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha on raising a new $350M round, the narrative that quick commerce is hurting grocery stores, industry pay structure, and more — In a wide-ranging interview with Moneycontrol, Palicha asserted Zepto is an Indian company that is not controlled by Americans, unlike Amazon and Flipkart parent Walmart.
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim launches its developer offerings, including cloud infrastructure access, and an Android app for its eponymous AI chatbot — Krutrim's mobile app launch comes as the country's first AI unicorn gears up to launch its developer offerings, which includes cloud infrastructure and mapping solutions.
Debangana Ghosh / Moneycontrol: India's top five IT services companies, including Infosys and Wipro, collectively saw a decline of 69,167 employees in FY 2024; HCLTech added 1,537 employees — Four out of the five top IT companies including TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Tech Mahindra lost employees both sequentially in Q4 and full year FY24.
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Q&A with Slack CTO Cal Henderson on how the pandemic changed Slack and workplace habits, acquisition by Salesforce, generative AI, India market, and more — The pandemic accelerated changes that were already happening in the workplace and took us forward five or 10 years in terms of workplace habits …
Bhavya Dilipkumar / Moneycontrol: Bengaluru-based Scapia, which offers a co-branded credit card and an app to turn daily expenses into travel rewards, raised a $23M Series A — The company will use the funds to add more financial services to the platform, including personal loans and insurance, and also hire more talent in product and tech development areas
Anand J / Moneycontrol: Sources: Apple is in talks to launch Apple Card in India, meeting with HDFC and the RBI; a source says Apple is holding discussions with the NPCI over Apple Pay — This comes in the wake of Apple's decision to stop card payments in India on its App Store and for its iCloud services.
Moneycontrol: Amazon plans to integrate its logistics network and SaaS tools with India's Open Network for Digital Commerce, after Paytm and others committed to joining ONDC — Other e-commerce and fintech players who have committed to join ONDC include Meesho, Snapdeal, Shiprocket, Paytm and PhonePe
Bhavya Dilipkumar / Moneycontrol: Mumbai-based Mintoak, which lets banks deploy and scale services like payments and lending to their SMB customers, raised a $20M Series A led by PayPal Ventures — The startup plans to use the raised capital to ramp up its tech stack and double down on the existing product portfolio.
Bhavya Dilipkumar / Moneycontrol: Bengaluru-based Entropik, which uses AI to analyze consumers' expressions, eye gaze, and more, raised a $25M Series B in equity and debt led by Bessemer and SIG — Entropik is planning to use the funds raised towards bringing innovation in consumer research for global brands and for expanding …
Moneycontrol: ShareChat employees and investors shed light on the company's leadership crisis and say revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and the ~$5B 2022 valuation — The company's top and middle management are hollowing out, revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and Sharechat's top-tier valuation …
Moneycontrol: Some ShareChat employees and investors detail the company's leadership crisis and say revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and its ~$5B valuation in 2022 — The company's top and middle management are hollowing out, revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and Sharechat's top-tier valuation …
Nikhil Patwardhan / Moneycontrol: Walmart-backed Indian fintech company PhonePe raised $350M from General Atlantic at a $12B+ valuation, with plans to raise as much as $1B in tranches — With the valuation markup, PhonePe has become a decacorn or a startup valued at over $10 billion, joining the likes of Flipkart …
Moneycontrol: India releases draft online gaming rules, seeking to create a self-regulatory body and to require parental consent for gamers under 18, for public consultation — These draft regulations come at a time when India's gaming sector has seen unprecedented growth in terms of app downloads and revenue
Nikhil Patwardhan / Moneycontrol: Simplilearn, which offers upskilling courses, bootcamps, and certifications, raised $45M led by GSV Ventures; Blackstone acquired a $250M majority stake in 2021 — The higher learning edtech platform will use the funds to boost its growth plans in India and international markets
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Meta confirms WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and India's public policy head Rajiv Aggarwal have stepped down; sources say the exits are not layoff related — Shivnath Thukral, who is currently serving as the director of public policy at WhatsApp India, has been appointed the director …
Deepsekhar Choudhury / Moneycontrol: Source: Indian B2B marketplace Udaan plans to lay off 325 to 350 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, a week after raising $120M in convertible debt — Up to 350 on-payroll employees to get impacted, apart from a number of contractual workers — A week after securing $120 million …
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Google paused its in-app billing policy in India after the Competition Commission of India ruled not to restrict app developers from using third-party payments — Google said on November 1 it has paused enforcement of its in-app billing system in India following a recent ruling of the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
Moneycontrol: WhatsApp confirms Manesh Mahatme, who led its Indian payments business, has stepped down after 18 months; a source says Mahatme plans to rejoin Amazon — Mahatme's resignation comes at a time when WhatsApp's mobile payments business has failed to take off in a significant fashion in India
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Google extends third-party in-app billing to India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and the European Economic Area; non-gaming developers globally can participate — All non-gaming developers can offer an additional billing option to their mobile and tablet users on Google Play in India …
Moneycontrol: Google says it removed over 2,000 personal loan apps on Play Store in India from January to July 2022, after they were found to be in violation of its policies — Tech giant says it is working with government agencies and other stakeholders to weed out bad actors.
Vikas SN / Moneycontrol: Snap launches Snapchat+ in India for ~$0.62 per month, offering exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features; the service costs $3.99/month in the US — Snapchat+, which unlocks a collection of exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features, will be available for a monthly fee of Rs 49
Moneycontrol: MapmyIndia, which provides mapping data to Apple, Amazon, and others, rises 53% on market debut, opening at $20.88 per share after listing at $13.64 — CE Info Systems, popularly known for its brand MapmyIndia, made a strong debut on the bourses on December 21 despite volatility in the equity market …
Swathi Moorthy / Moneycontrol: Users and experts reveal Clubhouse's content moderation struggles in India, amid a deluge of 18+ rooms, adult content, harassment and bullying on the platform — Moneycontrol pieced this story from conversations with nearly a dozen people who are users, creators, psychologists, industry experts, and civil society organisations.
Swathi Moorthy / Moneycontrol: Users and experts reveal Clubhouse's content moderation struggles in India, amid a deluge of 18+ rooms, adult content, and harassment and bullying — Moneycontrol pieced this story from conversations with nearly a dozen people who are users, creators, psychologists, industry experts, and civil society organisations.
Moneycontrol: Online food delivery platform Zomato invests $175M across Indian startups Shiprocket, Curefit, and Magicpin, and plans to invest $1B in startups over two years — Online food delivery platform Zomato on November 10 announced a $175 million investment across three homegrown startups …
Vikas Sn / Moneycontrol: Truecaller opens up 15.4% in its Stockholm market debut at $6.82 per share, giving it a market cap of ~$2.5B — Truecaller cofounders Alan Mamedi (L) and Nami Zarringhalam — Caller identification firm Truecaller, which earns majority of its revenues from India, made its trading debut at $6.82 …
Moneycontrol: Byju's raises ~$300M at a ~$18B valuation led by Oxshott Venture Fund — Online education firm Byju's has raised Rs 2,200 crore or about $300 million from investors, valuing it at about $18 billion, continuing its fundraising spree, regulatory filings indicated.
M. Sriram / Moneycontrol: Venture Intelligence: Indian internet startups raised a record $20B this year, across 576 deals, surpassing the $13B from 878 deals in 2019 — India has become the preferred investment destination for various reasons - low-interest rates in the US, an expanding online consumer base …