Pleased Friday! Digital funds spiked in the course of the competition of Diwali. This and extra in in the present day’s ETtech Morning Dispatch.
Additionally within the letter:
■ US tech cos depend on H-1B
■ Canva’s India plans
■ ETtech Accomplished Offers
Digital funds journey on festive cheer; UPI logs document transactions on Diwali night time
Digital cost transactions noticed a gentle uptick with Indians happening a consumption spree in the course of the festive month shopping for garments, attire items for his or her pets, and reserving holidays.
Numbers recreation: Unified Funds Interface (UPI), the most well-liked retail cost platform, reported a document 644 million transactions on October 31, the day of Diwali. Throughout the board, cost aggregators who course of funds for on-line retailers noticed anyplace between 50% and 60% bounce in transactions throughout a number of classes of retailers.
Macro report: Japanese monetary companies main Nomura, in a report on India’s Diwali spends, identified that in comparison with 2023, development this 12 months was muted however consumption traits have been regular throughout rural and concrete India. General gross sales grew 15% between 2024 and 2023, with development primarily pushed by on-line retailers.
Credit score transactions: Just like the Dussehra festive week, your entire month of October noticed credit-based transactions driving a lot of the gross sales. Amazon Pay noticed a 50% year-on-year (YoY) bounce in transactions by Amazon Pay-ICICI Financial institution bank cards. Fintech startup Kiwi stated that RuPay-powered bank cards noticed main development in neighbourhood shops, with shoppers utilizing their credit score devices to pay by way of UPI.
Additionally Learn | Festive gross sales finish with a bang, after Rs 1 lakh crore of clicks
ED sifts by way of carts of Amazon, Flipkart sellers
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday performed searches on the premises of sellers of ecommerce giants Amazon and Flipkart for alleged overseas change violations, sources within the know instructed us.
Driving the information: The searches stem from the CCI’s probe on on-line marketplaces, which discovered that each Amazon and Flipkart have been giving preferential remedy to a few of their bigger sellers.
Quote, unquote: “… these searches are primarily based on the current findings of Competitors Fee of India’s (CCI) antitrust investigations. Sure irregularities have been discovered within the inventories and books of the sellers below probe, and the identical is being studied,” stated a authorities supply.
Inform me extra: The company initiated its investigation primarily based on a number of complaints towards the ecommerce marketplaces alleging they’ve been violating overseas funding norms “by immediately or not directly influencing the sale worth of products or companies and never offering a degree taking part in discipline” for all of the sellers.
Recap: In August, commerce minister Piyush Goyal alleged that Amazon’s proposed $1-billion funding in India was to compensate for its big loss that “smells of predatory pricing”. He additionally questioned the affect of ecommerce on crores of small retailers.
Additionally Learn: ETtech Explainer: Timeline of CCI’s antitrust probe into Amazon and Flipkart
US MNCs leaned on H-1B visas extra previously eight years
Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple are amongst US expertise giants hiring extra H-1B visa-holding workers within the final eight years at the same time as Indian IT companies companies lower their reliance, an ET evaluation confirmed.
Driving the information: India’s prime seven IT companies corporations, together with TCS, Wipro, Infosys, and HCL, have introduced down their dependency on H-1B workers by 56% within the final eight years.
In the identical interval, the usage of the US’s premier work visa soared by 189% at Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple mixed, an evaluation of H-1B beneficiary approval knowledge from US Citizenship and Immigration Providers confirmed.
Present state: The anti-immigration stance of newly elected US President Donald Trump may have an effect on not solely new H-1B employee visas but in addition renewals for present holders, the employability of H-Four visa spouses, short-term intra-company transfers on L1 visas, and extraordinary expertise classes like EB1 for researchers.
Additionally Learn: IT sector upbeat regardless of fears over revamp of immigration legal guidelines
Knowledgeable take: Immigration attorneys are bracing up for a whole overhaul of the Immigration and Nationality Act, with a selected concentrate on the extremely sought-after H-1B work visa class. Some specialists are even forecasting country-specific quotas primarily based on the US’s bilateral relationships, which may place India in a beneficial place.
Canva is leveraging its Fb India communities to construct deeper inroads
Cliff Obrecht, cofounder, Canva
Design software program startup Canva is betting on localisation of its design templates and options to cater to the rising inhabitants of social media influencers and content material creators in India, stated Cliff Obrecht, cofounder of the Australian startup.
Plans for India: Within the final one 12 months, India has doubled in development and contributed ‘considerably’ to the $2.5 billion annualised income run fee the startup has achieved. Canva is utilizing its Fb-based communities of greater than 240,000 freelancers and 10,000 academics to construct deep inroads into the nation. India is the fifth-largest marketplace for the software program big.
World development: Canva has round 200 million month-to-month energetic customers worldwide, which has grown exponentially during the last 12 months or so. The corporate not too long ago undertook a significant secondary transaction that valued the startup at round $32 billion.
Enterprise biz: Canva has seen its revenues from the enterprise gross sales enterprise bounce 300% within the final one 12 months. Round 95% of Fortune 500 corporations are utilizing Canva, together with the likes of Atlassian, HP, NYSE, and DHL Categorical.
Additionally Learn: India is our fifth largest market; one of many quickest rising: Melanie Perkins, CEO, Canva
ETtech Accomplished Offers
Haldiram Bhujiawala secures Rs 235 crore from Pantomath’s Bharat Worth Fund; sells minority stake: Kolkata-based snack model Haldiram Bhujiawala has raised Rs 235 crore from personal fairness investor Bharat Worth Fund (BVF), managed by monetary companies agency Pantomath Capital Administration, in change for a minority stake.
AI software program agency Thesys raises $Four million from Collectively Fund: Synthetic intelligence (AI) software program platform Thesys has raised $Four million in seed funding led by Collectively Fund, with participation from 8vc.
SaaS-focused agentic AI platform Pulse raises $1.Four million: Software program-as-a-service (SaaS)-focused agentic AI platform Pulse has raised $1.Four million in a seed funding spherical led by Endiya Companions, with participation from a bunch of angel traders, together with the founders of SaaS platform Zluri and customer support startup Yellow.ai, together with different entrepreneurs.
Journey startup 30 Sundays raises $770ok in spherical led by InfoEdge Ventures: Journey startup 30 Sundays has raised $770,000 in a funding spherical led by early-stage-focused enterprise capital agency InfoEdge Ventures.
Different High Tales By Our Reporters
Alakh Pandey, founder, PhysicsWallah
PhysicsWallah income tops Rs 2,000 crore in FY24; loss jumps: Edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah crossed the Rs 2,000-crore income mark in the course of the monetary 12 months ended March 31, 2024, however its loss widened in a giant approach.
Freshworks to put off 660 workers amid world restructuring: Nasdaq-listed software-as-a-service (SaaS) main Freshworks is lowering its workforce by 13%, impacting about 660 workers globally, as a part of its efforts to streamline operations, the corporate’s CEO Dennis Woodside wrote in a letter to the corporate’s workers. The agency presently has a workforce of greater than 5,000 workers.
Google Cloud companions with DeliverHealth to boost healthcare documentation with AI: Google Cloud on Thursday introduced a collaboration with DeliverHealth, a healthcare medical documentation firm, for healthcare suppliers to doc affected person care.
World Picks We Are Studying
■ What Large Tech CEOs need from a second Trump presidency (FT)
■ Why AI may eat quantum computing’s lunch (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
■ Elon Musk is now X’s greatest promoter of anti-immigrant conspiracies (Bloomberg)
