Bullets

Meta's third round of layoffs, or the "Year of Efficiency", is coming to India. Saket Jha Sourabh, Avinash Pant, and Amrita Mukherjee, directors of media partnerships, marketing, and legal team, are some of the Indian employees affected by this round of layoffs.

The "Year of Efficiency" consists of removing 10,000 employees and freezing hiring for 5,000 open positions, as managers from various departments are asked to become "individual contributors".

This Bullet feed's getting filled with layoffs, something needs to change.

Kicking big tech firms to the curb, IAMAI's council selects members from startups. Dream11’s founder & CEO, Harsh Jain, is the chairperson, while Rajesh Magow from MakeMyTrip and Satyan Gajwani from Times Internet are chosen Vice-Chirperson & Treasurer, respectively.

The 24-membered governing council surprisingly doesn’t contain a single member from either Google or any of the other big tech firms.

Looks like the big kids were not invited to the trendy tech party!🤭

Nykaa experienced a remarkable surge in revenue but encountered a turbulent journey in net profit during the Q4 of FY23.

While their revenue from operations bloomed by a splendid 33.7% to ₹1,301.7 crore, their net profit took a detour and declined by 71.8%, landing at a mere ₹2.4 crore.

Nykaa seems to have taken us on a rollercoaster of surprises with the financial performance. Let’s hope their next quarter brings smoother sailing for their margins!
 

The roads of Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru will see 25,000 four-wheelers and 10,000 two-wheelers EVs running from next week. This initiative is part of the Uber Green category and is the first step toward Uber’s sustainability goals by 2040.

As an MoU agreement with Tata Motors, Uber will also release XPRES–Tata Motor EVs in a premium category.

The boom of EVs in India is a good sign of the nation’s movement toward creating greener surroundings.🚗

After withdrawing around $7 billion from Indian startups, reaching funding worth $15 billion in the country, Japanese Investment firm SoftBank is looking to reinvest around $400-$500 million.

The investment will be directed towards 5 startups in India, each with a valuation of around $400-$500 million, with investment in each firm exceeding $100 million if its investors want to exit, owing to the ongoing funding winter.

The aim behind the investment is to help these startups reach unicorn status.

Based on an Economic Times report, JioMart has laid off around 1,000 employees and plans to let go of up to 10,000 employees. Apart from the layoffs, many employees have been placed on Performance Improvement Plans as well.

Reliance's acquisition of Metro Cash and Carry India Pvt Ltd- Metro AG's Indian arm, which added close to 3,500 employees to its workforce, led to this decision.

Perfect, even the big shots are now jumping on the lay-off train! Who's next? Tata?

Meta has finally found a taker for Giphy after the UK's antitrust authority demanded the tech giant to sell the GIF library. 

Shutterstock snatched Giphy for a price of $53 million, leaving Meta's wallet hurting from their initial $315 million investment.

However, they can still enjoy Giphy's content through an API agreement.

This rollercoaster ride encountered a roadblock when the UK regulator said, "Undo it!" After a detour through the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the deal wraps up next month. Phew!
 

Media intermediaries like Twitter & Facebook might soon be held accountable for the content on their platforms. With the public unveiling of the Digital India Bill, the neutral ground for these platforms is in danger of poofing.

MoS for Electronics & Information Technology, Rajiv Chandrasekhar, is releasing the draft of the Digital India Bill for public consultation in June’s first week. 

Here’s hoping the 22-year-old IT Act’s replacement would bring much-needed changes to make the digital world safe for netizens.

The Adani Group has recently seen the market capitalisation of the various stocks of the conglomerate rise to their all-time highs since the ill-fated release of the Hindenburg Research report on 24 January 2023.

Adani Enterprises showed the strongest hike of all the stocks, reaching ₹2,600 on Tuesday from the ₹1,900 range last week.

After losing around ₹82,000 crore last week and making the same amount back through the ongoing rally, Adani is turning out to be one volatile underdog!

Meta, the proud owner of Facebook, has just been slapped with a mind-boggling fine of 1.2 billion euros! 

Since 2020, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), acting as the EU's watchdog, has diligently investigated Meta Ireland's practice of transferring user data to the United States.

This marks the third hefty fine Meta has faced in the EU this year and the fourth in just six months. 

Ouch! Looks like Meta's piggy bank is taking a hit.
 

BSNL, the government-owned telecom company, has placed advance purchase orders worth over ₹15,000 crores to TCS and ITI for deploying 1,00,000 4G sites nationwide. 

Tejas Networks, a key player in the TCS-led alliance, will provide the essential Radio Access Networks (RAN) equipment for the project. 

Will this ambitious project finally bring high-speed communication services to every BSNL user?
 

The slowdown in e-commerce left logistics company Delhivery with consecutive losses in its quarterly revenue. After an 8.5% loss in Q3, the March quarter also saw a 10% decline.

Despite negative results, Delhivery is planning to invest in the SaaS platform Vinculum Solutions. Delhivery is set to buy 10.94% Vinculum stakes at ₹72.54 per share.

Will this initiative to boost the D2C approach increase Delhivery’s next quarterly results? Only the future would tell!

SBI declared its Q4 result yesterday, and it's looking good! Beating estimates from various brokerages, the largest bank in India declared a PAT of ₹16,694.51 crore for the March quarter, growing by a whopping 83.18% compared to last year's ₹9,113.53 crore for the same period. The bank's NII also increased from ₹31,197 crore to ₹40,392.50 crore, rising by 29.5%.

SBI is no hoarder either, as it has declared a 1,130% dividend at ₹11.30 per share!🤑

🎵 Uh-oh brace yourselves for the government’s latest single hit! 

Starting July 1, all your international credit card payments are getting a 20% tax twist. The TCS rate was cranked up from 5% to 20% in this year's union budget. 

The government has put them under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, burdening banks and travelers with higher costs, remittance limits, and refund complexities.

So, whether you're swiping in Santorini or tapping in Tokyo, be prepared to sing the tax blues!

Fast fashion brand Shein is planning to re-enter India. Reliance Retail is partnering with Shein, which was banned in 2020 due to the India-China border situation.

After being shunned by the US for using Xinjiang cotton from China, Shein is facing difficulties in sourcing. By collaborating with Reliance, Shein will get one of its fabric sources back in India.

By bringing the previous general of the fashion empire back, Reliance is ready to dominate the industry yet again.

Tesla officials met Indian government officials from various departments to plan to establish an automobile manufacturing unit in India. This plan comes as a result of Tesla not wanting to sell its product somewhere it cannot manufacture and service them and India's aversion to importing goods manufactured in China.

Tesla currently has manufacturing units established in US, Germany and China. A manufacturing unit in India could help the economy by generating jobs and bringing competition to the near-monopolistic EV industry.

After being slapped with a hefty ₹936.44 crore fine by the Competition Commission of India in October for playing rough with its Play Store policies, Google faced the consequences. 

The Alliance of Digital India Foundation stormed in, waving their banners of non-compliance, seeking a CCI review at the Delhi High Court.

But hold your popcorn, folks! In a high-stakes showdown, Google now bravely marches forward with its new payments policy in India, boldly proclaiming compliance with the CCI’s directives.
 

Chief Executive of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Adam Selipsky shared the company’s plans to invest over $12.7 Billion in India. This investment will boost the cloud infrastructure as well as add $23 Billion to the country’s GDP.

AWS has already invested $3.7 Billion in the country between 2016-2022.

After firing above 500 employees from Amazon India, is this the company’s way to placate the nation’s emotions?

Kishore Biyani's Future Retail has lost all favour, going from 49 ambitious bidders to just 6, with Reliance Retail and the Adani Group being the most recent and significant dropouts.

Space Mantra is the highest bidder, aiming for the whole business, while Pinnacle Air, Palgun Tech LLC, Lehar Solutions, Goodwill Furniture and Sarvabhishta e-waste management are bidding for parts of the company.

From 1,500 outlets to struggling for bidders, Future Retail really lost the plot.

Zomato has upped the game by introducing its own UPI offering called Zomato UPI in collaboration with ICICI Bank. 

This exciting development allows customers to seamlessly make payments within the Zomato app, eliminating the need for redirection to external platforms like Google Pay or PhonePe. 

They aim to entice users to embrace UPI payments over cash on delivery, by the simplification of the payment process. 

Can this fancy manoeuvre provide a smoother customer experience and improved efficiency for Zomato?