Welcome to the world of facts and news: August 2022

US officials order Nvidia to halt sales of top AI chips to China

Nvidia said the ban - which affects its A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks - could interfere with the completion of developing the H100, the flagship chip it announced this year.

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Meta to set up group for paid features on Instagram, Facebook

The move would put Meta on the same course as Snap Inc and Twitter Inc - companies that have launched paid tiers to unlock additional features.

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Bike Bazaar raises Rs 170 crore led by Women’s World Banking Management

The company intends to use the funds to increase its business in rural India and also scale its marketplace business for the sale and purchase of used two-wheelers.

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Digital transformation is driving demand for tech skills: LinkedIn India's Ashutosh Gupta

As per LinkedIn’s India Labour Market Insights, hiring in the country was up 63% in the quarter ended June compared to the same quarter in 2019.

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SoftBank’s Rajeev Misra steps down as corporate officer on record losses

Rajeev Misra will retain his post as head of SoftBank Investment Advisers, which helps oversee the first Vision Fund’s existing investments.

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Snap plans to cut staff by 20%: report

Snap's hardware division, responsible for Spectacles and the Pixy camera drone, its team working to help developers build mini apps and games inside Snapchat and Zenly, the social mapping app it bought and runs separately, will be hit by the layoffs

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Apple quietly gives up its Didi board seat after turmoil

Adrian Perica, Apple’s vice president of corporate development, has resigned from Didi’s board, according to a one-sentence release posted on Didi’s website this month. Didi didn’t respond to requests for comment. Apple declined to comment.

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Amazon, Google slam Microsoft's cloud computing changes

The U.S. software giant on Monday announced amended licensing deals and other changes that will take effect on Oct. 1 and which they say will make it easier for cloud service providers to compete.

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Exclusive | NPCI set to pick up 9-10% stake in government’s e-commerce project ONDC

The government’s National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Bank of India are also expected to acquire stakes in ONDC; network plans B2B entry

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Zomato tests new pilot project, launches intercity food delivery service



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Committed to provide all possible support to startups, says MeitY secretary

Addressing an interaction between the IT ministry and the representatives of some of the startups that have been mentored by the ministry’s MeitY startup hub (MSH), Sharma said that the innovation and energy of India startups was commendable.

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Nazara Technologies acquires interactive entertainment company WildWorks

​Nazara Technologies will buy existing stockholders' stakes in WildWorks and its intellectual property for cash.

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Australia demands Apple, Meta, Microsoft share anti-abuse steps, threatens fines

The threat underscores Australia's hardline approach to regulating Big Tech firms like Meta, Apple and Microsoft since 2021.

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Elon Musk subpoenas Twitter whistleblower, seeking details on spam, security

Elon Musk sought information from whistleblower Peiter Zatko mostly about the way Twitter measures spam accounts.

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Meesho to widen logistics network with software; foreign investors cut stakes in IT firms

The solution will also let Meesho work more closely with local and regional players that may not have access to software solutions to service large volumes of ecommerce deliveries.

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Meesho builds logistics SaaS platform to widen its network

While the product is still being developed internally, this would reduce Meesho’s dependence on large third-party logistics players like Ecom Express, Xpressbees and Delhivery over a period of time.

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Noida demolition becomes internet event

Indians closely followed the Noida twin-tower demolition on the Internet Sunday. Soon after an implosion triggered with 3,700 kilograms of explosives brought the towers to ground in the afternoon, feeds on WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms were flooded with photos, videos and memes.

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Digital lending startup EarlySalary raises $110 million at $300m valuation

The Pune-based company said it plans to use the investment to accelerate its loan book, increase its presence to 150 cities, hire more for senior management functions, and grow the scope of its buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) business.

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Byju’s FY21 financials likely by Sept 6; SMEs may have to hire infosec officers

Byju' s has told its debt investors the audited results – already 17 months late – are expected by September 6.

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Abu Dhabi’s SWFs in talks to join $500 million Byju’s fundraise

Sources close to the company said Byju’s potential investors are being given two options — either they come as equity investors at a $22 billion valuation or opt for a convertible pre-initial public offering instrument with a 20% discount to an IPO valuation band.

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Tech Mahindra CEO Gurnani unfazed by moonlighting; others disagree

Moonlighting refers to pursuing more than one job at a time, usually in non-work hours. While this is not a new phenomenon, remote working followed in the Indian IT sector has helped employees take up this option in larger numbers.

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Byju's tells debt investors it will present audited results on Sept 6

Company may hold board meeting next week to discuss auditor's financial report for FY21 and FY22

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Flipkart lines up Rs 3,600 crore for three automated fulfilment centres

Talking about the up-coming festive season and Flipkart’s biggest discounting sale Big Billion Days (BBD), Badri said demand will revive and this year’s sale will be the best ever festive sale.

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Report alleges breach of Vi customers’ sensitive data, telco denies

The telecom operator, however, denied any data breach and claimed the report was false and malicious.

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The rise and rise of India SaaS

The Indian SaaS market is expected to account for almost 7 to 10% of the global SaaS market, from 2-4% at present, according to EY-CII Research Report.

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The rise and rise of India SaaS

The Indian SaaS market is expected to account for almost 7 to 10% of the global SaaS market, from 2-4% at present, according to EY-CII Research Report.

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Paytm appoints financial services veteran GS Sundararajan to its board

Company also announced the retirement of long-time independent director, Mark Schwartz, upon completion of his tenure.

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Over half of Bitcoin's daily trading volume fake globally: report

Bitcoin represents 40% of the $1 trillion global crypto market.

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Instagram refutes claims that users location is shared with followers

According to GSM Arena, a viral post claimed "a recent iOS update" has made it so that "people can now find your exact location from Instagram".

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Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica privacy suit

The deal comes as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who announced her resignation in June, were due to testify in court in September as part of the scandal.

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The crypto world can't wait for 'the Merge'

The upgrade - known as the Merge - has gained near-mythical status after years of delays that left some insiders questioning whether it would ever happen.

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New Meta VR headset set to launch in October: Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg revealed Meta's new VR developments on Joe Rogan's podcast.

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Games People, and Technology, Can Play



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Zerodha crosses 1 crore customer base mark, Aadhaar biggest tipping point: Nithin Kamath

“The plan to rely on word-of-mouth & have a single offering for all customers had benefits that we never thought of at the start. Economies of scale kicked in not just in tech but across support & ops—the team size has remained the same as we went from 20lk to 1cr clients,” Kamath said on Twitter.

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Social commerce startup Meesho shutters Superstore grocery business in India, 300 'lose' jobs

Homegrown social commerce platform Meesho has reportedly shut down its grocery business called Superstore in more than 90 per cent of cities in India (except Nagpur and Mysuru), resulting in several job losses.

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Twitter’s terrible week

The most explosive allegation, however, was the Indian government forced Twitter to put a government agent on the payroll, and that this agent would have had access to sensitive user data because of Twitter's weak security infrastructure.

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Elon Musk's SpaceX and T-Mobile plan to connect mobile phones to satellites, boost cell coverage

Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched nearly 3,000 low-Earth-orbiting Starlink satellites since 2019.

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Jack Dorsey's Block ends Afterpay smartphone tie-up with Australia's Westpac

Jack Dorsey's Block acquired Afterpay in a $29 billion deal earlier this year.

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Jack Dorsey says his biggest regret is Twitter became a company

Jack Dorsey said that it should be "a protocol" and that Twitter should not be owned by a state or another company.

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ED raids CoinSwitch Kuber; car makers scramble for EV talent

CoinSwitch, which is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital India, has over 18 million registered users. According to its website, crypto worth over Rs 1 lakh crore has been traded on its platform.

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Bengaluru ranked second in APAC top tech hub list

India added more than 5 lakh IT jobs over the past fin year: Cushman and Wakefield study.

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ED searches Coinswitch Kuber’s five locations under money laundering probe

This is the third exchange under the scanner of the federal agency for allegedly diverting proceeds of crime raised by 365 instant loan apps by offering loans at exorbitant rates of interest and then using tele-callers to recover them.

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'Big drop' in digital lending complaints; Instamart expands to 25 cities

The new rules have already had a positive effect, it seems, with complaints about digital lending down significantly in the past fortnight, according to non-profits that work to protect consumers.

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Nasscom Foundation on track to expand digital skilling programs across India

With the top goal to enable women’s entrepreneurship, the foundation expects to impact over 25 lakh lives across 15 states by the end of this year itself, chief executive Nidhi Bhasin told ET. While the foundation is currently focused on urban areas it is rapidly expanding programs to rural India. These initiatives are part of Nasscom’s stated Tech For Good goals for the next decade.

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Men’s innerwear brand XYXX raises $11 million in funding

Founded in 2017 by Yogesh Kabra, XYXX is a new-age menswear brand which produces and retails products across innerwear, comfortwear, loungewear, active wear and winter wear.

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Swiggy’s Instamart logs nine million users in 25 cities within two years

Instamart aims to deliver groceries in 15-30 minutes through a network of seller-owned dark stores that emerged from the learnings of Swiggy Stores.

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Hyper-scaler slowdown could dent cloud revenue for IT companies

Chinese cloud service providers have already said that growth had slowed due to market regulations, while AWS, Azure and Google Cloud reported a 7% lower incremental revenue in the first half of this year compared to the previous year.

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Twitter misled regulators on hackers and spam, whistleblower claims

In an 84-page complaint, Zatko, a famed hacker more widely known as "Mudge," alleged Twitter falsely claimed it had a solid security plan, according to documents relayed by congressional investigators.

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Twitter negligent on cybersecurity: Whistleblower



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Payment aggregators to approach RBI; IT firms cut variable pay; and ED's loan app probe finds Rs 800 cr crime proceeds

Payment aggregators which are already on the tenterhooks with the Reserve Bank of India’s diktat on lending rules are set to lobby the central bank to ease the guidelines.

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15 companies in fray to buy gaming firm SMAAASH

Nazara Technologies, which is backed by late billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s Rare Enterprises, and the Malpani Group that recently acquired Manmohan Shetty-owned theme park operator Adlabs Entertainment, are the two prominent applicants.

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Yellow.ai deploys 30% of global generative AI bots domestically

While markets like the US are mostly using GenAI for customer support in a bid to cut costs, India Inc. is using them as an opportunity to g...