The Rise of Generative AI in Indian Business: Flipkart's AI Minutes and GCC Innovations

Flipkart Minutes; AI upskilling

Happy Monday! Flipkart has upped the quick commerce ante ahead of crucial festive season sale. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in this letter: ■ TCS CEO interview ■ X's Community Notes feature ■ MeitY on Digital Competition Bill Festive season is around the corner and this year the battle will be among the quick commerce players. Driving the news: Flipkart is planning to take the battle head-on for quick commerce with around 100 dark stores in operations before its BigBillionDays sale, sources aware of the plans said. Called Flipkart Minutes, the offering is visible to select users in certain pin codes. Tell me more: Besides Flipkart's entry into the space, quick commerce is also likely to corner a chunk of festive sales this year, given the leading platforms have expanded well beyond grocery over the past few months. High pressure: Growth for quick commerce is coming from newer territories, sources told us. This means Flipkart's entry will intensify competition in the existing top cities. A price war is already underway among companies flush with capital. Also Read:How capital surge may fuel discount war in quick commerce space Expansion ahead: Zepto, since closing the $665 million funding, announced it's doubling the number of dark stores to 700 by March 2025, while the same for Blinkit is at 1,000. Swiggy Instamart has more than 500 dark stores. How Blinkit -- the market leader -- reacts to rivalry from existing and new players will be watched. This may be reflected in the July-September quarter earnings. Festive rush: A new-age food brand's top boss told us the company is in talks with two leading quick commerce players to ensure adequate stocks at warehouses so these can be moved to dark stores in the city for fast deliveries. "Quick commerce is the fastest growing on a month-on-month basis. This year, we expect a significant demand uptick during Diwali sales. Speed, deals, and excitement around space will drive it," he said. ETtech In-depth | Quick commerce is diversifying fast. It won't be easy Professionals in areas, such as data science, marketing analytics, computer science, and operations are increasingly turning to upskilling platforms like Simplilearn, Coursera, Upgrad, Teamlease, and Newton School, which are offering specialised programmes in generative AI, machine learning (ML), and cybersecurity. Driving factor: The surge in AI course demand reflects the broader trend of businesses seeking to leverage advanced technologies to stay competitive. Also read | Prompts and the art of earning in times of AI Relaunching courses: These upskilling platforms are providing tailored AI programmes for various roles, including operations, generative AI development and custom large language models (LLMs). Enrollment rate: Around 340,000 individuals enrolled in Upgrad's free courses in the last fiscal year ended March, with 40% of the learners focusing on generative AI, technology, machine learning, software, and data courses. Coursera saw someone in India enrolling in its generative AI content every three minutes in 2023. This year, it is seeing one enrolment every minute from Indian learners. Also read | Ghosts in the machine: Peril of hallucinations in GenAI chatbots Emerging markets like India will be very important for the future growth of Tata Consultancy Services, and not operating in these markets will be a lost opportunity, chief executive officer K Krithivasan told us. Some edited excerpts: FY25 outlook: "Things have not changed much, but we believe this year is better than last year. But if you look (specifically) at the US, people are expecting (a change) after the Federal Reserve announcement in terms of jobs and some cuts in interest rates. Similarly, once the presidential elections are complete in November, it will give them a direction on which way the overall economy will go." Also read | TCS Q1 profit rises 8.7%; wage hikes, demand slump drag sequential numbers On IT acquisition spree: Our approach has been to create synergy. If I can top off what we can acquire and provide a growth multiplier, we will do it. If not, we will not do it. It's easy to acquire, but if you're not able to execute on synergy benefits, you will be staring at more inefficiencies. So, we don't want (that). Our benchmark on acquisitions is quite high. Work from office mandate: There are people with genuine reasons to work from home, people holding out or not coming at all are a smaller percentage. We are close to 80% of the people coming into the office. Before the pandemic also, about 80-85% of people came to office. If you go into any of our centres, the activity is like pre-Covid level. X's Community Notes was supposed to be an ally in the battle against digital misinformation. But 100 days after its India launch, the feature is yet to establish a solid footing in a diverse country fraught with unique challenges. What is Community Notes? The idea of Community Notes, X explains in a blog post, is to "create a better-informed world by empowering people (on X) to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts". The timing of the launch in the country, however, was met with suspicion from several quarters. Many "eligible" users complained that they were not being allowed by X to "join" as contributors because of their political leanings. Within days of the feature being introduced in the country, users also complained that it had already been "hijacked" by followers of a particular political leaning. Sharing space: X ranks the contributing volunteers on accuracy, context, neutral language, and other parameters and keeps a dynamic score based on which users are allowed to write notes or just vote to decide if those should be shown to users, a lawyer who works with big tech firms, including X, said. According to X, the platform now has close to half a million contributors who wrote more than 37,000 notes in 2023. These notes were shown to more than 14 billion times to users across the globe last year. Expert take: Though features such as Community Notes hold promise, platforms need to be cautious as such tools can be manipulated by long-term coordinated social engineering attacks, Tarunima Prabhakar, cofounder at tech and policy research firm Tattle, said. MeitY may ask MCA to keep ex-ante out of Digital Competition Bill for now | The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will likely tell the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) that the ex-ante provision in the proposed draft of the Digital Competition Bill (DCB) should be kept out for now, sources told us. The IT ministry's suggestion to exclude the ex-ante framework will be part of its overall feedback to the MCA on the draft DCB. Startup founders upbeat on US visa tweak despite big hurdles in process | The US government's decision to tweak the rule that offers extended stay to international entrepreneurs -- which aims at creating jobs and spurring innovation -- has evinced mixed response from immigration executives and Indian startup founders. Zomato, Swiggy hike platform fee by 20% to Rs 6 per order: Food delivery majors Zomato and Swiggy have increased their platform fee to Rs 6 in key markets like Bengaluru and Delhi. This marks an increase of 20% from the Rs 5 the two platforms were previously charging in these markets. ■ Amazon hits prime time for earnings expansion (WSJ) ■ The Metaverse was supposed to be your new office. You're still on Zoom (Wired) ■ AI bubble set to inflate further (FT)

How GenAI is aiding Indian GCCs; AI funding dip

Happy Tuesday! India's global capability centres are evolving into front offices for multinational corporations. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in this letter: ■ Financial services for seniors ■ Swiggy's pre-IPO Esop sale ■ LinkedIn's video offering launch Once tagged as the back office of the world, India is starting to become the front office for several multinational corporations that have established captive technology centres in the country. The proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will only accelerate this wave, said experts. State of play: GCCs are "moving up from a back office to a central office", said Deepak Mangla, CEO, corporate centres, India and Philippines, at JPMorgan Chase, which has one of the largest GCC presence in India with over 55,000 employees across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, and Noida. GenAI in focus: Multinationals are building cyber capabilities in India along with new functions like legal, supply chain procurement plan, vendor management, and R&D facilities. There is also a big focus on AI and GenAI-related centres of excellence (COEs). "We are increasingly seeing AI and GenAI proof of concepts (POCs) moving to the production stage at a higher level across GCCs," said Rohan Lobo, partner and GCC consulting leader at Deloitte India. About one-third of such work is in the BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) sector, he added. Numberwise: As per technology industry body Nasscom's last count, there were over 1,580 GCCs with 1.66 million employees in India until March 2023. In FY23, GCCs generated cumulative revenue of about $46 billion. This is more than double the estimated $20 billion generated by about 1,000 such centres in 2016, according to a report by ICICI Securities. It forecasts GCC revenue to reach about $100 billion by 2030. Also read | The rise of the GCC ecosystem in India Expert take: Srikanth Srinivasan, vice president and head, member and outreach, at Nasscom said earlier GCCs used to do a lot of routine operational work. "But now you see a huge transformation or jump in the kind of work that's happening today, where people are looking at doing very focused work with the help of AI," he said. Funding for AI startups in India has seen a massive drop, contrary to the global trend. Driving the news: Funding for AI startups in India stood at $8.2 million in the April-June quarter, declining about 91% sequentially and by 82% year-on-year (YoY), data sourced from market tracking firm Tracxn showed. This, however, comes on top of a near 110% sequential growth in funding in the previous quarter and 56% in the quarter ended December 2023. Global trend: Calendar year-to-date, Indian AI startups raised nearly $96 million, a 61% increase over the same period in 2023. This is an 82% decline compared to the first half of 2022 when AI funding peaked at $560 million for the whole year. However, globally, AI startups have been defying the 'funding winter'. In the US, for instance, AI startups received $27 billion in funding in April-June, accounting for nearly half of all startup funding in the country during that period. Also read | PE, VC funding slows in first half of 2024; secondary deals become prominent The bottom line: Investors remain bullish in the long term, despite existing concerns. "Numbers around AI investing need to be taken with a pinch of salt... AI today is like the cloud -- almost every new startup is utilising it to varying degrees," said Alok Goyal, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners. Stellaris is "very bullish on the outlook for AI-centric funding," he said, adding that more than 50% of its investments in the last 12 months have gone into AI-first startups. Also read | Indian fintech sector sees 59% drop in funding in H1 2024, remains among top three globally Titan Capital-backed Khyaal, Aroa Venture Partners-backed Samarth Life, and Hyderabad-based Anvayaa are offering prepaid cards, wallets, investment products, and insurance services, aimed at meeting the financial needs of seniors. What's happening: Khyaal offers a prepaid card called the 'Khyaal card' to enable online transactions, with most transactions being done on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms. Similarly, Anvayaa provides a prepaid wallet account that can be used to manage the expenses of parents living far away from their children. Samarth Life has partnered with the likes of HDFC Bank to create a 'special' senior citizen account for its users. Tell me more: Khyaal sees around 75% of the seniors using the platform for their financial needs. Anvayaa has served over 60,000 elders to date, with over 80% utilising their prepaid account offering. Investors are also seeing major growth potential here. Khyaal raised $4.2 million in February this year from a bunch of investors. Samarth Life raised around Rs 12 crore in its first institutional funding in February this year. "We believe that with rising incomes, better health, and a longer lifespan, the Indian senior citizen segment is emerging as an economically relevant target segment," said Sajith Pai, investment partner at Blume Ventures Sriharsha Majety, MD & group CEO, Swiggy Food and grocery delivery company Swiggy on Monday said it will buy back employee stock ownership plans (Esops) worth $65 million. Driving the news: The Esop buyback is being conducted at a valuation of around $9 billion, compared to $10.7 billion that Swiggy fetched during its last fundraise in January 2022. So far, the company has cumulatively enabled over Rs 1,000 crore ($119.6 million) of Esops liquidity, benefiting more than 3,200 employees. "Employees owning shares of their company creates alignment of incentives and a sharp focus on collaborative excellence, which is a virtuous cycle that we believe in and espouse," said Girish Menon, head of HR at Swiggy. Also read: Swiggy IPO: Food-delivery major secures shareholder nod for potential $1.25 billion public offering Esops galore: Startups like Meesho, Purplle, and Urban Company have conducted staff share buybacks this year. Flipkart conducted the largest ever Esop buyback for a new-age firm as part of a 'one-time payout' worth $700 million last year. Razorpay and Udaan also figure among well-funded startups that have conducted such buybacks over the past couple of years. Platform fee hike: Separately, Zomato and Swiggy increased the platform fee they charge customers to Rs 6 per order, a 20% hike, in key markets like Bengaluru and Delhi. LinkedIn to launch video offerings in India: Professional community platform LinkedIn is set to launch its video offering in India to tap into the burgeoning opportunity in the short-form video market, which is currently worth $5.5 billion. LinkedIn has observed a 60% increase in video uploads in India, compared with 45% globally, LinkedIn vice president of product management Gyanda Sachdeva told ET. ET Explainer: Behind EU vs Elon Musk fight over blue tick: The past week saw a faceoff erupt between tech billionaire Elon Musk and the European Union (EU) after the latter accused Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter) of violating its online content regulations around transparency and accountability. Here's an explainer on the accusations against X and what the two sides have been saying. Yali Capital launches Rs 810 crore deep tech fund: Deep-tech focused venture fund Yali Capital on Monday announced the launch of its maiden fund with a target corpus of Rs 810 crore, including a greenshoe option of Rs 310 crore. IndusDC earmarks Rs 100 crore to build 5 deep-tech startups in 2 years | IndusDC, a venture studio, has earmarked Rs 100 crore, or about $12 million, to identify and develop deep-tech startups in India's industrial and energy sectors in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. EV ride-hailing company BluSmart raises $24 million in funding | BluSmart, a ride-hailing startup that uses only electric vehicles, has raised $24 million, or Rs 200 crore, in a funding round led by its existing investors, Zurich-based climate finance firm ResponsAbility Investments, cricketer MS Dhoni's Family Office, and ReNew founder Sumant Sinha. ■ The hidden ties between Google and Amazon's Project Nimbus and Israel's military (Wired) ■ Samsung's 'chip crisis': AI ambitions hit by unprecedented worker unrest (FT) ■ How startup Wiz went from zero to a possible $23 billion sale to Google in four years (WSJ)

How GenAI is aiding Indian GCCs; AI funding dip

Happy Tuesday! India's global capability centres are evolving into front offices for multinational corporations, with a focus on high-end technology and AI. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in this letter: ■ Financial services for seniors ■ Swiggy's pre-IPO Esop sale ■ LinkedIn's video offering launch Once tagged as the back office of the world, India is gearing to become the front office for several multinational corporations that have established captive technology centers in the country. The proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will only accelerate this wave, said experts. State of play: GCCs are "moving up from a back office to a central office", said Deepak Mangla, CEO, corporate centres, India and Philippines, at JPMorgan Chase, which has one of the largest GCC presence in India with over 55,000 employees across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, and Noida. GenAI in focus: Multinationals are building cyber capabilities in India along with new functions like legal, supply chain procurement plan, vendor management, and R&D facilities. There is also a big focus on AI and GenAI-related centres of excellence (COEs). "We are increasingly seeing AI and GenAI proof of concepts (POCs) moving to the production stage at a higher level across GCCs," said Rohan Lobo, partner and GCC consulting leader at Deloitte India. About one-third of such work is in the BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) sector, he added. Numberwise: As per technology industry body Nasscom's last count, there were over 1,580 GCCs with 1.66 million employees in India until March 2023. In FY 23, GCCs generated cumulative revenue of about $46 billion. This is more than double the estimated $20 billion generated by about 1,000 such centres in 2016, according to a report by ICICI Securities. It forecasts GCC revenue to reach about $100 billion by 2030. Also read | The rise of the GCC ecosystem in India Expert take: Srikanth Srinivasan, vice president and head, member and outreach, at Nasscom said earlier GCCs used to do a lot of routine operational work. "But now you see a huge transformation or jump in the kind of work that's happening today, where people are looking at doing very focused work with the help of AI," he said. Funding for AI startups in India has seen a massive drop, contrary to the global trend. Driving the news: Funding for AI startups in India stood at $8.2 million in the April-June quarter, declining about 91% sequentially and by 82% year-on-year (YoY), data sourced from market tracking firm Tracxn showed. This, however, comes on top of a near 110% sequential growth in funding in the previous quarter and 56% in the quarter ended December 2023. Global trend: Calendar year-to-date, Indian AI startups raised nearly $96 million, which is a 61% increase over the same period in 2023, though an 82% decline compared to the first half of 2022 when AI funding peaked at $560 million for the whole year. However, globally, AI startups have been defying the 'funding winter'. In the US, for instance, AI startups received $27 billion in funding in April-June, accounting for nearly half of all startup funding in the country during that period. Also read | PE, VC funding slows in first half of 2024; secondary deals become prominent The bottom line: Investors remain bullish in the long term, despite existing concerns. "Numbers around AI investing need to be taken with a pinch of salt... AI today is like the cloud -- almost every new startup is utilising it to varying degrees," said Alok Goyal, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners. Stellaris is "very bullish on the outlook for AI-centric funding," he said, adding that more than 50% of its investments in the last 12 months have gone into AI-first startups. Also read | Indian fintech sector sees 59% drop in funding in H1 2024, remains among top three globally Titan Capital-backed Khyaal, Aroa Venture Partners-backed Samarth Life, and Hyderabad-based Anvayaa are offering prepaid cards, wallets, investment products, and insurance services, aimed at meeting the financial needs of seniors. What's happening: Khyaal offers a prepaid card called the 'Khyaal card' to enable online transactions, with most transactions being done on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms. Similarly, Anvayaa provides a prepaid wallet account that can be used to manage the expenses of parents living far away from their children. Samarth Life has partnered with banks like HDFC Bank to create a 'special' senior citizen account for its users. Tell me more: Khyaal sees around 75% of the seniors using the platform for their financial needs. Anvayaa has served over 60,000 elders to date, with over 80% utilising their prepaid account offering. Investors are also seeing major growth potential here. Khyaal raised $4.2 million in February this year from a bunch of investors. Samarth Life raised around Rs 12 crore in its first institutional funding in February this year. "We believe that with rising incomes, better health, and a longer lifespan, the Indian senior citizen segment is emerging as an economically relevant target segment," said Sajith Pai, investment partner at Blume Ventures Sriharsha Majety, MD & group CEO, Swiggy Food and grocery delivery company Swiggy on Monday said it will buy back employee stock ownership plans (Esops) worth $65 million. Driving the news: The Esop buyback is being conducted at a valuation of around $9 billion, compared to $10.7 billion that Swiggy fetched during its last fundraise in January 2022. So far, the company has cumulatively enabled over Rs 1,000 crore of Esops liquidity, benefiting more than 3,200 employees. "Employees owning shares of their company creates alignment of incentives and a sharp focus on collaborative excellence, which is a virtuous cycle that we believe in and espouse," said Girish Menon, head of HR at Swiggy. Also read: Swiggy IPO: Food-delivery major secures shareholder nod for potential $1.25 billion public offering Esops galore: Startups like Meesho, Purplle, and Urban Company have conducted staff share buybacks this year. Flipkart conducted the largest ever Esop for a new-age firm as part of a 'one-time payout' worth $700 million last year. Razorpay and Udaan also figure among well-funded startups that have conducted such buybacks over the past couple of years. Platform fee hike: Separately, Zomato and Swiggy increased the platform fee they charge customers to Rs 6 per order, a 20% hike, in key markets like Bengaluru and Delhi. LinkedIn to launch video offerings in India: Professional community platform LinkedIn is set to launch its video offering in India to tap into the burgeoning opportunity in the short-form video market, which is currently worth $5.5 billion. LinkedIn has observed a 60% increase in video uploads in India, compared with 45% globally, LinkedIn vice president of product management Gyanda Sachdeva told ET. ET Explainer: Behind EU vs Elon Musk fight over blue tick: The past week saw a faceoff erupt between tech billionaire Elon Musk and the European Union (EU) after the latter accused Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter) of violating its online content regulations around transparency and accountability. Here's an explainer on the accusations against X and what the two sides have been saying. Yali Capital launches Rs 810 crore deep tech fund: Deep-tech focused venture fund Yali Capital on Monday announced the launch of its maiden fund with a target corpus of Rs 810 crore, including a greenshoe option of Rs 310 crore. IndusDC earmarks Rs 100 crore to build 5 deep-tech startups in 2 years | IndusDC, a venture studio, has earmarked Rs 100 crore, or about $12 million, to identify and develop deep-tech startups in India's industrial and energy sectors in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. EV ride-hailing company BluSmart raises $24 million in funding | BluSmart, a ride-hailing startup that uses only electric vehicles, has raised $24 million, or Rs 200 crore, in a funding round led by its existing investors, Zurich-based climate finance firm ResponsAbility Investments, cricketer MS Dhoni's Family Office, and ReNew founder Sumant Sinha. ■ The hidden ties between Google and Amazon's Project Nimbus and Israel's military (Wired) ■ Samsung's 'chip crisis': AI ambitions hit by unprecedented worker unrest (FT) ■ How startup Wiz went from zero to a possible $23 billion sale to Google in four years (WSJ)

Flipkart in Q-fest; AI upskilling

Happy Monday! Flipkart has upped the quick commerce ante ahead of crucial festive season sale. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in this letter: ■ TCS CEO interview ■ X's Community Notes feature ■ MeitY on Digital Competition Bill Festive season is around the corner and this year the battle will be among the quick commerce players. Driving the news: Flipkart is planning to take the quick commerce battle head-on by operating nearly 100 dark stores before its BigBillionDays sale, sources aware of the plans said. Called Flipkart Minutes, the service is visible to select users in certain pin codes. Tell me more: Besides Flipkart's entry into the space, quick commerce is also likely to corner a chunk of festive sales this year, given the leading platforms have expanded well beyond grocery over the past few months. High pressure: Growth for quick commerce is coming from newer territories, sources told us. This means Flipkart's entry will intensify competition in the existing top cities. A price war is already underway among companies flush with capital. Also Read: How capital surge may fuel discount war in quick commerce space Expansion ahead: Zepto, since closing its $665 million funding, said it will double the number of dark stores to 700 by March 2025, while the same for Blinkit is at 1,000. Swiggy Instamart runs more than 500 dark stores. How Blinkit -- the market leader -- reacts to competition from existing and new players will be interesting to watch. This may reflect in the July-September quarter earnings for Zomato. ETtech In-depth | Quick commerce is diversifying fast. It won't be easy Professionals in areas, such as data science, marketing analytics, computer science, and operations are increasingly turning to upskilling platforms like Simplilearn, Coursera, Upgrad, Teamlease, and Newton School, which are offering specialised programmes in generative AI, machine learning (ML), and cybersecurity. Driving factor: The surge in AI course demand reflects the broader trend of businesses seeking to leverage advanced technologies to stay competitive. Also read | Prompts and the art of earning in times of AI Relaunching courses: These upskilling platforms are providing tailored AI programmes for various roles, including operations, generative AI development and custom large language models (LLMs). Enrollment rate: Around 340,000 individuals enrolled in Upgrad's free courses in the last fiscal year ended March, with 40% of the learners focusing on generative AI, technology, machine learning, software, and data courses. Coursera saw someone in India enrolling in its generative AI content every three minutes in 2023. This year, it is seeing one enrolment every minute from Indian learners. Also read | Ghosts in the machine: Peril of hallucinations in GenAI chatbots Emerging markets like India will be very important for the future growth of Tata Consultancy Services, and not operating in these markets will be a lost opportunity, chief executive officer K Krithivasan told us. Some edited excerpts: FY25 outlook: "Things have not changed much, but we believe this year is better than last year. But if you look (specifically) at the US, people are expecting (a change) after the Federal Reserve announcement in terms of jobs and some cuts in interest rates. Similarly, once the presidential elections are complete in November, it will give them a direction on which way the overall economy will go." Also read | TCS Q1 profit rises 8.7%; wage hikes, demand slump drag sequential numbers On IT acquisition spree: Our approach has been to create synergy. If I can top off what we can acquire and provide a growth multiplier, we will do it. If not, we will not do it. It's easy to acquire, but if you're not able to execute on synergy benefits, you will be staring at more inefficiencies. So, we don't want (that). Our benchmark on acquisitions is quite high. Work from office mandate: There are people with genuine reasons to work from home, people holding out or not coming at all are a smaller percentage. We are close to 80% of the people coming into the office. Before the pandemic also, about 80-85% of people came to office. If you go into any of our centres, the activity is like pre-Covid level. X's Community Notes was supposed to be an ally in the battle against digital misinformation. But 100 days after its India launch, the feature is yet to establish a solid footing in a diverse country fraught with unique challenges. What is Community Notes? The idea of Community Notes, X explains in a blog post, is to "create a better-informed world by empowering people (on X) to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts". The timing of the launch in the country, however, was met with suspicion from several quarters. Many "eligible" users complained that they were not being allowed by X to "join" as contributors because of their political leanings. Within days of the feature being introduced in the country, users also complained that it had already been "hijacked" by followers of a particular political leaning. Sharing space: X ranks the contributing volunteers on accuracy, context, neutral language, and other parameters and keeps a dynamic score based on which users are allowed to write notes or just vote to decide if those should be shown to users, a lawyer who works with big tech firms, including X, said. According to X, the platform now has close to half a million contributors who wrote more than 37,000 notes in 2023. These notes were shown to more than 14 billion times to users across the globe last year. Expert take: Though features such as Community Notes hold promise, platforms need to be cautious as such tools can be manipulated by long-term coordinated social engineering attacks, Tarunima Prabhakar, cofounder at tech and policy research firm Tattle, said. MeitY may ask MCA to keep ex-ante out of Digital Competition Bill for now | The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will likely tell the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) that the ex-ante provision in the proposed draft of the Digital Competition Bill (DCB) should be kept out for now, sources told us. The IT ministry's suggestion to exclude the ex-ante framework will be part of its overall feedback to the MCA on the draft DCB. Startup founders upbeat on US visa tweak despite big hurdles in process | The US government's decision to tweak the rule that offers extended stay to international entrepreneurs -- which aims at creating jobs and spurring innovation -- has evinced mixed response from immigration executives and Indian startup founders. Zomato, Swiggy hike platform fee by 20% to Rs 6 per order: Food delivery majors Zomato and Swiggy have increased their platform fee to Rs 6 in key markets like Bengaluru and Delhi. This marks an increase of 20% from the Rs 5 the two platforms were previously charging in these markets. ■ Amazon hits prime time for earnings expansion (WSJ) ■ The Metaverse was supposed to be your new office. You're still on Zoom (Wired) ■ AI bubble set to inflate further (FT)