Hello,
The government is taking steps to clear the air with startups.
Following the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology advisory directing AI platforms to seek permission before launching an AI product, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has clarified that this directive does not extend to startups.
He further emphasised that the process of seeking permission, labelling and consent-based disclosure is an ‘insurance policy’ to platforms which consumers can otherwise sue.
In other news, ahead of a US court hearing on the whereabouts of $553 million, BYJU’S said its subsidiary, Inspilearn LLC, remains the beneficiary owner of the fund. Reports suggest that Camshift, a Florida-based hedge fund which disclosed the transfer of funds from BYJU’S Alpha, had been asked to reveal its whereabouts or face court action.
Meanwhile, India’s digital payments ecosystem continues to evolve.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said customers will soon be able to pay businesses through net banking irrespective of whether their banks and the merchants’ payment aggregator are integrated. He hopes to launch the interoperable payment system this year.
Also, Go Digit General Insurance, which became India’s first insurtech unicorn in 2021, has received SEBI’s nod for an IPO. The company’s proposed IPO comprises a fresh issuance of shares worth Rs 1,250 crore and an offer for sale of 10.94 crore shares.
ICYMI: Here’s a look at all the action that took place at TechSparks 2024 Mumbai.
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Meet Bengaluru’s Good Samaritan St Brosph
- Personal finance 101 with Sharan Hegde
- Platos streamlining cafeteria management
Here’s your trivia for today: Which is the oldest existing continuously operating university in the world?
Inspiration
Meet Bengaluru’s good samaritan St Broseph
Dushyant Dubey is Bengaluru’s superhero—the city’s friendly neighbourhood Good Samaritan and a humanitarian who goes by the moniker St Broseph on the social media platform Reddit.
Today, Dubey’s work has led to a St Broseph’s Army of 5,300 volunteers in Bengaluru alone and the St Broseph’s Foundation, which helps people in distress.
Social work:
- On average, Dubey gets around 100 cases in a day, including civic issues, crimes, scams, and some even as inane as how to get rid of a gecko in a home.
- Two of the high-profile cases he has worked on include the attack on a trans person and the death by suicide of a college student in the city.
- The St Broseph Foundation also runs several safe spaces known as the St Broseph Safehouses, which are fully furnished apartments offering free accommodation and security to victims of crime who are physically at risk.
Funding Alert
Startup: Safari Industries
Amount: Rs 229 Cr
Round: Private equity
Startup: Cardiotrack
Amount: $2M
Round: Pre-Series A
TechSparks
Personal finance 101 with Sharan Hegde
Financial influencer Sharan Hegde says managing personal finances and asset allocation is as important as upskilling and increasing the primary income. At TechSparks 2024 Mumbai, he emphasised that young professionals should pay attention to the money that’s lying in their bank accounts.
Plan ahead:
- According to Hegde, people should develop a habit of tracking their financial assets ranging from their bank accounts, fixed deposits, or public market investments every month, and should also have clarity on long-term plans regarding their retirement corpus and inheritance.
- Hegde, who’s also the Founder and CEO of financial education startup The 1% Club, also discussed the dynamic landscape of financial planning.
- He elucidated the concept of post-FIRE (financial independence, retire early), according to which individuals should focus on aggressively saving enough investment corpus by their mid-30s or early 40s which should be invested in relatively risk-averse asset classes so they don’t have to work for money in their sixties.
Startup
Platos is streamlining cafeteria management
To bring consistency to the unorganised catering industry, childhood friends Arjun Subramanian and Raj Jain, who shared a passion for innovation, decided to partner in 2019 to explore opportunities in the institutional cafeteria space.
In May 2020, the duo co-founded Platos, a one-stop solution for catering with a custom technology suite to streamline all aspects of cafeteria management.
Key takeaways:
- The Chennai-based startup offers B2B2C cafeteria management for clients, with a B2B SaaS platform serving as a technology partner for companies and food vendors.
- Platos says it has transformed 45 cafeterias across eight cities in India, including Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, and Hyderabad, among others.
- Currently, it has over 45,000 monthly users placing more than 200,000 orders, resulting in an annual GMV run rate of Rs 18 crore.
News & updates
- Unequal footing: The European Union has fined Apple €1.84 billion ($2 billion) for breaking its competition laws. The bloc would impose the fine—its first-ever antitrust penalty on the US tech giant—for preventing rival music streaming services such as Spotify from telling iPhone users that they could find cheaper ways to subscribe outside of Apple’s app store.
- Bronze medal: Nvidia Corp has overtaken Saudi Aramco in market value, making the chipmaker the world’s third-most valuable public company after Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp. The company’s stock price rose 2.5% on Monday reaching $2.11 trillion, meanwhile Aramco’s value dipped to $2.01 trillion.
- On the rise: Bitcoin rallied to a two-year high on Monday, breaking above $65,000 as a wave of money carried it within striking distance of record levels. The largest cryptocurrency by market value has gained 50% this year and most of the rise come in the last few weeks where inflows into US-listed bitcoin funds have surged.
Which is the oldest existing continuously operating university in the world?
Answer: The University of al-Qarawiyyin. It was founded in 859 AD in Fez, Morocco.
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