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Hello,

Bhavish Aggarwal is going big with Ola Mobility. 

The company plans to deploy 10,000 electric two-wheelers across three cities in the next two months and gradually scale up its service across India by the end of the year. 

In September 2023, Ola launched a pilot project of the e-bike service in Bengaluru. Most recently, it launched the service in Delhi and Hyderabad. 

In other news, the Indian Patent Office granted a “record” 75,000 patents in the last 10 months, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said, adding the government has either eliminated or simplified 40,000 compliances to ease the burden on entrepreneurs.

Speaking of commerce, the government will bring reforms to the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) domain to smoothly move goods between the domestic tariff area and SEZ space without affecting the competitiveness of goods in the export markets.

Also, Asia Pacific businesses are sprucing up investments in Gen AI. According to Infosys Research, investments are projected to nearly triple for Gen AI technology to $3.4 billion in 2024 across Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, and Singapore.

ICYMI: Cursive writing is making a comeback in the age of computers, as this California school decides to go old school.

Lastly, here’s why tech layoffs in January ballooned globally.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Binny Bansal exits Flipkart
• Steady capital inflow into startups
• Giving children the right to choose

Here’s your trivia for today: What is the term for a group of flamingos?

Ecommerce

Binny Bansal exits Flipkart

Binny Bansal, Co-founder and former CEO of Flipkart, has stepped down from the Board of the Walmart-owned company, the ecommerce giant confirmed to YourStory. 

According to media reports, Bansal will now focus on his new ecommerce venture, OppDoor.

A long journey:

• “Flipkart is in a robust position, with a strong leadership team and a clear path forward, and with this confidence, I have decided to step aside, knowing the company is in capable hands,” Bansal said in an official statement.
• Bansal’s decision to step down comes months after he fully exited the ecommerce company by selling his shares to Walmart. Sachin Bansal exited Flipkart post Walmart acquisition.
• Recently, Walmart bought investor Tiger Global’s remaining shares worth $1.4 billion to take Flipkart’s ecommerce ambitions to a global scale.

Funding

Steady capital inflow into startups

January saw a steady fund inflow, with venture capital funding into Indian startups hovering around the $100-million mark for the last three weeks. The total venture capital funding for the last week of January stood at $166 million across 17 deals. In contrast, the previous week saw a total funding of $131 million.

Highlights:

• The big positive during this week was the emergence of Krutrim as the first unicorn for 2024.
• This week, BYJU’S remained in the spotlight as it published its financial figures for FY22 and continues to face challenges from the lenders.
• Ecofy, an NBFC that focuses on supporting green projects, raised $10.8 million from FMO, the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank.

Social Impact

Giving children the right to choose

Since its launch in January 2020 in Chennai, the Indian Community Welfare Organisation’s (ICWO) Anti Human Trafficking Club, along with the Tamil Nadu Child Labour Task Force, has rescued and rehabilitated 168 children—mostly boys—from factories in and around Chennai, and five other girls who were trafficked and sexually exploited at work. 

A new life:

• About 80% of the rescued children come from other states, including Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Rajasthan. 
• According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a total of 6,533 people were reported to be trafficked in 2021, of which 2,877 were children—eight trafficked a day.
• Families in dire financial conditions are often approached by traffickers with an offer to buy their children, and with no other escape from their relentless poverty, parents tend to comply. The traffickers also exploit their lack of awareness, according to CRY.

News & updates

• Chips: The US administration is expected to award billions of dollars in subsidies to top semiconductor companies, including Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, in the coming weeks to help build new factories in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
• Betting: X plans to roll out a new sports betting feature after inking a deal with the digital gambling platform BetMGM, the online sports betting subsidiary of MGM Resorts International, Fortune reported. The new feature will display sports gambling statistics directly on the site, along with a link to test your luck on BetMGM.
• Back online: Microsoft’s Teams services were restored on Saturday after a disruption blocked access to the messaging platform. User complaints peaked on Friday afternoon with more than 14,000 incidents, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. 

What is the term for a group of flamingos?

Answer: Flamboyance.

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