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Hello,

There’s more bad news for Paytm.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has issued a cautionary advisory to traders to switch from Paytm to other payment options for business-related transactions. CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said RBI’s restrictions have raised concerns about the security and continuity of financial services provided by the platform.

Elsewhere, troubled edtech firm BYJU’S finally paid the January salaries to its employees, Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran told his workforce in an email. The entrepreneur said the company had to “move mountains” in order to make the payroll.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg has become the fourth-richest person in the world, surpassing Bill Gates. The Meta CEO and Co-founder’s net worth is now $165 billion.

ICYMI: As Facebook turns 20, a look back at its journey to 3 billion users.

Lastly, we leave you with some breathtaking images of starling murmurations captured by photographer Søren Solkær as they travel across Europe. In one of the captures, the flock resembles a cat!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Hospitality industry bats for growth
• Meet AI assistant for coding

Here’s your trivia for today: What element is named after the Greek word for green?

Union Budget

Hospitality industry bats for growth

While presenting the Interim Budget 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman encouraged the development of iconic tourist centres, the promotion of islands including Lakshwadeep, as well as the focus on spiritual tourism. While the hospitality and tourism industry welcomes these moves, stakeholders also say the industry needs more attention and targeted measures.

“India has many amazing places to visit; however, there is no hospitality ecosystem in place at the grassroots level of the locations,” says Puneet Sethi, Managing Director of Kaara Hotels and Resorts. 

Scope:

• “Measures such as long-term loans to states will foster long-term development and unlock India’s tourism potential,” says Gautam Aggarwal, Mastercard’s SA Division Head.
• Sethi believes the government should establish a unified platform for all hotel/resort licences and the taxation for social functions (seminars, weddings, etc.) should be reduced to 5%.
• “As tourism infrastructure develops in Lakshadweep, we will be launching holiday packages including sailing on cruise and overnight stay options,” says Chirag Agrawal, Co-founder of TravClan.

Startup

Meet AI assistant for coding

Ayush Singhal wanted to build something like Grammarly for software code—a tool that would correct and upgrade the programming language as it is being coded by the developer. CodeMate’s plugin fixes syntax and run-time errors, as well as warning about performance issues, and more. 

AI debugging:

• CodeMate can refer to multiple codebases and provide suggestions to make sure the code is maintainable, scalable, and adaptable. 
• The tool can also suggest removing coding redundancies once testing is over to make it cleaner—considered good practice in the industry
• CodeMate operates on a subscription-based revenue model, offering three distinct plans. It targets corporates, individual contributors, and freelancers.

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Source: Pexels

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News & updates

• Setback: The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) has denied the application for emergency interim relief filed by Sony against Zee Entertainment. It said it has no jurisdiction or authority to injunct the company from approaching the NCLT to implement the merger scheme.
• Outlook: Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, expects its business this year to be “slightly better” than last year but is facing a shortage of chips for AI servers due to geopolitical uncertainty. Its customer Apple earlier forecast a drop in iPhone sales. 
• White-collar: An unnamed multinational company was scammed of $25 million after an employee in Hong Kong attended a video conference call with deepfake recreations of the company’s CFO and other employees. The scammers had used publicly available footage to digitally recreate each individual.

What you should watch out for

• Nadella’s visit: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be visiting India on February 7 and 8 as part of his annual visit. The main focus of his India trip will be AI and its opportunities. The visit follows Microsoft’s first-ever edition of its global AI Tour in India. Last year, Nadella met some of the key customers, startups, developers, not-for-profit organisations, and students during his four-day visit to India.
• Monetary policy: The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee is expected to convene this week to decide on the interest rate. While the industry largely expects the RBI to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5%, the meeting will be keenly watched to determine when the rates will be cut and the growth-inflation trajectory.  

What element is named after the Greek word for green?

Answer: Chlorine.

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