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Hello Reader,

The Enforcement Directorate has frozen Rs 9.82 crore worth of funds in merchant IDs with certain online payment gateways as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation against a “Chinese-controlled” investment token app. 

Meanwhile, government-backed open protocol network Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) is set to launch in beta for public users in Bengaluru Urban. Here’s how it will work.

Also, NASA released images of the recent DART Mission taken by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Lastly, it turns out that the Metaverse may not actually solve society’s exacting beauty standards.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Is moonlighting “cheating”?
• Tracking your credit score
• Upskilling in local languages

Here’s your trivia for today: When was the first episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired? 

Work culture

Is moonlighting “cheating”?

While many of us take up side hustles to supplement our incomes, the practice of moonlighting has sparked a debate after Wipro fired employees for working for competitors and Infosys issued a company-wide warning.

Many IT firms call moonlighting “cheating”, but the COVID-19 pandemic created an impetus for many professionals to take up side gigs. 

Re-thinking side hustles:

• The emergence of many gig platforms like Workflexi and Flexiple has expanded the scope for moonlighting for tech employees.
• Food aggregator Swiggy says its ‘Moonlighting Policy’ enables employees to pick up gigs outside the company.
• Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani welcomed moonlighting, saying it’s important to change with the times.

<Funding Alert>

Startup: Meesho

Amount: $192M

Round: Undisclosed

Startup: FourKites

Amount: $10M

Round: Strategic

Startup: Indel Money

Amount: $6M

Round: Undisclosed

App Friday

Tracking your credit score

It’s important to stay on top of your credit report. But it’s even easier for fraud loan apps to misuse sensitive identification like PAN details.

To solve for that, OneScore app gives a 360-degree view of your credit profiles—right from your CIBIL score to a breakdown of your EMIs, repayment histories, and all the loans signed to your name.

360-degree credit profile:

• FPL Technologies, the company behind OneCard and OneScore, claims it does not spam or display ads on the app.
• The free app has one crore downloads, with a rating of 4.5 out of 5 on the Google Play Store.
• Experian and CIBIL credit scores get updated every month, while the app also gives tips on improving the score.

Startup

Upskilling in local languages

Mohammed Hisamuddin and Rahul Ramesh would read numerous stories of passionate students who overcame their difficulties and excelled in their academic pursuit.

They developed Entri.app, which provides content like videos, mock exams, study cards, and podcasts in regional languages to help users either crack exams for government jobs or up-skill them for private jobs.

Vocal for local languages:

• Entri.app currently offers services in five vernacular languages—Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada.
• It offers 500+ courses for state PSC exam, Bank, SSC, GATE, CAT, MAT, Railway, coding, tech training, digital marketing, spoken English, stock market, and more.
• The startup also offers cohort-based courses which connect a batch of students with an expert mentor who speaks their local language.

News & updates

• In the fast lane: Porsche AG shares made a strong start on Thursday after Volkswagen defied volatile markets to list the sports car brand at a valuation of 75 billion euros ($72 billion) in Germany’s second-biggest market debut.
• Seeds of doubt: Top corporations have embraced ESG publicly as core to their shareholder and stakeholder policies, but behind the scenes, executives exhibit less support for the rising influence of the investing philosophy.
• Meaty matter: Bitcoin mining’s climate impact is comparable to farming cattle or burning gasoline when taken as a proportion of market value, according to researchers at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. 

What you should watch out for

• Today is the RBI-mandated deadline for businesses to tokenise credit and debit cards.
• Last date for owners of demat accounts to enable two-factor authentication.
• Four government securities to be auctioned through multiple price-based methods as Centre hopes to raise Rs 33,000 crore via sale.
• RBI’s rate-setting panel’s decision to be announced today.

When was the first episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired? 

Answer: September 8, 1986. The show ended on May 25, 2011, after 4,561 episodes across 25 seasons.

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