Also in this letter:
■ Paytm shares recover
■ ETtech made agreements
■ Amazon’s AI shopping assistant
Apple plants could generate 600,000 jobs in India by March
As Apple continues its uncontrolled expansion of operations in India, its ecosystem is… It is expected to generate up to 600,000 jobs at the end of this fiscal year.
Number by number: Apple’s Indian workforce will comprise 200,000 direct jobs to be created by the end of March, with women accounting for 70%, according to estimates and data submitted to the government.
Apple’s three contract manufacturers in India – Foxconn, Wistron (now Tata Electronics) and Pegatron – have so far created 80,872 direct jobs. Other suppliers, including Tata Group, Salcomp, Motherson, Foxlink, Sunwoda, ATL and Jabil, have together created around 84,000 direct jobs.
Read also | How Tata Group’s growing presence is transforming Tamil Nadu’s industrial hub, Hosur
India plans to: “Overall, Apple vendors and suppliers have created around 165,000 direct jobs since the start of the PLI (production-linked incentive) programme for smartphones (in 2020),” said an official with knowledge of the details. Besides, Tata Group’s twin plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, is expected to hire around 50,000 employees over time.
New CFO on board: Apple on Monday named an insider Kevan Parekh as its CFO, Parekh, who has been with Apple for more than a decade, will join the company’s executive committee and take over as chief financial officer on January 1, 2025.
Read also | Apple names Indian-origin Kevan Parekh as CFO: 10 things you need to know
Get up to speed quickly: The announcement comes before Apple’s fall event, which will take place on September 9 In Cupertino, California, the tech company is expected to launch its new iPhone series with long-awaited artificial intelligence features.
Read also | Apple steps up efforts on its manufacturing plan in India
Zomato introduces secondary marketplace for event ticketing: “Book now, sell anytime”
Zomato, the leading food delivery provider, on Tuesday announced the launch of a secondary market for event ticket sales on its platform.
Tell me more: The feature, called ‘Book Now, Sell Anytime’, allows users who have purchased event tickets on Zomato to sell them on the app. It will be available on September 30, when bookings open for Zomato’s Feeding India concert, which will be headlined by pop singer Dua Lipa.
Controls established: To ensure that the feature does not promote bad practices like promoting unfair prices in the marketplace, Zomato said it has implemented certain checks and balances.
Zeenah Vilcassim, CEO of Zomato Live Entertainment, wrote in the blog post that Zomato will limit the number of tickets a customer can buy and sell to 10 per category.
The highest price at which they can list their tickets will be capped at 2 times the current phase price on the Zomato app, he wrote.
Read also | Zomato shuts down intercity food delivery service Legends due to lack of product-market fit
Increase volume: The announcement comes as Zomato continues to double down on its bet on the delivery business, for which it will launch A new app called DistrictThe company announced on August 21 that it was Acquisition of Paytm’s event and movie ticketing business in an all-cash deal that values the entity at Rs 2,048 crore.
We later reported that BookMyShow, the market leader in selling tickets for shows in India, It could face intense competition from Zomato.
In a letter to shareholders, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said the company anticipates the gross order value of its Go vertical to grow more than three times to over Rs 10,000 crore by FY26.
Paytm shares rally after fintech firm issues clarification on Sebi notice
Shares of Paytm’s parent company, One 97 Communications, increased after the company clarified regarding the show cause notice issued to founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and other former board members.
Details: Shares of Paytm rose 3.5 per cent to hit an intra-day high of Rs 548.70 on the BSE, before closing at Rs 544.75.
The company’s shares had ended with a fall of more than 4%or Rs 24 per share, to Rs 530.05 on the BSE on Monday, amid reports that Sebi had issued show cause notices CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma and board members who served during its initial public offering in November 2021 for alleged misrepresentation of facts.
Read also | Paytm could reach profitability by 2027, says Bernstein report
Paytm Response: Paytm said Sebi had issued a notice in the March 2024 quarter regarding employee stock options granted to Sharma. Responding to a query from the stock exchanges, Paytm said the notice is not a news and the company is in touch with the markets regulator to make necessary representations.
Additionally, Sharma has sought to settle a securities law violation case with Sebi.
Read also | Paytm Money appoints NV Srinivasan, former AMFI CEO, to its board of directors
ETtech does business
Ritesh Arora, co-founder of Browserstack
SaaS unicorn Browserstack acquires Berlin startup Bird Eats Bug: Web and mobile software testing platform powered by Accel, Browserstack has acquired Berlin-based bug reporting startup Bird Eats Bug in a $20 million deal. Valued at $4 billion When it last raised capital in 2021Browserstack is one of the most valued software product startups in India.
Keshav Reddy, scion of GVK Group, invests in One Money: Keshav Reddy, founder of Equal, an identity verification startup, has… invested an undisclosed amount in a strategic stake on Hyderabad-based account aggregator platform One Money. The company did not disclose details of the deal.
Finarkein Analytics raises $4.75 million: Data analytics company Finarkein Analytics has raised $4.75 million in a funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners. Existing investors IIFL’s Fintech Fund and Eximius Ventures also participated in the round, along with angel investors including Nitin Gupta of Uni and Chirag Jain of Ashika Group.
Convin secures $6.5 million in funding for its expansion plan: Convin, an AI-powered conversation intelligence platform, has raised $6.5 million in a funding round led by India Quotient. The money will be used to expand the Bengaluru-based company’s core team and distribution channels, said chief executive Ashish Santhalia.
Deeptech startup DeepMatrix raises $1.6 million: New Deep Tech Company DeepMatrix has raised $1.6 million in a funding round The round was led by YourNest and Arali Ventures. Angel investors including Abhishek Goyal, founder of data intelligence platform Tracxn, also participated in the round.
Amazon launches AI-powered shopping assistant in India
Amazon India has launched its Shopping assistant ‘Rufus’, powered by artificial intelligence in the domestic market as the ecosystem heats up for the festive period.
Helping hand: Rufus can help shoppers get product recommendations, access shopping list advice, compare product categories, and see what other customers have said in response to their specific questions, among other things.
It is trained using Amazon’s own product catalog data, community discussions, and customer reviews, and runs on an internal large language model (LLM) specialized in shopping.
Tell me more: Rufus is currently available only to a handful of customers in India in beta mode, and will be rolled out to more users “in the coming weeks.” It was first announced in the US in February this year, before being rolled out widely to all customers in that country in July.
Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was prepared by Megha Mishra in Mumbai.
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