New Rs 500 crore scheme to promote electric mobility kicks in from April 1

The Rs 500 crore EMPS 2024 scheme aims to boost electric vehicle adoption till July, supporting 3,72,215 EVs with incentives for various types of vehicles and advanced batteries, aligning with the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative.

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Zomato gets tax demand order of Rs 23 crore

Zomato to appeal Rs 23.26 crore tax demand from Karnataka for FY 2018-19, including GST of Rs 11,27,23,564. Confident in a strong case, Zomato plans legal proceedings within a specified timeframe.

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Infosys set to get Rs 6,300 crore tax refund gain

Infosys received Rs 6,329 crore in tax refunds for 11 years but faces a Rs 2,763 crore tax demand for 2022-23. Various subsidiaries also dealt with tax liabilities and refund orders, impacting the company's overall financial position.

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14 years on, the marvel of DPI’s expanding universe

It’s been 14 years since the first Aadhaar number was issued, a decade since the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was designed.Ever since, the digital public infrastructure universe has been expanding.

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Govt not at a standstill due to polls, working to make India a $35 trillion economy by 2047: Piyush Goyal

Ahead of elections, Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal spoke on centre’s focus, trade, new-age companies and more. He said country’s growth to be based on twin pillars of being inclusive & sustainable.

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OpenAI unveils AI technology that recreates human voices

The high-profile artificial intelligence startup said Friday that a small group of businesses was testing a new OpenAI system, Voice Engine, that can re-create a person's voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, it can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds like yours.

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Microsoft and OpenAI planning $100 billion data center project: report

Microsoft and OpenAI are planning a data center project that could cost as much as $100 billion, and will include an artificial intelligence supercomputer called "Stargate", the Information reported on Friday.

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Tredence puts 10% revenues to develop GenAI capabilities: CEO Shub Bhowmick

Tredence, led by CEO Shub Bhowmick, invests in GenAI for various sectors, aiming for 40-50% revenue growth in 2024. The company emphasizes R&D to enhance AI capabilities and developer productivity.

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Large action models gearing up to turn AI’s promise into action

Rabbit’s R1, the world’s first LAM-powered device, is set to start shipping in a week and tech biggies like Microsoft and Salesforce investing in this cutting edge technology. LAMs can be ‘revolutionary’ and bring significant business gains, experts said. AI making choices on the behalf of consumers will, however, also add further complexity to business decision-making.

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Amazon invests $2.75 billion in ChatGPT-rival Anthropic, takes total investment to $4 billion

The investment comes six months after Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, making the San Francisco start-up Amazon’s most important AI partner. Amazon said at the time that it had the option to bring its total investment to $4 billion. It had until the end of March to do so, according to financial filings.

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Chiratae Ventures gets $70 million via portfolio sale as VCs eye exits

Chiratae Ventures sold stakes to Madison India Capital for $70 million, involving companies like Lenskart, Bizongo, and Rentomojo. Madison Capital, supported by Lexington Partners, had invested in Sequoia Capital India's portfolio firms like Star Health.

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Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque exits startup ‘hollowed out’ by departures, mismanagement

Stability AI CEO Mostaque resigns, leaving a turbulent legacy. The startup grapples with leadership changes, financial strains, and operational hurdles. Uncertain future looms despite efforts to pivot and stabilize amidst fierce competition in the AI landscape.

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Apple to hold annual developers conference June 10-14

Apple's WWDC on June 10-14 will showcase software updates for iPhones, iPads. Some attendees at Apple Park. Reports suggest AI collaborations with Google, OpenAI. Speculations on a deal announcement.

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Top companies back move to set up open cloud compute network

People+ai, an initiative by EkStep Foundation co-founded by Nandan Nilekani, set out last year to address increasing compute demand in the country, which is increasing with AI.

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Outflows from Grayscale bitcoin ETF hit $1.9 billion in single week

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust saw $1.9 billion outflows, affecting U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs. Despite buying interest from BlackRock, Fidelity, inflows slowed. Grayscale's high fee, bankruptcy trustees selling contributed. Challenges with Wealthfront, interest from institutional investors.

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Govt plans independent regulator for online gaming

To determine the direction that gaming regulations, the National Law University (NLU) Delhi, along with industry body E-Gaming Federation (EGF), is consulting with industry stakeholders.

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Physics Wallah shrugs off profit drop, plans more offline centres

Chief executive Alakh Pandey told ET that the offline business at Physics Wallah now contributes 40% of total revenue although it accounts for only 5% of its student base and the company is aiming to take the revenue share to about 45%.

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Paytm refutes layoff reports as SVP Praveen Sharma steps down

One97 Communications Ltd (OCL) announces Praveen Sharma's resignation as Senior VP at Paytm. Sharma steps down for new opportunities after Google. Paytm emphasizes sustainable growth, innovation, and commitment to customer service and team development.

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India’s gaming industry powers up

​​The report found that India contributes approximately 20% of the world’s total mobile game downloads, surpassing even the combined download totals of the next two: The US and Brazil.

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Investors greenlight Trump's $5.7 billion social media deal

The deal values Trump's majority stake in the company that holds his app Truth Social at about $3.3 billion. The windfall could prove vital as Trump grapples with the financial fallout of a string of legal cases against him, including a $454 million judgment in a civil fraud case in New York.

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P2P lenders to stop liquid funds; and other top tech, startup stories this week

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms have decided to halt one of their most attractive products from March 31 following increased regulatory scrutiny by the Reserve Bank of India, we reported on March 22.

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European regulators crack down on Big Tech

Apple, Meta Platforms and Google are set to be investigated for potential violations of the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) that could lead to fines of up to 10% of their global annual turnover, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

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P2P lenders to stop ‘liquid funds’ as RBI peers into business

The initiative by the Association of P2P Lending Platforms comes on the back of sharp displeasure expressed by the country’s banking regulator over a spate of such products offering attractive interest rates and instant liquidation options to retail investors.

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Reddit shares open 38% above IPO price

The San Francisco, California-based company priced its IPO at the top end of the $31 to $34 range. The IPO valued Reddit at $6.4 billion, while the company and its selling shareholders raised $748 million.

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Microsoft agreed to pay Inflection $650 million while hiring its staff: report

Microsoft has agreed to pay Inflection about $650 million while hiring the AI startup's staff, the Information reported on Thursday, citing a person involved in the deal.

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Global PE investors eye bigger pie of India’s software services sector

The number of PE firms holding majority stake in Indian IT services companies had doubled between 2019 and 2022 to more than 50, as per Avendus Capital data.

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PB Fintech to set up payment aggregator subsidiary

PB Fintech, the promoter of Policy Bazaar, on Wednesday said its board has approved the incorporation of a wholly-owned subsidiary to carry on the business of payment aggregator.

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Startups ‘reverse flip’: Pine Labs, Zepto, Meesho in queue for India return

Startups such as Pine Labs, Zepto, Meesho are the latest new-age companies looking to move headquarters to India. However, Indian-origin companies looking to move base from the US or Singapore face a hefty levy.

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PM Narendra Modi to address entrepreneurs, investors at Startup Mahakumbh event tomorrow

During the second day of the three-day event, Groww cofounder and chief operating officer Harsh Jain said fintechs should collaborate with regulators, and work together to bring change, rather than bypassing or ignoring regulations.

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'AWS working with Indian startups to solve for world'

Cloud major looking to export ‘great ideas’ from here, says Gaurav Arora, director and head of startup business in Asia Pacific and Japan at AWS.

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Nvidia AI developer conference kicks off with new chips in focus

Nvidia's new chip and software announcements at GTC 2024 will help determine whether Nvidia can maintain its leadership position as the dominant seller of the tools needed to fuel the past year's frenzy around AI. Nvidia dominates the data center AI chip market, capturing roughly an 80% share last year.

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B2B ecommerce firm Jumbotail raises Rs 151 crore in funding

Jumbotail will use the funds raised to scale up its “Go-To-Market products and services for new and emerging brands,” it said in a statement without elaborating.

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Companies hail tweaked advisory easing AI model rollout

The revised advisory from the IT ministry does away with the provision that mandated intermediaries and platforms to get government permission before deploying “under-tested” or “unreliable” AI models and tools in the country.

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How people's reluctance to take phone calls is affecting companies and gig workers in particular

Ecommerce and logistics firms note a comparable drop in calls for deliveries longer than same-day or next-day, leaving gig workers hassled and late for their next drop. Businesses are trying to find ways to adapt to this change, all the while finding ways to get consumers to pick up important calls.

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India’s startup landscape: Funding winter continues as investment plummets

​​A new report brings out the continuing downward trend in funding, as investors remain more cautious and selective, even as India remained the fourth largest venture market in the world in 2023.

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Sam Bankman-Fried deserves 40-50 years in prison for FTX fraud, prosecutors say

Sam Bankman-Fried should spend between 40 and 50 years in prison after being convicted for stealing $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, prosecutors said on Friday.

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Paytm Payments Bank releases FAQs on steps to close Paytm FASTag, refund of FASTag balance & more

FAQs for Paytm FASTag users: To help users of Paytm FASTag, Paytm Payments Bank has issued a fresh set of FAQs. Here is what it states.

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Gold loan startup Rupeek is staring at a down round

Rupeek could be staring at a cut of as much as 40-50% in its valuation. It was last valued at $600 million. A down round is where a company raises new funds at a lower valuation compared with the previous round.

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Europe one step away from landmark AI rules after lawmakers' vote

Three years in the making, the AI Act comes as generative AI systems such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's chatbot Gemini become more popular, fuelling concerns about misinformation and fake news.

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Microsoft singles out Google's competitive edge in generative AI

Alphabet unit Google enjoys a competitive edge in generative artificial intelligence due to its trove of data and AI-optimised chips, Microsoft has told EU antitrust regulators, underscoring the rivalry between the two tech giants.

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Apple buys startup DarwinAI, adds staff to its AI division: report

Apple has bought Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) startup DarwinAI and added dozens of the company's staffers to its AI division, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

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Sustainability platform Tapfin bags $4million in funding from Elevar Equity

The Mumbai-based company plans to utilise the freshly acquired capital to fuel its growth initiatives, expand its market reach, and enhance its technological capabilities by attracting top-tier talent across various domains.

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ChatGPT users to get access to news content from Le Monde, Prisa Media

ChatGPT users will get access to French and Spanish news content from Le Monde and Prisa Media, Microsoft-backed OpenAI said on Wednesday, disclosing its partnership with the media publications.

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Behind the OnlyFans porn boom: allegations of rape, abuse and betrayal

OnlyFans says it is building "the safest social media platform in the world." But a Reuters investigation identified 128 cases in which women and men complained to U.S. law enforcement agencies that sexual content featuring them ended up on OnlyFans without their permission - and was often sold for profit - between January 2019 and November 2023.

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B2B, manufacturing tech drove IPO market in past five years: report

According to the latest ‘Digitizing Make in India’ report by Boston Consulting Group and venture capital firm Matrix Partners, within the B2B space, there had been 11 initial public offerings in the past five years in the specialty chemical industry, featuring companies such as Chemplast and Senmar.

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STMicroelectronics CEO says China is a growth market despite US chip war

Speaking at a Citi technology conference in London, CEO Jean-Marc Chery said the company is not daunted by plans by Chinese chipmakers to invest in relatively older generations of chips, following a US-led campaign to prevent Chinese companies from being able to make their own advanced chips.

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Kaynes SemiCon OSAT to move from Telangana to Gujarat: Sources

Kaynes broke ground in Kongara Kalan near Hyderabad in October last year and proposed to invest Rs 2,850 crore there.

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Hospitality brand Quorum Club secures pre-Series A funding led by Gruhas

Quorum Club was founded in 2018 by Vivek Narain and his wife Sonya Jehan. It runs three brands—Quorum, a subscription-based members-only club, District 150, a meetings and events space, and Business Quarter, a coworking space.

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Meet India’s own ChatGPT-style AI model Hanooman

The first version of ‘Hanooman’, an artificial intelligence model that can generate both text and speech in several Indian languages, is scheduled to be released in late March.

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Elon Musk can’t sue his way to AI breakthroughs, Vinod Khosla says

Musk, who was on the founding team of OpenAI, filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the company, accusing it of straying too far from its mission and becoming beholden to its largest investor, Microsoft Corp.

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Fashinza, Virgio to return majority capital after pivots

Fashinza and Virgio failed to attract customers in the original business plans for which they had raised the funds. They are now returning most of the capital they had raised, after a change in their business models.

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TikTok divestment bill would give government stronger legal position: US DOJ

The Justice Department gave a classified briefing to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday before the panel voted 50-0 on a bill to give ByteDance six months to divest short video app TikTok or face a US ban.

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Battling the spam goliath: Inside Trai's plan to clamp down on unwanted calls, spammers

Trai's efforts to combat spam include implementing DLT, removing inactive headers, and AI-based scam detection. However, challenges such as evolving tactics and lack of adoption of the consent module remain. Trai aims to standardize procedures to reduce junk messages and pesky calls.

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Unveiling the future: From reinventing smartphones to life-like robots, top inventions from MWC 2024

Mobile World Congress 2024 showcased a glimpse of what to expect in our increasingly tech-driven world. From reinventing the familiar smartphone to life-like robots, the summit was brimming with possibilities. MWC gave us a first-hand look at an incredible life-like humanoid that can answer questions, hold a conversation, even have some jokes to tell.

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Sam Altman's Worldcoin files lawsuit after Spanish ban

Worldcoin aims to create a global identity system, and involves people getting their irises scanned in exchange for free cryptocurrency and a digital ID.

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Tech-first VCs line up for new-age consumer firms

Tech-first VC Nexus Venture Partners will lead a $5 million funding round in specialty coffee brand AbCoffee and it will also invest in lab-grown diamond maker Aukera, sources told ET. Accel, one of Flipkart's earliest investors, will close a $12 million round in fast fashion brand Newme. Why are tech-first VCs lining up for new-age brands with a horde of affluent young customers?

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House lawmaker says US ByteDance investors should urge China to allow TikTok sale

Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs a House panel on China, introduced legislation on Tuesday with Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel's top Democrat, that would give ByteDance about six months to sell TikTok or face a ban citing national security concerns.

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Parineeti Chopra-backed personal care startup Clensta says it grew 300% in FY24

Clensta is now looking to penetrate deeper across its current 57 focused cities through same-store, same-city growth, said Puneet Gupta, founder of the personal care startup.

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Google vs startups game makes RMG platforms interested

As the battle between Google and startups over service fees unfolds, online real-money gaming (RMG) companies are observing the situation closely. These companies are concerned that they might be the next group of app developers to face the 15-30% fee implementation starting from June this year.

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Groundbreaking for three semiconductor plants likely next week

Of the three semiconductor projects, two are from the Tata Group. They include an $11 billion semiconductor fab facility, the country's first, at Dholera in Gujarat. The other unit proposed by the conglomerate involves a Rs 27,000 crore chip assembly, testing, marking and packaging facility at Morigaon in Assam

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Much excite, very wow: Meme coin volumes jump on local bourses

Famous meme coins such as Shiba Inu (SHIB), Dogecoin, Floki, Vita Inu, Doge Bonk and PepePAD made up around half the total trading value of $113 million on the top three Indian crypto exchanges in the 24 hours till 7 pm Tuesday, according to data from global crypto data platform CoinMarketCap.

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Big Tech app stores focus of EU digital crackdown: Margrethe Vestager

In an interview, EU's competition chief Margrethe Vestager said she’s most concerned about smaller app stores being given fair access to operating systems run by companies that dominate the market like the likes of Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Microsoft Corp.

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ETtech Explainer: Elon Musk vs OpenAI and the curious case of sour grapes

Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that the artificial intelligence firm has strayed from its original not-for-profit mission of building open-source artificial intelligence (AI) for the good of humanity, working now to ‘maximise profits’ for its major investor Microsoft.

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Ben Greenfield lends heft to Mukesh Bansal’s biohacking venture

Ben Greenfield is a well-known fitness consultant, ‘biohacker’ and triathlon runner, who is consulting with Mukesh Bansal to help him set up a chain of biohacking centres in India. Such centres will provide various therapies and consultations, among other services.

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ETtech Explainer: Why are Indian startups up in arms against Google Billing?

On Friday, Apps like Shaadi.com and BharatMatrimony.com were delisted by Google since they did not adhere to the tech giant’s billing policies. However, ahead of a meeting with the IT ministry, these apps were restored on Google Play Store, but without their in-app payment options.

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Apple launches MacBook Air laptops with faster M3 chips

The new MacBook Air models come with 13-inch and 15-inch screen sizes and are up to 60% faster than the model with Apple's M1 processor, the company said on its website.

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Indian internet companies dial up fight against Google

Indian companies have asked the government to give Google a “strategic response” on what they deem to be monopolistic behaviour by the US tech major. Meanwhile, Google has maintained that its actions against the ten companies are only to make the ecosystem “fair” for a “vast majority” of developers who comply with its norms.

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Court says EU must pay a fraction of legal fees sought by Qualcomm

The Luxembourg-based General Court said the number of hours worked and hourly rates used in Qualcomm's claim was "manifestly excessive". Qualcomm submitted its legal bill to the European Commission in 2022 after the General Court backed the U.S. group's fight against a 997 million euro EU antitrust fine issued in 2018 and ordered the regulator to pay Qualcomm's legal costs

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Detecting deepfakes should not be the sole responsibility of platforms: Sam Gregory

Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness, a global human rights organisation, which uses video and technology to expose human rights abuses and has worked on the threats of AI and deepfakes, spoke to ET about AI related challenges and strategies in elections.

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Myntra secures $54 million fund infusion from parent Flipkart

Myntra has been attempting to enhance its portfolio of international brands collections, with premium offerings showing fast growth. This as online fashion in the lower-price segments has lately witnessed a softness in demand.

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Isha Ambani wows in pink for Anant's pre-wedding festivities

Isha Ambani, looking glamorous, kicked off her brother Anant's pre-wedding celebrations in style. She donned a beautiful soft pink off-the-shoulder gown designed by London-based Miss Sohee. The dress featured delicate floral motifs throughout, adding a touch of elegance.

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Intel sees AI opportunity for standalone programmable chip unit

Intel's programmable chip unit began operating as a standalone business at the beginning of the year, and on Thursday outlined its plans for the future and its official name: "Altera, an Intel company."

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Germany wants Big Tech to pay towards compliance costs of new digital law

The landmark rules set out a list of requirements for the six companies, such as allowing rival services to inter-operate with their services, as well as letting business users promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside their platforms.

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Microsoft tailors AI for finance teams in specialized 'Copilot' strategy

Microsoft said its tool, called Microsoft Copilot for Finance, helps users review data sets for risks, produce reports from raw numbers, and generally handle tasks they might otherwise outsource. It did not announce pricing or a date for wider availability.

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