2024: How the fintech industry will learn to live a regulated life

For Razorpay and Cashfree, Christmas came a week early, as after a year of being under embargo from the RBI, which halted new merchant onboarding, the startups finally managed to restart business.

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India job scene sees early signs of disruption from AI

Millions of working employees will need reskilling and upskilling, which in turn could create new job opportunities as well, say experts

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Boom in AI prompts a test of copyright law

Authors and a leading photo agency have brought suit over the past year, contending that their intellectual property was illegally used to train AI systems, which can produce humanlike prose and power applications like chatbots.

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Manipur CM announces welfare schemes for education, sports and women empowerment

Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh announced the launch of multiple welfare schemes in January. These include the Khungang Ama, Sanabung Ama scheme, the Chief Minister's Sportspersons Livelihood Guarantee Scheme, and the Ima Nongthang Leima Yaipha Tengbang Scheme. Additionally, Singh introduced the School Fagathansi 2.0 and College Fagathansi schemes to improve educational infrastructure. Furthermore, financial packages will be provided to displaced individuals and farmers through the Chief Minister's Farmer Livelihood Scheme.

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Bihar education department orders re-verification of more than one-lakh newly recruited teachers

The Bihar Education department has ordered re-verification of nearly one lakh teachers recruited last month, following complaints that those turning up for the job were imposters. Additional Chief Secretary, Education Department, K K Pathak, blamed the anomalies on the 'failure' of Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) to share thumb impressions of candidates who had appeared in the entrance examination with the department at the time of counseling in November. The department recently called 4,000 selected teachers for random re-verification and identified three imposters. Legal actions have been initiated against imposters by the department.

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23 going on 24: Making sense of a chaotic yet colourful year for India's tech sector

From 15.4 billion downloaded games to 138.08 crore people covered by Aadhar, India's tech sector had an eventful 2023. ET takes a look at the top 23 moments from 2023.

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US wants to contain China's chip industry. This startup shows it won't be easy

The production of advanced chips is one of the most contentious technological struggles now dividing the United States and China as they vie for economic and military supremacy. Washington is trying to curb China's access to sensitive microchip design tools.

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IT executive exodus: a primer on breach of contract, lawsuits

IT major Wipro has filed at least two legal complaints against its former senior executives including former senior vice president Mohd Haque and ex CFO Jatin Dalal for breach of his employment contract with Wipro. What does this mean?

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Chinese company BabyBus is taking kids for a ride

BabyBus is still very active in India despite TikTok and other Chinese apps being banned. Experts have raised questions over the handling of Indians’ data by the company that provides customised free digital content primarily for children.

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DMI, Aditya Birla Finance in race to scoop up ZestMoney in firesale

ZestMoney, which was offering buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) loans to customers at ecommerce and offline checkout points, had around December 5 informed its employees about its plans to shut down by the end of this month. ET wrote on December 7 the company shut down mostly after its lending partners withdrew debt lines to the startup.

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Russian tech company Arenadata plans to hold IPO in 2024

Arenadata, a Russian developer of data collection and storage platforms, intends to launch an initial public offering (IPO) on the Moscow Exchange in 2024.

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Social media companies may have to delete data of users away for three years

The proposal is part of draft executive rules of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, which was ratified as a law in August this year. ET has seen a copy of the draft rules, which will be floated for discussion among stakeholders shortly.

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2023 Year in Review: How money followed deeptech companies at tech’s frontier

Deeptech is a term for businesses using advanced science and technology to find solutions for complicated problems across over a dozen sectors. The year saw a steady increase in investor interest in high-tech innovation-focused companies.

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Zomato receives Rs 402 crore show cause notice over unpaid GST on delivery charges

Zomato said it received the GST notice on December 26 to show cause as to why an alleged tax liability of the said amount for the period October 29, 2019 to March 31, 2022 should not be demanded from the company.

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Flipkart marketplace arm’s revenue jumps 42% to Rs 14,845 crore in FY23, loss narrows 9%

Walmart-owned Flipkart runs its India business through various entities, and Flipkart Internet runs the marketplace where the firm earns its revenue in the form of seller commissions, advertising income, and other fees for seller services.

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Apple in advanced talks with parts companies Aequs, Rayprus

Aequs makes high-quality toys, consumer durable goods and aerospace parts in India, US and France while Rayprus is a subsidiary of Taiwanese contract manufacturing giant Foxconn and makes high-quality precision camera and lens solutions.

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Startups write a $1.5-billion twist in winter’s tale

December brings the highest monthly fundraise of 2023, though the annual total is the lowest in 7 years.

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2023 Year in Review: Meet the executives who donned the founder hat

In partnership with executive search firm Longhouse Consulting, ET has put together a list of high-profile executives who launched their own ventures this year. Several of these executives are still tinkering with and developing their startups in stealth mode.

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Artists use tech weapons against AI copycats

Artists under siege by AI that studies their work, then replicates their styles, have teamed with university researchers to stymy such copycat activity. The artist turned to free software called Glaze created by researchers at the University of Chicago.

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Working towards launching six satellites in 2024, 18 by 2025: Pixxel CEO Awais Ahmed

Fireflies is a constellation of satellites which will have high resolution cameras and higher collection capacity and will remain in Space for ten years. Honeybees is another constellation of satellites which will increase the resolution of images and the wavelength range of Pixxel’s satellites.

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Peak XV-backed semiconductor firm Mindgrove’s quad core chip enters design phase

The second chip is a quad core with support for external memory and an integrated GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), Shashwath TR, cofounder and CEO, Mindgrove Technologies told ET.

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FTX debtors settle claims over Embed deal with Sam Bankman-Fried, others

The settlement agreement is between Bankman-Fried, and former FTX executives Nishad Singh and Gary Wang.

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In-depth | India’s electronic ambitions ride on young female employees

Women are increasingly becoming the talent pool of choice for electronics companies. This augurs well for companies which will have to double down on their hiring considering the electronics market in India alone is being valued at $155 billion, with domestic production accounting for 65 per cent.

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Plan in works to recognise skill certification of MNCs, top companies

While Microsoft, IBM, HCL Tech and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have come on board, talks are on with Google, Meta, Cisco and various sector leaders, a senior government official told ET. "The plan is to have at least 10 international awarding bodies in the next two months and double this to 20 by July 2024," the official said.

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OpenAI in talks to raise new funding at $100 billion valuation: report

The terms, valuation and timing of OpenAI's funding round have not yet been finalised and could still change, the report said.

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How layoffs reordered Indian startups this year, and other top tech stories this week

Startups laid off over 28,000 people just in the first three quarters of 2023. This alone was over 50% higher than 2022, when companies let go nearly 18,000 employees.

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China announces rules to reduce spending on video games

The new rules, which will effectively set spending limits for online games, sparked panic among investors, wiping off nearly $80 billion in market value from China's two biggest gaming companies, as investors sought to gauge the potential impact on earnings and more restrictions in the offing.

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Coforge gets Rs 122 crore income tax demand notice

The company said that the assessment unit had made an adjustment under transfer pricing due to variation in margin.

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Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 could send 240 million PCs to landfills: report

The electronic waste from these PCs could weigh an estimated 480 million kilograms, equivalent to 320,000 cars.

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PM Modi taps Bhashini AI platform to bridge language divide

Bhashini counts among its various products and technologies, real time speech to speech machine translation, and automatic speech recognition, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi used on December 19 to interact with students in various parts of India via video conferencing.

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As RBI lifts curbs, Razorpay, Cashfree eye lost market share

With both Razorpay and Cashfree back in the business, industry insiders said there could be a price war breaking out in the online merchant payment space.

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Google Maps, ONDC, Namma Yatri tie up to provide seamless mobility experience

ONDC may include long-distance trains and flights in time to come, its managing director and chief executive officer T Koshy said.

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28,000 and counting: That’s the 2023 layoff data from startup land

Startups have been the worst hit this year since the highs of aggressive hiring from 2021, data from Longhouse Consulting shared exclusively with ET showed.

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Indian companies seek comprehensive cybersecurity: HPE India CTO Sadasiva Ranganath

On certain days, HPE records as many as 2.6 billion logged requests and cybersecurity-related events. Cybersecurity, therefore, is no longer a “one-time effort” that companies are putting in, Sadasiva Ranganath said.

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OpenAI says board can overrule CEO on safety of new AI releases

​​The release of the guidelines follows a period of turmoil at OpenAI after Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman was briefly ousted by the board, putting a spotlight on the balance of power between directors and the company’s c-suite.

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Uber pushes intercity, reserve rides, leans on longer trips

The company has expanded the intercity service to around 100 cities and is adding new features to the offering that increases the average ticket size on the platform.

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Tech services demand may rise on upbeat statements from Fed

Central bank’s guidance on rate cuts may lead to higher spending on tech by companies in the top market for IT services.

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Laptop company Primebook grabs 3% market share in first year

Mahant claimed that the company is one of the fastest growing startups in the IT hardware sector whose valuation has already crossed Rs 500 crore.

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Unicorn Slice eyes $100 million to fuel its banking dreams

The Bengaluru-based fintech firm is scouting for fresh equity and is trying to get a good deal from investors. The talks are still at an early stage and, given the overall funding winter, might take a few months to close, sources told ET.

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Over 20 lakh parents attend mega PTM in Punjab govt schools

More than 2 million parents of government school students attended a large-scale parent-teacher meeting (PTM) conducted statewide on Saturday. Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains reported that valuable suggestions were gathered from parents during the event, held at 19,109 schools from 10 am to 3.30 pm.

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AI’s Magic Call: how AI will make smartphones smarter

Artificial intelligence will unlock limitless possibilities in smartphones once they fully adopt the technology and make it a part of their offerings. Here's how AI will make smartphones smarter and unleash the next phase of growth for the industry

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Seeing eye to AI: risk and impact of artificial intelligence use in businesses

Along with independent research and analysis firm Foundry, looked at actions, experiences, and projections of more than 1,000 decision-makers, C-level executives, business leaders, automation leaders and practitioners across industries and regions over two months. The report underscored three topics – AI, productivity improvements and scalability.

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Going vocal with local on LLMs; and other top tech, startup stories this week

While tech biggies including Microsoft, Google, and Meta are leading the charge on AI, more localised contingents are emerging across geographies, including in India and the European Union.

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Infosys kicks off holiday season with long-awaited pay hike

The hikes, which typically are effective from April 1, have now been announced from November 1, 2023, ET has learnt. It does not include reviews for entry level workers of the IT services major, according to people aware of the matter.

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Government may go high-tech to reduce wastage of fresh fruits, veggies

Plans to use a technology tool developed by ecommerce major Amazon called Johari to reduce wastage of fresh fruits and vegetables at its warehouses and retail outlets.

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Eye on higher tech spend in 2024, IT firms see 5-6% rise in hiring

Hiring mandates put out by IT services companies – that had almost completely frozen recruitments in the last few quarters due to weak tech demand – are improving on a month-on-month basis, recruitment firms said.

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BharOS looks to provide its technology for routers

BharOS, an indigenously developed mobile operating system, is considering providing its technology for routers, said Karthik Ayyar, the founder of JandK Operations, an IIT Madras incubated non-profit organisation that has built BharOS.

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US-India partnership to become most strategic in the world: John Chambers

Chambers also underscored that India is on track to become the number one economy in the world, reiterating his comments from June this year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the US.

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Ola, SarvamAI announce their large language models

In two separate developments on Wednesday, mobility unicorn Ola and AI startup SarvamAI have announced their large language models (LLMs) trained to generate text in Hindi.

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Investments in private markets, firms fetch better returns than public markets: report

The report highlights that the aggregate benchmark of alternate investment funds (AIF) investing in private markets delivered an alpha of 13.5% over the public market equivalent, S&P BSE Sensex.

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Isro enables access to remote sensing data from 44 satellites since 1986

​​This is in accordance with the Indian Space Policy 2023 that talks about enabling easy access for government entities and non-government entities to space-based remote sensing data collected through public expenditure.

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M2P Fintech acquires Goals101 in a cash-and-equity deal worth Rs 250 crore

The equity-plus-cash deal is worth Rs 250 crore, or $30 million, people aware of the negotiations told ET.

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India strategically important for us, says NTT Global CEO Abhijit Dubey

Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Group views India as a strategically important market that houses its second largest employee population outside of Japan and has the potential to be among the company’s top revenue generators, its global CEO Abhijit Dubey told ET in an exclusive interview.

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GPAI Summit 2023 | India will launch AI mission to boost agri, healthcare: PM

“The aim of this mission will be to establish sufficient AI compute power in the country. This will help India’s innovators and startups get better facilities. Under this mission, AI applications in agriculture, healthcare and education-related sectors will be promoted,” Modi said at the inaugural session of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit 2023.

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Indians still prefer to use cards during international travel: report

The survey also found that around 10-12% of the respondents still use currency exchange, which means while using their cards they use cash too.

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Ayurveda-focused B2C startup Nat Habit raises $10 million led by Bertelsmann

The company has previously raised about $7 million in total. From the current funding, about $2 million will be used for early-stage investor exits, in about 5X returns in four years. Its other past investors include Peak XV Partners, formerly Sequoia India and Southeast Asia.

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Zomato sees an opportunity in catering business

The company is also looking to add more offerings to its loyalty programme, Gold, despite concerns about the potential impact on profitability, Rakesh Ranjan, chief executive for food delivery, said in an interview.

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US judge to hear Meta privacy dispute with FTC next month

The agency proposed tightening a 2019 consent agreement, that had forced Facebook, which became Meta in 2021, to pay a $5 billion penalty.

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Dunzo survival hinges on Reliance Retail commitment to funds

An impasse after several rounds of discussions has left Dunzo’s other investors increasingly sceptical of its chances of survival in the absence of fresh funding soon, said multiple people briefed on the situation.

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Amazon competitor Zulily curtails operations, lays off hundreds

Zulily will lay off 292 workers in Seattle and elsewhere in Washington, effective from February 7, according to a notification from the state Employment Security Department, reports Seattle Times.

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Finally, it's done: Europe agrees landmark AI regulation deal

With the political agreement, the EU moves toward becoming the first major world power to enact laws governing AI. Friday's deal between EU countries and European Parliament members came after nearly 15 hours of negotiations that followed an almost 24-hour debate the previous day.

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Green Shoots: Sustainability now part of corporate agenda for Indian tech companies

For tech companies in India, sustainability is now part of corporate agenda. So accordingly, apart from their products, the likes of Intel and SAP Labs have also invested in green campuses

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Microsoft says it does not own any portion of OpenAI

"While details of our agreement remain confidential, it is important to note that Microsoft does not own any portion of OpenAI and is simply entitled to share of profit distributions," said company spokesman Frank Shaw.

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Europe agrees landmark AI regulation deal

With the political agreement, the EU moves toward becoming the first major world power to enact laws governing AI.

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Startups’ annus horribilis; and other top tech stories this week

Indian startups are closing 2023 with a cloud of uncertainty looming large over them.

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Funding in Indian startups sinks to its lowest since 2017

Investments till date at $7 billion for 2023; Oct-Dec least funded quarter since July-Sept 2016, show data

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Memory, storage products made at Micron ATMP in Sanand will be largely exported: Micron MD Anand Ramamoorthy

On Monday, agreements for ensuring project milestones are met on time, and for disbursement of incentives, were signed among Micron, India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) and Government of Gujarat.

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WhatsApp introduces "view once" feature for voice notes

The feature allows users to designate voice notes as "View Once." This enhances privacy by preventing the recipient from exporting, forwarding, saving, or recording the voice note. The "View Once" audio will disappear once the recipient listens to it.

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Elon Musk says his AI firm xAI is not raising funds 'right now'

The company has raised $134.7 million in equity financing from a total offering amount of $1 billion, the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed on Tuesday.

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NCLT tells Ashneer Grover to establish maintainability of plea against BharatPe

On Wednesday, the tribunal heard arguments on the quantum of stake Ashneer Grover, who is also the founder of BharatPe, holds in the company.

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India's tech chops help GCCs to look within for solutions

ANSR, which helps set up GCCs and handles over 110 centres and 120,000 GCC talent resources, says that over 30,000 critical jobs over the past decade have been insourced from system integrators to their own payrolls by GCCs.

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Apple taps companies in India, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan for critical parts

In January, about 17 Chinese companies that supply components for Apple’s devices applied for government clearances to set up manufacturing facilities in India.

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Perfios eyes US, Europe expansion in 9-12 months: CEO Sabyasachi Goswami

The software-as-a-service startup has been chalking out plans to enter the US and European markets next year. According to Goswami, almost 10% of the firm’s revenue can come from these adjacent industries in the next two to three years.

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Failure to curb deepfakes may lead to action under IPC too: Official

On Tuesday, senior government officials from the ministry of electronics and information technology met executives from social media and other internet-based intermediaries. The meeting was chaired by the minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

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Byju’s may have to dip into Epic sale funds to keep lights on

Troubled edtech reduces notice period to 15-30 days across staff level to cut costs

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Uber set to join the S&P 500 index in latest sign of turnaround for the ride-hailing service

The San Francisco company will be added to the benchmark index prior to the opening of regular trading on Dec. 18, S&P Dow Jones Indices said late Friday.

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Focus on low-cost AI models, says Nandan Nilekani

Speaking at the Carnegie Tech Summit 2023, Nilekani said that all AI should be use-case-led which can be amplified to make the lives of common people better.

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Zerodha cites IP database update for login glitch on Kite

Users of Kite took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday morning to vent out their frustration after being unable to login into the app.

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EU founders and VCs turn to safer shores like AI on slump

European startups are making strides towards developing AI platforms that aim to compete with US-based companies, such as Open AI, in addition to building in areas such as quantum computing, chip design and semiconductors.

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Game theory: How fortunes of India's gaming industry turned from being a sunrise sector

From being a sunrise sector to a stressed one, fortunes of India’s gaming industry have quickly turned. ET looks at what is driving the bullish investor sentiment in the sector despite recent setbacks

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As Zo House turns one, a look at the co-living space where Web3 creators huddle, work and play

Zo House BLR at Anaa Infra’s Signature Towers is a home away from home for an elite group of 405 members who hold nonfungible tokens (NFTs), including actor Lisa Ray, former Unacademy chief of design Abhinav Chhikara, and Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal, among others.

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OpenAI's Sam Altman, sugarcoating the apocalypse

The government has nibbled the edges of regulation, but the quicksilver AI has already leaped ahead of the snaillike lawmakers and bureaucrats. Nobody, even in Silicon Valley, has any clue how to control it.

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Inside a Mumbai house where a league of gaming legends resides

Esports organisations such as S8UL, Revenant Esports, GodLike Esports, Orangutan Gaming and Global Esports have leased out swanky bungalows to build gaming houses or boot camps to house the top esports athletes of their teams.

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EU wants to know how Meta tackles child sex abuse

The request for information focuses on Meta's risk assessment and mitigation measures "linked to the protection of minors, including regarding the circulation of self-generated child sexual abuse material (SG-CSAM) on Instagram", the European Commission said.

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