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The gaming industry in India is facing tax woes as the GST department issued pre-show cause notices to several cash flow-rich firms in the sector. One of the notices, amounting to an estimated Rs 25,000 crore, was served to fantasy sports company Dream11, making it the largest indirect tax notice in India. This move has sparked legal disputes and challenges from the gaming companies, who argue that the tax demands are retrospective and unfair. The Supreme Court will conduct further hearings on the matter on October 10.
Bluestone is only the latest in the list of investments by Pai and Kamath, but this marks the growing pace at which they are signing new cheques at a time mid-to-large scale startups are finding it hard to score new funding.
After a slowdown in technology IPOs in 2022, several tech companies including Arm, Instacart, and Klaviyo have returned to raise funds from the public market. However, the valuations of these companies have fallen significantly compared to their peak valuations. Instacart, for example, is aiming for a $10 billion valuation, which is only a quarter of its peak valuation of $39 billion. The sentiment in the market has shifted, and investors are now looking for right-sized offerings rather than inflated valuations.
ETSA this year comes at a time when the technology industry faces multiple headwinds. The volatility in valuations of publicly listed tech companies, which began in the US in late 2021, has continued to spill over into the private markets. Indian startups, too, have felt this turbulence, with several of them getting valuation markdowns as increasingly cautious investors hedge their bets.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the real-time bank transfer mechanism, breached the 10 billion monthly transaction volume mark last month. And with the festive season not too far away, one can only expect it to grow more in the coming months. But what does this 10 billion really mean — and how did we get here?
While the jury is still out on the profitability — if at all — of quick commerce firms, especially as a standalone business, multiple industry executives and investors in the space agreed with Palicha, on ‘execution’ being the differentiator.
After the issues with IL&FS and DHFL, the regulator has become very concerned about the NBFC sector. Also, a clutch of unscrupulous Chinese players playing around in the lending space without any formal regulatory nod sent alarm bells ringing at the RBI. As a result, fintechs find themselves under tremendous scrutiny when they apply for an NBFC licence.
Perhaps what could turn out to be one of the most crucial acts for Digital India was undertaken by the Indian Parliament through the passage of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 earlier this week. While the law will impact every entity in this country that deals in the personal data of Indian citizens, tech companies and consumer facing startups are perhaps going to be impacted the most.
The April-June earnings posted in the past week by companies such as food and grocery delivery platform Zomato, software-as-a-service major Freshworks, and new-age logistics services provider Delhivery showed that steps towards frugality could lead to favourable results, even in a relatively short time.
While the initial buzz was that JFS would start off with a lending business given that it has an NBFC licence, the joint venture announcement stumped many.
This week was Dunzo’s worst ever since it pivoted to quick commerce with Dunzo Daily in 2021. At ETtech, we have been closely tracking the Reliance Retail and Google-backed firm. What has come to pass has been in the making for a while.
When a user wants to play a game like a fantasy sports competition or card games like rummy or poker, where they stand to win real money based on the outcome, they first deposit a contest entry amount (CEA). From this, prior to creating a pool that will be passed on to the winner, the platform deducts its fee — typically between 8-15%. This is called the gross gaming revenue (GGR).
This week’s ETtech newsbreak on PharmEasy going for a rights issue at a price 90% lower than its peak valuation of $5.6 billion to repay debt has tripped alarm bells in several startups that have taken debt financing.
By calling out the widespread adoption of private crypto currencies as a risk to monetary stability, the RBI has indicated to the market that its stance will only get harder going forward.
“Are you really surprised?" an edtech founder said, implying that industry executives have seen this blow-up coming for a while. “This will have an impact on other startups, especially in the current market where money is tight,” the entrepreneur said.
New capital — in primary funding — is increasingly hard to come by due to a host of reasons, including global macroeconomic conditions and a reset in valuations. In this scenario, existing investors who want a partial exit from older investments are game for such deals.
Over the last month, Altman has met heads of states and governments of several countries. The latest halt on his whistlestop tour was India, where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
The aftermath of Covid-19 and the subsequent moratorium on loan repayments burnt a massive hole in the loan books of lenders. While the large players managed their books somehow, fintech non-banking financial companies (NBFC) have grappled with ballooning non-performing assets (NPAs).
Earlier this week, the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) elected a new 24-member governing council – and from that, a four-member executive council . Dream11 cofounder and CEO Harsh Jain was elected the chairperson with Makemytrip cofounder Rajesh Magow becoming the vice-chairperson and Times Internet vice chairman Satyan Gajwani taking over as the treasurer.
The free run that Indian fintech founders had is a thing of the past. Not only has the regulator stepped in to check the speed of innovation, banks are also looking to work only with regulated fintechs.
To be sure, cash will continue to play a big part in the Indian economy. But over the next five years, cash will no longer be king. It will have to take its place among commoners.
The market landscape and dynamics have changed in the past year amid the government’s investigations against electric two-wheeler manufacturers over subsidies claimed under government scheme FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India). This scheme was launched in 2011 as part of the National Mission on Electric Mobility.
As things stand, it is no wonder that fintechs have been shopping around to acquire an NBFC licence. Cred acquired Parfait Finance in November 2021 and BharatPe acquired Trillionloans, a Mumbai-based NBFC, in March.
This week ETtech's reporters broke a bunch of stories across fintech, online pharmacy and social media, which highlight the growing push towards self-regulation and the challenges being faced by players in adopting it.
Even for Blinkit, the change in payout structure was the straw that broke the camel’s back with delivery executives telling us that they had been working under poor conditions but stuck around because the quick-commerce platform paid better than its rivals.
