Audio
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Data protection bill, 2023 likely to be introduced in Parliament — expect the law soon?
India's Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 is likely to be introduced in the Parliament soon, amid protests from several opposition members, according to multiple media reports today. We asked Prateek Waghre, policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, to explain the significance of this bill becoming law. This latest bill, is the culmination of a process that started from a landmark judgement six years ago that reaffirmed privacy as a fundamental right, Prateek says
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Google and Meta did better than expected — is that just ads or is there good news for tech spending?
Alphabet, on the back Google, did better than expected, and so did Meta, with its latest earnings and where Facebook crossed 3 billion monthly active users. Harish Krishnakumar, senior market analyst with IDC India's Enterprise IT Services and Cloud team, and Suresh Ramanathan, dean and principal at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai joined us today on ToThePoint to discuss this. We asked if the stronger ad spending allows us to anticipate greater enterprise tech spending in the months to come. And were there any lessons here, for India's consumer facing Internet startups
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Manav Garg on Together's new $150 mln fund and his optimism over SaaS IPOs in India
Manav Garg, founding partner at Together, talks about the VC firm's plans for its second fund. At $150 million, the new fund's target is almost twice the size of the first one, which Together raised in 2021. The firm, founded by Garg, who is also the founder and CEO of Eka Software Solutions, Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshworks, and Shubham Gupta, a career venture investor, has achieved the "first close" of the second fund, which Together expects to invest in promising generative AI ventures, in addition to existing focus areas
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Byju's problems pile on — what's the end game, and how will this impact India's edtech startups?
In a relatively short span of time, Byju's credibility has taken a hit, from being India's most valued startup to one whose future is in question, as investors leave the company's board and raise red flags. Forbes India's Rajiv Singh joins us today to talk about some of the most recent developments and what we might infer from them. Questions include, were such marquee firms, who are some of the largest names on Byju's cap table, not aware of the extent of the problems and why were they unable to get the company to course correct sooner
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With rumours of a Rs20-lakh car, is Tesla any closer to starting in India?
Tesla has been negotiating with India for well over a year, Soumen Mandal, a senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research points out. Mandal, who tracks the automotive segment as part of his portfolio, joins us on ToThePoint today to walk us through how India might go from here to becoming an export hub for Tesla, and whether it can also be significant domestic market. And if an agreement is reached soon, here's how long it will take before a made-in-India Tesla rolls out
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Why Sravanth Aluru at Avataar is betting enterprise and consumer interactions will all go 3D
Sravanth Aluru, co-founder and CEO of Avataar.ai, talks about how the world of commerce is changing to embrace 3D and augmented reality. Avataar, a nine-year-old company, was co-founded by Gaurav Baid, who is the chief product officer, and Aluru. They have raised some $55 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management, and built a team of 180 engineers in San Francisco and Bengaluru. Avataar is helping its customers tell the story of their products the same way we see the real world with our eyes
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The blue bird is dead, Twitter becomes X: Can a 'super app' work in India?
Elon Musk reportedly said in a Twitter Spaces conversation that the blue bird logo was being cut down with blow torches, after he announced yesterday that the microblogging platform is being re-branded as X. Sanjay Swamy, co-founder and managing partner at Prime Venture Partners, joins us today to discuss what this re-branding means. Swamy, a well-known VC investor in India's fintech scene who's previously also helped design some of the payments aspects of Aadhaar, sets forth his arguments as to why he doesn't see a successful super app emerging in India any time soon
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HUL's Q1 results fail to impress, missing street estimates — what are its challenges ahead?
Hindustan Unilever's fiscal first-quarter results miss sent its stock down in Mumbai trading today. Volume growth at 3 percent, was well below the street expectations of about 5 percent. Does that mean a rural slowdown is persisting? And are there factors that will continue to affect topline growth? Forbes India's Samar Srivastava spoke with Sachin Bobade, vice president of research at Dolat Capital, to take stock of what challenges the FMCG giant faces through the rest of the year
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Kamal Karanth at Xpheno on IT services hiring, the rise of GCCs and other notes on staffing
In this episode, Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno, a staffing specialist in Bengaluru, talks about the current state of recruitment in the IT services industry in India. Kamal talks about the next wave of global capability centres rising in India and why software job seekers should consider these opportunities. He also talks about some 14,000 vacancies in the Indian startup ecosystem that still need to be filled while a funding winter is on, and finally, on whether generative AI is a meaningful opportunity from a staffing company's perspective
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Tata Group to set up £4 billion EV cell plant in the UK — India next, maybe?
India's Tata Group yesterday announced it will set invest more than £4 billion ($5.2 billion) to set up an electric battery cell manufacturing plant in the UK. The Gigafactory, as these plants are popularly called, will have a capacity of 40GW a year, and it is expected to start production in 2026. Forbes India's Manu Balachandran joins us on ToThePoint today, to discuss the significance of this investment — the Tata Group's first cell factory overseas and one of the largest automotive investments into Britain. We also ask why India didn't make the cut as a location
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Why Jio Financial Services is being spun out of Reliance and how it might unlock value for investors
Jio Financial Services, the financial services arm of Reliance Industries, will be spun out of the company on July 20, to be listed separately and trade on both the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. In the run up to the listing Reliance Industries has said that each shareholder of Reliance Industries will be eligible for shares in Jio Financial in a 1:1 ratio. Forbes India's Samar Srivastava joins us on ToThePoint today to explain how this process will work, and how the demerger might unlock value for investors