One Thing Today in Tech
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Big Tech's 'Big Tobacco' moment; Licious turns unicorn; and a chat with Deep Vision's CEO Ravi Annavajjhala
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, was roundly criticised by US lawmakers on Tuesday at a hearing for employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen. Haugen had gathered evidence from the company's own research on how the social networking giant was harming young people. Notably, US senator Richard Blumenthal said, "Big Tech now faces the Big Tobacco jaw-dropping moment of truth", according to multiple reports on the hearing. In our tech conversation, we talk to Ravi Annavajjahala, CEO at AI chip company Deep Vision, on expansion in India
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Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp outage; first ransomware death lawsuit; and a chat with GalaxEye's founders
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all had major outages for many hours on Monday. On Tuesday, they issued statements that services were coming back online gradually. The first lawsuit blaming a death on a ransomware attack has been filed in the US. Byju's is raising more money. In our tech conversation, we talk to the founders of GalaxEye, about their plans for a low earth orbit constellation of satellites
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Jeff Bezos invests in Ula; Oyo seeks $1.2 billion in IPO; and a chat on the record money flow into India's internet unicorns
Jeff Bezos is investing in an Indonesian ecommerce startup, Ula, via his family office Bezos Expeditions, TechCrunch reports. Oyo Hotels and Homes filed its draft prospectus with India's capital markets regulator on Friday aiming to raise Rs 8,430 crore ($1.2 billion) through an initial public offer of shares. Google has abandoned its plan to offer a banking service, Plex, less than a year after launching it, Wall Street Journal reports. And in our tech conversation today, Arun Natarajan at Venture Intelligence puts the massive money flow into India's internet unicorns in perspective
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Ola Electric hits $3 billion in valuation; TCS lands MCX mandate; RBI's AFA rule kicks in; and Byju's Dev Roy on a new innovation hub
Ola Electric, the EV unit of ride-hailing business Ola, has raised over $200 million led by Falcon Edge, Softbank and others, at a valuation of $3 billion, the company said in a press release. Founder Bhavish Aggarwal also tweeted that the money will help Ola Electric accelerate its development of electric motorcycles and four-wheelers. In our tech conversation, Dev Roy—chief innovation and learning officer at Byju's—unpacks a new innovation lab
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Search visually on Google; Amazon launches Astro; and a chat with Kris Nair of Kawa Space
At its Search On Livestream event, Google showcased some of the features that will roll out in the coming months. One of them is the capability to search visually, allowing for more context-based results that would be more useful. Amazon has launched a home assistant robot called Astro. CredAvenue raised $90 million in series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. In our tech conversation, we talk to Kris Nair, founder of Kawa Space
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Special briefing: Accel's Shekhar Kirani on Freshworks and the science and art of succeeding as a VC investor
Shekhar Kirani couldn't have imagined that the little Chennai outfit would go on to deliver Accel's first US IPO from its Indian portfolio—and an India-founder-led software products company at that. Forbes India caught up with Kirani, a day after he returned from attending Freshworks's billion-dollar IPO on the Nasdaq. We spoke about everything from what was going through his mind on the floor of the exchange to how Girish had matured as an entrepreneur and what it takes to succeed as a VC investor
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Facebook to 'pause' Instagram Kids; and a chat with Cropin's founder Krishna Kumar
Instagram's head Adam Mosseri said the Facebook unit will "pause" development of a version of the photo and video sharing app targeted at children, dubbed 'Instagram Kids'. However, Instagram will continue to develop and integrate parental supervision features into the existing app, Mosseri said in a blog post, while also arguing YouTube and TikTok had children's apps. In our tech conversation, Krishna Kumar—founder and CEO of Cropin—unpacks his company's multiple agri-tech cloud software products
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PM Modi launches digital health mission; India's top young scientists named; and a chat with ION Energy's CEO Akhil Aryan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launches the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission today at 11 am via video conferencing. The main components of this platform include a health ID for every citizen that will also work as their health account to which personal health records can be linked and viewed via a mobile app. Healthcare Professionals Registry and a Healthcare Facilities Registries will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine. And in our tech conversation today, we catch up with Akhil Aryan, the co-founder and CEO of ION Energy
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EU USB Type-C rule will likely affect Apple; Uber's pension plan for UK drivers; and a chat with the founders of DataSutram
Apple users of the lightning connector will likely be the most affected if a proposed rule to make the Type-C USB connector a common charger standard is adopted as a law in Europe. The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, Thursday said it is putting forward legislation to establish a common charging solution for all the relevant devices. That, and in our tech conversation today, the founders of Extrapolate Advisors unpack their data-as-a-service platform, called DataSutram
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Freshworks surges on Nasdaq listing; Facebook's new CTO; and a chat with the founders of CoffeeMug.ai
Freshworks became perhaps the first Indian-founder-led cloud software venture to publicly list in the US, on September 22, after a successful initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Shares of the company, which listed under the symbol FRSH, were 32 percent higher at $47.55 at the close of normal trading on the exchange. The shares rose to over $49 in after-hours trading. In tech conversation, we catch up with the founders of a new networking platform for professionals, entrepreneurs and angel investors, CoffeeMug.ai
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Freshworks' $10 bln IPO; Karnataka bans 'games of chance'; Amazon's new Kindle; and a chat with ex-Googler Kanan Rai
Freshworks will become perhaps the first Indian founder-led cloud software venture to become a publicly listed company in the US, on Wednesday. The company will sell its shares at $36 each—on strong demand — after initially setting a range of $28 to $32 and then raising it $32 to $34. At $36 a share, Freshworks will raise about $1 billion and have a market value of $10 billion. In our tech chat, Kanan Rai speaks about her experience as a non-techie woman building businesses within Google