ETtech

Startup funding in the last week of January 2024 went up by about 97% from the same period a year ago, totalling $93.8 million across 11 different deals. Companies, across seed, early and late-stages, had raised about $47.6 million across 18 rounds in the period from January 27 to February 2, 2023, as per data from Tracxn.The most significant amount of capital raised in the week was in early-stage funding, at about $67 million, accounting for 71.4% of the overall deal value. This was followed by $15 million in the late…

Food-delivery platform Swiggy has tested a Rs 10 platform fee on users. It started by levying this as a Rs 2 fee back in April last year, and raised it to Rs 3 in October. Now, it is potentially looking at increasing this levy.Swiggy is not the only company in the consumer internet space to impose such charges, and platforms are looking at these fees to optimise unit economics in their quest for profitability.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteMITMIT Technology Leadership…

Investments in Indian startups dropped about 80% on year this week, totalling $143.9 million across 26 different deals.Companies, across seed, early and late stages, had raised about $722 million in 30 rounds in the period from January 13 to 19 last year, as per data from Tracxn.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIT DelhiIITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine LearningVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Product ManagementVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and…

Google’s Play Store will allow a variety of real money gaming (RMG) apps, which let players wager actual money based on the outcome of online games, to be listed on the platform, it said in a blogpost. At the same time, the popular app store will be charging them a service fee, adding to the pressure their margins already face due to increased indirect taxation.Here’s a deeper dive into what this means for one of the most profitable, and more recently troubled, startup ecosystems in the country:Elevate Your Tech Prowess…

With no respite from the funding squeeze, investments in startups in the second week of 2024 dropped about 70% on year, totalling $102.1 million across 26 different deals.Companies, across seed, early and late stages, had raised about $288 million in the period from January 6 to 12, 2023, as per data from Tracxn.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteNorthwestern UniversityKellogg Post Graduate Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Professional…

After a prolonged tug-of-war between asset managers and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulator green-lit the first-ever US-listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track the price of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency: bitcoin. The SEC has granted approval to 11 applications from major entities such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, and ARK Investments.What is an ETF, and why is there a lot of buzz around this?An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a type of investment fund or product that trades…

New-age companies are unlikely to have much to cheer about in 2024 if early funding figures are anything to go by.Investments in startups in the first week of 2024 dropped by about 88% from the same period a year ago, totalling $35.8 million across eight deals. In volume terms, deals were down 86% from 59 a year earlier.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM LucknowIIML Executive Programme in FinTech, Banking & Applied Risk ManagementVisitIndian School of BusinessISB…

Prize money disbursement in esports tournaments this year is expected to surpass the Rs 30-35 crore mark cumulatively handed out in 2023 as such events continue to grow in reach and scale, and organisers remain upbeat.Tournament organiser (TO) Skyesports alone has announced a target pool of $2.5 million (Rs 20 crore) to be paid out to winning teams in 2024. Game publisher Krafton, which disbursed Rs 3.8 crore in 2023, also said both the prize size and scale of its tournaments shall be higher in 2024 with more penetration…

Last week’s copyright infringement lawsuit by The New York Times ( NYT) against ChatGPT- maker OpenAI has opened another battlefront between big technology companies and news publishers. NYT has questioned the very essence of how large language models (LLMs) – on which tools such as ChatGPT-- are trained. The development could have broader ramifications for news media firms and how they should be valued for helping train language models by the courts. Even as most generative AI companies are dealing with copyright issues…

A majority of Indian startup founders are unwilling to raise money at a lower valuation than the last round, even as they expect the funding drought to continue in the first six months of 2024, according to ETtech's annual State of Startups survey.Nearly 80% of the respondents to the survey conducted among 80 of India’s top founders, investors and internet executives, said they would not accept a lower valuation for their companies, while 74% said the funding freeze would only start to ease up in the second half of next…