UPI, built by a coalition of Indian banks, has become the most popular way Indians transact online, processing over 10 billion transactions monthly.
In February, a parliamentary panel in India urged the government to support the growth of domestic fintech players that can offer alternatives to the Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay apps.
The NPCI has long advocated for limiting the market share of individual companies participating in the UPI ecosystem to 30%.
The RBI is also weighing an incentive plan to create a more favorable competitive field for emerging UPI players, another person familiar with the matter said.
Indian daily Economic Times separately reported Wednesday that the NPCI is encouraging fintech companies to offer incentives to their users, promoting the use of their respective apps for making UPI transactions.
That’s a different strategy from just about every other market, where Google has been merging Wallet and Pay experiences together under a single Wallet app.
We’re continuing to invest in the Google Pay app to give people easy, secure access to digital payments,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Then, it tried to replace the Wallet and its Android Pay app with Google Pay.
In 2022, Google relaunched the Wallet app as its digital wallet platform for Android, Wear OS and Fitbit OS.
However, in February this year, the search giant announced it would replace Google Pay with the Wallet app in the U.S.
The Oversight Board, Meta’s semi-independent policy council, it turning its attention to how the company’s social platforms are handling explicit, AI-generated images.
Tuesday, it announced investigations into two separate cases over how Instagram in India and Facebook in the U.S. handled AI-generated images of public figures after Meta’s systems fell short on detecting and responding to the explicit content.
In other words, after two reports, the explicit AI-generated image remained on Instagram.
The second case relates to Facebook, where a user posted an explicit, AI-generated image that resembled a U.S. public figure in a Group focusing on AI creations.
Meta’s response and the next stepsIn response to the Oversight Board’s cases, Meta said it took down both pieces of content.
WhatsApp is testing Meta AI, its large language model-powered chatbot, with users in India and some other markets, signalling its intentions to tap the massive user base to scale its AI offerings.
The company recently began testing the AI chatbot, until now available in the U.S., with some users in India, many of them said.
India, home to more than 500 million WhatsApp users, is the instant messaging service’s largest market.
Meta unveiled Meta AI, its general-purpose assistant, in late September.
The AI chatbot is designed to answer user queries directly within chats as well as offer them the ability to generate photorealistic images from text prompts.
Initially, the web version, called Truecaller for Web, will only be made available to Android users in India, the company said, but it plans to roll out the support in other territories in the future.
All Truecaller for Android users in India can now link their devices to the web client on a PC or a Mac through a QR code.
This is akin to linking the web version of a messenger like WhatsApp or Telegram.
Now users will be able to look up numbers without any such limitations on the web client, the company said.
Last month, it launched a “Max” feature update for Android users to block all calls from unapproved contacts or spam detected by AI.
Indian ride-hailing giant Ola is shutting down its operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, six years after expanding to international markets as it shifts focus to shoring up its domestic business ahead of an initial public offering.
An Ola spokesperson told TechCrunch that the SoftBank-backed ride-hailing startup sees “immense opportunity for expansion in India,” where it operates in hundreds of cities and offers a range of transportation options, including two-wheelers.
“With this clear focus, we’ve reassessed our priorities and have decided to shut down our overseas ride-hailing business in its current form in the UK, Australia and New Zealand,” the spokesperson added.
The startup plans to file for an initial public offering after the public listing of Ola Electric, the leading electric two-wheeler brand in India that spun out of Ola.
Ola Electric is looking to raise $662 million from its IPO in India, according to paperwork it filed late last year.
Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
With its third private equity fund, Avendus plans to write larger checks more frequently, one of the sources said.
The firm raised its second fund, amounting to around $185 million, in 2021.
Avendus employs over 150 bankers and was the top financial advisor in India last year.
In the past decade, similar to financial advisors in other regions, Avendus has diversified its offerings, venturing into wealth management, credit financing, and private equity.
Amazon has quietly introduced a “special store” called Bazaar in India, featuring affordable and trendy fashion and lifestyle products, as it ramps up efforts against Walmart-owned Flipkart and Reliance’s Ajio, which have made deeper inroads in the Indian fast-fashion market.
“India e-commerce category mix is changing; Mobiles and Consumer electronics share is declining.
Fashion has seen the strongest growth since FY19, and now holds the highest category share,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a note last month.
India is a key overseas market for Amazon, which has invested more than $11 billion in the country to date.
The fast-fashion e-commerce market has gained significant traction in India in recent years, with local startups drawing inspiration from global pioneers like Zara, H&M, and Uniqlo.
India, grappling with election misinfo, weighs up labels and its own AI safety coalition An Adobe-backed association wants to help organizations in the country with an AI standardIndia, long in the tooth when it comes to co-opting tech to persuade the public, has become a global hotspot when it comes to how AI is being used, and abused, in political discourse, and specifically the democratic process.
Tech companies, who built the tools in the first place, are making trips to the country to push solutions.
Using its open standard, the C2PA has developed a digital nutrition label for content called Content Credentials.
It also automatically attaches to AI content generated by Adobe’s AI model Firefly.
“That’s a little ‘CR’… it’s two western letters like most Adobe tools, but this indicates there’s more context to be shown,” he said.
Weeks before the national elections in India, Elon Musk-owned X said it is rolling out support for posting Community Notes — the company’s crowd-sourced fact-checking program — in the key overseas market.
The first set of contributors from India will start posting notes from today and more will be accepted over time, X said.
Community Notes now active on India!
Over time, the company has allowed members from different countries to start posting Community Notes to provide local context better.
India was one of the last major markets where Community Notes had not previously expanded.
