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Also in this letter:
■ Indian startups have sacked more than 11,500 workers this year: report
■ Alibaba determined to maintain New York listing amid audit dispute
■ Musk says Twitter can become accurate, relevant news source
Zomato to have many CEOs, will call itself Eternal, says Deepinder Goyal
Food delivery startup Zomato is internally rebranding itself into “Eternal” – a larger organisation that will house all of its businesses, much like the Google-Alphabet rebrand.
Why now? “We are at a stage of life where we are maturing from running (more or less) a single business to now running multiple large companies,” Deepinder Goyal, CEO and MD of Zomato, wrote on the company’s slack channel on July 28.
He said Zomato was transitioning from a company where he was the sole CEO to one with CEOs for each of its businesses – Zomato, Blinkit, Hyperpure and Feeding India.
Goyal added that Eternal would remain an internal name for now. “You should start seeing the Eternal logo at a few places in our office, as well as some t-shirts on yourselves in a few days,” he wrote.
How it stands: At present, Blinkit is led by Albinder Dhinsda, and cofounder Mohit Gupta is the chief executive of Zomato’s food delivery operations.
Ramit Goyal is the head of product and growth for its business-to-business restaurant supply business Hyperpure.
Why ‘Eternal?’ “The word Eternal is a mission statement in itself. Eternal means forever, something that will last for more than just a few lifetimes. Boundless, timeless, undying, endless, permanent – are some of the other words that can be used to describe Eternal,” he wrote in the message.
Tough times: Last week, Zomato’s stock nosedived after the mandatory lock-in period for pre-IPO shareholders expired. Overall, the stock has declined by over 70% from its all-time high of Rs 169.10 on November 16, 2021.
The company will announce its financial results for the April-June quarter on Monday.
Indian startups have sacked more than 11,500 workers this year, data shows
More than 25,000 startup workers in India have lost their jobs since the pandemic began, and more than 11,500 have been fired just this year, according to data compiled by Crunchbase.
Edtech leads: The layoffs in India are dominated by edtech platforms such as Unacademy (1,150 employees), Byju’s (550 at Toppr and Whitehat Jr) and Vedantu (624).
Others that have laid off employees include ride-hailing platform Ola (nearly 500), healthcare startup MFine (600) and pre-owned cars platform Cars24 (600).
US scene: In the US, more than 32,000 tech workers have been laid off so far this year, including at Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Meta, the data showed.
“We’ve included both startups and publicly traded companies that are based in the US. We’ve also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as Klarna,” Crunchbase said.
The layoff includes ride-sharing platform Uber, Netflix and several cryptocurrency exchanges and lending platforms.
Robinhood, Glossier and Better are just a few of the tech companies that have trimmed their headcount this year.
Big picture: Since April 1, more than 43,000 workers from 342 tech companies and startups have been laid off across the world, over 13% of these are from India, according to latest data compiled by layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs in startups.
Alibaba determined to maintain New York listing amid audit dispute
Chinese tech giant Alibaba said on Monday it is keen to maintain its New York Stock Exchange listing, three days after the US Securities Exchange Commission placed it on the list of Chinese companies set for delisting from the US.
Alibaba, which was planning to apply for a dual primary listing in Hong Kong to make it easier for Chinese investors to buy its shares, was placed on the list along with over 270 other Chinese companies for failing to meet US auditory requirements.
Long dispute: China and the US have been at loggerheads over the audit rules for US-listed Chinese firms.
While Beijing prohibits foreign inspection of working papers from local accounting firms, the US requires Chinese companies to comply with American Auditing standards for three consecutive years.
Under the new rules, Chinese companies have until 2024 to comply with the audit demands.
ETtech Done Deals
■ Tartan, a Payroll and workforce management startup, raised $4.5 million in funding from 500 Global (previously 500 Startups), InfoEdge Ventures and Naval Ravikant-backed Quant Fund, among others. Founded in June 2021, Tartan provides a white-labelled application programming interface (API) suite for financial institutions to access their consumers’ payroll data with their consent to verify income and employment status.
■ OckyPocky, an English learning platform for kids, raised an undisclosed amount from Silicon Valley-based Goodwater Capital and Naval Ravikant-backed Quant Fund. OckyPocky leverages natural language processing (NLP) to help children between the ages of 2 and 8 learn and speak English.
Tweet of the day
Musk says Twitter can become an accurate and relevant news source
Amidst an ongoing legal battle with Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the social media platform has the potential to be a relevant and accurate news source that’s “not totally depressing”.
Having earlier dismissed the mainstream media as a “click-seeking machine dressed up as a truth-seeking machine”, Musk tweeted, “It sure is hard to find a news source that’s accurate, relevant and not totally depressing,” adding, ‘Maybe Twitter can become that’.
Musk vs media: Musk has long been a vocal critic of the mainstream media. A few days ago, criticised the Wall Street Journal, saying its report on his alleged affair with Google cofounder Sergey Brin’s wife Nicole Shanahan was untrue.
Earlier, a Business Insider report claimed SpaceX paid an employee $250,000 to settle claims that Musk had sexually harassed her in 2016. Musk called the allegations “utterly untrue” and said they were made to prevent him from acquiring Twitter, a deal he is currently trying to terminate.
Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai and Ruchir Vyas in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.
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