Inside Elevation Capital’s SaaS bets; Indian IT industry’s GenAI moment

Hello,

Troubles just do not seem to end for BYJU'S.

This time, the edtech major and its subsidiary Aakash parted ways with Deloitte as their statutory auditor. The accounting firm attributed its resignation to the delay in the company’s submission of FY22 financial statements.

Following this, BYJU’S has appointed BDO (MSKA & Associates) as its statutory auditors for the year commencing from FY22 for the next five years.

The development comes amid reports of three key board members resigning from BYJU’S board due to disagreements with founder Byju Raveendran on critical operational matters related to the edtech company. However, BYJU’S has denied the reports.

Meanwhile, gaming VC fund Lumikai launched its Fund II targeting a $50 million corpus from global investors to support promising gaming and interactive media entrepreneurs in India, ranging from pre-seed to Series A investments.

Elsewhere, social media “titans” are gearing up for well… an actual ‘cage match’. 

In yet another (friendly?) feud, Elon Musk has challenged Mark Zuckerberg to engage in a cage match in Las Vegas’ Vegas Octagon after the Meta boss cheekily told Musk to “send me location”.  

All this, of course, started with the news of Meta releasing ‘Twitter Rival’ called THREADS. 

Lastly, check out the world’s hardest dish, literally! 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Inside Elevation Capital’s SaaS bets
• Indian IT industry’s GenAI moment 
• Learning via the Museum on Wheels

Here’s your trivia for today: Which country’s national language has the longest alphabet?

Venture Capital 

Inside Elevation Capital’s SaaS bet

Elevation Capital has a reason to be happy. 

The Gurugram-based venture capital and growth equity firm expects its investments in the SaaS sector to break out in terms of revenue in the next two to three years. The optimism stems from the fact that five of the 15-plus SaaS companies it has backed since 2020 have crossed the $5-million annual recurring revenue mark. 

Upper hand:

• The market buzz around generative AI has benefitted some of Elevation’s portfolio companies, including Murf.ai, an AI-enabled voice-over startup, which the fund had backed in a seed round in July 2021. In September last year, the startup raised $10 million in a Series A round.  
• Nanonets, an AI-based document workflow automation company, which raised $10 million in a round led by Elevation Capital in February 2022, has also seen a revenue uptick. 
• On Elevation’s watchlist—at the seed stage—are SaaS startups with proven go-to-market strategies and strong product muscle and customer-centric companies with evidence of quick product iterations. 

Funding Alert 

Startup: Tummoc

Amount: $1M

Round: Pre-Series A

Startup: French Crown

Amount: Rs 8.6 Cr

Round: Undisclosed 

Tech

Indian IT industry’s GenAI moment 

The buzziest of buzzwords, Gen AI or generative artificial intelligence, has pushed tech companies across the globe to invest both time and money to win the AI race. And, Indian IT companies aren’t far behind. 

Into the future:

• TCS has developed a large portfolio of AI-powered solutions and intellectual property in the areas of AIOps, Algo Retail, smart manufacturing, digital twins, and robotics. 
• Wipro plans to integrate Google Cloud’s full suite of generative AI products and services with its own AI intellectual property (IP), business accelerators, and pre-built industry solutions.
• Despite the optimism around GenAI, there is also an element of concern around how the technology will unfold given there are still a lot of question marks on the grounds of legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks.

Inspiration 

Learning via Museum on Wheels

The Museum on Wheels is an initiative by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai. An iconic art and history museum in India, the institute is over 100 years old, and houses a collection of 70,000 historical works from India and abroad.

A new world:

• For the past eight years, the project has achieved success by using two specially-designed air-conditioned buses that serve as mobile exhibition spaces.
• It has conducted eight mobile exhibitions across various schools, colleges, and NGOs catering to children in states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, and Delhi-NCR region.
• Some of the past themes for the exhibition have been the history of Indian money, a display of the Harappan civilisation, and a display of fossils.

News & updates

• Fighter jets: General Electric's aerospace unit has signed an agreement with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to make fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force. The deal includes the potential joint production of GE Aerospace's F414 engines in India, and the engines will be used to power Tejas fighter jets.
• Lab meat: US regulators met another alternative protein milestone when they approved both Upside Foods and Good Meat to sell their cultivated chicken products within the country. Known as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured meat,” these proteins are made from animal cells rather than slaughtered animals and are often developed using a fermentation process involving bioreactors.
• Rate hike: Turkey’s central bank jacked up the country’s key interest rate, almost doubling it from 8.5% to 15% as the new economic administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embarked on a dramatic monetary policy U-turn. And, there will be further gradual monetary tightening until inflation improves.

Which country’s national language has the longest alphabet?

Answer: Cambodia. Its national language, Khmer, has 74 characters (including some without any current use).

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