Reliving the best experiences of 2023

Hello,

As we bid 2023 adieu, a little older and a little wiser, the year will be remembered as one of test and triumph.

The funding winter dried out the flow of capital into the Indian startup ecosystem while investors doubled down on scrutiny amid instances of financial irregularities at several startups including 4B Networks, Zilingo, Mojocare, Trell, and GoMechanic.

On the brighter side, the stock markets boomed. The Sensex and Nifty50 closed the year with a notable uptick of 20% and 19%, respectively, despite the Adani Group’s credibility crisis post the Hindenburg report. 

Also, the year saw some stellar public market debuts, with the IPO of Honasa Consumer—the parent of Mamaearth among others—subscribed 7.61 times and drone manufacturer ideaForge Technology’s shares listing at an impressive premium of 93.45% to its issue price.  

The state of the Indian economy, too, heightened investor confidence, with India becoming the fastest-growing major economy and displacing the UK to be the fifth-largest economy globally. The country—now the world’s most populous—is also expected to maintain this growth momentum on the basis of strong domestic demand and global trade flows.

All in all, 2023 was a year of hits and misses, lessons and learnings, and a fair share of drama. Relive the top stories from the startup world here.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Reliving the best experiences of 2023
• Optimising debugging for developers

Here’s your trivia for today: What do the Dutch believe in eating on New Year's Day to bring good luck?

Yearender

Reliving the best experiences of 2023

As we draw closer to the end of yet another eventful year, we bring to you the best from our lifestyle and cultural e-magazine, YS Life, that are worth a re-visit.

The best:

• South-East England’s Surrey is known for its rolling hills, sinking valleys, ancient heathland, waterways and county cricket. During its visit, YS Life explored the villages, taking a trip back in time and experiencing the slow life in today’s fast-paced world. 
• In 2023, we visited God’s Own Country to briefly experience Kuttanad life. In the backwaters of Kumarakom, in Kerala, CHG Earth’s Coconut Lagoon marries simplicity with luxury. 
• Away from box-office numbers and chart-busters, in an attempt to bring forth the best of independent films, YS Life has carefully curated a list of films–both engrossing and entertaining, that make for a solid watch in 2024. 

Startup

ICYMI: Optimising debugging for developers

Observability enables companies to understand the internal state of a system while monitoring detects problems or anomalies using data collected. Middleware operates at this intersection, enhancing cloud-native infrastructure through observability, monitoring and automation.

It allows DevOps teams to debug the issue faster by bringing all the metrics, logs, traces, and events to a single unified timeline.

Issue detection:

• Middleware offers eight observability capabilities such as infrastructure monitoring, log monitoring, APM to monitor applications errors and performance, database monitoring etc.
• The platform uses GPT-4 to identify infrastructure and application problems quickly, with suggested solutions for issue resolution. 
• The company recently came out of stealth mode and secured $6.5 million in seed funding in August for team expansion, product development, AI enhancement, and customer acquisition. 

News & updates

• Counterclaim: Accountancy firm EY is facing a new lawsuit claiming 1.5 billion Euros ($1.66 billion) in damages over its role in auditing Wirecard's books before the German payments company collapsed in 2020. Wirecard filed for insolvency in June 2020 after disclosing a 1.9 billion-Euro hole in its accounts that EY said was the result of a sophisticated global fraud.
• Decoupling: Ant Group Co. finished the procedure to remove controlling stakeholders from the board almost a year after billionaire Jack Ma promised to cede his dominance of the Chinese finance giant. As part of the process, the People’s Bank of China granted an application to remove any controlling shareholders at Ant’s Chinese payment platform Alipay.
• On behalf: BlackRock has teamed up with J.P. Morgan and quantitative trading firm Jane Street as its authorised participants (AP), while Valkyrie has also named Jane Street in addition to Cantor Fitzgerald as AP, for their yet-to-be-approved exchange-traded fund to acquire bitcoins.

What do the Dutch believe in eating on New Year's Day to bring good luck?

Answer: Oliebollen. They are Dutch doughnuts, often studded with fruits and sold on street carts.

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