Swiggy gears up for IPO; India ranks 3rd with 67 unicorns

Hello,

Microsoft’s GitHub has now found a rival in Google.

At Google Cloud Next 2024 event, the tech giant unveiled Gemini Code Assist—an AI-powered assistance to help developers build applications with higher velocity and quality. The company also unveiled its first ARM-based CPU specifically created for data centres.

ICYMI: All you need to know about Google’s new GenAI capabilities and AI infrastructure. 

Back home, the stock market has climbed to a new high.

BSE Sensex breached the historic 75,000 mark before closing more than 300 points lower. The rally was led by Reliance Industries, SBI, Airtel, and TCS.

NSE Nifty, too, hit a record high above 22,700 as Infosys stock surged 2%.

Meanwhile, Paytm Payments Bank CEO Surinder Chawla resigned from his post citing personal reasons and career advancement. This follows Praveen Sharma’s exit from Paytm last month as Senior Vice President.

Elsewhere, Ola is shutting its operations in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand to pursue expansion in India. The company had been losing market share to its biggest rival, Uber, an Ola employee told YourStory. 

Oh, and YourStory is going to host its first-ever developer conference, DevSparks 2024, in Bengaluru on May 4. The tech summit will host 1,000+ developers, engineers and technologists, and showcase the latest developer innovations in the emerging tech ecosystem.

Join us to be a part of the vibrant app development ecosystem. Get your passes here.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Swiggy gears up for IPO
• India ranks 3rd with 67 unicorns
• Web3 adoption in India

Here’s your trivia for today: Also known as "lean manufacturing," just-in-time manufacturing is a hyperefficient process pioneered by what Japanese automaker in the 1960s?

Foodtech

Swiggy gears up for IPO

Swiggy has converted to a public company under Swiggy Limited from Swiggy Private Limited, as it prepares for a public-market listing later this year, filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs showed. 

In February, the Sriharsha Majety-led company changed its name to Swiggy Private Limited from Bundl Technologies, aiming to “establish greater proximity and identification of the company’s corporate name with the company’s core brand, ‘Swiggy’”.

New pastures:

• The food and grocery delivery firm is looking to raise as much as $1 billion from an initial public offering set to take place later this year. It would file its DRHP over the next few months. 
• Invesco—a top investor in Swiggy—has marked up the valuation of its holding in the firm to $12.7 billion, up 18% from its last fundraise in January 2022.
• This comes weeks after New York-based Baron Capital raised Swiggy’s valuation to $12.1 billion, up 13% from its $700 million fundraise.

Funding Alert

Startup: Sprinto

Amount: $20M

Round: Series B

Startup: Age Care Labs

Amount: Rs 10.16 Cr

Round: Equity

Startup: Zulu Defence

Amount: $750,000

Round: Seed

Startups

India ranks 3rd with 67 unicorns

India has 67 unicorns, making it the third-largest unicorn ecosystem globally, next to the US and China, according to a report by Hurun Research. Fintech, SaaS, and AI are among the top sectors represented by India's unicorns. 

Billion$ club:

• India lags behind China and the US in the number of AI unicorns, with only one AI unicorn Krutrim, compared to 60 in the US and 37 in China.
• The absence of unicorns in sectors like aerospace or spacetech, where both the US and China have advanced, presents a significant gap and potential opportunity for India.
• Bengaluru remains one of the top cities for hosting unicorns in India, along with Paris and Berlin, with 32 unicorns. San Francisco remains the world's unicorn capital, followed by Singapore.

Report

Web3 adoption in India

The adoption of Web3 in India continues to grow, with over 1,000 startups emerging in the space from 2018 to 2023, as per a report by Web3 venture capital firm Hashed Emergent. 

The report, titled India’s Web3 Landscape 2023, created in collaboration with KPMG India, Devfolio, Coin Switch, and Kratos Gaming Network (KGen), identified Bengaluru as an emerging hub for the sector. 

Key takeaways:

• India's share of the worldwide Web3 developer community has grown from 3% in 2018 to 12% in 2023 among emerging markets. Female participation rose from 3% to 14% over the past five years.
• While the US leads globally with 26% of Web3 developers, India's growth of 300% from 2018 to 2023 is among the highest among major markets.
• The sector attracted about $250 million in investments in 2023, marking an 81% decline from the total funding ($1.4 billion) in 2022. 

News & updates

• Weather: India is expected to see a normal monsoon in 2024, Skymet said, promising some respite after predicting more-than-normal heat wave days in the summer preceding the June-September rainy season. Monsoon rains are expected to be 102% of the long-period average of 868.6 mm.
• Issues: Binance’s new CEO Richard Teng said the company has moved past cultural issues after it was hit with a $4.3 billion fine to settle charges from the US Justice Department, which alleged Binance practised a ‘move first, ask for forgiveness later’ approach. 
• Trade: Issuers of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds said the US SEC is unlikely to approve such a product for the cryptocurrency ether. The regulator has a late May deadline to conclude its review on an ether ETF. 

Also known as "lean manufacturing," just-in-time manufacturing is a hyperefficient process pioneered by what Japanese automaker in the 1960s?

Answer: Toyota.

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