Go First impacts EaseMyTrip’s bottomline; From hospitality to building LLM
Travel booking platform EaseMyTrip's revenue from operations in the financial year 2023-24 grew 31.5% YoY. Preksha Kaparwan, along with Saurabh Moody, have together built three startups. Unicorn startups displayed a vast gender pay gap in their founder salaries.
Hello,
Ecommerce platform appointed ex- executive Prathyusha Agarwal as Vice President of its value commerce platform , people in the know told YourStory.
The move comes amid a wider reshuffle in Flipkart’s senior leadership as the company gears up for its IPO. Earlier this month, Walmart-backed Flipkart also tapped Jupiter Money’s Anuj Rathi to join as CEO.
The e-retailer has also announced a fresh round of funding led by Walmart, with Google joining as a minority stakeholder. Flipkart has reportedly raised $950 million in the latest round, with Google pitching in $350 million, taking its valuation to $36 billion. The round was initiated in December last year with Walmart investing $600 million.
In other news, the initial public offering (IPO) of co-working space operator Awfis Space Solutions was subscribed 11.40 times on Friday. The IPO, which will end on Monday, was fully subscribed on the first day of bidding on Wednesday.
ICYMI: The wild story behind FBI’s smartphone company.
Lastly, Payal Kapadia’s debut fiction feature, All We Imagine As Light, has received an eight-minute-long standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.
And that’s not even remotely close to the longest ovation in the history of the festival. That honour goes to Pan's Labyrinth in 2006, for which the audience clapped for 22 minutes!
It naturally begs the question: why do humans clap at all?
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- EaseMyTrip’s Q4 earnings
- From hospitality to building LLM
- Female vs male unicorn founders
Here’s your trivia for today: Which is the oldest film festival in the world?
Earnings
EaseMyTrip’s revenue rises but profit shrinks
Travel booking platform 's revenue from operations in the financial year 2023-24 grew 31.5% YoY to Rs 590 crore while profits declined by 23% YoY to Rs 103 crore as the latest quarter slipped into a loss of Rs 15.7 crore.
Key takeaways:
- On a quarterly basis, the company posted a 40.7% YoY increase in revenue for the January to April 2024 quarter to Rs 164 crore.
- The company attributed the latest quarter's loss to write-offs of amounts that were supposed to be recovered from now-defunct Go Airlines (India) Limited, which operated Go First carrier.
- For FY24, the expenses increased by 41.2% YoY to Rs 394 crore. The steepest rise was in service cost of tour packages, which increased nearly 5X to Rs 49.6 crore.
Top Funding Deals of the Week
Startup: Finserv
Amount: Rs 150 Cr
Round: Non-convertible debentures
Startup: SAVE Group
Amount: $13M
Round: Equity
Startup:
Amount: $11M
Round: Seed
100 Emerging Women Leaders
From hospitality to building LLM
Preksha Kaparwan, along with Saurabh Moody, have together built three startups: , a real-time data analytics company; Cashless, a payment technology platform; and most recently, , an enterprise AI startup for enterprises that helps them generate insights from structured and unstructured data using private Large Language Models (LLMs) on-premises.
Building tech:
- Under Super.ai, Kaparwan has created a platform similar to ChatGPT; an AI tool for enterprise data that allows users to ask questions in natural language, generate comprehensive stories on their data, and integrate with existing BI tools.
- Kaparwan and her team are now working towards creating Enterprise General Intelligence, a live AI brain for businesses that can diagnose and suggest actions based on historic market situations.
- “If you have done your graduation and the initial preparation, you are at the right time and place to grow in this field. You realise that beyond gender binaries, innovative minds matter, given the grave talent shortage in the industry now,” she adds.
Preksha Kaparwan, Founder, Super.ai
Report
Female vs male unicorn founders
Unicorn startups displayed a vast gender pay gap in their founder salaries with on average female founders taking home Rs 1.1 crore against Rs 8.5 crore given to their male counterparts, according to a report by PrivateCircle Research.
Gender gap:
- In the fiscal year 2023, male founders earned a median salary of Rs 1.8 crore, whereas female founders earned Rs 1 crore.
- Overall, the median salary of a unicorn founder has been on the rise, with founders taking home Rs 1.5 crore in FY23 from Rs 1.2 crore in FY22.
- Across sectors, media and entertainment unicorn founders earned the highest salary in FY23 with a median of Rs 3.5 crore.
News & updates
- Goodbye: Kabosu, the Japanese dog that became a global meme and the face of alternative cryptocurrency Dogecoin, has died at 18, her owner announced in a blog post on Friday. The Japanese Shiba Inu passed away while sleeping, her owner Atsuko Sato wrote.
- Gen AI: OpenAI's efforts to produce less factually false output from its ChatGPT chatbot are not enough to ensure full compliance with European Union data rules, a task force at the EU's privacy watchdog said.
Which is the oldest film festival in the world?
Answer: Venice International Film Festival. It started in the year 1932
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