India's CTO Excellence Awards winners; Myntra CPTO on AI and personalisation

Hello,

The future belongs to those who forge their own path.

YourStory’s India Tech Leaders Conclave 2024 celebrated the unsung heroes of India’s techscape who dared to go their own way and fostered innovation over the past decade.

The one-day event honoured 22 of India’s unsung tech leaders with India’s CTO Excellence Awards, presented by Karnataka IT & BT, Rural Development, and Panchayati Raj Minister Priyank Kharge.

Addressing the tech leaders, he lauded them for putting India on the global map, stating, “it is easy to build an app, but to scale it in Indian conditions, it is impossible without you guys.”

The event celebrated tech leaders who have played crucial roles behind the scenes, shaping their company’s success and India’s tech story.

“The effort of thinking small and big is the same. You anyway spend 14-18 hours working hard for whatever you’re trying to do, you might as well think big,” said Pramod Varma, the chief architect of Aadhaar; CTO, EkStep; and current Co-founder at FIDE, during a fireside chat.

You can catch all the action here.

Meanwhile, pricey groceries are set to stay expensive, according to RBI's monetary policy committee members, who believe volatile food inflation is holding back any possibility of changes to India’s policy stance.

Also, Google is halting its experiment of allowing real-money games on the Play Store worldwide but will continue allowing the apps that were part of India’s pilot programme for fantasy sports and rummy apps, which has been running since 2022.

Lastly, video game enthusiasts everywhere have an exciting weekend ahead, with the release of brand new content for FromSoftware’s spectacularly popular title Elden Ring. 

The DLC, titled Shadow of the Erdtree, is FromSoftware’s largest expansion to date, and promises dozens of new weapons, spells and builds to test out in brand-new terrains against over 40 unique bosses.

Gamers, assemble!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• India's CTO Excellence Awards winners
• Myntra CPTO on AI and personalisation
• Quick commerce co Zepto secures $665M

Here’s your trivia for today: Large language models (LLMs), which form the basis of AI chatbots, can sometimes generate plausible sounding “facts” that aren’t actually true. What are they called?

Events

India CTO Excellence Awards winners

YourStory, in collaboration with Longhouse Consulting, recognised some of the architects of the country’s technological advances with India’s CTO Excellence Awards 2024.

Celebrating 22 tech leaders excelling in their fields, the awards highlighted tech leaders based on a comprehensive set of criteria, including but not limited to the number of years in a CTO role, impact on business growth, innovation, intellectual property contributions, leadership, mentorship, functional responsibilities, and more. 

Tech leaders:

• With over two decades of experience across Yahoo, Amazon and Myntra, Flipkart CTPO Jeyandran Venugopal’s visionary leadership continues to shape the future of ecommerce in India.
• Ajit Narayanan has been pivotal in building and scaling digital products across ecommerce, healthcare, mobile and AI domains. At Licious, he is leading the transformation of the brand and its consumer experience through technology-driven innovations.
• Rahul Chari, Founder and CTO, PhonePe has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of digital payments in India. Before co-founding PhonePe, he played a pivotal role at Flipkart, building the entire tech stack for eKart.

Top Funding Deals of the Week

Startup: Zepto

Amount: $665M

Round: Undisclosed

Startup: EKA Mobility (Pinnacle Mobility Solutions)

Amount: $100M

Round: Undisclosed

Startup: Ummeed Housing Finance

Amount: $76M

Round: Series F

Ecommerce

Myntra CPTO on AI and personalisation

From asking users for inputs to using generative AI to create profiles for users, personalisation at scale in India needs a multi-pronged approach, said Raghu Krishnananda, Chief Product and Technology Officer of lifestyle and fashion-focused ecommerce platform Myntra.

“Personalisation also should not just be at an individual level but at a regional and cohort level as well,” Krishnananda said in a panel discussion at YourStory's India Tech Leaders' Conclave 2024.

Customised:

• Strategies around the search option, using AI technology to curate selections and outfits, and using queries to suggest items beyond the main product category are some of the ways in which companies, including Myntra, can provide personalisation at scale, Krishnananda added.
• Sumant Narayanan, Business Head, India & SAARC, Akamai said offering personalisation at scale in India is a very unique problem as the country is diverse.
• When asked about the viability of scaling AR/VR, Myntra's Krishnananda said the benefits are huge, especially for ecommerce companies. 

Funding

Quick commerce co Zepto secures $665M

Quick commerce unicorn Zepto has raised $665 million at a valuation of $3.6 billion. With this, Avenir, Lightspeed, and Avra (Anu Hariharan's new fund) have joined the company’s captable as new investors, among others.

The round also witnessed participation from existing investors Glade Brook, Nexus, and StepStone, along with Goodwater and Lachy Groom. 

Quick funds:

• The company plans to focus on expansion and double the store count to 700 by March 2025. It had earlier said it plans to float an IPO in early 2025. 
• Zepto is focusing on growing its consumer offerings and new projects that will offer 10X customer experience, including launching categories and expanding initiatives like the Zepto Pass membership programme, noted Co-founder and CTO Kaivalya Vohra.
• Zepto said its GMV has multiplied year-on-year to a base of more than $1 billion, and that nearly three-fourth of the company's stores are fully EBITDA positive as of May 2024.

News & updates

• Back and forth: Nvidia is no longer the world's most valuable company as it lost the top spot to Microsoft after Jensen Huang-led company's shares declined 3.4%. Nvidia, whose market capitalization surpassed that of Microsoft earlier this week, lost around $91 billion on Thursday.
• Sustainability: Amazon announced on its news blog that it has reduced the use of plastic air pillows by 95% and switched to crumbled paper fillers instead. Amazon also says it plans to use paper filler for “nearly all” of its customer deliveries on Prime Day.
• Super AI: SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said at the shareholder meeting that he wanted to achieve “artificial super intelligence,” which would be 10,000 times smarter than human intelligence. Arm is likely to be at the heart of that effort. SoftBank is setting up an AI division and will have a prototype in the spring of next year.

Large language models (LLMs), which form the basis of AI chatbots, can sometimes generate plausible sounding “facts” that aren’t actually true. What are they called?

Answer: Hallucinations.

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