30-04-2025
To open source or not; Urban Company founders sell stock
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To open source or not; Urban Company founders sell stock
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Also in the letter:
Experts make a new case for open-source path to Indian LLMs
Tell me more:
In views:
Entrepreneur Paras Chopra said Sarvam's pipeline should be open source, given taxpayers' money funds it.
Hari Subramaniam, cofounder, Niti AI, argued that government-funded technology must be open to foster innovation.
Sarvam cofounder Pratyush Kumar clarified that the government's involvement is an equity investment, not a grant.
On the other hand:
Urban Company founders sell shares worth Rs 780 crore
Driving the news:
Sources say part of the post-tax proceeds was used to complete the payment for partly paid-up shares issued during a 2019 rights offering.
The founders will not participate in the IPO's offer-for-sale (OFS) tranche.
Tell me more:
Buyers include Prosus Ventures, Dharana Capital, Think Investment, former ITC executive Sanjiv Rangrass, and SailThru Ventures.
Swiggy founder and Group CEO Sriharsha Majety purchased Rs 88 lakh worth of Urban Company shares.
Post these secondary transactions, the three cofounders (Bhal, Chandra, and Khaitan) now jointly hold around 20% stake in the company.
IPO details:
Urban Company filed for a Rs 1,900-crore IPO on Monday, comprising a Rs 429-crore fresh issue and a Rs 1,471-crore OFS by investors such as Accel, Tiger Global, and Elevation Capital.
In 2024, Dharana Capital bought nearly Rs 400 crore worth of shares from Urban Company employees and early backers, including Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, who clocked a 200x return on their nine-year-old investment.
Indian gaming companies enter big league with rising monetisation, global acquisitions
Tell me more:
Nazara Technologies is raising significant capital to acquire global studios, while players like Krafton and Bitkraft are actively pursuing Indian gaming IP.
This marks a notable shift—from a sector long dominated by real-money gaming, now hampered by regulatory crackdowns—to positioning India as a creative and scalable game development hub.
Global moves:
Nazara has earmarked Rs 800–1,000 crore for acquisitions this year.
Bitkraft is doubling down on its India bets.
Krafton acquired a 75% stake in Nautilus Mobile for Rs 118 crore.
Blue Ocean Games, backed by Krafton, launched a $30 million fund focused on Indian indie developers.
AI: Boon or bane?
Midcore in focus:
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Another 195 trainees fail assessment test at Infosys; co offers outplacement and upskilling support:
Limit usage of non-financial requests to UPI: NPCI to banks:
Inside Reliance Retail's reboot to 30-minute quick commerce:
Global Picks We Are Reading
Happy Wednesday! With Sarvam's new government assignment, India is debating open sourcing. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.■ Indian gaming cos in big league■ Latest in Gensol crisis■ Infosys trainees let goIndiaAI's decision on whether to open source its foundation models has sparked debate after Sarvam AI was chosen as the first company to develop the country's large language model (LLM).Experts argue that government-funded models should be open to benefit the broader technology the open source debate is intensifying. Following the January release of the Chinese open-source model DeepSeek, OpenAI founder Sam Altman admitted their earlier approach had been 'on the wrong side of history.' India has now entered the Bhojwani, former head of People+ai initiative, countered that Indian businesses need a competitive edge to succeed globally, and their labour and intellectual property should not be undervalued.L-R, Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, cofounders, Urban CompanyUrban Company cofounders Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Raghav Chandra, and Varun Khaitan have sold shares worth nearly Rs 780 crore through a series of secondary transactions in the months leading up to the at-home services platform's draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filing India's gaming industry is seeing a steady rise in monetisation, especially beyond real-money gaming, as domestic firms and global investors seek to tap into the growing demand for Indian gaming intellectual property (IP) and talent, industry executives told AI is revolutionising game development, allowing smaller studios to produce high-quality games faster and more affordably. Yet, industry experts warn that an oversupply of content could outpace user demand, intensifying monetisation challenges in an already crowded games—such as shooters, strategy, and multiplayer action titles—are gaining momentum, especially via in-app purchases. Meanwhile, casual and hyper-casual games face headwinds amid a global slump in advertising Delhi High Court on Tuesday restrained Gensol Engineering , BluSmart Fleet, and BluSmart Mobility from creating third-party rights over 95 Tata Xpres Electric Vehicles leased by Clime has asked another 195 freshers to leave after they failed internal assessment tests, bringing the total number of affected trainees since February to over National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed banks to restrict the number of non-financial transaction requests they send to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) Retail plans to scale up hyperlocal deliveries using its existing store network, adding dark stores where needed. The company outlined the strategy during its post-earnings call.■ Trump's tariffs will widen the digital divide ( Wired ■ AI executives promise cancer cures. Here's the reality ( The Atlantic ■ OpenAI forecasts revenue topping $125 billion in 2029 as agents, new products gain ( The Information
