One important thing: Apple said it has started manufacturing the iPhone 14 models in India within three weeks of its launch, marking the first time it is producing the latest smartphone in the country in such a short span.

In today's newsletter:

• Deep discounts are back on Flipkart, Amazon
• Unacademy cuts burn, eyes breakeven by Jan
• Another blow for skill-based games

Flipkart and Amazon are fighting back with a vengeance after being forced into the corner by offline retailers and feeling the agony of inflation.

The start of the festive season has seen a return to pre-pandemic levels of deep discounting and mega spends on social media advertising to entice buyers, according to industry players.

• Flipkart and Amazon sellers in categories such as smartphones, home decor, and fashion have seen a 5X increase in demand in the last few months
  
  
• SaaS platform Unicommerce has estimated that the volume of orders shot up 28 percent compared to first two days of 2021 festive sales
  
  
• Personal care was identified as the fastest-growing segment, with over 70% year-on-year growth in order volume
  
  
• Despite just a 7% increase in order volume, fashion remains the dominant category with the highest order volumes

Many sellers are unhappy with the high costs of keywords, lower average selling prices and delayed dispatches.

• Bid prices of keywords have gone up by 25-30 percent across all major categories, compared to last year
  
  
• This has happened because of aggressive bidding by private labels, legacy brands and a widening seller base, say players
  
  
• The average selling prices in fashion are under pressure. Sellers say this may be because of Tier 2 and Tier 3 tilt of sales
  
  
• Unicommerce reported over 32 percent YoY growth in order volumes for Tier 3 cities and over 20 percent growth in Tier 2 volumes
  
  
• Flipkart is facing backlash because of cancellations of iPhone 13 orders which were sold for Rs 50,000 only

While some categories, such as fashion and home care, see dispatch dates pushed back to a week after purchase, electronics dispatches are even further delayed, with delivery timelines stretching all the way to Diwali.

• For Flipkart, the expected time of delivery even in metro cities has fallen from T+2 to T+5 or T+6 days. Its listings are also going out of stock faster
  
  
• Some sellers are taking a step back from the sales as they fear that delayed dispatches will lead to a higher rate of returns

The second-most valuable edtech startup in India appears to be making progress towards its goal of profitability thanks to some tough decisions like hundreds of layoffs, cutbacks on digital marketing, apart from docking free meals, initiating pay cuts and travel restrictions.

Unacademy, currently valued at over $3.4 billion, has cut its monthly burn to a fourth, sources tell us.

• Unacademy’s monthly expenses are down to Rs 50-60 crore from Rs 200 crore previously
  
  
• The company expects to end FY22 with a revenue growth of 55 percent, internal projections accessed by Moneycontrol show
  
  
• Unacademy anticipates 15 percent growth in FY23, with revenue already up slightly more than 10 percent year to date
  
  
• Unacademy now expects to break even by January next year

While the company did not officially comment on the story, Gaurav Munjal, the company's CEO and co-founder, responded on Twitter with "it's true" to a tweet that quoted the story.

Read more on the company’s cost-cutting initiatives and growth projections here.

Unacademy's move to cut costs drastically comes at a time when edtech companies are focusing on profitability in the wake of Byju's, the most valuable edtech in the world, reporting what was the largest loss for an Indian startup.

Moreover, it comes at a time when the edtech sector is going through challenging times, with schools, colleges and physical tuition centers reopening.

Unacademy's IPO prospects would also improve if it were to meet its projections, as public investors favour firms that are profitable. Munjal had stated earlier this year that the company will aim to launch an IPO by 2024.

Here we go again... Last year, Tamil Nadu had banned online games where the transfer of money is involved, only for the Madras High Court to revoke this suspension a few months later. Now, under a new government, the state is trying its luck again.

The Tamil Nadu cabinet headed by chief minister MK Stalin has approved an ordinance that bans online games with stakes in the state. It is now awaiting an approval from the Tamil Nadu governor.

Over the past year, several Indian states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka have banned or tried to ban real-money games. For skill-based games such as rummy, South India is particularly an important market since it has a good penetration in these states.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court started hearing a plea by the Tamil Nadu government against a high court order that had struck down its earlier ban, terming it unconstitutional. Since then, a similar plea by the Karnataka government has also been clubbed with this matter. 

Meanwhile, the union government is mulling a central regulation for the sector. A seven-member inter-ministerial task force chaired by minister of state for information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar has been set up to work on regulations for the online gaming industry and identify a nodal ministry for the sector.

• The minister has held multiple rounds of discussions with skill-gaming platforms, industry associations, lawyers and gamers who have sought a light-touch self-regulatory policy framework.

A few of us from Moneycontrol's startup and tech team spent three days last week at the Global Fintech Fest, which was held in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex.

The event was a huge success and a great opportunity for fintechs to demonstrate why their growth is critical to changing India's financial landscape on their own turf. It attracted over 7,500 visitors per day and featured a powerful speaker lineup of regulators, ministers, top bankers, and fintech founders across 5-6 parallel sessions for hours each day.

However, it was regulators and bankers' blunt statements that, in their opinion, fintechs weren't going far enough in terms of compliance that ultimately made headlines.

While the regulator was dishing out harsh reality checks to fintech founders, the rest of the audience lavished them with attention, including requests for photographs and thier startup pitches.

For a lowdown on all the highlights of the three days, read our story.

• South Korea said Interpol had asked law enforcement around the world to find and arrestTerraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, who is facing charges related to the $60 billion wipeout of cryptocurrencies he created.
  
  
• The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, is looking for a licence to operate in Japan, four years after leaving because it lacked an authorization.
  
  
• The Walt Disney Company may be expanding into the crypto space after posting a new job for an "experienced corporate attorney" to work on "emerging technologies" such as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the Metaverse.

The Elon Musk-Twitter buyout saga has to be one of the strangest deals in history, with filmy twists and turns every other week.

A podcast docu-series from Axios tries to decode how Musk attained cross-industry dominance, what that suggests about his potential management style for Twitter and the inner workings of the social media platform.

So, how will the battle of titans end?

Listen to the podcast