1 important thing: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sent a second deal termination letter to Twitter, this time citing a recent whistleblower complaint from the social media firm's former security head. Twitter however responded saying it has breached none of its representations or obligations under the agreement and termed the letter is invalid and wrongful under the agreement.

• This fight however has not stopped the company's product efforts as it rolled out Twitter Circle - a feature that lets users share their tweets with a smaller group - to everyone across the world.

In today's newsletter:

• To do or not to do: Moonlighting policy edition
• Meta's 'Advertise Now Pay Later' plan
• Zomato riders to face the music

To add to the ever-increasing list of troubles for the Indian IT firms, Rishad Premji's tweet calling moonlighting ‘cheating' has stirred a hornet's nest.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, moonlighting refers to a person holding multiple jobs or taking on gigs alongside their full-time job. Now, this isn't necessarily a new phenomenon, but it has gained popularity thanks to the pandemic and hybrid work becoming the new reality.

• In a recent survey of IT/ITeS employees, 65 percent of respondents said they either were engaged in part-time opportunities during work-from-home (WFH) or knew a colleague who was.

Employees believe it is their own business what they do post their nine to five job.

While Premji's tweet brought the matter to the fore, Swiggy's recently launched moonlighting policy also grabbed eyeballs. Now, several honchos in the IT industry are siding with either one of the two beliefs.

TCS COO NG Subramaniam termed it an ethical issue, many like Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani and Former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai disagreed and said they found no harm in it.

Employers fear a risk of loss of productivity and there are concerns about confidentiality of information, especially when the employee works two jobs in the same industry and function.

• Some industry experts say it's time to lay the ground rules and demand disclosure from employees and encourage transparency, while others find it unnecessary, as they believe current HR policies are strong enough from preventing employees from divulging confidential information.

That said, experts say moonlighting is here to stay even though a second full-time job has been termed to be unethical or illegal.

For now, IT companies are waiting and watching whether it is making an actual difference on the work front before they take a step.

(Read our deep dive on why do employees moonlight)

Amid the global economic downturn, Facebook parent Meta is making it slightly easier for advertisers to run their ad campaigns

Meta will allow advertisers to pay for their ad campaigns in easy installments over three months at no additional interest. India is the first country where the social networking giant has launched such a feature. 

Advertisers can convert any amount between Rs 3,200 and Rs 500,000 as EMIs. Meta will bear the applicable interest payable to the bank, and give it as an upfront discount to the business on its ad spends. 

Rising inflation and uncertainty around a looming recession along with other macro environment challenges has led to advertisers cutting back their ad spends this year, thereby impacting the revenue growth of firms dependent on digital advertising such as Meta. The company faced its first ever revenue drop in Q2 2022.

• Earlier this month, we reported that startups have slashed their marketing spends by around 30-60 percent, with sectors like fintech, edtech and cryptocurrencies witnessing the maximum decline.

Meta said it is also expanding the scope of its Small Business Loans initiative to over 19,000 PIN codes across India, thereby covering the entire country.

• The programme allows businesses to apply for collateral-free business loans from as little as Rs 30,000 to as much as Rs 1 Crore via third-party lending platforms.

Speed at your own risk! That's the message Zomato is giving to its delivery executives as it prepares to show a number on their bags that commuters can use to register complaints against speeding riders.

"We do not incentivise riders to deliver an order quickly. We don't even tell them what the estimated delivery time is. If someone is speeding, it is of their own accord," said Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal.

Apart from this remark, Goyal largely remained in the backseat in the food delivery platforms's first annual general meeting as a public company with chief financial officer Akshant Goyal doing most of the heavy lifting.

• While 41 shareholders registered as speakers for the AGM, only around 10 of them got the chance to quiz the company's management, most of them centred around Zomato's path to profitability, plunging share prices and the acquisition of quick commerce company Blinkit.

"I would pray to god so that the curse may fall on the dishonest anchor investors who pulled down the price..They should be blacklisted," said a shareholder during the AGM. Ouch!

Zomato shares are currently trading at a discount of over 20 percent to the issue price of Rs 76 apiece in its initial public offering (IPO) last year.

Zomato also launched a pilot of an inter-city delivery service called 'Legends' that will allow select users in parts of the National Capital Region to order food from restaurants in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow and other cities.

"We will rapidly scale this to other cities in the next few weeks…Sky is the limit to how big Intercity Legends can become,” the company said.

This comes months after its 10-minute food delivery pilot in Gurugram, although we wonder what happened to it that since the pilot has not been extended anywhere else.

• Another ongoing test is a grocery pilot in Delhi-NCR with recently-acquired quick commerce company Blinkit, where the firm has integrated the Zomato app with the Blinkit back-end to enable grocery orders from the food delivery app itself.

• In a rising interest-rate world, many financial sectors and products including private equity and cryptocurrencies will face an existential crisis, according to James Grant, founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.
• Major cryptocurrencies were trading in the red today as the global crypto market cap increased 3.53 percent to $978.66 billion over the last day.
• As the American business magnate Warren Buffet turns 92 today, here is a look at his top quotes about bitcoins, cryptos and tech companies.

Bengaluru's the best for weather, they said. It will be fun, they said!

Heavy rains lashed Bengaluru today disrupting the lives of millions of people in the "Silicon Valley" of the east. Videos of the grim situation of the IT hub of India flooded the social media.

Except for those school kids who still love staying at home and enjoying the emergency government-declared holiday and maybe those TikTok stars who were dancing for 'tip tip barsa paani', many office goers, employees and daily-wage workers were stranded on the streets.

Many questioned the Bengaluru municipality on the lack of proper drainage and road systems as waterlogging continued. "The joke is called Silicon Valley of the east. This is RMZ Ecospace. Can BBMP or any elected representative promise that this won’t happen next year no matter what?" one user tweeted with a video.

One last thing before you finish our One Last Thing, stay safe and carry an umbrella or even a small boat with you!

Or is this an opportunity for Uber or Ola to launch boat rides?