One quick thing: It's been a long funding winter for Indian startups, and there's no sign of it ending anytime soon (even as the actual winter approaches!)

In the latest indication of this trend, Indian startups raked in $2.7 billion across 205 deals in the June-September quarter, marking a two-year low, as per a report by PwC India. 

In today's newsletter:

• Infy mulls moonlighting policy
• Gadkari’s latest message to Elon Musk
• Vedantu has come full circle

IT services bellwether Infosys reported a solid set of numbers for the fiscal second quarter that were largely in line with expectations. The company's consolidated net profit increased 11.1% year on year to Rs 6,021 crore, while revenue increased 23.4 percent.

Infosys said that people have been fired in the last twelve months because they were found to be working for two companies where there were confidentiality issues.

However, the company appears to be changing its stance on employees taking up side gigs externally. The company said that it will support employees who take on specific side projects with the prior approval of managers, and that it is also considering a more comprehensive policy for it.

Watch: Infosys CEO Salil Parekh’s interview with Moneycontrol

• The quarter's large deal total contract value (TCV) was $2.7 billion, the highest in the last seven quarters
  
  
• Constant currency revenue growth guidance revised from 14-16% to 15-16%
  
  
• The upper end of the operating margin guidance has been lowered. Now, the company expects it to be in the range of 21-22% instead of 21-23%.

The board approved a Rs 9,300 crore share buyback programme through the open market, the company's fourth buyback.

• Infosys' net addition fell by over half on a sequential basis, coming in at 10,000 as opposed to last quarter’s 21,171
  
  
• Attrition declined sequentially to 27.1% from Q1’s 28.4%
  
  
• Over 40,000 freshers were hired in the first half of the fiscal as opposed to FY23’s target of 50,000

In recent days, India's union minister for road safety and transport has been talking, sleeping, walking, and breathing (figuratively) only green hydrogen and EVs. We'll tell you why.

At the grand CNN News 18 Indian of The Year 2022 Awards held yesterday, Gadkari not just spoke about how Green Hydrogen is the future of India, he literally arrived at the event in a first-of-its-kind hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (EV), Toyota Mirai.

Gadkari reaffirmed his strong support for manufacturing in India, saying that India is open to any brands and companies, including Tesla, investing in the electric vehicle ecosystem as long as the manufacturing takes place in India.

This follows similar earlier statements about the electric carmaker's plan to manufacture in China and sell in India, which Gadkari described as "not a digestible concept."

Flex fuel is popular in the United States and Europe, but it is new to India. This week, Gadkari unveiled Tata Motors' first flex-fuel vehicle and advised automakers to consider transitioning to flex-fuel vehicles within the next six months.

During the event, he said that the cost of a litre of petrol is as high as Rs 120 per litre, however, if the fuel is mixed with Bio Ethanol, the prices will come down to at least Rs 25 per litre.

For Vedantu, whose founders previously ran an offline coaching brand called Lakshya, life has come full circle. The edtech unicorn has now acquired offline test prep platform Deeksha.

The move, according to company co-founder Vamsi Krishna, is intended to strengthen the company's hybrid test prep foray. Krishna also believes the acquisition will help Vedantu's profitability plans because Deeksha is a "healthy" company.

After the pandemic boom, K12 edtech companies are seeing less demand for online classes as schools and tutoring centres open up.

Many companies, like Byju's and Unacademy, have made hybrid forays to survive in a time when VC funding seems to be scarce.

While Byju's acquired Aakash, Unacademy opened its offline classes in Kota, which is a hub for coaching. Vedantu, while late, appears to have joined the fray.

A day after edtech behemoth Byju's announced plans to lay off 5% of its 50,000-strong workforce, another edtech startup has followed suit.

FrontRow co-founder Ishaan Preet Singh told us that they laid off another 130 employees four months after laying off a similar number of people.

• The company now plans to “start from scratch” as the earlier model "does not scale," Singh said.

PhysicsWallah, India's newest edtech unicorn, has acquired two startups, PrepOnline and Altis Vortex, to foray into government job preparation and book publishing, respectively.

• The company expects its FY23 revenue to top Rs 1,200 crore amid high demand for its courses, co-founder Alakh Pandey recently told us.

In a recent episode of our show Bits to Billions, Pandey opened up on life after becoming a unicorn, his struggle and backstory, and competition, among other topics. Watch the episode.

Imagine if you woke up one day to the news that alarm clocks were outlawed and that roosters were to be used in their place.

Too dramatic? But that's exactly how many regular Ola, Uber, and Rapido passengers felt after the Karnataka government banned app-run autos.

While the services continued to operate despite the ban, autos took nearly 18-20 minutes to arrive at passengers' homes.

In addition to the passengers, the drivers associated with the ride-hailing apps are in complete disarray due to a lack of communication about whether to accept or cancel rides. Many were even stopped by the Bengaluru traffic police if caught using the app.

While the government has made it clear that the autos of Ola, Uber and Rapido are illegal, the companies are fighting the battle to stay afloat and solve the license issues at the earliest. 

Read our story

• Cryptocurrencies may have crashed this year, but they are still a great way for hackers to make money online. So far in October, at least $718 million has been stolen. This brings the total for the year to more than $3 billion and puts 2022 on track to be the year with the most money stolen.
  
  
• Michael Barr, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve for supervision, says that crypto tokens aren't likely to replace traditional money, and banks should be careful when they try out this asset class.

Elon Musk is famous for building cars, rockets and even underground tunnels. 

But a lesser-known fact is his track record of selling wacky merchandise or what appears to be joke products with great success. This includes surfboards, tequila, red satin shorts and more notoriously the "Not-A-Flamethrower" which sparked much debate. 

The latest product in this line-up is a perfume called 'Burnt Hair'. He is also committing to the role fully by changing his Twitter bio to 'perfume salesman'

The world's richest man also appealed to his over 100M followers to buy the perfume so that he can "buy the social media platform Twitter".

With the perfume costing $100 per bottle, Musk claims to have sold 20,000 bottles to earn around two million dollars in just a few hours.

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