One important thing: Shardeum, Nischal Shetty's latest venture, has raised $18.2 million in a seed round at a $200 million valuation. 

• Shardeum will be competing head-on with Ethereum, which has been very popular among Web3 programmers.

 In today's newsletter:

• ONDC blinks on restaurant commissions
• Now, Byju’s core biz turns loss-making
• PhonePe: Revenue boost ahead of listing plans

From a distance, it appeared to be a knight in shining armour. The sheen of the armour, however, faded as soon as the knight approached.

That's how restaurants must be feeling now that the Online Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has stated that restaurant commissions will be determined by market forces.

In a meeting with eateries in Delhi, ONDC officials said that commissions charged by seller-aggregators on the network will not be capped. It also said that there will be no guidance on the fees that seller apps can charge.

With the ONDC being government-backed and claiming to right the wrongs done by monopolistic marketplaces, restaurants expected commissions to be restricted in this model

• Currently, restaurants have to pay more than 40 percent of the average order value in listing fees, commissions, and marketing costs

ONDC chief T Koshy said social audits by users and network participants, as well as periodic compliance reviews, will encourage good behaviour when it comes to governing buyer-side platforms so that they don't end up favouring one seller or restaurant over another.

While buyer-side platforms on the network can experiment with parameters to display search results, they must ensure that the logic or algorithm used is consistent across the results

• For instance, a buyer-facing platform displaying results based on ratings cannot place a restaurant with lower ratings above one with higher ratings in the listing.

Also, no penalty has been prescribed for bad actors. The theory is that once users realise that one buyer-side platform falls short of expectations, they will migrate to a different platform.

The most valuable Indian startup seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into a sea of problems.

The company's latest filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs revealed that Byju's core business, which had been profitable up until FY20 (2019-20), has turned into a loss-making one in FY21 (2020-21), thanks to a 30 percent decline in revenue during the period.

Byju's standalone business, which constitutes its K-12 (kindergarten to class 12) offerings, reported a loss of Rs 2,702.14 crore in FY21. It made a profit of Rs 50.76 crore in FY20, which was later revised to Rs 7.39 crore due to a change in its accounting methodologies.

Byju’s total revenue dipped to Rs 1,551.64 crore in FY21 against Rs 2,242.05 crore in FY20. The FY20 revenue, like the consolidated numbers, was revised downwards to Rs 2,242 crore from Rs 2,434 crore.

• Even in FY19, Byju’s standalone business had a profit of Rs 20.16 crore.

In the filings, it was revealed that Byju's had extended unsecured loans totalling several crores of rupees to four companies, two of which it had subsequently acquired.

• In FY21, Byju's provided loans to WhiteHat Junior, Toppr, Grade Stack (Byju's Exam Prep platform), and Byju's K-3 Education
  
  
• Toppr and Grade Stack were later acquired by Byju's

These loan disbursements were not previously made public. Find out more about it here.

PhonePe, which has rapidly expanded its financial services offerings in the last year, saw a 138 percent increase in revenue in fiscal year 2021-22. This is good news for the company, which is preparing to go public as soon as its core businesses turn profitable, hopefully in 2023.

• The company's revenues increased to Rs 1,646 crore in FY22 from Rs 690 crore in FY21 owing to growth across business lines.
  
  
• The company's losses, excluding Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) costs, reduced to Rs 671 crore in FY22 from Rs 780 crore in FY21.

The increase in revenues was offset by a significant increase in costs, primarily due to marketing expenses.

PhonePe, like many other fintechs, increased its marketing efforts during the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2021 and the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2022. The majority of the money was spent on advertising for the company's new insurance distribution business.

• As a result, marketing costs increased by 62 percent to Rs 866 crore in FY22, compared to the previous year.

The company also said that it has made significant investments in hiring for future product lines such as insurance, wealth services, and others. 

• Employee costs at PhonePe increased by 41% from Rs 393 crore in FY21 to Rs 555 crore in FY22.

• Former Valour Inc. executive Diana Biggs has been hired as a partner at 1k(x), a $1 billion crypto venture capital firm backed by British hedge fund tycoon Alan Howard. Biggs will provide support for 1k(x)'s new and existing portfolio companies, fostering partnerships with institutions and non-crypto applications.
  
  
• Walmart's global CTO, Suresh Kumar, suggests that cryptocurrencies will become a "major" area of disruption, especially in the way that customers pay for virtual and physical goods in the future. Kumar also said that the Metaverse and live streams on social media apps would play a significant role in marketing to consumers, and that cryptocurrency could play an important role in payment in these settings.

Being online means being vulnerable all the time. It may seem harmless, but it actually poses a threat to humans on a scale never before seen. 

On Twitter, we open up to complete strangers and display our most recent Instagram photos for all to see. There are profound mental effects of constant public scrutiny.

Researchers have found a correlation between excessive social media use and the development of depressive and anxious symptoms.  

Many psychologists also believe that people may be dealing with subtle but pervasive psychological effects.

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