One quick thing: TCS has announced that it will pay all of its junior-level employees 100% of their variable pay for the third quarter.

• Mid- and senior-level employees' variable payouts depend on business unit performance

Meanwhile, TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan told us in an interview that there was over-excitement and mindless cloud-service purchases amid pandemic-fueled digital transformation and cloud-migration activities.

Gopinathan added that there is a lot of buzz about the AI chatbot ChatGPT at TCS. Here's what he has to say about it. 

Catch the full interview here.

Also Read: Budget 2023 | TCS chief Rajesh Gopinathan sees services sector happy, centred on government agenda

In today’s newsletter: 

• RuPay cards get a boost
• Layoffs @ CoinDCX
• Another setback for Google in CCI fight

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In a big win for the digital payments industry, the Cabinet today approved a Rs 2,600 crore incentive scheme aimed at promoting RuPay debit cards and boosting low-value Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions.

Low-value RuPay debit card transactions and person-to-merchant (P2M) BHIM-UPI transactions will be eligible for incentives.

• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) -- the nodal body for digital payments and settlement systems - had requested "for incentivisation of BHIM-UPI and RuPay Debit Card transactions to create a cost-effective value proposition for ecosystem stakeholders, increase merchant acceptance footprints and faster migration from cash payments to digital payments.”

Here are some important data points to understand this question:

• Total digital payments transactions increased by 59% year on year, from Rs 5,554 crore in FY2020-21 to Rs 8,840 crore in FY2021-22

• BHIM-UPI transactions increased 106% year on year, from Rs 2,233 crore in FY2020-21 to Rs 4,597 crore in FY2021-22

As digital payments become more popular, incentives like this will help industries keep up with demand and accelerate the transition from cash payments to online payments.

In the face of a challenging market, cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX has taken steps to cut costs by laying off some of its employees.

• CoinDCX went on a hiring spree last year in a bid to diversify its business. It subsequently launched a venture arm and app aggregator Okto.

CoinDCX is now consolidating some of its functions, resulting in layoffs of around 80-100 employees across teams such as marketing, branding, and activation, sources tell us.

While the company has denied any layoffs, it has confirmed an internal restructuring.

"As we are in the build phase and some products are on the anvil, this has paved the way of generating new roles for which we are hiring and this has also given an opportunity for an internal reshuffle. These restructured teams are being assigned interesting mandates to contribute to CoinDCX's growth journey in the Web3 space,” the company said.

Crypto exchanges around the world have been dealing with a range of issues. Apart from bankruptcies, many companies have laid off employees, including Coinbase and WazirX.

WazirX published its proof of reserves today in collaboration with third-party platform CoinGabbar, revealing that it has over $286 million in holdings.

Rivals CoinDCX and CoinSwitch have so far made their proof of reserves public following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which sparked discussion about the need for exchanges to be more transparent.

Google has faced another legal hitch in its biggest market by users: India

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has denied interim relief to Google on its plea to stay the Competition Commission of India (CCI)'s recent antitrust order related to its Play Store policies. 

• Last week, the tribunal also refused to provide any interim relief to the search giant on CCI's antitrust order against its Android business.

In October 2022, the CCI directed Google not to restrict app developers from using any third-party billing or payment processing services to purchase apps or for in-app billing on the Play Store apart from a range of corrective measures. Additionally, Google also faced a penalty of Rs 936.44 crore.

Google had then stated that the model has "powered India's digital transformation" and expanded access for "hundreds of millions of Indians". 

• It subsequently paused the enforcement of its in-app billing system in the country, a policy that has already been made mandatory for in-app digital content purchases for users outside of India.

All eyes are now on the Supreme Court which has agreed to hear Google's appeal on January 16, against the tribunal's order that refused to block CCI's Android antitrust ruling. 

The stakes are high for Google since the remedial measures ordered by the CCI will have a significant impact on its business model.

The US tech giant told the apex court in a filing that the order may stall the growth of Android ecosystem in India since they will have to "make far-reaching changes to the mobile platform which has been in place for the last 14-15 years," as per Reuters.

Chennai is shining bright not only because of the release of the much-anticipated Thunivu and Varisu films, but it is also quickly gaining ground as India's analytics hub.

Chennai has a conducive ecosystem for this, writes Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, former CMD of Cognizant India and Partner at Catalincs in a column for us.

Many companies, including both multi-service IT firms and large multinationals such as Ford and Barclays, have established exclusive data analytics labs or have built deep capabilities in various areas of analytics in Chennai.

Read the column  

On this day in 1787, astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.

Quick trivia: Although Herschel discovered the two moons, they were named by his son in 1847 and 1852, several years after his father died in 1822. (Picture credit: Wikipedia)

• Voyager Digital, a bankrupt cryptocurrency lender, has received preliminary court approval for its plan to sell $1.02 billion worth of assets to Binance.US. 
  
  
• Binance acknowledged system flaws that left its supply of Binance Smart Chain BUSD, one of the company's stablecoins that is backed one-to-one by the US dollar, undercollateralized by at least $1 billion.

SS Rajamouli's RRR struck gold at Golden Globe Awards! 

The film's song Naatu Naatu took home the Golden Globe for best original song. What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that it is the first time an Asian song has won the award.

The foot-tapping number, composed by veteran music director MM Keeravaani, was up against Taylor Swift's Carolina, Ciao Papa from Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Lady Gaga's Hold My Hand from Top Gun: Maverick, and Rihanna's Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

• Fun fact: The song was shot outside President Zelenskyy's residence in Ukraine.

However, in a bittersweet moment, RRR lost the Golden Globes to Argentina's historical drama Argentina 1985 in the "best picture-non English" category.

Here's a clip of the RRR team's thrilling victory celebration.

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