One quick thing: Byju's-owned test prep firm Aakash has a new CEO

In today’s newsletter:

• A litmus test for Wipro and Rishad Premji 
• Chip Dreams: Tata hiring from Taiwan
• Livspace eyes $25 million more from KKR

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Two letters, a trustworthy man, and a litmus test: all of it points towards an uphill task that a 32-year veteran of one of India's top IT companies has to crack.

Srinivas Pallia was appointed as Wipro's CEO and MD on Saturday evening after Thierry Delaporte decided to step down a year before his term ends.

While Delaporte’s action was sudden, it didn’t surprise anyone, since the move had become only a question of 'when' and not 'why'

• Wipro has seen one of the worst phases under the Paris-based Delaporte. Dwindling revenues, decreasing margins, senior-level exits, and a larger disconnect within the organisation.

• The IT firm continued to underperform compared to peers, even after billions of dollars on acquisitions such as Capco and Rizing.

Wipro's board, promotors, and analysts are trusting Pallia with a humongous task: to rebuild what's lost.

• Former Wipro board member Suresh Senapaty, and one of founder Azim Premji’s most trusted advisors, believes Pallia will turn around the fortunes of Wipro.

One senior former executive said the bleak Q4 numbers and FY25 outlook may have necessitated the management to finally ask Delaporte to step down.

• Pallia's selection is also a litmus test for Rishad Premji as executive chairman, as this is his second attempt at choosing a top leader for one of India's most respected firms.

In an email to employees, the former CEO said that his main goal of transforming Wipro is complete.

• Pallia is the best man for the job who will further the agenda of growth that he started, Delaporte said.

Pallia said his learnings from being a hiker- Resilience, tenacity, and adaptability- will show him the way to steer the company out of the current situation

• Pallia said he also believes in work-life balance, deviating from the chatter on social media about a rival founder's comments.

Read our deep dive

If you happen to speak with people who lived in the Bokaro Steel City of the 60s and 70s, they might tell you anecdotes about Russians living in the city. This is because the Soviet Union had sent its talent to the Indian steel manufacturing township.

Something similar may happen yet again — this time with Taiwanese chip workers.

The Tata Group is heading to Taiwan for a roadshow to convince the Southeast Asian country’s semiconductor engineers and technicians to move to India.

• In a poster for the roadshow, Tata Electronics invited Taiwanese professionals with 5 to 16 years of experience in various semiconductor manufacturing roles. 

• It said candidates must be willing to relocate to India and will undergo 18 months of initial training in Taiwan.

The salt to steel conglomerate's fab in Gujarat and chip packaging plant in Assam are expected to create 47,000 skilled jobs.

"I suspect the most important challenges will be to offer attractive wages and career opportunities. The fact that Tata's facility will be a joint venture with PSMC likely facilitates this," said Chris Miller, author of the book Chip War. 

Even beyond this facility, India would benefit from closer collaboration with Taiwanese firms and universities, given the complementarity in their technology workforces, he said.

Former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan recently criticised the government's chip subsidy package of Rs 76,000 crore as too costly at "Rs 4 crore per job created."

• This is over 150 percent of the central higher education budget, when higher education institutions lack resources, he said.

Go deeper

After a dull funding year, things are looking up for many startups in terms of funding, but there are strings attached!

Livspace, the home and interior platform is in talks to raise $20-25 million from private equity giant KKR in an internal round but at a lower valuation.

In the ongoing negotiations, Livspace is only being valued at $700 million, sources told us. This is a substantial drop from the company’s last valuation of $1.2 billion when it raised $180 million in February 2022 from KKR and others

• To be sure, several startups – like Letstransport, Udaan, Rupeek, and Byju's – have either raised money in a down round or are in the process of doing so. Reality check, eh?

Livspace has however denied such talks. KKR declined to comment but sources at the PE giant said the talks could be preliminary in nature. 

This funding is crucial for Livspace as it looks to use the money to extend its cash runway and also set aside some money for general business purposes. 

• Livspace is currently burning $4 million a month. It can also use the money for acquisitions. 

The firm had planned up to five acquisitions in FY24 and even earmarked $100 million but not a single deal fructified.

• In 2015, Livspace went on a buying spree and acquired Dwll, YoFloor, and DezignUP. After a gap of about six years, it bought Singapore-based Qanvast in 2021.

Read more

• OpenAI reportedly created a speech recognition tool called Whisper to transcribe over a million hours of YouTube videos, which was then used to train its GPT-4 model. 

• A look at how teachers are using artificial intelligence to grade essays, developing lesson plans and creating assignments. 

• Spotify now allows its Premium subscribers to generate a playlist based on text prompts.

Hans Zimmer, who is behind some of the most iconic movie soundtracks, including titles such as Interstellar, Inception, Dune, The Lion King, and The Dark Knight, may soon make his debut into the Indian film industry. 

The Oscar winner is reportedly teaming up with music legend AR Rahman to compose music and background score for the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer epic drama Ramayana. 

• The movie is projected to be one of the costliest productions in Indian cinema and is gearing up for a Diwali 2025 release. An official announcement is expected to be made on April 17, 2024, on the occasion of Ram Navami.

If the collaboration is happening, we can't wait to hear what these two musical geniuses create together!