One important thing: Accenture bookings decline sequentially, headcount falls by 6k

In today’s newsletter:

• Byju's rocked by board departures, auditor exit
• Koo's active user base continues to shrink
• Web3 funding in India plummets 97%

Also, get ready for a battle of tech titans in a cage! Scroll below for more deets.

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India's biggest unicorn, Byju's, has been plagued by a never-ending streak of bad news. 

Three Byju’s board members — representing investors Peak XV Partners, Prosus, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative— have quit due to differences with founder Byju Raveendran on key operational issues.

• Remaining on the board are Byju himself, his co-founder and wife Divya Gokulnath and younger brother Riju Raveendran

 If that was not enough of a blow, accounting major Deloitte also resigned as the company’s auditor today. Byju’s has now appointed BDO as its auditor for the next five years.

• Deloitte said in a letter that there had been no communication from Byju’s on completing the audit of FY22 financials, which is already delayed by 9 months

• It also flagged that the edtech unicorn is dilly-dallying in resolving some changes in the previous year’s (FY21) audit report

These setbacks are piling up on Byju’s, which is in dispute with lenders in the US after the latter asked the company to repay part of the $1.2 billion term loan B.

• The two parties are now locked in a legal battle with each other in the US

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Koo, the home-grown microblogging platform, has not been able to take off, despite all the troubles at Twitter.

Koo's monthly active user (MAU) base has been on a steady decline, failing to capitalise on Twitter's misery.

• In July 2022, when Twitter was locked in a standoff with the Indian government, Koo had 9.4 million MAUs

• By April 2023, that number had fallen by a third to about 3.1 million MAUs

Koo assured its investors that it would reduce its monthly cash burn. However, reducing cash burn meant that MAUs would continue to decline.

• Koo reduced its monthly cash burn to Rs 10.2 crore in April 2023 from around Rs 16 crore in January 

However, this falls short of Koo's promise to investors that its cash burn would come down to Rs 6.5 crore by March-end.

In the past, many of us explored various messaging apps as alternatives but ultimately found refuge in WhatsApp. Koo is facing a similar challenge.

• Due to its lack of additional features and offerings, Koo has struggled to retain users, according to analysts

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India’s Web3 ecosystem appears to be hit by the worst kind of funding winter. 

Funding in the first five months of 2023 declined by 97% as compared to the same period last year, according to data accessed from Venture Intelligence.

• The Web3 sector includes crypto, NFTs, DeFi, decentralized applications, and blockchain startups

Funding to the sector plunged to $32 million across seven rounds in the first five months of 2023, from over $1 billion across 44 rounds in the same period last year.

• Investors said this was largely due to negative sentiments around crypto since 2022
  
  
• Apart from macro challenges, the collapses of FTX, Terra, Three Arrows, and Signature Bank also impacted funding

Moreover, many investors have shifted their focus to AI, further affecting investment in the Web3 space.

Web3-focused investors believe that this is the best time to invest in the sector, as they are likely to find better businesses and lower valuations.

In fact, some VCs like 100X.VC and Antler India waited for the bull run to end before making investments in Web3 startups. They were looking for sensible bets where the founders are also looking to solve bigger problems in a decentralised manner. 

Over the past two years, Antler India has invested in eight Web3 startups, while 100X.VC has invested in six.

“Earlier, Web3 startups would raise funds by writing a white paper but now they need to show some traction, minimum viable product and future path,”  said Parth Chaturvedi, investments lead at CoinSwitch Ventures.

Go deeper

On June 22, 1973, the first Skylab crew safely returned to Earth after completing a successful 28-day mission. From May 25, 1973, to February 8, 1974, Skylab was occupied by three different crews. During this time, they conducted 270 scientific and technical investigations and spent a total of 171 days in orbit.

Today, the Payload Operations Integration Center at Marshall serves as the central hub for scientific work on the International Space Station.

• Blockchain-based payments firm Ripple has secured in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to offer digital asset payments and token products in the city-state.

• Lawyers representing Binance, Binance.US and CEO Changpeng Zhao have filed a motion alleging that the Securities and Exchange Commission misled the public in statements issued over an ongoing securities lawsuit.

Billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk plan to take their online feud offline.

The Tesla billionaire threw down the gauntlet on Twitter, challenging Zuckerberg to a cage match! This comes as Meta gears up to launch a potential rival to Twitter.

Zuckerberg wasted no time in accepting the challenge, writing on Instagram Stories, "Send me location."

• It remains to be seen whether the two tech titans will actually come to blows

In the meantime, we can all enjoy the spectacle of two billionaires bickering like school children. It's a reminder that even the most powerful people in the world are still human, and they're just as capable of petty squabbles as the rest of us. (Image credit: @greg16676935420/Twitter)

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