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In today’s newsletter: 

• Deep cuts at ShareChat
• Accenture casts shadow on Indian IT
• India's LLM race heats up

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The winter chills seem to be far from over for ShareChat.

In a bid to cut costs, the social media unicorn has fired 15%, or about 200, of its employees across functions. 

• Calling it a "strategic restructuring" that is part of its annual planning for 2024, the company claims these layoffs will help it achieve profitability within the next 4-6 quarters 

This comes after a similar move earlier this year, when the company laid off around 600 employees and co-founders Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan stepped down from their executive roles.

Despite the funding winter and ShareChat’s challenges, Singh and Ahsan's entrepreneurial ambitions have not been deterred. 

• The duo recently secured $3 million in seed funding from high-profile investors for their robotics startup, General Autonomy

Additionally, in FY23, they received a total pay of Rs 1.8 crore from ShareChat.

The social media firm's net losses increased 72% to Rs 5,144 crore in FY23, driven by rising server rents, financing costs, and foreign exchange losses.

• Revenue grew 59% to Rs 553 crore in FY23 compared to the previous financial year

It was valued at $5 billion in its last funding round and is backed by investors such as X (formerly Twitter), Google, Lightspeed, and Temasek.

Go deeper

IT services giant Accenture reported its first-quarter earnings for fiscal year 2024 today, and the results are not encouraging.

Accenture, whose fiscal year runs from September to August, announced subdued Q1 earnings:

• Revenue came in at $16 billion, marking the company's slowest YoY revenue growth in the past 13 quarters
• The company's outlook for discretionary demand in 2024 also remains weak

As one of the world's largest IT companies with a substantial workforce in India and a direct competitor to TCS and Infosys, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities predict that this trend will adversely impact the upcoming earnings of the Indian IT sector.

Considering the subdued demand and spending outlook for the near term, a quick recovery in the ongoing slowdown of Indian IT companies is unlikely, say analysts at Kotak.

• TCS and Infosys are set to report their earnings for the December quarter in the coming few weeks

It is not all doom and gloom for Accenture. 

• The company secured large deals of over $100 million from 30 clients in Q1. Analysts expect that these deals will propel growth in H2FY24

The biggest surprise was Accenture's industry-leading generative AI pipeline, which surged to $450 million in Q1, a significant jump from $300 million for the entire FY23. 

Find out more

As the global large language model (LLM) race intensifies, India emerges as a formidable contender, with diverse initiatives shaping the landscape. 

Forget Sam Altman's scepticism about a groundbreaking LLM emerging from India. 

• Local startups and tech companies are quietly churning out LLMs tailored for the country's diverse linguistic landscape and unique needs

• Krutrim: Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal has thrown his hat (and a Sanskrit name) into the ring with Krutrim. Not only does this AI model understand 22 Indian languages, it also claims to leave OpenAI's GPT-4 in the dust when it comes to Indic languages
  
  
• Sarvam AI's OpenHathi: This Hindi LLM is making waves with its bilingual training and real-world focus. Sarvam AI has even partnered with KissanAI to fine-tune the model using farmer conversations
  
  
• Zoho: SaaS giant Zoho is charting its course in the LLM space by developing smaller AI models tailored for specific domain problems. Founder Sridhar Vembu told us the company is working on AI models based on 7 billion to 20 billion parameters
  
  
• Indus Project: Tech Mahindra aims to create a foundational model for Indian languages with the Indus Project. Initially focusing on Hindi and its 40 dialects, the LLM is expected to be launched early next year

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Read our story to know the other contenders.

P.S: Any guesses on what the word of the year is? Scroll down to find the answer!

December 19 was a special day for several top Indian payment gateway companies, as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) granted them final authorisation to operate as Payment Aggregators. This includes prominent players like Razorpay, Cashfree, Google Pay, Enkash, neobank Open, and fintech firm Paymentz.

• This long-awaited green light comes after a year of anticipation, during which Razorpay and Cashfree were even barred from onboarding new merchants, a significant blow to their core business

In an interview following the RBI's approval, founders of Razorpay and Cashfree share their insights and reveal their key focus areas moving forward.

• Microsoft Copilot can now compose songs, thanks to an integration with AI music startup Suno.

• Stability AI has introduced paid membership for commercial use of its AI models.

The theme of the year is undoubtedly AI, as evidenced by the selection of the word of the year by several prominent dictionaries. 

• Cambridge Dictionary and Dictionary.com have both chosen "Hallucinate" as the word of the year for 2023
  
  
• Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2023 is "authentic," a term that gained significant usage this year due to conversations surrounding AI
  
  
• Collins Dictionary also declared AI as its word of the year

However, Oxford University Press stands out as the only exception, opting for a Gen-Z slang term, 'rizz,' as its word of the year. Rizz is essentially short for charisma and is often referred to as someone's ability to charm a person. 

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