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In today’s newsletter: 

• Meta sounds warning on India's telecom bill 
• Sam Altman's Worldcoin pulls Orb from India 
• It's raining dollars for Flipkart, GreyOrange

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The last few years have been a cat and mouse game between internet platforms and the Indian government. And things might just be heating up even more!

Social networking giant Meta is worried that the Indian government will regulate internet apps with the proposed telecom law.

• We accessed an internal e-mail by Meta’s India policy head, Shivnath Thukral, which says that the broad definitions of ‘telecom services’ and ‘messages’ in the Bill are a matter of concern.

The current version of the legislation allows the government to intercept messages, set standards of encryption and take control of telecom networks.

• Meta currently owns two of the world’s biggest messaging apps - WhatsApp and Messenger. (Three, if you count Instagram as well!)

After a previous version of the proposed law included over-the-top (OTT) applications in its ambit, the government received a lot of flak from privacy activists.

• The current version of the Bill has removed all explicit mentions of OTT, but Thukral and other experts say there’s a lot of ambiguity.

• Government sources argued that the law needs to be read with the Allocation of Business Rules to arrive at the conclusion that it won’t apply to OTTs

In his email, Thukral says a minister has conveyed to him that the government has no intention to bring OTTs under the law, but he is still suspectful of the wiggle room in its phrasing.

Read: All you need to know about the Indian Telecommunications Bill 2023

If OTTs like WhatsApp and Signal are indeed regulated by the telecom law, they would need to take authorisation to operate in India.

• They might also need to open up to government surveillance and dilute their encryption standards

Meanwhile…About 60 companies including Signal, Proton, Mozilla, and digital rights groups have demanded that the Indian government must withdraw the Bill to protect fundamental rights.

(P.S. If you are interested in Meta, you don’t want to miss today’s book recco. Scroll below for more deets!)

Remember Sam Altman’s Worldcoin?

The crypto project that grabbed quite a few eyeballs when it launched at a valuation of $3 billion in July 2023. 

• Hundreds of enthusiasts flocked to the local locations where they could find its flagship device the ‘Orb’ to create their unique World IDs through eyeball scanning and earn free WLD tokens.

Turns out, this offline Orb verification service was discontinued in India nearly 3-4 months back.

When Worldcoin opened up its services to the masses in July, it had listed India as one of the countries with access to Orbs.

There were about 18 listed locations including shopping malls and metro stations across Bengaluru and Delhi NCR. India locations were recently removed from the site.

• According to sources, this was driven by the massive demand seen at these locations, which Orb wasn’t adept to handle.

• On occasions, local police had to intervene at the malls to control crowd and seize orbs 

• Additionally, there were concerns around Worldcoin not having prior permissions at these spots to run their campaigns 

A source privy to the development told us that this is a temporary move, as the company is working on building bespoke hardware and solution for India to manage the scale of demand.

Sam Altman, co-founder of Worldcoin, is currently looking to raise $50 million in a new round, according to media reports. 

• Worldcoin's ecosystem involves three key elements: World ID, Worldcoin token (WLD) and World App. World ID is the main personalised biometric digital identity, created through Orb verification.

The WLD token is a crypto token that can be used for transactions and payments on World App. World App serves as a digital wallet, as well.

Go deeper

The year end funding rush continues as more late-stage companies raise large rounds giving the ecosystem much-needed hope before 2023 draws to a close.

E-commerce giant Flipkart is preparing to close a whopping $1 billion funding round, sources told us. 

• Parent entity Walmart has already put in $600 million while existing stakeholders and other external investors will pump in the remaining $400 million, they added. 

Flipkart will use the money to bolster its tech capabilities, strengthen its supply chain and expand operations.  

It’s not only Flipkart but one of its investee companies has also landed big bucks.

GreyOrange, a robotics and automation company, has secured $135 million from Anthelion Capital, Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital, 3State Ventures and Blume Ventures. 

• The fresh funds will be used to cater to more warehouses, distribution centres and retail stores

This financing comes after a large $110 million funding round in May 2022.

EV ride hailing company BluSmart which said existing investors, founders and others have put in $24 million but did not disclose any investor names.

• This financing comes months after the firm landed nearly $42 million in a mix of equity and debt funding from BP Ventures, and several other existing investors.

As an ecosystem we have been adept at celebrating success stories but we are also learning to respect failure and the effort behind startup journeys which is the real crucible for long term sustainable growth, writes Alteria Capital’s Vinod Murali.

• Great founder quality, deep management teams, stable and growing domestic market, and improved global positioning of India are some of the reasons to feel optimistic about 2024, he says.

Read his column

• Antropic is reportedly in talks to raise $750 million funding led by Menlo Ventures at a $15 billion valuation

• Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth talks about how generative AI is reshaping the social networking giant.

In 2021, Facebook (now Meta) was rocked by one of the biggest controversies in its history following the leak of thousands of internal documents by a whistleblower Frances Haugen. These documents revealed that the social networking giant was aware of the negative impact its products cause but had largely ignored them.

• The leak resulted in a series of investigative articles published by journalist Jeff Horwitz in the Wall Street Journal.

Horwitz expands on these revelations in his latest book, "Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets" that provides a closer look into the company's internal dynamics and culture, while showcasing the courageous stand of employees who risked everything to expose the firm's toxic secrets.

Read it on Amazon