One important thing: Amazon, Google, and Zomato are among 32 companies that have been granted in-principle authorisation by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to act as online payment aggregators. 

• Applications from an additional 18 companies, including PhonePe, CRED, and Mobikwik (Zaakpay), are currently under process, RBI said. 

In today’s newsletter:

• Only 6 of India's 51 unicorns profitable in FY22
• Boosting Elon Musk's Twitter popularity, CEO can wait
• Space industry's pitch for dedicated spaces

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Result day is never enjoyable for anyone. Even more so when you know how the exams went. It's been the same feeling for Indian unicorns in recent months, as 51 of them have reported their FY22 financials.

Among them, only six showed a positive bottom line. This number is even lower than it was a year ago, as four of the companies in this dataset - Fractal, Lenskart, Games 24x7, and Shiprocket - have fallen into the red this year.

Turn your attention to SaaS companies, which appear to have figured out the key to investors' hearts, thanks to their high gross margins.

Uniphore, for instance, turned a profit of Rs 33.5 crore from a loss of nearly Rs 282 crore in FY21. Others in the fray include:

• Infra.Market and OfBusiness - Only these two startups clocked a profit of more than Rs 100 crore
  
  
• Mamaearth, meanwhile, saw its profit halving to Rs 14 crore from nearly Rs 30 crore earlier
  
  
• Sadly, no fintech unicorns made the list

As with a million other things that have gone wrong since 2020, the lack of profits in the startup ecosystem can be partially attributed to the dreadful Covid-19 pandemic.

• To capitalise on an increase in demand caused by stay-at-home restrictions, most founders focused on 'growth at all costs,' and got a little carried away

Startups thus spent millions of dollars on growth, which eventually led to about 45, in this dataset alone, incurring significant losses.

Go deeper. Also, read what investors and experts think about startups’ inflated valuations in the first part of this data series.

"Main apni favourite hoon"

This iconic dialogue from the movie Jab We Met is most likely Twitter owner Elon Musk's mantra.

If Twitter employees have learned anything about Musk in the last few weeks, it is that he does not like being told that he is unpopular or that his popularity is waning.

Tesla's erratic CEO paid $44 billion for Twitter, a digital town square, when all he seems to want is a broadcast list. (Wonder if he tried to buy WhatsApp?)

Musk asked Twitter engineers to boost his tweets over others on the social media platform after US President Joe Biden's tweet about the Super Bowl got more engagement than his (now-deleted) tweet, according to Platformer. 

• Subsequently, Twitter artificially boosted them by a factor of 1,000, which led to Twitter users seeing only his tweets on their timelines a few days ago.

Musk is reportedly becoming increasingly frustrated with dwindling engagement numbers on his tweets.

Last week, he fired one of the two remaining principal engineers for saying that the engagement numbers on his tweets might be declining due to waning public interest in the mercurial billionaire, the publication said.

Meanwhile, if you were expecting Musk to resign as CEO of Twitter nearly three months after he said he would, you'll have to wait a little longer, at least until the end of the year.

"I need to stabilise the organisation and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and the product road map is clearly laid out," Musk said at the World Government Summit in Dubai today.

• After the interview, in his typical shitposting style, Elon Musk tweeted out a picture of his pet dog Floki with a caption: "The new CEO of Twitter is amazing."

The hundreds of IT parks in India are synonymous with the growth of this sector in the country. An industry group is now advocating for dedicated Space Technology Parks (similar to IT parks) to help the space sector.

The cost of technical infrastructure required for design, development, and testing in the space industry is extremely high, in contrast to other sectors, according to the Indian Space Association (IsPA), whose members include Airtel, Larsen & Toubro, and space tech startups such as Pixxel and GalaxEye.

• Most of this infrastructure is with the Indian Space Research Organisation, Defence Research and Development Organisation and other bodies.

In a recently released concept note, the industry body proposed a framework for the operation of these STPs. The IsPA proposed that these parks would have:

• Testing facilities and services
  
  
• Ground infrastructure
  
  
• Incubation centres 

Currently, STPs have been proposed in Gujarat and Kerala, but the industry body notes that more must be done to boost this sector, whose achievements are largely limited to ISRO's accomplishments.

Go deeper

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently proposed extending the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) facility for merchant payments to travellers coming from abroad. But how exactly does this work, and what do you need to know before you arrive in the country? 

We explain the exact process, right from when one lands in India. Do watch

Niklaus Wirth was born on this date in 1934. He is a computer scientist best known for developing Pascal, one of the first widely used high-level programming languages.

In 1984, he received the Turing Award, widely regarded as the highest honour in computer science, for developing a series of innovative computer languages. (Picture credit: Wikipedia)

• FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was barred from using VPNs while on bail because a judge worried they posed similar risks to encrypted messaging apps. Bankman-Fried claims he used a VPN to watch football. 
  
  
• In a research report, Morgan Stanley noted that stablecoin products potentially compete with traditional banking systems and that its falling market capitalization indicates a decrease in cryptocurrency liquidity and leverage.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on a quest to break down barriers and reach for the stars. 

The conservative nation will launch its first female astronaut into space later this year, ushering in a new era of progress and inclusion.

Rayyana Barnawi will make history by becoming the first Arab woman to soar beyond the bounds of our planet.

Barnawi will join fellow Saudi Ali Al-Qarni on a 10-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Read more

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