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In today's newsletter:

• India's tech IPO party losing steam?
• 26 e-comm apps swear they're dark pattern free
• Paytm’s long road to UPI recovery

Bonus: Three words that sum up the year 2025. Scroll below for more deets!

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The IPO confetti hasn’t even settled — and the share prices are already tidying up. 

• The share prices of all newly-listed tech firms – Groww, Lenskart, Pine Labs and PhysicsWallah (PW) – fell by the end of the day’s session on November 20.

The new kids on the block just learnt the landing’s steeper.

Groww saw the steepest fall among the new-age tech cohort, dropping as much as 9 percent during intra-day trading before settling 7.8 percent lower on the NSE.

• The decline wiped out about Rs 23,000 crore, or $2.6 billion, in market capitalisation as of 2 pm on November 20. 

• Its market cap stood at Rs 95,505 crore during the day, slipping below the Rs 1.19 lakh crore, a high it hit on November 18

The November 20 drop marked a second straight decline. The stock had already fallen 10 percent and hit the lower circuit on November 19, ending a five-day rally.

Also read: Groww faces 30 lakh-share auction; analysts flag deepening short-seller trap

Lenskart, the recently listed eyewear retailer, too saw its share price fall about 2.8% during the day’s trading

• Its share price, at around Rs 415 apiece on the NSE, reverted to the IPO price of about Rs 409 per share 

 Pine Labs and PW were next, each setting about 1% lower at the end of the day’s session on November 20, but still dropped lesser on November 20. 

• The stocks fell after analysts turned bearish on the companies
  
  
• PW’s market cap erosion now stands at nearly Rs 12,000 crore in just three sessions 

Dig deeper

India’s biggest apps are scrubbing their screens clean — and the government is checking every pixel.

Top platforms insist their UIs are spotless — at least according to their own audits.

• Twenty-six firms, from Flipkart and Myntra to Zepto, Swiggy and MakeMyTrip, have submitted dark-pattern declarations with the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA)

• Each says it’s free of all 13 banned tricks — no drip pricing, no confirm-shaming, no sneaky baskets.

The filings span marketplaces, travel, grocery, fashion, pharmacy and consumer brands.

The CCPA’s May directive set off the biggest interface spring-cleaning India’s internet has seen.

• Companies were told to audit their platforms and publish declarations within three months.

• The Centre also pushed for a Joint Working Group to guide enforcement and build consumer awareness.

The CCPA has welcomed the filings — and reminded firms that dark patterns remain illegal under the Consumer Protection Act.

Round one’s done, and the regulator wants the rest of the apps at the compliance counter.

• The CCPA has urged all remaining platforms and developers to complete audits and file disclosures.

• It’s also keeping watch for violations and hasn’t ruled out action where needed.

With the first disclosures now public, the dark-pattern crackdown shifts from policy to enforcement.

Dig deeper

What started with a crippling RBI setback in January 2024 has turned into a rebound story for fintech giant Paytm, thanks largely to unwavering merchant loyalty.

In October, Paytm reported 1.52 billion UPI transactions, marginally higher than 1.45 billion transactions the platform reported in October 2023. 

• It took almost two years for Paytm to claw back to the current position after the RBI ban on its associate company, Paytm Payments Bank.

While Paytm did see a drop in customers during the crisis, its merchant transactions never fell, supported by the soundbox devices.

Despite the restrictions, merchant subscriptions continued to grow and reached almost 1.4 crore by the end of the September quarter of FY26, up from 1 crore in January 2024.

• Merchants pay about Rs 100 per device each month, which translates into roughly Rs 1,500 crore in annual revenue.

The rise in merchant subscriptions, along with cost reductions, has helped the company post a net profit for two consecutive quarters.

Paytm’s monthly UPI transaction value is still below the levels seen in late 2023 and early 2024

• In October 2023, it processed Rs 1.678 lakh crore. Two years later, the figure stood at Rs 1.671 lakh crore.

Paytm’s monthly transacting users were also lower at 7.5 crore in the September quarter of FY26, down from 10 crore in the December quarter of FY24.

Dig deeper

Also read: UPI failures drop sharply this festive season; SBI’s glitch rate falls to one-third of last year

• Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, widely regarded as one of the godfathers of AI, is leaving the company after a 12-year stint. He plans to launch a new startup focused on advancing his research on Advanced Machine Intelligence, and Meta will be a partner in the new firm.

• Google DeepMind has hired former Boston Dynamics CTO Aaron Saunders as VP of hardware engineering as CEO Demis Hassabis outlines his vision of Gemini becoming an operating system for physical robots.

AI's influence in our lives is growing rapidly, reflected in the words of the year selected by major dictionaries.

• Cambridge Dictionary has picked Parasocial as its 2025 word of the year, a nod to the one-sided connections people form with influencers, celebrities, and increasingly AI chatbots.

• Collins English Dictionary's word of the year is vibe coding, which has gained mainstream adoption over the past year. 

Dictionary.com however stands out as an exception, selecting the Gen Alpha slang term "67" (pronounced six-seven not sixty-seven) as its word of the year, which doesn't have a fixed definition but roughly means “so-so”.

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