Did you watch yesterday's Women's Premier League (WPL) match between UP Warriorz and Gujarat Giants? It came down to the wire, with the UP Warriorz winning in a last-over thriller.

One interesting thing: India is witnessing a surge in the popularity of women's cricket. In fact, during ICC Women's T20 World Cup, which took place from February 10 to February 28, 2023, Instagram Reels related to the tournament were viewed over a billion times, parent firm Meta stated today.

• Smriti Mandhana was one of the most talked about players, followed by Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur, the company said. (P.S. Both players will be in action today in the WPL match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians.)

Read the story for more trends from the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.

In today’s newsletter:

• IT services sector job openings drop 33% in Feb
• Build on India's digital public infra, Pramod Varma to startups
• Small towns attract startup investments

You're invited to Moneycontrol's India Fintech Conclave. We have a star-studded lineup featuring a Union Minister, RBI official, policymakers, bankers and top founders who are reshaping the fintech landscape in India. 

• It's happening tomorrow in Mumbai. RSVP here.

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Job openings in the IT Services industry have remained significantly lower than they were during the boom periods of 2021 and 2022, with openings down 33% in February 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to Xpheno’s active jobs report.

Why does this matter?

• Net headcount addition in IT Services companies has slowed significantly in each quarter this fiscal year
  
  
• Amid a challenging macroeconomic climate, clients are focussed on cost optimisation and are curtailing their IT spends
  
  
• Headcount addition is seen as one indicator of demand

There were 75,000 available jobs in the sector as of February 2023, a 15% increase from the previous month.

In October 2022, the cohort of companies comprised of IT services, software products, and internet-enabled startups had the fewest job openings, with it inching up slowly since then. 

• This sector used to be the dominant player in terms of active job openings, which it no longer is, and its share of total jobs has been declining

Xpheno has projected growth in headcount in the first quarter of FY2024 due to a spike in demand.

Anil Ethanur, co-founder of Xpheno, said that the nature of the sector is such that it can’t be away from hiring for long. 

• He attributed the uptick in February (as compared to January) to compensatory and preparatory hiring action by the IT sector.

Go deeper

Former chief architect of Aadhaar and India Stack Pramod Varma is looking forward to many more UPI-like moments in sectors such as healthcare, education, and business. For this, he is banking on India’s startup and entrepreneurial energy.

Varma called on entrepreneurs to build on the Indian digital public infrastructure (DPI).

“We are 1.4 billion people, so we are pretty diverse. Such diversity necessitates diversity of solutioning as well. The enormous amount of startup and entrepreneurial energy needs to build on top of the DPIs,” Varma said at the Nasscom Technology Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2023.

TPG-backed Fractal AI, which was valued at $1 billion last year, aims to become a $15 billion annual revenue company by serving the world's 500 biggest companies, according to co-founder and CEO Srikanth Velamakanni.

“Eventually, our goal is to serve 500 of the largest companies on the planet and work with them. If they spend about $30 million with us annually, we can become a $15 billion company. We are not chasing valuation, but I think we have a path to becoming a $15 billion revenue company,” he told us in an interaction on the sidelines of NTLF.

While there is a debate on which Indian state is the ‘real’ startup hub of the country, the very concept of ‘startup hubs’ and their effectiveness is now being questioned.

Funding for small-town startups increased by 41% in 2022, while funding for those in hubs such as Bengaluru, Mumbai, and the NCR fell by 48% during the same period, according to Blume Ventures’ Indus Valley Annual Report 2023.

• This suggests that investors are now starting to increase their investments in startups that are emerging from tier two and three cities

The funding winter has also led to investors making fewer late-stage bets.  

• Growth stage funding fell by 55% in value in 2022, accounting for roughly 90% of the drop in 2022

• Seed-stage deals have dropped 25% in comparison

While the number of seed funding rounds fell from 2,003 in 2022 to 1,150 in 2023, the average deal size in the segment increased by 30% year on year to $1.1 million.

Go deeper

On this day in 1992, the Michelangelo virus caused what was most likely the first public malware scare in history.

The virus had a unique characteristic - it was programmed to activate on March 6th every year, which coincided with the birthdate of the famous Renaissance artist Michelangelo. This connection prompted researchers to give the virus its name.

Quick fact: The scare turned out to be a dud. While the virus did affect several thousand computers around the world, it was nothing deadly.

• US Attorney Damian Williams wrote to the court that Sam Bankman-Fried should be allowed to do legal research online, follow news and sports, shop on Amazon, and order food while awaiting his federal court date. Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan denied a messaging app request last month.
  
  
• Crypto exchange Binance sought to hire Gary Gensler as an adviser before he became chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

In a groundbreaking development in the field of assistive technology, researchers at the University of California San Francisco have successfully created a device that allows a paralyzed man to communicate through his thoughts. 

This remarkable achievement was made possible through the use of a "speech neuroprosthesis," a cutting-edge technology that translates the user's brain signals into words, which are then displayed on a screen. 

Watch how it works

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