One quick thing: Urban Company and boAt parent firm gets SEBI nod for IPO.

In today’s newsletter: 

• Less paperwork, more wafer work, says PM Modi
• Pizza Bakery, Paris Panini up for sale
• Green shoots @TCS: Mega deal, wage hikes

Also, Tesla recently made its much-anticipated India debut. Curious how it’s performing? Scroll below for more deets!

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Forget gold rushes and oil booms, the new treasure hunt is for chips

At Semicon India 2025 today, Prime Minister Modi said speed is the new currency in semiconductors, urging startups, academia, and states to cut red tape and stack up wafers.

• Modi highlighted that 10 semiconductor projects worth $18 billion are underway.

By putting wafer fabs above paperwork files, the PM hinted that execution will define India’s chip journey.

India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 1.0 funds are almost tapped out, with ISM 2.0 now being finalised, promising $30 billion in combined central and state support.

• Venture capital firms such as Premji Invest, Accel, Blume, and Celesta Capital are joining forces, with a total of eight U.S. and Indian VC and PE firms forming an alliance to bet about a billion dollars on the country’s deep tech startups.

It’s a second innings that India hopes will see less policy chatter and more silicon splatter.

The highlight was from India’s space agency ISRO, which unveiled its new VIKRAM3201 microprocessor at the event.

• Add to that, CG Semi’s OSAT pilot in Gujarat announced last week, and India is finally moving from PowerPoint slides to power-packed silicon.

The message is unmistakable: India’s chip story has moved off the whiteboard and onto the wafer.

Modi likened chips to the new oil, calling them “digital diamonds” in a world powered by bytes not barrels.

• With 350 exhibitors from 33 countries and nine Indian states on the floor, India is trying to turn its chip ambition into a global showcase.

If oil fuelled empires, India is betting that silicon will script its shot at tech sovereignty.

More coverage from Semicon 2025:

• Tata Consulting Engineers in talks with Odisha semiconductor plant promoters, scales up projects

• 'Challenges driven by economic selfishness': PM Modi's veiled dig at Trump tariffs at Semicon 2025

• ASML pitches for India business as PM Modi eyes local chip making

When one of your vendors sees your business up close…they tend to like it a little extra.

Kitchens@, a company that rents out cloud kitchens, has expressed interest in buying out Popo Ventures, people familiar with the matter told us.

• Popo Ventures runs Pizza Bakery (a pizzeria), Paris Panini (a gourmet sandwich eatery) and Smash Guys (a burger joint) in Bengaluru.
  
  
• Popo Ventures is being valued at Rs 750-800 crore, or about 4-4.5X of its annualised revenues of Rs 175 crore, during these discussions.

While the deal is surely an attractive one, thanks to the hefty multiples, it hinges on just one criterion: Kitchens@’s ability to raise the funds needed to finance a deal of this size.

• Kitchens@ has been in the market to raise Rs 2,000 crore for a year now but a fundraising deal is far from done.
  
  
• If Kitchens@ raises the amount, Popo Ventures will find a new home. Else, it continues to run business as usual.

The main reason Popo Ventures has signed a term sheet with Kitchens@ is because its revenue multiples are on the attractive side. 

• Popo Ventures has courted at least four other offers in the past years but all were offering a revenue multiple of 2X, half of what Kitchens@ is currently offering.

Whether the two sides go through and finalise a deal remains to be seen, but the offer remains on the table until around January 2026.

Dig deeper

TCS has struck its first mega deal for this fiscal year and also rolled out annual salary hikes, signaling fresh momentum at India's biggest IT company.

TCS has signed a seven-year agreement worth 550 million euros (around $640 million) with Scandinavian non-life insurance company Tryg. 

• The deal extends a 15-year partnership across three major markets - Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

TCS will streamline Tryg’s complex IT landscape, unify fragmented operating models across regions, and leverage automation and AI to boost efficiency across the IT operations value chain.

TCS reported a series of $500 million-plus deals in India and other regions in FY24. However, FY25 saw a lull as customers remained cautious about their tech budgets due to macroeconomic headwinds. 

TCS has been operating in Denmark and the Nordics for 30 years, with over 20,000 employees supporting leading enterprises across areas such as banking, financial services, insurance, retail & CPG, telecom, manufacturing, and tech services.

TCS has started rolling out annual salary increments, with most employees receiving hikes of 4.5 to 7 percent and top performers receiving over 10 percent, sources told us. 

• The salary hikes, which TCS typically rolls out in April, were delayed by more than a quarter due to macroeconomic uncertainties and a challenging business environment. 

The IT major is also letting go of 2 percent of its workforce, or roughly over 12,200 employees, over the next year, in a bid to become more agile and future-ready amid rapid disruptions in technology, we exclusively reported in July.

Read: Had to take 'difficult call' to build stronger TCS, says CEO K Krithivasan after cutting 12,000 jobs

• Major social media platforms in China have started rolling out labels for AI-generated content to comply with a new law that came into effect on September 1.

• The rise of AI-powered agents has prompted sellers and brands to rethink how they sell products online, particularly how their products are spotted by AI systems and recommended by chatbots.

From high-voltage launch to low-watt sales. That seems to be Tesla's story in India so far. 

Since its much-anticipated entry into India in mid-July, the electric vehicle maker has garnered only 600 orders so far, much lower than its own expectations.

For a company that aimed to electrify India, it seems the current isn’t flowing as expected.

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