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In today’s newsletter: 

• Salt to Semicon: Tata chip coming soon
• India's antitrust bill puts Big Tech on notice
• Perfios is now a unicorn

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The Tata Group, which was the first Indian company to produce steel, generate hydel power, and operate an airline, is now preparing to become the first to manufacture advanced chips in the country.

PM Narendra Modi today laid the foundation stones of three semiconductor plants that will attract investments worth Rs 1.26 lakh crore.

“The 21st century is a tech driven century and you can't imagine it without chips. Made in India chips will help push India towards Atmanirbharta (self-reliance) and Adhunikta (modernity),” PM Modi said.

Two of these projects will be undertaken by the salt-to-steel conglomerate – a fabrication plant (fab) in Gujarat's Dholera and a chip packaging plant in Assam's Morigaon.

• The Dholera fab will have a capacity to produce 50,000 semiconductor wafers per month

• The chip packaging plant in Assam will produce 48 million chips daily and supply them to companies like Tesla and IBM

The third chip project, flagged off today, is a packaging facility set up by CG Power for an investment of Rs 7,600 crore.

India might soon be looking at a cumulative production capacity of 1.8 lakh silicon wafers per month, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.

• This is assuming that two chip fabrication proposals by Israel's Tower Semiconductor and India's Semiconductor Lab get approved by the government

• Silicon wafer fabrication is one of the most technologically challenging parts of the chip supply chain and each wafer typically produces 300-400 chips

Go deeper

After a year of debate and the ousting of Big Tech members from a key trade body, the Indian government has released its draft Digital Competition bill! 

• This legislation aims to level the playing field for smaller players by imposing new obligations on major tech companies

Tech giants are prohibited from using non-public data of business users to gain an unfair competitive advantage against their counterparts.

• Companies can no longer "intermix" personal user data without explicit consent

• Users will have the freedom to use third-party applications on these platforms

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) will monitor adherence to the bill. Penalties for non-compliance include:

• Hefty fines of up to 10% of a company's global turnover

• Imprisonment of up to 3 years

This draft bill follows a 235-page report submitted by the Committee for Digital Competition Law. The committee specifically sought industry feedback on the need for such legislation.

• Only X (formerly Twitter) among the foreign tech giants endorsed such a regulation

• Meta requested further market research, while Amazon claimed existing regulations were sufficient 

Indian companies like Swiggy, Flipkart, Oyo, and Zomato also opposed it, with MakeMyTrip and Paytm offering conditional support.

After a dismal 2023 for Indian startups, the year 2024 is off to a promising start with Perfios, a B2B fintech SaaS company, joining the coveted unicorn club with a valuation of over $1 billion. 

• This follows Krutrim SI Designs achieving the unicorn status earlier this year

Perfios, a business-to-business (B2B) software provider for financial institutions, has raised $80 million in its latest funding round. 

• The round was led by Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG), the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of the esteemed Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

Back in September 2023, Perfios reached a valuation of nearly $800 million when it secured $229 million in its Series D funding round.

In 2023, the financial landscape experienced a funding winter, but there has been a notable improvement recently. 

• We previously reported that funding surged to $636 million in 63 deals in February, a 19% increase from the year-ago period, which saw $535 million in 50 deals.

• While funding is on the rise, investors are showing increased interest in sectors such as SaaS and fintech, and Perfios appears to be aligning perfectly with investor preferences

What's particularly advantageous for Perfios is its successful global market expansion. The company has established a presence in South-East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, with plans to further invest in expanding to other regions.

Find out more

Bengaluru has lately been scrambling for water, and the crisis seems to be worsening by the day.

• However, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board chairman Dr. V Ram Prasath Manohar assures citizens, saying "all is well"

In an interview with us, he stated that the tech capital requires 2,100 million litres per day (MLD), of which 1,450 MLD is sourced from the Cauvery river, and the remaining 650 MLD comes from groundwater.

• Dr. Manohar also raises an eyebrow at suspected vested interests aiming to cast shadows over Bengaluru's reputation and thwart foreign investments

Read the full interview

• Midjourney banned Stability AI staffers from using its service, accusing them of causing a system outage while scraping data.
  
  
• The European Union is enacting the most comprehensive guardrails on the fast-developing world of artificial intelligence after the bloc’s parliament passed the AI Act.

Do you ever get sucked into a rabbit hole of online weirdness and wonder, "Wait, what?"  

• Well, buckle up, because Chips with Everything is going to be your digital compass.

Hosted by Jordan Erica Webber, this podcast tackles the head-scratching questions of our hyper-connected world. 

The podcast serves up insightful interviews with experts, leaving you informed, entertained, and maybe a little freaked out about the future.

Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

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