Breaking: iPhone supplier Foxconn plans to make a ‘mega investment’ in Telangana, which would create 1 lakh jobs, says state industries and information technology minister KT Rama Rao.

One important thing: The parliamentary standing committee on IT and communications has examined and approved the draft digital personal data protection (DPDP) bill, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said today.

• The government published the much-awaited draft digital personal data protection bill in November 2022.

•  The revised bill focuses only on personal data, thereby doing away with regulating the use of non-personal data.

In today’s newsletter:

• Narayana Murthy blames investors for startup woes
• Swiggy sells cloud kitchen business
• Maharashtra wants its startups back

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 on March 7 in Mumbai. RSVP here.

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As corporate governance strategies plague several well-funded startups, Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy said that he doesn’t hold young entrepreneurs responsible, but rather venture capital (VC) firms.

• The theory that only the topline matters and not bottomline, propounded by venture capitalists, is “completely wrong,” Murthy said

It’s the older people who have to tell them to accept deferred gratification, he said while criticising "mature" VCs, the Board of Directors as well as advisors

Will ChatGPT steal the jobs of coders? Murthy responded emphatically in the negative, saying that the technology should be welcomed.

He referred to program generators that came up in 1977-78, which gave rise to similar worries. 

“..the human mind is the most flexible instrument. It can adapt very well. And all that happened was people start solving bigger and bigger problems which these program generators could not handle,” Murthy said.

Onboarding delays are currently dominating the conversation in the IT Services industry.

Weighing on this topic, Murthy said during the dotcom bust, the Infosys Board and its executive leadership decided to take pay cuts in order to honour the job offers made to new graduates.

Swiggy has swallowed one more bitter pill in its effort to reach profitability sooner rather than later.

• Amid a tough funding environment, the food delivery platform has sold off its cloud kitchens business in a share swap deal with Kitchens@

• This comes two months after the company laid off 380 employees and shut down its meat marketplace

Meanwhile, Kitchens@ said that it will have combined annual sales of $65 million (Rs 520 crore) after the transaction.

• The company aims to reach $100 million in revenue within the next 6 months and has already secured letters of intent with over 40 brands to partner via a franchise model.

Swiggy Access, the foodtech unicorn's cloud kitchens business, was started in November 2017 to aid restaurant brands with real estate to set up delivery-only kitchens.

• By late 2019, the food delivery major had spent Rs 175 crore and scaled up the segment to over 1,000 cloud kitchens across 14 cities.

• It had also announced plans to spend another Rs 75 crore and expand the cloud kitchen business to 12 more cities by March 2020.

But Swiggy’s plans to scale up the cloud kitchen business fell by the wayside with the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

For most, Karnataka would be the startup hub of India, hailing innovation at the forefront. But the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis begs to differ. 

Maharashtra lost a lot of startups to Bengaluru and Hyderabad due to its unaffordable infrastructure, according to Fadnavis. 

However, he believes that Maharashtra is the real startup capital.

“Maharashtra is the real startup capital because out of the 80,000 (DPIIT-registered startups), 15,000, and around 25 unicorns are in Maharashtra. We were the first to have our own fintech policy which was actually very forward-looking,” Fadnavis said.

Fadnavis emphasised that the state government is now working to improve infrastructure in order to welcome startups back.

The Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, he said, will be operational by the end of this year or early next year

“The time of travel will be reduced to less than one hour from one corner of Mumbai to another. I believe the rentals will also come down,”  he added.

Go deeper

It has been exactly 51 years since NASA launched Pioneer 10, one of the most iconic interplanetary probes in history.

It was the first Earth-based probe to travel through the asteroid belt, explore Jupiter, and pick up enough speed to permanently leave the Solar System. (Picture credit: Wikipedia)

• The custodial arm of Binance will apply for a license to offer cryptocurrency services in Singapore. Binance Asia Services, a Singapore affiliate of Binance, withdrew its local license application in December 2021 without giving a reason beyond "strategic, commercial and developmental" considerations.
  
  
• Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain, has launched Polygon ID, a web3 identification service that will enable blockchain-based applications to authenticate user credentials without compromising personal information.

Have you ever wondered how much real estate you could buy with $1 million? 

In Mumbai, India's financial capital, a million dollars will get you 113 square metres of real estate, making it the 18th most expensive residential market in the world, according to a report. In Delhi, the same amount will buy you 226 sq m, while in Bengaluru, it will get you 385 sq m.

Meanwhile, the city-state of Monaco remains the world's most expensive city in 2022, where $1 million would only get you 17 sq m of real estate.

Check out the full report

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