One quick thing: Paytm Payments Bank's managing director and CEO Surinder Chawla is stepping down.

• Paytm's UPI market share also drops to 9%, lowest in four years.

In today's newsletter:

• Ola bids adios to international markets
• Swiggy's pre-IPO valuation boost from Invesco
• Qualcomm, Mediatek launch fresh chip war

Google Cloud shows off new products: A new AI-fueled video creation tool ... Challenger to GitHub's Copilot ... a new Arm-based data centre processor and many more AI updates.

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If you are in or travelling to Australia, the UK or New Zealand, you might have one less cab option to pick as Ola Cabs has pulled the plug on its international business today.

Ride-hailing giant Ola is shutting its international operations, nearly seven years after trying to expand its footprint. As a result, the firm will also be letting go staff in these three markets.

• While Ola claims this decision is to focus entirely on the India business, sources in the industry say that the move comes due to stiff competition from rivals such as Uber.

• The move also comes amid rising pressure on fleet operators and ride-hailing firms across the world to fast-track the transition to electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Ola's main electric vehicle rival Ather Energy is re-evaluating plans to increase its capacity this year. 

• Ather Energy co-founder Tarun Mehta told us in an interview that the firm had put on hold its plan to increase capacity in 2023, due to a slowdown coupled with subsidy reduction that hit the EV industry. However, they are now seeing a revival since last quarter.

• The Bengaluru-based startup is gearing up to compete with the largest EV makers like Ola Electric and TVS with the launch of its first family scooter Rizta. Ather Energy expects its market opportunity with Rizta to be more than four times larger than with other models.

Read the interview

In the run up to its planned IPO later this year, Swiggy has received a much-needed shot in the arm from one of its investors. 

Invesco, the investor that led Swiggy’s $700 million funding round in January 2022, has marked up the company’s valuation for the third consecutive time. 

• Swiggy’s fair market value is now pegged at $12.7 billion, regulatory filings as of January 31, 2024 showed.

In a year's time – Invesco has lifted Swiggy’s valuation from a low of $5.5 billion to a high of $12.7 billion now 

• Another investor Baron also raised Swiggy’s valuation to $12.2 billion last month.

While these fluctuations may not materially impact startups, they give a direction of the company’s business. That is especially crucial for Swiggy since it has to hit the Street later this year.

Swiggy's IPO will mean that investors will directly compare its performance with publicly-listed rival Zomato. And so far, the latter seems to have an edge, even hitting a milestone of $20 billion market cap recently. 

Over the past 12 months or so, Swiggy has been focusing its time on being IPO ready.

• It has appointed investment bankers, converted to a public limited company, and appointed board members among other measures.

• Sriharsh Majety, the company’s group CEO, even told us that he was spending more time with founders who have taken their company public and learning from them

Dig deeper

With cars becoming 'computers on wheels', chipmakers are looking at the auto space as the next big opportunity.

Chipset rivals Qualcomm and MediaTek are extending their rivalry beyond smartphones into India's automotive sector.

• Both of them are gearing up with fresh investments to attract customers in the four- and two-wheeler segments with their latest offerings.

Qualcomm has worked with Indian automotive companies such as Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, while its Taiwanese rival MediaTek is set to sign up its first customer.

"This is a big upcoming market in the next two years, and we feel that automotive is going through a change. We are already talking to customers in India, including EV players," said Anku Jain, managing director of MediaTek India.

Qualcomm and MediaTek are pivoting towards solutions for connected and autonomous vehicles, while they compete with NXP in the digital cockpit and autonomous driving segments.

Embedded connectivity is expected to be integrated into over 80 percent of passenger cars, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research.

More than 70 percent of these vehicles are projected to incorporate autonomy features by 2030, it said.

Go deeper

India's share of web3 developers grew to 12% globally in 2023, a significant jump from only 3% in 2018.

In the same year, web3 funding dropped by over 80% year-on-year to $250 million in 2023 as compared to $1.4 billion in 2022, according to a report by early stage web3-focussed venture capital firm Hashed Emergent. 

• As market conditions have started improving and companies are ready to capitalise on the next bull run, Hashed Emergent is already witnessing signs of recovery, CEO Tak Lee tells us.

Full story

• Elon Musk predicts AI will be smarter than the smartest human within two years.

• Meta plans to launch two small versions of its upcoming Llama 3 large-language model next week

Red Pill or Blue Pill, anyone?

The iconic Matrix movie franchise is growing with a new one in the works. 

It's still early days for specifics on what the movie will be about or whether any of the original cast members are coming back or not.

However, Drew Goddard, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Martian, will write and direct the yet-untitled movie.