One quick thing: Former TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan earned Rs 29.16 crore in FY23, which is significantly lower than the salaries of his peers at Infosys and Wipro.

In today’s newsletter:

• Shailendra Singh on Peak XV minus Sequoia
• Why WhatsApp failed to seize the UPI crown 
• Ola Electric taps Stan Chart veteran ahead of IPO

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Sequoia, once the titan of startup investment in India, may have lost its reigning status. 

However, Shailendra Singh, the managing director of Peak XV Partners - the rebranded Sequoia Capital India - is brimming with confidence. He firmly believes the revamped firm will swiftly reclaim the title.

Peak XV Partners will continue to actively invest in India, Singh told us in an interview, a day after Sequoia hived off its India arm and rebranded it.

“We will double down on India and Southeast Asia and other core markets because we have lots of freedom to make unique and specific choices for our market,” he said.

Singh also explained how the investment firm, under its new avatar, would conduct business in the country.

• Peak XV Partners will have much more freedom to help cross-border founders

• Artificial intelligence will be a key area of focus for the firm

The rebranded venture capital firm's limited partner (LP) agreements will not change, according to Singh. The firm also does not need to raise new capital as it has a significant amount of dry powder.

• The company has no plans for cost-cutting measures and intends to maintain its existing cost structures

Additionally, Peak XV Partners will double down on Surge, its early-stage accelerator programme. Singh said the company will also become more active in seed-stage investments as a result.

Read the full interview

Meta's obsession with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), and its desire to take on TikTok globally through Instagram Reels, meant that Meta India's ambition to invest in WhatsApp Pay was not fully supported.

With over 500 million daily active users, no payment app could have rivalled the virality. No need to download a new app either.

It was a sitting duck, and WhatsApp's game to lose, and lose it they did, big time!

• Meta's global team seemed overly confident that all those users would jump on the payment bandwagon, just as they did in China with WeChat.

From treasury issues to design issues to awareness and marketing, the global team hardly saw the ground reality in India, where customers require cashback incentives to shift from their existing habit of using PhonePe or Google Pay.

Metaverse is definitely out of the question, but WhatsApp still has the potential to capture a sizeable market.

The platform has around 25 million businesses that interact with customers through chat, and several companies like JioMart allow users to order through WhatsApp. A seamless payment integration would work wonders for India's most loved instant messaging platform.

Three years ago, everyone in the payment industry was worried about WhatsApp taking over UPI, and there were even public interest litigations (PILs) filed in courts to stop it. However, WhatsApp lost the plot.

Find out more

Ola Electric now has a new head of corporate finance and treasury: Topsy Mathew. 

• Mathew served as the managing director of Standard Chartered India Bank before quitting two years ago. He joins Ola at an interesting time.

The appointment of Mathew comes at a time when India’s largest EV maker is planning to go public in early 2024. 

• The company has already engaged investment banks Kotak Mahindra Capital and Goldman Sachs for the IPO
  
  
• Sources say that Mathew, with his experience as a banker, will play an important role in Ola’s path to IPO

Ola has been focusing on growing its electric vehicle (EV) business lately. 

• In September 2022, the company shut down three businesses: used cars, cloud kitchen, and grocery delivery

• Ola Electric also restructured internally in September 2022. The company hired a number of new people in order to centralise and unify operations across its different verticals

Go deeper

On June 7, 1979, India launched its first experimental remote sensing satellite, Bhaskara-I, from Russia's Volgograd Launch Station using the Intercosmos launch vehicle, C-1 Intercosmos. The satellite was developed by ISRO and had a primary mission to collect data on hydrology, oceanography, forestry, and telemetry. 

Its nominal mission life was one year, but the satellite remained in orbit for approximately ten years before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere in 1989.

• Coinbase is ready to take its legal battle with the US Securities Exchange Commission to the Supreme Court, as the government agency widens its crackdown on tokens that it considers listed securities.

• FTX is reportedly considering selling its stake in Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor. Perella Weinberg, the bank in charge of the potential sale, has been discussing the idea with investors.

Do you ever find yourself wondering what happened to that one person from that one thing? 

Well, wonder no more! What Happened To...? is here to answer all of your burning pop culture questions.

From the Ice Bucket Challenge to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, "What Happened To...?" covers it all. 

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