One quick thing: Why Accenture’s earnings is good news for India

In today’s newsletter:

• Global CEOs Exclusive: Snowflake + Pure Storage
• Paytm, Navi's trial by fire and comeback
• Delhi unicorns outpace Bengaluru, Mumbai in hiring

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? You can sign up for Tech3 here

We spoke to CEOs of two global tech firms- Sridhar Ramaswamy of Snowflake and Charles Giancarlo of Pure Storage.

In a free-wheeling interview with us, NYSE-listed Snowflake’s CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy reflected on his first year at the helm after an innings as the founder of search engine Neeva.

• He admits that while it was a trial by fire for the firm and him, both have emerged stronger since then.

The last time we spoke to Ramaswamy in 2021, he was a passionate founder building an ad-free, subscription search engine Neeva.

• He is also an alum of IIT Madras and Brown University, was part of the early engineering team that built Google Search.

He later led Google's advertising products, which accounts for a lion's share of its revenue.

But he said he doesn’t miss being a founder and is at home in Snowflake, where he gets to set strategy, build teams, and launch products. 

• He also stressed the importance of building things with urgency. “I drive myself and my team relentlessly," he said.

Snowflake is betting big on Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India with plans to expand its staff at its Pune facility which will work closely with captives.

• Ramaswamy said India is driving decision-making for global firms and is no longer just back offices.

“Sometimes it’s like abbreviations don’t convey the spirit of what is going on. This is no longer back-office work. This is no longer coding work.”

Moving from one global CEO to another, we spoke to data storage and platforms company Pure Storage’s chairman and CEO Charles Giancarlos. 

• He discussed the company’s India expansion strategy, the US government’s IT spending, and AI’s impact on the data centre, and storage industry.

Giancarlos added that he expects “some deflation of the AI bubble,” as existing LLM models of OpenAI and Google have reached competency saturation.

Dig deeper

Two of India’s most storied founders- Sachin Bansal and Vijay Shekhar Sharma faced an existential threat this year.

While Paytm and Navi Finserv were at the receiving end of the Reserve Bank of India’s circular, the regulator provided both companies with a chance to correct them.

The central bank reversed Navi’s ban in less than 45 days. Also, Paytm was allowed to migrate its users to new UPI addresses with new banking partners as its associate company was banned from carrying out banking operations.

• The regulator also instituted a regular interaction platform with fintech founders

Moreover, the fintechs also seem to understand the regulator’s perspective better.

The digital payments platform Unified Payments Interface (UPI) set up and regulated by RBI has been offering a plethora of opportunities to monetise. This has encouraged more than 20 new companies to apply to be UPI apps.

• UPI is the most preferred method for consumers to make all types of payments from bills to insurance and SIPs.

• Credit card and credit line products on top of UPI also offer potential revenue channels.

Mobikwik made big gains during the first two days of trading in December after the company chose to price its IPO at one-third of its last round of private funding valuation.

• MSME lending firm Aye Finance filed DRHP ahead of its listing next year.

• 2025 could likely see multiple IPOs from firms such as PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay, and InCred among others.

• PhonePe and Groww could also take the first steps towards listing next year.

Dig deeper

Delhi NCR’s unicorns are giving Bengaluru and Mumbai a run for their money- at least in terms of hiring!

Unicorns based in the National Capital Region, including PolicyBazaar, Blinkit, and Zomato, have hired over 18,000 employees in the past 12 months, significantly higher than Bengaluru.

• Despite adding more staffers, Delhi NCR may, however, have fewer people working at startups than Bengaluru in total.
• Chennai, on the other hand, reported the second-highest employee additions in unicorns.

In contrast, Mumbai, which is also a startup hub, saw hiring among unicorns decline by 7,024 employees, almost similar to Pune and Hyderabad.

While unicorn startups have grown in size and generated more revenues, their employee base has largely remained stable, also a factor of mass layoffs in the previous year. 

• On average, the attrition rate at startups was 4.5 percent, much lower than that of Indian corporates’ 15-17 percent in 2023.
• Companies such as Zerodha and Zoho maintain attrition rates of around a percent or lower.

There was however some volatility during the 12 months, as more employees left unicorns than joining them between Aug 2023 and Aug 2024.

• The total workforce of India’s unicorns saw a net decrease of around 6,700.
• India’s 116 unicorns employed 410,829 people in August 2024, down from 417,561 in the year-ago period.

Dig deeper

It is a Go Goa Gone moment for Indian travelers, who are choosing international destinations for their year-end holiday plans.

• The cost of a week-long trip to Goa versus Bali is almost at par.

Affordability and easy visas are making overseas destinations a hot pick for tourists.

• Tourism boards of many countries, including Malaysia, are also offering lucrative packages to Indian travelers.

Read to know more.

• The race for AI is heating up in India. Why? Telangana wants to make Hyderabad India’s AI capital with plans to create a massive 200-acre AI city.
  
  
• Can a bloody war train AI models, you ask? Ukraine is doing just that with approximately 2 million hours of drone footage for training AI models.

And finally, Christmas isn’t complete without Home Alone, now on Amazon Prime Video. Ring in the holiday season with cozy movies and a warm mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows!

 Here are some timeless classics we love: 

• Love Actually, starring Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson 

• Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz-starrer The Holiday on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix 

• Lindsay Lohan's Falling for Christmas on Netflix.

• And finally, Christmas is incomplete without watching the Home Alone series which you can catch on Amazon Prime Video.