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In today’s newsletter:

• UPI sets sights on North America, Middle East
• Eruditus bucks edtech gloom, clocks $400 mn revenue in FY23
• Swiggy adds AI to cart

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India's homegrown payment stack, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), is smitten by wanderlust!

After successfully entering France and Singapore in the last six months, it is all set to travel to North America and some countries within the Middle East.

“We will focus on countries which are of importance to Indians when they travel abroad or where we have significantly large Indian diaspora residing,” Ritesh Shukla, CEO of NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), told us.

UPI going global means two things:

• Countries are taking inspiration from UPI and building something similar
  
  
• UPI is becoming interoperable in other countries, making payments easier for Indians travelling abroad 

India's UPI system is becoming increasingly attractive to other countries. Singapore, France, UAE and the list continues...

Also Read: Who stands to benefit from India's UPI and Singapore's PayNow linkage

"UPI going global means that we are adding another dimension...Singapore launch received a lot of excitement and we are approaching and getting approached by newer markets to develop something similar,” said NIPL's Shukla. 

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw previously said that India has signed MoUs with 13 countries that want to adopt UPI for digital payments. 

• Nepal was the first foreign country to deploy UPI as a payment platform

Go deeper

Over the past year, the buzz in the edtech realm has centred around the post-Covid slump. As lockdowns eased and traditional educational institutions reopened their doors, the once-mighty surge of online learning took a hit.

• However, amidst this downturn, Eruditus, a platform for higher education and upskilling, seems to have defied expectations

The company managed to grow by over 60%, at a time when many edtech firms globally have forecast flat to marginal growth.

Eruditus, backed by global investors like SoftBank and Sequoia, saw its revenue soar 63% in FY23 to $400 million, its co-founder and CEO Ashwin Damera told us.

• As a result, the company's loss (excluding exceptional items such as ESOP costs) narrowed to $40 million from more than $60 million a year ago

Eruditus also managed to generate an operating profit, albeit a small one of $3 million, in the April-June quarter, for the first time since it raised external capital, Damera said.

Damera believes that the recent disruption caused by generative AI models like ChatGPT will not impact the higher education segment as much as it will hit the tutoring segments. 

• In fact, he said that the recent generative AI frenzy has led to a strong rise in demand for Eruditus' AI courses

(Picture credit: Dall-E)

Next time you’re scrolling for food options on Swiggy, there’s a high chance that the images and the mouth-watering descriptions you see may not have been clicked or written by a human.

Swiggy has assembled a team of five people who will work solely on AI-related tasks at the company. 

One of their aims: lower operational costs.

“AI is not a not an area of curiosity anymore, it is an area of active workstream. AI is also a space where we don't know what we don't know…Until and unless we are boundaryless in our thinking on this one right now we'll be making a mistake…cost is only one side of it,” Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Swiggy's Food Marketplace, told us.

Customer refunds and restaurant discovery are two more areas where Swiggy has been using AI.

• The company’s total refunds amount to an “insignificant” number on its P&L 
  
  
• Earlier this month, Swiggy launched WhatToEat, a feature that shows food options based on mood and cravings 

Take a larger bite

The biggest takeaway from the first week of the IT earnings season was the focus on generative AI.

All three tier-I Indian IT firms, including Tata Consultancy Services, HCLTech, and Wipro, shared updates on their proof of concepts, deal pipelines, investment plans, and associate training targets for generative AI.

• Indian IT firms, however, are still some time away from generating actual revenue from generative AI, according to analysts

The current investments are being made out of fear of missing out (FOMO), as firms want to be ahead of the curve in case the technology goes mainstream soon, analysts said. Find out more

On July 17, 1850, the first photograph of a star other than the Sun was taken at the Harvard Observatory. The star was Vega, the second brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere and located in the Lyra constellation. (Picture credit: Wikimedia)

• Hollywood actors are joining screenwriters in what is turning out to be one the biggest strikes in the entertainment industry in more than six decades. One of the main reasons actors are fighting is to prevent studios from using their digital likenesses without their permission, a move they believe could threaten their livelihoods and their reputations as artists. 

• Can AI be an inventor? A group of legal experts are pressing patent agencies, courts and policymakers to address this question.

A new name. A new reign!

Wimbledon, tennis' most prestigious competition, has not been won by the sport's Big Four players -  Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray - in 21 years. 

• Carlos Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spaniard defied all odds to defeat Djokovic 1-6, 7-6 (6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 in a momentous Wimbledon men's singles final yesterday. 

Alcaraz also earned the distinction of being Wimbledon's third-youngest men's champion, following in the footsteps of tennis legends Boris Becker and Bjorn Borg. 

Relive the moment

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