One important thing: Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today acknowledged that users of the MCA21 portal have faced challenges in filing due to technical issues since 46 forms were moved to a new version of the website on January 23. 

• She has directed officials to form a special team to address public grievances on priority 

• The minister has also directed the MCA to monitor the issue on a daily basis

In today’s newsletter:

• PhonePe funding spree continues 
• Why Indian startups may be overvalued
• Indian govt has a ChatGPT tool for school homework

Bonus: It's Valentine's Day and there is a surprise in store for Hindi romantic movie enthusiasts. The reclusive filmmaker behind the longest-running movie in the history of Indian cinema has given his first video interview in 28 years. Scroll below for more deets!

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PhonePe may have domiciled itself in India, but it has avoided the troubles that Indian fintechs face.

While many fintech startups are battling a funding winter, valuation markdowns, regulatory hurdles, and weaker demand, PhonePe appears to be operating in a different world altogether. (At least by the looks of it.)

PhonePe has raised another $100 million from Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital and TVS Capital, as a part of its ongoing larger funding round at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion.

• In January, it raised $350 million from General Atlantic and kicked off its $1 billion funding round 

With money in the kitty, PhonePe has announced big expansion plans, including the launch of new products such as stock broking, ONDC (open network for digital commerce)-based shopping, and account aggregators.

• Most importantly, the fintech has announced forays into lending, which it has avoided for years

Interestingly, PhonePe's lending foray comes at a time when the banking regulator and the government have recently cracked down on digital lending apps.

Go deeper.

The Indian startup ecosystem has become highly attractive for investors since the outbreak of Covid. Since March 2020, billions of dollars have been invested in the country's startups.

This made India the third-largest startup and unicorn ecosystem in the world, but it appears to have had an unintended consequence: inflated valuations.

The majority of India's unicorns have higher revenue multiples than their global peers. The average trailing revenue multiple of 51 of the country's 107 unicorns is around 30, which is higher than in most geographies, including emerging and developed markets.

• Growth-stage startups typically tend to have a backward revenue multiple of 15-20
  
  
• While revenue multiple is not the only metric investors look at, it is one of the most important metrics for gauging valuations

The data collated by us excludes listed unicorns like Zomato, Paytm and others. With growth expected to slow in the coming quarters, companies may find it difficult to raise funds, particularly at higher or even existing valuations.

"In India, founder egos are more inflated than valuations," said a partner at one of India’s most prolific investors, requesting anonymity.

According to him and many other investors we spoke with, founders will need to battle their egos and accept flat or down rounds in order for their company to survive this funding winter.

• Investors say startups need revenue growth or profitability to raise a new round at a higher valuation

Do read our story on what investors think about valuations and growth. Also, stay tuned for another data story tomorrow :)

While the ChatGPT phenomenon has raised concerns about misuse by students to complete their assignments, the Indian government has turned that fear on its head.

India is using ChatGPT to build two important projects: democratising school education in vernacular languages and increasing public awareness of government schemes.

• The first could soon be used by school students to get answers to curriculum-related questions in any Indian language

• It is built on the bedrock of ChatGPT, Bhashini (a government-backed translation project), digital textbook repository DIKSHA and WhatsApp APIs

In a video demonstration of the tool we accessed, a student posted a Hindi-language WhatsApp voice message containing a math question. The voice note was first converted to a text in Devanagari script, and then the response was displayed on the chat itself.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is using ChatGPT to develop an additional tool that will transform WhatsApp into a search engine for government schemes.

• Similarly to the educational tool, a person can ask about any government scheme on a WhatsApp chat and ChatGPT will generate information about it

• The next phase of this project will include feature phones that do not have WhatsApp access, so that people can call a toll-free number and ask a question

Social networking giant Meta is looking to integrate broader generative AI technologies, which can generate text, images, sounds, and other media formats in response to short user prompts, into its products such as Facebook and Instagram.

"What you're going to see from us in terms of generative AI, is thinking through how we give people creative superpowers," Tom Alison, the head of the Facebook app at Meta, said today.

Read the story

On this day 18 years ago, former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim launched YouTube, the world's most popular video-sharing platform.

YouTube, which has its headquarters in San Bruno, California, United States, was acquired by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Watch the first-ever YouTube video, titled "Me at the zoo".

• Magic Eden, the leading marketplace for Solana NFTs, laid off 22 employees, citing company-wide restructuring.
  
  
• Paxos Trust Company "categorically disagrees" with the United States securities regulator's classification of Binance USD as a security.

Aditya Chopra, the director of India's longest-running romantic drama Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, is so media shy that it has created a myth that he doesn't exist. He rarely steps out for film parties and has never given a video interview. In fact, his last interview was with a print magazine in 1995.

28 years later, the Yash Raj Films scion is shedding his invisibility cloak for his first-ever video interview.

The occasion is a documentary series titled 'The Romantics' that celebrates the legacy of his father Yash Chopra, often regarded as the 'King of Romance', and the over 50-year journey of Yash Raj Films that has given us iconic romantic films such as Silsila, Kabhi Kabhie, Dil To Pagal Hai, Lamhe and Veer-Zaara.

• The four-part docu-series, directed by Smriti Mundhra, features interviews with over 35 leading personalities, including Karan Johar, Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Kapoor, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, and Rani Mukherji.

Watch the documentary on Netflix

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