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One quick thing: BGMI, one of India’s most popular mobile games, is coming back after a 10-month suspension. But there is a caveat. Read more

In today’s newsletter:

• Zomato aims to clock net profit by March 2024
• ONDC sales plunge after discounts disappear
• Another headache for Byju's

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Zomato is now in its post-adjusted EBITDA era: It is ditching the metric and is eyeing full profitability.

•  The food delivery major is now adjusted EBITDA profitable as of Q4FY23, excluding Blinkit's expenses
  
  
• The company now aims to achieve full profitability by March 2024, this time including expenses related to Blinkit as well

This appears to be a rebuttal to Zomato's competitor, as the timing is suspect - Swiggy announced it is adjusted EBITDA profitable in March 2023, excluding ESOP expenses. 

• Losses narrowed to Rs 188.2 crore in Q4FY23 from Rs 359.7 crore YoY
  
  
• Revenue from ops rose to Rs 2,056 crore, up 70% YoY 

More on the numbers here.

Between Nov 2022 and Jan 2023, Zomato lost four top executives. Now, it has made three new appointments: 

• Rakesh Ranjan as CEO of the food ordering and delivery business 
  
  
• Rinshul Chandra as COO of the food ordering and delivery business
  
  
• Rishi Arora as CEO of Hyperpure

Zomato has become the first food delivery giant to comment on ONDC, following reports suggesting that the government-backed open network could pose a threat to the duopoly of Swiggy and Zomato.

“At Zomato, we welcome all innovations that could help the restaurant industry in India grow. We continue to watch the ONDC progress closely and learn from it,” said Chief Financial Officer Akshant Goyal

Along with Zomato, logistics major Delhivery also reported its Q4-FY23 numbers. 

• Losses widened to Rs 159 crore in Q4FY23, up from Rs 119.8 crore YoY
  
  
• Revenue dropped for the second straight quarter amid a slowdown in e-commerce

All that glitters is not gold. 

After pumping discounts to double its orders week-on-week for a month, ONDC has received a reality check.

ONDC's daily retail orders dropped 50% to 12,000 last weekend, after the network drastically reduced large discounts on logistics for users. 

• During the first week of May, the retail segment witnessed a peak daily volume of 25,000 orders, while the mobility sector recorded 34,000 rides per day
  
  
• Currently, retail orders on ONDC primarily consist of food delivery, with a significant but much smaller number of grocery orders, and a low-single-digit percentage of home decor
  

The decline in orders was also partially due to challenges faced by certain grocery-focused seller-side apps, which were caught off guard by a sudden surge in volume for which they were not fully operationally ready.

• The surge in grocery orders last Sunday was due to a Rs 100 discount coupon offered by a large network participant

• Some grocery stores lacked the necessary inventory, and the seller-side apps were not equipped with automatic scaling on cloud servers

Read our deep dive on the discount war between ONDC and Swiggy-Zomato

The list of troubles seems to be never-ending for Byju’s. 

Now, the edtech’s US entity has been accused of hiding $500 million from lenders.

The allegation emerged during a court hearing in Delaware, where Byju's Alpha, the US subsidiary of the edtech firm, is facing a lawsuit regarding the control of the company.

• A top manager at Byju’s Alpha “admitted to transferring half a billion dollars out of the company,” according to the lenders’ lawyer
  
  
• Byju's Alpha responded to the lenders' allegations by saying that the company was trying to protect the money from predatory lenders and that it had the right to transfer the money under the loan agreement

Byju's raised a term loan B (TLB) of $1.2 billion in 2021 from a clutch of global investors, marking one of the largest fundraises through debt instruments for India's startup ecosystem.

Byju's has refuted allegations that it was hiding any money from lenders through Byju's Alpha. The company described Alpha as a non-operative entity in the US, without any employees. 

• It expressed astonishment at the claims made in a Delaware court.

Byju's further stated that it is fully compliant and has not violated any provisions outlined in the Credit Agreement or the agreed-upon rights and responsibilities between the parties involved.

This week, we witnessed a prominent figure in the field of artificial intelligence call for regulation, highlighting the need for increased oversight and guidelines.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this week testified before the US Congress and acknowledged the need for regulating the technology. 

“If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,” Altman said.

To address this concern, he proposed the formation of an agency that would licence the most powerful AI systems and have the authority to “take that licence away and ensure compliance with safety standards”.

Also read: OpenAI launches official ChatGPT app for iOS

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, an early backer of OpenAI, expressed his dissatisfaction with the AI startup. He expressed disappointment in the organisation's departure from the non-profit model and claimed that it owes its existence to him.

In related news, a study conducted by Microsoft revealed that GPT-4, a more advanced version of OpenAI's ChatGPT, can be trained to reason and apply common sense similar to humans. 

In other AI news, Facebook parent Meta unveiled a custom chip family as part of the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) programme. These chips aim to improve efficiency in recommendation models used for serving ads and other content in news feeds. 

Additionally, Meta outlined plans to revamp its data centres with modern AI-focused networking and cooling systems, with the construction of the first facility scheduled for this year. 

• The company claims that the new design would be 31% cheaper and could be built twice as quickly as its current data centres

More from the world of AI:

• Harness the power of AI to tackle financial crime
• Beijing calls on cloud providers to support AI firms
• AI's loneliness crisis

• Coinbase launched its zero-fee subscription service, Coinbase One, extending its reach beyond the US to include the UK, Germany, and Ireland.
  
  
• FTX's leadership looks to recover over $240 million from insiders and executives who profited from the wildly inflated acquisition of stock-clearing platform Embed.

Crime thrillers have gained immense popularity on streaming platforms, and one such engaging series keeping the trend alive is Dahaad, starring Sonakshi Sinha.

The show, consisting of eight gripping episodes, follows a fictional storyline centred around a suspenseful investigation of a dangerous criminal. Stream it on Amazon Prime Video

For those who prefer a different genre, Modern Love Chennai is a must-watch. This delightful series is the third Indian adaptation of the renowned Modern Love franchise. With six heartwarming stories, it offers a captivating glimpse into the soul of Chennai. Watch it on Amazon Prime Video

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