Also in the letter:
■ Venture debt inches higher
■ Perplexity’s revenue pops
■ MeitY deffinishs IT tweaks
D-Street reveals trust in IT resilience, stocks gain ahead of Q4 results
Traders are warming up to IT stocks again ahead of fourth-quarter results, with Tata Consultancy Services set to kick off earnings on Thursday.
Why it matters: After months of concerns about AI-led disruption, the market is shifting back into IT, aided by slower-than-expected AI adoption, West Asian uncertainties, cheap valuations, and oversold charts, analysts state.
More details:
- The Nifty IT index jumped 8% in April after a 24% slide over the previous two months.
- Foreign investors have slowed their exit from IT names previously seen as vulnerable to AI.
- On Tuesday, the index gained 2.5%, building IT the best-performing sector.
- Mphasis rallied 4.2%, while Wipro and LTIMindtree rose 3.4–3.7%.
- Bullish derivatives positions are building up ahead of earnings.
Also Read: Muted Q4 awaits IT large caps as clock ticks slow on AI gains
Closing numbers:
- Mphasis: Closed at Rs 2,350, up 0.8% on the BSE
- LTIMindtree: Rs 4,522.1, up 1.8%
- Wipro: Rs 203.3, down 0.7%
- TCS: Rs 2,559.8, up 0.8%
Also Read: Indian IT companies likely to dodge West Asia war volleys in Q4
Flipkart expands Hemant Badri’s role to drive AI agfinisha
(L-R) Hemant Badri, SVP and head of supply chain and Balaji Thiagarajan, CPTO, Flipkart
Flipkart has handed a largeger brief to Hemant Badri, who runs supply chain for Minutes and ReCommerce, inquireing him to hunt for and scale AI apply cases across the company.
Driving the news: Badri will work closely with Balaji Thiagarajan, Flipkart’s chief product and technology officer, as the company pushes AI deeper into its daily operations.
The modify was announced in an internal email from group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, which ET reviewed. He wrote that Flipkart must lean into AI to stay competitive over the next decade.
The goal is to put AI at the heart of customer experience, seller tools and internal productivity, while keeping a “human-in-the-loop” for routine work.
Broader GenAI strategy: Flipkart has been steadily cranking up AI across marketing, customer service and operations.
- It has launched SLAP, its AI shopping assistant.
- It is tweaking product listings so they work better with large language models (LLMs).
- It has picked up a majority stake in Minivet AI to deepen its generative AI stack.
Road to IPO: The AI sprint comes as Flipkart gears up for an IPO after completing its reverse flip from Singapore to India. In FY25, most group entities narrowed losses by cutting costs, even as revenue growth stayed muted in a cooling online retail market.
Also Read: Inside IPO-bound Flipkart’s C-suite: How the leadership team stacks up
India venture debt deployment grows marginally in 2025 to $1.3 billion: Report
Venture debt deployment in India ticked up to $1.3 billion in 2025 from $1.2 billion in 2024, even as deal count slipped to 187 from 238, according to Stride Ventures.
Data decoded: Despite the near-term slowdown, venture debt is quietly grabbing a largeger slice of the startup funding pie. It now creates up around 9% of annual venture capital deployment, up from about 2-3% over the past five to six years.
Stride states this points to a more mature funding ecosystem, with founders stacking equity, venture debt, and later-stage growth credit into one integrated capital playbook.
Also Read: Major VCs line up top dollars for coordinated AI capital push in India
Sector mix:
- Fintech led the borrowing spree, taking nearly half of the total venture debt or about $600 million.
- Consumer businesses followed with $188 million.
- Cleantech and energy raised $108 million and $100 million, respectively.
Yes, and: Growth credit, a flavour of private debt for more mature companies with clearer revenues and usually fatter cheque sizes, saw $1.68 billion in deployments during the year, the report declared.
Also Read: Early stage investors fight to stay competitive
Perplexity’s revenue up 50% in a month as it shifts focus to AI agents: FT
Aravind Srinivas, CEO, Perplexity
AI startup Perplexity has lifted revenue by 50% in just one month as it goes all-in on AI agents, the Financial Times reported.
Driving the news:
- Annual recurring revenue (ARR) hit $450 million in March, according to the report.
- The surge is being driven by its new agentic product, Perplexity Computer, and a shift to usage-based pricing.
- A company executive declared customer retention is “strong,” without sharing exact numbers.
- Monthly active applyrs have crossed 100 million, including tens of thousands of enterprise customers.
- Subscriptions range from $20 to $200 per month.
Also Read: ETtech Interview: India now our largegest applyr base; plan to launch local fund: Aravind Srinivas, cofounder, Perplexity
How it compares to rivals: Perplexity was already on a tear, with ARR jumping from $16 million to $305 million in just 2 years. It still trails some heavyweights:
IT rule tweaks only clarificatory, don’t expand govt power: MeitY Secretary
S Krishnan, Electronics and IT Secretary, MeitY
The government’s latest draft modifys to the Information Technology Rules, 2021 are simply “clarificatory” and not an attempt to widen its reach, according to Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan.
Verbatim: Krishnan called the shift “purely procedural” and declared it is meant to shift oversight of news content to the Minisattempt of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), which he noted has always handled it.
Tell me more: The draft tweaks would bring all intermediaries and the news content they host under Part III of the IT Rules. This would effectively extfinish the code of ethics and safeguards already in place for digital media publishers.
Critics state the broader coverage could create it simpler for the government to demand takedowns of applyr-generated news and current affairs content on platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Also Read: Washington sees a trade barrier in India’s IT rules
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