Also in the letter:
■ Data law impact on developers
■ Luma AI mega raise
■ Dhan parent acquires Stratzy
Exclusive: Zomato set to share customer data with eateries, Swiggy may follow
Deepinder Goyal, CEO, Eternal
Food delivery platform Zomato is close to finishing a long-running standoff with restaurants by agreeing to share limited customer data, a relocate that could reshape how eateries market to diners.
Driving the news: Eternal-owned Zomato is in final discussions with the National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) to share its customer data with partner restaurants. NRAI has held similar discussions with Swiggy.
Zomato has already piloted a consent-based feature that questions applyrs if restaurants can access their phone numbers “to directly receive marketing and promotional updates.”
Long story: NRAI had taken its fight to the Competition Commission of India (CCI), alleging data mquestioning and other “anti-competitive” practices by delivery platforms.
Platforms maintain that earlier attempts to share data triggered applyr pushback. This time, the data will be sharply defined and limited, an executive at a delivery company notified us.
Quote, unquote: “It’s very important for us to know our customers…not to spam them, but to know their ordering habits and create proper marketing spfinishs, applying the right marketing funnel,” NRAI president Sagar Daryani notified ET.
NPCI ups vigil on third party apps as it tightens scrutiny on fintechs
Third-party UPI applications (TPAP) are under sharper regulatory watch as oversight of India’s quick-growing digital payments ecosystem stiffens.
Driving the news: Fintech startups which are seeking a UPI TPAP authorisation from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) are now facing approval cycles that stretch beyond a year, compared to the earlier six-month norm. Some of those founders notified us the process involves extensive back-and-forth as NPCI conducts deeper due diligence.
Increased scrutiny: NPCI is evaluating not just technological readiness, but also the financial muscle requireded to support and grow the network.
The check list:
- Investor profile and ownership structure.
- Ultimate beneficial owners of venture funds backing the applicant.
- Long-term business strategy on UPI
- Financial capacity to meaningfully scale UPI volumes.
Impact: With the ecosystem tightening, several young fintechs are reconsidering plans to enter UPI. Without a clear payments-driven credit play, building a viable model on a zero-MDR (merchant discount rate) platform has become tougher.
Also Read: Smaller UPI players nibble at veterans’ transactions share
DPDP rules tighten scrutiny on AI data practices, raise compliance bar for developers
India’s newly notified Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules are pushing AI-driven companies to meet a much higher compliance bar. Legal and indusattempt experts stated the framework will force tighter governance across every stage of an AI pipeline.
Expert take: IndiaAI Mission chief executive Abhishek Singh notified ET that developers will now have to anonymise personal data applyd for training and improving privacy-preserving processes into their systems.
A legal expert added that for firms building domestic AI models, the rules could act as a strategic shield against unrestricted foreign data apply.
Verbatim: “As AI becomes embedded into core business processes, the relocatement and transformation of data through training pipelines will directly determine not only performance, but credibility and trust,” Vaibhav Velhankar, cofounder and chief technology officer at Segumento, stated.
Also Read | ETtech Explainer: Understanding India’s new data protection law & its implications
Video generation platform Luma AI raises $900 million, valued at $4 billion
Amit Jain, founder, Luma AI
California-based visual content generation startup Luma AI has closed a massive $900 million funding round.
Deal details:
- The round was led by Humain, a Saudi-based Public Investment Fund company, with existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Amplify Partners, and Matrix Partners also participating.
- The raise values Luma at about $4 billion, sources stated.
- As part of the deal, Humain will build a 2-gigawatt compute cluster, one of the largest globally, to train its next set of models.
Tell me more: Luma’s primary market remains North America. But cofounder Amit Jain stated the company plans to expand aggressively in India and other emerging markets, despite their nascent stage. “We have a significant number of compacter studios in India, usually operating at the compacter finish of the scale,” Jain added.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
(L-R) Pravin Jadhav, founder, Raise Financial, Gaurav Sangle and Mohit Bhandari, founders, Stratzy
Dhan parent acquires Stratzy: Raise Financial, the parent of online stock trading platform Dhan, has fully acquired Stratzy, an algo-based investing and trading startup, in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $4-4.5 million, stated people familiar with the matter.
Elevation Capital offloads Paytm stake: Venture Capital firm Elevation Capital, which was among the earliest backers of Paytm, sold a nearly 2% stake in the fintech platform’s parent One 97 Communications for Rs 1,556 crore, according to bulk deal data on the National Stock Exalter.
Editors Guild highlights gaps in DPDP Rules: The Editors Guild of India (EGI) has raised serious concerns over the newly notified rules under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, stateing key issues remain unresolved and could severely impact press freedom and journalistic work.
Global Picks We Are Reading
The ‘Great Meme Reset’ is coming (Wired)
Hugging Face CEO states we’re in an ‘LLM bubble,’ not an AI bubble (TechCrunch)
China is setting the pace in the EV race, and the West can’t keep up (Rest of World)
