Startup Digest: Twitter says 50-60% of tweets asked by govt to be blocked "innocuous", Signzy raises Rs 210 cr from Gaja Capital and others

The High Court of Karnataka on Monday heard a petition by microblogging platform Twitter against the central government's orders asking it to block some accounts, URLs, and tweets.

Twitter had challenged the orders on grounds of violation of freedom of speech and the authorities not issuing notice to the alleged violators before asking Twitter to take down content.

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) had on September 1 filed a 101-page statement of objection to Twitter's petition. Senior advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for Twitter on Monday online, argued the company was following the rules laid out in the Information Technology Act.

He contended that Twitter as a platform was affected by the Centre asking it to take down accounts without issuing notice to the alleged violators. The Centre was asking for wholesale blocking of accounts which will affect its business, according to him. He said several prominent persons have accounts on Twitter.

The senior advocate presented the example of a particular blocking order in which Twitter was told to block 1,178 accounts. The government did not inform them (account holders) and Twitter was also not allowed to inform them. Datar argued that requirements of Section 69A of the IT Act were not followed. He cited the example of one Tweet that the government ordered to be removed.

Datar argued that Twitter itself blocks tweets that it considers wrong. He said tweets promoting "Khalistan '' are blocked by Twitter. However, 50 to 60 percent of tweets that are asked by the government to be blocked are "innocuous".

Digital banking infrastructure provider Signzy has raised Rs 210 crore (about $26 million) from Gaja Capital and its existing investors, Vertex Ventures and Arkam Ventures.

The Bengaluru-based fintech company would use fresh funds to boost its product portfolio towards greater adoption of its platform by global banking and financial services customers.

"Signzy has seen strong adoption of its 'No-code' product by financial services companies. The solution has been developed from the ground up to allow banks and financial services providers to roll out and offer fintech-like user experiences in a matter of days," said Ankit Ratan, CEO of Signzy.

Signzy has filed eight patents so far in the US, and nine in India, for its innovations. The company received a US patent for banking in the metaverse earlier this year.

Butterfly Learnings, a full stack omnichannel phygital pediatric development and behavior health platform has raised $1.5 million in its seed funding round from Insitor Partners, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, Fondation Botnar, UTIL Stiftung, and CIIE.CO.

The company said it will use the funds to build and scale the digital product and expand its physical footprint across India. Butterfly Learnings currently has four centers across Mumbai and Thane. The company is looking to scale its services across the country and deliver improved clinical outcomes to more than 2,000 children and families in 2022.

"There is a huge unmet need in India for behavioral health for children within the age of two to eight years. We are using an evidence-based approach to deliver better outcomes to children and their families," said Dr Sonam Kothari, co-founder, and CEO of Butterfly Learnings.

Natural fragrance brand Nirmalaya has raised $800,000 in its seed funding round, led by Artha Venture Fund along with key investors including The DotIn Network, Shiprocket – Huddle Accelerator, Flawless Company Family office and other marquee angels.

The firm is aiming to amass more than 2,00,000 customers across India, US, and Middle East markets, Nirmalaya targets to reach the revenue milestone of $3.50 million in the next 16-18 months, a statement said.

"Our first step will be to expand our presence to the US & Middle East Asia regions by introducing unique and chemical-free fragrance products, including reed diffusers, and car & room fresheners, in these markets by March'23.

This geographic and product expansion will be at the core of our strategy, helping make Nirmalaya a mainstream brand known for its pure, carbon-free, and long-lasting fragrances.

Ultimately, we want the leadership position in the Indian and Global incense market and export our products to over 40+ countries within the next 18 months," said Bharat Bansal, co-founder, and CEO of Nirmalaya.

Food startup Sugar Watcher has received undisclosed capital in a funding round led by Mumbai Angels and FAAD Network. The low glycemic index food brand will use funds to bolster its marketing, working capital and product development capabilities.

"We are glad to have closed this bridge round with Mumbai Angels and Faad Networks, which will help us focus on launching new products and expand to newer geographies like UAE and USA," said Treman Singh Ahluwalia, founder of Sugar Watchers.

OEM-connected commercial electric vehicle manufacturer Urban Sphere has raised Rs 30 lakhs in its first round of funding led by the angel network. According to the company, the capital will be used to increase its operations across national and international grounds and increase clientele for its connected commercial four-wheeled vehicles.

"We will be using this funding to set up extensive ground operations of Manufacturing, R&D. With the hope of bringing Connected Wheels on Road for Indian markets through an innovative Connected Commercial 4-wheeled Electric Vehicle for the future of Transport & Logistics," said Karthik A, CEO and co-founder, Urban Sphere.

Private sector rocket maker Agnikul Cosmos is pushing itself hard to have its first test launch before the end of 2022, said a top official.

"We are planning to test launch our rocket Agnibaan before 2022 end. Our plan is to launch the rocket from a mobile launch pad. The test launch will happen from India's rocket port Sriharikota belonging to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Srinath Ravichandran, co-founder and CEO of Agnikul Cosmos told IANS.

Queried about the payload to be carried, Ravichandran said it will be a dummy payload.

When asked about plans to have the test launch sometime next month S.R. Chakravarthy, professor and head, National Centre for Combustion Research and Development, IIT Madras and Advisor to Agnikul told IANS: "We have been working towards it all the while but nothing is fixed yet."

According to Ravichandran, the plan is to have the test launch before the end of 2022. He also said the ISRO is rendering great help to Agnikul.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership India-Yash project, led by Jhpiego, and implemented by Villgro Innovations Foundation, a social enterprise incubator in India, has announced the first cohort of social enterprises selected for the Yash Entrepreneurs Program (YEP).

Launched in April 2022, the program will support 20 enterprises across India, over a 36-month period, to invest in solutions to how youth and adolescents access quality family planning and reproductive health services.

As a part of the first cohort, eight social enterprises, including Curapy Health, Kamacore Media, StandWeSpeak, Green Delight Innovations, Padcare Labs, Pinky Promise, Shivtensity and Thinkpods Education Services, will receive a funding of $13,200, technical assistance, mentoring, and incubation support from Villgro.

Uttar Pradesh Police, and the Government of Uttar Pradesh, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with MapmyIndia, an advanced digital maps and deeptech company to enhance traffic and safety in the state.

As per a statement, MapmyIndia’s technology Mappls will be linked with government systems and procedures and will provide free services to customers and commuters via the Swadeshi Mappls maps and navigation app.

The app will assimilate all traffic advisories, notifications, and safety alerts for public use, enable the public to share/provide feedback on any traffic/safety-related issues, facilitate seamless and smooth operability to designated officers of UP Police, who will closely update these notifications on the Mappls app on a day-to-today and continuous basis, so that commuters benefit, it added.

Edtech platform PrepInsta claims to have witnessed a 20 percent hike in student packages bagged in August 2022 over August 2021. As per the company, despite the job challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, PrepInsta’s final placement for August this year saw a significant increase, with the highest offer being for Rs 47 LPA and the average salary reaching 7.6 LPA.

Due to the sheer volume of offers made by companies like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, the October placement report is expected to be 2-3x higher than that of August, the firm added.

Women make up 34% of the startup workforce. And while there’s still room for improvement, this number is much higher compared to the overall white-collar workforce participation, as per a report by xto10x, a scaling platform for growth-stage startups.

The report found that the percentage of women decreases with seniority and less than 20 percent of startup leaders are women, and women founders are in single-digit percentages.

The eNPS among women employees was on average, 18 points lower than the eNPS among men, showing that women in the ecosystem are currently less fulfilled and happy in general than men, the report added.

The findings also showed that startups that have more than 40 percent of women in their leadership team have better eNPS on average, which is over 7 points higher compared to startups with less than 10 percent women leaders.

Britain could fine TikTok 27 million pounds ($28.91 million) following an investigation that found the short-form video app may have breached the UK's data protection law by failing to safeguard the privacy of children using the platform, as per a Reuters report.

The investigation found that TikTok could have processed data of children under the age of 13 without appropriate parental consent and failed to provide proper information to its users in a transparent way.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued TikTok and TikTok Information Technologies UK with a "notice of intent", the regulator said in a statement.

"Companies providing digital services have a legal duty to put those protections in place, but our provisional view is that TikTok fell short of meeting that requirement," Information Commissioner John Edwards said.

"While we respect the ICO's role in safeguarding privacy in the UK, we disagree with the preliminary views expressed and intend to formally respond to the ICO in due course," a TikTok spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement to Reuters.

Google on Monday rebuffed a push by European telecoms operators to get Big Tech to help fund network costs, saying it was a 10-year-old idea that was bad for consumers and that the company was already investing millions in internet infrastructure, Reuters reported.

The comments by Matt Brittin, president of EMEA business & operations at Google, come as the European Commission said it would seek feedback from the telecoms and tech industries on the issue in the coming months before making any legislative proposal.

"Introducing a 'sender pays' principle is not a new idea, and would upend many of the principles of the open internet," he said according to the text of a speech to be delivered at a conference organised by telecoms lobbying group ETNO. "These arguments are similar to those we heard 10 or more years ago and we have not seen new data that changes the situation."

It "could have a negative impact on consumers, especially at a time of price increases," Brittin said, citing a report by pan-European consumer group BEUC outlining such concerns.

He said Google, owner of YouTube, has done its part to make it more efficient for telecoms providers by carrying traffic 99 percent of the way and investing millions of euros to do so.

Non-fungible token (NFT) trading startups do not want to sell their offerings through Apple App Store because 30 percent commission on in-app purchases, and other tough rules, will bleed them out.

According to a report in The Information, Apple is insisting that its regular 30 percent commission from in-app purchases should also be paid on all trades. This stopped NFT startup Magic Eden from offering trading on its app, even after Apple reduced its commission to 15 percent for firms earning under $1 million annually.

"So far, though, most see some obstacles, including the up to 30 percent commission Apple charges on in-app purchases, as well as pricing conventions that are difficult to apply to volatile digital assets,” the report mentioned.

Grab, Southeast Asia's biggest ride-hailing and food delivery firm, does not envisage having to undertake mass layoffs as some rivals have done, and is selectively hiring while reining in its financial service ambitions.

Chief operating officer Alex Hungate said that earlier in the year, Grab had been worried about a global recession and was "very careful and judicious about any hiring", and as a result, it had not got to the "desperate" point of a hiring freeze or mass layoffs.

"Around mid-year, we did some kind of specific reorganisations, but I know other companies have been doing mass layoffs, so we don't see ourselves in that category," Hungate, 56, told Reuters in his first interview since joining Singapore-based Grab in January.

The company was hiring for roles in data science, mapping technology, and other specialised areas though every hire was a much bigger decision than it used to be, he said.

Decade-old Grab, a household name in Southeast Asia, had about 8,800 staff at the end of 2021. Like its rivals, it has benefited from a boom in food services during the COVID-19 pandemic, while ride-hailing suffered.