Startup Digest: Unacademy’s Relevel lays off 40 employees, LEAD sacks 60 more employees, Ola to shutdown Avail Finance app: Report &  Meta 'rescinds' full-time job offers amid recession fears

The impacted employees will be extended the same benefits that were given to the 350 employees that were sacked by the company in November 2021. These are severance pay equivalent to the notice period and an additional two months, accelerated vesting, medical insurance and placement support, said Munjal.

With the latest round of layoffs, Unacademy has sacked more than 1,200 employees since the start of 2021.

Edtech unicorn LEAD has sacked 60 employees in second round of layoffs in less than six months of letting go of about 100 employees. The company has fired employees from the tech and product teams in the current round, as per a report by Inc42.

"If projects don't meet success criteria or don't fit our strategic roadmap, teams are either re-assigned or asked to seek other opportunities. This is a regular business activity and a normal churn of 1-2 percent in an organisation of 2,000 people," a LEAD spokesperson told CNBC-TV18.

The spokesperson added that they have grown 2X this year and are hiring for growth. The sackings come days after the startup reported a net loss of Rs 397.1 crore for FY22, which widened over three-fold from the previous year.

Ola Financial Services has ceased lending to customers, largely blue-collar workers, through Avail Finance app, the Economic Times reported, citing sources.

As per the report, the company stopped disbursing loans in December. Only the collection of loans will take place throughout the year, which will be completed in December 2023, as Avail offered one-year loans.

The firm is working on a new lending service that will be made available to customers through the Ola app and the Ola Money app, it added.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a plea by Google seeking a stay on a Rs 1,337-crore penalty order slapped by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on the tech company, which the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) refused to stay.

The SC will hear the plea on January 16. Refusing to stay the CCI order, the NCLAT had directed Google to deposit 10 percent of the Rs 1,337 crore penalty amount. CNBC-TV18 had earlier reported Google was set to challenge the Android antitrust ruling in SC.

Google cited urgency in its plea with the SC as the CCI order comes into effect in almost a week, on January 19. Google told the court the CCI order was "extraordinary" and contained "errors", including instances of plagiarism from competition proceedings in the European Union. Google also said NCLAT's order was "unlawful, incorrect", and there was "no application of kind" in refusing the stay plea.

But even as SC agreed to hear Google's plea, the company received another blow on January 11, when the NCLAT rejected Google's plea seeking a stay of a second CCI order against it. NCLAT observed that Google "may be hurting other payment aggregators by insisting on payment only through its system in the App Store". In this case, also, NCLAT has directed Google to pay 10 percent of the penalty amount in four weeks and ruled out any interim relief. The NCLAT will do a final hearing on April 17.

The cabinet has cleared incentives to promote RuPay debit card and United Payments Interface (UPI) transactions. As part of this, Rs 2,600 crore will be provided as an incentive scheme for rupee digital transactions. This will primarily be targeted for the unorganized sector, MSME and farmer community.

Earlier, CNBC Awaaz reported that this incentive will be given so that more and more people can adopt digital payments.

In today's time, India has the most effective payments market in the world. This development is the result of the initiative of the government and the innovation of the companies of the digital payment ecosystem. This scheme will promote research and development in the fintech space, the report said. This will help the government to make digital payments more effective in different parts of the country.

In another development, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has asked the UPI ecosystem to allow users from some countries with non-resident account types like non-resident external (NRE) and non-resident ordinary (NRO) accounts with international mobile numbers to transact through UPI. In simple words, this means that non-resident Indians (NRIs) will soon be able to make payments in UPI without having to get an Indian mobile number.

Meta has announced a partnership with the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) to upskill more than 3,000 auto dealers across the country to build a social presence and digitise using its various platforms.

The 'Move with Meta' skilling and enablement programme, announced during the Auto Expo 2023,' will provide auto dealers across the country an easy and low-cost access to best-in-class digital expertise.

"Over the last two years, we've enabled more than 2,600 dealers to digitise their outreach and experiences through our unique solutions and tools," said Saugato Bhowmik, Director-Auto, CPG, and D2C for Meta in India.

FADA will play a pivotal role in ensuring the seamless delivery of the 'Move with Meta' programme across geographies to enhance the digital prowess and proficiency of automotive dealers of all sizes.

The NEW Shop, an omnichannel convenience commerce company, has announced its plan to hire 5000 employees pan-India by June 2024. The firm said it intends to hire across roles and levels including supply chain, business development, sales, technology, training, procurement and operations.

This is a strategic move by the brand aligned with its expansion plans of opening 700+ stores within the next 18 months, the statement said.

The NEW Shop said it will be hiring resources in the fields of marketing, sales and operations within its headquarters in Delhi. For the remaining roles, it will be sourcing regional talent. Approximately, 5 percent of the overall hiring will be allocated to filling senior leadership positions.

Gupshup, a conversational engagement platform, has partnered with Experian, a credit bureau to offer credit scores to consumers on WhatsApp.

With the launch of this initiative, the number of consumers checking their credit scores at Experian has reportedly grown almost two-fold, the firm said in a statement.

Consumers can check their credit scores for free by sending a 'Hi' message to Experian India’s WhatsApp number. This service is available 24x7 for consumers. Going forward, additional value-added services will also be made available that will prompt consumers in real-time if there is a change in their score, the company stated.

The services will be extended to financial institutions so that they can embed WhatsApp-based credit report access with consumer consent.

Meta has reportedly rescinded full-time employment offers to some people, which is a first for the company as it never took back job offers in its history.

According to tech writer Gergely Orosz, Meta has rescinded job offers in London, "as I confirmed with developers impacted. New grads with offers due to start in February have been taken back in bulk. I know of about 20 people so far". "This is the first time I'm aware that Meta is taking back signed, FTE (full-time employment) offers," Orosz said in a tweet.

Meta's position until now was that FTE offers are "NOT at risk, up to even a week ago". In October this year, recruiters made it clear to candidates worried about their Meta offers that these are safe, according to Orosz.

Meta, that saw 11,000 employees being shown the door, has hit India teams too, IANS reported.

US-based software firm Scale AI, laid off 20 percent of its workforce this week. The decision was announced by founder and CEO Alexandr Wang via a company blog post.

"We saw strong sales growth through 2021 and 2022. As a result, we increased headcount assuming the massive growth would continue. However, the macro environment has changed dramatically in recent quarters, which is something I failed to predict," Wang said.

The company did not say how many people work at Scale AI. However, back in February 2022, the company told TechCrunch it employed about 450 people.

Employees who are affected will receive a minimum of eight weeks of severance and three months of healthcare.

In addition, the company is waiving the one-year equity cliff for employees with less than one year of tenure and offering immigration assistance to those on visas that require continued employment.

As part of other changes, the company plans to set significant operating expense reduction targets for each function, adjust its hiring targets, and re-evaluate any new offices.

Crypto exchange FTX will ask a US bankruptcy court to allow it to auction off pieces of its business and to keep customer names secret for at least six months while it works to recover funds lost in what was allegedly a huge fraud, Reuters reported.

FTX will ask US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Delaware to approve procedures for selling affiliates LedgerX, Embed, FTX Japan and FTX Europe as a way of raising funds for customers, who have lost potentially billions of dollars.

The four companies FTX intends to sell are relatively independent from the broader FTX group, and each has its own segregated customer accounts and separate management teams, according to FTX court filings.

The crypto exchange has said it is not committed to selling any of the companies, but that it received dozens of unsolicited offers. FTX expects to generate additional bids by scheduling auctions in February and March.

TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew on a visit to Brussels sought to reassure the European Union the app would respect the bloc's increasingly stringent tech rules and commitments to privacy and child safety.

The short-video app, which is owned by Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance, has for the last three years worked to counter U.S. concerns over whether the personal data of its citizens can be accessed and its content manipulated by China's Communist Party or any other entity under Beijing's influence.

"The objective of the meeting with TikTok was to review how the company is preparing for complying with its obligations under the European Commission's regulation, namely the Digital Services Act (DSA) and possibly under the Digital Markets Act (DMA)," the EU executive said in a statement.

"At the meeting the parties also discussed GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and matters of privacy and data transfer obligations with a reference to the recent press reporting on aggressive data harvesting and surveillance in the U.S," it said.

Tiktok said it was committed to complying with EU rules in a transparent way. "It's a top priority for us to be ready for this," its vice-president for public policy, Europe, Theo Bertram, said in a tweet.

Apple is planning to start using its own custom displays in its mobile devices from 2024 onwards in an attempt to bring more components in-house, Bloomberg News reported.

The company intends to begin by swapping out the display in the highest-end Apple Watches by the end of next year. Apple plans to eventually bring these displays to other devices as well, including the iPhone, according to the report.

The tech giant is aiming to reduce its reliance on other partners such as Samsung Electronics and LG. The report added that the screens would upgrade the current OLED standard to a technology called microLED.