India's EV revolution gets a boost As Centre Cuts Taxes | Roundup #146 | The Startup Operator

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another Startup Operator Roundup. I am Roshankar Yafa and I am Gunjan Saha

[00:00:08] and we break down the biggest headlines from the Indian Star Aviko system.

[00:00:12] If this is the first time you are tuning into the channel please cut it.

[00:00:16] We will first have to address your ethnic attire.

[00:00:19] So we happened to be recording this episode on Holy, well clearly once one of us is feeling celebratory.

[00:00:26] I wonder why you are not wearing a curta?

[00:00:28] I am too scared to ruin all my good curta's on Holy.

[00:00:32] But yeah, happy Holy to you folks as well. I am sure you had a fun day, colorful day.

[00:00:38] Yeah, colorful day.

[00:00:39] Okay go and tell them what we do on the roundup.

[00:00:43] So in our channel we regularly speak to founders, investors, operators asking them about getting the pulse of the Startup ecosystem.

[00:00:51] And every Sunday we host this show called the Startup Operator weekly roundup, where we break down the biggest headlines from the Startup ecosystem and try to explain what it means for you.

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[00:01:09] So we are doing this roundup also after sometime we took a lot of time.

[00:01:13] Yeah quite a lot of time.

[00:01:14] In that absence Gunjan Saha has turned your older.

[00:01:18] I turned your visor.

[00:01:19] Okay, no comments on that.

[00:01:22] So a lot has happened in this past few weeks.

[00:01:25] So here's a quick rundown.

[00:01:27] Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Startup Mahakum at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 20th of March.

[00:01:34] And over there he highlighted major developments from the Indian Startup ecosystem.

[00:01:38] Centred has announced lowering of import duties on EVs to boost investments in India and certain companies like Tesla gets a huge advantage based on this.

[00:01:47] IT ministry has removed the need for getting an approval for rolling out new AI models.

[00:01:52] When the government had announced a plans few weeks back it was met with a lot of deliberation by the Startup community.

[00:01:58] New competition laws will be bringing big techs with over 10% of its global user base in India under its ambit.

[00:02:06] And paytm finally gets the NPCI not to operate as a third party application provider.

[00:02:11] So looks like you know good days are ahead for paytm.

[00:02:16] Zomato launched the pure veg fleet to cater to vegetarian customers.

[00:02:21] However, that initiative was rolled back and Nexus venture partners MD summit bridge Verma who we have had on the podcast before he is leaving Nexus Ventures to start his own fund.

[00:02:33] And of course this past few weeks also saw the announcement of Devon which is the first AI software engineer.

[00:02:40] So if you are a software engineer especially you should definitely wait for us to talk about that because who knows there might be something in it for you.

[00:02:54] So Russian three weeks what were you up to?

[00:02:57] It's two weeks actually but yeah must feel like three without me.

[00:03:02] But yeah even full couple of weeks the IPO started right let's us at the better for RCB fans.

[00:03:10] Right we got off in like typical fashion losing the first one to channel something something can't be changed never change but hey the women's team won the cup.

[00:03:20] Yeah you know overnight I became a women's cricket fan.

[00:03:25] I hadn't watched any of the matches but then I caught the highlights and yeah pretty awesome man at least where you can really hit the ball out of the stadium for not the stadium at least in the stands for a six.

[00:03:37] And Sri Lanka party is awesome as well great flight drift turn all of the good stuff so yeah nice amazing stuff but catch the ladies in action.

[00:03:47] I don't know how some ladies in action but I saw the men in the queue.

[00:03:50] Why are you blushing dude?

[00:03:52] I don't understand why.

[00:03:54] I mean I'm just talking about great cricket here come on for God's six.

[00:03:58] I'm looking at you and smiling you shining.

[00:04:01] You're so passionate while talking about women's cricket.

[00:04:04] Yeah I mean hey they got us a cup dude someone got us a cup I mean I will you know I'll support anyone who gets us a cup really.

[00:04:12] It's been 14-15 years of heartbreak for RCB fans but here's a start okay so the highest run getter for RCB in all of the seasons like combined has been Virat Kohli and he has some 7000 plus runs right.

[00:04:27] Guess who the second highest run getter for RCB is Indian not you know foreign national Indian run getters and how much they've scored.

[00:04:36] I don't have no idea not a big RCB fan here.

[00:04:40] I just guess how much the total score would be?

[00:04:44] How much?

[00:04:45] 4500?

[00:04:46] 900 something.

[00:04:48] Rahul Dravid.

[00:04:50] I mean talk about an over lens on you know King Kohli right but anyway man this season E-Sala let me just talk.

[00:05:01] Don't jinx it don't jinx it.

[00:05:03] But I'm supporting KKR they seem to be informed though their performance was questionable but then also remind me I just watched the series inside edge and I was just trying to see how and proper IPL match plays out with the betting going on behind and the KKR versus S R H match was too good if you knew that people are betting behind the scenes.

[00:05:24] So that was fun.

[00:05:26] Anyway enough of cricket let's talk startups India startup ecosystem flourishing at an unprecedented rate driven by the youth.

[00:05:35] This is not limited to metro cities it has now become a social culture.

[00:05:39] This is not just a sentiment that we have been talking about in the podcast but an acknowledgement by Prime Minister Modi.

[00:05:45] The PM inaugurated startup mark on at Bharat Mandapurman New Delhi on the 20th of March and emphasize the country's roadmap of working to become a Vixit Bharat by 2047.

[00:05:56] There are four key messages that stood out in the Prime Minister's address.

[00:06:00] Number one, develop Indian solutions for global applications.

[00:06:04] Number two, pay it forward.

[00:06:06] Number three, deepen industry startup linkages and forth new enterprises are now becoming the linchpin of the Indian economy.

[00:06:16] So it was a very fantastic speech that delivered I highly recommend folks to check it out on YouTube but for me one thing that really stood out for me is that India is actually becoming a hotbed for global innovation and the way industry bodies, the way government bodies are working closely with the startup ecosystem is definitely an example.

[00:06:35] It's an example set for the global community and it's interesting to see that now the elections are coming up how more will these ties improve over time.

[00:06:46] Yeah, hopefully I mean, you know Prime Minister Modi is back at third time right all exit polls indicate the same so let's hope that that happens.

[00:06:54] Look the startup India program started in 2016 and since then we've made some progress for sure right the constant asks from startups have been the same thing right I mean is the regulatory compliance bits right make it easy for us to make it easy for us to start and you know shutdown companies right make it easy for us to file taxes operate and environments like in FinTech healthcare so on and so forth.

[00:07:19] Right all the ambiguity that you have on regulation like let's come up with like clear rules on the you know how to operate and so on and so forth right that aside I mean obviously another second thing has been you know attracting investments right make it easy for people to invest in startups right attract foreign capital flows and so on and so forth right.

[00:07:43] You know we had this draconian angel tax that was mooted sometime back but thankfully I mean that has ceased to exist as well but still it isn't as easy as let's say other startup ecosystems right like for example SF or you know Israel and elsewhere right so make it easy for people to attract investments.

[00:08:06] And a third has been you know working with government agencies like isro for example or the Indian Institute of science and so on and so forth right work with these folks to co create collaborate and bring new innovation to the world right we've seen what a fantastic outcome they've achieved on the space side right working closely with the Indian Space Association and is so right I mean you have a bunch of these folks that are you know whether it's pixel

[00:08:34] or the other thing that's a lot of people are not going to be able to do something like that and I hope that we achieve more on these three fronts I really like the prime minister speech I think you know it's fantastic that startups are a part of the government lexicon right sometime back I mean Bala Jishinivasan had mentioned that you know our budget had words like you know blockchain and FinTech and so on and so forth.

[00:09:04] And so on that was not very usual even for developed economies right so yeah it's awesome that startups are mainstream and it's awesome that you know prime minister and the government itself feels that you know startups are a key part of us getting to the five trillion economy and beyond.

[00:09:25] So yeah I mean I'm really positive one of the things that you know we're doing is the whole national research fund right I mean we're going to we've committed about one lakh crores which is a significant amount right and I hope that you know that kind of increases and they're able to democratize some of the teething problems that we have to avoid a base of people so that we can come up with innovative solutions yeah.

[00:09:50] So another thing is the whole collaboration that you spoke about one thing that stands out truly well here is let's take the example of UPI right the problems which we as a country are solving for ourselves is essentially the answers to big global global level problems like payments right so what we're building for India because the de facto solution for the world and that is because we try to solve problems at scale and not just in a particular niche yeah I think that is working on really well for a country like us.

[00:10:19] No this is what Nandan calls population scale problems right again you know UPI has been a fantastic innovation to that and I'm really looking forward to you know O and DC O C and the others kind of panning out in their true vision right I mean that will you know that truly be then that next level of innovation I feel.

[00:10:43] Also in another big boost to the EV sector of the country India will be lowering import taxes on certain electric vehicles for companies that are committing to invest at least $500 million and setting up a local manufacturing facility within the next three years.

[00:10:59] firms meeting this requirements will be allowed to import 8000 EVs a year at a reduced import duty of 15% on cars costing 35000 dollars or above India currently levels attacks of 70% to 100% on imported cars depending on their value.

[00:11:15] The policy change is likely to pave the way for Tesla to enter India as the Elon Musk lead company has been in talks with the government for a long time.

[00:11:22] The move also aligns with India's global ambitions to boost adoption of EV and reduce the dependence on oil imports Tesla may use India as a manufacturing base to export its vehicles to Southeast Asia and unlike the US another major automobile markets India's average car price is under $10,000

[00:11:42] and 70% of the cars sold in India are below $15,000. So definitely we're not going to see Tesla's be the every third of fourth car in the road but rather India will become the exporting hub for Tesla at least in the Southeast Asian markets.

[00:11:56] No, see 500 million is some change for Tesla but it's a start right is definitely a start and if you look at you know how Tesla and Elon Musk have interacted with the government over the last three or four years right we've played to a leverage right Mr. Nithin Guttkuri is amazing at that right he's a businessman himself and he's negotiated very well for India right which is that hey you commit to some kind of investments commit to growing the ecosystem here setting up a manufacturing base provide a

[00:12:26] very high rating employment etc and then we can consider you know some kind of a deduction in the tax and so on right I mean in the exercise. So that's really what's happened you know the difference between 70% and 15 is quite a lot right so I won't be surprised to see you know a few Tesla's on the road for sure right but this is a very very interesting and important first step I would say in terms of setting up you know manufacturing here because

[00:12:55] yeah I mean if you look at manufacturing hubs across the world I mean in terms of you know just the population the skill level so on and so forth you can't ignore India right I mean China the wages are rising as well and plus given the geopolitical tensions right now I mean if anyone is looking for China plus one or you know just be risking their supply chain from China I mean you can't ignore India right and that's really what we should play to our advantage.

[00:13:23] Also within the whole EV market right that we are seeing this trend of premium premization right what essentially means that today is most of the EVs in the four-wheeler segment or the two-wheeler segment they are between the price range of $1400 to $1800 while the traditional IC engines are available at an average price of $1,000 right so as we have seen in US when Tesla launched over there they started by you know making luxury cars once the brand becomes well known there's more reliability on it.

[00:13:52] They start coming to mid market and lower markets but I think what will really be driving the whole EV adoption in India is a B2B use case which is the Zomato's for these and all there is actually happening see because EV obviously you know gives phenomenal benefits on the economy side of things right I mean it's cheap as hell.

[00:14:14] The initial investment let's it to buy your EV is it's at a premium when you come back to IC engines but the running cost of an EVs were period of one year or more than the total cost of ownership reduces actually not even that I mean you know you're not going to give your fleet you know ethar and you know even all our ones or whatever right I mean you're going to give them the cheapest possible bike and those are like pretty minimal actually you know we should definitely get one of these mobility companies you know on the part in fact

[00:14:44] I mean I will be speaking to the city of bounds right we had the founder Vivekanan sometime back maybe couple of years back.

[00:14:51] 2012 yeah 21 something right yeah it's been a long time now so so we're going to have someone from bounds again and it'll be interesting to understand the economics of you know how things work out but yeah interesting stuff yeah.

[00:15:09] Okay so we have been talking about the government and the startup ecosystem well here's another update the ministry of electronics and information technology has reversed its previous stance on AI regulations by removing the approval requirement for new AI model rollouts in India.

[00:15:25] By embracing a more flexible approach to AI regulation mighty aims to unleash the full potential of India's AI ecosystem and drive technological advancements across industries.

[00:15:36] The regulatory reversal is expected to have profound implications for India's ecosystem attracting investment for sitting collaboration stimulating growth and driving technological advancements across industries.

[00:15:48] Despite the removal of the approval requirement might it remains committed to upholding the ethical standards and safeguarding against potential risks associated with AI technologies and it also highlights a need for responsible AI development and deployment practices.

[00:16:03] Now what this story essentially is an update when the government passed laws saying that any new AI model rollouts need to be approved by the center.

[00:16:11] Now of course there's a lot of criticism within the AI community from foreign investors domestic investors saying that this much of scrutiny is going to hamper investments into this niche field and that's going to make investors shy away from investing in India.

[00:16:27] The government has heard that and they have recalled that policy so I think this the government is being really proactive to the needs of the ecosystem.

[00:16:35] Yeah it is but look coming I don't also agree that you know you can just not regulate this right and let the innovation kind of find the median in which it has to operate right I mean I don't think that's the case.

[00:16:48] It is very very difficult to regulate right because AI is extremely probabilistic but I think you are to build some kind of accountability into it right I mean we saw the kind of ridiculous answers that Google's Gemini gave out for instance right now someone has to take responsibility of for that right I mean and it can have consequences.

[00:17:08] You know when you think about the elections upcoming right now in a month or so right I mean it can definitely influence people one way or another I mean we've seen this elsewhere as well.

[00:17:20] So I think the government for sure should keep a close watch on how some of these big platforms are you know delivering this kind of technology but it's just so hard man it's just really really hard to arrive at you know what is the right way to regulate there are roughly about three approaches.

[00:17:38] The way I look at it right I mean in the US I think they just go by what the big platforms do right and then figure you know how to sort of mediate regulate and so on.

[00:17:49] So the likes of Google Facebook or even Tesla and so forth have a lot of leverage on that and then in Europe I mean you have a different case of you know before the innovation they'll bring out the regulation right and they'll be very proud of that that you know I mean they've managed to regulate what I'm doing.

[00:18:08] So whatever it is and they don't mind stifling you know innovation at the cost of safety security and all of those things I mean that's the priority that they have right now India we are doing something in between right which is that we are quite reactive to things you know and I made this case sometime back that you know India loves banning things because by the time you let something be the second order impact of you know whatever it is whatever kind of technology or

[00:18:38] being it is right it can just be very difficult to control given the scale and complexity of India right so our approach has always been to sort of you know ban things and then make exceptions right so it's it's classic right so we're trying to figure things out you know as it comes now also think it's more about you know rather than asking for explicit permission whether you can do this or not.

[00:19:02] I think it's more about putting some sort of guardrails into key how can things move forward yeah it's very difficult though you know I mean it's just I don't know I won't want to be a policy maker you know trying to regulate some of these things it's it's it's possibly once they're trying to influence people with this podcast.

[00:19:21] No I'm just doing it for shits and giggles.

[00:19:25] Oh yeah talking about big text right and the India government being proactive the government is now considering a new digital competition law that could bring big tech companies under its purview if they have 10% of the global user base or business transactions in the country.

[00:19:41] This move aims to address potential antitrust concerns related to significant digital intermediaries and prevent tech giants from flexing their muscles too much.

[00:19:50] Some of the rules might include ensuring everyone plays nice on platforms avoiding any preferential treatments and search results and making sure that tech works well with others Google I hope you're listening.

[00:20:02] Some digital firms making a hefty sum of over 2000 crores in India could also fall under this law even if they don't have its 10% of its user base in the country but to keep the spirit of innovation a life smaller digital firms might get a free pass.

[00:20:17] Now the goal here is actually to stop any sort of foul play rather than dealing with the aftermath of it as you rightly mentioned and very soon according to reports it is expected that new laws backbone might include a draft bill and some solid recommendations so it's interesting to see how you know this large tech companies are going to react.

[00:20:36] See it's long due I would say right I mean and in my opinion any of these large innovations that have massive impact are going to tend towards becoming utilities right whether it is your search whether it is right sharing whether it is e-commerce marketplace what have you you know that's just the way of the world right when you gain you know such significant influence over people in their lives.

[00:21:02] I think this is broadly going to happen you know so yeah I mean it'll be interesting to see how this kind of place out you know it's about time that some of these folks are made to play nice right and one could be you know solving this regulation like the government has kind of mooted the other could be you know platforms like ONDC for instance right.

[00:21:25] The vision of ONDC in order to democratize innovation to everyone right and not have any kind of biases and favorites you know in a sort of marketplace scenario I mean if that vision is realized I think you know automatically we will solve a bunch of these things so I think it'll have to be a mix of both.

[00:21:44] So this past few weeks one company was making the headlines I know we're not talking about by Jews it's PTM due to regulatory issues PTM payments bank or PVBL could not accept deposits or top ups after 15th March this meant PTM had to look for a different way to continue its UPI services now NPCI or the national payments cooperation of India has given 197 communications limited the company that owns PTM.

[00:22:13] The permission to work as a third party application provider or TPP for UPI services. This is a big deal because it allows PTM to offer UPI based transactions through its app so that means if you are a user of PTM you will not be facing any disruption in services but here are the key things that you need to know.

[00:22:32] PTM now has what's called a TPP license this means it can provide apps that are UPI compliant to end user customers this could include mobile wall is merchant apps or any other platform using UPI as payments.

[00:22:45] 4 banks access bank HDFC SBI and yes bank will act as payment service providers for PTM's parent companies which means that these banks will help UPI operators for PTM users so amid all of this chaos of PTM and you know intermediate and stuff I think there was one more thing I'm going to do is

[00:23:00] I think there was one clear winner which was the unified payments interface or UPI because if the architecture was not sound or not modular enough there would be a lot of Kios and probably India's digital payment infrastructure would have come crashing down.

[00:23:15] I think the interoperability for sure is a fantastic fantastic feature of UPI right there is this amazing podcast I listen to Neil Conte Mishra on Mukesh oneself's sparks right we'll link to it in the description but it's a phenomenal podcast that talks about you know the India stack and the significance the history evolution all of that stuff.

[00:23:39] Yeah Neil Conte is amazing right he is just fabulous at explaining things all the macro stuff in a way that you're able to relate very well right so yeah do check out that podcast awesome.

[00:23:53] Zomato had also launched what they call a pure wedge fleet located to vegetarians customers but few days after they rolled out the feature the Pinder Gold took to Twitter saying that key they're rolling it back.

[00:24:05] He further said that post feedback the company realized that some customers as well as delivery partners been land troubled you to this elaborating on the rational behind the rollback the Pinder says that this will ensure Zomato's red uniform delivery partners are not incorrectly associated with non-veg food and block by any residents welfare societies on any special days what do you make of this India is a complex society man I mean really.

[00:24:33] I don't know what the need was for you know green or red or whatever right their private enterprise you can you choose to do whatever they want you know that is socially legally ethically fine right but yeah I mean it could just cause unnecessary chaos right I mean if green as wet and red is non-veg right so they are still segregating the fleet but they're just not using those colors to kind of denote everything.

[00:25:01] But I mean I was just flabbergasted at all of the comments on Twitter right I mean it's just astounding I mean apparently you can be vegan right and that can have swag value but you can't be a desi vegetarian right because then you're somehow imposing your you know cast by S and whatnot right I mean good God I mean the levels of thinking right but here India is a complex society and Zomato has done a reasonable thing to sort of roll back and

[00:25:30] you know not not given to any any unnecessary chaos right because ultimately I mean see is it a good thing I think it's a fantastic thing right I mean they should respect you know their users their customers so for sure right I mean some people do have concerns on you know this whole veg and non-veg mixing and whatnot right I mean people I know people who avoid going to restaurants where the same whether means a couple in the same kitchen.

[00:26:00] For sure right I mean to each his own and Zomato with the right thing in the sense that of treating these people differently yeah maybe the uniforms are not required right but they still continue to do that which is I think a great thing right so one thing is that Zomato has always been like yours to the ground listening to their customers right so they iterate really really quickly so fantastic stuff and you know they're profitable as well because of the whole IPO thing right so yeah awesome.

[00:26:30] It's been there also got married recently dude we're not going to talk about it I mean for more of that you can check out any other startup outlet but no we're not going to talk about founders marriages and whatnot.

[00:26:43] We did our research he did his whatever base three salacious all right moving on next is venture partners is said to see the departure of one of its managing directors

[00:26:58] or after a 13 year stint he invested in startups like postman an academy in from market among others and we also had the pleasure of talking to him I think in 2021 20 2020 oh wow yeah long time back for years where the pleasure talking to him in our podcast Russian can you tell us some of your some areas of fantastic person right he's been a executive he's been an investor both in public and private markets and a fantastic VC as well.

[00:27:27] Right this whole developer tools market that we have today I mean driven by postman hasura bunch of others you know Samir was one of the early believers in that right and I spoke about his thesis for the same and so forth in November of 2020 and you know he's such a kind guy as well because

[00:27:46] the first time we did recording with him after about 100 podcasts the worst thing happened right we recorded it and then I realized that you know there's a problem with the zoom recording and I didn't get the record didn't get the recorded file right he was so sweet I mean he agreed to do it another time you know so I recorded

[00:28:07] the podcast two times thanks to Samir right really the kindest person I will say you know and wish him all the best really yeah it's a fantastic conversation I mean we'll link the episode in the description so please check it out yeah check out 2020 me

[00:28:24] Alright so now before we move on to the notable fundraisers our devin was announced which is the world's first AI software engineer

[00:28:32] Devin is a brainchild of Swedish AI startup called pelteran it leverages advanced algorithms and neural network architectures to automate many aspects of the model development pipeline right from data pre processing to model training and optimization.

[00:28:48] One of Devin's key features the ability to understand and interpret human input allowing users to communicate the requirements and preferences in natural language this intuitive interface simplifies the model development process making it accessible to individuals with varying levels of technical expertise.

[00:29:05] This development reminds me of you know one of the interviews by Jensen Huang who is the CEO of NVIDIA he said he was asked rather that he will programming coding become a necessary skill for the purpose of the future to which Jensen replies that he know we are putting on the hard work today to build

[00:29:26] Generative AI model so that in the future people don't need to code they can just you know give instructions in natural language

[00:29:35] The computer will be able to understand it and generate the output

[00:29:38] And I think slowly slowly we are moving towards that future where you don't need to be a quarter expert quarter or programmer but you need to be a creative person look

[00:29:47] I mean programming has come a long way over the last 30 years right I mean nobody writes you know code for the compiler anymore you know

[00:29:53] So it is going to tend towards becoming more human language oriented I would say but man I think you still will have to understand some level of problem solving abstraction

[00:30:07] You know data orientation and so on so forth right I mean will it get to a point where any person will say anything and then have their desired impact

[00:30:17] I don't know maybe it will ultimately get to that but yeah I am not like totally you know subscribe to the notion that you know you don't have to learn programming and go and do all the other stuff right

[00:30:29] I mean pick up English or philosophy or whatever I think all of that is required but yeah it doesn't hurt to have some computer science fundamentals

[00:30:37] No no absolutely I mean it's not like not like you ask chat GPT hey make me a computer program that makes butter chicken in the microwave

[00:30:45] I mean of course that will not happen but yeah you're right if come along I mean just look at website the butter chicken example made absolutely no sense but yeah we'll pardon Gunjan Sahar for that

[00:30:57] Yeah but have you seen this guy Scott Wu the CEO of the firm that filter at least Devin yeah the guy is some kind of a math genius okay I mean people have been posting videos of his math

[00:31:14] Olympiad or whatever and it's insane I mean you know he doesn't even have to let the person finish the question I mean he already has an answer right guess we had five thousand like that

[00:31:24] something but we we had a one was the most human fastest human calculator do check that out also we link that also in the description more work for the producer

[00:31:35] Okay all right this seems like a long long round up lot of news updates we were missing for a couple of weeks yeah yeah

[00:31:45] Yeah cool so but here are the notable fund is from the past two weeks.

[00:31:48] Navam Capital which is an early stage venture capital firm has successfully marked the first close of its meet and investment vehicle the Navam venture fund one

[00:31:57] with commitments totaling 50 crore rupees are approximately six million dollars.

[00:32:01] Perfews which is a B2B SaaS Fintech company secured 80 million dollars in a funding down which was led by teachers venture growth or TVG which is the late stage and growth investment arm of Ontario

[00:32:14] Ontario teachers pension plan this significant investment catapults perfews into the exclusive club of Indian unicorns

[00:32:22] and also makes perfews the first unicorn of 2024 so a big up to the perfews team awesome audio entertainment platform pocket FM raised 103 million dollars from light speed and steps on group

[00:32:35] health tech startup ultra human raised 35 million dollars from bloom ventures stead view capital Nexus venture partners alpha wave and the Pender goal

[00:32:43] what's really exciting here is to see that you know late stage funding 80 million dollars 103 million dollars 35 million dollars big numbers are back yeah I really hope and in fact they're already doing it you know ultra human is sniping at a or as heels right I mean they're producing amazing amazing products

[00:33:02] shout out to Mohit we had him also on the podcast some time back you should look at the reviews and whatnot I mean fabulous stuff right I mean I have been considering a wearable for a while but I've held off thinking it could be a vanity purchase but you know who knows my first could be an ultra human right

[00:33:19] yeah ultra human you can send some freestyle freestyle for us to test and review yeah we'll test for sure right but shout out to my friend Rajiv you know one amazing amazing guy right has been investing in you know deep tech for a while now you know has been early on a third bunch of other startups as well are of and so on

[00:33:45] so fantastic guy and really I could not be happier all the best do Rajiv and I'm sure he'll kill it yeah his tweets are also pretty amazing you guys should check him out on yeah yeah okay talking about Twitter this is the tweet we have for the talk of the town section Microsoft CEO Sacha Nadila to board members

[00:34:08] and this is quote unquote if open air disappeared tomorrow we have all the IP rights and all the capability we have the people we have the compute we have the data we have everything we are below them we are above them we are around them

[00:34:24] what do you think of that that's like you know we should queue in some sigma male or some chat music in here right I mean that's like total tug man I mean Jaze he seems like such a genuine guy right yeah I mean yeah below above around good God I mean like what bad as her he this is yeah look I mean Microsoft has been really present with these acquisitions right whether it is

[00:34:53] LinkedIn or GitHub or open AI yeah that's three for three I should say right and all of them at a significant price you know LinkedIn maybe at 2526 billion GitHub at about 8 billion the open AI again I think about 10 billion dollars so yeah significant money invested in the right direction

[00:35:13] right so yeah no shit that he has them you know above below and around so yeah the best thing to happen to Microsoft after Bill Gates is I am a person of Indian origin Microsoft stock has gone up maybe 2025 times since he took over right I know one person who's benefited immensely from that

[00:35:32] yeah you know him too but yeah so talking about this speed this is not a recent comment made by Satya Nadeela this is a very old transcript which was I think he said in a board of directors meeting when you know Sam Altman was out stood off open AI

[00:35:50] and this is a this quote is a transcript from that meeting but I think it's a very very powerful thing for a CEO of Microsoft to say because the way he's planning out his moves it's like he's thinking beyond AI yeah

[00:36:09] crazy joke joke joke was that was a joke huh oh shit I don't know that okay all right folks that's all from the past two weeks on the India startup ecosystem

[00:36:23] Russian you had a fantastic conversation lately on the podcast yeah which you really

[00:36:28] think a heartfelt tweet that just got five retweets so why don't you tell us something about it it'll get 50 retweets I'm sure to this right but yeah I had a fabulous fabulous conversation with Vinit Devaya of teleport me and he is you know one of those folks from the 2012 2013 era that I have followed since

[00:36:51] it's been a rather interesting journey at the cost of like you know repeating myself I would say go check out that tweet and retweet it for good karma that also is linked in the description below will link that also

[00:37:05] I had folks so hope you enjoyed this conversation and had some things to take away from our conversation we'll be back again with more updates in

[00:37:15] the next episode which will be coming out on next Monday and not two weeks later hopefully do keep keep sending us your feedback we love going through them and we try to make changes a little by little but

[00:37:27] the best thing that you can do for us is to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform and apart from that like share subscribe comment do all the good stuff and we'll back

[00:37:36] again next week yeah take care happy holy enjoy

[00:37:45] you