Policy Reforms & Tech Innovations: India's Startups Look to Modi 3.0 | Roundup #154

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Startup Operator Roundup. I'm Roshan Kariyappa and I'm Gunjan Saha and together we are gonna break down the biggest headlines from India's growing startup ecosystem. Last week, the country elected a new government and startups have big aspirations from Modi

[00:00:16] 3.0 right from strengthening the EV policies to easing funding and what not. 10 Indian startups which includes the likes of Pixel, Sarvam AI and Niramai have achieved global recognition by getting featured in World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneers List.

[00:00:35] Enterprise software giant SAP has made an acquisition of Walkme which is a digital adoption platform for a sum of 1.5 billion dollars and no this does not include any stock component it's all cash. Wow! Talk about big acquisitions. Whew!

[00:00:50] Edtrick startup leverage edu faced criticism because of an article that was published by the Ken. The article questioned the company's business stability prompting its founder Akshay Chaturvedi to clarify certain points on Twitter. Looks like well media really has a role to play in shaping a startup's brand.

[00:01:07] Kind of. TCS has launched an AI aggregator platform called AI Wisdom Next. This platform is designed to help businesses develop and keep up with the rapid evolutions in AI. And lastly HSBC and Blackrock have declared that their investments in ByJuice is now worth zero dollars.

[00:01:26] So that is a shocker. Probably better than your investment in SBI last week. Yes. Awesome! So we'll get started with this. Well but before we get started if you're a regular listener to our channel then please

[00:01:39] share this video with your friends and peers and if you're tuning into our channel for the first time please subscribe to it for We Talk Everything Startups. We have fantastic interviews with founders, investors and operators and I'm sure that

[00:01:52] you're gonna have some takeaways from this conversation as well. That's what we hope. Well people are hoping a lot of things. Last week new government, the World T20 Cup started and we're bored of beginning right? Yeah I mean last week has been like a roller coaster week right?

[00:02:16] I mean there are years and decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen right? I mean crazy crazy crazy. So finally the Indian elections are truly over right? We had the results of the election and congratulations to Prime Minister Modi and the NDA government right?

[00:02:36] Modi 3.0 as you pointed out exciting times ahead for sure and I think you know for those in the business community and startups right? I mean what this will mean is continuity right on the policy front.

[00:02:49] Hopefully you know there will be bold reforms and they will not be weighed down by coalition pressures and so on and so forth. 240 is a significant number so they still have some kind of leverage and you know Chandrababu Naidu really truly built the Hyderabad IT ecosystem right?

[00:03:08] So I mean the man is certainly forward thinking right? So we should have some kind of support. I mean it's like one of us is in the government in some sense right? So good I mean a lot of optimism, optimism, a lot of hope.

[00:03:23] Yeah you know what I realised? I realised with this you know bald look I mean I'm looking shorter than you. We should do something about it. Damn! Do we really need to? Yeah I mean I'm just hoping for my hair to grow back.

[00:03:35] But yeah did you guys add any stocks last week? I mean what about you? I thought you were gonna punt SBI and all that. I don't know but I did increase the weightage of some stocks. It was a good time to buy. Nice!

[00:03:49] It was the greatest sale of the year. I mean like you had some of these blue chip companies that have fallen by 15%, 20% and whatnot. Adani fell by 25% right?

[00:04:00] That should have been some kind of a record in terms of how much market cap got wiped off in a few hours. Right? But yeah fantastic stuff. And not only in Indian stocks right? I think Berkshire Hathway... I think that was a glitch.

[00:04:14] And people bought it for I think at a discount of 98 or 99%. Insane! Like I said it's a rollercoaster week. But yeah the stock markets are back. Pretty much recovered. Some stocks are doing even better than before. Right? Again guys not financial advice.

[00:04:32] You're here for all the startup knowledge and the memes right? And bad jokes of course. So who can forget that? Did you watch the USA and Pakistan 2020? See I mean like on the face of it a match between USA and Pakistan shouldn't have been that exciting.

[00:04:50] Because USA is playing cricket for the first time in the World Cup. And well but that match went to the Super Rovers and Pakistan faced a defeat. Yeah I mean think about it right? But that's the beauty of T20 right? Anything can happen on any given day right?

[00:05:05] I mean if the stars are shining then you know anyone can do anything. The USA team kind of looks like an NRI import sort of a thing right? I mean the star of the... The star of the match was this guy Saurabh. Saurabh Nidravalkar. Yeah right.

[00:05:22] Unpronounceable last name. Apologies to all Marathis. But yeah fantastic guy. And seems like one of those Sharma Ji ka betas right? I mean he played India under 19 cricket right? International. And he's got an MS in Computer Science from Cornell. He's a Principal Engineer in Oracle.

[00:05:43] And I mean the guy can sing right? I mean he plays ukulele and sings on Instagram and whatnot. Are you talking about him or are you talking about yourself? Well I mean I can't play cricket. But yeah what a fantastic guy. Seriously. Sounds like the complete deal.

[00:06:00] Yeah I mean Gunjan if you're interested. But yeah lot of fun stuff happening. Let's get on with the startup stuff. Yes. So the startup ecosystem has big aspirations from the new government that is forming and they're eagerly waiting for the new policy changes,

[00:06:17] the new budget which I think will be announced in the next month. What startups are really looking forward is to hear reforms in the EV space to strengthen that and even to support small town entrepreneurs and ensuring financial market stability.

[00:06:33] Some of the points that we have aggregated from various new platforms include policy reforms for smooth startup funding, corporate governance, regulatory hurdles, digital competition bill and a better integration with global systems. But what are some of the things that you are looking forward to personally?

[00:06:49] Yeah that's the list right? That's the list. You know I mean Manish Sabharwal of TeamLeaf often talks about this regulatory cholesterol that exists in the Indian financial system right? And I hope that that is eased out.

[00:07:04] Right that it's easier for people to invest in startups and also cash out. It's easier to start and shut down companies and those things will solve a plethora of problems really. But other than that as you rightly said on the EV side

[00:07:21] people are looking for clarity beyond the fame subsidies itself in terms of how we're going to build that ecosystem whether it's in terms of charging stations and accessories and so on and so forth. The focus on manufacturing should continue right?

[00:07:36] I mean supply chains are still running away from China and we do have this opportunity to make the most of it. So I've made the case for why we need another 100 or 200 of these ITIs

[00:07:50] the erstwhile ITIs that can teach people all of these skills on the electronics side of things and so on and so forth. Yeah and investments you know. FIIs have had a kind of seesaw time over the last couple of weeks right? Selling and buying and selling and buying.

[00:08:10] But hopefully you know foreign capital will be back for good. Continuity is good. Continuity represents stability and businesses love stability right? So yeah really looking forward to another 5 amazing years where the India story only grows. Yeah I think also something to really look forward to

[00:08:28] is the implementation of the digital competition bill. We have discussed that in our previous roundup as well. The way government is going to navigate this without really you know hurting the big tech companies that are operating in India

[00:08:41] because they have formed such an integral infrastructure layer in our population. Yeah these guys have to sufficiently Indianise you know. I made the point last roundup look we're not going to build the next Indian X. We're not going to build the next Indian Meta.

[00:08:55] Right we're not going to build the next Indian Google. Maybe we'll build something different right? But then these companies do have an omnipotent presence here. They do impact our lives and the best that we should do is to get these guys to Indianise sufficiently right?

[00:09:11] Pay their taxes here, employ people here, build an ecosystem and you know look at our entrepreneurs more kindly right? I mean set up these redressal mechanisms and so on and so forth and be transparent in their operating practices. So yeah that's really what we should do.

[00:09:30] And look at how we've negotiated with Tesla right? In fact Elon Musk was one of the first business leaders to sort of wish you know Prime Minister Modi post the election. Not the first. Well Gunjan is allured into the fact that

[00:09:46] there was a certain friend in Italy who wished the Prime Minister. We'll talk about that later in this roundup. Man the melody memes are lit right? Seriously amazing, amazing amazing memes. Keep up with the creativity guys. I think we should put up some of these on the start-up.

[00:10:03] I think this elections also saw a great meme fest. Yeah amazing memes. And it's only getting better right? I mean yeah. So yeah, so all of this and more to look forward to. I am super excited, I'm really kicked. I'm happy to leave behind all of this electioneering

[00:10:20] and like look forward to some policy stuff. But Indian start-ups are really making waves in the global scene. The World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers List was announced last week. This is an annual selection of the world's most innovative and impactful technology companies

[00:10:36] that have the potential to quote unquote significantly disrupt existing industries and contribute to solving global challenges. The list for 2024 consists 100 start-ups and out of those 100 start-ups mentioned, 10 start-ups are from India. So that is 10% of the list were Indian start-ups. Quick math. No, Prerna.

[00:10:58] The start-ups that were mentioned were of course Pixel that is in the space tech sector. Niramai which is developing a novel AI based test for detecting early stage breast cancer. Sarvam AI which is building foundational models for Indian languages. Then we have Ampere R that is creating dispatchable

[00:11:17] renewable energy generating plants. Cropin is developing a farm monitoring and management solution. Then we have Entry that is giving access to learning and up-skilling programs in Indian local languages using AI. On the health tech front, we have Healthplates which is developing AI powered electronic

[00:11:35] medical record software for the healthcare sector. International Battery Company that is manufacturing large sized rechargeable prismatic lithium ion nickel manganese cobalt batteries. That was a mouthful. That's a mouthful, yeah. That's all of the elements on the periodic table combined.

[00:11:54] Then we have Nextwave which is an AI driven platform that offers vernacular based coding courses. And last but not the least, we have Stringbio that is producing next gen ingredients for agriculture, animal feed and human nutrition for GHG gases. So a lot of unique companies here, right?

[00:12:13] Especially apart from the whole AI bit and Pixel of course that we have been talking about, there's a lot of things on the healthcare and agritech space. Yeah, Niramai has been doing some great work with breast cancer detection and so on. And it's so important, right?

[00:12:26] I mean, last week we had the session at WIMO on breast cancer and cervical cancer awareness, right? And it is, yeah, it's something that we definitely have to solve and I'm glad startups are getting involved on that front. But look at the type of problems

[00:12:43] these guys are solving, right? I mean, local problems that can be scaled internationally. And also proper deep tech stuff, right? AI and whatnot. So yeah, I'm really excited about what these guys will look like in another year or two years and so on.

[00:13:00] The World Economic Forum itself is a little irrelevant. I mean, it's become redundant over the last like, five, 10 years, I would say. You have like a bunch of buddhijivis from everywhere trying to like be puppet masters and move the pawns here and there.

[00:13:15] But yeah, I mean, this is a good list. It's had startups like Google earlier. Google was still a startup. Yeah, so it's a nice list to belong to. And as you said, I mean, 10% of the list, right? I mean, it's good mind share.

[00:13:33] Moving on, last week SAP announced the acquisition of Walkme, which is a digital adoption platform for a $1.5 billion cash deal. Well, if you have ever used SAP, it is really painful to not just derive value from it, but also to navigate in from various screens.

[00:13:51] SAP in fact, to address this issue launched SAP Enable now in 2017, but that really did not kick off well. The reason we're talking about this is because Walkme is a close competitor of Whatfix. Alok Goyal, who is an investor with Stellaris Partners had published

[00:14:09] a really interesting thread as to why this acquisition could prove advantages to Whatfix. One of the things he points out is that the team of Whatfix has pitched to SAP, but at that time SAP said, hey, you know what, we don't need your platform.

[00:14:24] We are good on our own. We have a great tech team. We'll build something in-house, but clearly that did not work out. Yeah, no, this is a very interesting acquisition, right? Walkme is about 260, 270 million closer to 300 mark. And 1.5 is let's say 5X multiple,

[00:14:41] which in these markets is a part for the course, I suppose. And yeah, kudos to Whatfix, man. I think there's a big win for Whatfix. They've been steadily taking business away from Walkme for a while now, right? And this whole digital adoption platform itself

[00:14:56] as a category has matured a great deal over the last five years. So much so that Gartner, Forrester have published multiple reports, right? And yeah, fantastic, fantastic stuff. As applications get complicated, you need some kind of an assistance to kind of navigate these applications

[00:15:16] and derive value from it. That is the whole fundamental premise of digital adoption platforms. And look, I mean, this is just inspiration for others in other categories to keep blowing away and keep at it, right? You might have a very large competitor in your space,

[00:15:35] but they are tired too, right? They're also facing all of this macro stuff on the market and whatnot. They also have to continuously rev the engine and whatnot, right? I mean, they are facing all of these challenges. And yeah, I mean, this is fantastic news really.

[00:15:55] And again, all the best to the Whatfix team. I hope they're able to run fast, run soon and capture more of the market. Also, I think Khadim has really built a fantastic team at Whatfix. They're growing in size and doing close to 60 million in revenue. Yeah, they are.

[00:16:12] And now I think that was gonna increase more with this acquisition. Yeah. And look, I mean, all of these large guys, right? I mean, whether it's SAP or whoever else, right? I mean, they all say they can build this stuff. It's easier said than done.

[00:16:23] It's easier said than done. I mean, this is one of those things that used to boggle my mind, you know, because you have infinite resources, right? Time, engineers, money, whatever you call it. Why can't you build every application possible, right? But it isn't as obvious, right?

[00:16:42] It isn't as easy as it seems. You know, I mean, I'll tell you consumer internet way back when in India, the number one question we see is would ask is, you know, why can't Google build this? Right, but 20 years of Google and you realize they can't build this.

[00:16:58] I think this time we can build another Google. Well, let's hope perplexity is that, I suppose. Right, yeah. Okay, on June 6th, the Ken published an article which was titled, The Study Abroad Business is Red Hot. So why is Leverage Edu anything but?

[00:17:18] Leverage Edu is a tech startup based in Gurgaon. They facilitate admissions for students in foreign universities. Quoting the article, the US $150 million startup needs both strict quality control to hold onto existing business and new markets to reduce its vulnerability as its markets raise their entry barrier.

[00:17:42] Akshay Chaturvedi, who is the founder of Leverage Edu had taken to Twitter to clarify a few things in the article, especially on like, on how he was misquoted and really that did not paint the narrative of Leverage Edu in a good light.

[00:17:55] Do you get the chance to read through the article? So I don't subscribe to the Ken morning context, a bunch of these folks, right? I mean, I just like, I don't get the point. I don't want to read hit pieces on companies, on founders.

[00:18:10] I don't want to know that really. Not to say that there aren't problems in startups. I mean, every startup I've told you is like super imperfect. That's what makes it a startup in the first place. I mean, it's almost like,

[00:18:22] the baby is learning how to walk and crawl and run and you're mocking the process in between. Right? Short of something illegal, immoral, unethical and so on. Right? I mean, there's always going to be these kinds of issues, right? Where startups aspire to do something

[00:18:41] and they're falling well short on most days. I mean, anyone who's been an operator in startups kind of realizes that more often than not you're failing, right? And to just say that, oh, you guys made all of this big tamasha about being whoever you are

[00:18:55] and then you're such a delta or such a distance away from that is, I don't know. I mean, I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to startups. So I don't like reading those kinds of pieces, right? Akshay has clarified plenty on Twitter. We'll link to that thread.

[00:19:14] You guys can check it out. We won't bore you with the details. But look, this is an important lesson for founders as well, right? The media is a double-edged sword. I mean, there's a guy, Andrew Zamosta, who published this wonderful blog

[00:19:27] that I keep referring to on the roundup often, right? The hype cycle for startups, right? Where the media kind of raises you, raises you, raises you, and then like, poof, drops you down, right? And then you make your way back again. So look, if you're gonna engage journalists,

[00:19:46] if you're gonna engage media, assume the worst, right? Just absolutely assume the worst because just the way the media business is set up, I think they benefit more from scandal. They benefit more from negative news. They benefit more from actually critiquing

[00:20:02] and pulling people down rather than the other, right? I mean, yeah, you can say that it's probably a reflection of society and human psychology, what not, but it is what it is, right? So if you're engaging journalists, just through my experience,

[00:20:17] what I've realized is record every damn conversation, and keep things. Also research the journalist before you interview. Yeah, yeah. We've had our own experiences where a bunch of data and privacy nuts wrote some crap about one of the startups

[00:20:37] that we work for, but it's just how it is, right? And if you look at Balaji Srinivasan or Elon Musk or even Larry Ellison, you know, talk about the media in a way that is less than flattering. It's for these reasons, right? All of them have suffered.

[00:20:54] And yeah, I really hope the quality of journalism improves, you know what I mean? That we're talking more positive stuff, right? I'm not saying all Kumbaya, Kool-Aid kind of stuff, but like I'm yet to see something like a deep dive on a particular sector, what opportunities there are,

[00:21:12] what startups could be doing, so on and so forth. Right, instead what you get is some of these hit pieces that just read like, you know, page three masala kind of stuff, right? Minus the, you know. Minus the masala. Minus the cocktail party kind of photos and whatnot.

[00:21:28] Right, so yeah, overall I just, I mean, I know these guys will recover and move on from this, right? Because I think Akshay made the point that those who matter really won't care, right? And those who care don't really matter. So Leverage Edo seems like an interesting platform,

[00:21:47] they've built this mentor platform where people can go and take guidance on admissions, on their dream colleges and whatnot. And this is a space that is like eternally viable. It's been a hard space for about 20, 25 years, right? And has assumed great importance post COVID obviously,

[00:22:07] but with as many students going abroad to study and do their masters and whatnot, we need such guidance and mentorship for sure. So wishing Akshay and the team all the very best as they build their venture out. Yeah, and also congratulations on your recent

[00:22:22] ESOP buyback program that you closed last week. And just to call out, I think Leverage Edo is only the second Indian company that has cracked a partnership with Australian universities. It's much, much more easier to have partnership deals with universities in Canada, US and UK,

[00:22:37] but not so much in Australia. So, and this is only the second company in India to do so. It takes a lot of hustle, man. I mean, the kid started this when he was 24, right? I mean, it takes a lot of effort. You know what I mean?

[00:22:49] It's yeah, I could go on about this for an hour, but I'll save you guys. Let us know what you think about this entire deal between journalism and startup building in the comments below. We'd love to go through some of your opinions on that.

[00:23:05] Moving on to the next topic, TCS has launched a new generative AI aggregator platform that is called AI Wisdom Next, and it cuts barriers for customers to develop and launch business solutions. The platform aggregates multiple generative AI technologies into a single interface.

[00:23:23] The reason I feel this is highly relevant, especially in today's time, is because the evolutions which you're seeing in the AI space is so, so much quicker. And since, I mean, think about when Chad GPT launched, right? Two years, one year back or two, one and a half,

[00:23:39] two years back. And now from text base, we have gone to vision, we have gone to speech, and now we're actually seeing AI girlfriends and boyfriend come out to life. Gunjan is obsessed with this AI girlfriend thing, dude. I mean, seriously, what is up? Best not discussed publicly.

[00:23:59] No, but I mean, look at all the businesses that are building on top of generative AI, right? I mean, if you're just packaging an AI feature and shipping it, then by the time the next evolution of AI comes in, you're becoming irrelevant.

[00:24:12] So this most successful businesses are the one that bakes in generative AI features into existing business rules to make it much more efficient and quicker and more accurate. And these are the kind of businesses that will essentially survive. I think it's a very relevant solution

[00:24:29] because obviously, gen AI is something that every enterprise in the world wants to adopt, but don't quite know how, right? And they will require someone like a TCS to sort of help them adopt this, right? And so what I understand with the Wisdom Next platform

[00:24:45] is that they have a bunch of playbooks for different industries on how they can immediately onboard gen AI and improve their processes by orders of magnitude, right? The greatest wealth in this whole phase is going to be made by services companies, for sure.

[00:25:04] We already talked about Accenture making four or five billion dollars of revenue, right? The largest in the space, right? More than OpenAI and so on. So these are the guys who are just acutely positioned to take over this space as such, right? So seems interesting.

[00:25:24] And in this interim period, you will need more such platforms and you will need more such innovation to help people adopt this technology. Yeah, moving on, Kari, do you know which was one of the most valued startups in India? No, I don't wanna say it.

[00:25:44] It's like he who shall not be named or they who shall not be named. Yeah, okay. Now tell me which is the least valued startup in India. We could start one right now. It should be more valuable than Biju's because HSBC and BlackRock are saying

[00:26:02] that their investment in Biju's is now worth nothing. BlackRock has become the first investor to publicly signal the company's troubles, marking their investments in Biju's as zero dollars in their recent financial reports. Tough scene, really tough scene. I mean, we've spoken plenty about the implosion and whatnot, right?

[00:26:22] But look, there's gonna be plenty of write-offs. I mean, folks who wrote checks in 2021, I mean, you're not gonna make money off of that. I mean, you invest at insane multiples and post the correction, it's down to third or fourth of whatever the valuation was.

[00:26:42] So how are you gonna make money? I mean, it's gonna be fighting the laws of physics to even get to whatever valuation multiples are reasonable at this point of time. So yeah, tough, tough, tough, but I guess it is what it is. Okay, before we react

[00:27:01] to some of the most trending things on Twitter, here's a quick roundup of the notable fundraisers from the week. Lenscard raised $200 million in a secondary investment from Temasek and Fidelity Management and Research Company. FIBE, which is a consumer lending platform, raised $90 million from TR Capital,

[00:27:18] Trifecta Capital, Amara Partners and others. Wow. Ether Energy raised 286 crore rupees or $34.5 million from Stride Ventures and its co-founders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain. Astro Talk raised 110 crore rupees or $14 million from Elevate Venture Partners and Left Lean Capital. And tech startup Test Sigma raised 8.2 million

[00:27:42] from Mass Mutual Ventures, Axel, Strive and BoltCap. You know, one startup I really want to talk about from the list is Astro Talk. I think this is something inherently Indian. And that startup has also been in the news a lot. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, good check sizes, right?

[00:27:59] Yeah, in the fundraisers are on the rise. Yeah, yeah. As we're seeing. Awesome. But yeah, this Astro Talk, man, I mean, there's a huge niche, right? And any niche with India size population is a significant niche, right?

[00:28:16] I myself do check Rao Kalam and all of that stuff, right? So I'm into it. Is it a good time for you? No, I mean, I didn't check. But hopefully yes. Yeah, I mean, it's a good niche and people do swear by stuff like this, right?

[00:28:33] I mean, they do check their horoscope and things to that effect. Some people, I don't know. What horoscope? The one that gets published in Hindustan Times? No, no, not that. I mean, that's like entertainment and stuff. This is like proper Jyotish and stuff, right?

[00:28:46] I mean, so they will show you like what planets are causing you to behave the way you are and suggest remedies and so on, right? Maybe I know a little too much about this because I downloaded a report last week.

[00:29:00] I'm yet to read it, but hey, hey, hey. We all have our guilty pleasures. Yeah. Talking about guilty pleasures. Here we are Jensen Wong signing what appears to be, well, why don't you take a look at it? So Carrie, at what point in the market cycle

[00:29:25] does the CEO of a company begin signing autographs? Yeah, I mean, signing autographs in weird places for sure. But Jensen is a rock star man and I'm glad that entrepreneurs are getting that rock star celebrity treatment, right? Obviously, creates a lot more aspiration

[00:29:43] and more people should totally become founders and sign autographs. I mean, just look at his face. We zoom in on his face, right? He really looks happy. He looks like he's made it. And more happier than him are the people standing beside him. Yeah, exactly.

[00:29:58] Dude, I mean, story time, okay? So 2013 or 14, I don't know, NASCAR product conclave, Fanindra Sama, okay? Of Redbus. I mean, he had just sold Redbus around that time, I think. It was the first time I saw people take selfies and that was not even that front camera time.

[00:30:17] You know, I mean, it was back then. And it was the first time I saw people take selfies with a founder. He got like total rock star reception, you know? People just lining up to take those selfies and whatnot. So we've come a long way since,

[00:30:34] although we haven't seen an Indian founder do this and likely we won't, but who knows? Who knows, who knows? So Mahesh Murthy on Twitter posted recently saying that if you have ever stayed in a hotel in Hyderabad, the Tilangana cops sent your details

[00:30:49] and that of who you stayed with to an American crypto firm that never took your informed consent for this. In Hyderabad, if you look at it, there are over 1,100 hotels, each with an average room capacity of 25 and an average occupancy rate of 75%.

[00:31:06] So that means that up to one crore names of hotel residents a year have been sent illegally. And what is shocking here is this is done by the state police and this data from, let's say government bodies are leaving the country and going into private hands

[00:31:23] that are not even situated in the country. That is pretty alarming. See Indians are very casual about data and stuff, right? And you know, this is why we need things like the data production bill and whatnot. While we all value the convenience

[00:31:40] that some of this stuff gives us, whether it's other and so on, we really have to be careful how this data is gonna be misused. This is like a seriously creepy thread actually. Yeah. Right? So yeah. Zebi data, the company is called Zebi data. Zebi data.

[00:31:56] Sounds like GPT generated. Zebi data. Okay. But talking about data protection, Adobe recently made changes to its privacy policies. It says that Adobe now has the power for worldwide royalty-free license to reproduce, display and distribute whatever content you create on its platform. Now I think as a creator,

[00:32:20] this should be pretty alarming. Yeah. First of all, I mean, congratulations on your hat trick of segues, right? Speaking of guilty pleasures, talking about India and speaking of data and privacy, right? So everyone, I think that deserves like a round of applause. Good job, Gunjan Saha.

[00:32:38] You're getting better as a host somewhat. Right? But yeah, this look, I mean, this is shocking, you know? And it's black and white, right? I mean, it's pretty clear that they're saying that everything you produce using their platform is theirs. Yeah.

[00:32:55] Likely they will use it to train AI models and whatnot to make these designers redundant, right? Insane. So Scott Belsky who is, you know, founder of Behance, which got sold to Adobe, has clarified on the thread saying that, you know,

[00:33:09] we put out a clarification and so on, right? But again, I mean, I don't know, right? I mean, it's in black and white and you're made to sign a legal agreement saying that anything I produce could be, you know, your property, property of Adobe, right?

[00:33:22] So that is insanely unfriendly to creators, you know? Anyway, they have people moving to Figma and Canva and all of those things. Yeah. And this is not great for sure. It's like saying Amazon owns all the companies that host the servers on AWS. Yeah, somewhat.

[00:33:45] That's a good attempt. Good one. Fourth one was like a little bit of a miss, but yeah. Okay. Anyway, moving on. Speaking of Segways. Speaking of Segways, here's a cool YouTube reel that we came across of Elon Musk and the things that he does on Christmas Eve. Damn!

[00:34:16] What a badass move, dude. What a boss. Wait, but I wonder what exactly went on in the flight for which it took a U-turn to go to Sacramento. Man, Elon is such a boss, man. I mean, we're just like fortunate

[00:34:31] to live in the times of Lord Elon, I'll tell you. Really what he did with Twitter was an inflection point in work culture, in how tech companies are run, really. Single-handedly responsible for trimming the bloat of all of the tech businesses. I mean, you have Google right now

[00:34:54] talking about productivity and firing people and so on and so forth. So Elon, again, hats off to him and I think everyone kind of owes him for igniting that fire up people's arses, right? To get them to move faster and think beyond whatever they've been doing.

[00:35:13] So yeah, fantastic stuff. Carry on, I got a question for you. Yeah, shoot. So who do you have dinner with, Modi Ji or Elon Musk? I think Modi Ji, for sure. Because running a country is way, way, way more complex than running a corporation, right?

[00:35:28] I mean, a lot of the times, especially folks in the tech world, they kind of underestimate the complexity of politics, managing different interest groups and then how all the second order effects can throw things off. And kind of think that politicians could be CEOs,

[00:35:47] but they can't, they absolutely cannot. And yeah, despite Elon being who he is, which is probably one of the five greatest human beings alive at this point of time, right? I would pick Prime Minister Modi for sure. But I think that was such an obvious answer.

[00:36:09] Yeah, it was. I mean, what do you expect? Okay. 3.0. Now wrapping up the roundup, we start off talking about Indian politics. Proto-Sphinx on Twitter said that if you consume too much politics instead of actually doing things, then go out and contribute.

[00:36:28] He says that it's very easy to criticize the government for not doing their job. But oftentimes we forget that as citizens, it is our job as well to contribute to nation building and development. Kind of preachy, but I think it makes a very valid point.

[00:36:43] No man, he's always on point, right? So Proto-Sphinx is Shashank of Deskera. And yeah, he's one of those guys that really look forward to reading and perhaps meeting someday, right? He's always on point. I mean, look, I think there's all of this news and information flying at you.

[00:37:05] And if you live in this constant state of reaction, then you're just gonna be paralyzed by all of that stuff. You're not gonna be able to do anything productive and that's absolutely true, right? So at some point you have to start distancing yourself from that

[00:37:20] and also keeping it real, right? How much of that can you really influence? How much of that really, really matters, right? So do something that is more meaningful to your proximal surroundings, right? Simple, simple things. Fix things around the house, like do something in your office

[00:37:36] that can change something for the better and so on and so forth, right? I mean, these small little things really tend to add up for sure. And if you see something wrong, I mean, go ahead and fix it, right? Don't think that it's a politician's responsibility

[00:37:52] or someone else somewhere else will do something about it. I mean, it could be your responsibility and while I'm saying this, I mean, I'm also kind of saying this to myself. I mean, after these elections, I have decided to pick one or two things

[00:38:05] that I'm gonna start working on, right? Which could be in the realm of public life, right? I mean, service and so on, right? And you don't have to wait for retirement to do that. This country is mine. Okay, I think this was a fun conversation, man. Sing.

[00:38:25] We'll wait for you to finish. Cue Swadesh music. What a movie. Alright guys, so I think with that, we'll let you go. Thanks so much for staying with us right till the end. We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as...

[00:38:42] doing the biggest yawn I've ever seen in like three years, I think. It's almost 2 o'clock. I think that alarm checks out. Yeah. He's gonna get a snooze alarm now. Alright guys, thanks for staying with us right till the end.

[00:38:55] We hope you have some interesting takeaways from this episode. Please keep sending us your feedback on the comment section, DM us on social media, do all the good stuff and please, please, please rate this episode on your favorite podcast platform. That means a lot to us.

[00:39:09] That's all. Have a great week ahead. We'll be back again with more exciting updates, content and jokes next week. Take care. Bye-bye. Jai Hind. Jai Hind.