Digital Financial News

By Supantha Mukherjee

Digital asset investment products witnessed outflows of $16 million last week, putting an end to an 11-week streak of consecutive inflows.

The changes will be effective from December 18. The fund house informed the change to its investors through an addendum. Rs 100 SIP in Tata MF schemes

Top M&As in 2023: In 2023, the Indian business landscape underwent a radical metamorphosis fuelled by a record-breaking M&A spree. The year witnessed a staggering 72 per cent increase in deal volume compared to 2022, according to Deloitte's findings. The total value exceeded a colossal USD 150 billion, according to Bain & Company.

SaaS market has been experiencing remarkable expansion, with projections indicating a substantial rise from $237.48 billion in 2022 to $273.55 billion in 2023. The SaaS industry is expected to maintain this impressive trajectory, reaching an estimated $908.21 billion by 2030, boasting an 18.7% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). The Software as a Service (SaaS) sector in India is gearing up for an extraordinary phase of growth and innovation in 2024.

Digital will be a convenience but plastic will remain in vogue albeit the drop in their usage, says Ramanathan RV, CEO & Co-founder, Hyperface.

In the ever-shifting world of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s recent price movement paints a complex picture, trading at $41,079 with a 2.01% decrease on Monday. Amidst this volatility, notable voices in the industry weigh in, offering diverse outlooks. VanEck’s CEO stands firm in the belief that Bitcoin will retain its status as the premier digital store of value. In a more futuristic projection, Cathie Wood speculates an astronomical rise for Bitcoin, predicting a 3,356% increase by 2030.

private equity investor InvAscent, through India Life Sciences Fund IV, has invested $10 million to acquire a minority stake in ABI Health Technologies Private Limited Ltd, a health-tech Software as a Service (SaaS) company headquartered in Bangalore. Founded in 2018 by Ajit Veerappan, ABI is a health-tech SaaS business which provides technology solutions to hospitals and diagnostic Labs. The company’s product, ClaimBook, helps a hospital to automate its entire health insurance claims management process, improving revenue cycles while reducing revenue leakage.

The next few months are crucial for final-year college students. It involves selecting a line of work, going through placement processes and interviews, and generally taking the first steps towards the rest of their lives. The process can lead to more questions than answers. This series, the Class of 2024, aims to simplify the way to navigate the world beyond the campus by talking about the sectors with opportunities, ways to use online platforms and preparing resumes, among other things. The fourth of the 10-part 'Class of 2024' series looks at the emerging areas freshers can tap for jobs. With shifts in technology increasing, the world of jobs is also evolving.

Udaan on Monday laid off 100 to 120 employees, about 10% of its workforce, days after raising $340 million in a funding round. Most of the job cuts happened in the go-to-market (GTM) team, which handles relationships with sellers, among other responsibilities, people in the know said. The layoffs, the sources explained, were due to redundancies following a rejig of the business in September.

More companies are turning to blockchain-based private credit as they seek financing amid increasing interest rates, leading to a significant surge in this sector. 

Now-defunct crypto exchange FTX has revealed its latest proposal aimed at returning billions of dollars to customers and creditors, marking the start of the final stage in resolving its bankruptcy case.

Fresh tokens enter the market frequently, yet only a select few succeed in capturing the interest of investors and leaving a lasting impression. Among the recent standout tokens are Bonk Inu (BONK) and Retik Finance (RETIK).

FTX Trading Ltd. unveiled its latest proposal for returning billions of dollars to customers and creditors, kicking off a final round of potential squabbles about how best to end the bankruptcy case of the fraud-tainted crypto firm. The reorganisation plan left some of the most important questions unanswered, including whether FTX will restart its defunct crypto exchange, how the company will estimate the value of some digital tokens and how much creditors can expect to get back.

Stock market today: Yes Bank shares have been in uptrend for near one month. However, it seems that the private bank stock is still not in mood to stop its rally. Yes Bank share price today opened upside and went on to climb to a new 52-week peak of ₹23 per share levels on NSE, logging an intraday gain of near 5 per cent during Monday stock market deals.

Tech Mahindra’s Indus project; AI4Bharat at IIT-Madras; Project Vaani–part of the Bhasha AI project of ARTPARK and the Indian Institute of Science’s pan-India language initiatives; Sarvam AI’s OpenHathi series; and CoRover.ai’s BharatGPT. Generative AI, or GenAI, refers to the ability of LLM-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos (hence the term, multimodal).

National Investigation Agency (NIA) carried out searches at 19 locations in South India by busting a «highly radicalised jihadi terror group,» sources said. The raids have been underway since this morning. The anti-terror agency is conducting these raids in close coordination with the state police forces. The sources, privy to the development, did not share the inputs about the exact location and about the jihadi group due to some operational reasons. Of the 19 places being searched by the NIA, the majority of them are linked to suspects affiliated with the jihadi group. As per inputs, the terror group is engaged in anti-India activities and has learned to plan attacks, recruiting youths, said the sources. The move comes days after the NIA raided multiple locations across Bengaluru, Karnataka, in a case relating to the radicalization of prisoners by a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist. A total of six locations, including the houses of four accused, one of whom is still absconding, were extensively searched in the case on December 13 as part of the NIA's continuing investigations into the case (RC-28/2023/NIA/DLI).

Narendra Modi will flag off the second Vande Bharat Express train running between Varanasi and New Delhi today i.e. on 18 December. The train will be flagged off at around 2:15 pm.

A material impact may start showing in the fiscal fourth quarter (January-March 2024) or the following three-month period (first quarter of fiscal 2025), they said.

PhonePe recently made an offer to cash-strapped Dunzo to invest a significant amount in its merchant network business, at a time the latter is desperately seeking cash, sources aware of the talks said. The proposal, however, didn’t move forward due to concerns among the troubled startup’s investors due to the strategic nature of PhonePe, which is majority owned by Walmart after its split from ecommerce firm Flipkart, these sources involved in the discussions said.

Slice is in talks for a $100 million equity funding round, according to three people in the know. Early conversations have happened with existing backers, but the leadership is looking to get an external investor to lead the round. The talks are still at an early stage and, given the overall funding winter, might take a few months to close, the people said.