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This is part of a series of interviews with the winners of The Economic Times Startup Awards 2023. Govind Agarwal and Afsar Ahmad, cofounders of online gaming firm Gameberry Labs that won the Bootstrap Champ category in The Economic Times Startup Awards 2023, said the company is focussed on growing steadily without any external funding. The Bengaluru-based startup, in fact, is considering acquisitions as profit piles up. While the online gaming sector has seen active investor interest in India, Ahmad, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, said Gameberry was averse to raising capital right from the beginning.

The worlds of Lucy Jackson and Nikki Westcott from We the Wild Ones and Blue Mountains artist Stephen Travers couldn’t be further apart at first glance.

In the wake of a $27 million cryptocurrency heist at CoinEx, the crypto world is abuzz with the allure of privacy coins like Monero ($XMR) and the innovative funding marketplace Borroe.Finance ($ROE), a DeFi project emerging as a golden opportunity for those looking to ride the Web3 revolution.

NEW DELHI : India expects to sign investment pacts worth ₹10 trillion during the Global Maritime India Summit in New Delhi slated for 17-19 October, Union minister for ports, shipping and waterways Sarbananda Sonowal said. In an interview, Sonowal said India is in talks with Russia to operationalize the recently proposed route of Chennai to Vladivostok, potentially reducing the maritime journey between the two countries to a mere 12 days. The development will facilitate trade between the two countries by providing a faster and cheaper way to transport oil.

Jammu and Kashmir has achieved a «significant milestone» in e-governance by providing over 1,028 services in online mode to citizens, institutions and business establishments, according to an official release issued on Sunday.

Bard — Google's competitor to ChatGPT — got an upgrade. One interesting new feature, called Bard Extensions, allows the artificial intelligence chatbot to connect to a user's Gmail, Google Docs and Google Drive accounts.

Coinbase's Blockchain Security Team recently identified a significant shift in the Zcash network's hash power distribution. A single mining pool, ViaBTC, was found to control over 51% of the network's computational power, raising concerns about potential security vulnerabilities.

As of today, Bitcoin is priced at $26,600, witnessing a subtle rise of nearly 0.10% over the past 24 hours and commanding a trading volume of $6.4 billion. 

India and South Asia Samiran Gupta has resigned, according to an update on his LinkedIn account. Gupta joined X in February 2022 before Elon Musk acquired the company. He continued on his job after Musk fired over 80 per cent of employees in India in November. Gupta's updated profile on Linkedin shows that he served the company till September 2023.

Amit Shah on Sunday said the three proposed criminal laws are people-centric, have the flavour of Indian soil and their main purpose is to protect the constitutional, human and personal rights of citizens. Addressing the International Lawyers' Conference organised by the Bar Council of India here, Shah also said the approach of the three bills is also to provide justice rather than mete out punishment. He appealed to all lawyers in the country to provide their suggestions to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS-2023), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS-2023) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA-2023) so that the country can have the best laws that benefit all. The three bills, which were introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 11, will replace the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Criminal Procedure Act, 1898, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 respectively. «India's criminal justice system was imprinted with colonial law.

social media marketers is growing in today’s highly digital landscape as big and small businesses invest in building their social media presence. These marketers leverage social media to help businesses achieve their marketing goals, reach the right audience, strengthen brand awareness and increase sales. But in a world where anyone can create and manage accounts, how can an individual build credibility and stand out in the market? Navdeep Sharma, Co-founder of ReelStar, a social media platform enabling users to monetise their content, says individuals must consider implementing various strategies such as defining a brand, maintaining quality of the content and ensuring consistency to gain credibility and stand out in the competitive social media market.

By John Kallelil

Apple has plans to scale up production in India by over five-fold to around $40 billion (about 3.32 lakh crore) in the next four-five years, according to government sources. The official, who did not wish to be named, said the company has crossed the $7-billion production mark in the last financial year. An email query sent to Apple did not elicit any reply.

LG Chem Ltd has entered a partnership with China's Huayou Group's subsidiary Youshan, it said on Sunday, to build a joint electric vehicle (EV) battery material plant in Morocco to diversify its portfolio. Huayou has joined the growing number of Chinese electric vehicle and battery companies seeking to expand overseas to get closer to their foreign clients and benefit from local incentives.

India’s image as a leading space technology player and reaffirming its position as an attractive investment destination. India is just the fourth country after the US, Russia, and China to achieve a soft landing on the moon, and at a reasonable cost of $75 million. India’s space economy is expected to grow to $12.5 billion by 2025. The multiplier effects of space technology expertise will spill over into component manufacturing, satellite systems, telecom, and assembly, and most importantly, it will create highly skilled and high-paying jobs. India is making its entry into another high-skill Industry — semiconductors.

Source- BloombergSource- BloombergSource- Bloomberg, JM Financial Research We continue to believe India’s decoupling with the world as far as equity markets are concerned which has started in the last 6 months will be sustained, because of the country’s resilient economic growth of 6-7% p.a. more than twice as much relative to the world; lower foreign debt dependence for its growth and very strong corporate profitability growth of over 15% CAGR next three years. In the longer run over a 20-year period history has shown all three sectors in India have given robust and similar returns to investors, ranging from a cagr of 15% to 17%.

crypto assets could threaten the effectiveness of monetary policy,” noted the Synthesis Paper developed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Financial Stability Board (FSB) at the request of the Indian G20 Presidency. The risks of crypto-assets or virtual digital assets (VDA) assuming the status of a “shadow” currency has also been a key concern articulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), prompting the Indian financial services regulator to push for a complete ban on crypto-assets. An important consensus from the New Delhi Declaration adopted by G20 leaders is that a global coordinated approach to crypto-asset regulation is required. A key challenge faced by regulators across jurisdictions when looking to supervise crypto-assets is the blurring of geographical boundaries. Any person with access to the internet can transact on a blockchain-based private cryptocurrency, allowing for seamless transactions with counterparties across multiple jurisdictions. Several crypto-assets operate without any intermediaries, making regulation even more difficult. Consequently, a framework that has “buy-in” from regulators across jurisdictions is the only effective way to regulate crypto-assets. The Synthesis Paper seeks to address this very problem. It sets out a comprehensive policy and regulatory response to address the financial stability and macroeconomic risks triggered by the widespread use of crypto-assets. Regulators across jurisdictions will still need to frame their own rules but can rely on the broad policy recommendations of the IMF and FSB (as set out in the Synthesis Paper).

WhatsApp are the next engine of growth and key priority for Meta in India, its top executive said exuding confidence that the company is «just getting started» given the «immense headroom» here, as more businesses digitise and transform. Businesses across the board are innovating and using WhatsApp to reach new audiences with sectors such as banking, e-commerce, gaming and small businesses taking the lead, Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President, Meta India, said. Businesses all across are innovating right from bill payment to sale of metro tickets, or banks sending statement balances, she said citing instances of how companies are embracing WhatsApp.

Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, the retail arm of Reliance Industries, has received the full subscription amount of Rs 2,069.50 crore from the global investment firm KKR and has allotted 1.71 crore equity shares. Following the share allotment, KKR's shareholding in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) has increased to 1.42 per cent, from 1.17 per cent. «Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd today received the subscription amount of Rs 2,069.50 crore from Alyssum Asia Holdings II Pte.

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