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Workers inspect smart phone components at the visual inspection area of the surface mount technology workshop inside the Realme factory in Greater Noida, India: Anindito Mukerjee | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Anindito Mukerjee | Bloomberg | Getty Images

India’s booming tech sector has suffered a major blow as startup darlings Byju’s and Paytm plunge into crisis amid regulatory scrutiny and alleged mismanagement.

“There’s been a bit of a reality check for the last couple of years in terms of how to keep corporate governance practices up at a level which is sustainable and at a world class level,” said Karan Mohla, general partner at venture capital firm B Capital Group.

Paytm, once a fintech star in India, has been mired in controversy since March 2022, after the Reserve Bank of India ordered the fintech giant’s banking unit to stop onboarding new customers with immediate effect.

A subsequent audit “revealed persistent non-compliances and continued material supervisory concerns in the bank,” the central bank said on Jan. 31.

Starting from March this year, Paytm was not allowed to continue accepting fresh deposits in its accounts or its digital wallet.

Yet to be profitable, Paytm is also reportedly being probed by the federal anti-fraud agency on possible violations of foreign exchange laws.

On Feb. 26, One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, said in an exchange filing that founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma had resigned from the board of Paytm Payments Bank.

During the pandemic, Paytm capitalized on the digital payments boom in India, reporting a 3.5 times growth in transactions. Investors like SoftBank, Alibaba Group and Ant Financial bet big on Paytm, but its stock price has slumped more than 70% since its IPO in November 2021.

SoftBank and Ant Group are now reportedly cutting their stakes in the payments company, according to local media.

Paytm doesn't have a clear path to profitability and that's irking investors: Analyst

“Venture capital investors and founders have a greater responsibility to make sure that governance in the company is sound,” said Ashish Wadhwani, co-founder and managing partner of IvyCap Ventures.

Byju’s, India’s most valuable startup at one time, is also struggling to survive. The Indian edtech startup has seen its valuation plummet from $22 billion to $1 billion, and faces a series of problems including alleged accounting irregularities and purported mismanagement.

The unprofitable company, which offers services ranging from online tutorials to offline coaching, attracted billions of dollars from investors during the pandemic when traditional classrooms were shuttered.

The company is under scrutiny after the Indian government reportedly ordered an inspection into Byju’s finances and accounting practices, according to Bloomberg on July 11.

“I think that the sector is going to be permanently scarred because of the development with Byju’s, because people are not going to look at that as an isolated problem. They will look at it as a larger edtech viability problem,” said Bhavish Sood, general partner at India-based venture capital firm Modulor Capital and former research director with consulting firm Gartner.

Inflated valuations

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the digital revolution in India.

From online education and food delivery to online shopping, tech companies saw a surge in demand for their products and services.

The government recognized more than 14,000 new startups in 2021 — compared to only 733 between 2016 and 2017, according to India’s Economic Survey for 2021-2022.

As a result, India became the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world after the U.S. and China, the survey showed.

In 2021, a record 44 Indian startups achieved unicorn status — valued at $1 billion or more, taking the overall tally of unicorns in India to 83.

Venture funding into Indian startups hit a record $41.6 billion in 2021, according to data from global startup data platform Tracxn.

But the tide has since turned.

Funding for Indian startups plunged 83% in 2023 from the record high $7 billion in 2021, as global venture funding dried up amid rising macroeconomic uncertainties, such as increased interest rates.

Byju’s valuation plummeted 95% after investors cut their stakes in multiple rounds. It was most recently slashed to $1 billion, after BlackRock downsized its holdings in Byju’s last month, according to media reports.

The venture capital model has broken down over the last two years, says advisor

The regulatory crackdown also hit Paytm hard, slashing its valuation to $3 billion as of Mar. 7, according to LSEG data. That’s a sharp decline from the nearly $20 billion valuation when it was listed in November 2021.

“There is no doubt that valuations were very stretched in 2021, early 2022,” said Wadhwani from IvyCap Ventures. “Some companies have done IPOs at valuations which were just not tenable and that caused a lot of stress in the market.”

Byju’s is facing a cash crunch, announcing in January that it was raising a $200 million rights issue of shares to clear “immediate liabilities” and for other operational costs. The firm is reportedly struggling with debt repayments and paying staff salaries.

“Companies which don’t have cash are being forced to do down rounds,” said Wadhwani, referring to funding rounds in which firms raise capital at a lower valuation than a previous round.

“Companies which don’t have a sustainable model are obviously going to go out of business because no one is going to fund them at crazy valuations,” he added.

“But also again, businesses which are run on fundamentals will continue to get funding.”

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Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

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Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

Sanjay Beri, chief executive officer and founder of Netskope Inc., listens during a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco, California.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cloud security platform Netskope will go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NTSK,” the company said in an initial public offering filing Friday.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said annual recurring revenue grew 33% to $707 million, while revenues jumped 31% to about $328 million in the first half of the year.

But Netskope isn’t profitable yet. The company recorded a $170 million net loss during the first half of the year. That narrowed from a $207 million loss a year ago.

Netskope joins an increasing number of technology companies adding momentum to the surge in IPO activity after high inflation and interest rates effectively killed the market.

So far this year, design software firm Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, while crypto firm Circle soared 168% in its first trading day. CoreWeave has also popped since its IPO, while trading app eToro surged 29% in its May debut.

Read more CNBC tech news

Netskope’s offering also coincides with a busy period for cybersecurity deals.

The year’s two biggest technology deals include Alphabet’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and Palo Alto Networksambitious plan to buy Israeli identity security company CyberArk for $25 billion.

Founded in 2012, Netskope made a name for itself in its early years in the cloud access security broker space. The company lists Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Zscaler, Broadcom and Fortinet as its major competitors.

Netskope’s biggest backers include Accel, Lightspeed Ventures and Iconiq, which recently benefited from Figma’s stellar debut.

Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are leading the offering. Netskope listed 13 other Wall Street banks as underwriters.

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Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband next month

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Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband next month

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta is planning to use its annual Connect conference next month to announce a deeper push into smart glasses, including the launch of the company’s first consumer-ready glasses with a display, CNBC has learned.

That’s one of the two new devices Meta is planning to unveil at the event, according to people familiar with the matter. The company will also launch its first wristband that will allow users to control the glasses with hand gestures, the people said.

Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, AR and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and obtained its current moniker after Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021.

The glasses are internally codenamed Hypernova and will include a small digital display in the right lens of the device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

The device is expected to cost about $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the people said. CNBC reported in October that Meta was working with Luxottica on consumer glasses with a display.

Meta declined to comment. Luxottica, which is based in France and Italy, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Meta began selling smart glasses with Luxottica in 2021 when the two companies released the first-generation Ray-Ban Stories, which allowed users to take photos or videos using simple voice commands. The partnership has since expanded, and last year included the addition of advanced AI features that made the second generation of the product an unexpected hit with early adopters. 

Luxottica owns a number of glasses brands, including Ray-Ban, and licenses many others like Prada. It’s unclear what brand Luxottica will use for the glasses with AR, but a Meta job listing posted this week said the company is looking for a technical program manager for its “Wearables organization,” which “is responsible for the Ray-Ban AR glasses and other wearable hardware.”

In June, CNBC reported that Meta and Luxottica plan to release Prada-branded smart glasses. Prada glasses are known for having thick frames and arms, which could make them a suitable option for the Hypernova device, one of the people said. 

Meta Connect 2024 kicks off

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Connect to showcase the company’s experimental Orion AR glasses.

The Orion features AR capabilities on both lenses, capable of blending 3D digital visuals into the physical world, but the device served only as a prototype to show the public what could be possible with AR glasses. Still, Orion built some positive momentum for Meta, which since late 2020 has endured nearly $70 billion in losses from its Reality Labs unit that’s in charge of building hardware devices.

With Hypernova, Meta will finally be offering glasses with a display to consumers, but the company is setting low expectations for sales, some of the sources said. That’s because the device requires more components than its voice-only predecessors, and will be slightly heavier and thicker, the people said.

Meta and Ray-Ban have sold 2 million pairs of their second-generation glasses since 2023, Luxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February. In July, Luxottica said that revenue from sales of the smart glasses had more than tripled year over year.

As part of an extension agreement between Meta and Luxottica announced in September, Meta obtained a stake of about 3% in the glasses company according to Bloomberg. Meta also gets exclusive rights to Luxottica’s brands for its smart glasses technology for a number of years, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC in June.

Although Hypernova will feature a display, those visual features are expected to be limited, people familiar with the matter said. They said the color display will offer about a 20 degree field of view — meaning it will appear in a small window in a fixed position — and will be used primarily to relay simple bits of information, such as incoming text messages. 

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, said earlier this month that there are advantages to having just one display rather than two, including a lower price.

“Monocular displays have a lot going for them,” Bosworth said in an Instagram video. “They’re affordable, they’re lighter, and you don’t have disparity correction, so they’re structurally quite a bit easier.”

‘Interact with an AI assistant’

Other details of Meta’s forthcoming glasses were disclosed in a July letter from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to a lawyer representing Meta. While the letter redacted the name of the company and the product, a person with knowledge of the matter confirmed that it was in reference to Meta’s Hypernova glasses.

“This model will enable the user to take and share photos and videos, make phone calls and video calls, send and receive messages, listen to audio playback and interact with an AI assistant in different forms and methods, including voice, display, and manual interactions,” according to the letter, dated July 23.

The letter from CBP was part of routine communication between companies and the U.S. government when determining the country of origin for a consumer product. It refers to the product as “New Smart Glasses,” and says the device will feature “a lens display function that allows the user to interface with visual content arising from the Smart Features, and components providing image data retrieval, processing, and rendering capabilities.”

CBP didn’t provide a comment for this story.

The Hypernova glasses will also come paired with a wristband that will use technology built by Meta’s CTRL Labs, said people familiar with the matter. CTRL Labs, which Meta acquired in 2019, specializes in building neural technology that could allow users to control computing devices using gestures in their arms. 

The wristband is expected to be a key input component for the company’s future release of full AR glasses, so getting data now with Hypernova could improve future versions of the wristband, the people said. Instead of using camera sensors to track body movements, as with Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s wristband uses so-called sEMG sensor technology, which reads and interprets the electrical signals from hand movements.

One of the challenges Meta has faced with the wristband involves how people choose to wear it, a person familiar with the product’s development said. If the device is too loose, it won’t be able to read the user’s electrical signals as intended, which could impact its performance, the person said. Also, the wristband has run into issues in testing related to which arm it’s worn on, how it works on men versus women and how it functions on people who wear long sleeves.

The CTRL Labs team published a paper in Nature in July about its wristband, and Meta wrote about it in a blog post. In the paper, the Meta team detailed its use of machine learning technology to make the wristband work with as many people as possible. The additional data collected by the upcoming device should improve those capabilities for future Meta smart glasses.

“We successfully prototyped an sEMG wristband with Orion, our first pair of true augmented reality (AR) glasses, but that was just the beginning,” Meta wrote in the post. “Our teams have developed advanced machine learning models that are able to transform neural signals controlling muscles at the wrist into commands that drive people’s interactions with the glasses, eliminating the need for traditional—and more cumbersome—forms of input.”

Bloomberg reported the wristband component in January.

Meta has recently started reaching out to developers to begin testing both Hypernova and the accompanying wristband, people familiar with the matter said. The company wants to court third-party developers, particularly those who specialize in generative AI, to build experimental apps that Meta can showcase to drum up excitement for the smart glasses, the people said.

In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce a third-generation of its voice-only smart glasses with Luxottica at Connect, one person said.

That device was also referenced by CBP in its July letter, referring to it as “The Next Generation Smart Glasses.” The glasses will include “components that provide capacitive touch functionality, allowing users to interact with the Smart Glasses through touch gestures,” the letter said.

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Google shares rise on report of Apple using Gemini for Siri

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Google shares rise on report of Apple using Gemini for Siri

Google CEO Sundar Pichai gestures to the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.

Camille Cohen | Afp | Getty Images

Alphabet shares rose on a Friday report that Apple is in early discussions to use Google’s Gemini AI models for an updated version of the iPhone-maker’s Siri assistant.

The company’s shares rose more than 3% on the Bloomberg report, which said Apple recently inquired of Google about the potential for the search giant to build a custom AI model that would power a new Siri that could launch next year. Google’s flagship AI models Gemini have consistently been atop key benchmarks for artificial intelligence advancements while Apple has struggled to define its own AI strategy.

The reported talks come as Google faces potential risk to its lucrative search deals with Apple. This month, a U.S. judge is expected to rule on the penalties for Google’s alleged search monopoly, in which the Department of Justice recommending eliminating exclusionary agreements with third parties. For Google, that refers to its search position on Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices — deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts.

The Android maker has said its Gemini models will become the default assistant on Android phones. Google this year has showed Gemini doing capabilities that go beyond Siri’s capabilities, such as summarizing videos. 

Craig Federighi, who oversees Apple’s operating systems, said at last year’s developer conference that the iPhone maker would like to add other AI models for specific purposes into its Apple Intelligence framework. Federighi specifically mentioned Google, whose Gemini can now hold conversations with users and handle input that comes from photos, videos, voice or text. Apple is also exploring partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI as it tried to renew its AI roadmap, according to a June Bloomberg report.

Documents revealed during Google’s remedy trial showed executives from Apple were involved in the negotiations over using Google’s Gemini for a potential search option.

Google declined to comment. 

WATCH: Apple explores using Google Gemini AI to power revamped Siri, reports say

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