The monthly round-up of India’s technology news from September 2022, from Startup News Asia.
This month’s Indian technology news round-up covers government concerns around fintech apps and money-laundering, Facebook’s Indian XR moves, VPN company withdrawal from India in the face of new surveillance legislation, pressure on apps to support India’s homegrown GPS navigation alternative and more .
Items listed are India’s technology news headlines, with each linked to the article behind it, online and in full – one click access to the Indian technology news that interests you.
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SNA on Substack, SNA on LinkedIn and SNA on Revue.
India: State of the fintech Union 2022 / Boston Consulting Group
- India: Skyroot Aerospace space-tech firm raised $51M with low earth orbit satellites focus, stepping into the international space launch market
- India: Multi-billionaire head of Reliance Industries announces $25BN plan to launch 5G mobile internet in the country inside 2 months, and sights on budget 5G smartphone partnering with Google
- India looks to step up manufacturing value chain with high-stakes bid into semiconductors, packaging $10BN to attract manufacturers to establish plants and to encourage investment in related sectors
- India: GroMo platform raises $11M with more than 1.2M agents across the country, selling over 100 financial products including insurance and credit cards
- India: Directorate of Enforcement conducted searches under anti money laundering act on Razorpay, Paytm and Cashfree Payments in Bangalore, seizing $2.1M in suspicious bank accounts
- India: Gov’t to intro legislation to regulate social media influencers, including penalties growing as high as $60K for failing to disclose financial ties with brands
The State of the Metaverse in 2022 / Nextrope
- India: Tata Group is reportedly in discussions with US-based Wistron to establish a manufacturing JV for assembling iPhones in India, continuing trend of moving production away from China
- India: Agnikul nears $20M funding close with the country’s first private small-satellite system, capable of carrying 300kg payloads to low Earth orbits up to 700km
- India: MeitY Startup Hub gov’t initiative and Meta unveil XR Startup Program, accelerator to support and boost XR technology startups, skills and ecosystem
- India: Taiwan’s Foxconn and Vedanta mining giant announce $19.5BN plan to build chipmaking factory, potentially creating 100K jobs in Gujarat
- India: Google partners NASSCOM industry body and gov’t IT Ministry for first batch of Google Cloud Computing Foundations with Kubernetes, aimed at higher education students and early-career graduates
- India: ‘Digital Banks – A Proposal for Licensing & Regulatory Regime for India’ available to download from NITI Aayog, gov’t public policy think tank
- India: Reserve Bank to bring card-on-file tokenisation norms into effect October 1st, driven by cyber-fraud around card data saved on merchant websites for future payments
- India: Gov’t is building a database of anonymized non-personal data for Indian companies and startups using artificial intelligence, primarily to aid local firms in training machine learning models
Bain & Co: 2022 Technology Report
- India: Proton VPN joins ExpressVPN, Surfshark and NordVPN in leaving the country, removing servers with statement of ‘no intention of ever complying with this or any other mass surveillance law’
- India: Govt proposes law to intercept encrypted messages on over-the-top comm services – OTT – such as WhatsApp et al, and literally anything deemed in future to be a ‘telecommunication service’
- India: KPMG launches ENRich 2022 startup search, seeking solutions in energy sustainability, security and affordability
- India: Binocs crypto tax reporting platform raises $4M, aiding investors track across more than 300 exchanges, 50 wallets, NFTS and smart contracts
- India: Gov’t reportedly pressuring Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung et al with mandate to support home-grown NavIC satellite navigation system in new devices sold in India from 2023
- India: Ministry of Defence looks to add quantum-based commercial cybersecurity solutions to communications with commercial request for proposal to QNu Labs, focusing on quantum key distribution
India Stack: APIs, digital ID, data and payments
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