
Qcomm cos on govt radar; Tata upskills in Taiwan
Qcomm cos on govt radar; Tata upskills in Taiwan
Also in the letter:
Govt may increase scrutiny on quick commerce firms following hygiene, food safety issues
Taking charge:
Second strike:
Last year, a raid by the Telangana food safety commissioner also flagged lapses at Blinkit warehouses.
In response, the FSSAI urged state authorities to step up inspections of quick commerce facilities.
The agency also amended norms, mandating that rapid delivery platforms supply products with at least 30% of their shelf life remaining or a minimum of 45 days before expiry.
In addition to concerns about food safety, quick commerce firms have also faced scrutiny over the use of manipulative design tactics, known as dark patterns.
Also Read:
Rapid expansion:
Tata Electronics sends hundreds of staff to Taiwan for semicon training
Driving the news:
Now hiring:
Talent hunt:
To build its talent pipeline, Tata Electronics is recruiting top executives from chipmakers such as Intel and GlobalFoundries, while also training less experienced employees.
Fresh graduates and professionals with some industry exposure are being sent to Taiwan as part of this programme.
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Flexiloans raises another Rs 375 crore from Fundamentum, Accion and others
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The round was led by existing investors, including Nandan Nilekani's Fundamentum, US-based impact investor Accion, American asset management firm Nuveen, and Denmark-based asset management company Maj Invest.
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Happy Wednesday! The government may increase surveillance on quick commerce dark stores because of increasing hygiene concerns. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.■ ETtech Done Deals■ Byju's US fire sale■ Meesho converts to public entityThe government is likely to increase oversight of quick commerce companies' dark stores following a spate of complaints about food safety violations at facilities run by leading players.Officials told us that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) will lead the effort, with plans for surprise inspections at dark stores and other storage facilities across the country.The FSSAI, which falls under the health ministry, sets standards for the manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import of food items.Source: HSBC Global ReasearchThe move follows recent action by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which suspended the licences of Blinkit and Zepto's dark stores in Mumbai and Pune after uncovering multiple hygiene breaches and violations of food safety norms.Industry executives and brand founders told ET that the fast and largely 'unchecked' growth of quick commerce platforms, which pushed both marketplaces and brands to scale at breakneck speed, may be at the root of the problem.Tata Electronics is ramping up preparations for its semiconductor fabrication (fab) and assembly and test (OSAT) facility by sending scores of employees to Taiwan for training.Sources told us that the electronics arm of the Tata Group has sent 'a couple of hundred' employees to its technology partner Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) for hands-on training in the specialised skills needed to operate the upcoming fab in Dholera.The training is being conducted in a phased and structured manner, as PSMC can accommodate only a limited number of trainees at a time.The Rs 91,000-crore fab in Dholera is expected to generate over 20,000 direct and indirect skilled jobs. Tata Electronics has started hiring in batches of 75, according to a person familiar with the matter."Different batches focus on distinct operations like equipment, yield engineering, process technology and another on quality engineering, which is generally a smaller group that doesn't need as many people,' the person said.ETtech Top 5 and Morning Dispatch are must-reads for India's tech and business leaders, including startup founders, investors, policy makers, industry insiders and employees.Interested? Reach out to us at spotlightpartner@timesinternet.in to explore sponsorship opportunities.(L-R) Manish Lunia, Deepak Jain, Ritesh Jain, founders, FlexiloansNon-banking finance company Flexiloans has raised Rs 375 crore in a mix of primary and secondary capital to drive its expansion plans.The raise follows a Rs 290 crore infusion in October 2024 . That round had valued the company at $140 million, ET reported at the time. The current raise includes a significant secondary component.Flexiloans ended FY24 with revenue of Rs 263 crore and a net profit of Rs 3 crore. The company is yet to file its FY25 financials.'Through this round, we have given exits to the high networth individuals who had invested in the company in 2017. Most of our existing institutional investors have doubled down in the company,' said Deepak Jain, a cofounder of Flexiloans.Bengaluru-based wealthtech startup PowerUp Money has raised $7.1 million in its first major institutional funding round, led by early-stage investors Accel, Blume Ventures, and Kae Capital. This round also included participation from 8i Ventures and DeVC.Founded in April by Prateek Jindal, a former cofounder at Uni Cards, the startup offers direct mutual fund investments to retail investors.Drone startup Garuda Aerospace, backed by former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, has raised $1 million in a funding round from the Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office (NSFO). The company plans to use the funds to scale up manufacturing capacity from 8,000 drones annually to 12,000-15,000 units.Two US assets of troubled edtech company Byju's, coding platform Tynker and kids learning platform Epic, have been sold for a fraction of what the company paid for them. A US bankruptcy court approved both sales during a hearing on May 20, as reported by EdWeek Market Brief.The board of ecommerce marketplace Meesho has approved its conversion into a public entity in anticipation of a planned initial public offering (IPO), as stated in its filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT experienced an outage , with thousands of users encountering difficulties in loading and accessing results for their prompts. The company acknowledged the outage and stated that both ChatGPT and the image generation AI tool, Sora, have been affected.■ Trump's Tech Bros: Can Tim Cook save Apple from the trade war? ( FT ■ Tesla's Robotaxis are rolling out soon—with one big unanswered question ( Wired ■ Google's AI search features are killing traffic to publishers ( TechCrunch
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