BUSINESS
Vol 2, Issue 11, June 16-31, 2022
BPCL refuels over 100 SL Airline flights CERT-In warns users of multiple bugs in Google Chrome, Zoho software
Chennai, July 8: The Indian government-owned oil marketing company
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) on Friday said that it
refuelled more than 100 flights of the SriLankan Airlines. In a tweet, the BPCL said: “We are pleased to support SriLankan Airlines, with refueling of their long-haul flights at Indian airports, to overcome the Jet Fuel shortage in their country. So far, more than 100 flights have been refueled at #Trivandrum, #Chennai & #Kochi airports.” In reply the SriLankan Airlines tweeted: “Thank you @BPCLimited! We truly value our partnership.” The island nation is undergoing severe economic crisis, and its fuel stocks are extremely limited.
India sees 33% dip in startup funding at $6.9 bn in April-June
Bengaluru, July 7 (IANS): The funding in the Indian startup ecosystem nosedived by a huge 33 per cent to $6.9 billion in the April-June period (Q2), from $10.3 billion in the first quarter (Q1) this year, amid the economic meltdown and layoffs in the funding winter, a report showed on Thursday. In Q2, 121 new startups closed their first funding rounds, four startups turned unicorns, 62 startups got acquired, and five filed their IPOs, according to data intelligence platform Tracxn Technologies. The Indian startups raised $6.9 billion in Q2 in 409 funding rounds
and the top startups were VerSe ($805 million), Delhivery ($304 million), and udaan ($275 million). They were followed closely by ShareChat ($255 million) and upGrad ($225 million). Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai are the top cities attracting the maximum investments, as per the report. “We aim to give industry stakeholders key insights of the ecosystem that would help in business decision making that is backed by extensive market intelligence and thorough research and data analysis,” said Neha Singh, Co-Founder, Tracxn. With Leadsquared, Purplle, PhysicsWallah, and Open becoming new unicorns, the total valuation of unicorns escalated to $31.8 billion in Q2. With respect to exits, while eMudhra, Delhivery, Handicrafts village, Eighty Jewellers, and Veranda Learning Solutions filed for IPOs, Blinkit (By Zomato), Whiteteak (By Asian Paints), and MyHQ (By ANAROCK) were the top acquisitions in the second quarter.
Social Platforms, internet first media, payments, B2B e-commerce and e-commerce enablers are the top sectors receiving the most funding from investors between April and June, the report mentioned. The total funding in Q2 also witnessed a decline in comparison to the same quarter last year (Q2 2021), where the total funds raised were $10.1 billion. “Though investors are a little wary due to the current environment it hasn’t dampened the investment spirit of the community. They have become more decisive about the startups they want to nurture and are focusing extensively from a long-term gain perspective,” said Abhishek Goyal, Co-Founder, Tracxn. While IPV and Blume Ventures topped the investment charts in seed-stage startups, Sequoia Capital and Accel ranked highest in the early-stage startups funding standing. Sofina and DST Global are the leading late-stage institutional investors, theATracxn report mentioned.
Google India to guide 10K startups in tier 2 & 3 cities
New Delhi, July 6 (IANS): Google India on Wednesday announced the launch of Startup School to guide 10,000 startups in tier II & III cities in the country. Startup School is a series of guided online trainings designed to equip early-stage startup founders with the tools, products, and knowledge that growing companies need. The curriculum will feature instructional modules on subjects like shaping an effective product strategy, deep dives on product user value, roadmapping and product requirements document development, building apps for next billion
users in markets like India, driving user acquisition and many more. The nine-week programme will also feature fireside chats between Google leaders and trailblazing collaborators from across the startup ecosystem spanning fintech, D2C, B2B and B2C e-commerce, language, social media and networking, and job search. “There will also be opportunities for founders to gain orthogonal insights from discussions around what makes an effective founder, formalising hiring and more,” Karthik Padmanabhan, Developer Relations Program Manager Lead and Aditya Swamy, Director - Play Partnerships, wrote in a blogpost. With close to 70,000 startups, India is the third largest birthing ground for startups in the world. And as more Indian founders lead their companies successfully to IPOs or unicorn status, it has set off a virtuous cycle wherein their success has ignited aspirations among
young Indians across the length and breadth of the country. Startups are no longer restricted to Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai or Hyderabad. India has multitudes of fast-growing startups headquartered in centres such as Jaipur, Indore, Gorakhpur and more. But, “these account for nearly 50 per cent of all recognised startups in the country. About 90 per cent of all startups fail within the first five years of their journey -- mostly for the same key reasons -- unmanaged cash burn, flawed demand assessment, ineffective feedback loops or lack of leadership,” the blogpost read. “There is a need for programmes which can organise this knowledge into a structured curriculum and deliver it across a wide footprint. Startup School India -- a Google for Startups initiative is designed to do precisely that as we align our efforts to support this expansion,” it added.
New Delhi, July 7: The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which comes under the IT Ministry, has warned users of multiple vulnerabilities in Google Chrome which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and denial-of-service (DoS) conditions on the targeted system.
Chrome due to ‘Heap Buffer’ overflow in ‘WebRTC’, ‘Type Confusion in V8’ and ‘Use after Free’ in Chrome OS Shell.
A remote attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by sending specially crafted requests on the targeted system.
CERT-In also advised users against a ‘Remote Code Execution’ vulnerability that has been reported in a Zoho Corporation software which could be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system.
“Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code and denial-of-service (DoS) conditions on the targeted system,” said CERTIn the advisory late on Wednesday. These vulnerabilities exist in Google
The vulnerability (CVE-2022-2294) is being exploited in the wild, said the cyber agency, adding that the users are advised to apply patches urgently.
This vulnerability exists in ‘Zoho ManageEngine ADAudit Plus’ due to a ‘misconfigured XML’ parser that processes user-supplied input
without sufficient validation. “Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system,” warned the cyber agency, advising the users to upgrade to the latest Zoho ‘ManageEngine ADAudit Plus’ security build update.
Twitter claims it suspends 1 mn spam users a day San Francisco, July 8 (IANS): As Elon Musk threatened to scrap the $44 billion Twitter acquisition deal over spam and fake accounts, the microblogging platform has revealed that it is suspending more than 1 million spam accounts a day.
since started to supply him with public tweet data.
The new figure represents a doubling of its previous update.
The one million figure will include accounts that are weeded out as they attempt to join the platform and therefore are never counted as daily users.
Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal had said in May that spam account suspensions were running at 500,000 a day, reports the Guardian. The report mentioned that Musk has agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but his lawyers have written to the company accusing it of refusing to provide sufficient information about the number of spam users on the service. It has
Twitter has stated consistently in its quarterly results since 2014 that it estimates its spam account problem to represent less than 5 per cent of its daily active users.
The microblogging platform has just under 230 million daily active users. The Tesla CEO has expressed concerns that the 5 per cent figure is substantially higher, a stance that appears to be a bridgehead for either terminating or renegotiating a deal
that is bound by a tight legal agreement. Twitter has given Musk access to a stream of data comprising more than 500m tweets posted every day to answer his concerns, the report said.
5G FWA subscriptions to exceed 460 mn subscriptions by 2030 New Delhi, July 4 (IANS): As the buzz around 5G gains momentum, 5G-enabled Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband subscriptions to cross 462 million by 2030, from roughly 75 million in 2021. 5G FWA will drive the bulk of the growth beyond 2025, replacing 4G FWA connections that will be still prevalent in some markets across Middle East and Africa (MEA), developing Asia and Latin America until 2024, according to Counterpoint Research. FWA is a scalable cellular wireless option for broadband connectivity to stationary equipment that provides Internet access. “By the end of 2021, only one out of every three households around the world (excluding China) had access to fixed broadband. And only 25 per cent of those households enjoyed speeds greater than 100 Mbps,” said Principal Analyst Tina Lu. As 5G takes centre-stage, the new 5G
network architectures and broader spectrum promises enhanced broadband services at a scale not possible in previous generations. Many developing economies as well as parts of developed economies still suffer from a digital divide with many unable to access broadband connectivity. “5G-enabled Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) is a killer use-case for bridging this digital divide and providing connectivity where fibre or even DSL has not yet reached,” said the report. The report said that there is a significant push from operators and even governments to prioritise national broadband initiatives with 5G FWA becoming integral to their 5G rollout strategies. “The US is currently the single biggest 5G FWA market, with both Verizon and T-Mobile being bullish on 5G FWA with mmWave rollouts ideal for dense urban connectivity,
and sub-6GHz spectrum driving broader coverage and above average throughput speeds,” said Lu. But the last-mile connection to fibre is very costly in rural areas, which opens the need for 5G FWA. “Africa, India, and other South Asian countries (excluding China), on the other hand, have the lowest fibre penetration and thus have the most potential to drive the 5G FWA subscriber growth this decade,” added Lu.
‘To maintain majesty of law’: SC sentences Vijay Mallya to 4-month imprisonment New Delhi, July 11: The Supreme Court on Monday sentenced fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya to four months’ imprisonment for contempt of court in 2017, as he had suppressed information from the court. It also ordered Mallya to deposit $40 million -- which he had transferred to his family members in violation of the court orders - failing which attachment of his properties will begin. A bench of Justices U.U. Lalit, S. Ravindra Bhat, and P. S. Narasimha said: “In the circumstances, in order to maintain the majesty of law, we must impose adequate punishment upon the contemnor and must also pass necessary directions so that the advantages secured by the contemnor or anyone claiming under him are set at naught and the amounts in
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question are available in execution of the decrees passed in the concerned recovery proceedings.” The bench noted that Mallya never showed any remorse nor tendered any apology for his conduct, as it imposed a sentence of four months and fine of Rs 2,000 on him. The bench added that in case the amount of fine is not deposited within the time stipulated, Mallya would undergo a further sentence of two months. The bench also ordered Mallya to deposit $40 million, which he had transferred to his family members in violation of the court orders, failing which attachment of his properties will begin. “The contemnor (Mallya) and the beneficiaries under said transactions, shall be bound to deposit the amount received by such
beneficiaries along with interest at the rate of 8 per cent per annum with the concerned Recovery Officer within four weeks,” it said. “In case the amounts are not so deposited, the concerned Recovery Officer shall be entitled to take appropriate proceedings for recovery of said amounts; and Government of India and all the concerned agencies shall extend assistance and complete cooperation. It shall be open to take such appropriate steps including the appointment of Forensic Auditor(s).” The top court also directed the Ministry of Home Affairs to secure the presence of the contemnor to undergo the imprisonment imposed upon him. “Needless to say, the Government of India including the Ministry of External Affairs and all
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other agencies or instrumentalities shall carry out the directions issued by this court with due diligence and utmost expediency. A Compliance Report shall thereafter be filed in the Registry of this Court,” it said. On February 10, the top court gave final opportunity to Mallya, seeking his appearance, before it pronounced sentence in contempt case filed by banks, in which he was found guilty. The top court said it has found Mallya guilty of contempt and punishment has to be imposed. It added that going by normal logic, the contemnor has to be heard, but he has not appeared before the court so far. It had said that if Mallya is not present in the hearing, then the
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matter will be taken to its logical conclusion. According to a judgment delivered on July 14, 2017, Mallya was found guilty of contempt for not paying Rs 9,000 crore worth of dues to the banks despite repeated directions. Additionally, he was also accused of not disclosing his assets and also secretly trying to dispose of the assets to defeat the purpose of recovery proceedings. On October 6 2020, the MHA told the Supreme Court that the UK Home Office has intimated, there is a further legal issue which needs to be resolved before Mallya’s extradition takes place and this issue is outside and apart from the extradition process having effect under the UK law.
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