Sebi can check compliance for VC, PE funds; Cred is reviewing its lending strategy
Also in the letter:
■ Top-level outputs continue into Swiggy.
■ Accenture moves to the side of AI
■ AI4Bharat puts India on the cutting edge of AI innovation.
Exclusive: Sebi can facilitate compliance for PE and VC funds
Things can get easier for venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funds, which have become large pools of risk capital for businesses.
Lead news: Last Friday, Indian capital markets regulator Sebi wrote to 20 fund officials and seniors saying it will conduct a “comprehensive review” of the rules “simplify, simplify and reduce the cost of compliance” for alternative investment funds (AIFs) is the normative term for VC and PE funds. The regulator has asked funds to come up with ways to ease their compliance burden, which many in the industry say has led to excessive regulatory scrutiny, two people told ET.
- AIF grew up, funded many Indian businesses
- Sebi wants to introduce rules to avoid scandals
- But the burden of compliance is hurting many funds.
Quote without quotes: “There is a feeling that the extensive intermediation of commercial bankers has led to administrative excesses … Participation in the investment committee also comes with regulatory obligations. A series of rule-making exercises were carried out which progressively limited the ability of investment managers and investors to write their relationship script, including the scope of the “supplementary letters”. Perhaps the AIF regime requires not only a “light touch” but also a “right touch” regulatory framework, said Richie Sancheti, founder of law firm Richie Sancheti Associates.
Jargon Buster: The “supplementary letter” explains the differentiated treatment of larger investors. The fund industry argues that while it may seem unfair, AIF is not a retail money management mutual fund – PE/VCs around the world offer different terms (such as lower fees and higher upside potential) to investors with large checks. Some funds believe that even the mandatory separation of several classes of units will increase the value.
Catch up fast: Last year, Sebi has made many changes to the AIF rules. These include a code of conduct for directors, managers and intermediaries of funds; rules for closing funds; attitude towards all investors at face value; separation of assets and liabilities of various schemes; limiting the term of ownership of funds to what is indicated in the document on the fund; rules for disclosure and consideration of investor complaints.
ETtech Deep Dive: How Kunal Shah’s Cred is rethinking its lending strategy to expand its user base
Cred plans to tap into a large market of consumers who are new to credit through the acquisition of CreditVidya.
Lead news: Credit plans to target users who have never taken a formal loan in the past, two people with knowledge of it told ET. He wants to go beyond conventional consumer loans and explore new opportunities related to long-term consumer loans and finances.
Tell me more: The largest fintech company uses Prefr, a digital lending platform that has teamed up with the company through Acquisition of CreditVidya and Newtap Technologies, its own non-bank financial company owned by founder Kunal Shah. Newtap Technologies, which acquired NBFC Parfait Finance and Investment, will be one of Prefr’s partner lenders, even as Newtap prepares to raise capital from existing Cred investors followed by plans to increase debt, sources told ET.
Background: The Prefr app provides loans up to 3 lakh with an average ticket size of less than 1 lakh. The average term of these loans ranges from six months to three years. The company claims to offer an interest rate of 18% to 36% on top of processing fees.
Top-level layoffs continue at Swiggy, SVP Anuj Rati likely to leave
Anuj Rathy, Senior Vice President, Revenue & Development, Swiggy
Swiggy, hit by declining costs and a general downturn in the food delivery industry, is likely to see another high-profile exit.
Lead news: Anuj Rathy, currently Senior Vice President of Revenue and Growth for Swiggy. going to leave the company. Sources told ET that Rati reports directly to founder and CEO Sriharsha Majeti and is currently working through the details of his departure with management. Rati has led work across growth marketing, customer management, Swiggy One, grocery marketplace, merchandising, social media, design solutions, financial services, and partnerships, among others.
Other outputs: Rati will join the list of top Swiggy executives who have left the company in recent months, including Karthik Gurumurthy, CEO of InstamartChief Technology Officer Dale VazAshish Lingamneni, Vice President of Marketing; and Nishad Kenkre, Vice President and Head of Revenue and Growth, Instamart’s Fast Commerce Division.
Discounted rates: Downgrading of Baron Capital Group Swiggy another 10% to $6.38 billion. as of March 31, 2023, after markdown Swiggy valuation up 34% to $7.1 billion as of December 2022. On May 9, ET reported that the round’s lead investor, Invesco cut the cost of a food delivery company by 33%. to $5.5 billion from $8.2 billion.
Accenture has joined its peers in the IT sector in harnessing generative AI. identified about 300 use cases in 19 industries where trending technologies can bring significant results, said ET Bhaskar Ghosh, Accenture’s global director of strategy. These include service delivery, consulting and technology.
Read also | IT customers push for AI-based generative solutions to boost productivity
Quick acceptance: Ghosh said the company is watching early adopters in financial services, retail and the public sector begin pilot projects, adding that cost will be a key factor in determining how quickly businesses adopt these tools. Accenture has teamed up with a global broadcaster to explore how generative artificial intelligence can drive audience engagement and growth. The company is also working with a multinational bank to use the technology to route large volumes of emails and draft responses after transactions are processed.
Tweet of the day
AI4Bharat: Put India on the global map of cutting-edge AI innovation
The open source artificial intelligence (AI) center based at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, AI4Bharat, has impressed many. Launched a year ago Nilekani Center at AI4Bharat built a team of nearly 200 translators across the country covering 22 Indian languages.
More about AI4Bharat: Tech billionaire philanthropist Nandan Nilekani is the primary sponsor of the Nilekani Center at AI4Bharat, with a focus on developing open source language technologies in the public domain.
With a corpus of 230 million parallel sentences between English and 22 Indian languages, the center aims to collect data from over 700 districts in India.
AI4Bharat products:
- Jugalbandi is a chatbot that uses the AI4Bharat language models to get information about government schemes in local languages.
- Supreme Court Software Vidhik Anuvaad (SUVAS) translates judgments and rulings into Indian languages
- Chitraleha is an open source tool for AI subtitles and video translation.
An Explainable Key to Relaxing AI Worries, Widespread Use in Business: Nidhi Srivastava of TCS | Indian market still at the research stage regarding generative AIbut business is showing strong interest across the board, including government and Tata group companies, Nidhi Srivastava, vice president and global head of Google Biz at TCS, told ET.
Smartphone brands are competing to bring apps like ChatGPT to mobile devices: Marketing materials of almost all smartphone brands there are mentions of artificial intelligence and machine learningin the hope that consumers will hook on to them when making a purchase decision.
The Global Elections We Read
Where does memory end and generative AI begin?Wired)
How Nvidia created the chip for the generative AI boom (Financial Times)
AI models can reduce biases, not reinforce them, says Sam Altman (The rest of the world)