One important thing: In an indication of the prevailing tough market conditions, funds raised through IPOs in India in FY23 was less than half of IPO fundraising in FY22, according to a new report.

• Rs 52,116 crore was raised by 37 Indian companies through main board IPOs in 2022-23, as compared to Rs 1,11,547 crore raised by 53 IPOs in 2021-22. 
• The last quarter of 2022-23 saw the lowest amount of IPO fundraising in the last nine years. That said, the IPO fundraising in FY23 was still the third-highest ever in history.

In today's newsletter:

• Layoffs continue at Unacademy
• PhonePe calls off ZestMoney acquisition
• Spotlight on 'Made in India' founders

Bonus: Idli is one of the most popular breakfast items in India but do you know how famous is it? We have some numbers. Scroll below for more deets!

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Anand Lunia, a prolific VC investor, had told us in an interview in November last year that companies would die a slow, painful death in the current downturn.

“This is a weird downturn in which a lot of money has been sitting in the company's accounts. When companies have a lot of money, the pain is very slow,” he told us. 

He also said how companies are making small, incremental cuts every six months, implying that the pain will last much longer. Unacademy’s case best explains his hypothesis.

The SoftBank-backed edtech firm has sacked another 380 employees or about 12 percent of its staff in its fourth round of job cuts in the last 12 months.

• Unacademy has now laid off more than 1,500 employees since the start of 2022
• Its workforce is down to under 3,000 from over 6,000 as of April 2022

Unacademy’s co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said that the previous job cuts have not been enough to make its core business profitable, due to which they resorted to further reduction in its team size.

Since last year, Unacademy has undertaken several initiatives to aggressively focus on profitability.

• The company reported a massive loss of over Rs 2,800 crore in FY22 (2021-22).
• Unacademy cut its monthly burn to Rs 50-60 crore from over Rs 200 crore in FY22, we reported in September last year

Unacademy’s core business has also witnessed a slowdown in growth, especially at a time when its closest competitor PhysicsWallah has claimed that it has achieved 6x growth this year. This will likely result in PhysicsWallah surpassing Unacademy in terms of revenues.

• Further, PhysicsWallah is also profitable and is raising a new funding round at 3x valuation, which may put pressure on Unacademy’s valuation.

Some popcorns never pop, no point keeping the stove on and waiting for it, right? 

Something similar happened in the fintech space today. After months of discussion, the much anticipated deal of PhonePe buying ZestMoney, a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platform, has been called off. The deal size was pegged at around $300 million.

 PhonePe initiated talks to acquire ZestMoney in November of 2022 to bolster its digital lending forays.

• PhonePe currently does not have digital lending on its platform and decided to enter the space while it also recently domiciled in India from Singapore.

There are multiple reasons why the deal didn't take off. The most important one is the regulatory hurdle around the entire BNPL space and the global slowdown in the business model, as per multiple fintech experts. Some also said that there were due diligence issues in the deal.

• "The deal has been called off. There are some issues over due diligence and as of now, PhonePe is not going ahead with it," a person with direct knowledge of the matter told us.

This move will likely be a huge setback to the Bengaluru-based startup, which counts Goldman Sachs, PayU and Xiaomi, among others as its backers, and in turn, the broader BNPL space in India. 

• Sources say that ZestMoney had been looking for a buyer for at least a year now as it has struggled to raise funding. ZestMoney's losses have widened 3X year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 398.8 crore during the financial year ending March 31, 2022

It also comes at a time when the industry is already reeling under intense regulatory pressure

• Prominent players such as LazyPay temporarily stopped support for its BNPL payment product LazyPlus UPI in July 2022 while US-based BNPL firm Sezzle shut down its India operations in April 2022.

Electric vehicle maker Ather Energy's journey as a startup began at a time when electric two wheelers were unheard of in India. This meant that the 10-year-old startup had to build their platforms and develop their engineering for their products from scratch.

For the first five years of Ather's existence, the startup did not have any revenue, customers, and products except for prototypes, co-founder and CEO of the company Tarun Mehta said in a panel discussion at News18's Rising India Summit yesterday.

It was only after they deployed their product in the market in 2018, that their fortunes began to turn.

• In fact, Mehta said that 90% of their revenues have come in the past year, indicating the longer lead time and the sudden ramp up in the company’s topline.

Besides Mehta, the panel consisted of boAT co-founder and CMO Aman Gupta, Agnikul Cosmos co-founder and CEO Srinath Ravichandra, IESA chairperson Vivek Tyagi and Poonawalla Fincorp MD Abhay Bhutada.

Gupta, whose wearable brand is said to be the second largest in the market segment after Apple, explained how they zeroed in on the sound design for their earphones and headphones.

"Design is very critical... if you look at India, when we were doing audio (development), (we realised that) India likes bass," Gupta said.

• Agnikul Cosmos plans to launch its 3D-printed rocket within the next 30-45 days, Ravichandra said.
• With time and money, India will start generating output in the semiconductor segment, Tyagi said.
• Bhutada however noted that there will be a lot of consolidation in the second half of 2023, with the market moving towards productivity.

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More from our Rising India Summit coverage:

• Aim to reach $100bn mobile exports from India in 5 years: Dixon Technologies
• Hydrogen to soon power buses & planes in India, says Nitin Gadkari
• 'It was magical': Guneet Monga reveals what convinced her to produce 'The Elephant Whisperers'

UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I), the world's first computer made available for commercial use, was received on this day by the US Census Bureau in 1951. It was officially put into service in June 1951.

The computer was developed by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, the inventors of the ENIAC (Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer), which was the world's first programmable general-purpose computer. (Image credit: US Census Bureau)

• US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler is set to appear before the House Financial Services Committee on April 18 to face questions regarding his approach to rule-making and digital assets. Meanwhile, on March 29, Gensler said that the existing securities law covers most of what is happening in the crypto markets and any additional legislation is unnecessary. 

• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly paying for his pricey legal defense using the funds from the bankrupt crypto exchange’s sister company Alameda Research that he had gifted his father in 2021.

Rs 6 lakh on 8,428 plates of Idlis

• That’s how much a user in Hyderabad spent on Swiggy in the past 12 months. 

The Bengaluru-based company shared this information on the occasion of World Idli day (Did you know it existed?) 

• Overall, Indians ordered a whopping 3.3 crore plates of idli in the last year.

Unsurprisingly, the cities that ordered the breakfast/tiffin staple the most was Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Coimbatore. That’s not to say that they like the same idlis.

• Bengalureans chose rava idli, while Hyderabad preferred karam podi ghee idli.