One Thing Today in Tech
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Special briefing: A conversation with TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan on his plan for the company's transformation
Change comes from within, and that is what Tata Consultancy Services—one of the world's biggest IT services providers—has been undergoing, even before Covid-19 struck. In this free-ranging conversation with Forbes India, CEO Gopinathan articulates what it takes to change an organisation that has more than half a million employees—most of them engineers. The aspiration is to set the company on to its next phase of evolution, to retain and build on its engineering prowess, but also to step up much more as a trusted strategic business advisor
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Study shows mRNAs may kill cancer too; Apple-Epic lawsuit ruling; and a chat with Qlik India's Varun Babbar
Messenger RNAs, or mRNAs, that became famous because they can fight Covid-19, as German company BioNTech showed in its vaccine, can fight cancer too, the company has found. BioNTech has just started human tests of a cancer treatment that uses mRNAs, which was found to completely shrink tumours in mice. Apple must allow developers to point to their own payment options, a judge ruled in California. In our tech conversation today, we talk to Varun Babbar, managing director of Qlik India
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Tata-Airbus military aircraft gets a go-ahead; Notion acquires Auotomate.io; and a chat with the founders of Sanas.ai
The Tata Group has been given the go-ahead by India's Cabinet Committee on Security for a new military transport aircraft that it is making in collaboration with Airbus—making it the first such military aviation contract given to a private enterprise in India, where the sector is dominated by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. In the tech conversation, we talk to the founders of Sanas.ai on their AI software that attempts to make people's accents more intelligible to each other
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Hyundai's hydrogen fuel cell system; Google picks Women Founders Academy 2021; Orca CO2 trap; and Aneesh Reddy on Capillary's US acquisition
Hyundai Group is planning to introduce a new generation hydrogen-based fuel cell system in 2023. It is part of the automaker's plan to achieve a fuel cell vehicle price point comparable to a battery electric vehicle by 2030. Climeworks, a direct air capture CO2 trap maker is switching on its first large plant on Wednesday. In our tech conversation, we talk to Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies about an acquisition in the US
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TCS to ask staff to return to 'work cities'; Dyson's robot; and Google Pay maker Sumit Gwalani unpacks account aggregator
Tata Consultancy Services will soon ask its staff to be based in their "work cities" as India's biggest IT services company prepares to bring work back to the offices. TCS has vaccinated more than 90 percent of its over half a million employees with at least one shot against Covid-19, Milind Lakkad, the company's global head of human resources told Forbes India in a recent interview. In our tech conversation, Sumit Gwalani—one of the developers of Google Pay and now a co-founder of epiFi Technologies—explains the account aggregator framework
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Special Briefing: Advances in wind power tech make it an increasingly important renewable option, say experts from GE and Continuum Green Energy
While solar power is widely accepted as a clean energy source, and hydroelectric projects have both advantages as clean energy and drawbacks in terms of the impact on the environment around them. According to those in the industry, advances in wind power are making it an increasingly important option. We bring you a conversation with Renjith VK, a wind turbines specialist at GE, and Arvind Bansal, CEO at Continuum Green Energy, which operates India's largest wind-solar hybrid farm, on the state of wind power in India
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Apple faces anti-trust complaint in India; Samsung's 200MP camera sensor; and Acceldata's CEO explains data observability
Apple is facing an antitrust complaint in India for allegedly abusing its App Store's dominance by forcing developers to use its proprietary in-app payments system. The allegations are similar to a case Apple is facing in Europe, where regulators are probing the iPhone maker's imposition of an in-app fee of 30 percent for the distribution of paid digital content, and other restrictions. In our tech conversation, Acceldata's Rohit Choudhary unpacks his data observability platform
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Amazon to hire 55k worldwide; Apple's baby step towards opening App Store payments; and a chat with Whatfix's CEO
Amazon's new CEO Andy Jassy expects to hire 55,000 recruits in corporate and tech roles worldwide in the coming months. Of the new jobs, over 40,000 will be in the US, and the rest in countries including India, Germany and Japan. Apple will allow reader apps—spanning magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music and video—to link their software to external websites for payments. In our tech conversation, we learn from Whatfix CEO Khadim Batti how they boost digital adoption
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Google, Apple store duopoly banned in South Korea; Prosus to buy BillDesk for $4.7 bln; and a chat about Inflexor's tech fund
Google and Apple will have to allow alternative payment systems on their app stores in South Korea, which has become the first country to ban the tech giants' restrictive practice of forcing developers to use their payments systems exclusively and then charging them fees of up to 30 percent. In our tech conversation, Venkat Vallabhaneni at Inflexor Ventures discusses the VC firm's new deep-tech focused fund
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China limits game time for minors; Accel offers Atoms—pre-seed funding; and a chat on India's new drone rules
China has imposed strong rules to curb gaming addiction among minors in the world's most populous nation that is also home to some of the world's biggest tech companies. On Monday, Chinese regulators slashed the time period players under the age of 18 can spend on online games to an hour of gameplay on Fridays, weekends and holidays. In our tech conversation, we discuss how India's new drone rules could be a game-changer
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Special Briefing: Freshworks—marrying the art of Indian entrepreneurship and the science of Valley scaling
Girish Mathrubootham never went to one of India's premier technology schools—the IITs—nor did he attend one of its hallowed business schools—the IIMs. But, he's just made corporate and tech history in India with Freshworks becoming the first cloud software venture started by an Indian founder to start an IPO in the US. Here's a conversation with Mathrubootham from February. He spoke about shifting to the US, his billion-dollar revenue ambition, thoughts on a US listing, and how Covid-19 gave him a chance to take better care of himself