Exclusive: Top-level changes at Amazon India; social media firms and anti-deepfake tools

Happy Friday! Amazon is undertaking a top-level restructuring of its India management team. We have this exclusive story and much more in today’s ETtech Morning Dispatch.

Also in this letter:
■ NPCI eyes big spends on RuPay UPI credit cards
■ Highlights from Bengaluru Tech Summit Day 2
■ Prosus working to up edtech portfolio returns: Ervin Tu

Exclusive: Amazon India starts top-level rejig under Manish Tiwary

Manish Tiwary, country manager, Amazon India

Amazon is headed for a significant restructuring in its India team. It has started with a senior executive moving to the US.

Headquarters calling: Noor Patel, among the most senior executives at Amazon India heading category management, is moving to the US. Nishant Sardana and Ranjit Babu will be getting the mandate of Patel’s role, according to India country manager Manish Tiwary’s communication to external brands selling on the Amazon India marketplace.

There’s more: As part of the incoming changes, a reshuffle may also see a new dual leadership structure coming into effect at the online retailer under Tiwary. According to people in the know, the revamp—which is still being finalised—is likely to see changes in the reporting structure for India between Tiwary and Amit Agarwal, the SVP for India and emerging markets at Amazon.

India role from US: Agarwal is now based in the US, but is still involved in the operations as India remains one of the biggest bets for Amazon. Certain functions reporting to Agarwal may see a shift towards Tiwary, as per current discussions.

Tell me more: “For instance, the tech stack of the seller side of business is reporting to Agarwal while the rest is to Tiwary,” one of the people aware of the discussions said. “The seller ecosystem has evolved a lot over the past few years and thus it needs more local decision-making,” a person aware of the matter said.

India slowdown: Amazon Seller Services—which runs the India marketplace—reported a muted growth of 3.4% in its operating revenue in FY23 at Rs 22,198 crore, while losses widened 33% to Rs 4,854 crore. In FY22, the same unit reported a 32% growth in operating revenue.

Cuts and closure: Earlier in the year, Amazon also conducted layoffs in India—as part of global job cuts—in the range of 500-1,000. It also shut its relatively smaller businesses like food delivery.

Both Tiwary and Agarwal have maintained that India remains a key market for the US retailer and it will continue investing in the local market. Amazon has started supporting its India investments from the revenue it generates from the local market, Agarwal told ET on August 31.

Also read | Amazon shrugs off ups and downs in its decade-long India journey

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Social media firms need time to tackle deepfake content: executives

deepfakes advertising THUMB IMAGE ETTECH

Social media and internet intermediaries, including the likes of Google and Meta, are likely to take more time to develop tools to accurately detect and take down deepfake and synthetic content, senior company executives told us.

Manual flagging needed: These executives said that currently, all such content needs to either be flagged by the user or gain “a certain level of traction or virality” to be recognised by machine parameters or artificial intelligence-driven identifiers.

“We rely on our users to flag such content to take them down. Our identifiers for any type of content, let alone deepfake or synthetically altered, can only work if such content achieves minimum traction on the platform,” a senior executive at a social media conglomerate said.

Catch up quick: Earlier this month, union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar met senior executives from social media and internet intermediaries on consecutive days to discuss the issue of deepfakes.

Vaishnaw later said that the government will come out with new rules and regulations to control the spread of deepfake content. Both Vaishnaw and Chandrasekhar had said deepfakes were a threat to democracy and stable governance that must be tackled immediately.

Steps being taken: Google recently announced that it will allow users to request the removal of AI-generated or other synthetic or altered content that simulates an identifiable individual, including their face or voice from YouTube in times to come.

Furore over digitally altered videos: The issue of deepfake content gained prominence when altered videos featuring actress Rashmika Mandanna went viral on social media platforms. Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also raised concerns about deepfake technology. He was referring to a fake video which purported to show him participating in a dance.

With credit cards on UPI, NPCI eyes share of big-ticket spends

Customers can now use their RuPay credit cards on UPI for larger ticket size transactions_online payments_ETTECH (1)

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently opened the floodgates of credit flow on India’s favourite payment mode, Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Now, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs UPI, wants to move large-ticket transactions on UPI, too.

What’s the news? NPCI has written to banks to get limits placed on UPI payments made through RuPay credit cards to be at par with normal credit card payments. This will help bring convenience and encourage users to use UPI for their large-ticket purchases as well, NPCI wrote.

Background: UPI is primarily used in the country for peer-to-peer payments and small-value merchant transactions made at local grocers, retailers and others. Consumers typically use their credit cards for large-ticket shopping. Now, with RuPay credit cards going live on UPI, NPCI wants to change that.

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But there is a catch: The share of UPI payments made through credit cards is very small, bankers said. They added that RuPay credit cards have a very small market share compared to the likes of Visa and Mastercard. Banks have scaled up their RuPay card issuance, and eventually, UPI for credit card payments will become popular too. But that will take time.

Growth in RuPay card transactions_Graphic_ETTECH

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Bengaluru Tech Summit Day 2 | ‘AI needs legislative guardrails’

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology

The world is increasingly aligning with India’s perspective that AI requires safety and trust guardrails, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, speaking at the Bengaluru Tech Summit on Thursday.

“While AI is the buzzword and ChatGPT is fancy, we need legislative guardrails of safety and trust, which can ensure that AI can never be misused or be used by bad actors to cause harm,” he said.

India AI Summit: Chandrasekhar emphasised that AI is the most impactful invention of recent times, with the potential to transform various sectors. Mentioning the upcoming India AI Summit on January 10, the minister said it will focus on talent, AI compute, AI chips, and foundational large language models. The government sees AI as a kinetic enabler to achieve the $5 trillion economy target.

Focus on semicon industry: India has seen significant progress in semiconductor design and innovation, but the major gap in the industry lies in the lack of a comprehensive supply and manufacturing ecosystem, according to industry executives at the Bengaluru Tech Summit.

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Prosus is working to up edtech portfolio returns: Ervin Tu

Ervin Tu, interim CEO, Prosus

Ervin Tu, interim CEO of technology investor Prosus and its South African parent Naspers, said the firm’s investments in companies such as Byju’s and Stack Overflow, which are struggling, have not affected its overall belief in the sector. The firm is working to improve returns on its edtech portfolio, he said.

CEOspeak: “We have turned our attention significantly to the three problematic assets and businesses in our (edtech) portfolio, that being Stack Overflow, Skillsoft and Byju’s. And we are working every day trying to improve returns there. Those situations, in our judgement, are not emblematic of a change in the overall thesis for edtech,” Tu told analysts after the April-September earnings were released.

Underperformer: Tu said on Wednesday that Prosus, which holds a stake of nearly 10% in Byju’s, had marked down its valuation to below $3 billion. In March, Prosus had valued the troubled edtech company at about $5.1 billion.

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Yes, but: Reporting its results for the first six months of FY24, Prosus said the group’s balance sheet is strong, with central cash of $15.1 billion, including short-term cash investments. During the April-September period this year, Prosus invested $477 million.

Other portfolio firms: PayU India, the Indian subsidiary of Prosus, recorded a 15% year-on-year rise in its total revenue for the first six months of FY24, at $211 million. Tu said PayU India may be IPO-ready by the second half of next year.

Meanwhile, Prosus, the largest shareholder in Swiggy with a 32.7% stake, said the Indian food-delivery major’s loss narrowed 35% from a year ago to $208 million for the half year ended September 30.