From Tim Cook to Narayana Murthy and from Isha Ambani to Bhavish Aggarwal — these are the newsmakers that drove prominent themes and trends throughout the year in Indian tech
What’s a newsmaker in the context of startups and tech? Is it an outspoken founder or investor who was among the headlines over allegations and controversies, or is it someone who creates phenomena with their statements and thoughts?Of course, towards the end of the year, some of his focus turned to generative AI. At a time when the global gen AI fight seems to be centred around big tech giants, Aggarwal’s third venture Krutrim is looking to disrupt the space with an AI-centric cloud infrastructure, developing AI models for Indian languages and more.Reliance is one of the biggest newsmakers in tech every year for everything that Reliance Jio does, but this time around it’s the retail business that has taken centre stage with Isha Ambani leading the line.The Padma Shri awardee argued that work productivity in India is one of the lowest in the world and urged youngsters to volunteer to work 70 hours a week. But this caused a lot of furore among certain sections of those who follow Murthy, even as many other entrepreneurs advocated for the same.Today, Yadav is dealing with multiple cases. The Economic Offences Wing has registered an FIR against him and is looking into the bigger complaint by Info Edge. Even former employees have filed FIRs against Yadav for furnishing bad cheques. Will 2024 see Yadav being prosecuted and charged for the Broker Network saga?With India looking to carve out a bigger piece of the global tech manufacturing pie in light of the China+1 movement, Chandrasekhar has emerged as the face of India’s tech policy in many ways.Altman’s visit to India and his public appearance attracted the who’s who of the Indian tech ecosystem. But when he was asked whether Indian companies could compete with OpenAI, his answer did not please many. He called it a “totally impossible” endeavour, but later clarified that he was simply responding to a question about trying to compete with OpenAI valued at over $25 Bn+ using just $10 Mn.
Over the past month, we have recounted the personalities that found themselves among controversies and success stories of the year — from public listings to startups that turned profitable and from founder exits to shutdowns in the Indian startup ecosystem, While these were some of the bigger stories of 2023, we believe newsmakers are those who drove themes and trends that remained prominent throughout the year.