Good morning. Earlybird here with your daily delivery of Indian business, tech, and startup news — all in fun, little bite-sized bundles.

In this edition:

• 📦️ Amazon’s new accelerator for Indian startups

• 🫰 Say goodbye to foreign angel tax exemption

• 📱 TikTok banned for French civil servants

MARKETS

*Stock data as of market close. Source.

Markets: The Nifty had a rough go this week, with a bearish trend continuing in the latter half after some initial stagnation. The index fell below a key support level of 17,000, leading to a bearish candle for the third week in a row. Yikes! If it breaks through 16,850, experts warn it could slide down to 16,500-16,400.

TECH

Pegatron plans its second iPhone factory in India

📱 Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing company, Pegatron, is reportedly in talks with the Indian government to set up another manufacturing unit in the country. Pegatron is a key supplier of Apple, and this move comes as part of India's push to attract foreign investments and increase local manufacturing under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.

On top of the first. According to reports, the company's second plant, al/beit a smaller one, may be located in the southern metropolis of Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. Pegatron also built its first India facility in Chennai over six months ago and made a $150M investment soon after.

Production share. According to research company Counterpoint, Pegatron presently accounts for 10% of Apple's iPhone output in India on an annualized basis.

Apple’s gadget-making growth in India. India is the world's second largest smartphone market, and Apple intends to manufacture iPad tablets and AirPods there as well.

STARTUPS

Amazon’s new accelerator to boost consumer product startups

📦️ Amazon India has announced the launch of Propel S3, a startup accelerator program designed to assist early-stage startups in the consumer products sector. The initiative is intended to assist startups in expanding their operations by providing them with access to mentors, training, and resources that will help them gain a wider audience.

Promoting Indian Startups

• The Propel S3 program is part of Amazon's ongoing effort to promote Indian startups and support the government's efforts to encourage local entrepreneurship.

• Amazon has already invested heavily in the Indian market, including a $1B investment in 2020 to digitize small and medium-sized businesses in the country.

Opportunities for Startups

The program will provide selected startups with a range of benefits, including:

• Reward opportunities and prize pools worth over $1.5M

• A total of $100K in equity-free grants for the top 3 winners

• Mentoring by industry experts and Amazon leaders

• Access to Amazon's global network of investors

• Exclusive access to Amazon's tools and services, including AWS credits

• Exposure to potential customers and partners through Amazon's network

Getting in. Applications for the program will be accepted through April 30, 2023. It will conclude in a demo day where participants will have a shot at pitching their best thought bubbles to a pool of eager VCs.

BUSINESS

Tax on angel investments is coming

💰️ The Indian government has updated the country's angel tax regime, in a move that may dismantle tax exemption for foreign angel investments. This is not great news for local startups on the receiving end and here’s why:

The gist of it. The government has effectively withdrawn the exemption from Angle Tax on cash received from outside India, i.e. foreign funds and non-resident investors.

Who pays what? Startups are now required to pay a tax on the difference between the money raised and the fair market value of the securities sold.

Digging deeper. The latest changes to the angel tax regime could have a significant impact on the Indian startup ecosystem, which is already suffering from what is widely referred to as "funding winter."

When the bomb with drop. The proposed adjustments will take effect in the fiscal year 2023-2024, which corresponds to the assessment year 2024-2025.

INDIA EDITION: WHAT ELSE IS ON THE BIRDWATCH

• 🩻 Tariffs on X-rays are on the rise. The Indian government has announced that it will be increasing the duty on X-ray machine imports from 10% to 15%, starting on April 1st.

• 🔬 Canadian tech maker builds new chips with Indian startups. Tenstorrent, a Canadian semiconductor company, is tethering a new bond with Indian startups by partnering with them to develop open source RISC-V microprocessors.

• 💵 Avalon’s new Rs 865 cr IPO. In what promises to be a "crore"-d pleaser for investors, Indian cloud-computing firm Avalon Technologies is set to kick off its IPO on April 3rd, with the company aiming to raise a whopping Rs 865 crore.

FUNDING DEALS

Catch up on the Indian funding flows from the past 24hrs:

• Byju's, the Indian ed-tech giant, is out to build a new course as it aims to close a $250M equity fund raise this April at a valuation of $22B.

• Character AI, a startup that's only 16 months old, has proven that age is just a number by becoming a unicorn after securing Series A funding worth $150M at a $1B valuation.

• Uravu Labs, a deep tech startup in India, just raised $2.3M in a recent funding round led by JITO Angel and other investors, in their pursuit of new renewable water solutions.

WORLD

Headline Explorer

📱 TikTok and other apps now banned for French civil servants. Civil servants in France will no longer be able to enjoy TikTok and other "recreational" apps on their work phones, as officials seek to promote productivity and limit distractions. However, certain exceptions will be granted in of official institutional communication.

🐦️ Musk pegs Twitter value at $20B. Elon Musk offered Twitter employees stock awards worth around $20B, which is under half the tab he paid to acquire the company last year. Albeit a clear acknowledgement of how much Twitter's worth has fallen since the deal, the figure is still far higher than public market valuation levels for Twitter's competitors.

📡 China expects to roll out early 6G by 2025. According to wireless network operator China Unicom, China is already planning for 6G applications to launch by 2025. This would put the country ahead of the game when it comes to rolling out commercial 6G services, which are expected to be significantly faster and more reliable than current 5G networks.

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