Also in this letter:
■ Infosys CEO Salil Parekh’s remuneration rose 43% in FY22
■ Jack Dorsey to step down from Twitter board after 15 years
■ Broadcom agrees to buy VMware for $61 million
Focus will be on cutting costs, Unacademy CEO tells employees
As investments in startups slow to a trickle amid global macro headwinds, Unacademy cofounder and chief executive Gaurav Munjal has told employees that “winter is here” and that funding will remain scarce for at least the next 12 to 18 months.
In his email to employees, sent early Thursday morning, Munjal wrote that cost-cutting would be the company’s key focus moving forward.
Medicine time: Munjal suggested that Unacademy would significantly reduce its marketing budget and focus on organic growth channels.
- He asked employees to ensure that the company was profitable across every test prep category in the next three months, and that Unacademy Centers were profitable in FY23.
- Munjal added that businesses such as Relevel and Graphy, which have been scaling up, should cut their cash burn significantly.
Alarm bells: Last week, Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Y Combinator had cautioned founders of all its portfolio firms, telling them to plan for the worst as funding dries up.
And earlier this week, Sequoia Capital cautioned its portfolio companies, calling the current downturn a “crucible moment” and telling founders not to expect a quick recovery.
Cold out there: Unacademy is one of several large Indian startups – including three edtech firms – that have laid off employees over the past few months. It has sacked over 1,000 on-roll and contractual employees across its core and group businesses in a bid to cut costs.
- And Lido Learning shut down in February, letting go of 150 employees just five months after raising $10 million from investors.
Also Read: Embattled payments startup Bolt is cutting one-third of its staff
Infosys CEO Salil Parekh’s remuneration rose 43% in FY22
Salil Parekh, CEO of IT giant Infosys, saw his remuneration rise 43% to Rs 71 crore in the fiscal year 2021-22, according to the company’s annual report.
The steep increase was due to a rise in his performance-based pay variable and stock incentives awarded in the past few years.
The news comes just a few days after Infosys extended Parekh’s run as its chief executive for five more years, making him the longest-serving non-founding CEO of the company.
Infy vs TCS: Parekh’s bump is significant, especially when compared to that of his TCS counterpart Rajesh Gopinathan, who saw his compensation jump around 26.6% year-on-year to Rs 25.77 crore in FY22.
Magic touch: Parekh has been at the helm of Infosys since 2018. Under his leadership, the company has managed to outshine its larger rival TCS on revenue for the past three fiscal years. In FY22, Infosys saw revenues grow by 19.7% in constant currency — its fastest in 11 years.
In a letter to the shareholders, Parekh said he remains optimistic about the company’s growth as demand from large enterprises and governments continues to rise.
Jack Dorsey steps down from Twitter board after 15 years
Jack Dorsey has stepped down from the company’s board, ending his formal relationship with the social network he co-founded in 2006.
Dorsey had been a director since 2007, and was Twitter’s CEO from mid-2015 to November 2021, when he handed over the baton to Parag Agrawal.
Significance: It wasn’t a surprise that Dorsey didn’t stand for reinstatement to the board. In November he said would step down as CEO and leave the board when his term expired. But his exit marks the first time in Twitter’s history that none of its cofounders is working at the company or sitting on the board.
Musk ‘ally’ gets the boot: At the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday, Twitter shareholders voted to remove Egon Durban, co-CEO and managing director of private equity firm Silver Lake, from the board. Durban’s firm has worked on deals with Musk in the past.
While they voted on a number of other issues as well, shareholders didn’t weigh in on the biggest change confronting Twitter – Musk’s looming takeover.
Musk raises another $6.5B: The Tesla boss has pledged an additional $6.25 billion in equity financing to fund his $44-billion Twitter deal, according to regulatory filings. This means he will no longer need the margin loan he took against his Tesla and SpaceX shares.
It also shows Musk’s willingness to complete the deal after announcing earlier that he was putting it “temporarily on hold”, owing to a lack of clarity on the number of spam and fake accounts on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Twitter will pay a $150 million fine to US regulators to settle allegations of misusing private information like phone numbers for advertising purposes. Regulators have also asked the company to improve its compliance practices.
Tweet of the day
Broadcom agrees to buy VMware for $61 billion
Broadcom has agreed to buy cloud-computing company VMware for about $61 billion in one of the largest technology deals of all time, turning the chipmaker into a bigger force in software.
It will spend the equivalent of $138.23 per share for VMware in the cash-and-stock deal. That is more than 40% higher than VMware’s stock price before rumours of a deal began to circulate over the weekend.
Record for a chipmaker: The deal is the biggest takeover ever for a chipmaker, beating AMD’s $34.1 billion takeover of Xilinx.
It also extends an acquisition spree for Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, who has built one of the largest and most diversified companies in the industry.
VMware bolsters Broadcom’s software offerings — a key part of Tan’s strategy in recent years. He acquired corporate-software maker CA Technologies in 2018 and Symantec’s enterprise security business in 2019.
Big bucks: The purchase also adds to a run of tech deals worldwide this year.
- In January, Microsoft agreed to buy video game publisher Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
- A consortium backed by Vista Equity Partners is acquiring software maker Citrix Systems Inc. for $13 billion.
- Elon Musk announced a $44 billion buyout of Twitter in April.
Also Read: Ten things to know about the Broadcom-VMware deal
Apple to raise starting pay for US employees as inflation bites
Amid rising inflation and unionisation efforts, Apple is increasing its US employees’ starting pay to $22 per hour, a 45% bump from 2018.
Quote: “This year, as part of our annual performance review process, we’re increasing our overall compensation budget,” said a company spokesperson.
The change will take effect in July, with Apple already telling workers it will advance their annual reviews by three months, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the development.
Rising pressure: Apple has been facing growing pressure from workers recently. In April, a few company workers at its Atlanta store had filed a petition to hold a union election, seeking to become the company’s first US store to unionize.
Google Maps workers demand WFH: Meanwhile, contact workers with Google Maps have filed a petition in Washington, seeking permission to continue working from home owing to high travel costs and low wages, according to a report in the New York Times.
Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai and Ruchir Vyas in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.
For all the latest Technology News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
