Also in the letter:
■ China-linked tools hit financial firms
■ Sequoia’s restructuring
■ Apple cuts employee AI budgets
Amagi’s Q2 revenue grows 27% to Rs 476 crore, profit rises
(L to R): Baskar Subramanian, Srividhya Srinivasan & KA Srinivasan, founders, Amagi
Amagi Media Labs reported robust revenues and profits for the July-September quarter, as the company saw growth across its cloud modernisation, streaming, and advertising businesses.
Financials:
- Revenue from operations: Up 27% to Rs 476 crore.
- Profit after tax: Up nearly 30-fold to Rs 75 crore, from approximately Rs 2.5 crore in the year-ago quarter.
- Adjusted Ebitda: Up 114% to Rs 89 crore.
CEO’s take: “We see three major opportunities: helping customers operate more efficiently, reach new audiences, and maximise revenues from their content. We expect AI to play an important role across all three,” Baskar Subramanian, managing director and chief executive of Amagi, said in a statement.
Shiprocket posts maiden profit on strong core business growth
Shiprocket CEO Saahil Goel
Logistics firm Shiprocket posted its first quarterly profit in Q2FY27, aided by growth in its core shipping business.
- The company swung to a profit of Rs 60 lakh in the quarter from a loss of Rs 20.29 crore a year ago.
- Revenue from operations rose 35% to Rs 674 crore.
- Revenue from its core business, which covers domestic shipping and related software tools, rose 25% to Rs 462 crore.
Moneyview net profit jumps to Rs 201 crore in Q2
Moneyview cofounder and CEO Puneet Agarwal
In its first quarterly results post-listing, digital lending startup Moneyview reported a more than fivefold jump in net profit.
Financials:
- Net profit: Rs 201 crore, up from Rs 38.7 crore in the year-ago period.
- Revenue from operations: Rs 1,120 crore.
- Disbursed loans: Worth Rs 7,701 crore in Q2, up 41% on-year.
Midterm results may slow US visa curbs, but no quick relief likely for IT
The sweeping victory of Democrats in the US midterm elections could slow the Trump administration’s push for strict H-1B visa and employment-based immigration restrictions. However, experts said it is unlikely to reverse measures already in place or bring any quick relief to IT companies.
Blue wave: The Democratic Party took over both chambers of Congress in a shocking reversal for the incumbent Republicans, much to the disappointment of President Donald Trump.
Experts said this result should increase scrutiny of the administration’s policy decisions, potentially slowing further restrictions. Still, any improvement in sentiment is unlikely to translate quickly into higher hiring or technology spending.
Expert take: The blue win could still signal a shift in sentiment towards tech services outsourcing and hiring of Indian professionals. “There will be a shift from executive-driven policymaking to greater congressional oversight,” said Pareekh Jain, chief executive of EIIRTrend, an research firm.
Existing curbs stay put: The results are unlikely to trigger a reversal of current constraints, which came via executive action and agency rulemaking: a $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B petitions, a wage-weighted lottery, and proposed prevailing-wage revisions. Congress can legislate on visa rules, but the president can veto such bills.
India flags China-linked AI tools in hacking campaign against financial firms
India’s nodal cybersecurity agency identified the hacking group behind a wave of AI-driven attacks on financial firms and named the tools involved, at least two of which are linked to China, Reuters reported.
Modus operandi: The group, which the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) calls “Crafty Falcon,” has breached non-bank lenders, fintech firms, and cryptocurrency exchanges, according to an advisory issued on Wednesday. Cert-In named four tools — ARTEX, PentAGI, Cairn, and CyberStrikeAI — that were used in these breaches.
China link: Security researchers have linked at least two of these to China. ARTEX has been used in attacks on South Korean banks since late September, according to CrowdStrike, which said a China-linked group also deployed it in an espionage campaign targeting more than 200 organisations across at least 14 countries.
Who got hit: Cert-In said Crafty Falcon “surveys its targets with machine intelligence” and moves money by invoking victims’ own payment and disbursement systems. Attacks were timed around holidays, weekends, and other low-monitoring periods to delay detection, and firms that had fixed flaws after earlier alerts were hit again after incomplete remediations.
Also Read: AI turns cyber threat into boardroom crisis
Sequoia Capital restructures operations after raising $10 billion, shuts London office
Sequoia Capital has begun a sweeping overhaul under which the global venture firm will close its London office and wind down its Arc accelerator and Scouts programmes.
Driving the news: In a reset a year after its leadership changed hands, the Silicon Valley firm will also merge its early- and growth-stage investing teams.
In a note to founders titled “The Sequoia of Tomorrow,” its seven general partners said the firm had raised about $10 billion in fresh funds and described the changes as a shift towards “high-conviction, highly selective” investing.
London exit: The London closure means “several people” will leave, the firm said. “This is not about the team — they are excellent. We simply don’t see the need for a local presence,” Sequoia said, adding it will keep backing European founders from the Bay Area.
Yes, and: As for India’s startup ecosystem, ET had reported in June 2023 that the VC had split into three independent firms, with its India and Southeast Asia businesses becoming Peak XV Partners, and its China arm becoming HongShan.
Apple cuts employee AI budgets for cost control push
Apple is cutting employee budgets for AI usage as part of a cost-saving drive, even as it tries to put the technology at the centre of its operations, Bloomberg reported.
What happened: Last month, Apple lowered the daily spending cap for some engineers using AI models to $200 from $300, the report said. It now plans further cuts for some engineering teams, potentially trimming daily allowances to as little as $100, the report said, citing people in the know.
But why: The moves capture the balancing act Apple faces, of reining in costs while urging staff to weave AI more deeply into their daily work. The company is pushing to modernise its engineering processes and internal operations with AI, even as it tightens how much employees can spend on the technology.
Also Read: Apple beats sales and profit expectations but AI costs weigh on holiday sales
