By Erick I’ll be honest, this week’s international tech news felt much more, ahem, entertaining than tech India news. Still, I have included only the bits that are relevant to Tech India. Although I’m really tempted to say that our friend Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella seems to have had a tough week, what with the global SharePoint outage (which is a big deal for most businesses) and the news about his staying positive despite 15,000+ layoffs this year. Business lessons?
Here’s the most important of what happened this week in Tech India:
- Dona’d Trump issued a veiled warning to American tech companies saying he wants to see more companies making and hiring in the US, rather than in countries like China and India. If you remember from TWITI #20 of 2025 he told Tim Cook he doesn’t want Apple “building all over India” but Apple is going ahead with building all over India anyway. So wonder how this will turn out.
- Government of India bans AltBalaji, Ullu and some 23 other OTT platforms in India over “obscene, ponographic content”. My filmmaker friend told me he thinks in reality they are banned because they offer God awful content overall, and they maybe try to retain users who are thirsty. If you know what that means. This reminded me of the time TikTok was banned I India – go lookup cringe Indian TikTok on YouTube if you dare.
- The Government of India cleared 6 semiconductor manufacturing projects with a total investment of more than ₹1.5 lakh crore and expected to create over 27,000 jobs. Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada said the approvals are part of the government’s ₹76,000-crore ‘Semicon India Programme’, aimed at building a semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in the country. Well I have not heard about “Semicon India Program” (it’s new, apparently) but there is the India Semiconductor Mission that is the Government’s bold vision to becoming the global chipmaking hub – and therefor the global tech dominant player.
- PayPal announced Wednesday it has partnered with global wallet companies to create a platform called PayPal World that is designed to make cross-border commerce easier. The platform will allow users to pay others using their local wallets and payment systems. This includes UPI wallets in India (via NPCI Payments Ltd. (UPI)) – which is exciting because my NRI aunty has one less excuse to send me $21 dollars for my birthday. Coming late 2025.
- Zoho develops its own LLM called Zia. Zoho also launched Zia Agents, with 25+ ready-to-deploy AI-powered agents available in Agent Marketplace; Zia Agent Studio a no-code agent builder; and a model context protocol (MCP) server to open up Zoho’s vast library of actions to third-party agents. This is part of its wider AI-powered offerings that compete with the likes of…. Grok and others. But better.
- AR Rahman meets Sam Altman and others – revealing he’s using AI in his music for his upcoming “Secret Mountain” project. As a lifelong Rahman fan I’ll admit I’m biased – if Rahman does it, then using AI for music is acceptable. Comment what you think about this. BTW, Rahman also meet Arvind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity.
- Chlorox sues Cognizant – a headline I never thought I’d read. Chlorox sues Cognizant for $380m over a cybersecurity lapse it claims led to a massive data breach in 2023. The lawsuit alleges that Cognizant’s service desk handed over login credentials to a cybercriminal without basic identity checks, resulting in operational paralysis and $380 million in damages. If this is true – that someone at Cognizant just handed over login credentials to anyone who asked – then $380 million is way too less IMO.
- Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX suffered a data breach, but the Exchange’s leadership assures that the users and their assets are not affected. I’ll need to spend more time on this one, because I’m still not sure how legal-ish is crypto trading in India.
On a personal / content creator note – as most of you know I always accompany a less-than-60-second video on my YouTube (short) and Instagram (reel) channels. I will continue to make these as I enjoy the feedback I get from those who say these 60 seconds give them the opportunity to stay informed about tech in India. But based on feedback and requests I have received, I will also do a longer YouTube “podcast” video for each TWITI that I will upload to my channel, which will include the news you read here and also more commentary on each of them, so you can listen to my on the way to work / college / school and continue to, you know, stay informed about tech in India.