By Erick Let’s not even talk about Trump. Really, let’s not. Clearly, Trump’s tariffs are a waste of time and are hurting Americans more than anyone else, and the biggest contribution to the world from his and his whole circus is some really excellent meme material.
Honestly though, I reacted to the news about Apple CEO Tim Cook giving Trump a gold plated plaque or whatever. This was my reaction, comment or message me if you don’t get it.
Let’s talk about more meaningful tech news from Tech India this week:
- TCS, dear TCS, laid off 12,000 people and then announced salary hikes for 80% of its staff. Nonsense. Watch another impromptu video I made here about this.
- Vinfast, the Vietnam-based global leader in electric vehicles opened a large manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu. I have been following Vinfast with a lot of interest – it is less than 10 years’ old and already has at least five showrooms in California, and seems to have already outperformed Tesla (in performance and price) and stands shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese EV giants. Vinfast become the latest automobile giant to Make in India.
- Speaking of EVs, Tesla’s second showroom in India is set to open in Delhi. Okay let’s move on.
- Swiggy rolls out Desk Eats, which is billed as a curated menu and food packaged to allow people “who don’t have time to take lunch break” to have a snack. I have strong feelings about this, watch this very impromptu video here.
- The Government of India announced PAN 2.0 project, choosing LTIMindtree to implement it and expected to go live next year. This is basically to simply and unify PAN and TAN services. The project costs nearly ₹1,5000 crore though.
- Spotify is hiking prices in India, somewhere around ₹230 per month. I haven’t used Spotify for years though to be honest, I use YT music only because it comes bundled with by YouTube Premium subscription – and this my friends is the only subscription I pay for because I don’t like watching ads on YouTube videos. Weird.
- Infosys has inaugurated an advanced AI, cybersecurity, and spacetech center in Hubballi (North Karnataka), boosting the region’s profile as a tech innovation hub.
- Ola Electric is set to unveil a major new initiative at an event in Tamil Nadu on August 15, promoting indigenous technology and manufacturing.
- Reliance has written off its $200 million investment in hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo. It was good while it lasted I guess.
- OpenAI has released GPT-5, its most advanced AI model, and emphasized India as its second-largest market after the US. CEO Sam Altman highlighted India’s rapid AI adoption and hinted at plans to make AI more accessible and affordable through local partnerships, though an immediate IPO is not on the horizon. Btw, GPT-5 is integrated into the Copilot bundle from Microsoft, and also Motorola announced that Microsoft’s Copilot Vision will be integrated into its AI suite for upcoming devices in India, extending its Microsoft partnership.
I’m honestly pissed about TCS. The company, it seems, had the audacity to have “clarified to Karnataka authorities that no employees have filed formal complaints regarding the layoffs, which are framed as a shift toward becoming a “future-ready organization””. Bi*ch, you fired 12,000 people and want to look like the good guy?
I’m genuinely worried about the state of the IT Services industry in India. I keep going back to this post I wrote about Infosys, and I monitor the industry closely and feel that it’s only gotten worse.
For those interested, see this excellent piece from The Verge (from 2019 but still rings with me) about Cognizant / Facebook moderators. Cognizant has since ‘quit’ but this still gives you an idea of the kind of work these companies accept for money, without worrying too much about having their young and desperate engineers exploited.
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