This week, social media was filled with posts stating that UPI may no longer be free. But that may really not be true. But it also may be…. true. Let me explain.

UPI Will Remain Free…. Not Really

What happened was that the Lok Sabha passed the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) bill on Thursday August 06th. This introduced UPI Merchant Discount Rates (MDR) on certain merchants, which the Finance Minister says will only apply on merchants and not end users. But the fact is that as on date, the UPI and Services Steering Committee (headed by the National Payments Corporation of India) is yet to decide on MDR after the bill clears Parliament.

The Government insists that MDR applies only to merchants and not the users. But if you think on this for a second, you’ll realise that it doesn’t really matter. Because like taxes, any extra fees on merchants is ultimately passed onto consumers. It’s like GST, or cess. The Government also insists that this fee will be lower than what credit cards charge, but it’s a fee nonetheless.

So…. it’s complicated. But we still can’t say for sure that UPI will not be entirely free for users. Which sucks because the Government went through great pains to weed out cash over the last 10 years – and when UPI has the highest volume of tranactions in the world (more than any other platform), to be slapped with a fee or increase in prices because of UPI is absolute shite.

For now, the Government said that the “vast majority” of merchant transactions will remain free. But the speculation will remain.

Microsoft has Opened its Biggest India Data Center in Hyderabad

And it’s for Azure. And of course, AI.

Thu.

According to Microsoft, “Microsoft now operates four cloud regions in India, giving it the country’s largest hyperscale cloud presence and more local choice with enterprise-grade security, compliance and governance frameworks for the AI era.”

Those four areas are Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad. All big cities.

They also said that they already got business from Adani and HDFC and a few others, to whom Microsoft has given “early access” to the Hyderabad center. So right now, Microsoft (via Azure) is India’s largest cloud computing provider.

Isn’t Satya Nadella originally from Hyderabad? Anyway.

Why is this bad? Because it is a data center. It is not being advertised as a “AI-Ready” data center, but AI is definitely not omitted from Microsoft’s announcement as well. I mean, the announcement has AI in its title.

Apart from the obvious environment disasters – which the big tech lobby has so far made sure are not credibly published by environmentalists – data centers are not really wealth-building. Especially in India. Data centers are coming to India at a very rapid pace because India has loosely defined Environmental laws that are very poorly regulated. In 2025, ever since I’ve been doing TWITI, Microsoft announced $20bn, Google $15bn, Amazon $35bn, and more, all for AI-ready data centers. And don’t even get me started about Ambani and Adani.

Reuters reported that Environmentalists have accused authorities of fast-tracking ⁠a planned ​Google data center hub in ​India without weighing risks to water supplies and wildlife, allegations the government ​rejects. But, come on. The Andra Government basically gave an entire hill to Google for its $15bn data center complex, and Google has already shaved off the hill.

Think about it – every summer is worse than the previous one. Water shortages are more common. Air quality is declining in more and more cities. According to the Progressive Policy Institute, India had 84 of the 100 most polluted cities in the world in January 2025. All for what? So that the HDFC app runs faster? Will it add more money to your account?

And let’s not forget the ramocalypse. The reason our gadgets are becoming more expensive is the shortage of memory chips, which is caused by rampant data center expansions around the world.

Plus, the AI bubble is going to burst. And it’s going to be worse than the dotcom bubble of the early 2000’s. And you and I, along with millions of “ordinary” Indians, will suffer the most.

Headlines

• Government gives Meta another warning. And finally, the Zuck has apologied. But that’s not for removing PM Modi’s facebook video, it’s an apology over issues related to CSAM, deepfakes and the temporary removal of PM Modi’s video. Actually, yes, it’s for removing PM Modi’s video.
• Bombay HC orders Meta and Google to remove Nithin Gadkari deepfakes. That’s like adding ethanol to fire, eh?
• WhatsApp is testing age verification of select users in India ahead of the rollout of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.
• Anthropic will offer in-country inference within India, where Claude requests will be processed on Indian servers through Amazon Bedrock. Anthropic delegation meets Karnataka CM.
• Government fined Zepto and others over dark patterns.
• After boycott calls (well done), Swiggy is refunding restaurant charges. Specifically, 250+ Bangalore restaurants threatened to delist from Swiggy and Zomato, citing inflated commissions, extra charges and narrower marging. Following negotiations, Swiggy agreed to refund promotional charges it levied on restaurants without prior consent. Remember that Rapido launched a zero commission food delivery app Ownly and it’s getting traction now.
• In separate news, Swiggy, Zomato, Zepto may face Maharashtra’s EV Rules. Specifically, Maharashtra State is considering bringing food delivery, quick commerce and ecommerce platforms under its proposed bike-taxi regulatory framework, which may include EV requirements, GPS based tracking, insurance cover and a 2% contribution towards a driver welfare fund. I hope this happens.
• Hero MotoCorp is going to debut its maiden electric motorcycle in 2027.
• Cars24, the used car marketplace, is investing $5m to launch Deployment Inc, which is an imdependent enterprise AI company. They said Deployment Inc will help enterprises deploy frontier AI models through Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs).
• Spacetech startup (I’m getting more wary of the spacetech space tbh), GalaxEye has acquired Bangalore-based spacecraft engineering company StarOps to… engineer satellites in-house. This makes sense I guess.
• OfBusiness and Shiprocket is the latest to join the IPO bandwagon. These are two B2B ecommerce platforms.
• Flipkart’s premium grocery brand is going to be called “Pykd” (the logo is as bad as the name) which it will pilot in Bangalore. Specifically, this is a premium grocery brand for Flipkart Minutes – so it’s premium grocery on quick comerce.
• Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos met PM Modi and shook hands. Netflix launched the “Netflix India Storytelling Initiative” with IICT and NFDC to “train young talent”. They didn’t say they’ll train young talent for free, just saying.
• Apple Pay now said to launch in India in October. No UPI, only supports Visa and Mastercard.
• India’s Ministry of External Affairs has launched its official Snapchat account as part of PM Modi’s Gen Z outreach.
• Reliance Retail acquires AI Fashion Startup Furrl to “boost personalisation”.

And finally, not entirely tech related, but you should know – Reliance Brands brings Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS brand to India. Just remember what I said last week – Kardashian’s brand, like so many so-called celebrity owned brands, profits from sweat shops and exploitation of labour in different parts of the world. In other words, they benefit from forced labour.

This Week’s Find

Since all these new AI-ready data centers will give you a headache, get this head massager.