Business
Ronnie Screwvala: No funding winter for startups with real business models
There is no funding winter for startups and unicorns with great and real business models and for those building organisations to outlast all others, according to Ronnie Screwvala, Co-Founder and Chairperson of higher education platform upGrad.
In an interaction with Screwvala said that even today, there are investments being closed daily across multiple sectors, as the world faces a great deal of uncertainty over multiple macro-economic factors.
Here are the excerpts from the interview:
Q: How do you look at the current wave of ‘funding winter’ in India?
A: I am always amused to hear this phrase ‘funding winter’, heard it so often in the last 15 years. I always thought only God was responsible for the multiple seasons we enjoy each year but of late, the private equity (PE) investor community is taking that place with their own patent on seasons.
Summer is when you bask in your own self-made glory, excesses and intoxication of hyper valuations, where no one is accountable and everyone is told to make hay while the sun shines.
Monsoon (unique to India) is a realisation that when ‘it rains it pours’ — good or bad.
Then, of course, is Winter, the time to re-write the same 50-page presentation that in summer months said exactly the opposite — the time to reverse the same intoxication of fund raise, valuations and hyper so-called growth with ‘one time’ write downs and blame the whole world, war, inflation and more, that was lurking around the whole summer but no one wanted to put their glasses on.
Seriously though, there is no funding winter for companies with great and real business models and for those building organisations to outlast all others. Even today there are investments being closed daily across multiple sectors — maybe not with the maverick investors who may be.
Let’s face it, the markets have corrected 10-12 per cent, that’s it. Overall, it is still way higher than pre-Covid and if you look, many companies are at their all-time high. This is also the best time for real businesses and mature founders not inflated with valuations to go out there.
Every company worth its value has to go through multiple seasons, over and over again, and the right ones grow and mature from that.
Also in Winter, the most elegant of snow leopards come out to hunt and be predators, and so Winter is the time for those who want to build to outlast and who want to be predators.
Q: The edtech sector is witnessing layoffs. Is this because funding dried up or there is more to it?
A: There is absolutely no ‘dry spell’. Just because a few handful of start-ups got crazily funded, made them lose all focus, pushed to grow and diversify are now being forced by those same investors to wake up and smell the coffee, does not mean there is any dry spell.
They were misguided by themselves and their Board and now are correcting themselves, unfortunately at the cost of valued working colleagues, but they are the exception, not the trend at all.
Never in a 100 years of education and ‘LifeLongLearning’ has there been a more opportune time to disrupt scale and include millions of college learners and working professionals to re-invent, re-skill and get onto a new growth path in their careers. India is also placed brilliantly to open up the higher education market in Asia and around the world.
We, at upGrad, have stayed away from the hubris of distraction and focused on outcomes and impacting careers.
Let there be no mistake, there is no better time than now. K12 went through its Covid bump and it is now seeing much needed correction, but the majority of companies in edtech are just getting started.
Q: How do you look at the global macroeconomic conditions that have engulfed economies the world over?
There were some interesting themes across the three days at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos. Here are some takeaways:
A) Those who were questioning the end of globalisation had not really spent enough time defining what that meant in the first place, before sounding the death knell on it. Globalisation is here to stay as the world consumer wants it that way. An 18-year-old Zayda in Bangladesh wants to own an Apple iPhone and the 22-year-old Amari in Zambia wants to graduate from a UK university.
While the world leaders have in their own way created barriers, through war or threats of war and more insular growth, the seven billion+ people on this planet will not let that happen and globalisation will prevail.
B) There is a reskilling revolution that is happening and will be a tsunami over the next decade across the world. Better education and lifelong learning — accessible and affordable to all — digitally can and will add a massive $8 trillion to the global GDP in this decade. Power shifts in countries will take place based on the workforce and their population being ready for the jobs of tomorrow and also be the learning capitals of the world.
C) India also has the place and the position to be the new voice of global leadership — largest democracy, fastest growing economy and a world leader with clarity, conviction and an agenda to put it at the centre-stage in the world.
D) There is no doubt that the world is going to pass through a very, very challenging time. With food being disproportionately available to countries around the world, the poor will get poorer even if the rich do not get richer. Covid is not leaving the planet in a hurry but has got us all hyper alert on health enough to take notice of even Monkeypox – something that was prevalent in Africa for years but ever since it hit the “western” world.
And the war is not going away in a hurry and it will be interesting to see how engaged the West stays as the war prolongs or will they lose interest if it does not serve their agendas.
The big question we also need to track is how polarised the world will get in the next two-three years. All of this will call for incredible world leaders and leadership in politics and in building business and organisations.
Business
US flight disruption: Air India advises passengers to check latest status

New Delhi : Air India on Saturday advised passengers to check the latest status of their flights and plan their journey to the airport accordingly, amid massive disruption at the US airports. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lifted a nationwide ground stop that had halted departures at US airports after a communications failure, though airlines warned that disruption and cancellations could continue.
“A nationwide ground stop is currently in effect across the US due to communication outages affecting air traffic operations. As a result, departures from airports across US are impacted, with possible consequential disruptions to Air India flights to and from the US,” Air India said in a statement posted on X. “Our teams continue to closely monitor the situation and will share updates as available,” it added. The cancellation of US flights happened after a communications problem affected air traffic operations. The notice announcing the cancellation did not specify the cause of the failure or say that airline schedules had returned to normal.
Earlier, the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center said the ground stop remained in effect across a large portion of the country, although some coastal facilities had been able to release international departures. In an update, American Airlines said some flights from certain airports were beginning to receive clearance to depart. At that point, most departures remained paused, and the airline expected further disruption, including unavoidable cancellations. American advised customers to check their flight status and review its travel alert for options. Its warning was issued before the FAA’s cancellation advisory. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters earlier that officials had acted as a precaution following a telecommunications outage affecting the FAA. “There is no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack,” he said at the time. That preliminary assessment did not rule out a cyberattack.
General
FBI warns AI tool can speed up cyberattacks

Washington : The FBI has warned that cybercriminals are using an artificial intelligence-assisted security testing tool to accelerate attacks on organisations around the world, with some intrusions reaching privileged access in less than three hours. In an alert issued on Friday (local time), the bureau said malicious actors had used the open-source framework, known as ARTEX, since at least August to target organisations across sectors including finance, government, technology, defence, energy and health care. The FBI said the tool can automate several stages of an intrusion, from identifying potential targets to preparing or carrying out data theft. That speed can leave defenders less time to detect and respond to an attack, it said.
The alert said some intrusions progressed from initial targeting to privileged access in under three hours. According to the alert, the framework was originally intended for authorised security testing. Its developer removed the original online repository in October following reports of malicious use, but copies and variants remained available, the FBI said. The bureau said the tool could lower the technical barriers for conducting complex operations and allow attackers to pursue multiple targets at the same time. Organisations’ internet-facing applications, cloud infrastructure and systems connected to suppliers or partners were among the areas of concern identified in the alert.
The FBI cited financially motivated attacks on South Korean financial institutions that it said resulted in personal information being taken from approximately 67,000 people. It also described a separate supply-chain compromise affecting users of a cloud backup service, which it said enabled access to more than 2,250 downstream customer environments. The bureau encouraged organisations to review their exposure to the internet, strengthen identity and access controls, monitor unusual activity and protect credentials. It also urged organisations that identify suspicious activity to contact the FBI or report it through the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Business
India’s forex reserves climb $2.49 billion to $719.5 billion, gold holdings surge to $104.8 billion

India’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $2.49 billion to reach $719.547 billion in the week ended November 6, according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday.
This increase follows consecutive weeks of decline, during which the reserves had slipped from $722.3 billion in the week ended October 17 to $717.057 billion by October 30.
The uptick in reserves was primarily driven by a sharp rise in gold holdings, which surged by $2.205 billion to $104.796 billion during the week, the RBI data showed.
Foreign currency assets, which form the largest component of India’s forex reserves, also rose by $232 million to $591.350 billion.
These assets are influenced by changes in the value of non-US currencies such as the euro, pound, and yen that are held in the reserves.
India’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) with the International Monetary Fund climbed by $52 million to $18.610 billion, while the country’s reserve position with the IMF increased by $1 million to $4.791 billion.
In rupee terms, the country’s total foreign exchange reserves stood at Rs 67,58,986 crore as of November 6.
Notably, the weekly increase in dollar terms came even as the reserves declined by Rs 49,742 crore in rupee terms, as per the data.
India’s forex reserves had previously touched an all-time high of $785.7 billion in the week ended September 4, following significant foreign currency inflows through a special concessional swap scheme for diaspora deposits.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the central bank eased the foreign exchange reporting requirements for small exporters and importers of services.
Under the amended Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Goods and Services) Regulations, 2026, individual service exporters will be deemed to have submitted the Export Declaration Form (EDF) once they provide the required payment-related information to their authorised dealer bank for crediting the proceeds to their accounts.
For exporters other than resident individuals, the same treatment will apply if the inward remittance for the service is not more than Rs 10 lakh or its equivalent in foreign currency.
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