#MCTech3 | Top tech and startup news this evening

The past few days have been filled with negative stories about Byju's. However, it looks like we finally have some good news coming from the company.

Byju's has cleared a majority of its Provident Fund (PF) dues, which will provide its employees with some much-needed relief.

TELL ME MORE

Byju's has deposited Rs 123.1 crore, or over 97% of its PF dues, the company told the EPFO on June 27 in an email.

• Byju's had delayed PF payments for a majority of its employees from August 2022 to May 2023. The dues amounted to over Rs 125 crore, sources told us

The company said that the balance of Rs 3.43 crore will be paid within two days. It also agreed to deposit PF contributions for June by July 15.

BUT ISSUES REMAIN

The settlement of the dues?only happened after the EPFO intervened . This means that another government agency has its eyes on Byju's.

• In April, Byju's also?came under the scanner ?of India's financial probe agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED)

India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA)?has also sought more information ?about the company and will take a final decision about whether to open a formal probe based on an assessment.

All of this is happening at a time when the company has been facing intense criticism on social media. It is also dealing with internal issues, such as the resignations of its auditor and directors.

FOUNDER TO ADDRESS CONCERNS

Naturally, with all this happening, there was chaos among Byju's employees. Founder Byju Raveendran typically addresses such issues with employees via email, but this time the founder did not say anything, which made employees more anxious.

• However, in a late-evening email today, Raveendran informed employees that he will be?holding a town hall tomorrow to address the ongoing developments

The Indian government-backed interoperable commerce network is set to get turbocharged with the help of a tech giant.

DRIVING THE NEWS

Google?is launching an accelerator for the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) ?to help merchants build and scale their digital commerce operations.

What’s on offer??

Google Cloud will offer merchants a ready implementation of ONDC infrastructure and core APIs as open-source solutions, in addition to providing access to its Retail AI technology and PaLM API.?

• Companies that enable ONDC can also apply for a $25,000 grant

HELPING BUILD INCLUSIVE LOCAL APPS

In another key development, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is?open-sourcing its first set of speech data , comprising over 4,000 hours across 38 languages. This is part of Project Vaani, a joint initiative between IISc and Google.

• The initiative was first introduced last year with the aim of collecting speech data from people across 773 districts in India

The data will be made available to developers, who can use it to build local language solutions and apps in the areas of speech recognition, translation, and natural language understanding.

GENERATIVE AI PUSH

Google is also making its next-gen large language model, PaLM 2, available in India through the PaLM API and MakerSuite, to help developers build generative AI applications.

• PaLM 2 already powers features in over 20 Google products, including the AI chatbot Bard, Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Sheets

In addition, Google unveiled a slate of AI tools and technologies for Indian developers.?More on that here