The Weekly Dispatch

Allcargo Gati, an Express distribution and supply chain solutions company, has announced the appointment of Sandeep Kulkarni as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Kulkarni, with over two decades of leadership experience across various industries, steps into this role to spearhead strategic planning and operational efficiency. In his new position, Kulkarni will focus on enhancing operational efficiency through the adoption of new-age technology.?

IT services firm SourceFuse expects to cross ?200 crore revenue mark

This fiscal driven by its machine learning solution segment, a senior company official said. SourceFuse co-CEO and cofounder Gautam Ghai said that the company plans to increase headcount by about 25% to 700 people next year from around 560 at present as it looks to broaden customer base and diversify offerings. The company has over 80% workforce in India.

Vaishali Kasture, Amazon Web Services (AWS) India and South Asia's Interim country head for commercial, resigned from her position.

She had taken over from the former president of commercial business, Puneet Chandok, in July this year. Her tenure at AWS spanned nearly 5 years. Before becoming the interim country head, she was the Head of top enterprise, mid-market, and global businesses in India and South Asia.

HCLTech has launched its new Global Delivery Center (GDC) in Iasi, Romania.

The new center will provide next-generation Digital, Engineering, cloud and AI solutions. As part of its nearshore strategy to serve global clients the company had said that it planned to expand its operations in Bucharest and Iasi and hire an additional 1,000 people in the country over the next 2 years. HCLTech has completed 5 years of operations in Romania and employs around 1,000 people across Bucharest, Iasi, and Brasov.

Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy has resigned to pursue “personal aspirations”

The company said in a surprise development which deepened the leadership crisis. Roy's last day at work will be Match 31, 2024, Infosys said in a regulatory filing. Jayesh Sanghrajka, currently EVP and deputy CFO, will replace Roy. While Roy's next move is not clear, Infosys has lost at least 8 senior management personnel in the last 12 months, several of them to rivals.

WhatsApp is rolling out the ability to pin messages inside chats and chat groups.

You can already pin chats/groups you most frequently engage with, and the new feature seems like an extension to that allowing users to also pin messages selectively, so they’ll always stay at the top inside chats and chat groups. Pinning messages in WhatsApp chats is a straight-forward process. You start with selecting the message you want to pin at the top and long-press on it.

Tech Mahindra launched Populii, a crowdsourcing platform that enables gig workers to collaborate with leading organisations through micro jobs requiring 'human-in-the-loop' services

According to a release. Gig jobs on Populii will include content rating, data collection, data transcription, and data annotation of multiple data types. Populii will have three customer-centric principles -- ‘advise, annotate, acquire -- to help enterprises scan seamlessly and accelerate product development.

Cognizant will acquire Thirdera to boost ServiceNow business.

ServiceNow develops a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. The deal is expected to close in January 2024. Financial details were not disclosed. Acquisition is expected to add more than 940 employees to Cognizant’s ServiceNow Business Group, creating one of the largest aggregations of ServiceNow professional certifications globally.?

OpenAI is facing a “major” outage on ChatGPT on the web

According to a notice on its website, without specifying the extent of the disruption.? It said that it has identified and addressed the source of the problem and is monitoring for further issues. However, the company has later said that the problem has been resolved. Interestingly, the post on website suggests that the issue may have only affected ChatGPT web users and iOS or Android users may not have actually been affected by the outage.

Infosys has called upon employees to work from office at least 3 days a week

And plans to soon make it mandatory after management requests to resume the normal office routine went largely unheeded. Expressing dissatisfaction over a tepid response to multiple return-to-office requests, the email highlighted that the 3 years of work from home arrangement following the Covid pandemic were long enough. Barring exceptions for medical reasons, employees must start coming to office, it further said.

Elon Musk’s AI company xAI has rolled out its chatbot Grok to India and 46 other countries

Including Australia, Canada, Malaysia and New Zealand. The service was extended for social media platform X’s Premium+ subscribers in the US earlier this month. Grok competes with the likes of OpenAI's viral chatbot ChatGPT and recently launched Google's Gemini AI. The social network that Musk bought a year ago launched the Premium+ plan last week for $16 per month, with benefits like no ads.

Tejas Networks has acquired the technology for producing Radio Access Network (RAN) – the heart of 5G communications – from the IIT, Madras, for ?12 crore.

This is a non-exclusive technology transfer. The Tata Group company is expected to be able to sell RAN to telecom companies in a year. ? RAN is a piece of equipment that every 5G telecom tower will need to have. It aims to integrate these innovations into cutting-edge products and solutions for both the domestic and international markets.

The US Federal Reserve's dovish pivot, and forecasts of rate cuts in 2024, triggered a rally across global equities.

Back home, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50, too, hit their respective record highs of 70,603 and 21,211 led by broad-based buying. At close on December 14th, the Sensex index stood at 70,514, up 930 points or 1.34%, while the Nifty50 settled 256 points, or 1.23%, higher at 21,183.

Cryptocurrency investor platform Coinswitch announced a new corporate entity, PeepalCo

Which will house all its brands as part of a larger business restructuring. Coinswitch is looking to diversify its offerings to include investment products like fixed deposits, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), etc. Explaining the leadership roles at the newly formed entity, Singhal said he will assume the role of Group CEO, Vimal Sagar Tiwari as Group COO, and Govind Soni as Group CTO.

Reliance Industries and Walt Disney are finalising details of a non-binding term sheet to merge their Indian media operations

According to media reports. Under the current terms of agreement, possibly to be announced in January, a newly-formed unit of Reliance's Viacom18 is to absorb Disney's Star India through a share swap deal. Reliance is likely to pay cash for a 51% in the proposed Viacom18 unit while Disney owns 49%. The unit's board is expected to have equal representation from both parties.