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Cognizant meets Q1 View, Begin Slay Off.
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brokerage from Sahi raises $33 million from Axel.
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TK Shiva Kumar, 150% jobs are at risk.
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NPCI meets with Pintak.
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Delivery apps roll out heat shield for riders.
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You are listening to Money Controls Tech 3 Podcast.
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Hello listeners, welcome to Money Controls Tech 3 Podcast.
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You go to show for the sharpest start-up and take-up dates Monday through Friday.
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You can catch us on the Money Control website, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get a podcast.
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Before we get into our top stories, a quick look at the earnings coming in from the tech site.
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Cognizant has reported Q1 2026 driving you of about $5.4 billion,
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which is up about 6% year on year or 3.9% in constant currency terms.
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And if we look at the operating margin has come in at about 15.6%,
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this seems to be flat on an adjacent basis, but down 110 basis points compared to last year.
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And another important metric bookings stood out trailing 12 month bookings rose 11% to 29.6 billion dollars
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with a book to build ratio of about 1.4 times.
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Alongside this, there's also a cost reset announcement underway from Cognizant,
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Cognizant effect to incurred between $230 million and $320 million under its projectly pre-structuring.
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Now, remember a large portion of this about $270 million is tight to employ related costs indicating
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there might be some layoffs or workforce changes as part of the reset.
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All right, moving on to our top stories starting with a warning coming out of Karnataka.
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Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivkumar spoke at the Network Stadium's Future of Work Summit yesterday
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and has said that artificial intelligence could impact up to 50% of jobs in Bengaluru and across the country.
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He's flagged that this is a major challenge as the adoption actually.
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At the same time, the state is continuing to push Impra and tech investment.
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Again, another important thing that he mentioned during the speech was plans to include a second airport in south of Bengaluru
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and a large AICT project.
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Now, this AICT project is expected to plan around 9,000 acres near Bidadi and could go before the cabinet soon.
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So, the idea is to create a more concentrated hub for AI and related industries instead of the current
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spread out ecosystem.
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So, Bengaluru continues to remain a key hub with over 22.6 million AIC professionals
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making it one of the largest tech talent cluster.
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All right, moving to payments where a shift is being discussed in how UPI evolves.
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NPCI, the National Payments Corporation of India is meeting smaller UPI apps to explore giving them early or exclusive access to certain features.
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Now, the ecosystem is highly concentrated.
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As we all know, phone pay and Google pay dominate the segment, accounting for about 80% of transaction.
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That leaves dozens of smaller apps sharing the remaining market.
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Now, the proposal here is to move from simultaneous feature rollout to a staggered approach.
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So, smaller apps could get early access to features like UPI Auto Pay and UPI Lite, which may help them attract users.
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So, apps expected to be part of the discussion include Bean, Cread, WhatsApp Pay, Movie Quick, Amazon Pay, Supermoney and Navi.
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So, there is also discussion around targeted incentives for emerging apps as well as tighten norms around auto pay mandate.
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So, this dodges the possible shift from a neutral rollout model to a more intervention driven approach to reduce market concentration.
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All right, let's talk about something very visible right now.
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Heat waves and their impact on delivery workers.
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E-commerce and Quickcommerce companies are expanding heat protection measures as temperatures are rising.
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Amazon, for example, has expanded its project ash wave, which includes air conditioned rest stops serving over 150,000 delivery workers each month.
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And Flipkart on the other hand is adding rest areas, hydration support, doctor on call access and heat safety training.
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Now, there is also shift towards portable solution.
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Blink it is distributing about 1.5 lakh glucose, stash it daily, while Zomato has expanded access to more than 5000 rest points.
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Zomato is also testing cooling vests in multiple cities for their driver partners.
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At the same time, worker groups are calling for formal protections, including paid cooling breaks and emergencies support.
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So, the conversation is now moving from optional support to the need for defined standards as extreme heat becomes a regular working condition.
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All right, finally, some funding news from the broken industry.
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Sahi has raised about $33 million in a series B round, which is led by Axel with participation from elevation capital.
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Now, the round value is the company at around $200 million, up from about $60 million in its previous round.
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That's quite a jump.
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Some background to add here, the company was founded in 2023 by your deal was and money's chain.
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So, Sahi operates a CNSC and BSC registered broker.
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The funding also remember comes at a time when the broken segment is seeing increased regulatory attention.
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At the same time, the activity is also seeing investor interests with platforms expanding beyond trading into broader financial services.
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All right, that's a wrap for today's episode of TechSlee from Money Control.
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A big shout out to our reporters from the tech and startup team for the stories we cover today.
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Thank you so much for listening.
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We air every Monday to Friday in the evening.
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So, tune in for more news minus the boring bits.
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This is Bavya Dilip Kumar signing off.
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You were listening to Money Control's Tech3 podcast.