After elaborate discussions with stakeholders, the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill has fixed the age of consent at 18. This would mean anyone below the age of 18 is defined as “children” and companies, including edtech startups, need to obtain explicit parental consent before processing data belonging to this user group. ■ FreshToHome bags $104 mn, led by Amazon’s venture fund ■ Walmart happy with Flipkart’s positive contribution margin ■ Polygon fires 100 employees Anyone in the upcoming Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill. The government will "review” this definition one year after the enactment of the Act, a senior official told us. Further, companies will need to obtain explicit parental consent before processing any data belonging to this user group. The decision by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology comes amid a sustained pushback from internet and social media intermediaries which have argued that keeping the age at 18 is not in line with global standards. Sources in the IT ministry said any decision to lower the age of consent to 16 a year after the DPDP Bill is enacted will be the government’s way of reassuring companies in the ed-tech and other children-content-related space. “We spoke to several stakeholders before coming to this decision. While parents want the age to be kept at 18, children and other stakeholders want it lowered. But right now, the age cut-off will be 18. We may lower it to say 16 a year after the (DPDP) Bill is in place,” the official added. The obligations prescribed in the draft Bill are a departure from similar norms around the world. For example, the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) recognise varying levels of maturity of young adults and teenagers while prescribing the age of consent and the rules for data processing. Local language social media startup ShareChat, , will prioritise scaling up revenue and treat each business on its short-term ability to generate cash flows, . The Bengaluru-based firm, backed by Twitter and Snap Inc, is preparing to open up its social media platform as well as short-video app Moj to political advertising ahead of the general elections next year as well as state elections later this year. “Our monthly burn today is a third of what it was the same time last year and our revenue run-rate would be double,” Sachdeva told us. Sources said ShareChat’s burn is still in the range of $6-9 million per month, though Sachdeva did not comment on the actual number. “We made decisions when there was growth at any cost and there was capital available for startups chasing growth. We had to tune ourselves according to that. Now, capital is very scarce. We haven’t touched the last round of funding money, but we raised it to ensure it as a buffer. It’s a hard place to be in to be post-facto looking at that. It is never sustainable to be chasing growth at any cost,” he said. Sachdeva said ShareChat registers 180 million monthly active users and the number of gifters had grown about three times in the last 12 months. It launched the in-app virtual gifting feature in September 2020 as a revenue stream. Currently, across ShareChat and Moj the annualised gross merchandise value from gifting is around $75 million. Online meat delivery company , amid a tough funding environment for late-stage startups. The company plans to use the funds to enter more markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, starting with Saudi Arabia, and also open more offline stores, cofounder Shan Kadavil told ET. “We have launched in 160 cities and 100 of these cities came in the last 12-18 months,” Kadavil said. “The first use of funds is going deeper into these cities…we are looking at Saudi as a market that we are looking to enter and the broader GCC. ” Recently, online food and grocery delivery startup Swiggy decided to shut down its meat delivery business. Kadavil said while his company saw a 10x growth in sales three years before last year, the growth rate has slowed down to around 30-40% currently. FreshToHome has opened about 30 offline stores, largely in its home city of Bengaluru, and the company plans to take this to about 100 stores soon. Upskilling platform in funding led by global equity firm Greater Pacific Capital (GPC). IT startup in a funding round led by MassMutual Ventures. Chronicle, a startup building a modern format of presentations, , led by Accel. Flipkart's parent and that it plays a key role in overall gross sales and revenue growth of the US firm, a senior executive at the world's largest retail firm said after announcing its fourth-quarter results. A positive contribution margin means the product being sold at a certain price can make contributions or generate money after the deduction of fixed costs at the firm. Speaking at the post-earnings call, Walmart CFO John David said, “A lot of our GMV (gross merchandise value) and revenue growth comes from Flipkart. We see great progress there and they continue to be a strong player in the market there. Flipkart has invested in infrastructure in the last three years and now we can see the contribution profit and we are excited to see that. ” Walmart International, which includes Flipkart, reported net sales of $27. 6 billion for the quarter under review – showing a growth of a little over 2% on a year-on-year basis. The was also highlighted in the earnings which contributed to the operating cost increase of 262 basis points. Polygon, a secondary scaling solution provider founded by three Indians for Ethereum blockchain, , the firm’s cofounder Sandeep Nailwal said in a blog post. The development comes at a time when the cryptocurrency sector has been witnessing a prolonged down-cycle. “Earlier this year, we consolidated multiple business units under Polygon Labs. As part of this process, we’re sharing the difficult news that we’ve reduced our team by 20%, impacting multiple teams and about 100 positions,” the blog post read. Nailwal said the impacted employees will each receive three months of severance pay, regardless of their level or tenure at Polygon Labs. In January, several global cryptocurrency players had undertaken layoffs to rein in costs. While Gemini slashed 10% of its headcount last month, Coinbase Global Inc had said it would reduce its workforce by about 950 employees. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has urged the ride-hailing companies, following its public directive to firms such as Ola, Uber, and Rapido to stop bike taxi services immediately. Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das and the prime minister of Singapore on Tuesday l using their respective Fast Payment Systems, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow. Oyo announced on Tuesday that it in 2023. The company said it plans to support the 'surge' in business travel by increasing its footprints across all the major business cities. ■ China’s Newest Weapon to Nab Western Technology — Its Courts ( ) ■ The big idea: should robots take over fighting crime? ( ) ■ Section 230: The little law that defined how the Internet works ( ).