Cred, Mobikwik and Groww report; OTT revenue share dispute among telecoms and tech companies.

Three leading fintech companies - Groww, Cred and Mobikwik - reported strong growth in their revenues on Thursday as the startup ecosystem seeks to achieve sustainable profitability. That and more today in the ETtech Top 5.

Singapore-based Nodwin Gaming acquires Publishme

Apple considered switching to DuckDuckGo from Google

Meta expects ad spending to increase this holiday season

Fintech startups report strong revenue growth

With funding tightening, if there's one thing that occupies every founder's mind, it's strong revenue growth. In keeping with the theme, three major fintech companies reported strong revenue growth today.

Cred reported 252% growth in total revenue for fiscal year 2023, while Mobikwik reported 17% quarterly revenue growth in the September quarter.

Groww also reported a healthy three-fold revenue growth between fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

>Groww reported total revenues of Rs 1,484 crore, up from Rs 422 crore in the previous fiscal. This includes revenue from Happay's expense management platform. The company's losses have marginally increased to Rs 1,347 crore in fiscal 2023 from Rs 1,279 crore in fiscal 2022. Mobikwik reported its second consecutive profitable quarter with a net profit of Rs 5 crore. For Groww, steady revenue growth has helped it to post a profit of Rs 73 crore in FY 2023.

Cutting costs: Cutting costs is one credo that all founders seem to follow. For Cred, the cost of conducting transactions on its platform increased by 354%. However, marketing expenses declined 26% to Rs 713 crore from Rs 975 crore.

Mobikwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh has indicated that the company's salary and marketing expenses have stabilized and steady revenue growth in the coming months will help boost Mobikwik's profits to double digits.

Credit remains the backbone: Be it asset management-focused player Groww, payment app Mobikwik or credit card payment platform Cred, credit is the backbone of every fintech business. Groww sees financial services as the next phase of its growth.

Mobikwik currently derives almost 60% of its revenue from financial services. Mobikwik chief Singh told ET that he wants to double down on asset management and lending through personal loans and "buy now, pay later" products.

The Cred, which doesn't want to position itself only as a fintech, is building verticals such as commerce and payments to increase revenue generation opportunities.

OTT charges won't affect net neutrality: COAI

Communications carriers and technology companies are once again at odds after the former proposed that large traffic-generating applications share a portion of their revenue with carriers to maintain and support telecom networks.

DETAILS: The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), representing Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, has insisted that its proposal to demand compensation from large traffic-generating apps does not violate network neutrality principles, as the tech companies have argued.

NEWS: Broadband India Forum (BIF) said on Tuesday that the telecom operators' arguments for demanding network usage charges from OTT providers, and the government's intention to introduce a licensing structure for them, will lead to violation of the principles and guidelines on net neutrality 2016.

Concerns: Fair fee proposal will 'provide opeHowever, telecom operators argue that this claim is misleading. Indian telecom operators are bound by their license conditions to ensure network neutrality or equal access to the network, COAI Director General S.P. said.

Singapore unit of Nodwin Gaming buys marketing firm Publishme

Singapore-based Nodwin Gaming has acquired a 100% stake in Publishme, a games marketing agency focused on West Asia and Turkey, for US$2 million.

What is Publishme? Publishme is a marketing agency with a number of publishers and brands in the games industry. Its clients include companies such as Activision, Garena, Supercell, Ubisoft and Nvidia.

Details of the deal: Indian gaming and media firm Nazara Technologies owned about 82% stake in the company, while Publishme founder Ozgur Ozalp owned the remaining portion. Nazara Technologies also owns a 54% stake in cybersports company Nodwin Gaming, which organizes events and tournaments, primarily generating revenue from advertising, sponsorship and media rights.

Nodwin Gaming raised $28 million in May at a post-money valuation of $349 million.

What's next? After the sale, Publishme founder Ozalp will become CEO of Nodwin Gaming Dubai. Publishme will also rename itself Nodwin Gaming in the Middle East, but will retain its Publishme name in its source market, Turkey.

Winzo invests $25 million to expand in Brazilian market:Gaming company Winzo is investing $25 million to expand its presence in the Brazilian market, co-founder Saumya Singh Rathore said. This is part of the company's strategy to tap into alternative sources of revenue through exports after the government imposed a 28% tax on online gaming.

Apple was considering switching to the DuckDuckGo search engine instead of Google

Apple has been in talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet-owned Google as the default search engine in the Safari browser's private mode, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

The U.S. Justice Department alleges that Google paid billions of dollars to Apple and other companies to become the default search engine in Web browsers and smartphones. Those deals have prevented other search engines, such as Microsoft's Bing and DuckDuckGo, from gaining users and becoming competitors to Google, according to federal and state antitrust regulators.

Nadella's Opinion:Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified Monday about his company's talks with Apple to convince Apple to make Microsoft's Bing search engine the default search engine in the Safari browser instead of Google. Nadella said Microsoft is willing to lose billions of dollars if Apple makes such a move.

Meta expects ad spending to increase this holiday season

Advertising spending this year during the festive season is likely to be higher than last year and Meta has every reason to be optimistic, said Arun Srinivas, director and head of advertising business (India) at Meta.

Details:Srinivas said consumers want to spend on Meta's apps, and he hopes advertisers will spend aggressively on its platforms during the festive season.

"We know that e-commerce platforms spend their sales during this period and spend on all forms of media, including us. Whether it's cars, real estate or jewelry, there will be plenty of launches in the high-end categories. Activity is also expected in the financial sector as it provides loans to consumers," he said.

AI-FUNCTIONS FOR ADVERTISING MATTERS: Meta has begun rolling out its first artificial intelligence-based generative art features for advertising materials in Meta's ad manager, with global rollout expected next year. Srinivas said artificial intelligence will play a key role in every Meta product over time.

The Top 5 news today was compiled by Megha Mishra in Mumbai and Eric Massey in New Delhi.