TechThisWeek: Layoffs at OYO; govt snubs Amazon’s $1 bn gift; fintech apps most popular in India

TechCircle’s podcast TechThisWeek brings you news, insights, wrapped up in a weekly roundup of the following hand-picked developments in the startup and enterprise technology ecosystems in India.

• The week started with news of lay-offs at budget hospitality chain OYO. According to reports, close to 2,400 employees across New Delhi, Gurugram and Jaipur are likely to be impacted. After Ola, this is the second SoftBank portfolio company in India that has taken drastic measures to ensure profitability and efficiency. 
• As money trickles into SoftBank’s ambitious Vision Fund II, an announcement by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to pump in $1 billion into the India marketplace was met with cold reception. Minister of commerce Piyush Goyal said that Amazon was not doing a favour to India with the investment. 
• The Amazon app stayed ahead of rival Flipkart’s in terms of downloads in 2019, according to App Annie’s State of Mobile 2020 report. The report also states that digital payments in India are seeing an uptick, as Indians use fintech mobile apps more often. India also led in growth of streaming and entertainment apps, with 80% growth in 2019.
• Technology giant IBM’s India employees accounted for a tenth of the 9,262 patents granted to the company in 2019. IBM won the highest number of US patents for 2019 and the winning patents by the India team include information transfer via eye contact and tracking of benefits and costs of IT infrastructure and automation.