{"id":616504,"date":"2026-09-30T16:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T16:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616504\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T16:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T16:12:13","slug":"apple-pay-finally-comes-to-india-why-flipkart-employees-are-unhappy-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616504\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Pay finally comes to India; Why Flipkart employees are unhappy; and more"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One quick thing: Govt\u2019s Rs 1 lakh crore deep-tech fund hits pause<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s newsletter:<\/p>\n

Finally, Apple Pay comes to IndiaWhy Flipkart employees are unhappy\u00a0Doordash dashes to Hyderabad for India GCC<\/p>\n

P.S.: Tune into Tech3 Podcast, your daily dose of tech and startup insights. Monday to Friday! Check it out on Spotify <\/a>or Apple Podcasts<\/a>. And don\u2019t forget to sign up to The AI Edge<\/a>, our weekly newsletter on all things artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? You can sign up for Tech3 here<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\" Top 3 Stories
\n Finally, Apple Pay comes to India
\n \"Finally, <\/a> <\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a 12-year wait… but Apple Pay has finally arrived in India.<\/p>\n

Driving the news <\/p>\n

Apple Pay launched in India today<\/a> in partnership with Axis Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The launch comes after months of negotiations with the banks.<\/p>\n

Customers with Axis Bank cards can add it to their Apple Wallet and make online and offline payments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While payment gateways will enable an Apple Pay option on the checkout page, customers can tap and pay with an iPhone or Apple Watch at offline point-of-sale (POS) terminals.<\/p>\n

Apple has also signed up a group of Indian payment service providers<\/a> and offline point-of-sale (POS) companies to bolster merchant acceptance in the country. <\/p>\n

This includes partners like Cashfree, Juspay, Mswipe, Paytm, PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay and Worldline. What\u2019s missing? Behind the news <\/p>\n

While Apple has an outsized market share among premium and affluent customers in India, credit card payments have grown more slowly over the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, UPI has become the de facto payment method for most digital transactions in the country.<\/p>\n

Apple and Axis Bank are betting on the ecosystem to encourage customers to use Apple Pay over other payment methods.<\/p>\n

The bottomline <\/p>\n

The rise of NFC payments in the country and the expanding payment infrastructure make the launch timing more opportunistic.<\/p>\n

Axis Bank could be hoping the partnership nudges customers to use Apple Pay more than they otherwise would. Apple Pay could also offer customers a faster, more seamless payment experience.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper<\/a><\/p>\n

Disquiet among Flipkart employees amid IPO delay
\n \"Disquiet <\/a> <\/p>\n

For years, Flipkart employees have been told to think of their ESOPs as a long-term wealth-creation opportunity. <\/p>\n

The problem now is that \u201clong term\u201d has become increasingly difficult to define. An exodus? <\/p>\n

At least 10 executives at the VP and SVP levels have exited Flipkart in recent months<\/a>, according to people familiar with the matter, even as the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant continues to evaluate its IPO plans.<\/p>\n

The comparisons are becoming harder to ignore.<\/p>\n

Wealth creation galore <\/p>\n

Meesho, which started eight years after Flipkart, listed in 2025. Swiggy went public in 2024, unlocking more than $1 billion in payouts for over 5,000 employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Groww, founded by former Flipkart employees, has also moved rapidly towards the public markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And now even Snapdeal, once considered to have fallen behind Flipkart, is working towards an IPO.<\/p>\n

Therefore, employees aren’t just comparing salaries anymore; they’re comparing the liquidity attached to their equity.<\/p>\n

Flipkart\u2019s ESOP buybacks <\/p>\n

To be sure, Flipkart has not been short of employee liquidity events. The company says it has created more than $1.5 billion in value for employees through ESOP buybacks since 2017<\/a>, including its latest exercise<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for many long-tenured employees, the big question remains whether there will be a larger, company-wide wealth-creation event through a public listing. The company view <\/p>\n

In a joint statement, Walmart and Flipkart said an IPO \u201cremains an active part of our strategic roadmap\u201d and that the company will move forward \u201cwhen the timing is right\u201d, without offering a timeline.<\/p>\n

The irony is particularly stark: Flipkart helped create a generation of Indian tech executives and founders who went on to build companies of their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, some of those companies are giving employees something Flipkart’s staffers have been waiting years for – a defined route from paper wealth to real wealth.<\/p>\n

For Flipkart, the challenge may no longer be simply convincing employees that the company has a future. It may be convincing them that they will personally participate in the value created along the way.<\/p>\n

Go deeper<\/a><\/p>\n

Doordash dashes to Hyderabad for India GCC
\n \"Doordash <\/a> <\/p>\n

India’s talent pool is getting another US tech suitor. Food and grocery delivery platform DoorDash is the latest to tap the country’s tech workforce to support its global operations.<\/p>\n

Driving the news <\/p>\n

DoorDash is opening its first India office in Hyderabad, starting with 500 employees.<\/p>\n

The company plans to scale the team to over 3,000 employees within two years.<\/p>\n

The HITEC City hub will be one of just three DoorDash-owned Customer Experience and Integrity (CXI) centres globally, alongside Tempe, Arizona, and Mexico City.<\/p>\n

The centre will initially house CXI and general and administrative teams, with specialised capabilities such as fraud review and technical operations potentially added later. By the numbers <\/p>\n

DoorDash serves more than 56 million monthly active consumers across 40-plus countries and processed over 3 billion orders annually, the company said.<\/p>\n

Hyderabad\u2019s GCC boom <\/p>\n

DoorDash\u2019s entry adds another global name to Hyderabad\u2019s booming GCC ecosystem.<\/p>\n

The Telangana government says the city has more than 500 GCCs employing over 5 lakh people, and is targeting 100-plus new centres.<\/p>\n

Telangana IT and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu said the investment reflects Hyderabad\u2019s emergence as a global talent hub and highlighted the potential for the centre to build capabilities serving markets outside India.<\/p>\n

Hyderabad already has GCCs of several global digital commerce giants including Amazon, Walmart, FedEx and Uber.<\/p>\n

Go deeper<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One quick thing: Govt\u2019s Rs 1 lakh crore deep-tech fund hits pause. In today\u2019s newsletter: Finally, Apple Pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[342,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-616504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}