Credit on UPI; Amazon rushes into quick commerce

Banks are finally looking to disburse loans via UPI, with initial trials in progress. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.

Also in the letter:
■ IT hiring in H2
■ Centre on data centre certification
■ IndiaAI GPU tender

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Several top banks are planning to extend credit lines via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), targeting users who have never taken a bank loan before, a fintech founder told us.

Driving the news: UPI-based loans, a recent innovation (less than two years old), come with an interest-free window post-disbursal. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now cleared the air on key questions, enabling early pilots to take off.

“RBI has given clarifications to some banks on how they can run it, and this would be around the likely treatment of the outstanding, interest-free periods, and reporting to the credit bureaus,” another fintech founder familiar with the development added.

How it works: These credit lines are typically secured against gold, fixed deposits, or offered as unsecured personal or consumer loans. Here’s the flow:

• A bank disburses a small-value loan to a credit account linked with a UPI app.
• The user then pays merchants or shops online using that UPI-linked credit.

But why? India has roughly 300 million UPI users, according to industry estimates, with 150–200 million considered active or power users. For banks, offering credit via UPI unlocks a sizable, ready market. For UPI, it may mark the next growth leap, mirroring the RuPay credit card playbook.

Also Read: NPCI to push out pull transactions from November with eye on reducing UPI scams

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Despite being late to India's competitive quick commerce race, Amazon is gunning for the top spot. India country manager Samir Kumar told ET the company is building its 10-minute delivery play, Amazon Now, around customer inputs and sees “multiple winners” in ecommerce.

Tell me more:

• Amazon Now launched in June in Bengaluru and has since expanded citywide.
• The service recently entered Delhi as part of a phased rollout.
• ET reported earlier that Amazon plans 300 dark stores across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru by 2025-end.

What rivals are doing:

• Flipkart jumped in with Flipkart Minutes in 2024 and is targeting 800 dark stores by year-end.
• Blinkit leads with 1,544 dark stores as of June 30.
• Swiggy Instamart and Zepto each run over 1,000 stores, making competition intense.

Also Read: Flipkart may limit its quick commerce expansion to top cities to reduce burn

Quote, unquote: “Ecommerce is still early, and quick commerce is part of that; it's just faster delivery for us. It's still early days, so it's not like it's late. I believe there will be multiple winners, but at the same time, we are building it based on our customer inputs,” Kumar told us.

By the numbers: Kumar said Amazon's recent sales indicate demand was strong among shoppers.

• Amazon's Prime Day hit 18,000 orders per minute at peak, up 50% year-on-year.
• Nearly 70% of new Prime signups came from smaller towns, underscoring demand beyond metros.

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The countdown has begun! Five days to India’s most definitive congregation of unicorns of tomorrow! The fourth edition of the ET Soonicorns Summit will feature a keynote address by Dr. Sharan Prakash Patil, minister of medical education & skill development, government of Karnataka, outlining the state’s vision for an AI-first future.

He will also unveil the ET Top Soonicorns and Minicorns of Karnataka | Priority Sectors 2025 report, produced in collaboration with Tracxn, spotlighting emerging hubs in Mysuru, Manipal, and Dharwad beyond Bengaluru.

Tell me more: The report also highlights Karnataka’s priority startup sectors—from fintech and digital commerce to EVs, HRTech, and EdTech—showcasing the state’s dual strength of broad-based innovation and category-defining giants.

Under the theme ‘From Research Labs to Revenue Models: The Billion-Dollar Blueprint for Scaling Indian AI Startups’, five power-packed pre-lunch panels will map India’s AI playbook—on capital flows, scaling, AI moats, foundation models, and the future of jobs—setting the stage for an unmissable gathering on August 22 in Bengaluru.

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India's top IT services firms are set to dial down mid- and senior-level hiring in the second half of the year, turning instead to freshers armed with the right skills, as job security jitters linger across the industry.

Driving the news: Muted hiring in the April-June quarter across the top five Indian IT firms is likely to continue, unless client spending picks up, said Neeti Sharma, chief executive of mass staffing firm Teamlease Digital.

• Lateral hiring will remain selective, while fresh recruitment could hinge on new deal wins.
• Sharma expects hiring growth of only 3–5% in H2, mainly driven by roles in artificial intelligence, cloud, and platform engineering.

Bucking the trend: It's not all gloom, however. Demand is expected to stay firm for skills in AI and machine learning, cybersecurity, cloud engineering, and digital consulting. These hires will be targeted, not in bulk, said Aditya Narayan Mishra, chief executive of recruitment firm CIEL HR.

Hiring targets: Despite the slowdown, IT majors are sticking to their campus commitments for FY26.

• TCS: 40,000
• Wipro: 12,000
• Cognizant, Infosys: 15,000–20,000

Also Read: Small cities see 50% H1 rise in IT hiring in a jobs twist

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Protest against data centre certification scheme in vain: The government is likely to proceed with plans for establishing data centre certification guidelines, despite the industry questioning the necessity for India-specific data centre standards and certification.

Third tender for IndiaAI Mission GPU cluster: Approximately 3,850 GPUs will be added through the third round of the IndiaAI Mission graphics processing units (GPU) tender, according to the project’s chief executive, Abhishek Singh. In this round, for the first time, IndiaAI has acquired 1,050 Google Trillium Tensor Processing Units.

New Artha venture for top portfolio startups exceeds target: Artha India Ventures has successfully closed its new Artha Select Fund at Rs 432 crore, with plans to invest in 12–14 startups over the next four years across spacetech, fintech infrastructure, premium consumer goods, and applied AI.

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■ Startup down rounds are at a 10 year high, according to PitchBook data (Fortune)

■ Did the system update ruin your boyfriend? Love in a time of ChatGPT (The Guardian)

■ Apple finally destroyed Steve Jobs’ vision of the iPad. Good (Wired)