IT services to sustain double-digit growth; Rajeev Misra’s role pared back at Softbank; Netflix rolls out spatial audio

India’s information technology services sector will sustain double-digit revenue growth this fiscal, at 12-13 percent, driven by digitalisation, strong demand for new-age technologies, and depreciation in the rupee, rating agency Crisil said in a note yesterday. Rajeev Misra, head of SoftBank Group’s giant venture-investing arm, will step back from Vision Fund 2, And you can now search for spatial audio on Netflix. Notes: India’s information technology services sector will sustain double-digit revenue growth this fiscal, at 12-13 percent, driven by digitalisation, strong demand for new-age technologies, and depreciation in the rupee, rating agency Crisil said in a note yesterday. This compares with the 19 percent growth last fiscal — the highest in the past eight years — given an expected tightening of IT expenditure by corporates amid the inflationary headwinds in America and Europe, which together contribute almost 85 percent to the sector’s revenue, Crisil notes. However, revenue growth was supported by the shift in various industries globally towards automation, digitalisation and digital transformation services in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the higher growth last fiscal had come on the back of a modest uptick of 6 percent in fiscal 2021, which was hit by the first wave of the pandemic. Operating profitability will also remain healthy, but could fall back a tad to the pre-pandemic low of 22-23 percent, compared with 24 percent last fiscal, due to rising employee costs and as travel comes back. All said, any further surge in inflationary headwinds leading to deferral of discretionary IT spending by corporates will bear watching, Crisil says. Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT company, will kick off the sector’s fiscal first-quarter earnings season after markets today. Rajeev Misra, head of SoftBank Group’s giant venture-investing arm, will step back from his role to run a new outside investment outfit as the tech-investment giant struggles with the fallout of the tech stock crash this year, Wall Street Journal reports. Misra, who joined Softbank in 2014, will stay on in a reduced capacity, overseeing the original Vision Fund investments, while stepping back from oversight of its successor, Vision Fund 2, according to a Thursday memo to staff signed by SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, the Journal reports. Son will take an even more prominent role in directly managing the funds, according to the memo, the Journal reports. Netflix is rolling out spatial audio to consumers around the world on its platform, in collaboration with Sennheiser, the video streaming company said in a press release yesterday. Spatial audio — which is an immersive surround sound experience — will roll out across Netflix’s catalogue, and users can find it by typing ‘spatial audio’ into the search bar to bring up shows that support the feature. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds