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India’s top IT companies might benefit as their biggest customers look to sunset legacy applications that are only being maintained for the critical data they hold, but first a couple of other headlines that caught my attention:  One97 Communications Ltd., which operates the Paytm wallet and payments network, has formed a committee, headed by Meleveetil Damodaran, the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the country’s capital markets regulator, to help the company meet compliance requirements. On Jan. 31, the Reserve Bank of India, ordered the company’s Paytm Payments Bank unit to cease most of its operations after Feb. 29 for various regulatory violations. The three-member committee includes Mukund Manohar Chitale, a former president of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), and Ramachandran Rajaraman, a member of the Advisory Board at Central Vigilance Commission. Meanwhile, India’s parliamentary committee on communications and IT has urged the central government to support the growth of domestic fintech players as alternatives to the duopoly of PhonePe, a unit of Walmart, and Google Pay which accounts for more than 83 percent of India’s digital payments transactions via the unified payments interface, TechCrunch reports. PhonePe leads, with 46.91 percent of the UPI market share by volume for the period of October to November 2023, the committee notes in its report. Google Pay held a market share of 36.39 percent in the same period. One thing today India’s IT services companies will likely benefit as their customers take a hard look at outdated software applications in the age of AI. Many of these applications are being maintained only for the data they hold, the consultancy ISG points out in a recent newsletter. Enterprises have large volumes of critical data locked in legacy applications, ISG’s Stanton Jones, Sunder Sarangan and Alex Bakker, note in the company’s weekly newsletter, Index Insider, with the tagline what’s important in IT. AI will be a forcing function for businesses to overcome the reasons that have been preventing them from sunsetting or modernizing these applications, which will serve as an important driver for ADM activity this year, they write. ISG’s most recent Application Development and Maintenance Buyer Behavior Study showed that about one in every ten enterprise applications has been classified as “end of life.” Most large enterprises have thousands of applications, so in most cases, this means that hundreds of applications are at the end of their life for any one company, they point out. And, the primary reason companies continue to support these legacy applications is because of the data they hold. According to ISG, 10 percent of enterprise applications being at end of life translates to more than 150 applications on average per company. Half of all enterprises ISG surveyed continue to support these applications because of the data stored in them. ISG, which tracks all IT outsourcing contracts worth $5 million or more, expects enterprises to double the number of AI-enabled applications in their portfolios by the end of 2024. This means that application optimization will be an important attribute of ADM activity in 2024. Companies will rely on their outsourcing providers for the resources required for these legacy transformation programs as well as their ability to combine cost optimization with modernization, according to the consultancy. Even in regions like the Asia Pacific, where companies currently lag their North American counterparts in GenAI spending, for example, Infosys, India’s second biggest IT services provider, forecasts a bigger increase than in any other region – 140 percent in the next year. This translates to an estimated $3.4 billion to be invested across Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, and Singapore, according to Infosys’s Generative AI Radar APac Report, released two weeks ago.

Google is retiring Bard, with the launch of a more capable chatbot, Gemini Advanced, but first a couple of other headlines. Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, yesterday, stood by its actions imposing restrictions on Paytm Payments Bank, stating that its order barring the small finance bank from most activities after Feb. 29, including taking any fresh deposits, was issued only after “persistent non-compliance” with rules. The action taken by the powerful banking regulator “is always proportionate to the gravity of the situation,” the bank’s Governor Shaktikanta Das, said in a media briefing, TechCrunch reports. Amazon Web Services India has started a space accelerator programme that will offer technical, business, and mentorship help to startups focused on space technology, with support from, T-Hub, and Minfy, an AWS systems integrator partner. This is AWS’s first accelerator program in India focused on startups in the space sector, and follows the MoU it signed with ISRO and IN-SPACe in September last year, to nurture startups in space-tech, and support innovation in the sector. One thing today A year after introducing Bard, Google is retiring the name and rebranding its AI products and features under its Gemini brand. It is also launching Ultra 1.0, its most capable large language model yet. “AI is also now central to two businesses that have grown rapidly in recent years: our Cloud and Workspace services and our popular subscription service Google One, which is just about to cross 100 million subscribers,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, writes in a blog post. “Gemini is evolving to be more than just the models,” Pichai writes. “It supports an entire ecosystem — from the products that billions of people use every day, to the APIs and platforms helping developers and businesses innovate.” The largest model Ultra 1.0 is the first to outperform human experts on MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), which uses a combination of 57 subjects — including math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics — to test knowledge and problem-solving abilities. Gemini is available in 40 languages on the web, and is coming to a new Gemini app on Android and on the Google app on iOS. The version with Ultra will be called Gemini Advanced, which is more capable at reasoning, following instructions, coding, and creative collaboration. “In blind evaluations with Google’s third-party raters, Gemini Advanced with Ultra 1.0 is now the most preferred chatbot compared to leading alternatives,” Sissi Hsiao, vice president and general manager for Gemini and Google Assistant, wrote in a blog post. With the Ultra 1.0 model, Gemini Advanced is more capable at complex tasks like coding, logical reasoning, following nuanced instructions and collaborating on creative projects, Hsiao writes. Gemini Advanced allows you to have longer, more detailed conversations, and it also better understands the context from your previous prompts. Gemini Advanced can be a personal tutor, help with more advanced coding scenarios, or generate fresh content. Gemini Advanced is available today in more than 150 countries and territories in English, as part of a new Google One AI Premium Plan for about $20 a month, with all the existing features of the Google One, including the 2TB of storage. In addition, AI Premium subscribers will soon be able to use Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. And Google is offering a two-month free trial. “To mitigate issues like unsafe content or bias, we’ve built safety into our products in accordance with our AI Principles,” Hsiao writes in her post. You can find more details in Google’s updated Gemini Technical Report. Gemini and Gemini Advanced are being rolled out on smartphones via a new app on Android. And in the Google app on iOS in the coming weeks.

Layoffs at tech companies have continued into 2024, but first, a couple of other headlines that caught my attention. Hyundai Motors is planning to list its Indian unit to raise at least $3 billion in what would be the country's biggest IPO, Reuters reported yesterday, citing two people it didn’t name. Hyundai, the second-biggest automaker in India with a 15 percent market share, is in early talks with several banks for the fund raising, which would value the Korean automaker’s Indian operations at up to $30 billion, which is more than half its market capitalisation of $42 billion in Seoul, according to Reuters. As Paytm reels under the Reserve Bank of India’s tough stance over the fintech company’s non-compliance issues, some founders of startups in India have written to Governor Shaktikanta Das and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, urging them to “review” and “reconsider” the regulatory directive asking Paytm’s payments bank unit to shut its main banking services after February 29, Economic Times reported earlier today. Policybazaar's Yashish Dahiya, Bharat Matrimony’s Murugavel Janakiraman, Makemytrip’s Rajesh Magow and Ritesh Malik of Innov 8 are among the signatories to the letter. They’ve said the punitive measures against Paytm would have a far-reaching impact on India’s fintech ecosystem, according to ET. One thing today Tech companies have already shed about 32,500 jobs in 2024, according to layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts at 5,000 tech companies. Snap, which operates the photo and video sharing app, Snapchat, is the latest internet company to announce job cuts in 2024. The company said in an SEC filing on Feb. 5 it would reduce its headcount by 10 percent worldwide. Snap expects it will incur charges ranging from $55 million to $75 million, according to its filing, from this latest round of cuts. The company previously laid off 20 percent of its staff and restructured its business lines in August 2022, CNBC notes. Several other well-known tech companies have reduced their staff strength this year, including Paypal, Microsoft, Zuora, Zoom, and Okta. Indian food delivery unicorn Swiggy, ahead of its IPO plans, recently cut another 400 jobs, TechCrunch reported on Jan. 25. And India’s top IT services companies entered the year with their collective workforce lower by tens of thousands of employees. Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT company, for example, reduced its workforce by close to 11,500 people in the nine months through December 2023. Infosys, the second biggest, has reduced its workforce by more than 20,500 staff in the same period. Tech and IT companies around the world recruited aggressively as the world came out of the Covid pandemic. Since then, the combination of the global economic slowdown and the rise of AI and AI-based automation, has changed the world. Now, even as things are beginning to look up in the world’s biggest tech market, the US, hiring will increasingly reflect investments in AI.

Apple’s Vision Pro headsets are now available for sale at stores in the US, but first a couple of other headlines that caught my attention. A UK minister on a trade mission last year assured Infosys that he would do what he could to help the company grow in the country, where founder NR Narayana Murthy’s son-in-law Rishi Sunak is prime minister, The Mirror reported. The paper obtained details of the April 2023 visit of Dominic Johnson, a minister in PM Sunak’s cabinet, using Britain’s freedom of information laws. Sunak has faced intense scrutiny over his wife Akshata Murty’s ownership of close to 1 percent of Infosys.  Freshworks, a Chennai-to-Silicon Valley software company, will report its fiscal fourth quarter and full year earnings results tomorrow, according to the investor page on the company’s website. The Nasdaq-listed provider of cloud software for customer engagement and IT services management expects to end the year with revenue of about $595 million, a growth of about 20 percent. Analysts will also be watching Freshworks’s net dollar retention, an important SaaS metric, that the company has projected at 105 percent. One thing today Apple, on Feb. 2 announced that its Vision Pro AR headsets were available for sale in stores in the US. Apple calls the headset a spatial computer, which works by tracking natural hand gestures and movement of your eyes. Last year, after Apple unveiled this, I’d spoken with Milind Manoj, an AR expert and founder and CEO of a company called PupilMesh here in Bangalore. I thought a quick recap of the features of the Vision Pro from that conversation might be interesting, so here goes. The first takeaway was that, like with any other Apple product, there's a lot that’s gone into the design and specs. Especially given that they have a dedicated processor, the R1 chip, that helps to make functions like the display rendering seem like near real time although it's a pass-through headset, is remarkable. In a pass-through headset, one is not really seeing the world around directly, but through the cameras on the headset, and then being streamed to the display. This is an interesting, and important, question according to Milind, because the user is seeing what the device sees. Therefore, the question is if you’d be okay with a device controlling what you are actually seeing because you are essentially blocking out one of your senses and relying on cameras – this might be okay or not, depending on what you’re using the device for. This is the biggest difference versus what are called optical see-through headsets which don’t block off your vision. These kinds of headsets will become increasingly important as the sophistication of AR applications that overlay digital information on top of the real world that we can see and touch and feel increases – think of applications like surgery, for example, where precision is critical and therefore what you’re seeing through the headset has to be accurate. The original Apple Glass project probably had such ambitions, where one could see through. Apple must surely be continuing to work on that technology, but we don’t know anything about a commercial product. The second takeaway from my chat with Milind was that unlike other Apple products so far, the Vision Pro still feels a little bit experimental, especially because it has a waist-mounted external battery pack that connects to the headset via a cable. This is obviously the best trade off that Apple’s engineers could think of with respect to the design and how long people could use the headset at one go, but it does make the Vision Pro a somewhat inelegant gadget in my view – you may be perfectly fine with an outside battery pack. The headset costs about $3,500 and its success will depend on the applications that developers come up for it. It’s unlikely to be in India any time soon, but Apple will probably show off the headset at its own stores in Mumbai

Apple’s focus on India is paying off and the company also captured the top position in revenue in a calendar year for the first time, due to strong demand for both its latest iPhone and older models, according to market research provider Counterpoint. Overall, Samsung maintained its lead with the biggest market share, at 18 percent, in the predominantly Android market, and Vivo took the number two spot with 17 percent share.

Ahead of the union government's budget for the year 2024-25, the well-known expectations remain, such as tax breaks and incentives, but India's tech startups are also hoping the government will sharpen its focus on supporting them to develop more intellectual property within the country, which is crucial for our long-term security. They want more R&D spends, deeper partnerships with public labs, and simpler rules to help them go after global customers.

An important conference is to take place tomorrow in New Delhi on India’s international role with respect to technologies that are considered dual use, meaning for civilian and industrial use, but also for defence and military applications. India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Department of Commerce in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and other Government Agencies is organising the National Conference on Strategic Trade Controls (NCSTC), tomorrow at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi, the nation’s capital. The conference will focus on India's Strategic Trade Control related to SCOMET and export controls system and international best practices on export of dual-use (meaning industrial and military) goods, software and technologies, according to a government statement circulated by the Press Information Bureau yesterday. SCOMET stands for Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies. Registrations for the conference have been invited by DGFT through its website. International speakers including the Chair of 1540 Committee of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the Chair of Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), senior government officials including the Commerce Secretary, Member (Customs) of CBIC, Director General of DGFT, and others would be participating. DGFT expects that more than 500 industry representatives will attend the conference. The thematic sessions planned during the day-long conference will focus on various aspects of India’s Strategic Trade Control system, including the legal and regulatory framework, the steps taken to streamline the SCOMET policy and licensing processes, the enforcement mechanism and supply chain compliance programs. India published its first Scomet list as part of its Foreign Trade Development and Regulation Act of 1992. In 2010, the Act was amended to add a new chapter, including a section that deals with controls on exports of specified goods, services and technologies – giving the central government the power to monitor and amend the list of such goods, services and technologies. Currently the list includes goods, services and tech under nine categories, ranging from nuclear technologies to aviation and aerospace to electronics to chemicals and biotech.

Those of you who caught Samsung’s Unpacked event two days ago would have seen a Google vice president of search coming up on stage to describe a new AI feature on the latest Galaxy phone, developed by Google. Google calls it circle to search, and that’s exactly what it is. See something you’re browsing that you want to know more about? Well, now just circle it, and you’ll get what the geeks would call multi-modal search results, meaning across text, images and so on.  Android users would be familiar with Google Lens, where you can use the phone camera and search for more information on a picture or how you can hum a song and ask Google what song it is. Circle to search is the latest in Google’s stable of AI and machine learning based features for end users on their smartphones that are making such interactions ever more human. “With a simple gesture, you can select what you’re curious about in whatever way comes naturally to you — like circling, highlighting, scribbling or tapping — and get more information right where you are,” Cathy Edwards, a Google VP and GM for Search, writes in a blog post, explaining how easy it is to use this feature. Edwards first presented this feature at Samsung’s event. An important aspect of this feature is that it allows you to search on whichever app or website you are on, without having to leave it, making it a minimally distracting task so you can continue to go on and finish what you were doing on the app in the first place. The possibilities are endless. It could be just about searching for more on a new pair of running shoes you saw on some website, for example. Or imagine just circling a dish on a food delivery app and getting more info on how healthy it is for you. This will be first available on Samsung’s latest Galaxy S24 smartphone that’s just been released, and on Google’s own Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones. Just long press on the home button, and instead of the Google Assistant, you’ll now bring up circle to search. You can then circle, or scribble or highlight or tap … “and just like that, your curiosity is satisfied,” Edwards said in her presentation at Galaxy Unpacked. “And when you are done you can just swipe away, and you’re right back where you started.” One last point. For Samsung fans, apart from the latest flagship phone, a more important release is Galaxy AI, Samsung’s own new AI system for its phones aimed at making the devices much more intuitive to use. Among the features Samsung has released are live transcript, and a bunch of AI assistants.

Apple has a new office in India in the heart of Bengaluru, the iPhone maker said in a statement. The country’s tech capital is already home to so many of Apple’s teams, including in software engineering and hardware technologies, operations, customer support, and other functions, according to Apple. This new workspace, which Apple hopes will be a powerful hub for innovation, creativity, and collaboration, is located at Minsk Square in the center of the city, a stone’s throw from Vidhana Soudha, the state parliament, the high court, central library, Chinnaswamy cricket stadium, and Cubbon Park, one of the largest green parks within Bengaluru. The proximity to Cubbon Park metro station means public transit is an option for Apple staff and visitors. The new office will house up to 1,200 employees, on 15 floors, and it features dedicated lab space, areas for collaboration and wellness, and Caffe Macs, which comprises Apple’s food-ordering app and service and physical space.  Apple currently has nearly 3,000 employees in India. The new office’s interior features locally-sourced materials, including stone, wood, and fabric in the walls and flooring, and the office is filled with native plants. The office will run on 100 percent renewable energy, and aims to achieve the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum rating — the highest level of LEED certification. Apple has been carbon neutral for its corporate operations since 2020, and has run all Apple facilities using 100 percent renewable energy since 2018. The office is the latest addition to the company’s corporate office footprint in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Gurugram, and represents another important milestone in Apple’s more than 25-year history in India. Apple is stepping up efforts to boost sales and manufacturing in India, which it sees as a long-term strategic market, as it seeks to reduce its dependence on China. Apple has faced both disruptions to its supply chain due to Chinese Covid related restrictions, and a resurgent competitor in Huawei, which has also released its own semiconductor chip for smartphones. Meanwhile, Apple has ended Samsung Electronics 12-year run as the world’s largest seller of smartphones by number of units, after achieving a 20 percent market share in 2023, according to data from International Data Corp. Samsung ended the year with a 19.4 percent share, followed by China’s Xiaomi, Oppo and Transsion, preliminary data from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker showed. Apple and Transsion were the only brands in the top five to record growth in shipments last year, when the market declined 3.2 percent to 1.17 billion units and hit a decade low.

VinFast, an electric vehicle manufacturer from Vietnam, plans to invest $2 billion dollars in India, but first a couple of other headlines that caught my attention. Japanese media and tech giant Sony Corp. is planning to call off the merger of its Indian unit with Zee Entertainment, more than two years after the deal was announced, over a disagreement on who will lead the $10 billion entity, Reuters reports, citing a Bloomberg News report from Monday that’s behind a paywall. Sony plans to file a termination notice before the extended Jan. 20 deadline to close the merger, while discussions between Sony and Zee were still ongoing. Wipro's lawsuit against former chief financial officer Jatin Dalal with respect to a non-compete clause in his employment contract was referred to arbitration by the Bengaluru City Civil Court in a hearing on January 3, Moneycontrol reports. The court's decision, thereby, allows the admission of a counter petition moved by Dalal, who’s joined Wipro’s larger rival Cognizant Technology Solutions, according to Moneycontrol. One thing today In one thing today, VinFast, an electric vehicle manufacturer from Vietnam, plans to invest up to $2 billion, to set up an EV plant in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, the company said in a press release on Jan. 6, coinciding with the state’s global investor summit. Vinfast, plans to invest $500 million in the first phase of the Project, spanning five years from the commencement date, later this year. The India expansion will help VinFast to seize growth opportunities in the world’s most populous nation and rapidly expanding EV market, the company said in the release. This initiative forms a crucial part of VinFast’s strategy to establish a strong presence in vital markets and strengthen its supply chain for global expansion, the company said.  The integrated EV manufacturing facility is to be set up in Thoothukudi, in Tamil Nadu. It is envisioned as evolving into a first-class electric vehicle production hub in the region, with an annual capacity of up to 150,000 units. Construction of the plant is anticipated to begin in 2024. The project is expected to generate between 3,000 and 3,500 jobs, according to VinFast. VinFast also expects to set up a nationwide dealership network in India.

Several multinational electronics and manufacturing companies including Apple’s supplier Pegatron and Korean auto giant Hyundai have committed to large investments in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, but first, a couple of other headlines that caught my attention. The US Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday ordered the grounding and immediate inspection of about 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft worldwide after a mid-flight emergency late Friday involving a plane operated by Alaska Airlines, NPR reports.  The US aviation regulator announced this order after an Alaska Airlines flight was forced to abruptly land in Portland, Oregon after a door plug blew out in midair, leaving a hole in the aircraft next to two unoccupied seats. Unicommerce eSolutions Limited, a software provider to ecommerce companies for transaction processing, has filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with India’s capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board, seeking an IPO. The proposed listing comprises of an offer for sale aggregating up to about 29.84 million equity shares of face value of Rs. 1. This includes up to 11.46 million shares by Unicommerce’s promoter AceVector Limited (formerly known as Snapdeal Limited), up to about 2.21 million shares by B2 Capital Partners and up to about 16.17 million shares by SB Investment Holdings (UK) Limited. One thing today In one thing today, Apple suppliers Tata Electronics and Pegatron, and automaker Hyundai Motors have signed investment pacts worth more than $4.39 billion with the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Reuters reports, citing a statement from the state government at a global investor summit. Industry analysts estimate India could account for as much as a third of Apple’s iPhone production in the coming years, as the tech giant steps up its efforts to reduce dependence on China. Apple is also looking at India as its next big market, where it has seen quarterly records in sales over the last two years. Pegatron is setting up a second factory in India, Reuters notes, and the Tata Group, which last year began to assemble iPhones, has also purchased a factory on the outskirts of neighbouring Bengaluru from Wistron, another Apple supplier. Tata Electronics has committed to investing Rs. 12,080 crore for mobile phone assembly operations, the state government said during the signing of the agreements, according to Reuters. Taiwan’s Pegatron expects to invest Rs. 1,000 crore to expand production, the government added. South Korean Auto giant Hyundai Motors plans to invest Rs. 6,180 crore, a part of which will go towards electric vehicle battery and car manufacturing. Vietnamese EV maker VinFast is setting up its first manufacturing facility in India and expects to invest up to $2 billion in Tamil Nadu, according to Reuters. The semiconductor giant Qualcomm yesterday, announced what it called a significant expansion in Chennai with a new facility for its design centre, with an investment of about Rs. 177 crore. The Design Centre is expected to generate jobs for up to 1,600 skilled professionals. It will specialize in wireless connectivity solutions, with a focus on innovations that complement Wi-Fi technologies. It will contribute to Qualcomm's global research and development in 5G cellular technology, Qualcomm said in a press release. Separately, Tata Power is exploring investments of up to Rs. 70,000 crore in Tamil Nadu over the next several years, including investments in some existing projects, the company’s chief executive officer Praveer Sinha said at a press briefing at the investors meet, Reuters reports. And JSW Energy has announced plans to invest Rs. 12,000 crore to develop renewable energy projects.

Discord has rolled out a bunch of improvements to its mobile app on both Android and iOS, but first: Byju Raveendran is contemplating using his 10-12 percent direct shareholding in the test-prep chain Aakash to raise about Rs. 600 crore to shore up his beleaguered ed-tech venture, Think & Learn, The Arc reported yesterday, citing sources it didn’t name. Thing & Learn, which operates the loss making BYJU’S online education platform, is under government scrutiny for a host of lapses. ZestMoney, a buy now pay later fintech startup in Bengaluru, is shutting down, and has informed its 150 remaining employees that it’s done, according to multiple media reports. The company was founded in 2015 and provided loans to those without credit cards or any other formal financing options. One thing today: In one thing today, Discord, which is where you’ll find many of the Gen Z, apart from Instagram, has overhauled its mobile app to work more like, well, a mobile app  “When we launched the Discord mobile app in 2015, our focus was on building great products for people who play games on PC, with mobile serving as a companion app for when you were away from your keyboard,” Francesco Polizzi, group product manager at Discord, says in a blog post on Dec. 5, announcing the new updates. “Now, with more users spending time using Discord on the go, we’re excited to roll out a faster, more reliable app than before, designed specifically for mobile,” Francesco says. The updated app, on both Android and iOS, brings faster app loading, better navigation, improved media sharing and voice and video experience, and an updated night mode. Discord has previously implemented features such as the global DM search on the app. After yesterday’s update, which is available in India also, app-open time is reduced by 43 percent on iOS and 55 percent on Android, and users can access more messages when offline, according to the company. Free users can now upload files of up to 25MB in size. Discord, which started as an online hangout for PC gamers has evolved into a wider platform where one can find groups of users with varied interests. Today the company says it has 150 million users around the world.  You can find the full list of improvements and updates on Discord’s website. Or you can use the link to the blog post in our show notes. One area where Discord has faced criticism is with respect to how it dragged its feet on protecting youngsters, according to multiple media reports. The company implemented some limited parental controls since only July this year, when it added an opt-in feature called family center. This feature requires the consent of your child to set up the family center on both the teen’s app and on the parents’ smartphones. Once done it will provide some high-level information to parents on the teen’s Discord activity. I would highly recommend reading a post titled A Parent’s Guide to Discord by the Social Media Victims Law Center in the US. The center warns that Discord requires users to be 13 years of age but does not ask for any documentation for proof of age. Like many other internet platforms, Discord can also be used by youngsters to access pornography and even drugs. And if you are parents to young teens, especially, this might be a good time to find out if they use Discord, talk about it, and agree on using the Family Center feature.