A dozen tech stories that rocked India in 2016

In the tech world, 2016 wasn’t a year of massive checks and volatile claims. It was a year of shutdowns, scale-backs, reorganizations, and much-needed perspective.

Here’s a rundown of some of India’s tech movers and shakers in the headlines this year.

1. Netflix launches in India

Netflix rang in the year with a huge Asian push when it launched its services in more than a hundred new countries, including India, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. This effectively brought the global streaming war to India. Amazon followed suit with Prime video later in the year.

Read about Netflix’s launch here and Amazon’s here.

2. India bans Free Basics

After months of blaming and counter-blaming, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) ruled in favor of net neutrality, saying no service provider should have the right to charge different prices for data services based on content. That effectively stopped Facebook’s Free Basics, Zuckerberg’s initiative to bring poor people online with cheap internet packages.

The TRAI said it will charge US$735 for each day that a service provider goes against the ruling. This fine will be implemented after six months, and the newly passed regulation will be reviewed after two years.

Read about it here.

3. Binny Bansal takes charge at Flipkart

Flipkart, India’s biggest ecommerce marketplace, rejigged its top-level management. Co-founder and chief executive officer till then, Sachin Bansal became executive chairman of the company. Binny Bansal, until then chief operating officer and fellow co-founder (they are not related), took charge as chief executive. This, of course, was the beginning of a year of organizational changes and employee exits, including those of its CFO, head of commerce, chief products officer, and chief business officer.

Read the story here.

4. Woman in the unicorn club

5. Ecommerce policy change

6. Myntra eats humble pie

7. PepperTap shuts shop

8. Nikesh Arora quits SoftBank

9. Flipkart buys Jabong

10. Demonetization

11. Flipkart, Ola turn “crybabies”

12. India sets rules for app-taxis, allows surge pricing