Thursday, 16th July ’20

The Morning Tea

Good morning, India has been all over the tech news thanks to the AGM of RIL. Google is investing $4.5 billion in Jio. Plus we have Jio glasses to look forward to. Corona continues to spread in India as many states are extending or imposing lockdowns.

Also, today it’s National Personal Chef’s day. Cook and delight your family with their favorite recipe. Hope you have a great day ahead!

MARKETS

  • Markets: Reliance’s 43rd Annual General Meeting was held. RIL venturing into grocery and mixed reality. Stocks dipped 6% as the Saudi Aramco deal has not progressed as per timeline. Also, IT services giant Infosys made a Rs 4233 crore profit in this quarter.

  • Economy: India has not gained much from US’s recent drop in China’s imports. This comes despite India’s relation with United States and a local push of India towards manufacturing. Trade war with China has forced US companies to push their supply chains away from China. 

TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

 

  • Google to invest Rs.33, 737 crores in Reliance Jio platforms for a 7.7% stake, Reliance MD Mukesh Ambani said in its 43rd AGM. This makes Google the 13th investor in Jio platforms and making Jio a zero debt company. Jio’s target of capital raising is now complete.
  •  RIL to venture into mixed reality services with Jio glasses. This is mostly for teachers and students to enable 3-D virtual rooms and conduct holographic classes through Jio Mixed Reality cloud in real-time
  • Google and Jio are collaborating to launch a new Google-based operating system. These new operating systems are meant for low price smartphones and making India “2-G free”. Even Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet spoke at the Reliance AGM stating that RIL deserves a lot of credit for India’s digital transformation.

WHAT ELSE IS COOKING

  • Iran drops Indian partnership from Chabahar Railway Line Project: Due to reasons of delayed funding from the Indian side, Iran has decided to continue with the railway line construction from Chabahar to Zahedan using $400 million from the Iranian National Development Fund. Meanwhile, Iran finalizes a 25-year economic and security partnership with China worth $400 billion in exchange for a regular and discounted supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years.
  • Passenger Vehicle sales plunge for the 9th consecutive quarter: The sales of passenger vehicles in India have plummeted 78.43% in the April-June period this year (for the 9th consecutive quarter) due to the on-going COVID-19 crisis, making it the longest slowdown in 20 years. Sales of commercial vehicles also saw a dip of 84.81%. The automotive industry is struggling with a lack of labor and demand.
  • Trump ends Hong Kong’s Special Status with the US: As a reprehension towards China over its imposing new security law on Hong Kong, Trump announced an end to Hong Kong’s special status with the US and signed legislation that would sanction Chinese officials responsible for cracking down on political dissent in the city. This law can bar top executives from the financial hub from entering the US and restrict their ability to engage in U.S. dollar-denominated transactions

IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS

Indian Railways’ mission for becoming Green Railways by 2030. 

What are the key highlights?

Indian Railways wants to achieve zero carbon emission. In this direction it has taken steps like railway electrification, improving energy-efficiency of locomotives & trains, fitting bio-toilets in coaches and switching to renewable energy sources. 

What are the major initiatives taken?

  • It has completed electrification of more than 63% of Broad Gauge routes & plans to complete it by 2023
  • 100 MW of solar panels have been commissioned on the roof-tops of various buildings, to produce power from land-based solar installations to run trains. 103 MW wind-based power plants have also been commissioned.
  • In order to save diesel, 505 pairs of trains have been converted to Head on Generation, where power is drawn from overhead electric supply instead of using power generator cars 

What are the other initiatives in the pipeline?

  • Fitment of a total of 69,000 coaches with 2,44,000 bio-toilets
  • 100% LED illumination of buildings and stations

MORNING TEA BREAK

  • Puzzle: How many logos out of these 25 can you identify? Rate yourself out of 25. Score greater than 20 means that you have optimal brand awareness.Logos

  • Checkout: Experience Dyslexia. A popular Indian movie from some time back broached the subject of a young child living with dyslexia. Keeping with the theme of empathizing with others, someone made a website that simulates dyslexia. 

  • Bonus: Tap for Beats – press anywhere on the screen and create music.

THE MILLIONAIRE MINDSET

  • Knowledge Check: Run rate is the financial performance of a company, using current financial information as a predictor of future performance. Run rates are helpful in formulating performance estimates for companies that have been operating for short periods of time or when a business is experiencing its first profitable quarter. Additionally, the run rate can be helpful in cases where a fundamental business operation was changed in some way like in the case of a pivot into a new direction/value proposition.
  • Practice: A few days ago a wordcloud was widely shared which showed the most frequently used tags for X in the now oft encountered tagline “During these X times”. This is apropos of the covid 19 crisis, during these difficult times. Many people now require from the relatively fortunate ones among us an unconditional positive regard, i.e. empathy, support and acceptance. This encourages openness, creativity, and honesty and fosters self-actualization by letting us know it’s okay to think, feel, and behave the way we do. When things seem to be crumbling an amiable arm around our shoulder can mean the world to us. All you need, after all, is love.

Written by Kumar Sourav Mohanty, Akansh Bhatt, and Shashank Dobhal

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