Thursday, 20th August ’20
Good morning, welcome to a fiery Thursday. Today is national lemonade day. This day is important to the spirit of entrepreneurship as many entrepreneurs sold lemonades as their first ventures when they were still kids. Apple is set to become the world’s first $2 trillion company. Did you hear about the Lindt factory’s defect coating a Swiss town in chocolate?
In this spirit of lemons, we hope that TMT continues to educate and entertain you. If you have any suggestions, please reach out to us at team@productround.com
Let’s start with a popular adage this morning.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
MIND MONK
Impostor Syndrome
The impostor syndrome is referred to as feeling like a fraud. But it can also be viewed as a failure to internalize success. Perhaps it’s not so much luck favouring us as we being sticklers for perfection instead – probing into our achievements under a microscope until we find the minutest aberration.
How can you then change the narrative to attribute your success to your work? Easy –
- You need to notice the system you use. Your process. Once you notice your work, your process, you’ll bring your unconscious work onto the fore and the attribution to luck will then subside, or at least take less credit.
- When you see that people who do similar things to you do well and a much larger group of people who do not do those things fail, you’ll realize your system works and hence – you have control after all.
- We are absolutely terrible at figuring out the true causes of our feelings and interpreting then isn’t our strong suit either. So you must understand that in a lot of instances your imposter syndrome is merely misinterpreted self efficacy.
- Relax. Let it pass. Do something small, yet tactical. Once you accomplish that move on to your project gradually. It’s always helpful to win mini battles before we go to war.
MARKETS
Markets: Indian indices overcame an uncertain start and traded in a range, before ending the day with gains. Global cues were also mixed due to the delay in the approval of the US stimulus package and mixed economic data coming in from around the world. The markets are trading uncertain and investors are advised to remain cautious. Traders will keep an eye on US-China tensions and coronavirus cases which will set tone for the markets. Development in global markets will also be watched closely by the traders.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
- Misleading health content has racked up an estimated 3.8 billion views on Facebook Inc over the past year, peaking during the COVID-19 pandemic. These misinformation superspreaders racked up 4 times the views of equivalent content from the sites of 10 leading health institutions, such as the WHO.
- Hackers gained access to the systems of the Marriott owned Starwood Hotels group, starting in 2014, where they were able to help themselves to information such as guests’ names, email and postal addresses, telephone numbers, gender and credit card data. This has prompted a class action lawsuit against Marriott by UK domiciled people.
- Bengaluru-based Pixxel is getting ready to launch its first Earth imaging satellite later this year, with a scheduled mission aboard a Soyuz rocket. The company, which announced a $5 million seed funding round led by Blume and Lightspeed, is aiming to provide high quality image at a better cadence.
WHAT ELSE IS COOKING
- Cabinet approves National Recruitment Agency: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved setting up of a National Recruitment Agency, aimed at filling up non-gazetted vacancies in both central government organisations and public sector undertakings. The agency will conduct a single entrance exam for tens of thousands of positions that the government and PSUs advertise for every year. The move will streamline the recruitment process for government jobs, a huge draw among the youth for the security they offer
- India to blacklist China’s PT Hexing & debar it from other government contracts: India plans to black-list PT. Hexing Technology, from participating in any future government tenders, post the cancellation of a ₹344.47 crore smart meter contract. This follows the Delhi High court decision on Tuesday to dismiss a petition filed by PT. Hexing Technology, seeking a stay on the encashment of its $4.08 million ( ₹30 crore) bank guarantee given to state run Energy Efficiency Services Ltd., following the cancellation of its smart meter contract for supplying 1.5 million units.
- Hero Electric partners OTO Capital for financing options for electric 2-wheelers: Hero Electric on Wednesday said it has partnered with vehicle leasing start-up OTO Capital to offer affordable and flexible financing options for electric two-wheelers. Under the partnership, OTO will offer a flexible model to customers to lease an electric two-wheeler for a minimum of 12 months, after which they can choose to upgrade to any other model. The partnership will be live across 16 Hero Electric dealers in Bangalore and Pune, with a focus to expand across India in the next few months.
BUSINESS LOUNGE
Canoo
Canoo is a subscriptions-only electric vehicle startup that deviated from the traditional car interior with rows of seats to instead create a seven-seater that looks more like a living room than an SUV. The trademarked technology allows for a rapid and cost-effective vehicle development through the world’s flattest skateboard architecture.
A video released last year describes that arrangement way better than words possibly could. Building a host of custom cabins or “top hats” to mount over this skateboard makes Canoo not only highly customisable for its personal use consumers but also to businesses with disparate needs. The cabins can be configured to best suit B2B customers and can range from an ambulance to a delivery van.
Everything about the car is radical. Take the stearing wheel for instance. It is not physically linked to the road wheels but uses electric signals to make the vehicle go left or right. The car has the regular strategems under its, well not hood – the floor perhaps – a team of lidars, cameras and sensors with deep learning assisting the driver, 28 minutes to 80% charge, non navigational functions controlled by your phone and your living room for a cabin.
Canoo just pulled off a reverse merger. A reverse merger is the acquisition of a private company by an existing public company often a Special Purpose Acquisition Company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. The reverse merger is becoming the preferred strategy for going public among EV makers. The $2.4 Billion valuation has prompted Canoo to take this route too.
Canoo has been building platforms which will be incorporated into the Hyundai and Kia fleet of cars in the future. The world is waiting with bated breath for Canoo to build it’s subscription based EVs with its panoramic roofs and it’s customisable minimalistic cabins. The prototype that looks like a VW Bus canoo-dled with a Tesla might just be the future of the EV.
TMT VARSITY
Varsity: Agile Methodology(#4 of 4)
Product Backlog: It is the list of items to be done. Items should be broken down into user stories which are further broken down into tasks.
Product backlog helps in planning the product roadmap, estimating the time frame and prioritizing the product features. Backlog consists of all the features that require to be done and can sometimes have multiple teams working on the backlog.
Iteration Planning: The purpose of iteration planning is to complete the top ranked (highest priority) items in the product backlog. Product backlog is broken down into story points and an acceptance criteria is set for each point.
Velocity calculation: This is done to estimate how many story points can be done in one iteration (aka sprint). Eg if 14, 16 and 18 story points were accomplished in the past sprints, then 16 can be taken as the average story point.
The story points are broken down into tasks which are given to team members who estimate the time required to complete their tasks.
Release Planning: This is the planning to deliver an incremental part of the code. This is done every 2-3 months and ensures that new features or enhancements are continuously being done.
Release planning requires the alignment of market and business objective, vision, product backlog and prioritized features. The net output of release planning is a review of release plan, commitment, issues, dependencies and suggestions for future enhancements in retrospective.
Written by Kumar Sourav Mohanty, Akansh Bhatt, and Shashank Dobhal
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