Thursday, 23rd July ’20
Good morning, welcome to TMT Thursday as we take you on this journey to get smarter every morning. We’ll go through a series of latest events and what’s happening. That’ll be followed by in-depth analysis, and sections to enhance you on personal and professional performance.
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MARKETS
Markets: US signs contract with Pfizer for COVID-19 vaccine doses. This is a good international market cue. Bajaj Auto profits plunge 53% as revenue falls 60%. Rossari Biotech to debut on July 23 with high anticipation. S&P and Dow open lower as Sino-US ties worsen.
Economy: Banks sanction Rs 1.27 lakh crore loans under the credit guarantee scheme. This is part of the Rs 3-lakh crore Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) for the MSME sector impacted by the economic slowdown triggered by COVID-19.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
- Snapchat has doubled its daily active user base in the quarter ended June 2020, according to Chief Executive Evan Spiegal. Snapchat has been focussing on language support, local content, and marketing partnerships across a variety of geographies. They have added support for 9 Indian languages currently. India is the second-largest market for Snapchat.
- National Payments Corp of India (NPCI) has gone live with its ‘Autopay’ feature on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. This could be revolutionary on multiple fronts like allowing subscription services to reduce their monthly collection costs. It also allows bank customers to make auto-payments less than Rs 2000 through their UPI apps. This would also help small businesses to collect monthly payments through one-time consent.
- Telecom operators in France planning to buy Huawei 5G equipment won’t be allowed to renew licenses for the gear once it expires, according to French authorities. This is to effectively phase out the Chinese firms out of mobile networks in France by 2028. France’s two other major operators, leader Orange and Iliad, mainly rely on Nokia, Ericsson or both for their mobile networks.
WHAT ELSE IS COOKING
KFC’s developing poultry-free chicken nuggets: In an attempt to become the first food-chain to produce lab-created chicken nuggets, and thus, “the restaurant of the future”, the company is collaborating with 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a Russian Tech firm to “print” chicken meat solely from chicken cells and plant material. KFC will provide the firm with spices and bread “to achieve the signature KFC taste” to duplicate both the texture and taste of its classic recipe.
Nandan Nilekani launches open credit protocol network: In order to enable democratization of credits for small business in their recovery from COVID-19 impacts, Nilekani, at the Global Fintech Festival, has announced the launch of a new credit protocol infrastructure called the ‘Open Credit Enablement Network’ (OCEN) protocol. Built by Indian Software Product Industry RoundTable (iSpirit), OCEN will act as a common language, connecting lenders and marketplaces to utilise and create innovative, financial credit products at scale.
India’s curbs on Chinese tyre imports worries German car makers: Germany’s premium automobile manufacturing companies like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Skoda Auto Volkswagen might see adverse impacts on their Indian operations due to India’s restrictions on import of certain types of tyres from China. Most of these manufacturers use a certain quality of pneumatic tyres which are not manufactured in India due to low domestic volumes. They are yet to get a license announced by DGFT for importing such tyres.
IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
ONOR – One Nation, One Ration
Why is it in the news?
Center had asked States and UTs to share the list of top 5 districts that are major recipients and major senders of migrant labourers. Earlier, they were asked to operationalize helpline number 14445 for ONOR.
What is the aim behind ONOR?
- As the lockdown relaxes, the migrant labourers are gradually returning to their workplaces. The implementation of One Nation, One Ration will ensure their food security
- It would introduce nation-wide ration card portability under National Food Security Act, to facilitate ration card holders lifting their food grains from any of fair price shops of their choice, without needing to obtain new ration card
- It would ensure that the beneficiaries are not denied their rations because of inter-state migrations
What are the recent developments in this direction?
- It is being implemented under Center sector scheme namely Integrated Management of Public Distribution System
- IM-PDS provides technological platform for the inter-state portability of ration cards
- As of July 2019, at least 20 states have joined ONOR
MANAGERS’ CORNER – Technology drive with TMT
Capturing what’s next with Virtual Reality
Let’s give some instances of “10-year technology adaptation gap”.
1. Internet: US 90s, India 2000s
2. E-commerce: US 2000s, India 2010s
3. Social Media: US 2000s, India 2010s
4. Fin-tech: US 2005 onwards, India 2015 onwards
Another major tech added to this list recently: Virtual Reality
A brief timeline of VR being lost in time and back:
1. 90s- VR devices were made but no commercial success
2. 2000s- AR/VR had no major commercial impact but companies like Google continued to explore
3. 2010s: A kid Palmer Lucky, working in his parent’s garage created Oculus Rift. This company revived the lost interest in VR devices
4. 2020s: India will adapt VR at a tremendous rate with Jio glasses
We can bet on VR to work in India because:
1. Jio platforms has technology backing like no other firm with investments from Google and Facebook.
2. Jio has a huge customer base already with Jio internet users.
3. Jio can be smooth with market penetration.
The ecosystem is going to be welcoming for AR/VR applications and startups which can foray early in this space to get a piece of the pie.
All the while Apple has been silently working on N301, its VR headset with a 1000 strong team.
THE MILLIONAIRE MINDSET
Knowledge Check: Interaction design is the relationship between user and product and the services they use.
The process of interaction design involves studying the behavior and structure of interactive systems and implementing them for developing useful digital products.
Product designers should not neglect key principles of ID while creating an interface for the user.
- UX: Match user experience and expectations
- Consistent design: Maintain consistency throughout the application
- Functionality: Follow functional minimalism
- Cognition: Reduce cognitive loads/mental pressure to understand the application
- Engagement: Design interactively such that it keeps the user engaged.
- User control: Allow the user to control, trust, and explore
- Perceivability: Invite interactions through intuitions and interactive media
- Learnability: Make user interactions easy to learn and remember
- Error handling: Take care to prevent errors, if they occur make sure to detect and recover them.
- Affordability: Simulate actions by taking inspiration from usual and physical world interactions.
Practice: Schedule time for healthy self-soothing. When working from home it can be hard to see the lines between work and downtime (in both directions). Make sure work time is used for work and downtime is kept sacred. Downtime is essential for self-soothing.
Epsom salt baths, listening to music, doing yoga, exercise, and meditation are all healthy self-soothing options. Relieving stress in healthy ways is key to ensuring your stress does not exceed your body’s ability to recover from it. This will allow stressors on your body to remain in the hormetic zone.
THE MORNING TEA BREAK
Boil the Frog. This website creates a playlist which slowly transitions from one artist’s style of music to another. All you need to enter are the two artists you wish to bridge. I found John Travolta’s album (didn’t know he sang) while transitioning between Bryan Adams and Lata Mangeshkar.
Written by Kumar Sourav Mohanty, Akansh Bhatt, and Shashank Dobhal
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