Thursday, 27th August ’20
Good morning, welcome to TMT Thursday. The economy is not expected to be at its best in the upcoming months as the COVID-19 cases continue to soar in our country. Multiple firms have laid off employees with the most recent addition of Accenture to the list which announced that it would let go of 25,000 of its workforce. Amidst, this pandemic Indian Education Ministry has decided to carry out the JEE and NEET examinations in September. There is a widespread outcry as to who would be responsible for the health of the youth of the nation who’d gather to give these exams. TMT hopes that government officials defer this till Nov till the CORONA cases subside.
Here are a few words of energy from Robin Sharma to start our day.
Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make. it will not only improve your life, but it will also improve the lives of all those around you.
MIND MONK
Doing Away with Stage Fright
You may have heard the joke that some people would prefer to be in their own coffins than give a eulogy at a funeral. While this may be an exaggeration, many would agree. Most of us feel a degree of nervous apprehension when preparing to speak up or perform in front of a group. The fear of public speaking or performance, often called stage fright, exacts a huge toll on self-confidence and self-esteem. But these simple recipes can help you bat it off to quite a great extent.
- Shift the focus from yourself and your fear of your true purpose—contributing something of value to your audience.
- Practice ways to calm and relax your mind and body, such as deep breathing, relaxation exercises, yoga, and meditation.
- Visualize your success: Always focus on your strength and ability to handle challenging situations.
- Make connections with your audience: Smile and greet people, thinking of them as friends rather than enemies.
- Stand or sit in a self-assured, confident posture. Remain warm and open and make eye contact.
- Give up trying to be perfect and know that it is OK to make mistakes. Be natural, be yourself.
Remember, you yourself are far bigger and more terrific than anything that terrifies you!
MARKETS
Markets: Indian market rose to a six-month high on August 26, powered by action in autos, banks, and energy stocks. The S&P BSE Sensex reclaimed 39,000 while the Nifty50 closed above 11,500. RIL led the charge with its 52 week high. Two-wheeler stocks also gained after FM Nirmala Sitharamans’ statement on lowering the tax rates on 2-wheelers. Matrimony.com jumped 10% after ICICI Mutual Fund, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and 238 Plan Associates buying shares in the matchmaking company. Markets are expected to remain volatile on Thursday.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
- Byju’s has raised $122 million from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s investment fund DST Global as part of its ongoing funding round, a month after storied Silicon Valley investor Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital chipped in $23 million at a $10.5 billion valuation. Byju’s expect to raise $400 Million in this round.
- Uber on Wednesday launched an on demand 24×7 Auto Rentals service in India. The service allows riders to book an auto and its driver for several hours with the liberty to make multiple stops along a journey. Prices start at Rs 169 for a one-hour/ ten km package that can be booked up to 8 hrs.
- Grid, a SaaS startup founded in Iceland that lets you turn spreadsheets into visual “narratives,” has closed $12 million in Series A funding. Grid provides a way to easily create visual and interactive narratives on top of existing spreadsheets and securely share them using the web.
WHAT ELSE IS COOKING
- Serum Institute begins clinical trial of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in India: Serum Institute of India’s trial for ‘Covishield’ vaccine developed by the University of Oxford started on Tuesday, with the first patients screened by Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University (BVDU) Medical College and Hospital in Pune. The hospital aims to have about 300-350 participants as part of the trial. Serum Institute is the 3rd firm to conduct human trials of a Covid-19 vaccine in India after Bharat Biotech (for Covaxin) and Zydus Cadila (for ZyCoV-D) started phase I and II trials last month.
- Bajaj Allianz General launches pet dog insurance starting ₹315: The pet insurance product called Bajaj Allianz Pet Dog Insurance Policy, provides comprehensive coverage to domesticated pet dogs of indigenous origin, pedigree, non-pedigree, cross-bred and exotic breeds over their lifetime from age 3 months to 10 years. The product consists of one mandatory base cover namely surgery expenses and hospitalization cover and six optional covers i.e. mortality benefit cover, terminal diseases cover, long term care cover, OPD cover, theft/lost/straying cover and third party liability cover.
- Trell launches a new anthem by Sukhwinder Singh to celebrate freedom of expression: India’s fastest-growing lifestyle community platform, Trell has launched a new anthem encouraging India to speak their heart and minds. Titled Keh Jo Kehna Hai, the song is a rare blend of acoustics with an upbeat tune and inspiring lyrics. With over 1.5 million views on Youtube, it has been trending on Twitter. The song celebrates the art of storytelling and encourages people to speak from their hearts as each one’s story is unique.
BUSINESS LOUNGE
Advent of Battery Technology
When Volkswagen invested another $200 million into QuantumScape (QS from here on), a Stanford University spinout developing solid-state batteries, the cumulative investment of $300 Million to date redoubled their commitment to a better future. The automaker’s bet on QS’ next-generation technology will unlock longer ranges and faster charging times in electric vehicles.
As no innovation happens in isolation, there are other companies that have also been laboring in the solid-state battery space. Ionic Materials is one such company, as is Solid Energy, which has attracted investment capital from General Motors. Sakti3 was acquired by vacuum builder Dyson while Bosch has picked up polymer electrolyte pioneer Seeo.
lithium-ion batteries use a liquid electrolytic solution to regulate flow, whereas solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte. The electrolyte is the conductive chemical mixture that allows the flow of the current between the anode and cathode. Using a solid electrolyte will provide a smaller size with higher energy density, longer lifespan, and increased safety.
Solid-state batteries theoretically could store twice as much energy as a lithium-ion battery. For example, if the battery of Tesla Roadster were replaced with a solid-state battery, it could help double the 620-mile range from its 200-kilowatt-hour battery. This number is at par, if not better, than what a regular gasoline car will get you. If Bill Gates is raving about it, so should you.
Jagdeep Singh is a veteran of silicon valley. He has built at least three successful companies and has been at the cutting edge of technology along the way. At Lightera, he worked on optical fibers with Multi-wavelength switches which provided additional capacity and disrupted the telecommunications industry. So he’s no fish out of water when it comes to advanced tech.
Volkswagen has pledged to put these batteries in their fleet by 2025. The only snag might be the high costs associated with solid-state batteries. Yet the promise of this technology at commercial scale has prompted a number of automakers like BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, and Toyota who are investing in the research and development of the battery technology. Let’s hope the economies of scale act as a panacea and bring cheaper, longer-range EVs into everyone’s garage in a few years.
TMT VARSITY
Learning Tableau
Tableau is a powerful and fastest-growing data visualization tool used in the Business Intelligence Industry. It helps in simplifying raw data into a very easily understandable format.
The best features of Tableau are:-
- Data Blending
- Real-time analysis
- Collaboration of data
There are certain capabilities in tableau like the Level of Detail expressions and Calculated Fields which set tableau apart from other visualization tools in terms of the extent of granularity of your analyses.
LOD Expressions provide a way to easily compute aggregations that are not at the level of detail of the visualization. You can then integrate those values within visualizations in arbitrary ways.
A few practical applications of LOD are:-
- Customer order frequency: Finding the number of orders each customer has made is relatively easy, but what if we wanted to know the number of customers who made one order, two orders, three orders, and so forth? To build such a viz, we can break up the number of customers by the number of orders made.
- Cohort analysis: In a view that groups customers by the year of their first purchase to compare sales contributions annually across cohorts, the minimum order date per customer will give the first purchase date. If the data in the viz is not displayed by the customer, we can use a LOD Expression to fix the minimum order date per customer.
Profit KPI
We can visualize profit trends over time, but what if we measure our success by the total profit per business day? We would probably want to know the number of profitable days achieved each month or year, especially if we were curious about seasonal effects. LOD Expressions allow us to easily create bins on aggregated data such as profit per day.
Written by Kumar Sourav Mohanty, Akansh Bhatt, and Shashank Dobhal
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