Friday, 4th September ’20
Good Morning, let’s welcome the weekend together with TMT Friday. Today, we want to ask you to be bold in your thoughts and actions. When you think about what way to choose in life, be bold. When you do not know if you are making the right decision, be bold. If there is ever a dilemma of what is the right thing to do, be bold. This boldness would count to 1000s of bold instances one day to help you reach the pinnacle of your personal and professional aspirations. Even if things don’t turn out the way you thought they would be bold.
Here are few words to start your day,
It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen.
MIND MONK
Things you can do when the “My life sucks” bug hits you.
- When you feel down, you are basically feeling either guilt, shame or worry which are horrible long-term solutions. So what should do when you’re feeling blue? Ask yourself what are you grateful for?
Yeah, gratitude is awesome… and it helps you improve your state of mind with an influx of dopamine.
- You can feel awful sometimes. What’s something you can do to get an immediate reprieve? Give that awfulness a name. Sad? Anxious? Angry?
Suppressing is obviously bad and labeling, on the other hand, is a part of the mindfulness process. You move towards acceptance and eventually not being affected by that emotion through it.
- Make a decision and then your brain finally feels at rest? That’s no random occurrence.
Brain science shows that making decisions reduces worry and anxiety — as well as helping you solve problems.
- Involve in any form of human contact. The wholesome effect of a hug is there for everyone to see. It can also be as small as passing the ball to someone while playing catch or one-touch football.
It’s all about involving people in your midst and thereby being involved yourself. Harks back to the social animal tendencies but hey it can feel good too.
MARKETS
Markets: Market traded range bound and ended mostly flat. Banking and financials saw selling pressure, whereas auto, FMCG, IT, and pharma stocks gained. The macroeconomic data suggests that the economic revival would take time and there do not seem to be many domestic triggers to boost the market sentiments. Traders should continue with a cautious approach. Also, the Indo-China tensions need to be eyed closely in the upcoming weeks. Banning more Chinese apps has led to Tencent losing $14billion in Chinese stock markets.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
- Zomato has roped in two new investors — Tiger Global and Kora Capital — in an ongoing funding round valuing the food ordering and restaurant discovery platform at around $3 billion. The company has raised around $250 million and Singapore’s Temasek, an existing investor, also joined.
- Livspace has raised $90 million, led by Kharis Capital and along with Peugeot Group’s FFP, Pidilite Group, and Singapore’s EDBI. Livspace is into home design and connects designers with customers as well as suppliers while operating a very complex supply chain to maintain delivery timelines.
- Facebook is once more ramping up its efforts to level the playing field and attempt to keep its platform from being manipulated to influence how people vote. Mark Zuckerberg today announced a series of new measures, including the news that it will block new political and issue ads in the final week of the campaign.
WHAT ELSE IS COOKING
- India ranked in the top 50 nations in the Global Innovation Index 2020: India climbed four spots on the Global Innovation Index 2020 and is now at 48th position in the list of top 50 innovative countries in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) annual ranking. Switzerland, Sweden, the US, UK, and the Netherlands are in the top spots of this year’s ranking. India occupied the 52nd position in 2019 and was ranked 81st in the year 2015.
- Online games Rummy, Poker banned by Andhra Pradesh Government: The Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday decided to ban online games like rummy and poker that were pushing the youth on a wrong path. The state cabinet that met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy took the decision to ban online gambling, Information Minister Perni Venkataramaiah said.
- Indian Oil’s crude carrier catches fire off Colombo: A fully loaded oil tanker has caught fire off the east coast of Sri Lanka, which has dispatched an aircraft and two navy ships to help in the rescue. The New Diamond, a very large crude carrier chartered by Indian Oil Corp (IOC), was heading to the port of Paradip in India, where the state-run firm operates a 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery. The ship had sailed from the port of Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait, carrying Kuwait Export Crude.
BUSINESS LOUNGE
Story of Zoho
Sridhar Vembu was passionate about engineering right from an early age. He went on to pursue a B.Tech from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, the first university graduate in his family. Working with his brother at Qualcomm, he developed a strong understanding of wireless communications but soon found out that his true passion lied in building a business.
And it wasn’t just about a techie discovering some loophole and building his riches out of it. Vembu was serious about the business aspect of starting up. This is evinced by the fact that over the course of close to 30 years, he hasn’t raised a single penny from a VC. Vembu remarked in his blog that he was in it to run a business but not to run away from the business.
Vembu Software got its big break when Cisco became their client. This was vindication for an upstart and seeing such a reputable company as Cisco in the list of clients gave potential one’s confidence in Vembu. In just four years since its inception, the company was generating an annual revenue of $10M and big VCs came calling left right and center.
With the dot com crash, Vembu software underwent a transformation of sorts and one of the offshoots to be born from it was Zoho. The “business OS” aimed to provide the breadth and depth of products that any small and medium business might require in order to function smoothly, streamlining their organization-wide sales, marketing, customer support, and inventory management functions in a single system
This was also the very early days of SaaS. Zoho though was not alone as Salesforce already boasted a huge percent of the market share. Years of having a simple business model, consciously eschewing becoming answerable to VCs, hiring talent that was overlooked by the top companies because of not having the right tags, and being the quintessential plucky underdog, brought Zoho to the enviable position it’s in today.
TMT VARSITY
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people in their social networks, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. This can be something as simple as an amusing song or game. Whatever the viral content is, it must encourage people to share with others so as many people as possible receive the content’s message.
Viral marketing is useful as a stand-alone marketing tool or as a part of a larger campaign that uses multiple kinds of marketing. It is especially attractive to smaller businesses or companies because it can be a cheaper alternative to traditional marketing efforts.
Viral marketing is a continual, interactive process. A company that implements a viral campaign shouldn’t simply let it run its course without adjustment. The Blair Witch campaign remained active on Internet message boards, interacting with real fans and regularly updating websites with more information based on fan discussions. It, like most viral campaigns, succeeded because it grew along with the interest in the product.
Written by Kumar Sourav Mohanty, Akansh Bhatt, and Shashank Dobhal
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