1.Hyundai seeks $19 billion value in India’s biggest ever IPO: Bloomberg Report

Ahead of India's biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO) of Hyundai Motor India, parent Hyundai Motor Company is seeking a valuation of $19 billion, a Bloomberg report, said citing sources in the know. The South Korean car maker, which plans to sell a 17.5% stake in the India business, may raise about $3.3 billion at the current valuation target, the people said.

The listing of Hyundai Motor India Ltd. is likely to take place in Mumbai on October 22, the people said.

2.Leading renewable energy firms in India seek buyers for 20 Gw assets

Nearly 10 leading renewable energy (RE) companies in India are actively seeking buyers for 20 gigawatt (Gw) of their operational and under-construction capacity. This comes in the face of significant hurdles, including a scarcity of power-purchase agreements (PPAs), power supply agreements (PSAs), and issues related to transmission connectivity.

India currently has 150 Gw of installed RE capacity. The ongoing sale accounts for 13.3 per cent of the industry’s total capacity.

3.AirPods made in India? Apple's big plans for a global export boom

Apple’s strategy in India just got a major upgrade, and it's not just about iPhones anymore. The tech giant is now taking a bold step by shifting AirPods manufacturing to India, solidifying its vision of making the country a key manufacturing hub outside China. Production will be split between Jabil’s Pune facility for casings and Foxconn’s Telangana unit for final assembly. While AirPods won’t enjoy India’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, Apple remains committed to scaling exports from India.

4.A streetcar named nostalgia: It’s the end of the track for Kolkata’s trams

Officials in Kolkata, the first and last Indian city to have trams, said the streets are too congested for them. Since the announcement, “social media has been awash in the ‘ding-ding tram nostalgia,” according to The Indian Express. But Delhi-based scholar Amartyajyoti Basu wrote in The Wire that the phase-out “represents a desire to push the working class to the margins, prioritising a glossy facelift for the city over inclusive and sustainable development.” He pointed out that the densely populated cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong have either revived or modernised their tram systems.

5.Google’s Visual Search Can Now Answer Even More Complex Questions

When Google Lens was introduced in 2017, the search feature accomplished a feat that not too long ago would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction: Point your phone’s camera at an object and Google Lens can identify it, show some context, maybe even let you buy it. It was a new way of searching, one that didn’t involve awkwardly typing out descriptions of things you were seeing in front of you.

Lens also demonstrated how Google planned to use its machine learning and AI tools to ensure its search engine shows up on every possible surface. As Google increasingly uses its foundational generative AI models to generate summaries of information in response to text searches, Google Lens’ visual search has been evolving, too. And now the company says Lens, which powers around 20 billion searches per month, is going to support even more ways to search, including video and multimodal searches.

Another tweak to Lens means even more context for shopping will show up in results. Shopping is, unsurprisingly, one of the key use cases for Lens;in the updated version of Lens, Google says it will show more direct links for purchasing, customer reviews, publisher reviews, and comparative shopping tools.

6.Oil surges after Joe Biden’s comments on Israeli retaliation

Oil prices soared to their highest level in more than a month on Thursday as traders speculated that Israel could engage in retaliatory strikes against Iran’s oil industry.

Brent crude rose by more than 5 per cent to settle at $77.62 per barrel after US President Joe Biden told reporters that such a move was under discussion in response to Tuesday’s missile attack on Israel by Iran.

The rise continued on Friday, with Brent up 1.6 per cent at $78.85. Asked whether the US would support Israel striking Iran’s oil facilities, Biden said: “We’re in discussion of that,” although in his truncated comment the US president went on to say: “I think that would be a little . . . anyway.”

7.For the first time, a case of type 1 diabetes appears to have been cured. 

The genetic type 1 is the rarer form of the disease, but still affects about 2 million people in the US alone. It used to be fatal and, although it can now be managed with regular insulin injections, is still a lifelong condition.

Last year, Chinese researchers modified patients’ own cells to create insulin-producing pancreatic tissue, and a year later, the first patient is still producing her own insulin and her blood sugar level is well controlled, Gizmodo reported. The results are preliminary and stem-cell research is fraught with dead ends and scientific fraud, but hopes are high that a cure is near.

8.Crows are even smarter than we thought

Crows and ravens, which belong to the corvid family, are known for their high intelligence, playful natures, and strong personalities. They hold grudges against each other, do basic statistics, perform acrobatics, and even host funerals for deceased family members. But we keep learning new things about the savvy of these birds, and how widespread that savvy is among the corvid family.

Earlier this year, a team of researchers from Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia and the University of Bristol found that a species of crow called the hooded crow—which has a gray bust and black tail and head feathers, making it look like it is wearing a “hood”—is able to manage a mental feat we once thought was unique to humans: to memorise the shape and size of an object after it is taken away—in this case a small piece of coloured paper—and to reproduce one like it.

9.The World’s Most Valuable Unicorns in 2024

The combined value of the world’s unicorns is $3.8 trillion — surpassing the GDP of India. In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist show the most valuable unicorn companies in the world as of October 2024, according to Carbon Finance, CB Insights, and Bloomberg.

Chinese TikTok developer ByteDance tops the ranking with a valuation exceeding $225 billion. In second place, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a valuation of $200 billion. The company is a primary launch service provider for NASA and the Pentagon, with over 7,000 satellites launched.

Following the success of ChatGPT, OpenAI has emerged as the third most valuable unicorn. The company recently announced it has raised $6.6 billion in new funding, achieving a $157 billion post-money valuation.

Overall, six of the 10 most valuable unicorns are based in the United States.