- Arvind's Newsletter
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- Arvind's Newsletter
1.Amazon set to launch Meesho competitor Bazaar in fight for value customers, reported Economic Times
Amazon is reportedly launching Amazon Bazaar, a no-commissions marketplace devoted to online sellers of unbranded clothes, shoes, and accessories that cost less than ₹600 (~$7.2). Bazaar won’t charge sellers a commission; instead it will earn from selling them logistics services.
This pits Amazon directly against SoftBank-backed Meesho, which has made its name in selling affordable, mid-quality goods to ordinary consumers in India. Besides, it must compete with Shopsy (owned by Flipkart) and Reliance’s new Ajio Street, all tapping so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ customers of affordable, unbranded goods.
2.Airtel introduces in-flight roaming packs starting at ₹195
Bharti Airtel, the second-largest mobile operator in India by subscriber count, on Thursday introduced new in-flight roaming packages.
These plans will cater to both pre-paid and post-paid customers, starting at ₹195 for 250 MB of data, ₹295 for 500 MB, and ₹595 for 1 GB. Additionally, all options include 100 minutes of outgoing calls and 100 SMS, with a 24-hour validity.
The company has also integrated in-flight roaming for pre-paid and post-paid customers with plans starting at ₹2,997 and ₹3,999, respectively, offering in-flight connectivity for free.
3.Nividia announced a surge in sales and profits on booming AI business
It reported highly anticipated fourth-quarter earnings yesterday that smashed records for both its quarterly and full-year results, boosted by strong demand for its semiconductors amid an artificial intelligence boom. The California chipmaker saw record fourth-quarter revenue of $22.1B, up 22% from the previous quarter and 265% from the previous year. The company's fourth-quarter net income was $12.3B, up 769% from $1.4B a year ago. Nvidia shares rose 15% in after-hours trading and drove global stock market rally.
Nvidia, founded in 1993, is the fifth most valuable company in the S&P 500, with its market value increasing by more than $400B this year to $1.67T as it became a primary beneficiary of investor enthusiasm for the future of AI. Nvidia currently ranks under Microsoft ($2.99T), Apple ($2.82T), Alphabet ($1.78T), and Amazon ($1.75T); the company had briefly surpassed the latter two tech giants earlier this month.
Nvidia's largest customers include Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google, which make up roughly 40% of the chipmaker's revenue.
4.Eye in the Sky, Will Broad in New York Times
The newest generation of satellites is powerful enough to resolve features of individual faces from Earth's orbit. While companies say they're taking steps to mitigate concerns, the technology has privacy experts on edge. What happens when the public square is perpetually under a watchful eye?
For decades, privacy experts have been wary of snooping from space. They feared satellites powerful enough to zoom in on individuals, capturing close-ups that might differentiate adults from children or suited sunbathers from those in a state of nature.
Now, quite suddenly, analysts say, a startup is building a new class of satellite whose cameras would, for the first time, do just that.
Anyone living in the modern world has grown familiar with diminishing privacy amid a surge security cameras, trackers built into smartphones, facial recognition systems, drones and other forms of digital monitoring. But what makes the overhead surveillance potentially scary, experts say, is its ability to invade areas once seen as intrinsically off limits. Read on
5.GRANOLAS: An acronym coined by Goldman Sachs analysts in 2020 representing Europe’s 11 largest companies by market capitalization at the time.
The GRANOLAS — GSK, Roche, ASML, Nestle, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, L’Oreal, LVMH, Astrazeneca, SAP, and Sanofi — have outperformed the U.S.’ so-called Magnificent 7 tech stocks, been less volatile than those peers over the past two years, and accounted for about 60% of all European stock market gains in the past year.
In part, their strength comes from their exposure to international market, but that could itself be a risk: A Donald Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election could lead to increased tariffs on foreign companies, while advantaging U.S. exporters through lower taxes and a stronger dollar.
Meanwhile, Analyst’s at Goldman Sachs who are fond of acronyms (remember BRICS), have named the Seven Samurai of market boosting Japanese Stocks. The Goldman analysts have highlighted a group of stocks that could serve as Japan’s equivalent of the Magnificent Seven that have come to dominate US equities.
Using a screening process to select top-performing stocks, Goldman settled on the following: Toyota Motor Corp, Subaru Corp and Mitsubishi Corp, along with four semiconductor plays in Screen Holdings Co, Advantest Corp, Disco Corp and Tokyo Electron Ltd.
The irony, of course, is that the movie The Magnificent Seven is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai. The US film might be better known, but the Japanese title has undoubtedly better stood the test of time.
6.Scientists developed a broad-spectrum snakebite antivenom.
Snakebite kills over 100,000 people a year, mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Antivenoms exist but they are species-specific, of no help if a victim doesn’t know what species bit them.
The researchers found proteins common to venoms from the elapid family, which includes some of the biggest killers such as the many-banded krait, cobra, and black mamba, and created an antibody for them. It’s not a fully universal antivenom — it doesn’t work against vipers, the other big family of venomous snakes — but the researchers think a cocktail of that antibody plus three others could “work as a universal antivenom against any medically relevant snake in the world.”
7.The biggest ever sanctions have failed to halt Russia’s war machine, reported the Wall Street Journal
Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western sanctions have failed in their most important task—stopping the Kremlin’s war machine.
Western officials and experts say the financial, economic, military and energy sanctions imposed on Russia since February 2022 have damaged Russia’s economy and arms-production capacity, and will create serious problems for the Kremlin in the coming years. But they acknowledge the restrictions have hit more slowly than they hoped.
This week, Western countries are adopting new sanctions against Russia. For the first time, the European Union will target companies from mainland China when its measures are announced on Saturday, officials say, shifting from efforts to persuade Beijing not to undercut sanctions to a more forceful approach.
The U.K. on Wednesday sanctioned six Russians it said were involved in the death of leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny, disclosed on Feb. 16. Washington plans to announce U.S. measures over Navalny’s death on Friday.
For Russia, dodging sanctions has become a priority. The Kremlin has directed Russian intelligence services to find channels for evasion and backfilling, Western officials say. Moscow has increased trade with China, India and other countries not subscribing to the Western measures, helping it sell energy and secure the supply of critical imports for the war.
Russia has used shell companies and neighboring countries to buy components used in weapons. And it has obtained a large number of old vessels operating under opaque ownership to circumvent a Western-imposed oil price cap.
Moscow’s avoidance of sanctions has created an elaborate cat-and-mouse game. Western officials design measures to hurt Russia, but the Kremlin eventually adapts, forcing the U.S. and European policymakers back to the drawing board. It is a competition the Kremlin can’t afford to lose. Western officials believe Russia cannot produce enough ammunition on its own to achieve its aim of subjugating Ukraine.
However, with Ukraine on the defensive and U.S. support for Ukraine facing political opposition, sanctions haven’t prevented Russia from vastly increasing military spending this year.
Iran and North Korea have delivered drones and missiles to Russia, while China and Turkey have helped provide Moscow with a regular supply of Western-made dual-use goods its military depends on to conduct the war.
