Arvind's Newsletter

1.India, Iran sign pact for long-term operation of terminal at Chabahar Port

A high-level delegation led by the Indian minister for shipping Sarbananda Sonowal visited Iran to sign the contract, which will pave the way for the full use of this strategic port in southeastern Iran, developed with Indian aid.

The long-term bilateral contract was signed between Indian Ports Global Limited (IPGL) and the Port & Maritime Organisation (PMO) of Iran, enabling the operation of the Shahid Beheshti terminal at the Chabahar Port for 10 years.

Located in the Sistan-Baluchistan province on Iran’s southwestern coast, Chabahar Port is at an important point on the Arabian Sea, with easy access from India’s west coast.

India has been pushing for the Chabahar port project to boost regional trade, especially for its connectivity to Afghanistan. India and Iran have projected the port as a key hub for the INSTC project. The INSTC is a 7,200-km-long multi-mode transport project for moving freight among India, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe.

2.Declining foreign ownership of the Indian stock market

Foreign ownership of the Indian stock market has declined to the lows last seen in 2012. The decline in foreign ownership comes amid rising domestic investor participationand lower relative attractiveness of the Indian market, despite higher earnings growth.

Domestic institutions have continued to buy. The gap in ownership between domestic and foreign investors has now narrowed to its lowest point since at least 2009 though foreign investor holding as % total shareholder holdings at 17.7%is still higher than domestic institutional holdings which are at 16.1% and the total institutional holding (foreign and domestic) is at 33.8% is greater share of the stock market than a decade ago(when it was 30.2%).

Private sector promoters, or majority owners, among listed companies continue to hold on to their shares. While the government promoter stake is down 3.5 percentage points to 10.4 per cent (March 2024) compared to a decade ago, private sector promoters held a bigger stake in their companies in March 2024 (41 per cent) compared to 37.8 per cent in March 2014.

3.China beats US to emerge as largest trading partner of India in FY24: GTRI

India’s largest trade partner is no longer the US. In the financial year 2023-24, China became India’s largest trading partner with two-way commerce worth US $118.4 billion, according to the economic think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI). Bilateral trade with the US, which was the biggest trading partner for the last two years, was at a close second at $118.3 billion. While India’s exports to China rose by 8.7% to $16.67 billion, imports from the country increased by 3.24% to $101.7 billion.

4.Customer care: How the bot army will shrink the outsourcing pie; Shelly Singh in Mint

In a recent interview, K. Krithivasan, CEO of TCS, said that AI would result in a “minimal” need for call centres within a year. He is probably right. Chatbots today are better at comprehending human languages; they are also cheaper. So, what happens to the human agent?

The world of the contact centre, once manned by an army of humans, has been transformed by technology. With every new technological advance, from interactive voice responses (IVR) almost three decades back to chatbots a decade or so ago, the human army has become a little smaller, and the promise of better engagement between customers and companies has become bigger.

At first, it was patchy, good enough only for ‘routine’ tasks such as resetting a password, ordering a cheque book or updating an account’s balance. That left all the stakeholders—the company, customers, and the human agents—wanting more. Complaining customers fret about talking to chatbots who can’t comprehend their ‘intent’. Human agents, on the other hand, have to turn the other cheek and endure the ire of customers (and frequently, their abuse) to ensure the company they represent appears to put the customer first.

But today, customer engagement is dramatically changing thanks to AI. Generative AI (GenAI) powered chatbots are far better in comprehending and processing human languages and addressing customer needs than their earlier avatars.

So much so, that in a 24 April interview with The Financial Times, K. Krithivasan, chief executive officer (CEO) of the $30 billion tech services major TCS, said that AI will result in a “minimal" need for call centres within a year. “Chatbots will soon be able to analyse customers’ transaction history and do much of the work done by call centre agents," he noted.

But there is a dark lining on that silver cloud. The outsourced contact centre industry, pegged to be worth $120-130 billion globally at the end of 2023, will contract to $95-105 billion in the next three to four years, according to Everest Group, a research and advisory group specializing in the global services industry.

5.The Indian elections is turning into a You Tube elections

The ongoing national elections have turned out to be a YouTube (YT) election, The Economic Times reports. Unlike the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when Facebook and WhatsApp were the dominant platforms respectively for electoral campaigning, YouTube has emerged as the principal digital arena for political debate and discourse. 

YT now has over 500 million subscribers in India, almost as much as WhatsApp users. The Aam Aadmi Party leads the league table among political parties with 6.26 million YT subscribers, closely followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with 5.9 million followers and the Congress Party in third position with 4.77 million subscribers. The BJP and the Congress also spent the most on video advertisements on Google, the former spending Rs 50.4 crore (~$6 million), while the latter spent half of that. 

6.Ukraine loses ground

Russia made significant battlefield progress against Ukraine. Moscow’s troops are winning more land each day than at any point since the early days of their 2022 invasion, while Kyiv’s forces are trading blame in retreat, The New York Times reported. Ukraine’s top general admitted that the situation in the northeastern Kharkiv region was “difficult,” while another commander told the BBC of his frustration at seeing Russian troops walk across virtually unopposed. Russian momentum is in part thanks to squabbles — now resolved — in Washington over aid to Kyiv, the military expert Phillips P. O’Brien wrote, resulting in a Ukraine hamstrung by a lack of materials.

7.BAFTA TV Awards: ‘Top Boy,’ ‘Happy Valley’ Win Two Each as ‘The Crown,’ ‘Black Mirror’ Miss Out

Happy Valley and Top Boy shared the BAFTA love on Sunday night at the British Academy’s prestigious Television Awards in London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Sarah Lancashire took home the top prize for her performance in Sally Wainwright’s Yorkshire-based police thriller, and fellow Briton Timothy Spall beat Succession‘s Brian Cox to win the equivalent award, best leading actor, for The Sixth Commandment – which also won two BAFTAs.

8.Auroras mesmerize the globe

The strongest solar storm in more than 20 years slammed into Earth this weekend, creating dazzling auroral displays and disrupting infrastructure. 

The Northern Lights were seen as far south as Mexico and India, while the Southern Lights delighted skygazers in Tasmania and parts of Australia. Auroras are the beautiful consequence of coronal mass ejections, which are flares that erupt from sunspots on the sun. These CMEs were powerful enough to interfere with Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service and affect some GPS systems — highlighting the vulnerability of essential space-based services to these events — but they can also affect the grid on Earth, too. There may be more to come: The sun is in a period of intense activity that could result in more, and even stronger, storms.