Arvind's Newsletter

1.Monsoon 2024 likely to set over Kerala on May 31: IMD

The onset of Monsoon 2024 in Kerala is going to bring major respite for people as most of India suffers from scorching heat conditions. This year, anticyclonic conditions and the El Nino effect combined to create intense heatwave conditions in several parts of eastern and southern India, and people are waiting for Monsoon 2024 to get some relief from the tough weather. 

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) release informed that this year, the Southwest Monsoon is likely to set over Kerala on May 31. The weather department works with a statistical model error of ± 4 days, which means Monsoon 2024 can start either four days before or four days after May 31. 

2.How Fractal, India’s first AI unicorn, is prepping for the next race

It took Fractal over 20 years to hit a landmark today’s startups aspire to achieve in about five years. In January 2022, TPG Capital Asia pumped in $350 million into Fractal, making it India’s first AI unicorn, or a company with a valuation of over a billion dollars.

The company today has over $300 million revenue, 4,600 employees and operations spread across 17 global locations. Data intelligence platform Tracxn ranks Fractal eighth among 1,435 competitors in the data analytics space. The long list includes giants such as Accenture and PwC, as well as well-funded startups such as CleverTap, Mu Sigma and data.ai.

This is the story of Srikanth Velamakanni and Pranay Agrawal, Fractal’s co-founders, who have stuck with the company through thick and thin. They have built the company through 10 acquisitions and is now collaborating with the hyper scalers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Databricks, Nvidia). Read on.

3.Why Indian Pharma Isn't Able To Break Free From Dependence On Chinese Bulk Drugs

The overdependence on China for APIs has always been a problem, but only in the aftermath of the pandemic-induced supply chain shocks did the government and industry decide to do something about it. In July 2020, the Indian government announced a production-linked initiative (PLI) to promote domestic manufacturing of bulk drugs. Four years on, a myriad of problems — from red tape to environmental concerns — put paid to those hopes and Indian drugmakers continue to rely on APIs from China.

Despite the industry’s efforts and the government's push to boost domestic manufacturing, India's imports of APIs from its neighbour have only gone up. Reji K Joseph, an associate professor at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), who has been tracking the fall and rise of India's API industry, estimates that China's share in India's import of APIs has also grown from 70% in pre-pandemic times to 72% post-pandemic.

4.India’s media over-emphasizes US concerns about its “democratic backsliding,” argued an international affairs scholar. 

C Raja Mohan wrote in The Indian Express that “neither India nor the quality of its democracy are political issues” in the US, which is struggling with Russian and Chinese aggression and the Israel-Hamas war while focused on its own election in November. US politics will be hugely influential in India, Mohan said — if Donald Trump were to win, his radical agenda “on border security, immigration, trade, military alliances” will matter enormously to Delhi. But Washington cares mainly about India as a security and trading partner, and its rhetoric on democracy is more bark than bite. “The battle for Indian democracy ,”Mohan said, “is at home, not between Delhi and the Western capitals.”

5.Google’s Astra is its first AI-for-everything agent

Google is set to launch a new system called Astra later this year. It promises that it will be the most powerful, advanced type of AI assistant it’s ever launched. 

The current generation of AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, can retrieve information and offer answers, but that is about it. But this year, Google is rebranding its assistants as more advanced “agents,” which it says could show reasoning, planning, and memory skills and are able to take multiple steps to execute tasks. 

Tech companies are in the middle of a fierce competition over AI supremacy, and  AI agents are the latest effort from Big Tech firms to show they are pushing the frontier of development. 

Read about all other major Google announcements yesterday below

6.US Targets Chinese Exports

The Biden administration announced increased tariffs yesterday on Chinese products, the latest expansion of US duties on goods manufactured in the world's second-largest economy. Imports of electric vehicles will see the steepest increase in tariffs, quadrupling from 25% to 100%. Former President Donald Trump first implemented heightened tariffs on solar panels, metals, and more in 2018. 

Tariffs are taxes—typically collected as a percentage of the good's value—placed on importers of foreign goods, often designed to protect consumers from low-quality goods or manufacturers from cheaper foreign competition. Economists claim the cost of tariffs is often passed on to domestic consumers. 

US and global officials have argued China artificially lowers the price of its exports with subsidies to undercut domestic sellers. China produces one-third of the world's manufactured goods and exports roughly $500B in goods to the US annually. The new tariffs are slated to apply to roughly 2% of those exports.

7.The world’s most efficient system for producing hydrogen is scaling up for mass production.

Some energy is always lost when turning water into hydrogen and oxygen — typical processes lose about 20-30%. The Australian startup Hysata developed a new system, avoiding bubbles in the fluid that block the conduction of electrical charge, and improving efficiency to 95%.

Hydrogen has advantages over batteries for long-term energy storage: It is more energy-dense — meaning it can be more easily used in industries such as aviation — and doesn’t lose charge over long periods. Hysata announced $111 million funding to scale production up, announced $111 million in funding to scale production up, New Atlas reported.

8.Anglo’s drastic plan to fend off BHP

Anglo American has unveiled the most radical plans to reshape the 107-year-old producer of copper, coal and diamonds in decades, as it fends off a £34bn deal from industry leader BHP.

Under its new vision, the FTSE 100 group would be rationalised to three divisions — copper, iron ore and fertiliser — shedding long-held mines producing platinum metals, metallurgical coal and nickel, as well as its trophy diamond brand De Beers, through sales and spin offs.

Anglo would also drastically slash spending on Woodsmith, its flagship $9bn project in England that will produce a yet-unproven fertiliser, to buy itself time to build a market for the product and save cash to implement the drastic overhaul.