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- Bit by Bit 13th Feb || Why Adani's $100 billion loss hasn't tanked Indian markets & more
Bit by Bit 13th Feb || Why Adani's $100 billion loss hasn't tanked Indian markets & more
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"5 amazing stories in 5 minutes to make you future ready"
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BFSI
Some analysts warned about the collapse of the country's financial markets and the Indian economy when shares of the Adani Group began their precipitous slide late last month, losing more than $100 billion in days. However, the feared market contagion has not materialized. In Mumbai, the nation's financial hub, Indian stocks had a quiet week and have been stable since the collapse of Adani. Even while U.S. stocks have declined by more than 4% over the same period, India's primary market index is nearly 2.5% higher than it was a year ago.
After being charged with fraud and stock manipulation by a minor New York trading company, Adani plunged dramatically. Even still, the disaster hardly makes a dent in the vast Indian bucket. Last year, the National Stock Exchange comfortably oscillated between $3 trillion and $3.5 trillion. The Adani Group, a family-run infrastructure and energy conglomerate, in some ways, stood alone, a reality that the rest of Indian business would undoubtedly like to have emphasized more explicitly as a result of the market's resiliency.
According to Mumbai-based Marcellus Investment Managers founder Saurabh Mukherjee, just 20 companies contributed 80% of the $1.5 trillion in value generated to India's public markets over the past ten years. Adani is one of those who make a lot of noise and brags about his power and political connections. However, 90% are "clean, well-run franchisees," according to Mukherjee. The heads of "the biggest, most reliable money-compounding machinery keep their heads below the parapet and their lips shut."
FMCG
Even if growth in cities is still more robust, Unilever's worldwide chief executive Alan Jope claimed that high inflation has a negative influence on demand from low-income consumers in Indian countryside.
"India's market growth is still more pronounced in urban regions than in rural ones, which is a reflection of the significant effects that rising food inflation has on low-income consumers. Rural markets are largely stable in value terms and have lower volumes "During its earnings call, Jope stated. But we continue to be optimistic that we can outpace the Indian market in terms of growth.
India is Unilever's second-largest revenue-generating market after the United States. Hindustan Unilever has reduced the cost of soaps and tea during the previous few months. The business has additionally stated that it will put its attention on high margin products rather than increasing volume sales at the expense of profit. For instance, Jope claimed that HUL is no longer a competitor in the low-margin, powdered tea segment of the Indian tea industry. But the business is expanding its market share in the premium tea market.
The majority of businesses, including Marico, Dabur, and Godrej, have recently stated that urban discretionary spending has been somewhat stressed since Diwali and that rural consumption has yet to catch up.
Manufacturing
The Story :
Hero MotoCorp, India’s largest two-wheeler maker, has set sights on an accelerated product plan for its electric vehicle (EV) business under the Vida brand. The company aims to develop a new range of EVs in the next 18-20 months to expand its portfolio and cater to different segments of the electric two-wheeler market, including more affordable or “mainstream" products, Swadesh Srivastava, Head of the Emerging Mobility Business Unit said in a post-earnings call with analysts on Wednesday.
He said the company began customer deliveries of the Vida scooters in December in three cities, and has so far delivered over 250 scooters.
The company plans to launch the scooters in a few more cities this quarter, followed by a nationwide launch. Hero MotoCorp launched the Vida V1 Pro & Plus in October, with an ex-showroom price of ₹159,000 and ₹145,000 respectively, making it one of the more expensive electric scooters sold currently in the domestic market. The Bajaj Chetak sells for ₹151,958, but the company is looking to launch a reconfigured version of the scooter at a lower price point helped by R&D efforts and supply chain ramp-up. Ather Energy’s 450 Plus is offered at a price of ₹117, 495 ex-showroom in Delhi, and Ola Electric’s S1 at ₹99,999, while the S1 Pro costs ₹129,999.
TVS Motor Company, which is significantly ramping up production of its iQube electric scooter with an aim to double volumes every quarter, is priced at ₹93,056.
TECH
Opera’s building ChatGPT into its sidebar
Opera’s adding a ChatGPT-powered tool to its sidebar that generates brief summaries of webpages and articles. The feature, called “shorten,” is part of the company’s broader plans to integrate AI tools into its browser, similar to what Microsoft’s doing with Edge.
Opera’s announcement comes just days after Microsoft revealed the AI-powered Bing and Edge. While the company’s search engine will offer access to an AI chatbot that provides annotated answers to queries, Edge will come with an AI “copilot” that can similarly summarize webpages or articles, as well as generate text for social media posts and more. Google also showed off its AI search bot Bard earlier this week, although it’s not available for users to demo just yet.
The “shorten” feature isn’t available to everyone just yet, though. Jan Standel, the vice president of marketing and communications at Opera, tells The Verge that it’s going to “launch in browsers very soon.” Opera’s also working on other AI-powered features that “augment” the browsing experience and plans on adding “popular AI-generated content services to the sidebar,” although it’s not yet clear what this could entail.
Anything Interesting
Google's rival to chatGPT makes an embarrassing mistake, wipes $100B off shares
The Story
Google's ChatGPT competitor is off to a shaky start after its launch video contained a glaring error regarding the James Webb Space Telescope and exoplanets. As a result of the blunder, Alphabet shares fell by around $100 billion on Wednesday.
In a promotional video released on Wednesday, Google's new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Bard, was asked to explain JWST's discoveries to a nine-year-old child. It responded that it was the first telescope to photograph a planet outside of the Solar System. This is however, incorrect.
The first image of an exoplanet was captured nearly two decades ago, long before the JWST was launched on Christmas Day 2021. The first exoplanet image, captured by the Very Large Telescope in 2004, shows a distant world orbiting the brown dwarf 2M1207, which is only 230 light-years away in the constellation Hydra.
Google's AI bot appears to have been confused by recent news headlines explaining how JWST captured its first image of an exoplanet. It turned out to be a costly mistake. According to Reuters, Alphabet's shares fell by 9% on Wednesday, wiping out around $100 billion from the company's market value.
"This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we're kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program," a Google spokesperson reportedly said in a statement.
