Bit by Bit 20th Oct. ||Lulu Group will invest $3 billion to build Ahmedabad's largest mall in India ||1000 workers have been fired by IT giant Microsoft & More

Good morning! Hola 1st years, Does holding 3 exams in one day constitute a violation of human rights? Brace yourselves!

Anyways, here are:

Happy reading!

MARKET UPDATE

• BSE SENSEX : ₹59,107.19 (+0.25%)

• NIFTY 50 : ₹17,512.25 (+0.24%)

• NIFTY BANK : ₹40,373.20 (+0.14%)

• USD/INR : ₹82.27 (+0.12%)

• BRENTOIL : $92.57 (+2.82%)

• MCXGOLD : ₹50,212.00 (-0.40%)

• FII Net Cashflow : - ₹453 crores

• DII Net Cashflow : + ₹908 crores

(Markets data as of 11:00 PM on 19/10/2022)

ECONOMY

Drones can boost India's GDP by up to 1.5%, address challenges for the country's key agriculture sector.

The Story:

Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, are being employed more frequently by a variety of sectors, from the military to personal use, but they can also increase a nation's economic productivity.

According to a report by the World Economic Forum, drones have the potential to be at the centre of a technology-led transformation of Indian agriculture that would increase the country's gross domestic product by 1-1.5 percent and create at least five lakh new employment.

The report, produced by the WEF's Centre for Fourth Industrial Revolution in India in collaboration with Adani Group, claimed that "there are truly revolutionary changes happening in the farthest reaches of the country - at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and agriculture as well as between military and civilian technologies - that have the power to truly transform a billion livelihoods." A technology-driven revolution could be sparked by drones, which are at the epicenter of this one.

AUTOMOTIVE

Hardeep puri: For promoting the use of flexi-fuel vehicles, automakers must provide the vehicles at various price points.

Key Points -

• Union minister, Hardeep puri said that government will provide support from the supply, policy, and demand side for the sale of flexi-fuel cars.

• By 2025, India might save nearly Rs 30,000 crore in foreign cash thanks to the addition of E20 to gasoline.

• When India obtains the G20 chair in December of this year, it will advocate for a global alliance for biofuels.

The Story:

Union minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr. Hardeep puri that Indian automobiles need to provide flexi-fuel cars at different price points to promote flexi-fuel cars. The government will provide support for the sale of flexi fuel - E10 (a blend of 10% ethanol with petrol) and E20 (20% ethanol with petrol). vehicles. Union minister gives an example of Japanese car maker Toyota's FFV-SHEV, a powerful hybrid electric vehicle (FFV-SHEV) that can run on 100% ethanol in India.

Five years prior, the 1,000-crore liter production target will be met, and by April 2023, we'll be prepared with the pilot project to make E20 fuel available in some pumps. By 2025, India might save nearly Rs 30,000 crore in foreign cash thanks to the addition of E20 to gasoline. The minister noted that the number of gas stations selling biofuels has tripled from 29,897 in 2016–17 to 67,641 in 2021–22. He also noted that India's ethanol demand is expected to increase to 10.16 billion liters by 2025.

RETAIL

Lulu Group to infuse ₹3,000cr to set up India's biggest mall in Ahmedabad

Key points :

• LuLu Group mainly operates in 23 countries located across the Middle East, Asia, the US, and Europe

• LuLu Group has an annual turnover of $8 billion and a staff force of more than 60,000

• The Ahmedabad based mall will have more than 300 national and international brands and 15-screen multiplex cinemas with Imax. Also, the mall will have a 3,000 people capacity food court with multi-cuisine restaraunts

The Story :

UAE-based Lulu Group International will likely enter Gujarat with a capital infusion of ₹3,000 crores to set up India's biggest shopping mall in Ahmedabad. Lulu Group Director of Marketing and Communications V Nandakumar stated that the shopping mall construction will commence in early 2023. This would be the third shopping mall of Yussuf Ali's Lulu Group in India. Earlier, the Group had opened a mall in Kochi, Kerala, and Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

The aim is to make Ahmedabad one of India's most prolific shopping destinations, Nandakumar stated. The development comes after the MoU signed between Lulu Group and the Gujarat government in the recently held UAE road show by Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel in Dubai.

Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Lulu Group is a world-renowned purveyor of an international business portfolio that ranges from hypermarket operations to shopping mall development, manufacturing, and trading of goods, hospitality assets, and real estate

TECH

Tech giant Microsoft lays off 1000 employees

Key Facts:

• Microsoft has laid off around 1000 employees due to economic slowdown

• The cut happened across teams, divisions and level across the world

• Other tech companies like Meta, Google etc are also slowing or cutting down on hiring

The Story:

Microsoft corporation has reportedly laid off about 1000 employees across multiple divisions. Tech companies have been moving towards slow or freeze hiring as the economy has been slowing down. Cutting jobs seems to be the next step.

Microsoft has refused to comment on how many jobs were cut but reports suggest the number is close to 1000. The company has stated that it will still hire in key growth areas in the year ahead. The same report has mentioned that nearly all tech companies have slowed hiring processes and are only hiring in essential areas.

Meta has also planned to cut budgets in most divisions and lay offs are expected in the company. Other companies like Google, Oracle, Twitter, Nvidia, Snap, Uber, Intel and Salesforce have also slowed or stopped hiring in the recent economic downturn.

Want a BIT More?

Women twice as likely as men to develop long COVID, study finds

The Story:

According to a study, women are twice as likely as men to develop COVID-19's chronic symptoms. Globally, 63% of people with lengthy COVID during the first two years of the epidemic were female, according to researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in the US.

Long COVID is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as symptoms that appear three months after contracting COVID-19 and last for at least two months.

The study, which was recently published in the journal JAMA, also discovered that women who were hospitalised with the SARS-CoV-2 virus had a significantly higher risk of acquiring protracted COVID than did men who were similarly hospitalised. Theo Vos, professor of health metrics at IHME and senior author of the study, said that since SARS-CoV-2 first spread throughout the world in 2020, three protracted COVID symptom clusters have prevented otherwise healthy people from fully recovering, prevented them from going back to work or school, and even forced them to seek out additional medical care or other rehabilitative services.

The research predicts that in 2020 and 2021, about 51% of long-term COVID patients complained of continuous exhaustion accompanied by physical discomfort or mood swings, 60% reported having respiratory problems, and 35% experienced cognitive abnormalities.

"This important research estimates the proportion, severity, and duration of long COVID symptoms that can help health communities and policymakers understand the need for appropriate medical care and sufficient access to services to help people recover," study lead author Sarah Wulf Hanson, a research scientist at IHME, said in a statement.