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  • Bit by Bit 5th November || WhatsApp update adds new features for groups || India's foreign exchange reserves finally increase by $6.56 billion to end a two-week decline. & more

Bit by Bit 5th November || WhatsApp update adds new features for groups || India's foreign exchange reserves finally increase by $6.56 billion to end a two-week decline. & more

November 05, 2022

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Good afternoon! Better days have arrived they are called Saturday and Sunday

So, here are:

" 4 amazing stories in 4 minutes, because why not?"

Happy reading!

MARKET UPDATE

  • NIFTY 50 : ₹18,117.15 (+0.36%)

  • BSE SENSEX : ₹60,950.36 (+0.19%)

  • NIFTY BANK : ₹41,258.45 (-0.10%)

  • USD/INR : ₹82.02 (-0.86%)

  • BRENTOIL : $98.09 (+3.61%)

  • MCXGOLD : ₹50,866 (+1.36%)

  • FII Net Cashflow : + ₹1436 crores

  • DII Net Cashflow : - ₹548 crores

(Markets data as of 11:00 PM on 4/11/2022)

ECONOMY

The Story:

Key Notes: 

•Due to an increase in foreign currency assets (FCA), the foreign exchange reserves have increased 

•However, the spot forex reserves are still sharply down

The foreign exchange reserves of India had their largest weekly increase since October 2021 and increased for the First-weekday occurrence in three weeks finished October 28 aided by improvements in both gold and foreign currency assets reserves. Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Shaktikanta Das stated last month that despite all, the bank's forex reserves umbrella has maintained its strength. Markets are unpredictable. He claimed that the RBI has been taking action in the forex market driven by ongoing evaluation of the current state and changing situations.

According to Das, value changes brought on by a strengthening US dollar and higher US bond yields are to blame for around 67% of the drop in reserves during the current fiscal year, which began on April 1.  

FMCG

The Story:

According to the report, in view of the ongoing slowdown, which has impacted demand in rural India, ITC doubled its rural stockist network in the current financial year, with a significant increase in coverage across low-population group markets. ITC has added more than 25 percent of new markets to the existing large serviced base.

The company’s retail base currently stands at 6.2 million outlets and it continued to deploy resources to augment the outlet coverage aggressively, with nearly 80 percent of new handlers added in the current year coming from a rural base.

Emami, which has one of the highest exposures in rural areas among its peers, the company is banking on its Project Dhanush initiative, which it undertook three years ago. In the past three years under this initiative, aimed at reaching the deepest and remotest of geographies, Emami expanded its footprint to more than 20,000 towns with a population of around 3,000.

Van branding and visual merchandising at outlets through point-of-purchase visibility has proved to be an effective consumer influencer fuelling rural market growth for Emami

TECH

Key Highlights: 

  • Wistron InfoComm invested ₹1,250 crores which was followed by the local units of Samsung and Foxconn, investing ₹900 crore and ₹650 crore, under PLI.

  • In all, the scheme managed to attract a total of ₹4,200 crores in investments.

  • The PLI targets production worth ₹10 trillion and jobs totalling 180,000.

Wistron InfoComm, the Indian unit of one of the world’s largest iPhone contract makers, emerged as the single biggest investor under the government’s production-linked incentives (PLI) scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing, bringing in ₹1,250 crores. The government launched the scheme in March 2020 to encourage manufacturing and create jobs.

The scheme, which targets production worth ₹10 trillion and jobs totaling 180,000 jobs, has produced electronic items worth about ₹1.67 trillion and nearly 29,000 jobs, according to data from the ministry of electronics and IT.

Against the backdrop of the pandemic-related disruptions and an acute global chip shortage, the Centre extended the tenure of the PLI scheme till FY26, allowing the companies to choose any five consecutive years between FY21 and FY26 to achieve the threshold targets for incremental sales, with FY20 as the base year.

However, experts said investment and production under the scheme could surge further amid the 5G rollout, which is expected to create replacement demand for phones. “Although the country witnessed considerable growth in production, the amount of value addition remained low as almost 80-90% of the components continue to be manufactured outside due to a weak component manufacturing ecosystem," an ICRA report said.

The report added that the key challenges faced by manufacturers in India include a lack of R&D infrastructure, high capital and logistics costs, muted private sector interest, and weak backward linkages.

Want a BIT More?

The Story:

According to Meta, the new WhatsApp communities feature was created with neighborhoods, work teams, and parents from the same school in mind.

With the introduction of a new communities feature, WhatsApp groups may now be consolidated under one roof. It was launched on Thursday and is set up to allow for smaller talks within each group while allowing updates to be broadcast to everyone at once across all groups.

Consider it the equivalent of a Russian stacking doll of WhatsApp groups, according to parent company Meta, which claims it was created with the help of local communities, workplaces, and parents of children attending the same school.

Once inside, you can switch between the various groups. Communities' administrators will have significantly more authority, such as the ability to send messages of announcement to every member of every subgroup.

Since end-to-end encryption is still in place, no one outside the group or chat will be able to see the outdated memes you send to your adolescent offspring. Mark Zuckerberg, the meta leader, claims that the upgrade just "improves groups."

For already-existing groups, new features are also being introduced as of right now. The most prominent of them are polls, which may eventually assist your pals in deciding what movie to see this weekend. Additionally, video calls are being made available to up to 32 persons.

Both updates will be accessible in both regular WhatsApp groups and those included in bigger communities.