What's buzzing

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 July 18, 2024: India’s federal think tank Niti Aayog has come up with a reporttitled “Electronics: Powering India’s Participation in Global Value Chains” outlining the measures that need to be taken for the country to become a major force in the electronics arena. The report says India should aim to achieve $500 billion in electronics manufacturing in value terms by FY30.

July 16, 2024: India has emerged as a bright spot in the IMF’s July 2024 update to its World Economic Outlook, with the nation’s growth revised upward to 7 percent this year. IMF said that the change in the case of India reflected “carryover from upward revisions to growth in 2023 and improved prospects for private consumption, particularly in rural areas.”

July 03, 2024: Indian social networking service provider Koo – one of the winners of the 2020 Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge – and at one point even being talked of as the country’s answer to the then Twitter(now X) has ceased operations. The announcement was made by one of the founders of Koo on LinkedIn.

You may also wish to read R M Consulting's view on the Koo episode here: 

https://rmconsulting.in/f/koo-the-unfulfilled-promise

June 27, 2024: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has come up with an AI Preparedness Index Dashboard to bring out how 174 economies worldwide, including India, currently fare on the AI-readiness front. Understandably, developed economies are found to be more AI-ready than those in the developing world in this exercise carried out by the IMF.

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https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

June 24, 2024: Global technology group Prosus has written off its investment made in edtech startup Byju’s, once India’s most valued startup at $22 billion. "In the current financial year, the group wrote off the fair value of its 9.6% effective interest in BYJU'S, due to the decrease in value for equity investors. A fair value loss of US$493m was recognised in other comprehensive income in the current year," Prosus said in its 2024 Annual Report.

June 20, 2024: A Hurun Research Institute report has reaffirmed the potential of India’s startup domain by forecasting the likelihood of a further 152 startups turning unicorns in the next five years. As per the said report, the future unicorns were seen disrupting the financial services, business management solutions, education, and healthcare domains. Currently, India boasts of 67 unicorns.

June 15, 2024:  With artificial intelligence forming a part of the agenda of the G7 Italy summit held on June 13-15, it was always expected that assembled leaders at the event would reiterate their commitment to work together for ensuring the safe and responsible use of sophisticated AI technologies. What, however, came as a welcome surprise, though, was the decision taken at the event to “launch an action plan on the use of AI in the world of work”. “We ask our Labor Ministers to develop the action plan, envisaging concrete actions to fully leverage the potential of AI to enable decent work and workers’ rights and full access to adequate reskilling and upskilling, while addressing potential challenges and risks to our labor markets,” the Apulia G7 Leaders’ Communique said.

You may also wish to read R M Consulting’s perspective on this at:

https://rmconsulting.in/f/apulia-g7-leaders%E2%80%99-communique-ai-india

May 30, 2024: The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a report on Strategies for Affordable and Fair Clean Energy Transitions. The report “shows how putting the world on track to meet net zero emissions by 2050 requires additional investment but also reduces the operating costs of the global energy system by more than half over the next decade compared with a trajectory based on today’s policy settings”.

May 17, 2024:  An interim version of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI has reiterated that general-purpose AI can be used to advance “public interest” but can also cause harm if not used responsibly.    The report was commissioned by the UK government and chaired by Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award-winning AI academic and member of the UN’s Scientific Advisory Board. The work was overseen by an international Expert Advisory Panel made up of 30 countries including the UK and nominees from nations who were invited to the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in 2023, as well as representatives of the European Union and the United Nations.  

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https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

May 10, 2024: The UK’s AI Safety Institute has released its Inspect evaluations platform for use by the AI community worldwide. Inspect is a software library which enables testers – from startups, academia, and AI developers to international governments – to assess specific capabilities of individual models and then produce a score based on their results. Inspect can be used to evaluate models in a range of areas, including their core knowledge, ability to reason, and autonomous capabilities. 

You may also wish to visit:

https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

May 06, 2024: The Election Commission of India has, through a communication dated May 06, asked all political parties and their leaders to “refrain from using in their campaigning any technological/ AI based tools which distorts information or spreads misinformation, which resultantly lowers the standards of electioneering.” The AI-related communication comes a day prior to the 3rd phase of India’s ongoing 7-phase general elections.

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https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

April 14, 2024: Industry body CII has come up with a corporate governance charter for startups in a move aimed at strengthening the governance framework in India’s startup ecosystem where doubts have surfaced about the robustness of the governance mechanism at several new-age businesses.

R M Consulting’s analysis of this CII measure is available at:

https://rmconsulting.in/f/cii-corporate-governance-charter-for-startups-%7C-a-welcome-measure 

April 12, 2024: The UK and the Republic of Korea are forging ahead with plans for the next wave of global discussions on the safe development of Artificial Intelligence, with the AI Seoul Summit set for May 21-22. The summit will spearhead discussions on AI safety, addressing the potential capabilities of the most advanced AI models, building on the Bletchley Declaration and wider agreements which were reached at the AI Safety Summit in the UK in November 2023, which included commitments from developers on AI safety. Countries will also gather for talks on how the technology can be made more inclusive, ensuring the benefits and opportunities of AI are shared equally – and how attendees can further advance innovation.

Read the Seoul Declaration for safe, innovative and inclusive AI

You may also wish to visit:

https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

April 02, 2024: The UK and the US have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on April 1 about working together to develop tests for the most advanced AI models, following through on commitments made at the AI Safety Summit held in the UK in November 2023.

You may also wish to visit:

https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

March 27, 2024: The US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) called for independent audits of high-risk AI systems as part of a series of recommendations in the AI Accountability Policy Report released on March 27. 

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https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

March 26, 2024: In his 2024 Annual Chairman's Letter to Investors, BlackRock's Larry Fink has advocated the benefits of "energy pragmatism" saying that it is still a path to decarbonization. Going on to point out that "The energy market isn’t divided the way some people think, with a hard split between oil & gas producers on one side and new clean power and climate tech firms on the other".   

You may also wish to read:  

Larry Fink, Energy Pragmatism, & Grandstanding on Renewables

March 21, 2024: The UN General Assembly, on March 21, 2024, adopted a landmark resolution on the promotion of “safe, secure and trustworthy” AI systems. It is the first time the Assembly has adopted a resolution on regulating artificial intelligence. 

You may also wish to visit:

https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

March 15, 2024: The Union government has approved a scheme to promote India as a manufacturing destination so that e-vehicles with the latest technology can be manufactured in the country. The policy is designed to attract investments in the e-vehicle space by reputed global EV manufacturers.

March 14, 2024: That startups can play a pivotal role in India’s growth and development has never been in doubt. Industry body CII report has spelt out just how these new-age businesses can make a difference. As per its recent report titled Unicorn 2.0: Adding the next trillion , the  startup and venture economy can likely contribute $1 trillion to the Indian economy and, also, add over 50 million jobs by FY 2030.

You may also wish to read:

Unicorn sun must also rise in the East

March 10, 2024: India has signed a trade and economic partnership agreement(TEPA) with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Among the EFTA countries, Switzerland is India’s largest trading partner, followed by Norway.

March 07, 2024: In keeping with its vision of ‘Making AI in India’ and ‘Making AI work for India’, the country has approved the IndiaAI mission with a budget outlay of Rs 10,371.92 crore. The IndiaAI mission will establish a comprehensive ecosystem to promote AI innovations. 

You may also wish to visit: 

https://rmconsulting.in/ai-1

February 23, 2024: Things seems to be getting challenging by the day at edtech firm Byju’s, once the most valued Indian startup and one of the biggest poster boys of new-age entrepreneurship. As Byju Raveendran challenges the validity of the February 23, 2024 EGM held by a group of investors to oust him from the company, are we in for a long-drawn face-off between a high-profile founder and select shareholders?

You may also wish to read:

Governance coming to the fore biggest gain for startup arena

February 23, 2024: Procurement of services through Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has grown almost 176 per cent from nearly Rs 66,000 crore in FY23 to nearly Rs 1,82,000 crore in FY24 (as on February 22, 2024). February 2024 saw a huge surge in procurement of services contributing to nearly 80 percent of the total order value transacted on GeM.

February 23, 2024: Indian Institute of Management, Shillong, will have the country’s first Gati Shakti Research Chair. The Chair will spearhead high-quality academic research on multimodal logistics with a North-East focus. It will also support the “multimodal logistics research activities, capacity building and outputs to enable PM Gati Shakti Masterplan to power the East and North-East Region’s logistical capacity.”