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On Episode 605 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist and Head - Research & Outreach at ICRA, Safi Ahsan Rizvi, Advisor at National Disaster Management Authority as well as Captain Sam Thomas, President at ALPA India. SHOW NOTES(00:00) Stories of the Day(01:48) Markets plunge suddenly by over 990 points(03:30) Retail inflation drops to 6-year low of 2.82%(12:00) Air India's shocking disaster.(20:09) Heat waves return to India as monsoon stalls. A check on preparedness.https://www.investing-referral.com/aff303For more of our coverage check out thecore.inSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
Navigating ACA Changes: Expert Insights from Agent BoostWelcome to another insightful episode of the Agent Boost Podcast!
Our guest in this episode is Geoffrey Biggs, CTO of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. He updates us on the recent ROS 2 Kilted Kaiju release, the pending ROS 1 sunset and the future of OSRF. Co-host Steve Crowe returns from Georgia with an update on the 2025 ICRA event. He discusses the event and all of the various robot demos at the event. ICRA is primarily a research-focused robotics event, and it offers attendees the opportunity to see the latest research projects from labs around the world. ### Our sponsor this week is SDPSI. Let's dive into the critical role of precision, quality, and alignment in robotics design and assembly. At SDP/SI, our engineering experts go beyond the standard manufacturing process by reviewing your designs before production, offering cost-effective, space-saving solutions that streamline your entire assembly process. Discover how we help robotics companies achieve unprecedented accuracy and efficiency. Don't miss this opportunity to learn how SDP/SI can elevate your robotics applications. Discover the difference! Visit https://sdp-si.com/ to learn more.
In this episode, Chris Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Thatch, joins Scott Becker to discuss how his team is transforming health benefits through ICRA (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements). He shares how a personal challenge with health insurance sparked the idea, how Thatch simplifies ICRA using fintech innovation, and why the shift from group plans to defined contributions is gaining traction.
On Episode 558 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Pawan Kumar, President of Seafood Exporters Association of India as well as Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist, Head - Research & Outreach at ICRA.SHOW NOTES(00:00) Stories of the Day(01:00) India beats tariff tantrums, becoming first global market to do so(03:59) Morgan Stanley cuts December Sensex target to 82,000, still 7% above current(07:38) Inflation is down to 5 year low, will it hold?(16:33) The International Energy Agency joins OPEC in slashing oil demand forecasts(18:19) How tariff tussles are have upended the lives of India's shrimp and seafood exporters(32:18) Build On BlockchainListeners! We await your feedback....The Core and The Core Report is ad supported and FREE for all readers and listeners. Write in to shiva@thecore.in for sponsorships and brand studio requirementsFor more of our coverage check out thecore.inJoin and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
In this episode of the Current Account podcast, businessline's Piyush Shukla is joined by Anil Gupta, SVP & Co-Group Head - Financial Sector Ratings, ICRA. The conversation delves deep into the latest decisions made by the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and their implications on the Indian economy, with a focus on lending, deposit rates, and gold loans. Gupta provides insightful analysis on the recent 25 basis point rate cut by the MPC. He discusses the expected impact of these cuts on retail and corporate borrowers, particularly the transmission to loan and deposit rates. The episode also explores the RBI's recent regulatory changes concerning gold loans, particularly the 75% Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio and new operational guidelines. Gupta shares his thoughts on how these adjustments bring more clarity and uniformity to the gold loan industry, despite initial concerns about the impact on Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs). He explains how the revised LTV calculation, which includes accumulated interest, aims to mitigate risks and create a level playing field for all players in the sector. Additionally, the discussion touches on the expanded scope for co-lending between banks and NBFCs, including non-Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) loans. This could potentially improve the distribution of credit and lead to better collaboration between banks and NBFCs, especially benefiting smaller NBFCs with strong distribution networks but limited balance sheet capacity.
El càncer de mama no és rosa. Crítica teatral de l'obra «Dones de ràdio», de Cristina Clemente. Intèrprets: Sara Diego, Sara Espígul i Àngels Gonyalons. Veus en off: Jordi Boixaderas, Anna Carreño, Marta Codina, Laura Fité, Yolanda Fuster, Andrés Herrera, Gemma Martínez, Montse Rodríguez, Núria Sanmartí. Escenografia: Max Glaenzel. Construcció escenografia: Taller d’Escenografia Castells. Vestuari i caracterització: Núria Llunell. Il·luminació: Kiko Planas. Espai sonor: Jordi Bonet i Efrén Bellostes. Direcció de producció: Josep Domènech. Cap de producció: Blanca Arderiu. Producció executiva: Macarena Garcia. Coordinació tècnica: AP7 Projectes Tècnics. Regidoria: Montse Alacuart. Tècnica de llums: Cristina Rodríguez. Tècnic de so: Efrén Bellostes. Maquinària: Carles Hernández ‘Xarli’. Cap tècnica del teatre: Marta Pérez. Màrqueting i comunicació de la companyia: Bitò Màrqueting. Comunicació del teatre: La Villarroel. Agraïments: Yolanda Fuster Martínez, Aïda Cerdanya Segura, Loli Guart Caparrós, Mireia Ros Lara, Rosa Romero García, Sílvia Loque Delgado, Íngrid Icra i Salicrú, Patrícia Moya Martín i Laura Iglesias Trafach. Amb el suport de: Generalitat de Catalunya – ICEC Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals. Distribució i producció: Bitò. Ajudant de direcció: Roc Esquius. Direcció: Sergi Belbel. La Villarroel, Barcelona, 26 març 2025. Veu: Andreu Sotorra. Música: Dreaming (Radio Edit). Interpretació: Good Vibes. Composició: Steve Lorber. Àlbum: Música relaxant, 2025.
On Episode 517 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Kinjal Shah, Senior Vice President & Co-Group Head, Corporate Ratings, ICRA. We also feature an excerpt from our interview with C Vijayakumar, CEO at HCL Tech from yesterday's Nasscom Technology Leadership Forum in Mumbai.SHOW NOTES(00:00) Stories of the Day(01:19) Markets hammered once again even as institutional brokerage buy calls rise(05:13) We need to transition from an input centric model to an outcome centric model, HCL Tech CEO C Vijayakumar to The Core(11:06) Indian IT to grow faster this year, expand workforce(12:30) Rating agency ICRA projects improved revenues on rural revival and increased Govt spend(20:47) Apple to hire 20,000 workers in US in definite hit to global sourcingListeners! We await your feedback....The Core and The Core Report is ad supported and FREE for all readers and listeners. Write in to shiva@thecore.in for sponsorships and brand studio requirementsFor more of our coverage check out thecore.inJoin and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
On Episode 507 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist at rating agency ICRA. We also feature an excerpt from our interview with Akshay Kumar Singh, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Petronet LNG Ltd (PLL).SHOW NOTES(00:00) Stories of the Day(00:50)The bulls and bears fight it out once again as markets slip for the 6th day(06:30)Consumer price inflation is down to a five month low, will another round of rate cuts come?(14:43)India is gearing up for a major gas sourcing and distribution push(27:19)The new tax bill is almost here and early reactions suggest more was expectedRegister for India Energy Week, Feb 11-14Listeners! We await your feedback....The Core and The Core Report is ad supported and FREE for all readers and listeners. Write in to shiva@thecore.in for sponsorships and brand studio requirementsFor more of our coverage check out thecore.inJoin and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
On Episode 438 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA as well as Peeyush Dalmia, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Take (04:21) Markets wait for election cues in the absence of others (07:55) Rating agency ICRA projects lower growth for 2024-25 (16:52) Is a global crude oil glut coming? (19:54) India needs insurance but Indians are not buying as much Listeners! We await your feedback.... The Core and The Core Report is ad supported and FREE for all readers and listeners. Write in to shiva@thecore.in for sponsorships and brand studio requirements For more of our coverage check out thecore.in Join and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channel Subscribe to our Newsletter Follow us on: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
Unlock the power of Individual Contribution Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICRA) and revolutionize your approach to employee benefits! Join us as Ashley McQuade from Venture shares her expertise on how ICRA can transform the way small businesses manage health benefits, offering flexibility and personalization like never before.
This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Niharika NandaToday is the 8th of October and here are the headlines.In the Haryana Assembly elections, the BJP exceeded expectations, leading in over 46 seats and securing a third consecutive term. This success can be attributed to key strategies including consolidating non-Jat votes by naming Nayab Singh Saini as CM candidate, replacing 60 candidates to counter anti-incumbency, and highlighting development and Direct Benefit Transfers in campaigns. In response to the results, the Congress made an unprecedented move by refusing to accept the election results, alleging a “conspiracy” involving the manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines. This marks the first time a major party has rejected an electoral outcome citing EVM tampering. Meanwhile, The National Conference and Congress alliance is poised to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir after the first Assembly election in a decade for the Union Territory. National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah won decisively in both Budgam and Ganderbal constituencies. Following Omar's victory in Budgam, his father and NC Chief Farooq Abdullah stated that he will become the CM. The BJP on the other hand, achieved its highest-ever vote share in J&K assembly polls, winning a total of 29 seats.Moving on from the assembly polls, India's domestic aviation market continues to strengthen, recording an 8.1% year-on-year increase in September with 1.32 crore passengers, according to ICRA, which maintains a stable outlook for the sector. Passenger numbers were also 15.2% higher than pre-pandemic levels in September 2019. As the world's third-largest and fastest-growing aviation market, India's aviation sector has staged a rapid recovery from the severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.An eight-year-old boy was run over by a speeding BMC garbage dumper on Tuesday morning. The Shivaji Nagar police have registered an FIR against the driver, who has since been arrested. Local residents have raised concerns about the dangers posed by speeding dumper drivers near the dump yard and have called for speed breakers on the road. According to a Shivaji Nagar police officer, the incident occurred around 10:30 a.m. in the Zakir Hussain Nagar area.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express
ICRA கொடுத்த அதிரடி REPORT STEEL, METAL பங்கு விலை எகிறுமா? | இந்த நாலு SECTOR-களை கவனிங்க மக்களே!
On Episode 372 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA as well as Jawahar Bekay, managing partner at CaptiveAide Advisory.SHOW NOTES(00:00) The Take: Why India should now think China plus 2(03:33) Markets catch Fed fever, ride on interest rate cut hopes(04:58) Oil prices rise once again on war tensions(06:00) Economists are polling lower GDP numbers for the first quarter, why there is uncertainty here on(14:33) WIll GCCs eat Indian IT Services companies' lunch?Listeners! We await your feedback....The Core and The Core Report is ad supported and FREE for all readers and listeners. Write in to shiva@thecore.in for sponsorships and brand studio requirements.For more of our coverage check out thecore.inJoin and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
On Episode 362 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA as well as Shiv Putcha, founder & principal analyst at Mandala Insights.SHOW NOTES(00:00) The Take(05:29) Markets withstand Hindenburg, Adani stocks don't(07:29) Inflation is down to 3.5%, why you shouldn't celebrate yet(14:13) Bharti buys a 25% stake in iconic UK brand, British TelecomRegister for The Core Meet Up!!Listeners! We await your feedback....For sponsorships and brand studio engagements, contact shiva@thecore.inFor more of our coverage check out thecore.inJoin and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
On Episode 342 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Vinay Kumar G, vice president and sector head – Corporate Ratings at ICRA.SHOW NOTES(00:00) The Take(04:00) Stories Of The Day(04:41) Sensex Crosses 81,000, markets at record highs for fourth day, bucking global trends(06:25) Infosys beats street estimates(08:45) Rice inventories are at record highs and the Government could open up exports(09:47) Is Indian aviation infrastructure ready for the big demand growth?(18:03) Are the days of revenge travel ending?Listeners! We await your feedback....To collaborate with our Core Brand Studio contact shiva@thecore.inFor more of our coverage check out thecore.in--Support the Core Report--Join and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
On Episode 320 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Paras Jasrai, senior analyst at India Ratings & Research (A Fitch Group Company), Prashant Vasisht, Senior Vice President and Co-Group Head, Corporate Ratings, ICRA as well as G Haribabu, president of the National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO).SHOW NOTES(00:00) The Take(02:21) Stories Of The Day(03:05) Stock markets stay near highs, why the action is shifting to debt flows(06:28) Heatwaves are on, understanding the impact on inflation(11:13) India's dream run with discounted Russian oil is ending and what that means(18:00) Why tenants across India are refusing to let out some 10 million homes, leading to supply distortionsListeners! We await your feedback....For more of our coverage check out thecore.in--Support the Core Report--Join and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
On Episode 303 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, chief economist of rating agency ICRA as well as Ashok Sreenivas, group coordinator at the Prayas (Energy Group).SHOW NOTES(00:00) Stories Of The Day(00:50) Markets swing again with 5 trading sessions to go for election results(01:54) How Japan & India are both China + 1 investment destinations(03:18) India's economy slowed down in the last quarter, what does it mean for the next?(11:23) India's power demand is surging and usage patterns are shifting, is there enough supply?(19:09) Crime pays but cybercrime pays moreFor more of our coverage check out thecore.in--Support the Core Report--Join and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) proposed changes for project financing could significantly alter how infrastructure and real estate projects are funded. The central bank has suggested increasing the provisioning for all project-backed loans to enhance accountability and project viability. A recent government survey of 1,873 projects revealed substantial delays and cost overruns, highlighting the need for stricter regulations. Yet, the new guidelines have sparked debate among banks and companies, who argue that higher provisions could impact profitability and increase capital costs. With stakeholders invited to comment until June 15, host Anirban Chowdhury delves into whether these norms will ultimately benefit or hinder the sector. Tune in to The Morning Brief podcast for an in-depth analysis from Anil Gupta, head of financial sector ratings at ICRA, Shravan Sampath, a renewable energy sector professional, and ET's Sangita Mehta.Check out the other interesting episodes like Polls On My Pod: Saturation States of Rajasthan & MP, Polls On My Pod: Muted Manipur & The Tamil Nadu Triangle, Arvind Kejriwal's Arrest: An Opposition Shaken or Stirred?, Alliance Arithmetic: Decoding the Political Jigsaw of Lok Sabha Elections 2024, and more!You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and LinkedinCatch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief' on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Claire chatted to Margarita Chli from the University of Cyprus all about vision, navigation, and small aerial drones. Margarita Chli is a professor of Robotic Vision and the director of the Vision for Robotics Lab, at the University of Cyprus and ETH Zurich. Her work has contributed to the first vision-based autonomous flight of a small drone and the first demonstration of collaborative monocular SLAM for a small swarm of drones. Margarita has given invited keynotes at the World Economic Forum in Davos, TEDx, and ICRA, and she was featured in Robohub's 2016 list of "25 women in Robotics you need to know about". In 2023, she won the ERC Consolidator Grant to research advanced robotic perception. Join the live audience! Robot Talk will be returning for another live episode recording this June, as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival in London. 'Humans 2.0: Robotically Augmented People' will be held at the V&A Museum at 1.30pm on Sunday 16th June. Register for a free ticket now: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/humans-20-robotically-augmented-people-tickets-879494560907 Win a Robot Talk T-shirt For a chance to win your very own organic cotton Robot Talk t-shirt, all you have to do is: Sign up to our newsletter Share our competition post on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads or Mastodon You can enter across multiple platforms. One lucky winner will be randomly selected each month! Find out more: https://www.robottalk.org/t-shirt-competition/.
Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Friday, March 22, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started:Indian benchmark indices surged on Thursday, riding the wave of optimism from global markets. This uptick came after the Federal Reserve maintained its outlook for three rate cuts within the year, sparking a rally. Both Nifty and Sensex rose more than 0.75 per cent by the end of the day's trading on Thursday. Money x Power = ? Have you ever heard of a plutocracy? It's a scenario where the wealthiest individuals not only hold the purse strings but also the reins of governance, turning financial might into political power. A similar trend is unfolding in India. As per the World Inequality Lab's latest study, income and wealth inequality are breaking records, even outpacing countries like China and Brazil. The elite one percent in India aren't just wealthy; they're earning 23 times more than the average Indian. If left unchecked, this imbalance could lead to India's future being shaped by a plutocracy.Mint's national writer Sayantan Bera takes a closer look at this pressing issue in today's Mint Primer.Ola Electric, steered by Bhavish Aggarwal, is on the brink of a significant move in India's electric vehicle landscape with its initial public offering drawing near. The electric scooter-maker known for its S1 series is drawing investor interest. People close to the matter told Mint's autocorrespondent Alisha Sachdev that Singapore's Eastspring and UK-based Pictet are lining up as anchor investors, signalling favourable market sentiment. Dominating over 40 per cent of India's electric two-wheeler market, Ola Electric's battery division, Ola Cell Technologies, is set to boost efficiency and profitability. Ola's ambitions are clear: expanding its cell factory capacity and venturing into advanced battery technologies, including bidding for lithium resources.The Indian Premier League, Indian cricket's biggest spectacle, begins today, kicking off a summer of high octane action in the game's shortest format. Cricket fans are excited, but the advertising scene this year tells a different story. Star Sports and Jio, the custodians of broadcast and digital rights, have seen ad rates stagnate. Major sectors like automotive, e-commerce, telecom, and fintech are yet to jump into the advertising fray. Mint's assistant editor Varuni Khosla reports on the mood of the advertisers around this year's biggest television event. Varuni also spoke to advertising experts who noted a peculiar reluctance towards the IPL among clients this season, pointing to a broader market slowdown rather than the tournament's appeal. Seems like restaurants are in a bit of a soup. The stock market isn't serving up good news for restaurants lately. Case in point: Devyani International Limited, the company operating your local KFC and Pizza Hut outlets. Over the past year, Devyani's shares climbed just 10 per cent, a stark contrast to the Nifty Midcap index's 57 per cent surge, indicating rough weather for the sector. And it's not just Devyani feeling the heat. Westlife Foodworld, which runs McDonald's in India, also saw its stock rise by merely 10 per cent over the same period. So what's behind this industry-wide slump? Mint's national editor Abhishek Mukherjee dug into the issue. Abhishek spoke to Siddhanth Chhabaria of Mirae Assets who blamed the downturn on dwindling demand and a broader consumption slowdown.Right before Russia made its move on Ukraine in February 2022, their hackers unleashed malware on Ukrainian military comms by targeting routers connected to Viasat, a major American satellite and internet provider. Things got tense and Ukrainian leaders called out for help. Elon Musk, who owns Starlink responded and Ukraine got its internet back. Fast forward two years, and Starlink has become a lifeline, keeping Ukraine's military and civilians connected through the chaos. This satellite internet service, brought to life by SpaceX, is changing the game with thousands of satellites zooming around in low Earth orbit. Meanwhile, back in India, there's a scramble to catch up. The Indian government tweaked some rules to make it easier for satellite broadband services to set up shop without the usual auction requirements. This is a big deal for companies like Bharti Group's OneWeb, Reliance's Jio Satellite Communications, Musk's Starlink, and Amazon's Kuiper, paving the way for them to offer their services across India's vast and varied landscape. Mint's telecom correspondent Gulveen Aulakh takes a deep dive into the emerging industry of satellite communications or SatCom in India. A subset of India's 8.5 billion dollar space economy, the satcom industry is set to close in on 2 billion dollars by 2030. According to ratings agency Icra, by 2025, India's satcom industry could be serving up to 2 million users and raking in revenue between 5,000 to 6,000 crore rupees a year. We'd love to hear your feedback on this podcast. Let us know by writing to us at feedback@livemint.com. You may send us feedback, tips or anything that you feel we should be covering from your vantage point in the world of business and finance.That's all for today. Thank you for listening.We'll be back on Monday with a fresh episode of Top of the Morning. Have a wonderful weekend!Show notes:Mint Primer | Mind the income gap: Is India becoming a plutocracy?Ola Electric holds a battery secret on road to IPOCricket spirits soar, but IPL's ad rates are flatRestaurants in the soup as weak consumer sentiment bitesLeos, Meos and Geos: Broadband from the stars is coming soon
A M Karthik, Senior Vice President & Co-Group Head, Financial Sector Ratings, ICRA, joins in, to decode the implication of several restrictions imposed on NBFCs in the recent months.
Small investors are savvier; look what they did with small-cap stocks International airlines vie for the Indian globetrotterTata Motors business divisions come to a fork in the roadShould Nvidia employees with stock options sell or stay put?Ask me anything: Inside the race to build desi GPTsWelcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Tuesday, March 5, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started:Concluding the day marked by range-bound trading, Indian benchmark indices ended Monday with marginal gains. The Nifty 50 reached a new all-time high of 22,440 in early trading but subsequently pared some of those gains. At the end of the session, Nifty was up 0.12 per cent while Sensex closed marginally up by 0.09 per cent. Retail investors are getting smarter day by day. With a rally in small and midcap stocks over the last three quarters of 2024, these investors who trade directly on the exchanges, had a gala time. Companies such as BSE, Birlasoft, Zensar Tech, Sonata Software, and RBL Bank saw their stock prices jump anywhere between 23 per cent to 415 per cent in the nine months through December. At the same time, retail investors cut their stake in these companies by 4 to 11 per cent. This means, these investors who typically invest only up to 2 lakh rupees, are getting in at low points and selling at mega profits. Mint's market correspondents Ram Sahgal and Mayur Bhalerao examine how retail players are riding the small cap wave.Global airlines are looking at India with hopeful eyes. After witnessing a surge in the domestic market last year, airlines are upbeat on foreign fliers from India. The upcoming summer season is adding to the momentum. International carriers like Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, and Etihad, among others, are expecting a significant increase in demand from India. They are adjusting their networks to accommodate this anticipated growth. According to the ratings agency ICRA, international passenger traffic for domestic airlines is projected to exceed the peak levels recorded in the fiscal year 2024. January 2024 itself saw 6.52 million passengers flying abroad, 17 per cent more than last January. Data from online travel portal ixigo attests to the growing number of outbound flights from India, reports Anu Sharma, Mint's aviation correspondent. Ixigo saw a 2.5 times increase in searches for international travel in April and May this year, compared to 2023. Most popular destination in these searches you wonder? These are countries that have recently made travel for Indians visa free such as Kenya, Thailand, and Malaysia.One of India's automobile behemoths is going to see a massive change in its corporate structuring. Tata Motors is going ahead with a demerger into two separate publicly traded companies. The company's board greenlit the demerger proposal on Monday. This division will segregate the Commercial Vehicles business and its related investments from the Passenger Vehicles sector, which includes passenger vehicle, EV, and Jaguar Land Rover verticals. So if you are a shareholder in Tata Motors, how will this affect you? All shareholders of the company will retain stock worth the same value in both companies following the demerger. The demerger is a logical next step after the previous split of the passenger and electric vehicle segments in 2022. The decision is expected to boost the independence of each business unit, which will also allow them to implement strategies more efficiently.Software company Nvidia has had a stellar run on the US stock market. Since the start of the year, its share price has gained more than 70 percent. Since last year, it has surged by a whopping 240 percent. The reason? Its dominance over supply over hardware and software needed to make artificial intelligence a reality. Such a performance in the markets has created many millionaires among its staff who hold employee stock options. Mint Money's Shipra Singh speaks to some Nvidia employees from India and talks to them about their newfound wealth — and how they plan to use it. Moreover, since these are US stocks, some might be tempted to not disclose them to the taxman. Shipra writes that this isn't advisable, as it opens them up to scrutiny under the Black Money Act.LLMs or large language models are the generators behind most of the AI chatbots floating around. LLMs excel in understanding and generating human-like text in the language that they are trained in. But How do you design an LLM for a country like ours, with hundreds of languages being spoken? This is where Indian GPTs come into the picture. While OpenAI's ChatGPT is largely trained on English, companies developing Indian language LLMs face the daunting challenge of training their systems in languages that are not extensively digitised. Indian companies have already started the uphill task of making accessible AI chatbots for all. Take ‘Ask Disha' for example - IRCTC's chatbot aimed at helping passengers. Chennai Police has a similar project — ‘AI Police', a virtual assistant. These chatbots work on an LLM called BharatGPT, which is designed by Bengaluru's AI startup CoRover. Mint's executive editor Leslie D'monte takes a deep dive into the emerging world of Indian LLMs. He also writes about the mammoth task that Indian companies face - creating an AI, accessible to all Indians. We'd love to hear your feedback on this podcast. Let us know by writing to us at feedback@livemint.com. You may send us feedback, tips or anything that you feel we should be covering from your vantage point in the world of business and finance.
Алексей Павлов - предприниматель в сфере маркетинговых технологий, основал и руководит компанией ADLUXE, кандидат экономических наук, преподаватель, куратор в группе компаний креативного мышления ИКРА. Интересуется образовательными технологиями и смешением подходов в маркетинге и обучение людей: от детей до сотрудников компаний. Alexey Pavlov is an entrepreneur in the field of marketing technologies, founded and runs the ADLUXE company, candidate of economic sciences, teacher, curator at the ICRA group of creative thinking companies. He is interested in educational technologies and mixing approaches in marketing and training people: from children to company employees. FIND ALEXEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook ================================SUPPORT & CONNECT:Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/denofrichTwitter: https://twitter.com/denofrichFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.develman/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/denofrichInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/den_of_rich/Hashtag: #denofrich© Copyright 2024 Den of Rich. All rights reserved.
In today's episode, special guests Tom Bender and Michael Jenkins join us to discuss the history and purpose of Construction ICRA (Infection Control Risk Assessment). This episode discusses: Importance of compliance and effects of noncomplianceHistory of training developmentThe changing ICRA landscapeIndividual responsibility and commitment to patient safety for allMoving forward and next steps to ensure ICRA awareness Tom Bender is Education Outreach Director at Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters (EASRCC). Michael Jenkins is Senior Representative/ICRA Lead at EASRCC – West Virginia District. Watch RecordingDownload TranscriptDownload Presentation Slides Check out our other interviews by visiting https://www.qualityinsights.org/qin/multimedia This material was prepared by Quality Insights, a Quality Innovation Network - Quality Improvement Organization under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Views expressed in this material do not necessarily reflect the official views or policy of CMS or HHS, and any reference to a specific product or entity herein does not constitute endorsement of that product or entity by CMS or HHS. Publication number 12SOW-QI-GEN-012524-CC-A
On today's episode, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, economist at ratings agency ICRA. We also feature an excerpt from the recent Energy Special interview with Dr Ranjit Rath, Chairman and Managing Director of Oil India Limited, India's oldest and more than a century old oil company.SHOW NOTES(00:00) Stories Of The Day(01:00) Stock markets make peace with IT stocks, MS overtakes Apple.(03:55) Are the Government's efforts to rein in inflation working?(11:16) Mapping India's oil prospects, onshore and offshore.(18:24) How Bangladesh footwear exports are growing rapidly, as it exploits synergy with garment making.(21:39) NRIs are buying more than 20% of new real estate, driving up prices on the premium end.(23:32) Canada may cap international students arrivals.For more of our coverage check out thecore.in--Support the Core Report--Head to www.indiaenergyweek.comJoin and Interact anonymously on our whatsapp channelSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube
Health insurance and open enrollment are demystified by industry experts Erica Dumpel and John Czajkowski. Listeners will gain valuable insights and advice on topics like Medicare enrollment, the impact of politics on health insurance, the rise of state-based exchanges, the financial benefits of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), considerations for different age groups, and employer-based insurance. This comprehensive discussion equips individuals with the knowledge they need to navigate the complexities of health insurance, ensuring they make informed decisions to protect their well-being. Resources:Website: CDAInc.netPhone Number: 770-449-7369Erica's Email: Erica@cdainc.netJohn's Email: John@cdainc.netTimestamp: 0:00:00 - Introduction0:01:18 - Erica's experience and background in the health insurance industry0:02:09 - John Czajkowski and his role in the family-owned insurance brokerage0:03:51 - Medicare and the open enrollment period0:06:57 - Seeking assistance for Medicare enrollment0:08:03 - Explanation of Medicare coverage in relation to employer-based insurance for individuals close to retirement0:08:47 - The complexities of health insurance and options for different age groups0:17:07 - Health insurance plans and considerations for families.0:21:30 - Discussion about HSA and its uses 0:26:02 - Self-employed individuals and their health insurance options.0:29:17 - Medicare and its impact on dependents.0:31:20 - Options for college students and their health insurance.0:32:07 - A strategic approach to health insurance.0:36:12 - Compliance for employers and the ICRA alternative.0:38:48 - Closing
On today's episode, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist at rating agency ICRA as well as Vivek Rathi, Director of Research at Knight Frank. SHOW NOTES[01:00] India's first quarter GDP is at 7.8%, below most forecasts.[08:49] An investigative journalism report points more fingers at Adani shareholding.[14:21] Mumbai sees record property sales in August, as prices set to rise further[21:46] Why is Indian IT sounding despondent while global banks are stepping up spending. An excerpt of The Core Report Weekend EditionFor more of our coverage check out thecore.inSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube | Telegram
On today's episode, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Sugandh Saxena, CEO of the Fintech Association of Consumer Empowerment as well as Hormazd Sorabjee, Editor of Autocar India.SHOW NOTES[00:56] Jio Financial stock gets hammered gain, hits a lower circuit on the bourses again[04:13] Rating agency ICRA and State Bank of India put out GDP projections for the April to June quarter. ICRA says 8.5%.[06:43] India's Digital Lending Industry Grows 49% but 86% of all borrowers are male with Sugandh Saxena[15:56] What Is the Future For Petrol Sipping Two-wheelers with Hormazd Sorabjee[21:51] Visiting New York? AirBnB may not be an option as New York cracks down on short term rentals and listings start disappearing.For more of our coverage check out thecore.inSubscribe to our NewsletterFollow us on:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Linkedin | Youtube | Telegram
A conversation with Teresa Krasny, Director and Editor of the forthcoming Degas Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Works on Paper, as well as Chair of the International Catalogue Raisonné Association. Teresa provides a wonderful overview of the catalogue raisonné process, while also sharing the challenges faced by researchers that are compiling the official record of an artist's work. In addition, she provides practical advice for living artists beginning the process in their own lifetime.https://degascatalogueraisonne.com/https://icra.art/
Live from the venue of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), we are talking with Ben Dart about the trends in robotics. In this podcast, Ben and Roland discuss the latest robotics technology as showcased at ICRA, and discuss where this technology is on the hype cycle. They also discuss how to get started with robotics yourself. Read a transcript of this interview: bit.ly/3XGQAMh Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter [monthly]: www.infoq.com/software-architect…mpaign=architectnl Upcoming Events: QCon San Francisco: qconsf.com/?utm_source=soundcl…&utm_campaign=qsf23 Oct 2-6, 2023 Follow InfoQ: - Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@infoq - Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq - Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 - Instagram: @infoqdotcom - Youtube: www.youtube.com/infoq Write for InfoQ - Join a community of experts. - Increase your visibility. - Grow your career. www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq/?u…aign=writeforinfoq
This week we welcome Norris Gearhart EVP of Regulatory and Business Practices at First Onsite Property Restoration for a show on Infection Control Risk Assessment, Disinfection and Diversification Opportunities for Restoration Contractors. LEARN MORE at IAQRadio+. Norris Gearhart is the Executive Vice President of Regulatory Business Practices for First Onsite Property Restoration. Norris has a long career as a solutions-focused leader, coach, and educator. He began his career in the restoration industry in 1985. He has had responsibilities in both the restoration and insurance realm over the span of nearly four decades. During this time, Norris owned or has been part owner of two successful full-service restoration companies building multi-million-dollar books of business. He brings considerable skills and expertise to the table, including being an OSHA outreach trainer for Construction and General industry, loss site inspections, estimating, project management, and as an instructor for the RIA Certified Restorer (CR), Fire Loss Specialist (FLS), and Environmental Risk Specialist (ERS) courses. He is currently serving as a voting member of the IICRC standards committee with the development of the S410 Infection Control Cleaning Standard. As the CEO of Gearhart and Associates, he created and delivered training and consulting services to equip Infection control practitioners, facilities managers, general contractors, disaster response contractors and sub trades with real-world practical knowledge to safely perform work in high-risk environments. Norris was the COO of TOMI Environmental Solutions, where he implemented and administered policies and procedures and was instrumental in obtaining the EPA registration for SteraMist as a Hospital Disinfectant. Subsequently, he was chosen as a member of the US Aid and World Health Organization team challenged with customizing a disinfection chamber for the Ebola outbreak in Africa. He also responded to global projects including outbreaks of Mears Coronavirus in Saudi Arabia. In 1995 he established a Restorx franchise for Johns & amp; Lyng Pty Ltd in Melbourne, Australia, now the largest publicly traded restoration group in Australia. While there he taught the Association of Specialist in Cleaning and Restoration (ASCR) now the Restoration Industry Association (RIA), Certified Restoration Technician course multiple times. This was the first time there were CRT's trained and certified outside of North America.
Dr. Aadeel Akhtar is the Founder and CEO of PSYONIC, a company whose mission is to develop advanced prostheses that are affordable for everyone. Victoria talks to Dr. Akhtar about the gaps in the market he you saw in current prosthetic ability, advancements PSYONIC has been able to make since commercializing, and essential principles and values when you were building out the team. PSYONIC (https://www.psyonic.io/) Follow PSYONIC on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/psyonicinc/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/PSYONICinc). Follow Dr. Aadeel Akhtar on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aadeelakhtar/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host Victoria Guido. And with me today is Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, Founder and CEO of PSYONIC, a company whose mission is to develop advanced prostheses that are affordable for everyone. Aadeel, thank you for joining me. DR. AADEEL: Thank you for having me, Victoria. This is fun. VICTORIA: Yes, I'm excited to meet you. So I actually ran into you earlier this week at a San Diego tech meetup. And I'm curious just to hear more about your company PSYONIC. DR. AADEEL: So, as you mentioned, we develop advanced bionic limbs that are affordable and accessible. And this is actually something I've wanted to do my whole life ever since I was seven years old. My parents are from Pakistan. I was born in the Chicago suburbs. But I was visiting, and that was the first time I met someone missing a limb; and she was my age missing her right leg, using a tree branch as a crutch, living in poverty. And that's kind of what inspired me to go into this field. VICTORIA: Wonderful. And maybe you can start with what gaps in the market did you see in current prosthetic ability? DR. AADEEL: When we first started making these prosthetic devices, we were 3D printing them. And we thought that the biggest issue with prosthetic devices was that they were way too expensive and saw that with 3D printing, we'd be able to reduce the prices on them. And that's true; it was actually one of the biggest issues, but it wasn't the biggest issue. After talking with hundreds of patients and clinicians, the number one thing that we found that patients and clinicians would raise issue with was that their super expensive bionic hands were breaking all the time. And these were made with injection molded plastics and custom-machined steel. And they weren't doing anything crazy with it. They would accidentally hit the hand against the side of a table, but because they were made out of rigid components, they would end up snapping up those joints. And a natural hand, for example, if you bang a natural hand against a table or a rigid object, then it flexes out of the way. It has compliance in it, and that's why it's able to survive those types of hits and impacts a little bit more. It forced us to think outside the box of how can we still leverage the low-cost manufacturing of 3D printing but make this hand more robust than anything out there? And that's when I started looking into soft robotics. And with soft robotics, instead of making rigid links in your robot, so instead of having rigid joints and components, you'd use soft materials like silicone that are more akin to your skin and your own biological tissues that are more flexible and compliant. So we started making the fingers out of rubber and silicone. And now we've been able to do things like punch through flaming boards, and I dropped it from the roof of my house 30 feet up in the air, and it survived. We put it in a dryer for 10 minutes, and it survived tumbling around in a dryer. I've arm wrestled against the para-triathlete national champion and lost. So this thing was built to survive a lot more than just hitting your hand against the side of a table. VICTORIA: Wow, that sounds incredible. And I love that you started with a premise, and then you got feedback from your users and found a completely different problem, even though that same problem still existed [laughs] about the low cost. DR. AADEEL: Absolutely. VICTORIA: Wow. So taking it back a little bit more to the beginning, so you knew you always wanted to do prosthetics since you grew up in Pakistan and saw people without their limbs. Take me a little bit more from the beginning of the journey. When did you decide to start the company officially? DR. AADEEL: And just to clarify, I was just visiting Pakistan for the summer, but I grew up and was raised here in the U.S. So I went to Loyola University Chicago for undergrad, and I got a bachelor's degree in biology there, followed by a master's in computer science. And the original plan was to actually become an MD working with patients with amputations and developing prosthetics for them. But while I was an undergraduate student at Loyola, I took my first computer science class, and I absolutely loved it. I loved everything about coding, and programming, and engineering. And I realized that if I became a straight-up MD, I wouldn't get to do any of the cool things that I was learning in my computer science classes. And I wanted to figure out a way to combine my passions in engineering and computer science with clinical medicine and prosthetics. And right down the street at a hospital formerly known as The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago...it's now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. It's the number-one rehabilitation hospital in the U.S. for the last 31 years. They made these huge breakthroughs in mind control bionic limbs where they were doing a surgery where they would reroute your nerves to other muscles that you already have on your body. And then, when you try to imagine bending your phantom elbow or making a phantom fist, your chest muscles would contract. And then you could use those signals to then control this robotic limb that was designed by Dean Kamen that was sponsored by DARPA and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was just absolutely incredible. And it was this perfect mixture of engineering and clinical medicine, and it was exactly what I wanted to get into. But, as you'd mentioned, we're all about accessibility, and a $100,000 cost hand would not cut it. And so I ended up finishing a master's in computer science. I taught at Loyola for a couple of years and then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I got another master's in electrical and computer engineering, a Ph.D. in neuroscience. And then I finished the first year of medical school before I left to run PSYONIC because it is a lot more fun building bionic limbs [laughs] than finishing medical school. And while I was a graduate student, we started 3D printing our own prosthetic hands, and we got the chance in 2014 to go down to Quito, Ecuador, where we were working with a nonprofit organization called The Range of Motion Project. And their whole mission is to provide prosthetics to those who can't afford them in the U.S., Guatemala, and Ecuador. And we went down there, and we were working with a patient who had lost his left hand 35 years prior due to machine gunfire from a helicopter; he was in the Ecuadorian Army. And there was a border war between Ecuador and Peru. And Juan, our patient, in front of international news stations, said that he felt as though a part of him had come back. And that was because he actually made a pinch with his left hand for the first time in 35 years. And you have to imagine the hand at that time was three times the size of an average natural hand, adult human hand. Had wires going everywhere, breadboards, power supplies, the walls, you name it. And despite that, he said that a part of him had come back. And he actually forgot how to make a pinch with his left hand, and we had to retrain his brain by placing a mirror in front of his left side reflecting his right hand, tricking his brain into thinking that his left hand was actually there. And he would make a pinch with both sides, and it would reactivate the muscles in his forearm on his left side. And when he said that, that's when I realized that if I stay in academia, then this just ends up as a journal paper. And if we want everyone to feel the same way that Juan did, we had to commercialize the technology. And so that's when PSYONIC was born. VICTORIA: I love that you're working on that as someone who's from Washington, D.C., and has done a lot of work in veterans and homeless organizations and seen how life-changing getting access to limbs and regaining capability can be for people. DR. AADEEL: Absolutely. In fact, our first user in the U.S. is a U.S. Army sergeant who lost his hand in Iraq in 2005 due to roadside bombs, Sergeant Garrett Anderson. He used a hook on a daily basis, and with our hand, he's actually able to feel his daughter's hand, which is something that he wasn't able to do with any other prosthesis. And for him to tell us that that is why we do what we do. VICTORIA: Right. And I saw on your website that you have several patents and have talked about the advances you've been able to make in what I'm going to call the sensorimotor bionic limbs. Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the advancements you've been able to make since you decided to commercialize this? DR. AADEEL: The first thing that usually users notice is that, and clinicians notice as well, is that the hand is the fastest bionic hand in the world. So the fingers close in about 200 milliseconds. And to put that into context, we can wink our eyes in about 300 milliseconds. So it's technically faster than the blink of an eye, which is kind of a cool statistic there. So it's super fast. And the fingers are super resistant to impact, so they're very durable. And so we've got a couple of patents on both of those items in particular. And then there's the touch feedback aspect. So this is the only hand on the market that gives users touch feedback. And so the methods that we have to mold the fingers to enable that sensory feedback that is what our third patent is on for the hand, and it just looks really cool. It's got like this black carbon fiber on it that just looks really futuristic and bionic. And it just gives users the confidence that this isn't something to be pitied; this is something that's really cool. And especially for our war heroes, that's something to be celebrated that I lost my hand for our country, and now I've got this really cool one that can do all of the things that my hand used to do. VICTORIA: And I also saw that it's reimbursable by Medicare in the U.S. And I was curious if you had any lessons learned from that process for getting eligible for that. DR. AADEEL: Yeah. And that was part of the goal from the very beginning. After we did our customer discovery process, where we figured out what the pain points are and found out that durability was one of the biggest issues, obviously, one of the other issues was the really expensive price of the other hands, and typically what we call a multi-articulated hand, so that's one where each one of the fingers move individually. Those are only covered by the VA, so if you're in the military or workman's comp so if you had a workplace accident. And that only accounted for about 10% of the U.S. market. And what the clinicians kept telling us over and over again was that if you can get the hand covered by Medicare, then usually all the other insurance companies will follow suit, like your Blue Cross Blue Shield, your Aetna, your Kaiser, et cetera. So that was our design goal from the beginning. So how can we hit a price point that Medicare would cover but also make this fully featured that no other hand can do any of these other things? What it primarily came down to was hitting that price point. And as long as we hit that price point, then Medicare was going to be fine with it. So we invented a lot of the manufacturing methods that we use in-house to make the hand in particular. So we do all the silicone molding. We do all the carbon fiber work. We do all the fabric work. We do all the assembly of it in-house in our warehouse here in San Diego. And by being so vertically integrated, we're able to then iterate very quickly and make these innovations happen at a much more rapid scale so that we can get them out there faster and then help more people who need it. VICTORIA: So you've really grown tremendously from when you first had the project, and now you have a team here in San Diego. Do you have any lessons learned for enabling your team to drive faster in that innovation? DR. AADEEL: Yeah, the biggest thing that I feel like a lot of things come down to is just having grit. So especially with a startup, it's always going to be a roller coaster ride. And for us, I think one of the big motivating factors for us is the patients themselves when they get to do these things that they weren't able to do before. So another one of our first patients, Tina, had just become a grandmother, and she was able to feed her granddaughter for the first time because she was able to hold the bottle with her bionic hand, The Ability Hand, and then hold her granddaughter with her natural hand and then feed her using The Ability Hand. It's, like I said, moments like that is why we do what we're doing. It gives us that motivation to work those long hours, make those deadlines so that we can help as many people as possible. VICTORIA: Right. So you have that motivating power behind your idea, which makes a lot of sense. What else in your customer discovery sprint was surprising to you as you moved through that process? DR. AADEEL: So there was definitely the robustness that was surprising. There was the cost that wasn't necessarily the highest priority thing, which we thought would be the highest priority. And the speed and just having to rely on visual feedback, you have to kind of look at the hand as you're doing the task that you're doing, but you have to look at it very intently. So that takes a lot of cognitive load. You have to pay attention very specifically to am I doing the right movement with my hand? In ways that you wouldn't necessarily have to do with a natural hand. And by making the hand move so responsive as it is and move so quickly, in addition to having that touch feedback, that reduces, or at least we believe it'll reduce a lot of that cognitive load for our patients so that they don't have to be constantly monitoring exactly what the hand is doing in order to do a lot of the tasks or the activities of daily living that they're doing on a day to day basis. The whole customer discovery process drove what features we were going to focus on in actually making this hand a reality. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes sense. And I love hearing about what came up that surprised people. And I appreciate your commitment to that process to really drive your business idea and to solve this problem that happens to so many people in the United States. Well, how widespread is this issue? And, of course, I'm sure you're targeting more than just the United States with rollout, but... DR. AADEEL: So, globally, there are over 10 million people with hand amputations, and 80% of them actually live in developing nations, and less than 3% have access to affordable rehabilitative care. So it's a huge need worldwide, and we want to make sure that everyone has access to the best available prosthetic devices. VICTORIA: That makes sense. So I guess commercializing this product leads to more room, more availability across for everyone. DR. AADEEL: Absolutely. And interesting thing about that, too, is that as we were developing these, the hand in particular, we've optimized it for humans to do human tasks. And we have a programming interface that we put on it that allows researchers to control each one of the fingers like you control the speed, the position, and the force from each one of those fingers as well as you can stream all of the touch sensors like over Bluetooth or over a USB connection, and then also the location of each one of those fingers as well. A lot of robotics researchers who are building humanoid robots and robot arms to do other tasks like manufacturing and robotic surgery and things like that have been purchasing our hand too. So notably, for example, NASA and Meta, so Facebook Meta, have purchased our hands, and NASA is putting it on a humanoid astronaut robot, which hopefully will eventually go into space. And then, on Earth, they'd be able to control it and then manipulate objects in space. And it's opened up an entirely new market, but the critical thing here is that it's the exact same hand that the humans are getting that the robots are getting. And what this allows us to do is just expand our volume of production and our sales so that we can actually further drive down the costs and the pricing for the human side of things as well. So if we're talking about places like India, or Pakistan, or Guatemala, or Ecuador where there are no government incentives in place to reimburse at a rate that they might in the U.S., then we can actually get the price point to one that's actually affordable in those areas as well. And I'm really excited about those prospects. VICTORIA: That's so cool that future robot astronauts will be financing people who have no ability [laughs] to go into space or anything like that. That's a cool business idea. I wonder, when did that happen for you, or what was that like when you realized that there was this other potential untapped market for robotic limbs? DR. AADEEL: It's interesting. It was always in the back of our minds because, as I was a Ph.D. student, I was in the Ph.D. group that focused on robotics, in particular more so than prosthetics. And I was the first one in the group to actually kind of have the prosthetic spin on things. And so I had an idea of where the market was for the robotic side of things. And I had some connections as well. And so I was actually giving a talk at Georgia Tech early last year. The Director of the Georgia Tech Robotics Institute, Dr. Seth Hutchinson, he was telling me that...he was like, "You should go to the big robotics conference, ICRA, because people are going to be like...absolutely love this product for their robots." And we were just like, huh, we never considered that. And so we decided to go, and it was just absolutely nuts. We've had researchers from all over the world being like, "How can I get this hand?" And compared to a lot of the robotic hands that are out there, even on the robotic side, this is a much lower price point than what they've been dealing with. And by solving a lot of the problems on the human side, like durability, and sensory feedback, and dexterity, and the pricing, it actually solved a lot of the problems on the robotic side as well. So I was just like...after we had gone to that conference, we realized that, yeah, we can actually make this work as well. VICTORIA: That's really cool. And it sounds like tapping into this robotics market and networking really worked for you. What else about your market research or strategy seem to be effective in your business growth? DR. AADEEL: This is interesting as well. So half of our sales actually come from social media, which for a medical device company is usually unheard of. [laughs] Because usually the model is, for medical devices, where you have a group of sales reps located across the regions that you're selling and so across the U.S. And they would visit each one of the clinics, and then they would work with the clinicians directly in getting these on the patients. That usually accounts for like 99% of sales. And so for us, for half of them to come from social media, it was a goal that we had set out to, but it was also surprising that that accounted for so much of our volumes and our revenue. The way we set it up was that we wanted to make videos of our hand that highlighted things that our hand could do that were novel and unique. And so, for example, we wanted to highlight the durability of the hand as well as the dexterity and the touch feedback. And so some of the first videos that we made were like arm wrestling against a bionic hand. And what's cool about that is that the general public just found that very interesting in general. But also, when a clinician and a patient sees that, wow, this hand can actually withstand the forces of an actual arm wrestling match, then they're also just as impressed. And the same thing with punching through three wooden boards that we set on fire; if it can handle that, then it can handle activities of daily living. General public seizes, and they're just like, "Whoa, that's so cool." But then clinicians and the patients they see that, and they were like, "My prosthetic hand couldn't do this before." And so then they contact us, and we're like, "How can we get your hand?" And then we'll either put them in contact with a clinician, or we'll work with one of the clinicians that they are already working with then go through their insurance that way. And so it's just been a really exciting and fun way to generate, like, expand our market and generate sales that we didn't necessarily think was going to be a viable way from the start. VICTORIA: Right. I totally get it. I mean, I want one, and both my hands still work. MID-ROLL AD: thoughtbot is thrilled to announce our own incubator launching this year. If you are a non-technical founding team with a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply for our eight-week program. We'll help you move forward with confidence in your team, your product vision, and a roadmap for getting you there. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator, that's tbot.io/incubator. VICTORIA: Have you ever seen someone rock climb with the prosthetic hand? DR. AADEEL: Not yet, but that is something that is definitely on our docket. VICTORIA: Okay, well, we need to do it. Since we're both in San Diego, I can help you. [laughs] DR. AADEEL: Sweet. I love it. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah, we can figure that out because there are, especially in the climbing gyms, there are usually groups that come in and climb with prosthetic limbs on a regular basis since it's a kind of a surprisingly accessible sport. [laughs] DR. AADEEL: So one of the great things about being here in San Diego is that there's like a ton of incredible resources for building prosthetics and then for users of them as well. So the Challenged Athletes Foundation is located 10 minutes from us. So we're located in Scripps Ranch. And the Challenged Athletes Foundation they're like over in the Sorrento Valley area. They hold the para-triathlon every year. And so we just went to their event a couple of months ago, and it was absolutely incredible. And so we've got like a five-year goal of making an ability leg. So we have The Ability Hand right now. So the ability leg, we want to actually be able to perform a triathlon, so run, bike, and swim with the leg. And I think that would be a phenomenal goal. And all the pieces are here in San Diego. We got the military hospital, and so we've got the veteran population. We've got the Challenged Athletes Foundation. We've got UCSD, and they're incredible at engineering. We've got two prosthetic schools right around LA, so Loma Linda University in California State University, Dominguez Hills. And there are only 11 in the entire nation, and two of them just happen to be right around here. It's a med tech hub. There's like a bunch of med tech companies and both startups and huge ones like NuVasive that are in the area. And it's a huge engineering place, too, with Qualcomm. And so we want to bring all of those resources together. And it's my goal to turn San Diego into the bionics capital of the world, where people from all over the world are coming here to have the most advanced devices ever created. VICTORIA: Oh, I love that idea. And you just moved to San Diego a few years ago. Is that right? DR. AADEEL: Actually, six months ago, so it's very new for us. VICTORIA: Six months? [laughter] Well, you sound like me when I moved to San Diego. I was like; it's great here. [laughter] DR. AADEEL: Well, I hope you still find it to be great. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah, I love it. I've been here for two years now. And, yes, there's more to it than just the weather being good all the time. [laughter] There's a lot here. DR. AADEEL: [laughs] It doesn't hurt, though, right? VICTORIA: Yeah. And, I mean, I love that I can still do my networking events outdoors all year long, so going on hikes and stuff versus being indoors in the winter. But I find it fascinating that San Diego has just so much biotech all around, and I will happily support how I can [laughs] turning it into a bionic limb capital. I think that's a great idea. Well, so I wanted to get back...we're talking about the future right now. I wanted to ask about building your team. So you started the company almost seven years ago, and you've grown the team a lot since then. Did you have any essential principles or values that you started with when you were building out your team? DR. AADEEL: Yeah. So when we were first hiring, I was still a Ph.D. student when I started the company. Our first employee was actually my undergraduate student. He's currently our Director of Engineering, Jesse Cornman. And we specifically were recruiting people that did stuff outside of the lab, so the electrical engineers and the mechanical engineers that we initially hired. We wanted to make sure that it wasn't just like the university projects that they were working on. And we would find a lot of our early people from like car team so like this was like building like a solar car, so Illini Solar Car was one of our places where we'd get a lot of our early employees as well as the electrical vehicle concept team and design, build, fly, and these student organizations where they had like competitions, and they had to build real, tangible things to compete in with. And the thing is that those are the people who do this stuff for fun, and you learn the most when you're having fun doing this stuff. And so we would always look for that stuff in particular. And there were some litmus tests that we'd have to be able to weed out very quickly what people know what. And so for electrical engineers, we would always ask if they know surface mount soldering because it's not like your typical soldering on a perf board or even like using a breadboard. It's like you have a circuit board, and you have to solder these very small components on there. And if you know how to solder those small components, you typically know how to code them as well. So they have some embedded systems background as well and some PCB design experience as well. And so that was like a quick litmus test that we use for the electrical engineers. For the mechanical engineers, it was typically if they knew how to do surface modeling. And so we would ask them, "How would you make the palm of a hand where you got these complex structures and these complex surfaces that have different geometries and different curvature?" And if they were able to do a surface modeling, then we knew that they'd be able to CAD that up pretty quickly. They probably have some sort of 3D printing experience from that as well, and that they can just rapidly iterate and prototype on the devices. And so that worked really, really well. And so we were able to get a lot of bright engineers who early on in the company...and many who were student interns at the time that eventually even went on to Microsoft and Google or some of the students went to MIT and places like that. And we were very fortunate to be in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's ecosystem, where it was just one of the best engineering schools in the world to develop this kind of stuff. VICTORIA: That's great. So you had really specific skills that you needed. [laughs] And you kind of knew the type of work or an experience that led to that. As you've expanded your team and you're building a culture of collaboration, how do you set expectations with how you all work together? DR. AADEEL: As a startup, we all wear many, many hats. So my job, I feel like, is to fill in all the gaps. And so some days, I might be doing marketing; some days, I might be visiting a clinic and doing sales. Other times I'm working with the engineering team to make sure that we're on track over there. And it's like all this stuff in between. And so being able to work cohesively like that and put on those many hats so that you know every part of the process from the marketing and sales sides but also the engineering and operations side, I think that's really allowed us to get to the point where we have by doing all these different functions together. VICTORIA: That makes sense. So you are all located in San Diego now, so you have to be in person to work on robot hands? DR. AADEEL: Yeah, we found that it was much easier to build a physical object in person than it was to do things remotely. At the beginning of COVID, we actually did try to, like, you know, we moved 3D printers out into people's houses and the manufacturing equipment. And then I remember just to put together a power switch that usually took like one hour to do in the lab. It took us a day and a half because one person had the circuit board, the other person had the enclosure, the other person had the thing to program it. And then each thing depended on each other. So you had to keep carting that small piece back and forth between houses, and it was just a nightmare to do that. And so after a couple of months, we ended up moving back into the offices and manufacturing there with staggered work hours or whatever. And at that point, we were just like, okay, this is much more efficient when we're all in person. And honestly, a lot of our best ideas have come from just me sitting here and then just walking over to one of the engineers and being like, "Hey, what do you think of this idea?" And it's a lot harder to do when you're all remote, right? VICTORIA: That makes sense. Yeah, just the need to physically put pieces together [laughs] as a group makes it hard to be fully remote. And you get a lot of those ideas flowing when you're in person. What is on the horizon for you? What are you most excited about in your upcoming feature set? DR. AADEEL: Like I said, one of the reasons why we moved here was to work with the military hospital, and so some of the work that we're doing with them is particularly exciting. The way you typically wear these prosthetic devices...so you'll have muscle sensors that are embedded in a...it's like a shell that goes around your residual limb. We call it the socket. Think about it as like a shoe for your residual limb. And the thing is, as you're wearing this throughout the day, it starts to get sweaty. It starts to get uncomfortable. Things shift around. Your signals don't control the hand as well because of all these changes and everything. And with the military hospital, we're working on something called osseointegration. So instead of having this socket that's molded to your residual limb that you shove your arm into, you have a titanium implant that goes inside your bones and then comes out of your body, and then you directly attach the hand to your bones like a limb naturally should be. And then, on top of that, instead of using these muscles sensors on the outside of your body, we're actually working on implanted electrodes with some of our collaborators. For example, at University of Chicago, they're doing brain implants to control prosthetic limbs. And a company in Dallas called Nerves Incorporated that's working with the University of Minnesota and UT Southwestern; they're doing nerve implants in your forearm and in your upper arm to control prosthetic limbs. And with those, you get much more fine control, so it's not like you're just controlling different grips, like preset grips in the hand, but you're actually doing individual finger control. And then, when you touch the finger, it's actually stimulating your nerves to make it feel like it's coming from your hand that you no longer have anymore. And this is where we're heading with all of this stuff in the future. And so we built The Ability Hand to work with clinically available systems now, like sockets, and muscle sensors, and vibration motors that are all outside of the body. But then also, when these future technologies come up that are more invasive that are directly implanted on your nerves as well as into your bones as well, we're really excited about those prospects coming out in the horizon. VICTORIA: That's really cool. [laughs] I mean, that would be really life-changing for a lot of people, I'm sure, to have that ability to really control your fingers and get that extra comfort as well. How do you manage quality into your process, especially when you're getting invasive and putting in nerve implants? What kind of testing and other types of things do you all do? DR. AADEEL: With The Ability Hand itself, there was actually an FDA Class I exempt device, meaning that we didn't have to go through the formal approval process that you typically do. And that was primarily because it's attached to your residual limb as opposed to going invasive. But with going invasive, with our clinical partners they're actually doing FDA clinical trials right now. And so they've gone through a lot of those processes. We're starting to enroll some of our patients who are using The Ability Hand to get these implanted electrodes. We're kind of navigating that whole process ourselves right now too. So I think that was one of the reasons why we moved to San Diego, to work with and leverage a lot of the expertise from people who've done it already, from the med tech device companies that are big that have gone through those processes and can guide us through that process as well. So we're excited to be able to leverage those resources in order to streamline these clinical trial processes so that we can get these devices out there more quickly. VICTORIA: That's very cool. I'm super excited to hear about that and to learn more about PSYONIC. Is there anything else you want to share with our audience today as a final takeaway? DR. AADEEL: Absolutely. So in order to make all this stuff happen, we're actually in the middle of raising a round right now. Our biggest issue right now is actually that we've got more demand than we can produce, so we're working on scaling our manufacturing here in San Diego. So we're in the middle of an equity crowdfunding round. And we're all about accessibility, so about making our hand accessible to as many people as possible. So we were like, why don't we make the company accessible as well? And one of the most beautiful things about doing this as an equity crowdfunding round is our patients actually have invested in the company as well. And so it's like, we're making these devices for them, and then they get to be a part of it as well. And it's just this beautiful synergy that I couldn't have asked for anything more out of a crowdfunding campaign. And so we've raised over 750k already on StartEngine. And you can find out more and invest for as little as $250 at psyonic.io, so that's psyonic.io/invest. And the other thing I was going to mention, especially Victoria since you're in San Diego as well, is that I happily give tours to anyone who is in the area. So if anyone wants to see how we build all these bionic hands and just a cool robotics startup in general, we'd be happy to have you come visit us. VICTORIA: That's very cool. I'll have to connect with you later and schedule a tour myself. [laughs] That's wonderful. I'm excited to hear all the things you're working on and hope to see you more in the San Diego community coming up. And we'll share links to the funding page and other information about PSYONIC in our show notes. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Mastodon at Victoria Guido. And this podcast is brought to by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thank you for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Aadeel Akhtar.
The Indian rupee sank to a new record low on Monday against the US dollar as the greenback's unabated strength wreaked havoc on financial markets across the globe amid fears over more aggressive monetary tightening. The local unit weakened by 63 paise to end Monday at 81.63 per dollar, against 80.99 at the previous close. The rupee has depreciated 9.7% against the US dollar year-to-date. On September 21, the US Federal Reserve not only hiked rates by 75 basis points -- taking the total tally of rate hikes since March to 300 bps -- but also hinted at a longer monetary tightening cycle than earlier expected. Since then, the rupee has gone from one of the world's best performing currencies to one of the worst. The dollar index, which has gained a massive 22% so far in 2022, surged to a fresh 20-year high of 114.50 early Monday. The rupee has depreciated 2% versus the dollar since September 21, ranking among the worst-performing emerging market units. Over the time period, it has fared worse than 14 other emerging market currencies, with only the South Korean won losing more versus the US dollar. Prior to September 21, the rupee had outperformed many of its peers, primarily on account of heavy market interventions by the RBI. The RBI has aggressively defended the rupee through sales of the US dollar since the Ukraine war broke out in late February. India's forex reserves have fallen by almost $100 billion from their peak of $642 billion in October 2021. As on September 16, they have dropped to a near-2-year low of $545.65 billion Some part of the fall in reserves is due to revaluation changes. The import cover provided by the reserves have reduced to 9 months from close to 15 months a year ago. Rahul Bajoria, Chief India Economist, Barclays Bank says, FY23 CAD at just above 3% of GDP is seen as sustainable. Fall in commodity prices higher than rupee decline. Full pass through to consumers to happen over next 3 months. The rupee dropping to a record low may be a mixed bag as far as exports are considered. If rupee's depreciation continues, Indian exporters stand to gain. However, the gain would have been much more if the Indian economy was less import-dependent, experts said. As a result, products across segments such as petroleum, gems and jewellery, and electronics may not gain much as they are import-dependent. Besides, there is always a risk of imported inflation, if the rupee falls too much. As India is 85% dependent on imports to meet its oil needs, a weakening rupee will make its purchases expensive, further fueling inflation which has remained above RBI's upper tolerance band for eight consecutive months. But oil and other commodity prices have eased from their peaks. Nevertheless, ICRA's Chief Economist Aditi Nayar said that a depreciating rupee will partly counteract the benefit of lower commodity prices on inflation. India's trade deficit more than doubled to $28 billion in August due to increased crude oil imports. Imports rose by 37% while exports rose marginally by 1.62%. This puts pressure on the current account deficit. Pronab Sen, former chief statistician of India says, RBI expects commodity prices to come down. It's trying to ensure importers benefit amid falling rupee. High trade deficit is a structural problem. Economists at HDFC Bank expect the RBI to continue with significant intervention to stall rupee depreciation pressures, especially as and if it moves towards 82 levels. According to them, the RBI has ample forex reserves and the recent drawdown in reserves needs to be seen in context of the significant build-up over the last two years. The RBI does not want the rupee to depreciate so quickly that India loses out on the benefit of lower crude prices in a significant way. But most currencies including rupee have depreciated due to dollar's strength. There may be an argument therefore to let the rupee depreciate further to preserve Indi
At a time when foreign investors are showing confidence in India's growth story, what is holding back Indian firms from coming forward and making investments, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked on Tuesday. The answer, according to analysts, is that Indian businesses are not confident about the durability of the demand recovery. Add to that the prevailing external headwinds and one gets a clear picture of what's stopping firms from increasing investments. Investments by India Inc have slowed down with the growth rate of gross block formation of Indian companies falling to single digits in the last two years as the pandemic hit consumer demand. Private final consumption expenditure, or PFCE, rose 13.5 per cent in the first quarter of FY23. Also, it was almost 10 per cent higher than the corresponding pre-Covid period of FY20. PFCE denotes demand in the economy. However, India Inc is not certain that demand will continue to gather momentum because retail price inflation has remained above the Reserve Bank of India's tolerance level of six per cent for the eighth consecutive month in August. Ranen Banerjee, the leader for economic advisory services at PwC India, told Business Standard that there was lower appetite for investing to build capacity because economic headwinds had caused the private sector to have little confidence in the sustainability of demand. He also blamed the combination of the pre-Covid slowdown, the Covid shock, and the current global growth challenges emerging from the ultra-tough monetary stances adopted by central banks. Banerjee also said that the benefits of the cut in corporate tax rates were used by businesses to deleverage their balance sheets. ICRA Chief Economist Aditi Nayar said that high commodity prices, geopolitical uncertainties, and uneven consumer demand were likely to have prompted India Inc to defer their capital expenditure plans in spite of healthy capacity utilisation in the fourth quarter of FY22. According to the RBI's OBICUS Survey, capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector rose to 75.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of FY22 from 72.4 per cent in the third quarter of that year. In fact, capacity utilisation levels have improved consecutively for three quarters. In the first quarter of FY21, it had fallen sharply to 47.3 per cent due to the lockdown imposed after the Covid-19 outbreak. ICRA's Nayar said that capacity utilisation was likely to register a seasonal dip in the first quarter of FY23, exacerbated by geopolitical headwinds and uneven demand for goods. So, what can be done to get India Inc to turn on the investment tap? [Byte of Madan Sabnavis on solutions] While investments as a percentage of GDP rose year-on-year in the first quarter of FY23, they were still below the 30 per cent mark required to push the economy on to the path of sustained growth. Gross fixed capital formation, or GFCF, numbers showed that there was an improvement in investments in the first quarter compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. This improvement was probably aided by government capital expenditure. However, it was clear that investments have still not recovered to pre-Covid levels. While disaggregated data is unavailable, experts have said that the government continues to be the source for a large chunk of the GFCF. The hope has been that government capital expenditure would lead to the crowding in of private investments, which would give economic growth the push it needs. However, despite significant central outlays, the private sector has remained investment shy. It remains to be seen what more the government can do to induce a change in behaviour anytime soon.
India's Gross Domestic Product grew 13.5% in the first quarter of FY22-23 compared to a year ago helped by the base effect, thereby registering the fastest growth in four quarters. But the numbers came in below the 15.2% forecast by economists, and much lower than the Monetary Policy Committee's projection of 16.2%. The last time India's economy grew faster was in Q1 FY21, when it gained 20.1% from the pandemic-depressed level a year earlier. With rising interest rates, uneven monsoon and slowing global demand, analysts fear the economy may fall short of the 7.2 per cent annual growth target for FY23 projected by the Reserve Bank of India. The GDP during April-June 2022 stood at Rs 36.85 trillion, compared to Rs 35.49 lakh crore in the corresponding quarter of the pre-pandemic year 2019-20. This means, the country's economy has grown at an average of 1.26% a year in real terms over the past three years. On a sequential basis, GDP in the first quarter contracted 9.6% from the preceding three-month period. According to Sachchidanand Shukla, Group Chief Economist at Mahindra and Mahindra, this is three times the average sequential contraction of 3.2% witnessed in the first quarter of each of the last five years before the pandemic. But, the year-over-year growth in GDP was led by consumption and investments, which grew 25.9% and 20.1%, respectively. The growth in government expenditure was a weak 1.3%. Looking at the sectoral trends, the GVA growth in manufacturing was 6.5, while the construction sector grew 16.8%. The labour-intensive trade, hotels and transport segment showed a strong 25.7% growth. The data released by the National Statistical Office showed while the services sector lifted growth during the quarter, activity in the trade, hotels, and transport segment, despite heightened betterment in hospitality, was below the pre-pandemic level of the June quarter of FY20. Aditi Nayar, Chief Economist at ICRA however said that relative to the pre-Covid level, this stood out as the only sub-sector reporting a contraction in Q1, in line with the robust but incomplete recovery in contact-intensive sectors. Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist, Bank of Baroda says, coming off a low base, one shouldn't reach much in the 13.5% number. Agri, real estate, finance and govt sectors contributed to the growth. Pvt investment and consumption should sustain for 7.2% annual growth. Pent-up demand could get diluted due to high inflation. Inflation remains one of the biggest risks as it impacts consumer spending, which accounts for about 60% of India's nominal GDP. There is also a possibility of slippages in terms of rice and pulses production if the area under cultivation is lower than normal. This can result in further price shocks if sowing doesn't see a recovery. On the fiscal side, buoyancy in tax collection will give enough comfort to the government in terms of budget management. Aurodeep Nandi, India economist and vice president at Nomura said even if one were to discount the low base, this marks a stellar rise in sequential momentum with post pandemic tailwinds lifting GDP growth in June quarter. As the year progresses, experts say that that slowing global growth, higher inflation, and tightening financial conditions will impact the pace of growth.
In its quest to turn back the clock on environmental damage and build a greener tomorrow, the world is slowly but steadily turning its back on polluting machines. And automobiles -- which contribute over 24 per cent of the world's direct CO2 emissions -- are on the radar. And that is the reason why electric-mobility is gaining traction across the world, and in India too. The electric vehicle market is projected to clock a compounded annual growth rate of 49 per cent between 2021-2030, and the annual sales are expected to cross 17 million by 2030, according to a report by India Energy Storage Alliance. NITI Aayog has set a target of EV sales penetration at 70% for all commercial cars, 30% for private cars, 40% for buses and 80% for two and three-wheelers by 2030. The message from the industry is clear. Automobile manufacturers, including the component makers, have lined up Rs 70,630 crore for EVs over the next five years, according to a Business Standard report. But what about the companies and the ecosystem which thrived on vehicles which run on petrol and diesel gulping internal combustion engines or ICEs. The thriving auto component industry is bracing for a paradigm shift. It accounts for just over 2% of India's GDP. In FY22, it recorded its highest-ever turnover of $56.5 billion, rising over 23%, while exports grew 43% to $19 billion. According to the Automobile Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA), auto component exports are expected to touch $80 billion by 2026, and the industry aims to achieve $200 billion in revenue by 2026. The transition to EVs presents both opportunities and challenges for the industry. For example, there will be a major shift from traditional ICE components to e-drive modules and systems. Ratings agency CRISIL estimates that revenue of the electric vehicle components' market in India is likely to rev up at a compound annual growth rate of 76% to Rs 72,500 crore by fiscal 2027. EV components such as batteries, drivetrains, electronics and others present an opportunity for auto component makers to diversify their revenue base beyond ICE vehicles. For makers of traditional auto components, about 75% revenue comes from parts which remain in EVs too. So, the growth is not a challenge for such companies, CRISIL said in a report earlier. It is the suppliers of the remaining 25% components, which are redundant in EVs, at risk. At the same time, component makers who were traditionally reliant on engine parts for the bulk of the business and players in ICE powertrain business, catering only to ICE engines and transmission could face a threat due to transition to EVs. Also, the number of components in EV powertrains is smaller and this will affect the aftermarket business, leading to lower replacement revenue. The turnover of the aftermarket in FY22 stood at $10 billion. There will also be some impact on the millions of existing and upcoming personnel in the industry. For instance, EV part makers require more tech people than in the traditional ICE component making firms. So, the skills needed for emerging supply chains will be very different and hence gradual upskilling of workers and understanding of the shift in nature of jobs will be critical. [Byte of Sunjay J Kapur, Chairman, Sona Comstar and President, ACMA (Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India)] The auto components industry, on its part, is looking to diversify beyond ICE vehicles. They still have the time to do so and the companies have already begun investing in electric components for the existing ICE vehicle makers as well as for EV makers. ICRA estimates that about 25-30 per cent of the total investments of auto component makers in FY23 and FY24 will be towards EV projects. Industry body ACMA recently said, 60 percent of its 800 members are ready to supply components to EV makers, which is a good sign. For instance, Uno Minda has already begun developing specific products for EVs. Elec
Günaydın. Gülşen, "Halkı kin ve düşmanlığa tahrik veya aşağılama" suçundan tutuklandı. Dolar/TL yılın rekorunu kırdı. Bakan Nebati, dar gelirliler için yeni bir destek paketinin yolda olduğunu açıkladı. Bugünün bülteni Getwallet destekleriyle ulaşıyor. Fotoğraf: Hakan Akgun/dia images/Getty Images
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is known all over the world for great research in robotics. Howie Choset is one of the most well-known robotics professors at CMU. For decades he and his students have taken on some of the most interesting and challenging research projects in robotics. They are well known for their many attempts to and iterations of building snake robots, and they are now working on robots for automating recycling tasks and more. Howie is even working on how to put snake robots on the moons of Saturn! In addition to that, Howie and many of his students have founded robotics companies all over the world. From robotic surgery with snake robots, to navigation software, to modular robotic components, the companies Howie has helped found are solving super interesting problems. Tune in to Crazy Hard Robots to hear Howie and Tom talk about some of the hardest problems in the world of robots. In this episode: The technical challenges of snake robots Starting a robotic surgery company Howie gives a live demonstration to compare how people think vs. robots Landing snake robots on the moons of Saturn About Howie Choset Howie Choset is a Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University where he serves as the co-director of the Biorobotics Lab and as director of the Robotics Major. He received his undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Business from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. Choset received his Masters and PhD from Caltech in 1991 and 1996. Choset's research group reduces complicated high-dimensional problems found in robotics to low-dimensional simpler ones for design, analysis, and planning. Motivated by applications in confined spaces, Choset has created a comprehensive program in modular, high DOF, and multi- robot systems, which has led to basic research in mechanism design, path planning, motion planning, and estimation. This work has been supported by both industry and government; DOD support includes two MURIs, one of which Choset received the CO-PI, a young investigator award, and multi-PI awards for modular systems. Choset.s group has produced over 60 journal papers (including 2 in Science and one in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science), 180 conference papers and 15 patents. Choset.s work has also been recognized by several best paper awards and nominations at ICRA, IROS and other robotics meetings. Choset's research program has made contributions to challenging and strategically significant problems in diverse areas such as surgery, manufacturing, infrastructure inspection, and search and rescue. In addition to publications, this work has led to Choset, along with his students, to form several companies including Medrobotics, for surgical systems, Hebi Robotics, for modular robots, and Bito Robotics for autonomous guided vehicles. Recently, Choset.s surgical snake robot cleared the FDA and has been in use in the US and Europe since. Choset also leads multi-PI projects centered on manufacturing: (1) automating the programming of robots for auto-body painting; (2) the development of mobile manipulators for agile and flexible fixture-free manufacturing of large structures in aerospace, and (3) the creation of a data-robot ecosystem for rapid manufacturing in the commercial electronics industry. This year, Choset co-lead the formation of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute, which is a $250MM national institute advancing both technology development and education for robotics in manufacturing. Finally, Choset is a founding Editor of the journal Science Robotics.
Many who had their jobs, incomes, and savings ravaged by the pandemic are still trying to recover. Retail inflation, which was making their lives a tad more difficult, eased marginally in May after touching an eight-year high of 7.79% in April. But it is still above the RBI's tolerance band of 2-6 per cent for a fifth month in a row. Most companies too are feeling the heat of soaring input costs. Hindustan Unilever Chairman Nitin Paranjpe last week said that India is currently going through “probably the most difficult economic situation”. He also said that the company would continue to increase prices even as FMCG market growth rates moderate and volume growth rates become negative in the short term. A closer look at the sales of products across different price ranges throws a disturbing trend. HUL, Dabur India, Asian Paints, and Parle Products have all seen consumers buying cheaper and smaller packs. Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, HUL saw its premium portfolio grow at twice the pace as the rest of its portfolio in 2021-22. Marico Ltd's premium personal care range also grew in high double digits in FY22. HUL, Britannia, and Parle Products get 30 per cent, 55 per cent, and 70 per cent of their business, respectively, from one, five and 10 rupee packs. As a result, FMCG firms have opted for making products smaller while still maintaining the same price -- a phenomenon called 'shrinkflation'. A NielsenIQ report has also found that the FMCG industry saw a decline in volume in the January-March period. In fact, rural India witnessed a 5.3 per cent fall in volume, the highest consumption slowdown in the last three quarters. The report said that a decline in consumption was echoed across all zones and the town classes, but was more prominent in rural markets. Meanwhile, a national daily reported that 12 million passengers took domestic flights in May, almost six times the number for the same month last year that was hit by the second wave of Covid-19. ICRA said that domestic air travel in May was only 7% lower than pre-Covid levels. ICRA also said that international air traffic has surpassed pre-Covid levels by around 24 per cent, with fares seeing a spike. The number of domestic and international flights operated by Indian airlines is also back to pre-Covid levels. All of this has come against the backdrop of several rounds of airfare hikes due to all-time high jet fuel prices. Let us now gauge the trend in auto sector. The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations has said that passenger vehicle retail sales in May 2022 were 11 per cent higher compared to the pre-Covid month of May 2019. But, two-wheeler sales in May 2022 were down 13.91 per cent compared to May 2019. However, according to FADA, the two-wheeler segment has seen a slight improvement in overall sales when compared with April this year. According to Maruti Suzuki India Executive Director Shashank Srivastava, the sale of SUVs and MPVs is expected to jump 63.93% in FY23 from FY19. The real estate segment also showed a divergent trend. According to ANAROCK Research, there has been a 230% jump in new launch supply in the luxury real estate segment, priced over 1.5 crore rupees, across India's top seven cities in Q1 2022 as against Q1 2020. Out of the overall housing sales in the top seven cities in Q1 2022, the luxury segment's share was nearly 12 percent compared to about seven per cent back in the pre-Covid period of 2019. ANAROCK Research added that before Covid, the affordable and mid segments were the most in-demand categories. However, given that the pandemic affected the affordable buyer-class the most, sales in the category went down from their earlier peak. Clearly, the divergent performances in various sectors is betraying the K-shaped recovery in the Indian economy. The pandemic seems to have no effect on the affluent class, which continues to splurge. While those at the bottom of the pyramid don't have m
Despite an on-going recovery in the telecom sector, analysts believe the stock performance of Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel may remain sluggish in the near-term. Their shares have cracked around 8-14% in the past three months as the benchmark Nifty50 shed 7.5%. Going forward, likely heavy investment in the upcoming 5G auction, coupled with flat subscriber growth, may act as overhangs in the near-term. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's data showed that industry-wide active subscriber base dipped by 7.8 million month-on-month in April 2022. While Bharti Airtel lost 3.1 million customers, Reliance Jio lost 0.1 million, and Vodafone Idea 3.8 million. Meanwhile, the industry-wide mobile broadband subscribers remained flat at 760 million. Analysts at JM Financial feel the broad-based active subscriber decline suggests that the November, 2021 tariff hike-led sim consolidation is not over yet. The other near-term hiccup, in terms of higher-than-preferred spectrum prices, may result in excessive capital outgo. Pricing concern, the nascent 5G ecosystem, and evolving use cases could also make 5G rollout granular. Rating agency ICRA pegs capital outlay of around Rs 1-1.1 trillion. Of this, the upfront payment will be 10,000 crore rupees if telcos opt for a 30-year payment plan. However, debt levels could increase with addition of deferred payment liabilities of this auction. That said, near-term pain points are expected to be compensated by long-term growth. ICRA expects the industry to report a growth of 10-12% in its operating income in FY23, which will translate into operating profit before interest and tax expansion by 15-18%. Industry consolidated revenues are estimated at Rs 2.6-2.7 trillion with operating profit before interest and tax of around Rs 1.2-1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, stock-specific action and global triggers will continue to dominate Wednesday's trading session.
Despite an on-going recovery in the telecom sector, analysts believe the stock performance of Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel may remain sluggish in the near-term. Their shares have cracked around 8-14% in the past three months as the benchmark Nifty50 shed 7.5%. Going forward, likely heavy investment in the upcoming 5G auction, coupled with flat subscriber growth, may act as overhangs in the near-term. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's data showed that industry-wide active subscriber base dipped by 7.8 million month-on-month in April 2022. While Bharti Airtel lost 3.1 million customers, Reliance Jio lost 0.1 million, and Vodafone Idea 3.8 million. Meanwhile, the industry-wide mobile broadband subscribers remained flat at 760 million. Analysts at JM Financial feel the broad-based active subscriber decline suggests that the November, 2021 tariff hike-led sim consolidation is not over yet. The other near-term hiccup, in terms of higher-than-preferred spectrum prices, may result in excessive capital outgo. Pricing concern, the nascent 5G ecosystem, and evolving use cases could also make 5G rollout granular. Rating agency ICRA pegs capital outlay of around Rs 1-1.1 trillion. Of this, the upfront payment will be 10,000 crore rupees if telcos opt for a 30-year payment plan. However, debt levels could increase with addition of deferred payment liabilities of this auction. That said, near-term pain points are expected to be compensated by long-term growth. ICRA expects the industry to report a growth of 10-12% in its operating income in FY23, which will translate into operating profit before interest and tax expansion by 15-18%. Industry consolidated revenues are estimated at Rs 2.6-2.7 trillion with operating profit before interest and tax of around Rs 1.2-1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, stock-specific action and global triggers will continue to dominate Wednesday's trading session.
The Reserve Bank of India's rate hike in May, in order to be in-line with the global market sentiment, has pushed the domestic currency to record low levels. Rupee has skidded over 2 per cent against the US dollar in May, seeing its worst monthly decline in 2022. In comparison, the S&P Sensex and Nifty 50 tanked over 3 per cent each during the period. Weak economic data, rising interest rates, soaring inflation, exit of foreign investors are some of the key triggers behind the rupee's meltdown. That is because a depreciating rupee does not bode well for foreign investors as returns reduce from Indian investments, prompting their departure. According to data provided by Jefferies, foreign portfolio investors have sucked nearly 5 billion dollars from Indian equities, so far in the month of May. Moreover, a falling rupee expands the deficit math of an import-oriented economy like India. As Indian economy is heavily dependent on crude oil imports, a weaker rupee, as well as higher crude oil prices, weighs on the current account deficit. It also presents the risk of imported inflation. Remember, a heavier import bill along with weaker rupee widened India's deficit to 20.7 billion dollars in April from 18.5 billion dollars in March. According to a report by S&P global market intelligence, India's oil imports bill hit a record high in April as it surpassed 4.8 million barrels a day. Against this backdrop, analysts believe that import-dependent companies will bear the brunt of a sliding rupee, especially when the input costs are on the rise. Pritam Patnaik, Head - Commodities, Axis Securities, says falling rupee, rising input costs weighing on economy. Inflation is rising due to weaker rupee, he says adding that import-dependent companies will bear the brunt According to a report by ICRA, the Indian rupee could trade in the range of 75 to 79 per US dollar in first half of FY23. ‘A rise in the current account deficit, along with monetary policy tightening, dollar strength and risk aversion towards emerging markets, is expected to impart a depreciating bias to the Indian rupee. However, large forex reserves, narrowing inflation differentials and the likely stemming of FII debt outflows would prevent a further depreciation', reads the ICRA report. That said, a weaker rupee offers silver lining for the export-oriented sectors. Analysts believe that IT, pharma, textile and specialty chemicals could gain a competitive edge amid the sharp decline in the rupee. Speaking to Business Standard, NS Ramaswamy, Head of Commodities, Ventura Securities said weak rupee will benefit IT, pharma, textile, specialty chemicals. Rising input costs can neutralise gains across export-oriented sectors, but the falling rupee will not bode well for auto, capital goods, power, telecom sectors. Overall, with rising interest rates and weak global macros, there's little room for optimism for the domestic currency. On Tuesday, markets will track GDP data for the March quarter of 2022. Globally, Euro zone CPI data and UK's consumer credit data will also be on investors' radar.
John McConnell discusses the research presented at ICRA 2022 to reduce drift in SLAM algorithms by incorporating overhead satellite imagery.
Sebastian Scherer from CMU's Airlab gives us a behind-the-scenes demo at ICRA of their Autonomous Flight Control AI. Their approach aims to cooperate with human pilots and act the way they would. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPsJ4ArdtTk The team took this approach to create a more natural, less intrusive process for co-habiting human and AI pilots at a single airport. They describe it as a Turing Test, where ideally the human pilot will be unable to distinguish an AI from a person operating the plane. Their communication system works parallel with a 6-camera hardware package based on the Nvidia AGX Dev Kit. This kit measures the angular speed of objects flying across the videos. In this world, high angular velocity means low risk -- since the object is flying at a fast speed perpendicular to the camera plane. Low angular velocity indicates high risk since the object could be flying directly at the plane, headed for a collision. Links Download mp3 (19.3 MB) Subscribe to Robohub using iTunes, RSS, or Spotify Support us on Patreon
Bill Smart, one fo the early ICRA Competition Chairs, dives into the high-level decisions involved with creating a meaningful competition.
The Reserve Bank of India sprung a surprise yesterday when it struck an unexpected dovish tone and refrained from tinkering with key policy rates. With this, the repo rate was left unchanged at 4% and the reverse repo rate at 3.35% for a 10th straight policy. The Monetary Policy Committee also decided to continue with the accommodative stance as worry over growth continues to weigh. The RBI projected 7.8% GDP growth for FY23, which is slightly lower than the 8% to 8.5% GDP forecast made by the Economic Survey 2021-22. Governor Shaktikanta Das said concerns are arising from the uncertainties related to Omicron and global spillovers. Nonetheless, no immediate threat to liquidity availability and hardening of interest rates resulted in bond and stock prices surging. The S&P BSE Sensex sprinted 460 points while the NSE Nifty surged 142 points to end at 58,926 and 17,606 levels, respectively. In the money market, 10-year govt bond yields cooled off over 1% to quote at 6.7%. But, analysts fear it may be too early to cheer. “RBI expressed a very dovish outlook for inflation for FY23, forecasting it at 4.5%. This comes despite higher oil and commodity prices, growth-supporting fiscal policy, continued economic normalisation, and a distinctly hawkish Federal Reserve. This suggests that the RBI is likely to remain behind the curve, until macro circumstances warrant a shift of gears,” says Aurodeep Nandi, India Economist and Vice-President, Nomura. Deepak Jasani, who is head of retail research at HDFC Securities, too, believes the RBI's latest monetary policy may raise concerns that it is behind the inflation curve. Assuming a normal monsoon, the RBI projected retail inflation for fiscal year 2022-23 at 4.5% with Q1FY23 forecast at 4.9 per cent; Q2 at 5.0 per cent; Q3 at 4.0 per cent; and Q4 at 4.2 per cent. But analysts worry that inflation risks, especially from fuel prices, remain a concern. If inflation rises more than expected, markets will have to realign quickly, they say. As regards money market, movement in yields will have to be tracked going-forward. Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA, expect the 10-year yield to cross 7% in April 2022, once the FY2023 borrowing program kicks off. The RBI also enhanced the Debt-VRR limit from Rs. 1.5 trillion to Rs 2.5 trillion yesterday, expecting higher FPI inflows into India's debt market. While this could be an interesting support to the bond market, analysts say the inflows will have to be tracked as the existing limits haven't been breached. Overall, the RBI's dovish policy will provide near-term support to both, equities and bond yields, but global headwinds remain key risks. On Friday, reaction to the fine-print of the policy, Q3 results, and global markets' reaction to US inflation data will be the key triggers. Watch video
Ustadh Michael Wolfender shares the story of the first revelation. Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was in secution, thinking, pondering when the angel Jibreel (Gabrial) came to him with and said Icra, read (Surah Alaq (96) The Clot). The Qur'an is the ultimate reading, the ultimate recitation that has great power to transform the lives of people, to elevate their humanity, to guide them to a better way of life. Allah chose a person, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, who was known to be trustworthy to give the responsibility of delivering this super powerful Word to the people. The Quran is mercy. What is this mercy? It is the guidance that alleviates pain, confusion, and destruction to the self, the society and all creation. Allah mentions in this same sura to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ that with this trust he has given him, he will be tested, he will go through hardship, but all of these hardships will ultimately make him stronger. Many tried to harm him but he was under the protection of Allah. They only harmed themselves. We ask Allah to give him peace and blessings for bringing us the Qur'an, the super powerful word of God.Support the show (http://www.goodtreeacademy.org/donate?id=pd)
Jeff Tharp interviews Justice Kuehl, an ambassador for Turning Point USA, Miss Tennessee USA (2020), and the daughter of Johnny and Elizabeth Enlow. This episode Jeff and Justice the dichotomy between feminism and Biblical womanhood, the forgotten mission of the church, and the importance of Biblical truth. Check out Justice's previous interview with Steve Shultz on Elijah Streams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IcRA... Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement by Sue Ellen Browder https://www.amazon.com/Subverted-Help... Sites we discussed: https://www.liveaction.org/ https://letthemlive.org/ https://www.tpusa.com/ Justice's socials: https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeEnlow https://www.instagram.com/justicehope... Elijah List Ministries / ElijahStreams TV, 525 2nd Ave SW, Suite 629 Albany, OR 97321 USA Thank you for making the always-free Elijah List Ministries possible! Click here to learn how to partner with us: https://secure.qgiv.com/for/eslsl/ Prefer to donate by mail? Make your check or money order (US Dollars) payable to "ELIJAH LIST MINISTRIES" and mail it to: Elijah List Ministries / Elijah Streams TV 525 2nd Ave SW Suite 629 Albany, OR 97321 USA
STEP TEN RECOVERY: We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. 1 John 1:5-10 Notice that the concepts and work of the last six steps (4,5,6,7,8,9) are actually rolled into Step Ten: Inventory (I), confession (C), recognize (R) defects, faults, and sins, and making amends (A). (ICRA) 1. As this continual inventory is important for spiritual fitness, where in my daily routine can I set aside time to make self-assessment part of everyday? 2. Do I have any resistance to evaluating my defects daily? What are my objections? What do I fear? 3. An example of a simple, daily, personal inventory: a. Where have I been selfish, dishonest, fearful, inconsiderate, or proud? b. What have I done right today? c. What do I need God's help with tomorrow? d. What am I grateful for today?
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