SK On, the loss-making battery unit of South Korea’s chip-to-construction conglomerate SK Group, said on Monday it will freeze the annual pay of all executive-level officials until it turns to profit, as part of its cost-cutting measures.Under the measures, C-suite executives, including the chief executive officer, let the company’s board decide their position, SK On said in a statement.

In his message to all employees, SK On CEO Lee Seok-hee said the emergency plan is to respond to “changed business environments” and effectively manage business operations, reports Yonhap news agency.

“The current crisis will be an opportunity (for the company) to reemerge as a leading global manufacturer (in the fields of EV batteries),” the CEO said.

SK On reported an operating loss of 581.8 billion won ($422.7 million) last year and remained in the red in the first quarter of 2024 with a loss of 331.5 billion won.

In its guidance announced earlier this year, the company targeted reaching the break-even point during the second half by posting an operating profit in the third or fourth quarter.

But SK On will continue to make investments in research and development projects to strengthen its competitiveness in car battery manufacturing while reorganising sales operations to flexibly respond to market demands, it said.

The global EV markets are in a stagnation phase, known as the “chasm,” which occurs before the widespread adoption of EVs.

SK On is 89.5 per cent owned by SK Innovation Co., the country’s leading refiner by sales. AGENCIES

 Video telematics startup Cautio on Monday announced a pre-seed raise of Rs 6.5 crore led by Antler, 8i Ventures and AU Small Finance Bank.

The funding round, a mix of equity and debt, also saw participation from Cautio’s early believing customers and angel investors.

“With the support of our friends at Antler, 8i and AU, we are primed to escalate our efforts in deploying cutting-edge safety solutions across the country,” Pranjal Nadhani, Co-founder & CTO, Cautio, said in a statement.

Cautio offers cost-effective video telematics products and delivers tailored solutions aimed at mitigating safety issues prevalent in India.

Through customisable dash cam devices and an AI-powered operating system, Cautio ensures accountability, improves driver conduct, minimises revenue loss, and adopts an API-first strategy, the company said.

“The Cautio model is not just about capturing telematics data but transforming it into actionable insights to enhance driver behaviour, increase safety, and pave the way for autonomous vehicles,” said Nitin Sharma, Partner at Antler.

According to Ankit Acharya, Co-founder & CEO of Cautio, telematics in India has rapidly advanced from GPS, Bluetooth and portable navigation to embedded connectivity.

“India, ranking first in global road fatalities, recorded 1,68,491 deaths in 2022, with overspeeding responsible for 70 per cent of these fatalities, along with approximately 4.4 lakh injuries,” said Acharya.

“Video telematics and dash cams, driven by demand from the commercial vehicle sector, will be crucial in eliminating hearsay and enhancing road safety,” he added. AGENCIES

About 17 Indian startups have raised $196.4 million in funding across 17 deals this week.This represents a decrease of 75 per cent from the $800.5 million secured by the startups last week across 21 deals, reports Inc42.

The largest funding round was witnessed by non-banking financial company (NBFC) Northern Arc this week. It raised $75 million via non-convertible debentures (NCDs) from the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO.

The Fintech sector emerged as the investors’ favourite this week as the startups in the space cumulatively secured $77.4 million across three deals.

Startups in the e-commerce sector raised $48.3 million across five deals, enterprise tech raised $25.8 million across three deals, real estate tech raised $20.2 million across one deal, and health tech raised $10.5 million.

However, seed funding dropped this week by 69 per cent to $6.9 million from last week’s $22.7 million, according to the report.

Softeware-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Rocketlane raised $24 million in its Series B funding round co-led by 8VC, Matrix Partners India and Nexus Venture Partners.

Co-working space solutions provider Smartworks has secured $20.24 million (Rs 168 crore) from a group of investors including Keppel, Ananta Capital Ventures Fund I, Plutus Capital, family trusts, and HNIs.

Meanwhile, a Nasscom report has said that India now ranks sixth among the top nine deep-tech ecosystems globally with 3,600 such startups, which received $850 million in funding last year. AGENCIES

As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to transform user experiences across devices and apps, ‘Apple Intelligence’ now aims to puts powerful generative models at the core of iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems, which will be part of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia this fall in beta.

Claiming to set a new standard for privacy in AI, ‘Apple Intelligence’ understands personal context to deliver intelligence that is helpful and relevant. ChatGPT will also come to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year, powered by GPT-4o.

This is how this new AI is going to change the way people use devices to communicate, work and express themselves.

First of all, the generative models have been infused with personal context to deliver intelligence that’s incredibly useful and relevant.

According to the company, with Private Cloud Compute, it has set a new standard for privacy in AI, with the ability to flex and scale computational capacity between on-device processing and larger, server-based models that run on dedicated Apple silicon servers.

AI-powered writing tools will help you rewrite, proofread, and summarise text.

With the ‘TextView’ delegate API, you can customize how you want your app to behave while writing tools is active — for example, by pausing syncing to avoid conflicts while Apple Intelligence is processing text.

Using the Image Playground API, you can add the same experience to your app and enable your users to quickly create delightful images using context from within your app.

Since images are created entirely on device, you don’t have to develop or host your own models for your users to enjoy creating new images in your app, according to Apple.

While emoji are represented as text, Genmoji will be represented as inline images.

‘Apple Intelligence’ also provides Siri with enhanced action capabilities. Developers can take advantage of predefined and pre-trained App Intents across a range of domains to not only give Siri the ability to take actions in your app, but to make your app’s actions more discoverable in places like Spotlight, the Shortcuts app, Control Center, and more.

With ‘App Entities’, Siri can understand content from your app and provide users with information from your app from anywhere in the system.

In the Notes and Phone apps, users can now record, transcribe, and summarise audio. When a recording is initiated while on a call, participants are automatically notified, and once the call ends, Apple Intelligence generates a summary to help recall key points.Searching for photos and videos becomes even more convenient with Apple Intelligence. AGENCIES

 In another bid to ensure healthcare for all, the government has unveiled three new initiatives which will play a major role in improving the quality of healthcare services in the country.

These initiatives include virtual National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) assessment for Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (AAM); a new dashboard which will help health institutions in quickly monitoring compliance with respect to Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS); and a spot food licence and registration initiative for food vendors.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav, said the government has established over 1.73 lakh AAMs, doubled the number of medical colleges since 2014, increased the number of AIIMS from seven to 23 and more than doubled the number of PG and MBBS seats since 2014.

“The government is committed to strengthening the healthcare system with more skilled human resources and quality infrastructure that can tackle both present and future medical challenges”, the minister noted.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Anupriya Patel, said that the launch of the virtual NQAS assessment and dashboard “will lead to improvement in providing quality of healthcare in public health facilities while the launch of the spot food licence will enhance the Ease of Doing Business in India”.

NQAS for Integrated Public Health Laboratories (IPHL) will improve the quality and competence of management and testing systems, which will positively impact the reliability of test results.

The launch of the spot food licence initiative is a ground-breaking new functionality for the instant issuance of licences and registrations through the Food Safety and Compliance System (FoSCoS).

FoSCoS is a pan-India IT platform designed to address all food safety regulatory needs.

Minister Patel said the government is working hard on building a robust and quality healthcare infrastructure by 2047, in accordance with Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s vision. AGENCIES

The development of ‘Made in India’ sovereign cloud infrastructure will enhance national security and resilience, industry experts have said, as the data centre capacity in the country is likely to double from 870 MW in FY22 to about 1,700-1,800 MW by FY25.The country currently has more data in India than the US and China put together.

“Average data consumption which was just about 300 MB a few years back had already become 25 GB per month, and by 2028, we will become the largest in the world in terms of per user data consumption at almost 62 GB per user per month, said Sunil Gupta, Chair, Assocham National Council on Datacenter.

“The digital pervasiveness is only becoming bigger, making India a digital-first economy leapfrogging us beyond every single largest global economy,” he said.

From about 200 megawatts in 2013-14, India has grown to 1200 megawatt.

“By 2027 we are expected to go to 2,000 megawatt. A sovereign cloud ensures that data generated within India remains within the country’s borders and also protected completely by local law and regulation,” said Gupta, also the Co-Founder, MD and CEO of Yotta Data Services.

By 2025, the Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) market is expected to grow to $35 billion, with data centres contributing to this growth.

“Growth is imperative as far as the country is concerned. The paradigm that we really need to focus on is to make the lives of individual Indians better,” said Niranjan Hiranandani, Past President Assocham and CMD, Hiranandani Group of Companies.

According to Surajit Chatterjee, Co-Chair, Assocham National Council on Datacentre, Mumbai is leading the pack in terms of the largest data cenrtre market share, followed by Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

“We are now moving into tier 2 and tier 3 markets,” he added. AGENCIES

GIFT Nifty, which are traded on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), recorded a new milestone of achieving an all-time high monthly turnover of $95.55 billion (about Rs 7,97,714 crore) as on June 27.This surpassed its previous record of $91.73 billion set in May. The benchmark achieved its highest-ever monthly turnover of 21,23,014 contracts in June.

“This milestone reflects the growing global interest and trust in the GIFT Nifty as a benchmark for India’s growth story,” NSE said.

“We are glad to witness the success of GIFT Nifty and express our sincere gratitude to all the participants for their overwhelming support and for making GIFT Nifty a successful contract,” it added.

Trading turnover on NSE IX has been growing exponentially since commencement of the full-scale operation of GIFT Nifty on July 3, 2023.

Since the first day of full-scale operations, GIFT Nifty has witnessed a total cumulative volume of over 21.06 million contracts with a total cumulative turnover of $881.26 billion till June 27, 2024. AGENCIES

 The shared (public) cloud infrastructure market reached $26.3 billion in the first quarter of this year globally, up 43.9 per cent compared to a year ago, according to a new report.

The shared (public) cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 30.4 per cent (year-over-year) to $108.3 billion for the full year, according to an IDC report.

For 2024, IDC forecasts overall cloud infrastructure spending to grow 26.1 per cent compared to 2023 to $138.3 billion.

Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is also expected to have double-digit growth in 2024 at 12.8 per cent, reaching $30 billion for the full year.

“The subdued growth forecast for non-cloud infrastructure at 8.4 per cent in 2024 reflects that even though most of the growth will come from cloud spending, general non-cloud dedicated systems are set to recover this year,” the report mentioned.

According to the report, the shared cloud infrastructure category continues to hold the largest share of spending compared to dedicated (private) cloud deployments and non-cloud spending.

In the January-March period, shared cloud accounted for 56.1 per cent of total infrastructure spending.

Cloud infrastructure spending growth continues being driven by the explosion of AI-related investments, which not only impact servers but also started to have positive influence on enterprise storage as well,” said Juan Pablo Seminara, research director for IDC’s Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker. AGENCIES

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) on Saturday launched an eSankhyiki portal with the objective of establishing a comprehensive data management and sharing system for ease of dissemination of official statistics in the country.

The portal (https://esankhyiki.mospi.gov.in) aims to provide timely inputs for planners, policy-makers, researchers and the public at large. The eSankhyiki Portal has two sections facilitating easy access and re-use of data, the Ministry said.

The first section is a Data Catalogue that lists the National Accounts Statistics, Consumer Price Index, Index of Industrial Production, Annual Survey of Industries, Periodic Labour Force Survey and Household Consumption Expenditure Survey in one place.

The second covers Macro Indicators. The section includes time series data of key macro indicators with features for filtering and visualisation. It also allows users to download custom datasets, and visualisations and enables access to them through APIs, thereby increasing the re-usability of data. At present, this section includes National Accounts Statistics, Consumer Price Index, Index of Industrial Production, and Annual Survey of Industries, encompassing the data of the last 10 years.

Statistics Day is celebrated in the country In recognition of the notable contributions made by Professor (late) Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in the fields of statistics and economic planning.

The main objective of celebrating Statistics Day is the creation of public awareness, especially among the younger generation, on the role and importance of statistics in socio-economic planning and policy formulation for the development of the country.

The theme for Statistics Day, 2024 is “Use of data for decision-making”. The concept of data-driven decision-making is important for making informed decisions in any field.

The Chief Guest on the occasion, Arvind Panagariya, Chairman, of the 16th Finance Commission highlighted the role of Prof. P.C. Mahalanobis in shaping the Indian Statistical System. He also urged that India should continue its data-driven policy-making in order to move along its development trajectory.

Prof. Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar, Chairman of the National Statistical Commission emphasized the need to make the data more accessible and usable. He also stressed the need for the interoperability and linking of databases generated by various agencies through coordination among stakeholders.

Saurabh Garg, Secretary, MoSPI while addressing the audience highlighted the recent initiatives of the Ministry for reducing time-lag in survey data like Computer-Aided Personal Interview (CAPI), new surveys, user engagement exercise and the newly launched eSankhyiki portal.

Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva, Global Director for the World Bank Group’s poverty and equity global practice made a presentation on the global experience of using data for decision-making. He emphasised that data is an essential infrastructure for effective policy-making while sharing prevalent global practices.

Based on the updated Sustainable Development Goals – National Indicator Framework (SDGs- NIF), MoSPI released three progress reports on SDGs with time series data. These reports can be accessed at the MoSPI’s website AGENCIES

IT major IBM and the Gujarat government on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to establish and promote an artificial intelligence (AI) Cluster in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT city), leveraging IBM’s ‘watsonx’ technology solutions to foster innovation and collaboration among financial institutions.As part of this collaboration, financial institutions will gain access to ‘AI Sandbox’, assistance in providing proof of concept, AI literacy programmes and digital assistant solutions.

“This MoU with IBM will help Gujarat to lead the country in efforts to adopt AI and drive digital transformation,” said Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel.

IBM will provide software technologies and platforms over a cloud environment enabling financial institutions to customise and fine-tune large language AI models in a sandbox environment.

“This collaboration is a significant step in our continued association with the Government of Gujarat to accelerate the digital transformation of the state,” said Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India and South Asia.

“By establishing this AI cluster, our aim is to make the latest AI solutions easily accessible to the vibrant and growing number of financial institutions in GIFT city,” he added.

The IT major will also aim to build a digital assistant-based solution that facilitates the onboarding and integration of these customised large language models for financial institutions.    Aligned with its commitment to skill 30 million people by 2023 and train 2 million learners in AI by the end of 2026, the company said it will develop an AI curriculum for schools and universities across the state. AGENCIES