Author: sahilbaid

Know about TRAI’s proposal of displaying name with phone number.

In November last year, TRAI floated a consultation paper seeking comments about the potential introduction of Caller Name Presentation (CNAP).

The feature will allow users to know the identity of the person calling them. The basic idea is that if people are aware of the person who is calling them, they can make an informed choice about those calls. At the same time, such a feature could potentially help in curbing harassment and other spam calls.

The proposal CNAP will also be difficult to execute from a technical perspective given that a number of phones in the Indian market may not be able to support it, telcos have said.

Meanwhile, Truecaller, which already offers a similar service albeit through a crowdsourcing model has said since several people purchase SIM cards using forged identity cards, TRAI’s proposal to use SIM registration data to display callers’ names might be fraught with inaccuracies since “the identity of the actual user of a mobile number may not be the same as the subscriber”.

Adani Enterprises files India’s largest FPO.

Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of ports-to-energy conglomerate Adani Group, said it would raise ₹20,000 crore in follow-on public offering of new shares, which is being touted as the country’s biggest FPO.

The Adani Group’s flagship company has filed papers with capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for the FPO.

An FPO is the issuance of shares to investors by a publicly listed entity. Its name comes from the fact that it follows an initial public offering (IPO). 

Over the past five years, Adani’s fortune has skyrocketed. In the past year, the share prices of his many publicly traded firms have soared by more than fivefold. Four of the six companies have increased investor worth by more than ₹1 lakh-crore. In five years, shares of his flagship company, Adani Enterprises, have increased by almost 2,500 per cent.

By 2027, India could assemble 1 in 2 Iphone according to a report.

India is projected to assemble up to 50 per cent of Apple’s iPhones by 2027, which will be a significant increase from the current rate of less than five per cent. According to a report by the South China Morning Post, it will bring India’s level of production in line with that of mainland China.

India could produce one in two of the world’s iPhones by 2027 as compared to the current percentage which stands at less than 5 percent, as per a latest  forecast by Luke Lin.

Here Luke Lin is an analyst at the research unit of Taiwan’s DigiTimes newspaper, in the South China Morning Post.

It appears that this  forecast is more aggressive than JPMorgan’s earlier prediction that India would assemble 25 percent of total Apple iPhones worldwide by 2025.

China’s first population fall in six decades.

China’s population fell last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline in its citizen numbers with profound implications for its economy and the world.

The country’s National Bureau of Statistics reported a drop of roughly 850,000 people.

China’s birth rate has been declining for years, prompting a slew of policies to try to slow the trend.

But seven years after scrapping the one-child policy, it has entered what one official described as an “era of negative population growth”.

India’s top 1 percent richest own 40 percent of total wealth.

The richest one per cent in India now own more than 40 per cent of the country’s total wealth, while the bottom half of the population together share just 3 per cent of wealth, a new study showed on 16th january.

Releasing the India supplement of its annual inequality report on the first day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting here, rights group Oxfam International said that taxing India’s ten-richest at 5 per cent can fetch entire money to bring children back to school.

On gender inequality, the report said that female workers earned only 63 paise for every 1 rupee a male worker earned. For Scheduled Castes and rural workers, the difference is even starker—the former earned 55 per cent of what the advantaged social groups earned, and the latter earned only half of the urban earnings between 2018 and 2019.

India’s trade deficit with China crosses $100 billion for the first time.

The trade between India and China has touched an all-time high of USD 135.98 billion in 2022 while New Delhi’s trade deficit with Beijing crossed for the first time a USD 100 billion mark despite frosty bilateral relations, according to data released by the Chinese customs on Friday.

The total India-China trade for 2022 has climbed to 135.98 billion, overtaking the USD 125 billion mark a year earlier by registering an 8.4 per cent increase, according to the annual Chinese customs data.

India’s 75th Army day.

India celebrates Army Day on January 15 every year to commemorate the achievements of the first Indian Commander in Chief of the Indian Army — General (later Field Marshal) K.M. Cariappa.

On this day, Cariappa, who led Indian forces to victory in the 1947 war, took over the command of the Indian Army from General Sir FRR Bucher, the last British Commander-in-Chief in 1949 and became the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of Independent India. The Army Day is celebrated every year to honour Cariappa and the defence forces.

As part of an initiative to take major events to other parts of the country, away from the national capital region, the 75th Army Day will be held in Bengaluru this year.

The rationale behind the move is to bring about increased visibility of these events and secure greater engagement with the local population.

Gold hits all time high.

Indian gold futures hit a record high on Friday, tracking gains in overseas market, but the price rise dampened demand in the world’s second biggest consumer of the precious metal, dealers said.

Local gold futures rose to 56,245 rupees ($691.45) per 10 grams, surpassing the previous record of 56,191 rupees hit in August 2020.

Fears of recession and rising interest rates led to a fall in stock prices in the developed world. At the same time, the fall of cryptocurrencies prompted investors to move toward safe haven. That spurred the demand for gold.

Benguluru tops among all Indian cities for startup funding in 2022.

Bengaluru topped the startup funding chart in India with $10.8 billion in 2022, followed by Mumbai at $3.9 billion, and Gurugram at a distant $2.6 billion.

Startups based in Delhi and Chennai registered $1.2 billion each in funding, followed by Pune at $1 billion, according to data provided by Tracxn, a leading global market intelligence platform.

In 2021, Bengaluru-based startups had raised $20.8 billion in funding and Mumbai-based startups had pocketed $5.2 billion in the same year, showing the impact of the deepening funding winter last year.

There were 22 unicorns in 2022, compared to 46 in 2021, and average funding before the unicorn round was around $160 million.

It is now taking an average of 5.1 years from Series A funding to the Unicorn round for the Indian startups.

RRR’s “Nattu-Nattu” song wins prestigious Golden Globe award.

Naatu Naatu,’ a song featured in the S.S. Rajamouli blockbuster film RRR won the award for the ‘Best Song in a Motion Picture’ in the 2023 Golden Globe Awards, the ceremony of which was held on January 11.

The song was composed by veteran music director MM Keeravaani and crooned by Kaala Bhairava and Rahul Sipligunj. Director SS Rajamouli along with his team including Ram Charan, Jr NTR, and MM Keeravaani, among others, were present to represent the film.

This is the first Asian film song to win in the category at the Golden Globes.

India previously made its presence felt in the Best Original Score category over a decade ago, when AR Rahman won for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Rahman was also nominated in the same category for Boyle’s follow-up, 127 Hours. V Shantaram’s Do Aankhen Barah Haath made history when it won the equivalent of the Best Non-English Language Film in 1957. Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was won the Globe in the same category, even though it wasn’t a foreign production.

Indian rupees was worst performing asian currencies in 2022.

The Indian rupee ended 2022 as the worst-performing Asian currency with a fall of 10.14%, its biggest annual decline since 2013, as the dollar rocketed on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy stance to tame inflation.

The rupee finished the year at 82.72 to the U.S. currency, down from 74.33 at the end of 2021, while the dollar index was headed for its biggest yearly gain since 2015.

A rise in oil prices brought on by the crisis between Russia and Ukraine also hurt the rupee and resulted in India’s current account deficit reaching an absolute record high in the third quarter of that year.

Market participants anticipate that the rupee will trade with an appreciation bias in 2023.finding comfort in declining commodity prices and holding out hope that foreign investors will continue to purchase Indian stocks.

Heading into 2023, market participants believe the rupee would trade with an appreciation bias, finding relief from easing commodity prices and hopeful of foreign investors continuing to buy Indian equities.

India’s first underwater tunnel to be built in West Bengal, expected to start by december 2023.

The first underwater tunnel in India is being built as part of the East-West Metro Corridor’s project, and it will take about 45 seconds for trains to cover the 520-meter stretch. The tunnel that goes under the Hoogly river in West Bengal is being touted as the Indian version of Eurostar’s London-Paris corridor. An estimated cost of Rs 120 crores is being spent on the project.

The tunnel, which is about 2.5 kilometres long, is expected to be commissioned in 2023 following the completion of the section between Sealdah and Esplanade.

The tunnel runs through the Salt Lake Sector V IT hub metro station in the east to Howrah Maidan in the west under the river. The construction of the tunnel has already been completed, and it is expected to be operational in December 2023 following the completion of a 2.5-kilometer section between Sealdah and the Esplanade.

Health experts says the next 40 days will be crucial for India amid covid surge in China.

.

There is still no clarity on what is happening in China, with experts raising alarm that the country is witnessing a steep increase in the number of COVID-19 cases due to coronavirus variant BF.7.

The Union Health Ministry has, however, said that the next 40 days will be crucial in India – with the country likely to witness a surge in January.

“In the past, whenever a NBCOVID-19 wave was reported in India, it used to hit us in 30-35 days, starting from East Asia, it used to hit Europe in 10 days, moving towards America and the Pacific region, and then finally hitting India which would normally take 30 days,” a senior health ministry official told media, requesting anonymity.

The official added that the number of deaths and hospitalisations is likely to be low this time, even if India is hit by a COVID wave by the end of January.

Meanwhile, the Ministry is likely to make mandatory, from next week, negative RT-PCR reports for passengers arriving from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Thailand.

Filling up of ‘air-suvidha’ forms and 72-hour prior RT-PCR testing could be mandatory for arrivals from these countries.

The government has made random coronavirus testing mandatory for two per cent of passengers arriving in each international flight from December 24. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya is likely to visit the Delhi airport to take stock of testing and screening facilities there.

RBI emerges as the top buyer of gold among its global counterparts.

With 132.34 metric tonnes (MT) of gold purchase, RBI emerged as the largest buyer of the yellow metal among central banks between April 2020 and September 2022. Also, RBI was the top gold buyer among its peers in 2020 while it stood third in 2021. In 2020, it bought 41.68 MT of gold while in 2021 and 2022 (till September end) it bought 77.5 MT and 31.25 MT respectively.

In 2021 the huge gold buying by RBI occurred in the backdrop of falling yellow metal price in the global bullion market but War in Europe proved beneficial for gold as the price crossed $2,000 per ounce in the first week of March 2022. But, the yellow metal lost its gains in the middle of March as consistent rate hikes by the Federal Reserve strengthened Dollar Index and bonds emerged as attractive investment options for Institutions and retail investors.

 Every major central bank keeps a portion of its reserves in gold as it plays a fine hedging instrument in the time of uncertainty and economic turmoil. During the balance of payment crisis in 1990-91, Indian government pledged 67 MT of gold to the Bank of England and Union Bank of Switzerland. During uncertain economic conditions, gold price takes upward trajectory and it was evident in 2020 when Covid induced economic turmoil made gold price touch an all time high of $2,067 per ounce. Since then GDP across the globe has picked up. Demand for yellow metal reduced with economic stability and prices declined consistently in 2021.

Amid covid concerns, chinese are turning to black market India made meds.

Residents in China have been scouring the market for generic COVID-19 drugs and India seems to be the answer to their problem. In the recent past, the Chinese authorities have approved two Covid antivirals – Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Azvudine – for the treatment. While China has ran out of the medicine, the Indian market is filled with it and is slowly becoming the next favourite destination.

In the past few months, topics like “anti-Covid Indian generic drugs sold at 1,000 yuan (US$144) per box” has been making the rounds of the Chinese social media. Platforms like Weibo and WeChat are filled with such queries and experts believe that black market deals are being conducted on them.

While the distribution of drugs which are not approved in China is not illegal, there can be penalties imposed on the illegal imports. Even the doctors in China have warned the public against buying drugs on the black market with several patients displaying massive side effects to the medicines.