Endeavor Careers Choicest Blogs Weekly Current Affairs January 2022, Week 05

Welcome to the Endeavor Editors’ Weekly Current Affairs Choicest Blog series. Get a weekly roundup – on news from business, economy, markets, policy, and more. A quick capsule format news summary and update to keep you abreast with all the latest current affairs.

1) International News and Global Economy

Ukraine crisis: Russian attack would be ‘horrific’, US warns

Top US General Mark Milley has said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be “horrific” and would lead to a significant number of casualties.Gen Milley described the build-up of 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine’s border as the largest since the Cold War.But US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said conflict could still be avoided through the use of diplomacy.Russia denies plans to invade and says US support for Ukraine is a threat.US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the US was committed to helping Ukraine defend itself, including by providing more weaponry.”Conflict is not inevitable. There is still time and space for diplomacy,” Mr Austin said, calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to de-escalate the situation.

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US and Germany step up pipeline warnings to Russia | DW News

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Explained: Why is Russia’s Putin drawing ‘red lines’ over Ukraine?

Ukraine has become the main flashpoint in Moscow’s relations with the West, with Russian troops massed near its border and NATO’s forces on standby in case Russia attacks its neighbour. Read why Russian President Vladimir Putin is so preoccupied with Ukraine and why he has chosen to bring the crisis to a head now.

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UK to offer NATO ‘major military deployment’ in Europe

Britain is preparing to offer NATO a “major” deployment of troops, weapons, warships and jets in Europe, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced, to respond to rising “Russian hostility” towards Ukraine.The offer, set to be made to NATO military chiefs next week, could see London double the approximately 1,150 UK troops currently in eastern European countries and “defensive weapons” sent to Estonia, his office said.”This package would send a clear message to the Kremlin — we will not tolerate their destabilising activity, and we will always stand with our NATO allies in the face Russian hostility,” Johnson said in a statement late Saturday.Relations between Russia and the West are at their lowest point since the Cold War after Moscow deployed tens of thousands of troops on the border of Ukraine.

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Economic crisis tightens grip on Sri Lanka’s hinterland

The country’s fast-depleting foreign reserves — $3.1 billion at the end of 2021 — have pushed the Rajapaksa administration into a corner. Scores of consumers are struggling to afford essentials such as rice, pulses, vegetables, fish, and meat whose prices are soaring, amid import restrictions imposed to save foreign exchange. Consumer price inflation hit 14% last week. Finding LPG cylinders, in short supply, remains a challenge.The story of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis came to the fore amid the pandemic, which dealt a severe blow to the country’s crucial, foreign exchange earning sectors. Colombo has foreign debt obligations totalling nearly $7 billion this year. India and China have extended emergency assistance by way of loans and currency swaps, but Sri Lanka is still on the edge. The national polity, policy makers and think tanks are debating if the country should opt for an IMF bailout. Some analysts are even arguing that Sri Lanka must prepare to default, and subsequently restructure its debt, although the government is determined to keep the country’s unblemished record in foreign debt servicing.

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Sri Lanka’s Economic & Food Emergency | What caused the crisis &is Rajapaksa Govt doing enough?

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Nearly 40% of people in Ethiopia’s Tigray lack adequate food – WFP

Nearly 40% of people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region do not have adequate food after 15 months of conflict, according to an assessment released by the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).The war broke out in November 2020 and pits the Ethiopian government and its allies against Tigrayan forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party that controls Tigray region.The conflict has killed thousands and displaced millions across three regions in Ethiopia and into neighbouring Sudan.The report comes as international concerns over humanitarian access to Tigray region mount again.WFP said that although the ability of aid workers to enter Tigray improved during the summer months and “kept starvation at bay” for people there, no aid convoy has reached Tigray since mid-December.The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday that all international aid groups operating in Tigray had run out of fuel.

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IMF warns China’s property stress poses spillover risk

A funding crisis battering China’s big property developers could start to shake the wider economy and global markets, the IMF warned, saying deeper reforms were needed to fully curb the threat.The International Monetary Fund’s report comes as property firms in the world’s second-biggest economy struggle with liquidity problems as Beijing looks to curb excessive debt and rampant consumer speculation in the sector.Multiple Chinese developers have also defaulted on bond payments in recent months, piling pressure on the wider economy and rattling investors.”Property plays a large role in both China’s economy and financial system, accounting for about a quarter of both total fixed investment and bank lending over the past five years before the pandemic,” the IMF said in a report released.It warned that with developers beyond Evergrande also facing funding problems, there were “concerns of negative spillovers to the broader economy and global markets”.

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AllianceBernstein Sees ‘Extreme Stress’ in China Property Market

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Doctors advise not to panic about new variant NeoCov

Even as reports emerge of a new lethal variant called ‘NeoCov’ that requires only one mutation to infiltrate human cells, doctors have advised people not to panic.NeoCoV has been discovered by scientists from the Wuhan University in China in a bat population in South Africa.While it has only been known to spread among these animals to date, the variant has shown the potential to penetrate human cells in the same way as the SARS-CoV-2 virus.According to the research on NeoCov, posted on preprint and not been peer-reviewed yet, the variant carries the combination of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS)-CoV mortality rate (where one in every three infected persons may die) and the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus’ high transmission rate.

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NeoCoV Explained: Know everything about the new virus that is creating panic | India Today

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IMF urges El Salvador to scale back its Bitcoin push

The International Monetary Fund said that El Salvador should dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury.The recommendation was part of the international lender’s report on El Salvador’s economy and went beyond its statement earlier this week urging El Salvador to drop Bitcoin as legal tender.The trust fund was intended to allow the automatic conversion of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars, El Salvador’s other currency to encourage people wary of adopting the highly-volatile digital currency.The IMF also recommended eliminating the offer of $30 as an incentive for people to start using the digital wallet “Chivo” and increasing regulation of the digital wallet to protect consumers. It suggested there could be benefits to the use of Chivo, but only using dollars, not Bitcoin.

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IMF urges El Salvador to reverse its decision to make Bitcoin legal tender

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James Webb Space Telescope turns on its Antenna; NASA reveals first Interstellar Target

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) arrived at its destination at the second Lagrange point on January 25, a milestone that has set the stage for historic cosmic discoveries. Currently in its commissioning phase, Webb is 15 lakh kilometres from Earth and the engineers behind this multi-billion dollar equipment are aligning its mirrors to prepare it for the mission ahead. In the process, NASA said that Webb’s ‘high-gain’ antenna has been turned on and revealed the telescope’s first target out there.In a new blog post, NASA revealed that Webb will begin its exploration journey by pointing at a Sun-like star named HD 84406. This star is about 260 light-years away from Earth and will be used to gather engineering data so that engineers can align Webb’s mirrors for further observations. According to the agency, Webb’s target is located in the Ursa Major constellation and has been selected as Webb can spot it at this time of the year.

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James Webb Space Telescope: How will it work? – BBC News

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2) India

Covid update

Covid-19 Numbers Explained: The third wave has likely peaked in India; here is why

The daily national count of Covid-19 cases has been falling for a week now. Active cases have been going down for four days. The weekly positivity rate has remained almost stable for a week.By all indications, the third wave seems to have already peaked, and it has happened at a level well below the peak of the second wave.The cases can rise again, but current trends suggest that it is unlikely to go very high.If the current trends hold, and cases continue to decline, India would have defied predictions of the third wave peak reaching 8 or 10 lakh cases a day. Also, India’s third wave trajectory would be remarkably different from most other badly affected countries, where the peak of the Omicron wave was two to four times higher than their previous peaks.

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Other updates

After NYT report on Pegasus, fresh plea in SC seeks probe into arms deal between India and Israel

A fresh plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a probe into the alleged defence deal between India and Israel to buy sophisticated weapons and Pegasus spyware.The petition has been filed by senior advocate ML Sharma who sought the formation of a three-member committee to investigate the matter.According to an NYT report, India bought the Israeli Pegasus spyware in 2017 as part of a USD 2-billion defence deal of sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear.In October last year, the Supreme Court constituted a three-member independent expert panel to probe the alleged use of the Israeli spyware Pegasus, observing the state cannot get a “free pass” every time the spectre of national security is raised and that its mere invocation cannot render the judiciary a “mute spectator” and be the bugbear it shies away from.

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Govt notifies drone certification scheme to boost indigenous manufacturing

The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has notified a drone certification scheme to ensure minimum safety and quality requirements as it will boost indigenous manufacturing. “The drone certification scheme notified on January 26, 2022, under Rule 7 of the liberalized Drone Rules, 2021 will help in simpler, faster and transparent type-certification of drones,” the MoCA said on Twitter.Along with the liberalised drone rules, airspace map, the PLI (production-linked incentive) scheme and the single window DigitalSky Platform, this will help drone manufacturing industry in India, grow, it stated.”Another step in making India the drone hub of the world by 2030,” it mentioned.

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3) Economy

High inflation to stick this year, denting global growth

Persistently high inflation will haunt the world economy this year, according to a Reuters poll of economists who trimmed their global growth outlook on worries of slowing demand and the risk interest rates would rise faster than assumed so far. This represents a sea change from just three months ago, when most economists were siding with central bankers in their then-prevalent view that a surge in inflation, driven in part by pandemic-related supply bottlenecks, would be transitory. In the latest quarterly Reuters surveys of over 500 economists taken throughout January, economists raised their 2022 inflation forecasts for most of the 46 economies covered. While price pressures are still expected to ease in 2023, the inflation outlook is much stickier than three months ago.

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Economic indicators flash early warning sign for India’s rebound

India’s economic momentum remained stable in December even as the first signs of slowing output growth appeared across some industries.That’s the reading from the overall activity tracker comprising eight high-frequency indicators compiled by Bloomberg News.Activity in India’s dominant services sector expanded for the fifth month, and manufacturing for the sixth, although growth in new work and production lost some momentum, according to IHS Markit. While the composite index slipped to 56.4 last month from 59.2 in November, it held up above its long-run average.Exports grew a robust 39% year-on-year in December to $37.8 billion, the highest monthly tally on record led by commodities, chemicals and electronics. However, the trade deficit remained elevated at close to $22 billion on the back of strong imports.

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IMF cuts India’s GDP forecast

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut India’s economic growth forecast to 9 per cent for the current fiscal year ending March 31, joining a host of agencies which have downgraded their projections on concerns over the impact of a spread of new variant of coronavirus on business activity and mobility.In its latest update of World Economic Outlook, IMF, which had in October last year projected a 9.5 per cent GDP growth for India, put the forecast for the next fiscal FY23 (April 2022 to March 2023) at 7.1 per cent.The Indian economy had contracted by 7.3 per cent in the 2020-21 fiscal year. The IMF’s forecast for the current financial year is less than 9.2 per cent that the government’s Central Statistics Office has predicted and 9.5 per cent that the Reserve Bank of India has estimated.

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4) Markets, Banking and Finance

Bad bank starts rolling, to start by taking up Rs 50,000 crore bad loans

The National Asset Reconstruction Co (NARCL) a government backed distressed asset aggregator will buy 15 accounts aggregating to Rs 50,000 crore before the end of the fiscal year. Overall 38 accounts totalling Rs 83,000 crore by banks which will be transferred to the NARCL, State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Dinesh Khara said.The Rs 83,000 crore that banks have agreed to transfer is less than Rs 2 lakh crore envisaged last year. Khara said that is because some assets have been resolved in the last one year. However, banks may consider transferring some more assets later next fiscal.NARCL will acquire the assets at 15% cash with security receipts issued for the remaining 85% for which the government has approved a five year guarantee of Rs 30,600 crore which will back stop banks in case of lower realisation.”It is expected that this model will free bandwidth as well as capital for banks and hence will be a more efficient way of recovering bad debts,” Khara said.

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USISPF recommends urgent action to address distortions and inefficiencies in the banking sector

Washington DC-based US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), which represents leading Fortune 500 companies, in a set of recommendations argued that to improve the ease of doing business for institutional investors, the process to register as Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) should be streamlined, and the ability to adopt a single window clearance will enable smoother setting up of companies in India.Urging full transparency in the upcoming sale of shares in Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), USISPF said that reforms in the insurance sector should include eliminating the cap on foreign direct investment, permitting commercial credit cards for settlement of cashless claims to healthcare service providers and allowing insurance companies to set the commissions they pay to agents.

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5) Business

Apple hits revenue record despite chip supply shortage

Apple reported record $124 billion quarterly revenue on Thursday, despite a global chip pinch and shifting impacts of the pandemic that have weighed down other big tech players.The expectations-beating results offered signals that the coronavirus-era tech boom may not be quite over yet, even as diminishing growth shadows firms like lockdown lifestyle champ Netflix.Overall, the tech giant posted a net profit of $34.6 billion in its first quarter, compared with $28.7 billion in the same quarter the prior year, according to the earnings report.The supply chain mess that has disrupted the making and delivery of products to consumers is not disappearing, but Apple said it expected less impact in the coming months.

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Google to invest up to $1 billion in Airtel; to co-create India-specific 5G use cases

Google will invest up to $1 billion in Bharti Airtel as the two companies explore ways to get more Indians online and look to cooperate on 5G use cases specific to the South Asian nation besides delivering enterprise services.Bharti Airtel is the second telco after Reliance Jio Infocomm to receive funding from the US tech giant. Google needs more and more people on the Internet which India with 1.3 billion people offers while telcos like Airtel and Jio needs more Indians to use smartphones to drive up data usage and revenue, say experts. Besides, the funds will be helpful for Airtel, India’s second largest carrier, as it prepares for 5G auctions slated for mid-2022 and subsequent network rollouts.Google will invest $700 million (Rs5,224.4 crore) from its $10 billion ‘Google for India Digitization Fund’ to buy a 1.28% stake in Airtel through a preferential issue of shares at Rs734 a unit

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Nitin Soni&Tarun Pathak discuss Google’s Investment in Bharti Airtel | Bazaar Corporate Radar

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6) Technology

Dealshare turns unicorn after $165 million funding from Tiger Global, Alpha Wave

Social commerce grocery startupDealshare has raised $165 million (Rs 1,239 crore) from investors led by Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global, making it the fifth Indian unicorn of the year. The company is valued at more than $1.6 billion.The funds raised in this round will be utilized to invest in technology and data science, as well as a ten-fold expansion in its logistics infrastructure and to increase geographic reach. In addition, it will establish a sizable offline store franchise network.

Founded in 2018 by Rajat Shikhar, Sankar Bora, SourjyenduMedda and Vineet Rao, Dealshare sells daily essentials and targets the middle-income demographic through a community group buying model.Rival Meesho has also ventured into selling groceries through a community group buying model, and so has social commerce startupCitymall. In September 2021, Meesho had raised $570 million from US-based asset manager Fidelity and Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital.

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Zomato picks up stakes in Adonmo and UrbanPiper; company board approves NBFC incorporation

Zomato a food-delivery and restaurant discovery platform has informed the Indian stock exchanges that it is investing in digital advertising company, Adonmo and in food ordering system, UrbanPiper. The deals have been approved by the company’s board of directors.The company’s board has also approved the incorporation of a non-banking finance company (NBFC), which will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zomato. While the name of the subsidiary is still to be decided, Zomato is in process of acquiring the NBFC license. The company will look to provide loans to its restaurant partners. The fresh investments by Zomato are a part of its larger strategy to back startups. Last year, the company said it plans to invest $1 billion in Indian startups over the next two years. It had announced investments in fitness platform, Curefit, hyperlocal discovery business, Magicpin and logistics firm Shiprocket.

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Ola plans aggressive push for Ola Dash in crowded quick-commerce arena

Ola is planning an aggressive push for its quick commerce service, Ola Dash, by setting up 500 dark stores across 20 cities in the next six months.The move comes at a time when several platforms—including Swiggy and Zomato—are eyeing a bigger play in this high-growth sector. Others like Zomato-backed BlinkIt (formerly Grofers), Dunzo and Mumbai-based Zepto are also amping up their offerings in the instant delivery category. Earlier this week, Swiggy raised $700 million in a funding round led by US asset manager Invesco at a valuation of $10.7 billion. Zepto last week raised $100 million at a valuation of $570 million. Reliance Industries recently led a $240-million funding round in Dunzo for a significant minority stake.Ola Dash currently services nine cities through 200 dark stores, offering more than 2,500 stock-keeping units. It aims to clock more than 500,000 orders per day by the year-end.

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BharatPe to overhaul governance after Ashneer Grover row

IPO-hopeful BharatPe is aiming to quell investor disquiet over a public row involving personal investments by one of its cofounders with an independent audit to bolster internal governance rules, two sources with direct knowledge said.The audit will assess if BharatPe’s senior executives are making proper internal disclosures about personal investments and check for conflicts, leading to a new code of conduct, one of the sources told Reuters.BharatPe, which allows shop owners to make digital payments through QR codes, has come under intense investor and Indian media scrutiny after cofounder Ashneer Grover sought damages from Uday Kotak, head of Kotak Mahindra Bank, alleging that the bank declined financing for a personal investment.

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7) Politics

Amid defections playing key role, states head for Assembly polls

Defections are de rigueur in election season as leaders move to other parties when denied a ticket or in search of greener pastures as they feel the opponent is likely to form the government. Parties on the rise also poach leaders to bolster their chances on seats they are weak. However, the ongoing Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur have seen a conspicuous number of defections, forcing political parties to make changes in their poll strategies and even engage in a counter-poaching exercise.

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8) Sports

Aussie Ash Barty defeats American Danielle Collins to win Australian Open

Ashleigh Barty ended a 44-year drought Saturday by becoming the first Australian to win an Australian Open singles title since 1978.The world No. 1 and crowd favourite capped off a dominant fortnight at Melbourne Park, overcoming American 27th seed Danielle Collins 6-3, 7-6(2) on Rod Laver Arena, to clinch her home Slam without dropping a single set.Barty, 25, has now won three of the four major trophies and is a perfect 3-0 in Slam finals.Her maiden Grand Slam title came at the French Open in 2019 where she defeated Marketa Vondrousova in straight sets. Last year Barty added Wimbledon to her resume with victory over two-time tournament champion Karolina Pliskova.Barty joins Serena Williams as the only active women’s player to have won at least three different majors and the season-ending WTA Finals.

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Billion-dollar brand: CSK is now India’s first unicorn sports enterprise

IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK) has become the country’s first sports unicorn, with its market cap touching a high of ?7,600 crore (more than $1 billion) and its share in the grey market trading in the ?210-?225 price band.The Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led CSK, which won its fourth IPL title in Dubai last year, now has a market cap more than its parent entity, India Cements. On Friday, India Cements’ market cap stood at ?6,869 crore.CSK’s latest IPL victory and the addition of two franchises to the league have caused the Chennai team’s market cap to surge ahead.

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India’s only athlete at the 2022 Winter Olympics

Arif Khan, an alpine skier from Kashmir, is the only athlete representing India at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.He will compete in two events – alpine skiing slalom and giant slalom. He is the first Indian athlete to qualify for two different events at the Winter Olympics. Arif hails from Tangmarg hill station, near Gulmarg in Kashmir. He attributes his success to his father, Yaseen Khan a ski tour operator. Yaseen introduced Arif to skiing when he was less than 10-years-old.His entry into the Olympics has put a spotlight on India’s winter sports talents again.He is hopeful that if the infrastructure is upgraded in Kashmir, India will have top-level athletes represent the country in winter sports.

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9) Opinion

Air India turnaround to cost Tatas over $5 billion, say industry experts

The Tata Group is making a bet of over $5 billion, or about Rs 37,500 crore, over the next five years on Air India to turn around the national carrier, industry experts said. The amount, one of them estimated, covers the Rs 15,000 crore of debt that the group has taken over and losses it will have to fund.To make the business profitable, the automobile-to-aviation conglomerate should have a single airline entity instead of three, increase ticket prices by at least 15%, rationalise capacity by chopping off loss-making routes, get rid of the Boeing 777 planes in their current configuration, and concentrate on the international product, experts said.Reworking onerous engineering contracts and rationalising workforce will be a huge challenge, they added.Air India’s accumulated losses at the end of March stood at Rs 83,916 crore. AirAsia India’s FY21 loss came in at Rs 1,532 crore and Vistara’s was Rs 1,612 crore.The largest expenses, aside of funding losses as well as debt, will be on plane refurbishment, the experts said.

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After almost seven decades, Tatas regain control of Air India. But the sale does little to shore up government’s coffers

Almost seven decades after ceding control of the airline, the Tata group on Thursday regained Air India. Last year, the group had emerged as the winning bidder for the airline, with a bid of Rs 18,000 crore. With this acquisition, the Tatas will gain 100 per cent ownership in Air India, Air India Express, and a 50 per cent stake in the ground handling firm AI-SATS. This sale marks the first major outright privatisation of a public sector entity in recent years.Though this is a milestone, by itself, it does little to shore up the government’s disinvestment proceeds. Of the Rs 18,000 crore winning bid, only Rs 2,700 crore is to be paid to the government, while the group will retain the balance, Rs 15,300 crore, in the form of debt. Data from DIPAM shows that the government’s proceeds from disinvestment remain well short of the target — as against a target of Rs 1.75 lakh crore, collections till now had been only Rs 9,330 crore. On its part, the government is hopeful of the LIC IPO culminating by the end of March, though, considering the intricacies of such a transaction, it is not clear if it can be concluded by then. Similarly, the privatisation process of BPCL as well as that of the public sector banks is also expected to spill over into the next year.

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Why LIC IPO & Air India sale is a one-two punch to further detoxify India’s fake socialist economy

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Indian economy needs more hand-holding, fiscal correction can wait: Report

Warning that any sudden and sharp fiscal consolidation steps can throttle the nascent and uneven recovery of the Indian economy, a Wall Street brokerage has said the Budget should instead focus on boosting overall demand, from rural consumption in particular, and invest more in infrastructure.The successive waves of the pandemic has made it more difficult to reduce government debt as a share of GDP in the medium-term, said Goldman Sachs in a pre-Budget note.It thus pencilled in a gradual fiscal consolidation with FY23 falling by 50 basis points to 6.3 per cent from 6.8 per cent in FY22, and set a target of bringing it down to 4.5 per cent by FY26.The brokerage believes that even though allocation for COVID related expenses will come down, the government will have to continue to focus on welfare spending and also expects capex to increase 12 per cent.But the higher spending will most likely be financed by higher tax revenue in FY23 and deferred asset sales from the current year, helping reduce the deficit.

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Cash flows and margins to guide start-ups, says Kumar Mangalam Birla

As the valuations of start-ups reach record high, key financial metrics such as healthy cash flows and gross margins will guide future behaviour and trends, chairman of Aditya Birla group, Kumar Mangalam Birla said. Birla said the world is awash in capital and there has perhaps rarely been a better time to be an entrepreneur, as everyone from angel investors to public markets line up to back ideas. “The competition for investment opportunities and the fear of missing out (FOMO) have driven up valuations of many fledgling companies to stratospheric levels,” he said.“From Aditya Birla Group’s experience in multiple businesses, across multiple geographies, I can say that in the long run sustainable and successful businesses are those that generate tangible profits, prosperity, livelihoods quarter after quarter. Valuation and business longevity will automatically follow,” said Birla.

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Why the geopolitical tensions in Yemen are a matter of concern for India

What began as a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government in Yemen has spiralled into a seven-year-long civil war, inflicting casualties well outside its borders, driving up crude oil prices and taking a toll on the global economy. The geopolitical tension in the West Asian country is bad news for India, which is already struggling to tackle a surging oil import bill.Seven Indian nationals are aboard a ship that was seized by Houthi rebels earlier this month. India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, TS Tirumurti, spoke at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Yemen and said: “Seven Indian nationals are among the crew members on board the ship and we are deeply concerned about their safety and well-being. We urge the Houthis to immediately release the crew members and the vessel. The Houthis also bear the responsibility of ensuring the safety of the crew members till their release.”The Government of India has further expressed concerns about the continued intensification of military operations in Yemen and called upon all parties to the conflict to immediately cease fighting.

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The Google-Airtel deal and its implications in India

Google’s plan to invest $1 billion in India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. and their cooperation in the cloud space will accelerate the Mountain View, California-headquartered internet giant’s digital ambitions in one of its largest markets, making it a stronger competitor to Microsoft Corp. and Amazon Web Services.Airtel already serves over 2,000 large businesses and around 1 million small businesses in India. As these businesses digitise, it is a win-win for the cloud providers to have access to this user base, say analysts.Gartner projects the cloud market in India will grow at 31% compounded annually over the next five years to $16 billion by 2025, underlining the growth opportunity. Execution will be key, but if done right, this will be beneficial to Google Cloud in growing its business beyond the top 6-10 cities in India, said Naveen Mishra, senior director analyst at Gartner.

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10) Weekly special

Scale to Succeed | Supercharging the EV Revolution

From mapping out future trends in the EV industry to sharing how the banking community can make finance more accessible for EVs, hear from industry leaders on ‘Scale to Succeed’

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With that, we come to an end for our Weekly Current Affairs January 2022 -Week5. Hope you have liked it. Write your feedback in the comments below and let  us know if there is anything else you would like us to cover.

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