by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Medium Enterprise, News
Mumbai (IANS): Automobile major Tata Motors will increase prices of its passenger vehicles range by up to Rs 25,000 starting April 2019.
The company said in a statement on Saturday that the prices will be hiked due to rising input costs and external economic conditions.
According to Mayank Pareek, President, Passenger Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors: “The changing market conditions, rising input costs and various external economic factors have compelled us to consider this price increase.”
“We are confident of maintaining our growth trajectory in the coming months on the back of our robust portfolio consisting of segment-leading products like Tiago, Hexa, Tigor, Nexon and Harrier.”
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Investing, Medium Enterprise
Bengaluru : Leading ride-hailing cab aggregator Ola on Friday said it raised Rs 400 crore from its early investors, including Tiger Global and Matrix India, to fund its electric mobility business.
“The Rs 400 crore fund from the first round of investment will be used for rolling out one million electric vehicles by 2022 as part of our ‘Mission: Electric’,” said the city-based app-enabling firm in a statement here.
The nine-year-old firm had set up in 2018 Ola Electric Mobility Ltd to use battery-run cabs as a pilot project at Nagpur in Maharashtra.
“We are running several pilots to deploy electric vehicles and charging solutions, including battery swapping stations, electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler services,” said the company in the statement.
Ola executives Anand Shah and Ankit Jain will drive the new business to make electric mobility viable at scale, enabling more clean kilometres on roads across the country.
“Our mission is to enable sustainable mobility for everyone. India can leapfrog problems of pollution and energy security by moving to electric mobility, create hundreds of jobs and economic opportunity,” said Ola Co-Founder and Chief Executive Bhavish Aggarwal in the statement.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Medium Enterprise
Chennai : Two and three wheeler maker TVS Motor Company on Friday said it logged three per cent sales growth last month.
In a statement, the company said it sold 299,353 units last month up from 290,673 units sold in February 2018.
During the period under review, the company sold 285,611 two wheelers and 13,742 three wheelers as against 280,942 two wheelers and 9,731 three wheelers sold in February 2018.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Commodities, Commodities News, Economy, Markets, Medium Enterprise, News
Canberra : Australia and Brazil have decided to escalate a trade dispute with India over sugar subsidies before the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Canberra said.
Trade Minister Simon Birmingham announced this late Wednesday after it was decided that subsidies paid to Indian sugar farmers was leading to an abundant global supply of sugar and significantly lower prices, disadvantaging other country’s farmers.
The global sugar price has hit a 10-year low, crippling sugar farmers in Australia who have also had to combat drought and floods, he said.
“That’s hurting canegrowers and sugar millers whether they’re in Australia, Brazil, or any other country in the world,” Birmingham told reporters.
Birmingham said that Australia has voiced its concerns to India to no avail, leaving the government with “no other choice but to initiate formal WTO dispute action, together with Brazil”, Xinhua news agency said.
“Last year, we saw around 1 billion Australian dollars (AUD) of additional new subsidies to Indian sugar farmers,” he said.
According to the Australian Sugar Mining Council, the subsidies could amount to 360 million AUD in losses for Australian farmers over the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 financial years.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Sales, SMEs, Technology
By V.S. Chandrasekar,
Barcelona : Dashing hopes of Indian consumers willing to acquire the just-released foldable phone from Huawei any time soon, the company says it is not planning to bring a 4G version of the Mate X shortly and that its availability will depend on the 5G network in the country.
Although India is targeting 2020 for 5G roll-out, the country is yet to allocate 5G spectrum to operators even for 5G trial of use cases.
Expensive at 2,299 euros (about Rs 1,85,000), the foldable Mate X is a 5G phone and as the US has been raising security concerns over use of Huawei 5G equipment, the European market could be the first to see the release of the phone.
Huawei showcased the foldable phone at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Barcelona, on Sunday, but did not allow the visiting journalists to touch the device.
“We expect to start shipping the device form the middle of this year through the carrier channel. Making the device available in the open market may take some time,” Kevin Ho, President of the Handset Business, Huawei Consumer Business Group, told IANS here.
Replying to a question about producing foldable phone for the 4G network, he said that although the company was not focusing on bringing a 4G to suit markets like India, it could consider such a proposal at a later stage.
Powered by the company’s Kirin 980 processor, the Huawei Mate X comes with a 6.6-inch dual display panel and offers a FullView display.
It houses massive 4,500 mAH dual battery and several industry-first features, including a new superfast charging capability that can reach 85 per cent battery in just 30 minutes.
The phone features a flexible OLED panel and a falcon wing mechanical hinge.
“Creating the foldable phone’s hinge is the most challenging part for our engineers,” Ho said. “We had to design the hinge to avoid layers like formation that one gets when one folds a book or a notebook. This was a big challenge and they had to use a sophisticated technology,” he added.
While Ho asserted that the phone was ready for mass production, he acknowledged that the company was still doing several tests and was also in talks with app developers so that apps can be optimised for a foldable device.
The 8GB + 512 GB phone, which can be easily unfolded at the click of a button, now has only one colour, Interstellar Blue, and comes with a full protection case. Huawei said it might introduce new colours for the device at a later stage.
When unfolded, the 6.6-inch dual display panel transforms into an 8-inch tablet only 5.4mm thick.
While unveiling the device on Sunday at a packed hall here, Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu claimed that the phone offers best selfie camera. But the company did not reveal the camera specifications.
“The phone will provide users more privacy and security protection,” he said.
“Today, many carriers are using NSA (non-standalone) architecture, working together with 4G. But the future of 5G is SA (standalone) architecture.
“Mate X is the only phone now with the capability to work in both the architecture. So this phone is not only for today, but also for future 5G,” Yu noted.
Ho parried questions on security concerns raised by countries like the US which accuse Huawei of passing on data to the Chinese government.
“We don’t want to talk about it today. We want to focus on technology and our new products today,” he said.
(V.S. Chandrasekar can be reached at chandru.v@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Medium Enterprise, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : You may soon login to Facebook with Blockchain-based authentication, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated.
In a public interview with Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain late on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said he is “potentially interested” in putting the Facebook login on the Blockchain technology.
“I’m thinking about going back to decentralised or Blockchain authentication. Although I haven’t figured out a way to make this work out but this is around authentication and basically granting access to your information and to different services,” Zuckerberg told Zittrain.
According to him, Blockchain could give users more powers when granting data access to third-party apps.
Facebook last year promoted one of its senior engineers Evan Cheng as the Director of Engineering at its recently launched Blockchain division.
Earlier in May, Facebook set up a group within the company to explore Blockchain technology and its potential use for the platform, headed by Messenger chief David Marcus.
Media reports also said Facebook was exploring to develop its own cryptocurrency.
Facebook has over 2.3 billion users globally and launching cryptocurrency will allow them make payments using a virtual currency like Bitcoin.
In a statement, Facebook said: “Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of Blockchain technology”.
According to The Verge, the risk of further data-sharing scandals is one of the main reasons why Facebook is wary of implementing the change.
“You basically take your information, you store it on some decentralised system and you have the choice of whether to log in different places and you’re not going through an intermediary. There’s a lot of things that I think would be quite attractive about that,” said Zuckerberg.
—IANS
