Airtel beats Jio to become the top telco in India; Clubhouse rose to 8.1 mn users
+ TCS to set up an IT digital hub in Kerala; Bitcoin achieves a market cap of $1 trillion
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Welcome to a fresh edition of NextBigWhat’s newsletter, which brings you all the important headlines from the tech and business space.
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#ShortNewsOverChai
Bharti Airtel adds 5.5 million new subscribers in Dec 2020, beats Reliance Jio to become the top telco in India
Jio added 3.2 million subscribers in Dec 2020. The overall telecom subscriber base fell marginally to 1,173 million in Dec 2020.
TCS will invest Rs 1,500 crore to set up an IT digital hub in Kerala; Signs an MoU with the Kerala government
The project would generate 20,000 jobs.
Elon Musk considers Cryptocurrency over ‘dumb’ Cash; says Bitcoin investment is ‘adventurous enough’
A single unit of Bitcoin now costs $54,150; prices have surged 60% so far. It achieves a market capitalization of $1 trillion for the first time!
Device-as-a-service (DaaS) adoption in India up 65% in the past 11 months; Mainly used by SMEs to reduce operating costs
Led by gains in FMCG, Pharma, and Banking and Financial services.
Report: Pandemic has disrupted labour markets; 18 million Indian workers will be forced to search for new jobs by 2030
Impacts will be felt on low-wage retail, food, and hospitality workers.020.
FYI: Clubhouse app downloads rose from 3.5 to 8.1 million between Feb 1-16
The presence of Elon Musk and Zuckerberg may have fuelled demand.
EA acquires British game studio ‘Codemasters’ in a $1.2 billion deal
Studio behind the Need For Speed, Real Racing will have games like Grid, Dirt Project Cars and others.
WhatsApp: One will not be able to send or read messages from the app if users do not accept the new privacy policy
WhatsApp will display a banner to better explain the policy updates
Quote of the day:
“To build greater resilience, enterprises must open themselves to more digitally-led partnerships” - Accenture
It also states, “Leadership is critical as every business becomes a tech business”. This is essentially, what FWD app enables. Give it a go!
#Dhandha Forecast
Around 77% of the Indian start-up founders prefer growth over profitability for 2021
Strong recovery in the economy provided optimism for growth in start-ups.
Indian IT players are well-positioned to capture at least 20% share of trillion-dollar over the next 4-5 years: HCL CEO
As per Nasscom, Indian IT industry revenues are set to grow by 2.3% to USD 194 billion in 2020-21.
Indian SaaS companies to reach $18-20 billion in revenue, 7-9% share of the global SaaS market by 2022: SaaS Report
The availability of talent, cost advantage, an SMB market make a strategic location for SaaS unicorns.
More #GlobalTechNews
Enforcement Directorate to begin the second phase of investigation on Amazon, based on the Reuters report
“We will be examining the findings of the story; the subject is not entirely new for us,” the ED.
Australian PM Scott Morrison discusses media bill with PM Modi, seeks support to fight the battle against Facebook
Morrison is not willing to bend to Facebook’s “threat”. After Facebook’s news ban, Australia’s ABC News tops the App Store’s news app charts.
UK Supreme Court: Uber drivers must be treated as workers and not self-employed; Gig workers win the battle
Drivers now can claim minimum wage and holiday pay.
Bill Gates: “I would rather dedicate funds addressing to climate change and COVID-19 vaccinations than rockets”
Unlike Musk, Gates doesn’t think going to Mars is that important.
Reports: Tesla and Toyota amongst the Top 10 Car List of the year due to their safety and “Green Choice”
Green Choice vehicles emit the lowest greenhouse gases and other emissions.
#RandomlySpeaking
India plans to privatize Varanasi, Bhubaneshwar, Amritsar, Indore, Raipur, and Trichy airports
The govt plans to privatize about 30-35 airports over the next 5 yrs.
Supreme Court says “banks cannot open lockers without issuing a written notice to the owner of the locker”
SC asks RBI to frame rules for all banks regarding locker management.