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Hello,

More Indians featured on the Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2024 than ever before.

Among the 200 Indians on the list this year, 25 featured on it for the first time. The total wealth of Indians on the list reached $954 billion—up from the previous year’s total of $675 billion held by 169 people.

While the wealthiest was (no surprise) Mukesh Ambani, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath was the youngest billionaire on the list.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has upgraded India’s economic outlook, projecting the country’s economy to grow at 7.5% in 2024 on the back of robust activity in services and industry.

Elsewhere, PhonePe said its users can now make payments in Singapore through UPI. Under the collaboration with Singapore Tourism Board, Indian travellers can transact with over 8,000 merchants in the city-state.

In other news, Zypp Electric reported a 3X growth in its revenues—from Rs 115 crore earned in FY23 to Rs 353 crore made in the fiscal year gone by. The electric fleet service provider also hit operational profitability led by a jump in its fleet size and expanding operations beyond Delhi-NCR. 

ICYMI: Ola Electric’s autonomous scooter can take sharp turns.

Oh, and have you heard of Norman Bel Geddes? He’s partly the reason why our cities are dominated by cars and highways.

His 1939 exhibition called “Futurama” changed the course of global cities. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Decoding Tata Steel’s deeptech focus
• How MongoDB is building solutions for India
• From Air Force officer to tech leader

Here’s your trivia for today: What is the most endangered species in the world?

Interview

Decoding Tata Steel’s deeptech strategy

Over the last five years, Tata Steel has built bonds with the startup community through its engagement programme, Innoventure. One of these challenges is decarbonisation as the energy-intensive steel industry has a large carbon footprint.

Now, Tata Steel is looking towards deeptech startups to iron out processes in the core areas of energy management, integration of AI and ML, robotics, sustainability etc. 

Learning from startups:

• As per Dr Debashish Bhattacharjee, Vice President, Technology and R&D, Tata Steel, the company’s intent is to take advantage of the creativity, passion and agility of startups to move fast in technologies.
• “We are engaged with startups working in advanced mobility like Hyperloop technology, AI, ML for large-scale modelling, etc. We also work with deeptech startups that have robots which can go underwater,” he adds.
• By engaging with startups, it adapted its procurement system to suit the needs of startups and introduced nimbleness in its processes, as per Bhattacharjee.

Funding Alert

Startup: SiftHub 

Amount: $5.5M

Round: Seed

Startup: Vodex 

Amount: $2M

Round: Seed

Startup: Arch0

Amount: $1.25M

Round: Pre-seed

Interview

How MongoDB is building solutions for India

New York-based MongoDB holds nearly half of the market share in the NoSQL databases category. For context, the NoSQL market has players such as Amazon DynamoDB and Apache Cassandra, and is expected to reach $86.3 billion by 2032, according to Allied Market Research. 

YourStory spoke with Sachin Chawla, the Vice President for India & South Asia at MongoDB, to understand the company’s plans for India. 

Key takeaways:

• Founded by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin Ryan in 2007, MongoDB began its India operations in 2013. 
• MongoDB’s customers in India include Upstox, Darwinbox, Canara HSBC Life Insurance, Magicpin and TATA AIG General Insurance.
• The company has initiated an academic programme aiming to train 500,000 students in India to help foster local talent. 

Inspiration 

From Air Force officer to tech leader

Teja Manakame was one of 25 women to join the second batch of women in the Indian Air Force. After a six-year-stint, she joined the IT industry. She is now a senior leader at Dell Technologies and spearheads many important initiatives and projects.

Inclusivity:

• Manakame’s first posting was in Mount Abu, where she was one among two women in a station of 300 personnel, including officers and airmen. 
• In 2005, Manakame joined Dell Technologies as a manager and has since grown through the ranks and is now Vice President (IT) at the company. She was the first woman to be promoted in-house to a Director role in Dell IT in India
• At Dell Technologies, Manakame has initiated and spearheads Tech CSR which works at the intersection of tech for social good.

News & updates

• Make in India: Tesla Motors will send a team to scout locations in India for a proposed $2-3 billion electric car plant, according to two people with direct knowledge of the electric vehicle company’s plans. The step towards making vehicles in India comes after India last month lowered tariffs on higher-priced imported EVs.
• Total loss: Intel’s chip-making division accumulated $7 billion in operating losses in 2023. That’s a big increase from the $5.2 billion it lost in 2022, and while it made $18.9 billion in revenue in 2023, that number is down 31% from the $27.49 billion it made the year prior.
• Job cuts: Amazon Web Services will cut several hundred jobs in its sales, marketing, and global services organisation, and a few hundred jobs on its physical stores technology team, executives in the tech giant’s cloud computing division informed employees.

What is the most endangered species in the world?

Answer: Vaquita Porpoise. The marine animal species has only about 10 individuals left in the wild.

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