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Hello,

While the new year brings new hope, the first week saw quite a drubbing at the stock market as eight of the top 10 most valued firms on the Indian bourses lost Rs 1 lakh crore in market capitalisation. IT majors Infosys and TCS took the biggest hit.

On the bright side, Mercedes Benz is doubling down on the Indian market as it expects a double-digit sales growth this year despite the threat of higher car prices. Last year, it sold 15,822 cars—its highest ever in the country.

This comes as India overtook Japan in auto sales in 2022, becoming the third-largest auto market after the US and China, according to a Nikkei Asia report.

Over to the digital world. While OpenAI’s seemingly “too real” ChatGPT language processing tool is causing many to hit the panic button, artificial intelligence has already entered the courts.

An AI-based legal advisor is set to play the role of a lawyer in an actual court case for the first time. DoNotPay’s AI chatbot will coach a courtroom defendant on how to escape a speeding charge. 

Wonder how it’ll perform in family courts… 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• SME lending on the blockchain
• Boosting TV manufacturing in India
• Revamping Middle East tourism

Here’s your trivia for today: How many eyes does a bee have?

Startup

SME lending on the blockchain

Many fintechs and NBFCs struggle to cater to the unorganised SME market due to a lack of transparency and liquidity. Dignify aims to solve that using blockchain to channel crypto liquidity into the SME market.

Bridging SME credit gap:

• Dygnify is building a credit infrastructure for capital to flow from crypto and digital asset investors to small business lenders.
• Its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is live on the Polygon testnet and can be accessed by all run-time environments and projects built on the Ethereum network.
• Dygnify is exploring SME markets in Southeast Asia while it ensures compliance with crypto regulations in India.

Inspiration

Boosting TV manufacturing in India

Father-son duo CP Gupta and Sagar Gupta started Ekkaa Electronics in Noida in 2019 to strengthen TV manufacturing in India. Today, it is a Rs 600 crore turnover company with more than 100 brands under its portfolio.

Making for the world:

• Ekka Electronics designs and manufactures smart LCD TV, LED TV, 4K 2K TV, and other TV products. 
• It manufactures more than 1 lakh TVs per month. To date, the company has sold around three million TVs.
• To compete with China, Ekkaa is now focusing on backward integration to optimise costs.

Gulf

Revamping Middle East tourism

From buying tickets and delivering customers door-to-door 14 years ago, Fazil Parakkat now runs Thrillark—an online in-destination booking platform for tours, activities, and local experiences. It connects customers with local tour operators to offer curated local experiences, services, and attraction tickets.

Curated travel:

• The platform has served over 1,84,000 guests since its inception in 2017. It processed 30,000 orders in 2019 alone, manually.
• Users can avail Thrillark’s services in Dubai, Turkey, Oman, and Abu Dhabi in the Middle East.
• Its curated experiences on offer include sunset camel ride, indoor skydiving, S Jet ski, and scuba diving.

News & updates

• The sack: Twitter reportedly laid off more employees from its already downsized trust and safety team handling global content moderation and the unit related to hate speech and harassment. At least a dozen more cuts affected workers in the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices.
• AR driving: BMW unveiled i Vision Dee concept sporty sedan car that features ‘Mixed Reality Slider’ which can “gradually fade out reality” and cover the car’s surroundings with Augmented Reality. Its e-ink panels can mix and match up to 32 colours across its body and wheels. 
• Breakthrough: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved lecanemab, the second-ever treatment for Alzheimer’s disease intended to tackle the root of the condition and slow cognitive decline.

How many eyes does a bee have?

Answer: Five.

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