Business & Economy – Page 15

Bengaluru set to add 46 new unicorns in next few years: Hurun India

These 46 soon to be unicorns come with a cumulative valuation of $18.4 billion

Bengaluru, the startup capital of India and the world’s third largest startup ecosystem after the U.S and China, is likely to witness the emergence of 46 new unicorns in the next two to four years, as per predictions made by Hurun Research Institute on Wednesday.

Hurun India Future Unicorn Index 2022 said 122 new unicorns would come up in the country in the next two to four years and Bengaluru alone would add 46 of these soonicorns to its existing tally of 33.

The pack of 46 soon to be unicorns that comes with a cumulative valuation of $18.4 billion would be led by city-based Ninjacart, a fresh produce supply chain firm, according to the report.

The long list of city’s soonicorns also include startup Juspay that got noticed with a Softbank-led $60 million fundraising round. Founded by Vimal and Ramanathan, the fintech currently supports BHIM App, an Indian mobile payment app developed by the National Payments Corporation of India, based on the Unified Payments Interface. The firm has been building foundational infrastructure by unifying and enhancing hundreds of diverse payments options.

Farmers celebrate Mannettina Amavasye with great reverence

Mannettina Amavasye, which is considered a farmer festival, was celebrated across Yadgir district by the farming community.

Farmers brought bullocks made of mud and offered a special puja to them and kept them on the top of their roof.

“Farmers believe that they will get sufficient rainfall if they observe this amavasye. They clean and plough the land in the summer to sow seeds in the monsoon. The bullocks play an important role and help farmers in tilling land and growing crops. Thus, they treat them as god,” Mallikarjun Satyampet, a farmer leader and State convener of Rajya Raitha Sangh, said.

The farmers offer puja to every farming equipment before they use it for agriculture activities. But, here, they offer puja to bullocks made of mud, which they treat as live bullocks, to seek sufficient rainfall for their crops.

“We worship mud-made bullocks with great reverence as we offer puja to live bullocks which are the most useful for us and we feel happy in celebrating every festival that is connected to farmers,” he added.

Bengaluru is key driver in GST backend operations

E-way bill and e-invoice is driven from the city by a small team from National Informatics Centre

As the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime is set to complete five years in a few days, Bengaluru has contributed to its nationwide operation. The backend operations for the crucial e-way bill, mandatory to move goods across the country, and the e-invoice that helps in input credit, is driven from the city by a small team from the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

In the four years since its inception, the country has seen over 273 crore e-way bills being generated to move goods and over 163 crore e-invoices having been generated. While the transition from the Value Added Tax (VAT) regime to GST regime took place on July 1, 2017, the e-way bill was introduced on April 1, 2018, while the e-invoice was introduced in October 2020. In fact, the e-Sugam launched by the Karnataka Commercial Tax in 2010 morphed into the e-way bill under the nation-wide GST regime. In the VAT regime, Karnataka was generating 1.2 lakh e-way bills a day.

36% increase

Since its introduction in 2018 April, the number of e-way bills generated daily has seen a 36% increase from about 22 lakh a day to 30 lakh a day. If 55.8 crore e-way bills were generated in 2018-2019, it has shot up to 77.4 crore in 2021-2022.

In case of e-invoice, the numbers have shot up by 92% since October 2020 when 26 lakh invoices were generated daily to about 50 lakh invoices daily now. If 4.95 crore e-invoices were generated in October 2020, it has reached 12.18 crore in April 2022. The numbers have also increased as the e-invoice mandate has been extended to those reporting above ₹500 crore turnover annually when the e-invoice was introduced in October 2020 to include those reporting turnover of over ₹20 crore in April 2022.

The NIC, sources in Commercial Tax Department said, has been managing the entire operations from Bengaluru with a staff of around 50. Sources also said, “It is heartening that the 24/7 software and hardware support from Bengaluru has been such that there has been no incident of the software glitch where an e-way bill generation has been delayed over the past four years.”

Researchers at IISc. develop algorithm to study connectivity in brain

Researchers at Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) have developed a new graphic processing unit (GPU) based machine learning algorithm called Regularised, Accelerated, Linear Fascicle Evaluation (ReAl – LiFE), which will help to obtain a better understanding and in the prediction of connectivity between different regions of human brain.

This algorithm can help analyse extensive data generated from diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) scans which helps scientists study the connectivity in the brain at a speed, which is 150 times higher than a regular desktop computer or existing state-of-the-art algorithms. The study has been published in the journal Nature Computational Science.

“Even though it is difficult to pinpoint the connectomes, we are trying to infer information highway network by looking at traffic flow patterns (if molecules are like cars). We look at the movement of water molecules in the brain and we try to infer where the wires are. The water molecules have to travel along the length of the cables (axons), which have connected various parts of the brain. By measuring these lengths of water molecules, we are able to infer which areas are connected,” explained Devarajan Sridharan, Associate Professor at the Centre for Neuroscience (CNS), IISc., and corresponding author of the study.

BEL signs MoU with Belarus-based Defense Initiatives

Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) signed an MoU with Defense Initiatives (DI), Belarus, and Defense Initiatives Aero Pvt. Ltd., India, a subsidiary of DI Belarus, for supply of Airborne Defense Suite (ADS) for the helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

The cooperation between these companies is also aimed at exploring various business opportunities for India and global markets for ADS, said BEL in a statement on Friday.

NIT-K faculty member gets patent for producing cement mortar brick having self-healing property upon cracking

A faculty member at the National Institute of Technology – Karnataka (NIT-K), Surathkal, has received an Indian patent for producing cement mortar brick with inclusion of bacteria in combination.

The brick thus made claims to be superior than the conventional ones in terms of strength and life of the structure and possess a self-healing property.

T. Palanisamy, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the institute, had applied for the patent in 2014 and it was granted in June 2022.

According to Mr. Palanisamy, microbialcreat composite is a new-age material with the property of self-healing upon cracking. This action is by the precipitation of lime (calcium carbonate) by the non-pathogenic bacteria used in the composite, upon coming into contact with air and water through the crack. The precipitated lime will cover the crack, thereby improving the stability of the surface.

Will offer knowledge, market intelligence to startups: ISRO Chairman

He was speaking at the opening session of a one-day national conference titled ‘Development of Space Start-up Ecosystem in India.’

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will offer encouragement, knowledge and market information to startups to ensure the growth and development of the space industry, said S. Somanath, Chairman, ISRO and Secretary, Department of Space here on Friday.

“The industry has been having a strong association with the Indian Space Programme all along. ISRO will offer support to startups in terms of encouragement, knowledge, ability to identify the market outside and provision of a conducive environment to ensure the growth of the space sector,’‘ he said while speaking at the opening session of a national conference on ‘Development of Space Start-up Ecosystem in India.’

Forty years of Corner House: Narayan Rao on how he built Bengaluru’s beloved icecream brand

During my conversation with Narayan Rao, the founder of Bengaluru’s popular icecream brand Corner House, I tell him, rather unwittingly, “Corner House is a legacy brand–”

It is, however, not preposterous to assume that Corner House is, indeed, a legacy brand in Bengaluru. It has, after all, 19 parlours across the city and two more in Mysuru. It has been around for 40 years, withstanding competition from other international icecream brands. It sells, on average, 1.5 lakh litres of ice cream every month.

The first was on a hot June afternoon in Delhi in 1980. Rao had just returned from Canada after studying hotel management. He was waiting outside the office of the general manager of a five-star hotel for his interview when he met his schoolmate, who was the personal secretary to the manager. She had a hunch that he would not like working there. “She said, ‘If you ask me, you should just turn around and walk out of here.’ I did just that. .” If he had not bumped into her, he might not have come to Bengaluru and started Corner House. “Forty years later, I called and thanked her.”

The second moment of serendipity came a few years after he started Corner House, which was then a fast-food joint. Business was stuttering. He ran out of the money he borrowed from his father. Banks, then, were not liberal with loans as they are now. He had no collateral, either. He was at a restaurant, contemplating the future of his fledgling food business over a coffee, when a fellow diner joined him. They exchanged pleasantries. It turned out that the guy sitting across the table was a bank manager whose brother was Rao’s classmate. Seven days later, Rao got the money he needed to keep his business afloat.

“Bangalore has always been good to me,” he says. It is where he met the love of his life, whom he is married to for 41 years. It is where he established his livelihood. For someone born and brought up in Delhi, it is now his home.

Intellectual Property Rights Cell inaugurated at JSS AHER

Focus would be on innovations, research

The JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research in the city in association with the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST) has established an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Cell.

It was inaugurated on Thursday and the objectives of the IPR Cell are to strengthen and expand human resources and institutions for training, research, and skill building in Intellectual Property (IP), to raise awareness about IP, catalyse commercialisation of IP, and to promote respect for IP rights.

The authorities said this would be a unique cell as the focus of this IPR cell at JSS AHER would be on innovations, IPR and commercialisation in the health sciences sector, medical devices, and patient care.

K.S.Rangappa, former Vice-Chancellor, University of Mysore, highlighted the importance of scientific research and outcomes in terms of IPR wherein he cited his own example of how out of the 7,000 molecules that he worked on, he could patent 12 products and 2 of these have been commercialised which are generating revenue for the IPR cell of the University of Mysore.

Kempegowda International Airport bags best regional airport in South Asia award

Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru (BLR Airport), on Friday said it has bagged the best regional airport in India and South Asia title in the 2022 Skytrax World Airport Awards.

The awards ceremony was held at Passenger Terminal EXPO in Paris, France, on June 16. “The event is one of the most prestigious quality awards for the airport sector, with CEOs, Presidents, and senior management from airports across the world in attendance,” according to the statement.