India-UAE Capital Funds to Support Start Ups

India and the United Arab Emirates have pooled their Resources to create a $150 million fund to support startups.

Highlights:

Within the next ten years, the fund will assist in creating ten unicorns. Unicorns are companies with a market capitalization of more than one billion dollars.

The fund was announced at the Dubai EXPO 2020. The fund will act as a Catalyst for the startups’ development.

It will be highly beneficial to startups in their early stages of development.

In both countries, the fund will support at least fifty startups. The fund’s Indian representative is NASSCOM.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between India and the United Arab Emirates to raise the fund.

UNESCO Heritage List – Nordic Clinker Boats

In December 2021, the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO, inscribed the Nordic “clinker boats” to its Heritage List.

Highlights:

For thousands of years, wooden sailboats have allowed northern Europeans to spread influence, trade, and even conflict across continents and seas.

The UNESCO designation was requested jointly by Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

The term “clinker” is said to refer to the way the building’s wooden boards were attached.

The use of overlapping longitudinal hardwood hull planks distinguishes wooden clinker boats.

These planks are held together by stitched or riveted seams. Internally, boats are fortified with additional wooden components, particularly tall oak trees.

Gaps are filled with a mixture of tar or tallow, animal hair, moss, and wool.

Dvara E-Dairy Solutions Launched AI Digital Tag

Dvara E- solutions has launched an AI (Artificial Intelligence) led digital tag, Surabhi e-Tag, to identify cattle based on muzzle identity. Dvara E-Dairy Solutions is a portfolio company of Dvara Holdings. This digital tag will be used for cattle Insurance products offered in PARTNERSHIP with IFFCO Tokio General Insurance.

Muzzle images of the cattle are collected through the Surabhi mobile application and stored in hi-resolution images as a unique digital identity.

The artificial intelligence-driven mobile application of Dvara E-Dairy captures muzzle images with the mobile phone, compares the cattles unique digital identity stored in a secured cloud server and retrieves the results in less than 60 seconds.

Conventional methods like polyurethane ear tags (PU ear tags) can be easily tampered with and are prone to duplication and fraud.

Losses of distribution companies (discoms) have declined by 38% to Rs 38,000 crore in FY20 from Rs 61,360 crore in FY19 as reforms initiated by theCentrereduced line losses and gradually brought about improvement in operations, power minister R KSinghsaid.

Releasing the ninth annual rating of discoms, Singh said the Average gap between the cost of power and revenue realisation of the utilities has also narrowed to 38 paise per unit from 42 paise during the period.

All the four discoms in Gujarat and one in Haryana DakshinHaryana Bijli VitranNigam were given A+ ranking by the report prepared by state-run power sector lenderPFC. Altogether eight discoms across Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Meghalaya, Jharkhand, Manipur,TripuraandTamil Naduwere given C, or the lowest rating.

Underlining the importance of the ranking, Singh said a fair and accurate assessment of the true position of the distribution sector will help in assessing and improving its performance. This will also assist state governments, lending institutions and other stakeholders to take important decisions, he said. The rankings have a bearing on the discoms ability and cost of borrowings.

Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Specialty Steel

The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Specialty Steel has been approved by the .

Highlights:

The scheme will last five years, from 2023-24 to 2027-28.
The five specialty steel categories chosen for the PLI Scheme are as follows:
Steel Coated/Plated Products
Steel with a high strength/wear resistance
Specialty Rails
Steel wires and Alloy steel products
Electrical Steel
PLI incentive measures have 3 sectors, the lowest is 4%, and the highest is 12%, which have been provided for CRGO.

Schemes Requirement

With a budget of Rs. 6322 crores, the scheme is expected to generate approximately 40,000 crores in Investment and a capacity addition of 25 MT for speciality steel.

By the end of 2026-27, speciality steel production is expected to reach 42 million tonnes.

Speciality steel was selected as the goal segment because of the 102 million tons of steel produced in India in 2020-21, the country only produced 18 million tons of value-added steel/Specialty steel.

Secured Logistics Document Exchange -SLDE

The Secured Document Exchange (SLDE) and a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculator were both introduced.

Highlights:

The government launched a secure logistics document exchange platform for the digital exchange of logistics-related papers, as well as a greenhouse gas emissions calculator for selecting the most sustainable and appropriate mode of transportation for freight movements.

The SLDE platform is a solution for replacing the current manual process of logistics document generation, exchange, and compliance with a digitised, secure, and seamless document exchange system.

GHG Emissions Calculator:

The calculator is an effective and user-friendly tool for calculating and comparing GHG emissions across various modes.

It enables commodity-level comparisons of GHG emissions and total transportation costs, including environmental costs, between road and rail modes of transportation.

Anand Radhakrishnan Won Will Eisner Comic Award

Visual Artist (Graphic Artist) Anand Radhakrishnan has won the esteemed Will Eisner Comic Award, considered what could be compared to the funnies world. The Eisner Grants are given out every year and the honor won by Radhakrishnan “Best Painter/Mixed media Craftsman (inside workmanship)” perceives the maker of a realistic novel’s specialty and pictures.

Highlights:

Radhakrishnan imparts the honor to UK-based colourist John Pearson. They won for their work on UK-based creator Slam V’s 145-page realistic novel Blue In Green, distributed in October 2020 by Picture Funnies.

Two New Heritage Sites in Spain

The notable Paseo del Prado avenue and Retiro Park of Madrid, in Spain, has been allowed the situation with UNESCO World Legacy Locales. The wide tree-lined Paseo del Prado, in the focal point of the Spanish capital, is Home to conspicuous structures like the Prado Historical center. The notorious Retiro Park, simply connecting with Paseo del Prado, is a 125-hectare green space, and quite possibly the most visited attractions in Madrid’s set of experiences.

Indian DGCA and EU aviation agency to collaborate on unmanned aerial vehicles

India is quickly moving to take its success in the area of drones to the next logical steps like using air taxis for urban mobility. Aviation authorities are tying up with international agencies to make the framework of rules to safely implement them same by devising air traffic management solutions; develop certification standards and putting in place the required infra.

TheDirectorate General of Civil Aviation(DGCA) has signed aMoUwith theEuropean Union Aviation Safety Agency(EASA) for cooperation in unmanned aircraft systems and innovative air mobility. This comes on heels of the two civil aviation authorities signing a letter of intent (LoI) on these two issues during the EU-India Aviation Summit held in New Delhi this April.

The MoU will also ensure regular information sharing between the two authorities on the technological developments and research in this area and also their respective strategies for outreach to relevant stakeholders. Further, the MoU will result in collaboration in conducting conferences, workshops, training programmers by DGCA and EASA in this area. The signing of this MoU is expected to result in harmonised standards and accelerated Growth of Indian unmanned aviation sector.

Chandrayaan-3 integrated with launch vehicle

In a major milestone,Isro said it has integrated the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft with the launch vehicle GSLV-Mk3or LVM3.

The space agency is looking at a mid-July launch (between July 12 and 19) window for India’s third lunar mission, and a second attempt at soft-landing equipment on Moon.

While the mission will carry a lander (Vikram) and rover (Pragna), it won’t carry an orbiter, which has been replaced by a propulsion module.
After its failed landing attempt in September 2019, Isro has carried out several changes on the lander.

At Rs 97,000, Gujarat ranks ninth in deposits per capita

Gujarat is among the top 10 states in India in deposits per capita, according to data from theReserve Bank Of India.

The states deposits per capita is Rs 97,000, ninth highest among the major states of India as of March 31, 2023. While the per capita deposits of several smaller states and Union territories are higher, among the major states, Gujarat stands ninth.

Gujarat is behind Delhi (Rs 3.94 lakh), Goa (Rs 3.92 lakh), Haryana (Rs 1.64 lakh),Punjab(Rs 1.51 lakh), Karnataka (Rs 1.26 lakh), Uttarakhand (Rs 1.24 lakh), Maharashtra (Rs 1.24 lakh) andKerala(Rs 1.02 lakh) on this parameter.

According to the latest report from the Gujarat state-level bankers committee (SLBC), aggregate deposits at banks in the state including scheduled , cooperative and small finance banks, stood at Rs 10.76 lakh crore.