Cybersecurity boom 💥
Climate generosity, e-learning boost, and Gpay vs. regulators.
Hi 👋, Tanvi here.
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Stock market summary:
US - S&P 500 down 2.59%
India - Sensex down 1.58%
Cybersecurity is getting warmer 🔐
Multiple surveys and independent reports indicate that the demand for cyber security professionals in India has more than doubled since the pandemic began, versus other areas of employment that have frozen or are cutting jobs.
As people move to remote work and with the adoption of software deployed over the cloud to enable the transition, corporations are more exposed than ever before to mistakes made by employees working on unsecured networks.
Also, global research companies like IDC and Gartner predict almost 40%+ growth rates in multiple billion dollar segments of the Cyber business, including identity management, traffic monitoring, endpoint security, email security etc. Upcoming companies in these areas have been some of the best performing businesses and stocks in 2020, worldwide.
Also, given India’s rising leadership on the global platform, the country has been generally more susceptible to attacks from unfriendly nations and business interests. Moneycontrol reports nearly 6x growth in attacks targeting Indian firms over the past years. Read more...
AMZN pledges $2 Billion for clean energy 🌍
Amazon has announced a $2 Billion VC fund to invest in clean energy to reduce the impact of climate change and support sustainable development. The company has pledged to be net carbon neutral by 2040.
The climate pledge fund will invest in companies such as transportation and logistics, energy, storage and utilization among others.
The ecommerce giant runs a global transportation and distribution network that has faced a lot of backlash from environmentalists and employees to take action on climate change.
Bezos individually has also committed $10 Billion back in Feb 2020 to fund groups fighting to protect the environment.
Edtech platform invests in competition 📚
Online tutoring platform Vedantu has invested $2 Million in Instasolv, a doubt clearing app. Instasolv targets students of class 6 to 12 looking to attempt the JEE and NEET, with an exclusive focus on tier 3 and tier 4 city students.
Oddly, terms of the investment will give Vedantu full rights to acquire the startup at a future date. Details are unknown. Additionally, it will also help the investor strengthen presence in the Q&A segment. Instasolv resolves about 3 Million queries each month.
Like other ed-tech platforms riding the pandemic induced online learning wave, in the last few months Vedantu also witnessed subscribers rising to 1.1 Million, with revenues growing by 80% during the same period.
Gpay vs. Regulators 📲
A financial economist and activist filed a PIL claiming that Gpay was conducting transactions without the required authorization from the RBI and acting in violation of Payments and Settlements Act.
Responding to that, the Reserve Bank Of India told the Delhi High Court that Google Pay “technically” does not operate any payment system as it is a third party app provider and therefore its operations are not in violation of the Payments and Settlement System Act of 2007.
RBI also said that Gpay does not find a place in the authorized payment system operators list published by National payments Corporation Of India because of the above reasons.
The proceeding is just another indication of how India’s interpretation of regulations is struggling to keep pace with innovation in technology and finance.
Coworking space raises capital despite lockdown uncertainty 🤝
Coworking space 91 Springboard has raised ₹45 Crore funding from its existing investors, in what seems like a lifeline extension in these tough times. The pandemic and lockdown has put the business model of anything “shared” under scrutiny.
Also, corporations who generously spent on coworking are now calling to reduce office spaces, in favor of remote work. Coworking space owners are confident however that they can appeal to more employees looking for flexible work alternatives.
91 Springboard was founded in 2012 and its customers included Zomato, OLX, Tata Sky, India Mart among others. The company has opened 14 of its 27 working spaces in India with the easing of the lockdown.
The capital raise may come as a surprise to many as India’s venture capital landscape remains mellowed down since the lockdown began.
Tweet of the day -
A little motivation to keep your momentum going through Thursday. Consistency is the only key to progress and change. Keep hammering.
What else are we snackin’
📍 Chip developed by IIT-Bombay to help navigation devices to find locations - a navigation detection chip developed domestically stands out as a viable and cheaper alternative for Chinese chips. The chip talks to India’s NAVIC group of navigation satellites and the US Global Positioning System-based satellites and can be used in smartphones and navigation systems. Bharat atma-nirbhar!
🚗 Workers in Mexico’s Volkswagen plant test positive for coronavirus- nearly 2% of the workers in a Mexican VW plant have tested positive for COVID-19, putting pressure on the car maker to shut its facility and be susceptible to supply disruptions and millions in losses.
🙁 Ridehailing firm cuts 9% head count - after cutting thousands of jobs just last month, Indonesian ride hailer GoJek further cut its staff by 9% as local cases continue to rise and lockdowns extend further into the year. The company is also closing its lifestyle services business GoLifek, which will render almost 60,000 service providers relying on the platform hanging.
😰 Mizoram hit by 4th earthquake in 3 days - 2020 has been a series of unending disasters. The state of Mizoram had its 4th quake of about 3.7 intensity. Thankfully, there is not much property or human damage reported just yet. The mountainous north eastern region is apparently the 6th most earthquake-prone belt in the world according to seismologists.
🖥️ Disney to launch Disney+ in 8 more countries - following footprints of rival Netflix, Disney is now bringing its streaming platform that is a huge success among families and kids particularly to more countries worldwide. It remains to be seen whether the company plans on acquiring regional content in the same way that its rival Netflix quite successfully did.
🚨 Wirecard ex-boss arrested over lost Billions - day before we wrote about how payments company Wirecard has found itself in the midst of a scandal of unprecedented scale. Yesterday the CEO of the company was taken into custody as creditors came knocking to find the truth behind the lost money. You can read the previous write-up here...
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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