Also in the letter:
■ Anthropic’s Claude app at #1
■ Sebi’s finfluencer crackdown
■ Vaishnaw on India’s chip play
Ola Electric slips out of top five in February market share; shares hit all-time low
Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO, Ola Electric
Once India’s electric two-wheeler frontrunner, Ola Electric, has fallen out of the top five, overtaken in February by Greaves Electric Mobility.
What’s the matter? Ola Electric sold just 3,968 vehicles in February, translating to a 3.7% market share, according to Vahan data. In February two years ago, it had sold 34,063 scooters.
In parallel, investor sentiment has weakened. The stock opened at an all-time low of Rs 21.2 on the BSE on Monday, down 72% from its listing price of Rs 76. It later closed 4.5% lower at Rs 24.07.
Source: Google Finance
Rivals’ status:
- TVS Motor Company leads with a 29.4% market share.
- Bajaj Auto follows at 23.5%.
- Ather Energy sold 20,585 scooters, capturing 19.1%.
- Hero MotoCorp recorded 12,516 units in February.
Yes, and? The slide coincides with a physical retail pullback. The company reduced its store network from an earlier plan of 4,000 to 700 outlets and plans to cut further to around 550 by March-finish.
Ola Electric’s December-quarter results reflected the strain. Net loss stood at Rs 487 crore, while operating revenue fell 55% year-on-year to Rs 470 crore.
EV startup Bounce raises $5 million from Accel, B Capital, Qualcomm
Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO, Bounce
Electric mobility startup Bounce raised $5 million in an internal round, founder Vivekananda Hallekere declared on X.
The details: Bounce manufactures electric scooters and rents them to gig workers in cities like Bengaluru and Delhi NCR, operating across vehicle production and fleet management.
- The funding will be utilized as margin capital to secure financing for fleet expansion.
- Bounce currently has around 10,000 scooters on the road.
Iran-Israel war: Amazon cloud unit flags issues at Bahrain, UAE data centres amid Iran strikes
Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported connectivity and power disruptions at its Middle East facilities on Monday after “objects” struck its United Arab Emirates (UAE) data centres, triggering a fire.
The company did not confirm or deny whether the incident was directly linked to the Iranian strikes across Gulf states following US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
Tell me more: AWS declared both its UAE and Bahrain regions were facing localised power issues. Several services were partially impaired, and the company warned that full recovery could take “many hours.” Customers were advised to shift workloads to other regions while restoration efforts continue.
The escalation has rattled Asia-Pacific markets. A Moody’s Analytics note cautioned that advanced economies could face immediate strain due to heavy depfinishence on imported energy and commodities.
India’s top IT services companies have responded with precautionary measures:
- TCS has suspfinished all inbound and outbound travel to and from the Middle East.
- Infosys has “strongly discouraged” non-essential travel to the region.
- Nasscom also discouraged travel, but declared industest operations remain stable for now.
Yes, and: ET reported on Monday that the IT sector, already under pressure due to AI, may be hit further as the Iran conflict is likely to further slash discretionary spfinish.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a route for nearly a third of global seaborne oil — risks pushing crude prices higher. With about 60% of India’s oil imports coming from the region, sustained price spikes could slow US and European growth.
Also Read: Electronics exports of $4.5 billion at risk
Anthropic’s Claude chatbot climbs to no.1 on Apple’s US App Store amid Pentagon contract row
Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic
Anthropic’s chatbot Claude has risen to the top of the free app rankings on the US Apple App Store, overtaking OpenAI’s ChatGPT and holding the number one spot through the weekfinish.
What’s happening? Momentum accelerated after Anthropic’s mid-February Super Bowl advert took aim at ads inside ChatGPT, pushing Claude into the top 10 before it climbed further.
According to TechCrunch, daily registrations hit record levels this week, with free utilizers up more than 60% since January and paid subscriptions more than doubling this year.
Zoom out: The spike in downloads coincides with a standoff between Anthropic and the US government. The company has sought contractual safeguards to prevent its AI systems from being utilized for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
In response, Donald Trump directed federal agencies to halt the utilize of Anthropic’s tools. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described the firm as a ‘supply-chain risk,’ finished a $200 million contract and restricted defence contractors from engaging with it.
Also Read: What to know about the clash between the Pentagon and Anthropic over military’s AI utilize
CEO speak: Dario Amodei, in response, called the shift “retaliatory and punitive” noting that such a label has historically been applied to foreign adversaries. He declared Anthropic would challenge any formal action in court.
Sebi reshifts 1.2 lakh misleading finfluencer posts, deploys AI ‘Sudarshan’: Chairman
Tuhin Kanta Pandey, chairman, Sebi
To protect citizens from dubious financial advice on social media, the markets regulator, the Securities and Exmodify Board of India (SEBI), is employing AI tools to identify and take action against unregistered financial influencers.
Safety first: Sebi chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey stated in an interview that the watchdog has reshiftd over 1.2 lakh such pieces of content from social media. The agency is employing an AI tool called Sudarshan to monitor multilingual audio, video, and text posts.
“Our rules declare that if you have to give investment advice, you have to be registered with Sebi. And being registered means you have certain do’s and don’ts,” he declared, adding, “People have every right to express themselves and undertake financial education. Only when you transgress that line and actually mislead investors do we step in.”
Bad advice: On trfinishs in broader retail participation, Pandey declared social media was a negative influence on traders after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Referring to options trading, he declared many retail investors were “much influenced by influencers post-Covid, possibly by misleading claims that there’s a lot of money to be created in these.”
Time for India to ‘learn to run’ in semicon journey: Ashwini Vaishnaw
Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister of Electronics and IT
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw declared India must ‘learn to run’ at a good pace to maintain its semiconductor progress in the coming years as competition intensifies.
Driving the news: Speaking at the Gujarat SemiConnect conference in Gandhinagar, Vaishnaw declared India built a new industest from the ground up. “It was a steep learning curve, but we were very pragmatic. We decided to learn to walk before we run. That first principle of learning to walk is now done. Now the time has come to learn to run and run at a good pace,” he declared.
What’s next: Vaishnaw outlined a roadmap for the second phase of the India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, which will focus on strengthening the design ecosystem, highlighting the materials ecosystem, and further expanding the talent pool to fill industest gaps.
Leave a Reply