By Reuters | Updated: 22 September 2023

Apple is expected to gain a larger share of India’s smartphone sales, with the high-end iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models accounting for more of its shipments. The company is projected to account for 7 percent of all smartphone sales in the country from July to December, up from 5 percent in the first half of 2023, according to data from market researcher Counterpoint shared exclusively with Reuters.

The tech giant has been touting India as its next big growth driver amid declining sales of its flagship device. Its suppliers have also been ramping up manufacturing operations in the region amid weakening demand and regulatory pressure in China.

Wait times in India for Apple’s latest 15 Pro and Pro Max models, which go on sale Friday, are stretching up to late October, mirroring trends seen in China and the US. Counterpoint estimated the models will account for 25 percent of overall iPhone 15 shipments in India in the fourth quarter, a 4 percent increase from what the previous generation top-range models accounted for a year earlier.

“The premium smartphone market in India has climbed tremendously from 0.8 percent of the total market in 2019 to 6.1 percent in the first half of 2023 and this is largely attributed to Apple’s success,” Nabila Popal, a research director at market intelligence firm IDC, said.

Apple is the largest player in the segment for smartphones priced over $800 (roughly Rs. 66,300) in India, with a 67 percent share in the first half, according to IDC data. Samsung accounted for 31 percent of the segment. Apple opened two flagship stores in the country earlier this year and CEO Tim Cook said in August that the company hit “record” revenue in India in the June quarter.

Still, Apple has a long way to go before the country could bring in sales seen in the company’s major markets. Morgan Stanley, in a note earlier this month, estimated that Apple’s revenue from India is about half that of China.

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By Press Trust of India | Updated: 21 September 2023

SoftBank-backed Meesho aims for three-fold growth in orders in the upcoming festive season as it will leverage Meesho Mall for the first time to attract consumers to buy directly from brands and authorised channel partners. The company launched an in-app brand store Meesho Mall last year to enable brands to sell directly to consumers.

Since its launch last year, Meesho Mall has been growing by about 30 percent month-on-month and has processed approximately 1 crore orders in the past six months, Meesho Chief Financial Officer Dhiresh Bansal said.

“We believe that Malls will be a significant lever for monetisation in the future. We are also expecting 3x order growth during the festive season. Staying true to its vision, Meesho Mall aims to double down on accessibility, affordability, selection, and experience for its diverse stakeholders,” Bansal said in a statement.

The company had recorded a 68 percent jump in sales on a year-on-year basis during its five-day festive season sale last year with around 3.34 crore orders.

Currently, Meesho Mall has partnered with over 400 national and regional brands, including renowned names such as Bajaj, Biotique, boAt, Decathlon, Bewakoof, Himalaya, Mamaearth, Milton, Paragon, Philips, Plum, Sirona and WOW Skin Science, among others.

The company said that the mall is witnessing over 25 lakh unique transacting users every month.

“Meesho Mall will be an enabler for several emerging and established brands looking to tap a larger audience across the country,” the statement said.

According to market research firm Redseer Strategy Consultants, Meesho was the second largest contributor in terms of order volume during last year’s festive season sales.

A recent report by the firm projects online sales during the upcoming festive season to grow by 18-20 percent and touch Rs 90,000 crore this year.

By Reuters | Updated: 21 September 2023

Amazon.com is scrapping a plan to charge merchants who do not use its shipping services an additional fee, a company spokesperson said on Wednesday, signaling that the e-commerce giant was taking a cautious approach to operations amid mounting antitrust scrutiny.

Effective October 1, Amazon was planning to impose a new 2 percent fee on every sale by third-party sellers that ship their products themselves, according to media reports in August. The company said the fee was intended to shield itself from higher costs.

“After careful consideration, we’ve made the decision not to implement this program fee to ensure seller sentiment related to the fee does not impact program participation,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters.

The reversal in Amazon’s plans comes when the company is facing a potential lawsuit from the US Federal Trade Commission. Bloomberg first reported the news on Wednesday.

The fee would have applied to thousands of merchants who ship orders through Seller Fulfilled Prime – Amazon’s program that guarantees swift product delivery, even though the company does not handle the shipping itself, according to the report.

The FTC is expected to file a lawsuit against Amazon later this month after the company did not offer concessions to settle antitrust claims, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The FTC began probing the company during the Trump administration when it also launched investigations into other tech majors. Amazon has been criticized for allegedly favoring its own products over those from outside sellers on its platform.

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By Reuters | Updated: 21 September 2023

OpenAI on Wednesday unveiled Dall-E 3, the latest version of its text-to-image tool that uses its wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT to help fill in prompts. Dall-E 3 will be available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers in October via the API, the company said. Users can type in a request for an image and tweak the prompt through conversations with ChatGPT.

“DALL-E 3 can translate nuanced requests into extremely detailed and accurate images,” the company said in a statement. OpenAI said the latest version of the tool will have more safeguards such as limiting its ability to generate violent, adult, or hateful content. The tool also has mitigations to decline requests that ask for images of a public figure by name, or those that ask for images in the style of a living artist.

OpenAI said creators could opt out of using some or all of their work used to train future text-to-image tools.

OpenAI’s race to create accurate text-to-image AI tools has several competitors, including Alibaba’s Tongyi Wanxiang, Midjourney and Stability AI, who continue to refine their image-generating models.

However, there are several concerns around AI-generated images. A Washington DC court in August ruled that a work of art created by AI without any human input could not be copyrighted under U.S. law.

OpenAI also faces several lawsuits. A trade group for US authors recently sued the artificial intelligence leader on behalf of writers including John Grisham and “Game of Thrones” novelist George R.R. Martin accusing the company of unlawfully training its chatbot ChatGPT on their work.

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By Press Trust of India | Updated: 20 September 2023

After India’s solar mission, Aditya L1 began its journey towards Lagrange point 1 following a key manoeuvre, it has started studying energetic particles in the solar wind from space and will continue to do so for the rest of its life, a senior astrophysicist said. The study of the solar wind, the continuous flow of charged particles from the sun which permeates the solar system, will be carried out with the help of a device named Supra Thermal & Energetic Particle Spectrometer (STEPS), a part of the Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX) payload.

“STEPS is now working from space. However, it was not sitting idle earlier. It has started functioning from within the magnetic field of the Earth since September 10 when Aditya was 52,000 kilometres above our planet,” Dr Dibyendu Chakrabarty, professor of Space and Atmospheric Sciences at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) said.
STEPS was developed by the PRL with support from the Space Application Centre (SAC) in Ahmedabad.

“During the travel time of four months (till Aditya L1 reaches its destination), it will study energetic particles in the solar wind. The data will help maintain the health and performance of our space assets in a better way,” Dr Chakrabarty told PTI.

The key aim of STEPS is to study the environment of energetic particles from the spacecraft’s position on the L1 point till it will function, he said. “The data from STEPS in the long term will also help us understand how space weather changes,” the space scientist said.

STEPS comprises six sensors, each observing in different directions and measuring supra-thermal and energetic ions. The data collected during the Earth’s orbits helps scientists to analyse the behaviour of particles surrounding the planet, especially in the presence of its magnetic field.

Aditya-L1, launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on September 2, will go up to the First Lagrangian point, about 1.5 million km from the Earth ISRO on September 18 said on X: “Off to Sun-Earth L1 point! The Trans-Lagrangean Point 1 Insertion (TL1I) manoeuvre is performed successfully. The spacecraft is now on a trajectory that will take it to the Sun-Earth L1 point.” Lagrangian points are where gravitational forces, acting between two objects, balance each other in such a way that the spacecraft can ‘hover’ for a longer period of time.

The L1 point is considered the most significant of the Lagrangian points, for solar observations, which were discovered by mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange.

By Reuters | Updated: 20 September 2023

India’s Ola Electric plans to file regulatory papers for its up to $700 million (roughly Rs. 5,815 crore) IPO before the end of October as the e-scooter maker fast-tracks its listing move, three people with direct knowledge said. Backed by investors including Singapore’s Temasek and Japan’s SoftBank, Ola Electric was valued at $5.4 billion (roughly Rs. 44,852 crore) in a recent fundraising.

In an email to its bankers and lawyers on Sunday, an Ola Electric executive asked external advisers on the IPO – including the investment banking units of India’s Kotak and ICICI, as well as foreign banks including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs – to give “utmost priority” to meet a five-week deadline, said the sources.

Ola Electric and Kotak did not respond to a request for comment while the other three banks declined to comment. The sources did not wish to be identified as the communication is internal.

India’s Ola Electric plans to file regulatory papers for its up to $700 million (roughly Rs. 5,815 crore) IPO before the end of October as the e-scooter maker fast-tracks its listing move, three people with direct knowledge said. Backed by investors including Singapore’s Temasek and Japan’s SoftBank, Ola Electric was valued at $5.4 billion (roughly Rs. 44,852 crore) in a recent fundraising.

In an email to its bankers and lawyers on Sunday, an Ola Electric executive asked external advisers on the IPO – including the investment banking units of India’s Kotak and ICICI, as well as foreign banks including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs – to give “utmost priority” to meet a five-week deadline, said the sources.

Ola Electric and Kotak did not respond to a request for comment while the other three banks declined to comment. The sources did not wish to be identified as the communication is internal.

Ola Electric is targeting IPO roadshows for early January or February, said one of the sources.

The company, India’s market leader in e-scooters with a 30 percent share, was founded by Bhavish Aggarwal and has seen its popularity surge as the country promotes the use of electric cars and scooters.

He has said his affordable e-scooters, which start retailing at $1,080 (roughly Rs. 89,700), are for the masses, and in an interview this year said “Tesla is for the West, Ola is for the rest.”

Ola Electric, though, still makes losses. It recorded an operating loss of $136 million (roughly Rs. 1,129 crore) on revenue of $335 million (roughly Rs. 2,782 crore) in the fiscal year ending March 2023, Reuters has reported.

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