The Snips Journal - Weekly Newsletter - Issue #5
This week, we have for you:
3 Snips In Numbers
3 Tiny Snips
1 Snip Thread
Sit back and feel those knowledge gains coming!💪💪💪
Snips In Numbers
SiN #46 – 815%
That is how much the online sales of Chinese Sports apparel company Li-Ning increased in April compared to last year! This comes against the backdrop of a nationalistic buying frenzy amidst the controversy regarding cotton produced in the Xinjiang region. Meanwhile, online sales of Adidas and Nike for April fell 79.3% and 57.5% YoY respectively.
SiN #49 – 42
That is the total number of BSE companies that have a market-cap of Rs 1 lakh crore or more year to date in 2021 as against 29 at the end of 2020. That is a 44% increase over a period of 4 months!
SiN #51 – (4.4%)
That is how much Moody’s has slashed India’s GDP growth projection for FY 22 in just 3 months. It was projected at 13.7% in February, just before the second wave of Covid 19 hit India, to 9.3% in May.
Tiny Snips
TS #22 – Protestify!
In January, Spotify was granted a patent for a voice recognition tech that analyzed user’s voice to infer their mood. The software would also attempt to determine other aspects of user’s identity like gender, age and accent. These data together with the location information would be used to create user profiles which would then be used to recommend songs and playlist accordingly. It’s essentially a far more sophisticated and personalized version of the recommendation algorithm used by Spotify right now according to voicebot.ai.
This move is facing backlash from Musicians, academics, and human-rights groups who signed an open letter to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek expressing their concerns. The letter alleges that the tech could be used to manipulate users’ feelings, can effectively lead to stereotyping people and also raises concerns about privacy, data harvesting, and surveillance.
More here.
TS #24 – “Literal Dogecoin on the Literal Moon”
SpaceX, the space exploration company founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last day that it will fund its mission to launch a satellite(named DOGE -1) to the moon exclusively by Dogecoin. Most of the price increase of he Dogecoin can be attributed to Musk’s tweets regarding the same. Even the falls too. Recently, when he was on the SNL, he called Dogecoin a “hustle” after which it fell 30% in value. This announcement “seems to be designed to fight back against that narrative” according to the Verge.
The mission is being sent and paid for by a company named Geometric Energy Corporation, whose CEO says the transaction “solidified DOGE as a unit of account for lunar business in the space sector.”
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who announced in March that his company will accept Bitcoin as a payment for buying Tesla Cars, yesterday tweeted that it would suspend the policy until any sustainable way to mine Bitcoin comes about.
TS #28 Let’s go on a ro’ad’ trip
On May 6 2021, Ford patented a new technology which enables the camera system on vehicles to scan billboards as you drive along, interpret that information and deliver targeted ads to the vehicle’s infotainment system.
But as with all patented technology, it is not certain if this system will ever be used in upcoming Ford vehicles (and we’d like that) as when motor1.com asked Ford for a comment about the patent they replied “patents on new inventions as a normal course of business, but they aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans.” Who knows what the infotainment system of the future will look like.
Snip Threads
The Tiger On The Fence
“The Tiger” here refers to Tiger Global Management LLC
Prologue
To do anything remotely tangible in a business, you need funds. To materialize your idea, hire employees and all that stuff requires money. So yeah, as they say, Finance is the life-blood of business.
You could either bootstrap your business with your own money or borrow from others. Without sufficient track-record or credit score, don’t even think of going to a bank. But how do you grow your business and develop a track record without funds? That itself poses a chicken first or the egg first situation.
The solution? Venture Funds, Angel Investors Or those with boatloads of money like, I don’t know, Hedge Funds?