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☆ How Women Are Building Community to Succeed in the AI Space.
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-05 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But others building startups report facing various gender-related obstacles to success, including bias in the fundraising process, limited mentorship opportunities, and difficulty building meaningful business relationships with men. And recent data from the UK shows that only about 4% of AI startups in the country have women founders. Developing relationships with other women working in the AI space has become a vital lifeline, she said. There were plenty of women interested in building AI companies, she said. AdvertisementThis observation was the catalyst for the Female Founder Circles, a community for women engineers interested in building AI startups.

Persons: Saumya Bhatnagar, Bhatnagar isn't, Fei Fei Li, Daniela Amodei, Mira Murati, it's, Bhatnagar, she's, I'm, Vivien Ho, Ho, they're, Forbes, Rejpal, Rajpal, Stephanie Guo, Guo Organizations: Deloitte, Bay Area, FFC, Pear, Zetta Venture Partners, Bloomberg Beta, GitHub, Sapphire Ventures Locations: Bay, San Francisco

☆ Labor Abuses Abroad
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-30 | by ( Megha Rajagopalan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the 1990s, more U.S. companies began manufacturing abroad, where labor was cheaper. Journalists, consumers and human rights groups noticed that, away from the eyes of American unions and regulators, these multinationals sometimes used brutal cost-saving measures, such as sweat shops and child labor. Companies would hire outside inspectors to scrutinize their supply chains. These inspectors would visit their suppliers’ factories, investigate abuses and determine whether everyone was following the rules. Major companies signed on, sending a message that they could clean up their own supply chains.

Persons: —, Saumya Khandelwal Organizations: Journalists, Times Locations: India, Maharashtra

☆ A Family Loses 3 Generations of Women in India Crowd’s Panic
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-03 | by ( Suhasini Raj | Saumya Khandelwal | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Vinod Kumar was away from home on Tuesday, as he usually is for days at a time in search of masonry work, when he got the dreadful call. All the women in his family, three generations of them, were dead, crushed in a stampede. For the rest of the day, Mr. Kumar and his three sons went from hospital to hospital searching for their loved ones among the bodies of the 121 people who had died when a large gathering of a spiritual guru broke into deadly panic. “Why did you leave me just like that? Who will scold the children now and push them to go to school?” Mr. Kumar wailed at the feet of his wife.

Persons: Vinod Kumar, Kumar, Raj Kumari, Bhumi, Mr, Kumar wailed Locations: Hathras

Before the water tanker rolled into one of New Delhi’s largest slums, Arvind Kumar was pacing between the gate of a public school and a tea seller’s stall hundreds of yards from his home, where he lives with nine members of his family. “There, it is coming,” Mr. Kumar shouted to a woman waiting on the slum’s edge. With their last stored drops now spent, and a heat wave searing the city, the two neighbors had decided to make sure the truck reached its destination. The woman boarded the 5,000-gallon tanker and guided its driver through a tight lane, past houses lined with thousands of jerrycans, many chained in place, and onto a stony plateau.

Persons: Arvind Kumar, ” Mr, Kumar

Young girls are pushed into illegal child marriages so they can work alongside their husbands cutting and gathering sugar cane. Labor brokers loan money for the surgeries, even to resolve ailments as routine as heavy, painful periods. Hysterectomies keep them working, undistracted by doctor visits or the hardship of menstruating in a field with no access to running water, toilets or shelter. But for many sugar laborers, the operation has a particularly grim outcome: Borrowing against future wages plunges them further into debt, ensuring that they return to the fields next season and beyond. Workers’ rights groups and the United Nations labor agency have defined such arrangements as forced labor.

Persons: Young, Hysterectomies Organizations: New York Times, Fuller, Labor, Workers, United Nations Locations: Maharashtra

☆ Indian economy to exceed growth estimates after strong Q2 beat : economists
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The country's economy expanded 7.6% in the July-September quarter, trouncing estimates of a 6.8% rise, data released on Thursday showed. He had an earlier forecast growth at 6.7%. The government stuck to its 6.5% growth forecast for the year, but chief economic advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran said he was "more comfortable with an upside to this projection than before". Reuters GraphicsCitigroup revised its growth forecast for the financial year upwards by 50 basis points to 6.7% citing a pick-up in investment activity. "This reaffirms our view of sustained investment recovery," the Wall Street bank's chief India economist Samiran Chakraborty said in a note.

Persons: Ranita Roy, Saumya Kanti Ghosh, V, Anantha Nageswaran, Gross, Samiran Chakraborty, Chakraborty, Radhika Rao, Gaura Sen Gupta, Ira Dugal, Nivedita Organizations: REUTERS, Rights, State Bank of India, Reuters Graphics Citigroup, Street bank's, DBS, IDFC, Bank Economics Research, Thomson Locations: Kolkata, India

There are moments in life that stick in memory as a fulcrum between before and after. Rohit, Arti’s new husband, was with her, his presence a tangible sign of his support. But even as Arti awaited the starting gun, the crowd of candidates beside her made painfully clear how much competition she faced. So many candidates had traveled to the exam site, on a remote campus in Uttar Pradesh State, that there was nowhere to house them all. Arti, Rohit and Meena had slept in a local gurudwara, a Sikh place of worship, packed in with the other hopefuls and their chaperones.

Persons: Arti Kumari’s, Meena, Rohit, Arti’s, Arti Organizations: Uttar Pradesh State Locations: Uttar Pradesh

For Nasreen, getting to New Delhi after she ran away from her family and the betrothal they had arranged for her was a daring feat. In the winter, the air pollution was among the worst in the world, clinging to skin and choking lungs. In her family’s flat, she cooked on a stove that added to the heat and smoke. When she could get outside, she had to walk a gantlet of leering men who lined the sidewalks. Delhi inspired her to dream of a bigger life and connected her to people who could help her reach for it.

Persons: Nasreen, Bindu Locations: New Delhi, Delhi

☆ India reassures confidence in Aadhaar after Moody's questions its reliability
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-25 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] A woman goes through the process of finger scanning for the Unique Identification (UID) database system, also known as Aadhaar, at a registration centre in New Delhi, India, January 17, 2018. REUTERS/Saumya Khandelwal Acquire Licensing RightsSept 25 (Reuters) - The Indian government on Monday reassured confidence in its digital identification system, Aadhaar, after a Moody's report last week highlighted concerns about it like establishing authorization and biometric reliability. India's ministry of electronics & IT said the Moody's report "does not cite either primary or secondary data or research in support of the opinions presented in it". The Aadhaar card, which is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), has a unique number tied to an individual's fingerprints, face and eye scan. Moody's in its report had said that Aadhaar's system often results in service denials, and questioned the reliability of biometric technologies, especially for manual laborers in hot, humid climates.

Persons: Saumya, Aadhaar, Akanksha, Maju Samuel Organizations: REUTERS, Indian, IT, of India, Gandhi, Rural, Thomson Locations: New Delhi, India, Bengaluru

"Is there going to be a challenge to Royal Enfield? It sold fewer than 30,000 motorcycles - less than the number of bikes Royal Enfield sells each month. Triumph said it has received orders for over 14,000 Speed 400 bikes, exceeding its total India sales of the past decade. Still, the frenzy over the new models is reflected in the surge in Google searches about Harley-Davidson and Triumph in India. Improved financing options is also encouraging lower-income buyers to consider premium bikes, said HDFC Securities analyst Aniket Mhatre.

Persons: Davidson, Rishi Vora, brokerages, Harley, Kotak, Royal Enfield's, Eicher, Royal, Shubhabrata Marmar, Enfield, Varun Painter, MotoCorp, Sathish Rao, Aniket Mhatre, Priyanka Kochhar, Indranil Sarkar, Aby Jose Koilparambil, Nandan Mandayam, Saumya Singh, Navamya Ganesh Acharya, Varun, Dhanya Skariachan, Euan Rocha, Christopher Cushing Organizations: Reuters, Bajaj Auto Ltd, Handout, REUTERS, Royal Enfield, Securities, Harley, Royal, Eicher Motors, Reuters Graphics Reuters, ROYAL, Enfield, Mahindra, Mahindra's, TVS, Bajaj Auto, Bajaj, Triumph, HDFC Securities, Thomson Locations: REUTERS BENGALURU, India, Royal Enfield, Bengaluru

People burned out of their homes by the hundreds. Men, women and children beaten and set ablaze by angry mobs. India, the world’s most populous country and home to the fastest-growing major economy, is now also the site of a war zone, as weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. More than 35,000 people have become refugees, with many living in makeshift camps. Internet service has been cut — an increasingly common tactic by the Indian government — and travel restrictions have made it difficult for the outside world to see in.

Persons: — Locations: India, Manipur, China

☆ India's PhonePe launches e-commerce app on government's open network
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Varunvyas Hebbalalu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

REUTERS/Saumya KhandelwalBENGALURU, April 4 (Reuters) - Walmart Inc-backed (WMT.N) digital payments firm PhonePe Pvt Ltd launched an app called Pincode on the Indian government's open network on Tuesday to strengthen its e-commerce business. The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was launched last year to enable small merchants and local stores across India to access processes and technologies typically deployed by large e-commerce platforms like Amazon (AMZN.O) and Walmart (WMT.N). Pincode, which will focus on hyperlocal commerce, is currently live only in Bengaluru and available on the Google Play Store and the App Store, PhonePe said in a statement. PhonePe already has an e-commerce platform, called Switch, on its app, which offers services including food delivery, grocery shopping, travel, hotel booking, retail fashion and healthcare. India's most valuable payments firm, PhonePe had raised $200 million from majority-backer Walmart in a pre-money $12 billion valuation in March.

☆ Big Tech's wipeout sends workers scrambling
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Matt Turner | Dave Smith | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider. Up first: I just returned to New York after a few days in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. It was intense and informative, packed with meetings with business leaders and government ministers from around the world. Davos, Switzerland Hanna Erasmus and EyeEm/Getty ImagesMore than 1,500 business leaders descended on Davos in the Swiss Alps last week. Saumya Khandelwal/Hindustan Times via Getty ImagesIt was a wipeout at Silicon Valley's tech giants this week.

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