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| Photo by Raman deep: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-person-1102257/ |
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| Photo by Raman deep: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-person-1102257/ |
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fiat_1100.jpg
For millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, India of the very recent past may as well have been the proverbial land of snake charmers. With so many flashy car brands offering a host of cutting edge features buzzing up and down India’s many roads and highways across its many cities, towns and increasingly villages, they would conjure up images of a medieval dystopia about what was after all a very modern 20th century India with myriad outstanding achievements to its credit.
It is true that before the launch of the Indo- Japanese Maruti-Suzuki 800 in the early 1980’s most Indian cars and motor vehicles were outdated, sluggish and inefficient when compared with what was driven in other countries around the world, including our neighbouring ones. The liberalization of the Indian motor vehicle sector continued into the 1990s, dazzling the people of the country with the world’s leading automobile brands. Apart from Suzuki, the likes of Honda, Kawasaki, Mazda, Opel, Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan, Isuzu, Daewoo and many other renowned motor vehicle legends graced the Indian roads ushering in the modern Indian automobile revolution. Today the Indian automobile market has some outstanding international and homegrown car brands to cater to the needs of the country's huge middle class and its increasingly large number of millionaires and billionaires. The roads of cities and towns throughout the length and breadth of India see all manner of cars these days- from the humble hatch backs to luxury vehicles from the stables of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Jaguar, not to speak of sporty SUVs where the bigger the better is the mantra.
But that does not mean that the pre-liberalisation generation of India did not have its own love affair with motor vehicles of which the country in fact boasted a rich tradition and history harking back to the earliest days of the twentieth century. The maharajas and the British high officials of the day were the first ones to use automobiles in India. By the time the country gained independence, the well heeled among the local populace too started owning cars.
This was the era of premium luxury automobiles which reflected the class and status of their owners. Brands like Rolls Royce, Plymouth, Bentely, Chevrolet,and Buick were owned and flaunted by royalty and wealthy business people like the Parsees. Other well to do people had their Morris Minors the precursor to the grand old Ambassador car the emblem of pre liberalisation India of languid pace.
Some enterprising Indians would dazzle their compatriots by buying contemporary foreign brands of cars at auctions conducted by the State Trading Corporation and driving around the streets of large cities like Mumbai and Delhi. Imagine the looks of envy when someone would drive by in their massive Chevrolet Caprice among a sea of dreary Ambassadors and Fiats!
The children who grew up in the 1970s to 1980s, however, carry vivid memories of the era of stately and graceful, if lumbering vehicles that took them to their destination albeit not at today's frenetic speed to this day. It was the era of the great Indian triumvirate of Ambassador, Fiat and Standard cars which remained pretty much the same vehicle barring a few minor and cosmetic upgrades from time to time for decade upon decade. Other much loved vehicles from that era were the Matador Van and the Jonga jeeps and the Shaktiman trucks, which were used largely by the army. All the buses and trucks were from Tata and Ashok Leyland, save a few by Hindustan Motors and some by Dodge, which one saw occasionally.
Among the two wheelers, it was the Bajaj Chetak scooter that ruled the roost, alongside the stately Lambretta. The most coveted of the bikes was the Enfield Bullet 350, with its iconic thumping sound which the armed forces and the police forces of the country bought in large numbers. The Yezdi and Jawa bikes were also very popular among the young for their stylish appeal. The Rajdoot Mini, which Rishi Kapoor popularised in his debut film Bobby, was also quite popular with the young and trendy. Rajdoot also mass produced other bigger bikes for the masses, including milk-men who would attach large cans of milk to either side of a bike and go on their daily deliveries.
Three wheelers from Bajaj and Lamberetta became the poor man's taxi, with the larger Tempo three wheeler with its distinctive growl being used to ferry goods across short distances.
These vehicles coexisted with bullock carts, cycle rickshaws and interesting hybrid vehicles like old American second world war leftover Hardly Davidsons being repurposed in Old Delhi as the iconic Phut Phut rickshaws capable of carrying six to eight passengers.
Automobiles had character in those times and people loved their cars and bikes dearly, almost like a family member, as they often were with them for years, sometimes even decades. It was a very different time, when cars didn't have air conditioning, but small electrically operated fans to circulate a weak breeze amongst the passengers. Other cars would show up with straw mats on the roofs of their cars on which their owners would spray water on hot summer days, to create some manner of primitive air conditioning.
Those were indeed very different times, but splendid times, nevertheless. Like the old Dylan song goes- ‘the times, they are a changin.” It's a pity they are.
When I was in school, I learned
about how Brazil transitioned to largely using ethanol-blended fuel for its
automobiles, as it could source it from sugarcane, which grows in abundance in
Brazil. Given that India has always relied excessively on imported petroleum
products to power its automobiles, I had wondered then why India, which, along
with Brazil, is among the top two sugarcane-growing nations in the world,
shouldn’t follow suit? Doing so would not only have shaved off billions
from India’s import bill, but it would also have made it less susceptible to
geo-strategic blackmail like the one it finds itself subject to on account of
the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
While India is trying to pivot away from its reliance on imported oil by stepping up domestic oil exploration and encouraging the widespread adoption of EV technology, it is in leveraging its natural advantage of being home to one of the largest agriculture-based economies in the world and making a move to biofuels like ethanol that it may find true energy security. While oil is messy, polluting, expensive, and causes global warming, the EV industry is heavily reliant on Chinese imports, making it a potential security nightmare. Besides, EVs or electric vehicles are non-polluting only if the electricity used to charge them is produced in a non-polluting way. With most of India’s power plants being coal-powered, going for large-scale adoption of EVs might not help fight the raging pollution levels across the Indian urban landscape. The advantages of using ethanol are many. These include, among other things, better engine performance, higher fuel efficiency, and the kicker being ensuring the energy security of the nation.
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| Photo by Atlantic Ambience |
India’s ethanol journey
The Path Ahead
One of the biggest hurdles in the
adoption of ethanol-blended fuel in India is the large number of old vehicles
that may not be entirely suited to running efficiently on it. The newer
vehicles have no such issues. As a matter of fact, automobile manufacturers in
the country should look at making flexible fuel vehicles like they have for
years in Brazil, capable of running on variable proportions of a petrol-ethanol
blend. Brazil even has vehicles that run on pure ethanol, comprising 95%
ethanol and 5% water.
It is heartening that major Indian automobile companies have stepped up to the plate with their plans to foray into the exciting world of flexible fuel vehicles. With the government planning to extend the same incentives that it extended to EV manufacturers to flexi-fuel vehicle manufacturers soon, the future for rapid adoption of such automobiles seems to be quite bright. In the meantime, it is important that the required fuel dispensing infrastructure be developed and people be made aware of the benefits of using flexible fuel vehicles, also known as FFVs.
Making a move to an ethanol-blended fuel dispensation does have its critics, who argue that the fuel is not compatible with a large number of old vehicles used in the country. Then there is the whole argument about the diversion of food crops like rice and maize towards ethanol production, which might impact the hard-fought-for food security of the nation. Other possible problems could be in the shape of using sugarcane and other water-intensive crops in the manufacturing of ethanol.
However, given the vastness of India and the natural resources it possesses, these are not deal breakers, and solutions can be worked out that adequately address these concerns. India’s tryst with ethanol has been a fruitful one, and continuing down this path will help the nation secure its energy needs for all times to come.
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| Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stacked-of-stones-outdoors-289586/ |
The Indian BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) sector has seen humongous growth over the last two decades, having grown in GDP from Rs. 1.8 trillion in 2005 to Rs. 91 trillion in 2025- a whopping 50X rise in value.[1]Apart from the burgeoning size of the economy and the accompanying rise in consumption of financial services, the greater inclusion of people living in tier II and tier II cities has also given a fillip to the sector, with aspirational spending leading to a lot of the credit growth. The government, on its part, has gone out of its way to ensure that more and more people join the formal banking system via Aadhar and the e-kyc aided simple account opening process. It has also helped put in place a highly efficient Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system to reach funds directly to the beneficiaries in their bank accounts, helping ingrain banking habits in a larger and larger number of people.
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Photo by Google DeepMind:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-artist-s-illustration-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-this-illustration-depicts-language-models-which-generate-text-it-was-created-by-wes-cockx-as-part-of-the-visualising-ai-project-l-18069696/
While LLMs, or large language models, have played a pivotal
role in the significant growth witnessed by GenAI, they do come with a number
of built-in issues that act as a damper on the universal adoption of the
technology. For one, the fact that LLM necessitates the training of models that
need to take billions and billions of parameters into account, which is
something that requires an enormous amount of investment. This ensures that
only the largest technology companies with untold resources can seriously look
at adopting this technology. Besides, the sheer consumption of energy to run
the servers can prove to be an environmental nightmare.
This is where the move to SLMs or small language models
makes eminent sense. As these need to conform to a much smaller number of
parameters than in the case of LLMs, they are able to run admirably on devices
with lesser processing power, including browsers, edge & IoT devices, and
smartphones. What’s more, the quantum of resources needed to be deployed for
this is way lower.
SLM technology is more
decentralized in that it can be customized to handle precise tasks as well as
datasets. This exposure to much more diverse datasets often makes them much
more efficient than large language models trained on a limited amount of data.
As smaller language models do not have large hardware requirements, these are
usually much cheaper to deploy, encouraging more and more organisations and
individuals to leverage their power. Another great advantage of using SLMs is
the fact that one no longer needs to share one’s sensitive information with
external servers, helping you to have enhanced digital security. As you can
never really fully comprehend the decision making process with regard to LLMs,
there is an ever present trust deficit that does not bode well for the
implementation of that model in a manner that aligns with your objectives.
The widespread adoption of SLM that we see on a daily basis
includes things like smart mail suggestions, grammar and spelling checks, voice
assistants, real time text translations, search engine auto fills, and so on.
This is a testament to the increased use of SLMs in preference to the
conventional LLMs by more and more businesses and enterprises, especially by
those who put a premium on cost, better control over technology, and the
security of sensitive information.
Though both LLMs and SLMs have played a critical role in
mainstreaming GenAI, the growing popularity of the latter is something that has
been quite discernible for some time now. To summarise, SLMs are growing in
popularity on account of the fact that LLMs require the deployment of large
amounts of resources, which require a substantial investment. Apart from
that, SLMs lend themselves to customization more easily, making them a more
efficient alternative to LLMs. To top it all, SLMs offer better security.
SLMs are increasingly taking over from
LLMs across small businesses and enterprises and this trend is here to stay.
AI is being used for practically every field of human endeavour, and it cannot be that it will not be leveraged for something like digital marketing, which, as it is, depends upon technology to achieve results. A majority of marketing professionals around the globe are quite comfortable using AI tools in their day to day work. The level of adoption may not be uniform, but there is no denying the fact that AI adoption in the field of marketing is growing by the day.
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| Image courtesy of Google's Gemini AI |
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| Image generated by Google's Gemini model. |
While AI is the flavour of the times, there is so much happening in this universe that one is often left gasping for breath trying to make sense of the ever-new terms being bandied about. Generative AI has been the buzzword for quite some time now, and just when one sort of came to terms with what it possibly entailed, one hears of another one-Multimodal AI.
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| Image generated by Gemini |
There is no
reason on the face of the earth (pun intended) for India not to be the tourism
capital of the world. From the lofty Himalayas and the Thar Desert to one of the longest coastlines in the world and from
historical monuments and a cultural heritage that goes back several millennia,
India offers more in spades than any other nation in the world. It has ski
resorts and beach resorts, jungle safaris and desert safaris, alpine forests
and mangrove forests, mighty rivers and serene lagoons and everything else you
can imagine, like exotic tropical islands and even an active volcano! Medieval
palaces, forts, ancient temples, a millennia-old classical music tradition, a
cuisine more varied than any other, and a unique way of life that has evolved
over thousands of years.
There is
nothing that any nation in the world has that can hold a candle to what India
has to offer. It compares favorably with Rome and Egypt when it comes to
ancient architecture, and its cuisines from across its various regions rival
those of France and Italy. India's ski resorts are no less than what Switzerland
offers, and its thriving wildlife offers more than what Africa does. From the frozen
deserts and icy rivers of Ladakh, to the aquamarine waters of Andaman and
Nicobar islands and from the rugged river-carved canyons of Gandikota and
Bhedaghat, there isn't enough space to go into the details of what India offers
the world. Yet, the international tourist arrival numbers for India are
abysmally low.
France, a
nation one-fifth the size of India, attracted 89.4 million visitors in 2024
(the highest in the world), when compared to an extremely modest 20.57 million
international tourist arrivals in the same year. In fact, India did not even
make it to the list of the top 10 nations attracting international tourists,
being left behind by countries like Spain, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom,
the United States, Germany, China, Thailand and Mexico.
India
earned as much as $35 billion from international tourist arrivals in 2024, a
figure that would have been a whopping $151.4 billion if something like 89
million international tourists had arrived in India instead. That is not all
that far from what India earns from its IT exports. Does one even begin to
fathom what kind of difference that would have made to the Indian economy? With
all that India offers, isn’t that a criminal waste of opportunity for a nation
that has more to offer than any other in the world?
If India
doesn't get the international tourist arrival numbers it deserves, it has to be
on account of the fact that very few of the international travellers who come
here recommend it heartily to their compatriots back home or want to visit it
again. This occurs because of the fact that India still has infrastructure
issues. Rail, road and air connectivity have come a long way in recent years,
but are still pretty inconsistent, with last-mile transportation often not
being up to the mark.
India has
many world-class hotels, some of which make it to several international lists
of the world's greatest hotels, but it does not offer much by way of affordable
accommodation comparable with other major tourism destinations. In particular,
there are issues with regard to safety and hygiene, especially in areas that
are not part of the well-known tourist circuits. International tourists expect
things like clean public restrooms and the availability of safe drinking water,
wherever they visit, no matter how remote the place may be.
Some
international tourists might get put off by what they might perceive as
restrictive visa rules. This is especially evident when you compare the tourism
visa policies of other tourist destinations around the world. One would do well
to make it possible for international visitors to come for even short-term
visits, allowing them more flexibility when it comes to travel planning.
While India
is a budget traveller's paradise, given the high number of expat backpackers
you see in the country, the mid to high-end tourists often face quite high
costs. Then, there is the question of the high taxes levied on hotels and
travel services. To top it all, hotel rates and airline ticket prices are
exorbitantly priced during the peak season, often making the visitors consider
other destinations to visit.
Lastly,
India has been rather lacklustre and inconsistent in showcasing its offerings
in the world tourism market when compared to other countries like France and
Italy, which have been able to develop a strong brand image in terms of what
those countries offer to visitors.
The
critical building block with regard to putting India on the path to achieving
the number one tourism destination in the world is to carry out a massive
upgrade of its infrastructure.
Improvement in road connectivity, adequate accommodation of
internationally acceptable standards and massive across-the-board improvement
in hygiene and sanitation levels not just across the tourist destinations, but
across the country. This entails a massive investment, which will pay back
handsomely in the times ahead.
The safety
and security of all tourists-domestic and international, have to be a matter of
national pride and importance. Not only does it entail better policing, but
also making the people realise that they have a stake in ensuring that the
world sees India as a great place to visit, where the people are warm, friendly
and well-disposed to people who visit their land. It would, in fact, be a great
idea to train people throughout the length and breadth of this vast country to
participate in the growth of the tourism sector. They could become a part of
the very lucrative hospitality industry, helping them raise their standard of
living.
India has a
head start in digital connectivity thanks to its impressive mobile connectivity
and the very successful rollout of its digital payments infrastructure. This
can be leveraged by putting an integrated ticketing system in place. Besides,
one can use apps and deploy AI to help tourists discover incredible India and
make the best possible travel plans with ease and convenience.
India is a
land that, at some level, beckons and fascinates the world, and this has been
true since the dawn of history. In offering people everything that is good,
profound and sublime in the world, it shows them the layered, intricate,
diverse and nuanced aspects of its way of life. Visiting India in many ways is
like finding the meaning of life itself.
We in India
owe it to ourselves to show the world the very best of what India is. If we do
that, there is no reason why India can't be the number one tourism destination
in the world. In so doing, we will not only contribute massively to the enrichment
of this vast and ancient land, going back millennia, but also bring the world
closer to it. As the old Indian saying goes, "The World is One
Family."
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Image generated by Gemini |
Is it a
great time to found a startup at a time when AI seems to be poised to impact
every aspect of human endeavour and activity? Do the tremendous efficiencies
that are said to accrue from deploying AI make it far easier to run a
successful startup, or do the complexities arising from its adoption make
things difficult?
With small
businesses being the backbone of most nations’ economies, both in terms of GDP
and private sector job creation, can artificial intelligence-powered startups
achieve breakout growth through market-disrupting innovation? The fact that
startups have access to easily available open-source tools, as well as a huge
amount of high-quality data, does give them a leg up with regard to coming up
with out-of-the-box solutions that are unconstrained by the hitherto high costs
of research and development that something like that might have entailed in the
past.
With
innovation being made so much easier to achieve, even the smallest of startups
can match the operational efficiency of much larger organisations. This
empowers them to function in a nimble and super-efficient manner, enabling them
to make lightning-fast strategic moves like rapidly coming up with new
iterations and aligning very quickly to any market changes.
On the flip
side, the high rate of obsolescence of the cutting-edge solutions offered by AI
means that startups will need to work very hard to maintain their competitive
advantage in the market. They could get trapped in a treadmill kind of race
that hampers growth. Constant innovation and adaptation do not necessarily lend
themselves to growth and stability, for a startup, as it would not be able to
find its feet in terms of zeroing in on a niche for itself. Then there is also
the fact that the regulatory landscape is evolving with regard to grappling
with the cons of AI, like data privacy, algorithmic bias and ethical concerns
about its use. Also, given that AI open source tools are available to everyone,
the advantage evens out, and it is quite challenging to apply a given AI technology
in a manner that others can't replicate.
At the core
of starting a new business lie its viability and chances of finding success.
The very best of business ideas might not stand muster in a tough and cutthroat
marketplace. It is important that your product or service should not only have sufficient
demand, but that you should also have a fair idea of who your target audience
is, as well as have your financial planning sorted. Besides, you should be
aware of the kind of competition you face. On top of all of that, you need an
insightful marketing strategy to achieve your sales and revenue objectives.
While in the past you might have needed to hire experts to guide you with all
of the above, you can now use AI to help you through all of these processes
cheaply and in double quick time.
AI can help
startups personalise marketing campaigns, carry out precise market segmentation
enabling better targeting, leverage predictive analytics allowing for strategic
decision making, and optimise the marketing & sales processes. It can also
help with compliance related matters, enhance security and protect against fraud. What’s
more, it can also help a startup attract funding from investors by helping it
get its financial analysis right.
Startups in
the world of AI largely have a good thing going. Artificial Intelligence levels
out the playing field for a lot of small-time entrepreneurs who were looking to
launch their startups, but were intimidated by the challenges involved. In
fact, there was never a better time for startups to launch, scale up and rule,
the challenges notwithstanding.
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| Photo by Tim Gouw: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-white-shirt-using-macbook-pro-52608/ |