Arundhati Bhattacharya on heading Salesforce India; Building better habits

BYJU’S continues to remain in the spotlight.

Edtech major Think and Learn, which owns BYJU'S brand, has released the full salary of 25% of employees in the lower pay scale while it has made partial payment to the rest of the workforce, the Press Trust of India reported, citing sources.

BYJU's management wrote two sets of letters to employees on Sunday, informing them about salary payment through alternate fund arrangements and mentioning financial constraints the company is facing due to the blocking of funds by a select group of investors.

In other news, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger has said a joint venture with Reliance Industries after merging its India business would benefit the company in terms of profit and also "derisk" its business in the Indian market.

Meanwhile, India and the four-nation European bloc EFTA on Sunday signed a free trade agreement under which New Delhi has received an investment commitment of $100 billion in the next 15 years. Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland are part of the EFTA.

ICYMI: All the action at SheSparks 2024.

Lastly, a quest to bring wifi to the Moon. 

With space agencies across the globe preparing for lunar missions, the next generation of moonwalkers may have a far more high-resolution way of keeping in touch–both with each other and with us back on Earth.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Arundhati Bhattacharya on moving to Salesforce
• Building better habits with Habuild 

Here’s your trivia for today: Which movie won Steven Spielberg his first Oscar for Best Director?

Interview 

Arundhati Bhattacharya on moving to Salesforce

For Arundhati Bhattacharya, former Chairperson of the State Bank of India, taking up the reins of Salesforce’s India division was a unique challenge. 

“A lot of people told me I am making a mistake, and that I was unnecessarily degrading my level. There I was (at SBI) managing an organisation of 270,000 people, while in Salesforce there were around 2,500 people in India,” she says.

Growth:

• The banker-turned-corporate leader believes that having an identity is most important for women, apart from being referred to as the wife, sister, mother, or daughter of someone else.
• Bhattacharya has made her mark, as a banker, a successful corporate chief executive, and also as an author. Her memoir, Indomitable: A Working Woman's Notes on Work, Life and Leadership, was published in January 2022 and chronicles her life in a male-dominated industry.
• Today, Salesforce has over 10,000 employees in India and a topline of Rs 6,000 crore. Additionally, Salesforce India registered a 50% year-on-year growth in revenue in FY23.

Startup 

Building better habits with Habuild 

Nagpur-based Habuild is a wellness platform that aims to promote physical and mental well-being and help people adopt a healthy lifestyle by cultivating lifelong habits such as yoga, meditation and Zumba. 

The wellness platform, which operates via a messaging automation tool integrated into WhatsApp, was founded in March 2020 by IIT alumni Saurabh Bothra, Trishala Bothra, and Anshul Agrawal. 

Stay fit:

• The startup offers community-based programmes wherein users practise yoga every day to maintain good health. 
• It also provides personalised support in adopting healthier eating habits, regular exercise, and mindfulness practices such as mindful journalling, juice fasts, gut cleanse, kitchen gardening, and marma healing, with the guidance of experts. 
• Habuild offers a range of membership plans—12-month plan for Rs 3999, 6 months at Rs 2999, and 3 months at Rs 1999.

News & updates

• Profits tumble: Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco has paid out dividends of nearly $100bn, despite the company’s annual profits tumbling from the record earnings raked in the year before.
• Wine glut: Millions of grape vines are being destroyed in Australia to rein in overproduction that has crashed grape prices and threatened the livelihoods of growers and winemakers.
• New theory: Dark matter is supposed to account for 85% of the mass in the universe, according to conventional scientific wisdom. But proponents of a radical new theory of gravity, in which space-time is “wobbly”, say their approach could render the elusive substance obsolete.

What you should watch out for

• IPO Watch: A total of seven companies will be opening their initial public offerings (IPOs) in the coming week along with eight new listings. Of the 7 upcoming IPOs, Popular Vehicles, and Krystal Integrated are mainboard issues, while the remaining four  are SME IPOs including Pratham EPC, Signoria Creation, Royal Sense Limited and AVP Infracon Limited IPO.
• TikTok ban: President Joe Biden said last week he would sign legislation that gives China's ByteDance about six months to divest the popular TikTok short video app. The US House of Representatives plans to vote on Tuesday or Wednesday on the TikTok crackdown bill. 
• Pi Day: March 14 marks the annual celebration of the mathematical constant pi, aka the Greek letter π. Its infinite number of digits is usually rounded to 3.14, hence the date of Pi Day.

Which movie won Steven Spielberg his first Oscar for Best Director?

Answer: Schindler’s List

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