AI driving India’s data centres; PW’s losses widen in FY24

Hello,

The smog season is here.

Over the last few days, air pollution has made life difficult in several South Asian cities. While Delhi’s air quality remained in the "very poor" category Thursday morning—with a layer of smog hanging over areas such as Akshardham temple—Lahore set up a smog war room to combat air pollution.

Speaking of the environment, Donald Trump’s second win, which has come days ahead of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), poses a major challenge to the fight against global warming. 

The reason: Trump has earlier described climate change as a “hoax”, and promised to roll back policies to clean up the economy. He has also vowed to increase US production of fossil fuels by easing the permitting process for drilling on federal land.

Also, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to miss the Cop29 climate summit is “a fatal signal”, raising questions about Europe’s commitment to the climate crisis.

ICYMI: Here’s why the European Union’s space programme believes 2024 will likely set a record for global warming. 

In this fight, climate tech startup SpiralWave has demonstrated a new device that yanks carbon dioxide out of the air via a plasma column. In the process, it converts the gas into green methanol.

Can a gadget that looks straight out of a sci-fi movie be the answer to climate woes?

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• AI driving India’s data centres
• PW’s losses widen in FY24
• Learn life skills with The Owl House

Here’s your trivia for today: In Norse mythology, what is the name of the ultimate battle?

In-depth

AI driving India’s data centres

AI is transforming data infrastructure in India, driving a significant increase in the demand for computing power and storage. This surge has placed considerable strain on existing data centres, designed to manage, organise, and share digital information.  

To meet the rising demand for data storage and processing, data centre operators in India are expanding their facilities. Hyperscalers or large-scale data centres that offer cloud computing and data storage services like AWS and Microsoft Azure are leading the charge, leveraging their extensive networks to support AI-driven applications and services.

Growth:

• While India has over 1,300 AI companies, it hosts only 150 of the world’s 11,000 data centres. Despite this, an Avendus report says, India’s data centre industry is projected to generate $25 billion in revenue by 2030.
• Several local micro data centres are coming up in smaller cities to distribute computing power more effectively. These facilities enable AI applications like smart city solutions and real-time analytics, broadening AI accessibility across the country.
• Hyderabad-based data centre firm CtrlS is scaling its infrastructure for high-density computing and AI workloads and is planning to invest $2 billion over the next five years in line with the IndiaAI Mission.

Edtech

PW’s losses widen in FY24

Edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah (PW) saw its losses widen significantly in FY24, fueled by a sharp rise in employee benefit costs and other expenditures, casting a shadow over a 2.6-fold increase in operating revenue. 

The heavy losses come on the back of the edtech company’s rapid expansion over the past couple of years. PW, which initially focused on the test-prep segment, has rapidly diversified its educational offerings over the past few years to encompass everything—from school education to skills training—casting its learning net over a wide base of learners.

Key highlights:

• The Alakh Pandey-led firm reported a consolidated loss of Rs 1,131.3 crore in FY24, up 13.5X from Rs 84.1 crore recorded in the earlier fiscal period.
• Its operating revenue surged 160.7%, touching Rs 1,940.4 crore in FY24 compared to Rs 744.3 crore in FY23.
• Earlier this year, PW Co-founder Prateek Maheshwari told YourStory that FY24 was the year of “growth,” while FY25 is the year of “sustainable growth,” as PW aims to return to a profitable path.

Social Story

Learn life skills with The Owl House

Founded by Priyadarshani Sule and Renuka Figueiredo in 2018, The Owl House is a community service initiative that empowers neurodivergent individuals by helping them find purpose and, where possible, earn an income. 

Much of its work involves skill-building for neurodiverse adults. It runs various courses that train adults with special needs in professional skills that will help them get employed, such as store management, cafe service, and gardening.

Building lives:

• Figueiredo shares they started Owl House as a multi-speciality centre, where people can come in for speech therapy, special education, and behavioural therapy.
• She shares that many people with neurodiverse conditions would finish school at 18 years of age and then have nowhere to go. This led them to pivot and transform Owl House into a skill development centre.
• The centre works with individuals having conditions like autism, ADHD, specific learning disabilities, Down syndrome, and others. It charges Rs 100 for a group session and Rs 200 for an individual session. However, those families who can't afford to pay take the programmes for free.

News & updates

• Job cuts: Nissan Motor will cut 9,000 jobs and 20% of its global manufacturing capacity, the automaker said, as it scrambles to reduce costs by $2.6 billion in the current fiscal year amid a sales slump in China and the US.
• Social media: Australia's government will introduce "world-leading" legislation to ban children under 16 from social media. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the proposed laws, to be tabled in parliament next week, were aimed at mitigating the "harm" social media was inflicting on Australian children.
• AI for defence: Anthropic is teaming up with data analytics firm Palantir and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide US intelligence and defence agencies access to Anthropic’s Claude family of AI models.

In Norse mythology, what is the name of the ultimate battle?

Answer: Ragnarok.

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