Fittr’s bold new growth plans; Converting waste wool into climate solutions
During its early years, Fittr went on a hiring spree and spent heavily on performance marketing and brand campaigns, which didn’t yield returns. “We ignored the losses and spent mindless money,” Jitendra Chouksey admits.
Hello,
Despite tech companies’ claims on AI agents replacing humans in the workplace, machines aren’t coming to take over jobs any time soon, at least according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
Researchers reportedly staffed a fake software company entirely with AI agents–and the results were chaotic, Business Insider reports. The top-performing model, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, for example, finished a little less than one-quarter of all tasks. The rest of the models, including Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash, performed even worse.
Meanwhile, in the world of tech, Huawei Technologies is preparing to test its newest and most powerful AI processor, which the company hopes could replace some higher-end products of the US chip giant NVIDIA.
The Chinese company hopes that the latest iteration of its Ascend AI processors will be more powerful than NVIDIA's H100, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Speaking of AI chips, an Indian startup Ziroh Labs, in collaboration with researchers at IIT Madras, recently said it has designed an affordable system that it says can run large AI models without requiring advanced computing chips from companies like NVIDIA.
Who will win the AI chips race?
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about:
- Fittr’s bold new growth plan
- Converting waste wool into climate solutions
Here’s your trivia for today: Which country in Africa is named after the Shona term for ‘stone houses’?
Startup
Fittr’s bold new growth plan
The COVID-19 pandemic provided Fittr the right environment to grow. However, reckless growth led to the company bleeding cash. The Pune-based startup has now found a new identity by betting on full-stack healthcare. YourStory finds out more.
Growth phase:
- During its early years, Fittr went on a hiring spree and spent heavily on performance marketing and brand campaigns, which didn’t yield returns. “We ignored the losses and spent mindless money,” Jitendra Chouksey admits.
- While revenues grew—from Rs 58 crore to nearly Rs 90 crore—so did the cash burn. As the world reopened in 2022, two years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, consumers returned to their gyms, leaving behind their online fitness sessions.
- Fittr’s broader ambition is to become an end-to-end healthcare company. The labs are just a starting point. “Eventually, we want to go into hospitals,” says Chouksey. “We want to own the entire healthcare stack.”
Inspiration
Converting waste wool into climate solutions
Samakhya Innovative Solutions, led by Prerna Agarwal, Shwetambara Ujjain, and Danish Choudhary, is finding value in coarse sheep wool that pastoral communities have been discarding for ages. It has revived sheep rearing as a profitable enterprise for over 500 pastoral families in the region, and provides employment for 35 women at its processing centres.
Key takeaways:
- Agarwal initially decided to help market artisanal products created by rural women. Her urban perspective was simple—to create an online market for beautiful products and watch it take off. However, the reality was far more complex.
- She discovered the lack of a market was a symptom of a much larger problem. Understanding the interconnected nature of rural livelihoods in the process was equally important.
- Samakhya’s insulation from coarse wool has been used in government primary schools, World Peace Center, Munjal Community Center, and Shree Brijmohan Munjal Auditorium, and RM Institute. Major corporations like Infosys have also begun exploring this material.
News & updates
- Buyout: Toyota Motor said it is exploring the possibility of investing in a potential buyout of key parts supplier Toyota Industries–a buyout that reportedly could cost $42 billion.
- TikTok: Chinese social media platform TikTok will enter the online shopping industry in Japan within the next few months, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Sunday. The company is preparing to recruit sellers soon for its e-commerce arm, TikTok Shop, in Japan, Nikkei said, citing a source involved in the operations.
What you should watch out for
- Ather IPO: Ather Energy’s public offering, which will open on April 28, will include a fresh issue of Rs 2,626 crore and an offer for sale of up to 1.1 crore shares. At the upper price band of Rs 321, the offer for sale would be worth about Rs 354.76 crore.
- Key data: Apart from news about the US-China trade developments, the global markets will closely watch US economic data, including Q1CY25 GDP growth estimates and the unemployment rate.
Which country in Africa is named after the Shona term for ‘stone houses’?
Answer: Zimbabwe
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