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Court approves $240 mn acquisition of Mahindra’s SsangYong Motor

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A Seoul court on Monday approved a local consortium’s acquisition of Mahindra & Mahindra-owned SsangYong Motor by Edison Motors for $254 million, paving the way for the financially-troubled carmaker to get back on track.

The consortium led by electric carmaker Edison Motors signed a final deal with SsangYong to take over the SUV-focused carmaker, according to the two companies.

SsangYong was placed under court receivership in April last year for the second time after undergoing the same process a decade earlier.

Its Indian parent Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. failed to attract an investor due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its worsening financial status.

Under the final agreement, Edison has agreed to acquire SsangYong for 304.8 billion won ($254 million), and the acquisition money will all be spent to repay some of the carmaker’s debt to financial institutions, the two companies said in separate statements.

Edison said it has paid 10 percent of the acquisition money and secured the remaining 274.3 billion won, reports Yonhap news agency.

The electric bus and truck maker is required to submit its rehabilitation plans for SsangYong to the court by March 1.

China-based SAIC Motor Corp acquired a 51 per cent stake in SsangYong in 2004 but relinquished its control of the carmaker in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

In 2011, Mahindra acquired a 70 per cent stake in SsangYong for 523 billion won and now holds a 74.65 per cent stake in the carmaker.

For the whole of 2021, its vehicle sales fell 22 per cent to 84,106 units from 107,324 a year earlier amid the pandemic and chip shortages.

SsangYong’s lineup consists of the Tivoli, Korando, Rexton, and Rexton Sports SUVs.

Business

AI to generate new revenue streams in 2025, innovate business processes: Experts

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New Delhi, Dec 25: Enterprises will reimagine business processes and value streams with AI agents in 2025, while taking into consideration the practical and ethical challenges, industry experts have said, adding that it will be the year of small language models, scaled reasoning and business value realisation.

In the coming year, AI agents will generate new revenue streams, innovate business processes across industries, boosting profitability, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

“Humans will increasingly take on roles where they set up agentic teams, plan agentic workflows, and validate work done by AI Agents,” said Sandhya Arun, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro.

According to Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar, CTO of Infosys, in 2025, we will see a lot of AI initiatives that are currently under rollout, to be scaled across enterprises, and businesses will start realising some measurable business value along the lines of cost, growth, better experience, and risk protection.

“We are seeing increased investments in scaling inferencing which improves the reasoning capabilities, thereby enabling the agentic systems to be used to eliminate tasks and re-engineer the processes,” Tarafdar mentioned.

As the small language models become more specialised and can deliver higher accuracy at lower cost, the adoption of these models in enterprises is likely to accelerate.

Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President and Managing Director, Adobe India, said that fuelled by a healthy enterprise business, vibrant creator community, and upcoming technological advancements, 2025 represents a year of extraordinary opportunity.

“We are committed to leading the way in harnessing generative AI’s potential responsibly and empower businesses and creators alike, setting new benchmarks in personalised customer experiences and content creation while upholding trust and transparency through our content authenticity programmes,” she noted.

The idea of software-defined capabilities, which originated with cloud technology, has now evolved across various machines like vehicles and robots.

“In 2025, software defined machines will be powered by AI and ML and make informed decisions. We will witness an increase in autonomous machines with over-the-air (OTA) updates,” added Arun.

Autonomous industrial robots will proliferate, and software-defined medical devices will evolve towards autonomous preventive maintenance and self-healing with minimal human intervention and down time.

Augmented analytics will enable citizen users to gain access to intelligent insights from ready-to-use data visualisations for faster and informed decision making. Data marketplaces will grow across industries and industry ecosystems to unlock new revenue streams, said experts.

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Indian firms raise bumper funds from equity market in 2024, set new records

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Mumbai, Dec 24: The year 2024 has been a historic one for the Indian stock market. Corporates raised bumper funds from investors through initial public offerings (IPOs), follow-on public offers (FPOs), qualified institutional placements (QIPs) and rights issues, and set several new records.

In 2024, domestic companies raised Rs 1.64 lakh crore through 90 IPOs.

During this period, shares worth Rs 1.39 lakh crore were sold to institutional investors. This is the highest figure ever for raising capital through public issues.

In 2021, companies raised the highest amount of Rs 1.18 lakh crore through IPOs. During this period, shares worth Rs 41,997 crore were sold by the companies to institutional investors.

So far this year, 20 companies have raised about Rs 18,000 crore through rights issues. Last year this figure was Rs 7,266 crore, and in 2022, it was Rs 3,884 crore.

Due to the boom in the IPO market, in December 2024, about 15 companies are going to raise Rs 25,500 crore through public issues.

The biggest-ever IPO of the Indian stock market was launched by Hyundai Motor India. Its issue size was Rs 27,870 crore.

Earlier, LIC’s public issue of Rs 21,008 crore in 2022 was the biggest IPO in the country so far. In 2024, Vibhor Steel Tube’s IPO received the highest subscription of 320 times. Apart from this, IPOs like KRN Heat Exchanger & Refrigeration, Manba Finance, and Gala Precision Engineering got more than 200 times subscriptions.

Indian firms raised Rs 1.4 lakh crore this year through QIPs, the highest figure so far since 2020.

This year, Vedanta and Zomato have each raised Rs 8,500 crore through QIP. Apart from this, Adani Energy Solutions and Varun Beverage raised Rs 8,373 crore and Rs 7,500 crore, respectively. According to data from the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), foreign investors invested around $14 billion in the primary markets this year, which is more than the previous record of 2021.

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Business

‘What Is The Hack?’: X User Raises Questions Over Uber’s Differential Pricing On iPhones & Android

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Cab-aggregator services have become an integral part of commute in many urban centres in India. Uber is one of the biggest names in the business, not just in India but globally.

In a story that surrounds the functioning of the application, one user took to X, to notify a peculiar observation.

While many have anecdotally mentioned a pattern of distinction in the pricing of the services, depending the device in use, this apparent differential phenomenon was highlighted by an X user who noticed the same.

Different Phones, Different Prices

The user who goes by the name SUDHIR, with the handle @seriousfunnyguy took to X with a photograph of two phones. The phones in the photograph had the Uber open. In the app, the user was in the process of booking a ride.

As one book a ride, the app shows different modes and options along with their respective pricing. In this, on one phone, which is an Android phone, the price is lower than the price for the same distance, on an iPhone. The rides were also booked at the same time.

The indignant user added, “Same pickup point, destination & time but 2 different phones get 2 different rates. It happens with me as I always get higher rates on my Uber as compared to my daughter’s phone. So most of the time, I request her to book my Uber. Does this happen with you also? What is the hack?”

Different Pricing Across Modes

In this, the pricing on the Android phone is shown to be lower than the prices on the Apple iPhones for all options, including Uber Auto, Uber Go, Go Sedan and Uber XL.

In the first option, there is a gap of over Rs 42. With Uber Go, there is a difference that is even greater at over Rs 120. For the Uber Go Sedan, the difference is over Rs 65. In addition, the price for Uber XL is close to Rs 100.

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