motivation

Flipkart raises $1 bn funding; drops plans to go public

India’s largest e-Commerce firm Flipkart on Tuesday said it has raised USD 1 billion (over Rs 6,000 crore) in fresh funding from a group of investors, the largest so far in the fiercely competitive online shopping segment in the country. The company did not disclose its new holding pattern.

The sources said, however, that with this round of fund raising, Flipkart is valued at about USD 7 billion (around Rs 42,000 crore). Co-led by existing investors Tiger Global Management and Naspers, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC, Accel Partners, DST Global, ICONIQ Capital, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Sofina also participated in this latest financing round.

The Bangalore-based firm will utilise funds on expanding its online and mobile services, focusing on areas like R&D, enhancing customer experience and sellerbase. Flush with cash, Flipkart is also scouting for acquisitions, which can help it expand into newer technologies like wearables and robotics, a move that it believes will impact mobile commerce in the days to come.

“The funds will be used to make long-term strategic investments in India, especially in mobile technology,” Flipkart co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal told reporters here. The focus at Flipkart is to continue to make shopping online simpler and more accessible through the use of technology, he added.

“This funding will enable us to step up our investments for innovations in products and technologies, setting us up to become the mobile e-commerce company of the future. This funding will help us further accelerate momentum and build our presence to become a technology powerhouse,” he said. On the company’s IPO plans, Bansal said: “IPO is not in consideration at all, we are not thinking about it. We have not settled on a business model that we can take public.”

In May, Flipkart had raised USD 210 million funding, bringing private equity firm DST Global on board as an investor. It is estimated that the firm has, so far, raised over USD 1.7 billion from investors, including the current transaction. The Bangalore-based firm, founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, counts Accel Partners, Dragoneer Investment Group, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Sofina and Vulcan Capital among its other investors.

The home-grown e-retailer had acquired online fashion retailer Myntra in May in what is estimated to be a Rs 2,000-crore deal. It had also announced an investment of USD 100 million (around Rs 600 crore) in its fashion business over the next 12-18 months.

Flipkart, currently 14,000 people strong, has 22 million registered users clocking over 4 million daily visits. It delivers 5 million shipments per month, which the company claims is growing rapidly. Flipkart’s moves are being seen as efforts to protect its turf in the USD 3 billion Indiane-commerce market that is witnessing aggressive competition from global giant Amazon and peers like Snapdeal.

Led by increasing Internet penetration and youngsters shopping online, India’s e-commerce market has seen huge growth in the past few years. As more people log on to the Internet to shop, it is estimated to expand over seven-fold to USD 22 billion by 2018.

Flipkart had a 4.9 per cent market share in 2013, while Amazon and eBay had 1.6 per cent and 1.2 per cent share respectively. Flipkart, which started in 2007 as an online bookstore, sells products across categories, including fashion and electronics. It also sells white goods and furniture.

While apparel and electronics are bestsellers for most e-commerce firms, categories such as home decor and household items are also popular. “We believe the Internet will improve the quality of life for millions of Indians, and e-commerce is going to play a huge role in this change,” Bansal said.

The company also plans to hire 1,000 engineers with an eye on expanding its R&D capabilities and is also looking at roping in mobile and technology experts from Silicon Valley.

“By 2020, India will have more than half a billion mobile Internet users. Our intense focus on mobile and technology puts us in a unique position to take advantage of this massive opportunity,” Bansal said.

Harvest of controversy,GM CROPS

Decisions on genetically modified crops cannot be left to experts; technicalities need to be supplemented by answers to people’s anxieties

A quirky anthropologist once exclaimed: “Biotechnology is sheer drama.” He explained his cryptic headline by saying all great contemporary philosophical and ethical debates intersect around it. He added that the city might be the basis for the 21st century imagination but it is the fate of Indian agriculture that would trigger some of the great dilemmas of the century. The sociologist added that it was time to see science as political, and claimed that our scientists like Madhav Gadgil, M.S. Swaminathan or Pushpa Bhargava were as critical to political theory as Ashis Nandy or Rajni Kothari. Each has mediated the relation between science and democracy, and each of them knows that nothing is more central to the fate of democracy than the debates around biotechnology and genetic engineering. This essay will try to outline the nature of this debate and link it up to the GEAC (Genetic Engineering Approval Committee) decision to field test a range of genetically modified crops.

Entry of Bt cotton

The public debates on GM began with the unannounced entry of Bt cotton in Gujarat, where the farmers had grown 21,000 acres of Bt cotton. It was an ironic beginning where an act of smuggling inaugurated the transfer of technology. Monsanto had no idea of this development and was as stunned as the government of India. The Bt cotton debate began as a downloaded debate where Indian journalists and movements discovered the implications of such an introduction. The first concern was whether Bt would enter the food chain and the second centred around empowerment. For centuries, farmers had been custodians of seeds but now they had to obtain seeds from multinationals. Expertise which was once located in the farmer was more focused in laboratories, many of which belonged to private firms.

Two other issues entered the first phase of the debate. One was a memorable battle between two champions of agriculture. Vandana Shiva attacked biotechnology and genetic manipulation claiming that it stunted diversity, disempowered the farmer and skewed intellectual property rights in favour of the multinational. Ms Shiva’s argument centred around alternative forms of farming while Gail Omvedt argued that in this age of liberalisation the farmer needed choice, the freedom to choose the kind of farming he wished to pursue and the seeds he wanted to pick.

The second phase of the debate arose over the introduction of Bt Brinjal. By the second phase, civil society and farmers’ movements had entered the fray in a more systematic manner and were demanding wider debates. The groups argued that the question was not a mere debate about technology. It was a debate about the nature of decision-making especially when experts’ decisions affected livelihoods, ways of life and the very notion of agency in citizenship. One had to answer whether citizenship was to remain a passive act of consuming science or whether the citizen as scientist was to have a say in technologies modifying life and livelihood. The groups argued that if science was public knowledge devoted to creating public goods, it should be subject to a public debate. This required that transparency and responsibility be built into every stage. NGOs showed that there was an arrogance to Indian science pointing out that science itself had changed, moving from certainty to risk. In the age of risk sciences like genetic engineering, one could not always predict whether a technology was safe. Safety had become a “bracketed” term where consequences were not fully predictable. Such new technologies required prudential rather than promethean behaviour, not the Pollyanna-like attitude of our scientists. The movements had a bit of governmental luck in the presence of Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Environment and Forests.

Mr. Ramesh summoned the various scientific academies to prepare a report, and simultaneously asked the Centre for Environment Education to arrange for a major colloquium on biotechnology inviting all the major stakeholders. The open hearings were a major breakthrough in the relation of science and democracy. A cross between a carnival and a protest meeting, the debates led to a moratorium on Bt Brinjal. A whole Pandora’s box of questions remain to be answered. There were questions of method. How objective is an evaluation, how safe is safe? Does the control of seeds by multinationals create a marked asymmetry in knowledge and power between the scientific multinational and the farmer? Can private science work for public benefit, and who decides? The questions of food chains, seed prices, contamination, certainty, and intellectual property created a new thesaurus of questions around biotechnology.

On July 18, the Genetic Engineering and Evaluation Committee gave a green signal for field trials of a whole range of genetically modified crops. This assembly line of crops included rice, mustard, cotton, chickpeas and brinjal. Two questions were immediately raised. Was such a range of testing required? Second, how objective was GEAC as an institution?

Pushpa Bhargava, former director of CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology), questioned the permission given to import GM-based soya bean oil and then went on to question the bona fides of GEAC as an independent evaluation committee of experts.

The nature of decisions in such “expert evaluation” committees needs to be discussed. One has to ask how stakeholder sensitive they are in terms of representation. Secondly, one needed an independent agency to evaluate data, especially private. Rituals of evaluation are part of the integrity of expertise. Thirdly, one has to ask about the method of evaluation itself. Can a small group of bureaucrats decide for the future? How do they explain the framework of that analysis? Can a small group like GEAC explain the ethical and political burden of such a decision? One thing is clear: the GEAC carry claim like the father of atom bomb Robert Oppenheimer did, that the bomb was a “technical answer to a technical question.” Bt crops grow beyond technical issues. They cannot be treated as technical fixes to social problems.

In fact, we should treat the protest by the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) as a collective questionnaire of anxieties and expectations. The BKU raised the following doubts. First, any democracy, any nation-state, has to raise issues of not merely territoriality but also seed sovereignty. Once Monsanto patents the seed, in its search for profit, who decides on ownership? Secondly, what is the new ethics they follow? As transgenic seeds can contaminate a food chain, what is the notion of corporate liability? There are laws for Intellectual Property but there seem to be no laws for corporate violations of nature. The idea of corporate social responsibility is too weak to address these questions. Already in nuclear energy, the nuclear liability clause caps corporate liability. The question is: can we afford such an equivalent system or do we need new ideas of law and ethics?

 The need of the hour is a new social contract where nature and technology are reworked constitutionally 

Food security & sustainability

Even technical questions do not sound strictly technical. How do we determine safety? Does safety include livelihood security of farmers or even the question of eco-system damage? Given the current nature of complexity, a responsibility as a simple cause and effect diagram may be difficult to fix. We need concepts which combine food security and food sustainability.

There is also the question of problem solving. C.S. Holling and other ecologists have advocated the idea of Panarchy. Panarchy like hierarchy is sensitive to levels but while a reductive hierarchic solution goes right down, panarchy argues that different levels of a problem require different solutions. Ecological science seems to suggest that genetic modification can no longer be touted as a single solution to agricultural problems.

All these questions demand or suggest the necessity of a different framework of debate. Firstly we need a nested series of hearings, debates, academic seminars where data is analysed independently. Secondly, the voice of dissenting scientists needs to be listened to and responded. Thirdly, decisions cannot be expert decisions — technicalities need to be supplemented by answering citizen anxieties.

Finally, the BJP government, instead of rushing into decisions, must set up a framework of debate. Delays while debates and tests are analysed need not be embarrassing. The need for speed is not obvious. In fact what is necessary is a new social contract where nature and technology are reworked constitutionally. As a democracy, we have to adjudicate between different ideas of farming, evaluate different kinds of responsibility, ethics and accountability. Bowdlerising GM crops is the worst thing any government can do. In its urge to satisfy the corporation, it cannot ignore the needs of farmers, the future and the ideals of our civilisation.

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PM addresses scientists at 86th ICAR Foundation Day

• Two-fold objective for agricultural scientists – enable farmers to feed India and the world; and earn a good livelihood • PM gives ICAR mantras of "Kam zameen, kam samay, zyaada upaj" and "per drop, more crop" • Create talent pool of young, educated and progressive farmers, and agricultural research scholars

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, has exhorted agricultural scientists to work towards a two-fold objective of enabling the Indian farmer to (a) feed India and the world; (rashtra aur vishva ka pet bhare) and (b) earn a good income in the process. (kisan ki jeb bhare). Addressing the agricultural scientific community on the 86th Foundation Day of ICAR, at the NASC Complex in Delhi, the Prime Minister – who was earlier greeted with a "standing ovation" – called upon the audience to give a "standing ovation" to the millions of Indian farmers, who, he said, have played a huge role in changing India`s fortunes. Speaking after giving away ten awards for excellence in agricultural research, Shri Narendra Modi asked the scientists to elaborate upon their research in simple terms, so that it could be understood by the farmers, and they could be convinced to try out new products and initiatives. Noting that farming in India is hereditary, and practices are difficult to change, the Prime Minister said that change can happen only when the farmer is convinced about its efficacy. Therefore, agricultural scientists must - in accordance with changing circumstances of climate, water and soil - help the farmer get convinced about their initiatives. The Prime Minister said that the water-cycle has to be managed according to the changing weather-cycle. The Prime Minister asked ICAR to set goals for their centenary, which is 14 years away. He said the work of ICAR should have two mantras: • "Kam zameen, kam samay, zyaada upaj" – Less land, less time, more crop • "per drop, more crop" He called upon ICAR to set its sights on achieving self-sufficiency in edible oil, and improving protein content and availability of pulses. Since demand is increasing, and land available will not rise, the focus has to be on soil fertility, the Prime Minister noted. Giving the example of Mahatma Gandhi, and his commitment towards water conservation, the Prime Minister asked ICAR to work for more efficient ways of water conservation and irrigation (jal sanchay se jal seenchan). Shri Modi also said that in the field of animal husbandry, special efforts need to be made to raise the level of milk productivity. To meet the challenge of "lab to land" – taking scientific research to successful interventions – the Prime Minister exhorted agricultural colleges to start radio stations. Noting that farmers listen to radio a lot, he said radio programmes run by college students would prove extremely beneficial. He called for a digitized database of all agricultural research in the country. He said young educated and progressive farmers; and agricultural research scholars can together form a talent pool in all districts of the country. The Prime Minister also called for a blue revolution that would extend the benefits of scientific research to the fisheries sector. He also called for greater research and promotion of coastal seaweed, and Himalayan herbal medicinal plants.

New urban development initiatives to address shortcomings of JNNURM

Smart Cities should aim at enhancing quality of urban life, says Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu Efficient service delivery through improved governance to be focus of Smart Cities Need for City specific long term strategic plans stressed

Learning from the experience of implementation of Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), the new urban development initiatives should aim at improving the quality of urban life in the country by addressing the chronic urban problems and by going beyond provision of just infrastructure. This broad view has emerged at the two day long brain storming session chaired by the Minister of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Shri M Venkaiah Naidu. During the discussions that concluded today, various aspects of urban development including the Smart Cities initiative were taken up for critical examination. Union Minister of Power Shri Piyush Goyal, Members of Parliament – Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Shri Jyothiraditya Scindia, Shri Baijayant Panda and Shri Rajiv Chandrasekhar also shared their perspectives. Shri Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary (Urban Development), Smt Anita Agnihotri, Secretary (Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation), senior officials of the two ministries besides experts participated in the two day long deliberations. While reviewing the progress on conceptualization of the ‘Smart Cities’ initiative, Shri Naidu stressed that the focus of this project should be to enhance quality of urban life through an integrated approach to urban planning and execution besides ensuring ‘inclusivity’. Shri Piyush Goyal suggested that solid waste management, cleanliness etc., should be addressed on priority for immediate impact. Referring to development of smart cities, he said that four or five such projects could be offered to states which have ready land availability. Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy noted that the six dimensions of smart cities should be smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment, smart ecology, smart people and smart living. He said based on the learnings of experience of some Asian and other developed countries, India specific model need to be evolved. Shri Baijayant Panda observed that emerging towns should be included under Smart Cities initiative aimed at energy efficiency, clustering of infrastructure and efficient management and governance ensuring inter-sectoral linkages. Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia suggested development of ‘counter magnet cities’ to spread urbanization to new areas. He noted that state governments need to play a pro-active role in addressing urban challenges. He suggested that small towns and cities that are not handicapped by ‘legacy’ issues like congestion and limited land availability could be chosen first to be developed as smart cities. Shri Rajiv Chandrasekhar said that though JNNURM had laudable objectives, it failed to develop a single ‘model city’ and this experience should be taken into account while devising new urban development schemes. He said, under JNNURM, central government ended up merely supporting asset creation. He suggested that the central government should play the role of a ‘catalyst’ in the new scheme of things. He stressed the need for city specific long term statutory development plans for assured outcomes. Shri Chandrasekhar also stressed the need to go beyond provision of infrastructure to ensure efficient delivery of public services to the urban people. He noted that the spirit of 74th Amendment to the Constitution empowering urban local bodies should be realized in full measure for urban development initiatives to be meaningful. As a starting point for the discussions, Shri Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary (Urban Development), in his presentation outlined that a ‘Smart City’ could be one with technology based governance that enables efficient public services and has 24 x 7 water and power supply, 100% sewerage, drainage and solid waste management facilities besides top class infrastructure. He further noted that to mobilize the required resources, funding through Public-Private Partnership, Multi-lateral agencies, Viability Gap Funding by the central government can be explored. After detailed deliberations, Shri Venkaiah Naidu directed the Ministry officials to prepare Notes for Cabinet at the earliest, based on the learnings of JNNURM implementation, inputs/suggestions received during the two day brainstorming session and from other sources. He suggested that there could be two different schemes – one for renewal of 500 urban habitations and the other for ‘Smart Cities’. The 500 habitations are to be provided with safe drinking water, sewerage management and use of recycled water, solid waste management and digital connectivity as mentioned in the General Budget for 2014-15.