Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu on Monday left for India after winning a silver medal in the Tokyo Olympics. The silver medallist is expected to arrive home later on Monday.

Mirabai Chanu had opened India’s medals tally on Saturday as she bagged a silver in the Women’s 49kg category at Tokyo International Forum.

“Heading back to home, Thank you #Tokyo2020 for memorable moments of my life,” tweeted Chanu.

Chanu lifted a total of 202 kg (87kg in snatch and 115kg in clean and jerk) during her four successful attempts across the competition.

China’s Zhihui Hou bagged gold with a total of 210kg and created a new Olympic Record while Indonesia’s Windy Cantika Aisah grabbed bronze with a total of 194kg.

With this monumental silver medal, Chanu has become the second Indian weightlifter to win an Olympic medal after Karnam Malleswari bagged bronze in the 69kg category at the 2000 Sydney Games when the weightlifting arena was opened to women for the first time.

Boxer Mary Kom on Sunday had congratulated Chanu for winning a silver medal at the ongoing Tokyo Olympics. “Congratulations @mirabai_chanu. Emotional and happy to embrace each other. A proud Manipuri and a fighter for India in one frame,” tweeted Mary Kom.

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Pakistan on Friday voiced “serious concern” over media reports about India allegedly eavesdropping on foreigners, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, using Israeli spyware Pegasus and urged the UN to thoroughly investigate the matter.

According to reports, Khan was a potential target of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware programme by clients of the NSO Group cyberespionage firm.

The Foreign Office (FO) through a statement responded to the media queries related to India’s alleged use of the Israeli spyware.

We have noted with serious concern recent international media reports exposing Indian government’s organised spying operations against its own citizens, foreigners as well as Prime Minister Imran Khan, using an Israeli origin spyware, the FO said.

The statement also condemned what it called “India’s state-sponsored, continuing and widespread surveillance and spying operations in clear breach of global norms of responsible state behaviour.

We are closely following these revelations and will bring the Indian abuses to the attention of appropriate global platforms, said the FO.

Pakistan also called on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, “bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account”.

India on Monday categorically rejected allegations linked to the Pegasus snooping row, saying attempts were being made to “malign” Indian democracy.

Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw asserted that illegal surveillance was not possible with checks and balances in the country’s laws.

“The press reports of 18th July 2021 also appear to be an attempt to malign the Indian democracy and its well-established institutions,” Vaishnaw said in Parliament

India, the minister said, has an “established protocol when it comes to surveillance… any form of illegal surveillance is not possible with the checks and balances in our laws and our robust institutions.”

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Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has said that the massive chip shortage will continue for at least two more years before the industry is able to completely catch up with the demand.

The strong demand environment continues to stress the supply chain across the world.

“While I expect the shortages to bottom out in the second half, it will take another one to two years before the industry is able to completely catch up with demand,” Gelsinger said during the Q2 earnings call on Thursday .

“IDM 2.0, which combines our internal manufacturing capacity with the use of third party foundries fast-positions us to weather these challenges and work with our ecosystem partners to build a more resilient supply chain,” he informed.

Intel laid out its IDM 2.0 strategy in March, moving the company forward toward its goal of delivering leadership products in every category in which it competes.

Intel reported a strong Q2 and raised full-year revenue guidance by $1 billion despite a highly constrained supply environment.

In the second quarter, the company generated $8.7 billion in cash from operations and paid dividends of $1.4 billion.

“Q2 revenue was $18.5 billion exceeding our guidance by $700 million. This upside was led by continued strength in our PC business and earlier-than-expected recovery in both our IoTG business and the enterprise portion of the data center segment,” said George Davis, Chief Financial Officer.

Gelsinger said that the ecosystem is back to shipping over one million PC units a day despite grappling with component shortages.

“I expect PC TAM growth will continue in 2022 and beyond, driven by three factors — PC density or PCs per household is increasing as COVID has irreversible changed the way we work, learn connect and care for each other,” he added.

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“Today is a big day for us. A new Day Zero. But we couldn’t have gotten here without the incredible efforts of India’s entire internet ecosystem,” said Zomato Co-founder Deepinder Goyal ahead of the day the company got listed.

In a blog post titled “Letter from Deepi,” he praised his colleagues and investors, and said Zomato will not alter the firm’s focus for short term profits at the cost of the long term success of the company.

“India is a tough market to operate in, but if you are building to succeed in India, you are already exceptional. I say that because I believe Zomato and Swiggy are two of the best food delivery apps in the world today. We have a long way to go before we can call ourselves world class by our customers’ standards, but we are determined to get there,” Goyal said.

Food delivery in India is largely a duopoly with Zomato and Swiggy being the players. Zomato had made a foray into international markets earlier, but is now focusing on its home market. Co-founder Gaurav Gupta had told Business Standard earlier that the firm is very focused on India, and the IPO will not change how it operates as a business.

ALSO READ: Ant-backed Zomato’s roaring India debut sets pace for internet startups

In a note in May, Anand Rathi Research said that in 2019 food consumption in India was about $670 billion, mostly driven by home-cooked food. Food Services, defined as non-home-cooked food or restaurant food, now contributes only around 10 per cent to the food consumption market. This is substantially lower than in global economies such as the US and China where food services contribute respectively about 54 per cent and about 58 per cent of total food consumption.

Hence, the scope for growth is big. In his post, Goyal said several times that it takes time to build a good product and that the company would remain focused on its long-term objectives.

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Shriram Housing Finance has drawn up an aggressive growth trajectory for the next two years with a plan to close the loan book at around Rs 5,600 crore this fiscal, and end FY24 at the Rs 10,000-crore mark, a top company official has said.

The city-based affordable housing focused lender, which is one of the three credit business verticals of the Chennai-based Shriram Group, closed FY21 with a loan book of Rs 3,923 crore, which despite the pandemic washout has already crossed Rs 4,000 crore as of end-June.

This means the company plans to add more than 1.5 times of its present book over the next 30 months, managing director and chief executive Ravi Subramanian told PTI in an interview.

According to the plan, the loan book should be touching Rs 5,000 crore by December and close the year at around Rs 5,600 crore, and reach Rs 8,000 crore in FY23 and top Rs 10,000 crore by FY24, said Subramanian who is also a fiction-writer.

The overall plan is to be amongst the top three affordable housing financiers, as already over 70 per cent of its book is in the affordable category, he said, adding the demand for housing is back and the overall tailwinds are positive now.

This year’s target is based on the optimism that there is no third wave of the pandemic, as the second wave has nearly washed out the first quarter, he admitted.

The disbursals are at 80 per cent levels now averaging Rs 170 crore, which used to be Rs 200-250 crore a month. We expect the monthly run-rate to touch Rs 300 crore from September provided there is no third wave and the vaccination pace increases, Subramanian said.

The company closed FY21 with Rs 62 crore profit, which Subramanian attributed to the low scale of its operations, but added that his mandate is to increase the scale, and keeping the cost lower.

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Indians are more vulnerable to technology support-related scams compared to the global average, and lost over Rs 15,000 on average in such scams, a Microsoft research has found.

According to the 2021 Global Tech Support Scam Research report, which looks at tech support scams and their impact on consumers, consumers in India experienced a relatively high scam encounter rate of 69 per cent during the past 12 months, close to the 70 per cent rate experienced in 2018. In contrast, there was an overall five-point drop in scam encounters globally with a rate of 59 per cent over the same period.

The survey was conducted in Spring 2021 and asked consumers to share their experiences with tech support scams for the year prior (January 2020 to present).

Almost half the consumers surveyed in India (48 per cent) were tricked into continuing with the scam – an eight-point increase from 2018, and three times higher than the global average of 16 per cent. One in three (31 per cent) of those surveyed continued engaging and eventually lost money–an increase of 17 points over 2018 (14 per cent).

In India, millennials, or those aged 24-37, were the most susceptible to such scams in 2021, with 58 per cent of those that continued with the scam incurring monetary loss. The research also found that 73 per cent of males in India who proceeded to interact with a scammer were likely to lose money.

Each month, Microsoft receives about 6,500 complaints globally from people who have fallen victim to a tech support scam; this is down from 13,000 reports in an average month in earlier years. To better understand how the problem with tech support scams is evolving globally and to enhance efforts to educate consumers on how to stay safe online, Microsoft commissioned YouGov for this global survey in 16 countries, including four Asia Pacific markets – India, Australia, Japan and Singapore. This is a follow-up to similar surveys that Microsoft conducted in 2018 and 2016.

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OnePlus on Thursday launched the Nord 2 5G in India. The smartphone comes in blue haze, gray sierra, and green woods colours. Powered by MediaTek Dimensity 1200-AI system-on-chip, the Nord 2 5G comes with up to 12GB RAM and 256GB on-board storage. It will be available to existing Red Cable Club members on July 26 and July 27 via the ‘Red Cable First Sale’ on the OnePlus online store, OnePlus Store app and OnePlus Experience Stores. Alongside the Nord 2 5G, OnePlus unveiled the Buds Pro wireless earbuds. The earbuds will launch in India in August.OnePlus Nord 2 5G: Price, sale details, and sale offers

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G comes in 6GB, 8GB, and 12GB RAM variants.

While the former two get 128GB on-board storage, the latter comes with 256GB on-board storage. The 6GB RAM variant comes in blue haze colour only, whereas the 8GB and 12GB RAM variants also get the grey sierra colour option. OnePlus also launched an India-exclusive green woods colour variant with PU leather back cover — comes with 12GB RAM and 256GB on-board storage.

The OnePlus Nord 2 5G (8GB and 12GB variants – blue haze and gray sierra) will be available to existing OnePlus Red Cable Club members on July 26 and July 27 via the ‘Red Cable First Sale’ on the OnePlus online store, OnePlus Store app and OnePlus Experience Stores. On the OnePlus online store and the OnePlus store app, OnePlus is offering a bundle deal — the OnePlus Band or OnePlus Buds Z will be available at a discounted price of Rs 1,499. Additionally, the first 2000 to purchase the Nord 2 5G on the OnePlus Store app will win a OnePlus handy fanny pack.

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Instagram said Wednesday it is testing a new feature called ‘Collab’, which will let people collaborate on Feed Posts and Reels.

The feature is being rolled out in India and the United Kingdom.

With ‘Collab’, one user can now invite another as a collaborator on the post or reel. If the invitee accepts, both accounts will appear in the post or reel header, and the content will be shared with the followers of both users.

Reels is Instagram’s short-video format, and has been very popular with creators on the platform.

“Collaborating is a huge part of how people connect on Instagram. With ‘Collab’, you can invite a collaborator to your Feed Post and Reels, so they can share the content with their followers.

If they accept, then they’ll be shown as an author, the content will be shared with their Profile Grid and their followers in Feed, and you will both see your shared feedback,” said Instagram in a statement.

The Facebook-owned platform is only testing the feature with a small percentage of its global community now.

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India has been sending a large contingent for the last three editions of the Summer Olympics. The Tokyo Olympics 2021 will see a 228-member strong contingent from India participate in 18 sporting events.

India’s Olympic contingent for Tokyo 2020 includes 127 participants from 18 sports, including two alternate players and one reserve goalie in men’s and women’s hockey squads, respectively.

Four Indian sailors — Nethra Kumanan and Vishnu Saravanan (laser class), KC Ganapathy and Varun Thakkar (49er class) — were the first to reach Tokyo from their training bases in Europe.

Check Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, India full schedule and live telecast details here

India in previous Olympics

In the 2016 Rio Olympics, 117 Indian athletes participated (63 men and 54 women) across 15 sports. The Indian roster featured three Olympic medalists from London, including badminton star Saina Nehwal, freestyle wrestler and four-time Olympian Yogeshwar Dutt, and rifle shooter Gagan Narang.

Check Tokyo 2020 men’s and women’s full schedule and match timings (India time) here

In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, India sent 83 athletes, 60 men, and 23 women, who competed in 13 sports. In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, 57 athletes in 12 sports represented India, and for the first time since 1928, the men’s national field hockey team was unable to take part in the Summer Olympics after failing to qualify.

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The prevalence of the highly-transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 among specimens sequenced over the past four weeks exceeded 75 per cent in many countries worldwide, including India, China, Russia, Israel and the UK, the WHO has said.

In the COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update published July 20, the World Health Organisation said that despite efforts to extend vaccination coverage, many countries across all six WHO regions continue to experience surges in coronavirus cases.

Over the past week, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from Indonesia (350,273 new cases; a 44 per cent increase), the UK (296,447 new cases; 41 per cent increase), Brazil (287,610 new cases; 14 per cent decrease), India (268,843 new cases; 8 per cent decrease) and the US (216,433 new cases; 68 per cent increase).

The update noted that as of July 20, a total of over 2.4 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences have been submitted to GISAID, the global science initiative and primary source that provides open access to genomic data.

Over 220,000 (9 per cent) of SARS-CoV-2 sequences submitted to GISAID are confirmed as the Delta variant.

According to GISAID data, as of 20 July, the prevalence of Delta among the specimens sequenced over the past 4 weeks exceeded 75 per cent in many countries worldwide including Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Israel, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore South Africa and the United Kingdom, the update said.

It reiterated that the Delta variant is expected to rapidly outcompete other variants and become the dominant circulating lineage over the coming months.

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