Barclays Announces over $400 million for its operation in India

 

Barclays has announced that it will be pumping in $400+ million (Rs. 3,000 crore) for its growth in India. This investment from the multinational banking behemoth will be targeting the bank's corporate and investment banking and private clients businesses.

With this investment Barclays' total investment capital in India will increase to Rs. 8,300 crore. The bank is clearly enamored by the potential in the country. It has built a splendid presence in the country where it offers best-in-class financing, advisory and risk management businesses within the Investment Bank, the entire suite of Corporate Banking capabilities, including cash management and trade finance.

“The capital infusion in the Bank reflects the success and strong track record of our India franchise built over the last three decades. We have ambitious growth aspirations, and the investment will help accelerate that as we look to leverage the attractive opportunities that the present situation offers,” said Jaideep Khanna, Head of Barclays, Asia Pacific and Country CEO, India.

Barclays was named as the Best Bond House in India by the IFR Asia Awards in 2019 for its dominance in debt capital markets and recognized by the industry for its ability to deliver offshore financings for a wide range of clients. The bank's Corporate Banking franchise has also been recently recognized with five awards in The Asset Triple A Treasury, Trade, SSC (Sustainable Supply Chain) and Risk Management Awards 2021 in India.

 

One of the Largest Eyewear Retailer Lenskart Opens New Tech Center in the US

 India's largest eyewear retailer Lenskart, in a recent press meet, has announced that it has officially entered into the USA market and plans to open its maiden tech center in the retail capital city—New York. The company is also looking to expand its market in Singapore and the Middle East with an aim to achieve maximum growth of about $15 billion by 2025.

Peyush Bansal, CEO and Co-Founder of Lenskart, has stated that this expansion will boost the company and bring the company a step close to revolutionizing the vision of the world. He is confident that Lenskart will bring new dynamism to the way customers look at the eyewear sector in the US with its wide range of over 2000 product styles. He further emphasized that the company will aim to provide a never-seen-before customer experience backed by robust technology and innovation.

Also, Lenskart will now be providing a fully operational website, lenskart.us, on the android play, and an iOS app store with free delivery across all regions in the US, which is similar to its current practice in India, Singapore, and Middle East Asia. With this move, Lenskart is now geared up to provide every American with access to best-quality designer glasses at reasonable rates.

 

Renders and specs of Moto E20 has been leaked ahead of the official launch

 

Fresh render and specs of the new Moto E20 have been leaked online ahead of its official launch. The leaked render gives us a 360-degree view of the phone’s design. The latest smartphone from Lenovo-owned Motorola is expected to come with a waterdrop-type notch, and it will also have an audio jack. The new device from Moto may have come with a dual rear camera setup with the module being placed on the top left corner. The leak also has reported that the phone will feature an octa-core processor and 4000mAh battery.

Evan Blass, a popular tipster, had leaked the render along with key specs of the new Moto E20. The tipster had also confirmed the previously shared renders were also for Moto E20. The phone from Moto is expected to feature a 6.5-inch display, and it will run on Android 11. Tips from various sources also suggest that the Moto E20 is codenamed Aruba, and XT215-1 will be its model number. The latest render leak indicated that the new phone would have a textured back, and the fingerprint scanner is also placed behind the phone. As usual, the phone’s power button and volume button will be placed on the right side, whereas the sim tray will be featured on the left.

 

Mirantis Partners with Westcon-Comstor, to reduce Kubernetes Complexity for Customers

The open cloud company Mirantis has announced that it has partnered with Westcon-Comstor for a distribution agreement across APAC that will simplify Kubernetes for its customers. This partnership will help Westcon's partners to ship code faster across Asia-Pacific.

This distribution partnership means that Westcon is now the Mirantis distribution partner in Australia, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

"Mirantis partners with the world’s top cloud infrastructure providers that Westcon-Comstor has extensive experience working with," said EJ La Fontaine, VP and region director APAC of Mirantis. "Westcon-Comstor works with Mirantis’ solutions to eliminate Kubernetes complexity with one consistent cloud experience for app and devops portability, a single pane of glass, and automated full-stack lifecycle management."

A global technology distributor that operates in over 70 countries, Westcon-Comstor creates business value and opportunity by connecting IT vendors with a channel of system integrators, service providers, and technology resellers.

Commenting on the partnership, Patrick Aronson, the Westcon-Comstor executive VP of APAC said that this partnership will help its partners eliminate Kuberenetes complexity for its customer and provide them with a single "consistent cloud experience."

 

Princeton Digital Group to Invest $150M to Establish a New Data Center in Indonesia

Asia's leading data center provider Princeton Digital Group (PDG) has announced $150 million to develop a new data center facility in Jakarta, Indonesia. The move comes as the company looks to expand its presence in its footprint across Asia.

Since its establishment less than four years ago PDG has built 19 data centers. Recently, the company also announced $1 billion to open a 100 MW flagship data center campus in Japan.

The new data center in Jakarta will be a 22 MW data center named Jakarta Cibitung 2 (JC2). This data center is being built within the same 19,550m2 facility that houses PDG's existing data center JC1. The expanded campus of 35 MW will serve global cloud companies, domestic internet companies, and enterprises.

"Jakarta is an exciting market, Cibitung being the pre-eminent cloud cluster in the region. With the expanded campus, PDG has become a significant player in the Indonesian market. With the explosive economic growth and rapid digitalization by both government and private sectors in Indonesia, the market is core to PDG’s strategy," said Stephanus Tumbelaka, PDG’s Managing Director of Indonesia.

With the ever-increasing adoption of cloud-based services in the public and private sector in Indonesia, the new data center in Jakarta will help deliver unmatched scalability, connectivity, and reliability.

 

Expanding Wings Amid Huawei Ban: Xiaomi Becomes World’s Second Top-Selling Brand

Xiaomi Corp is a Chinese multinational electronics company. Even though the company is not as big as its rival Huawei in terms of market share, it has outdone the former as its revenue surged in the second quarter (June)— a record 64 percent from a year earlier, beating analyst expectations.

Xiaomi’s global smartphone market grew by leaps and bounds, while its Internet-of-Things product segment showed considerable growth.

Clearly, the US government’s sanctions against Huawei have allowed Xiaomi to grow its market share. Other players including Oppo and Vivo have also benefitted from the Huawei ban. The Donald Trump-led government sanctioned Huawei that effectively crippled the company’s smartphone division.

On top of that, Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada in December 2018. The United States had issued an arrest warrant; as a result, she was detained at Vancouver International Airport. She allegedly misled HSBC about her company’s dealings in Iran. As of now, she remains in the custody.

As mentioned above, Xiaomi’s global smartphone market share hit a record high of 83 percent year on year, in the June quarter. The numbers were released by a research firm called Canalys. Xiaomi is well ahead of Apple in terms of the number of phones sold. Overall, the smartphone maker secured second position selling 52.8 phones worldwide. Samsung tops the list of smartphone makers with the most number of units sold.

 

Huawei might soon get approval from the US to sell chips to automakers

Officials in the US have now approved Huawei’s license applications to purchase chips worth millions of dollars. Previously, Huawei was blacklisted in the US, citing security concerns, but now, the license was approved due to the rise in demand in the auto components business. Huawei is one of the biggest names in the telecommunications equipment segment, but it was continuously hobbled by stringent trade restrictions made by former president Trump’s office. This eventually led to Huawei being blacklisted in the US to sell chips and other important components for smartphones and network gear businesses.

The Biden administration continued to enforce the ban and denied Huawei from selling chips to be used in 5G devices. However, in recent times, several sources have reported that the US has now granted licenses for suppliers to make use of chips from Huawei for vehicle parts like sensors and video screens. The latest approval can be connected with Huawei’s move to pivot towards items that don’t fall under the trade ban. The licenses were recently approved by the US mainly because the chips used in the auto segment are not very sophisticated, and it has a very low bar for receiving approval from the government.