FTP 2023 is forward-looking and envisions boosting manufacturing in India while also providing a vision to exponentially increase India's share in the global supply chain.
- By Kavita Arya, Chief Manager (Research), State Bank Staff College, Hyderabad

Based on the four pillars of incentive to remission, export promotion through collaboration, ease of doing business, and emerging areas, the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) 2023, announced on March 31, 2023, by the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, ticks most of the boxes for all the stakeholders. Alongside being responsive to the emerging needs of the time, the policy is a continuity to the time-tested schemes. A document that is nimble and responsive to the needs of trade and exports, is based on the principle of trust and partnership with the exporters. FTP 2015-20, which was to end on March 31, 2020, had to be extended due to the Covid pandemic and also due to the volatile geo-political wise. Continuous feedback and incorporating changes based on need is a unique feature of the new FTP 2023. A responsive system based on emerging situations and a dynamic policy aim at catering to the ever-evolving ecosystem of trade and compliance. Some of the thrust areas are: 1. In order to aid in the ease of doing business for exporters, FTP 2023 aims at process re-engineering and automation. Emerging areas like dual-use high-end technology items under Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment, and Technologies (SCOMET), collaborating between states and districts for export promoconditions till March 31, 2023. The FTP 2023 comes with no end date, and any/ subsequent changes may be done based on need.

The Race for AI Supremacy: IT's Advantage India
India Trumps South Korea to emerge as the 5th-largest market in terms of investments in AI-based startups.


India is the fifth-largest destination for AI investments globally, says a latest report from Stanford University. According to Stanford University's annual Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2023, total investments in AI startups in India reached at a massive $3.24 bn as of the end of 2022, which placed it ahead of competing nations such as South Korea, Germany, Canada, and Australia, among others. The United States, China, the United Kingdom and Israel were the top four markets for AI investments in 2022. Interestingly, AI startups in India between 2013 and 2022 received total funding of $7.73 bn, making it the sixth leading country with the most AI investments during the period, the report noted. In fact, India also emerged as the top-ranked region in terms of AI skill penetration rate. According to the Stanford report, as of 2022, India had the highest AI skill penetration rate among all the nations covered, ahead of the US (2.2) and Germany (1.7).

Machines cannot think of potential and qualitative changes. New knowledge comes from such transformations (humans), not from the extension of existing knowledge (machines). Only human intelligence is social and can see the potential for change, in particular social change, which leads to a better life for humanity and nature.

- ByMichael Roberts, Economist, London

ChatGPT is being heralded as a revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has been taking the media and tech world by storm since launching in late 2022. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT is "an AI trained to assist with a variety of tasks." More specifically, it is a large language model (LLM) designed to produce human-like text and converse with people, hence the 'Chat' in ChatGPT.

This is a big deal. India is not only growing in importance for Apple, but it is also becoming an important country in the wireless industry
- On why Apple sees India as an important market for its wireless future
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, came to be present at the opening day events at the inauguration of both the Mumbai and New Delhi stores. This is a big deal. India is not only growing in importance for Apple, but it is also becoming an important country in the wireless industry. This high-profile event appearance signifies how India is taking a big step forward in their growth and global standing. With this visit from one of the world's most powerful CEOs, India is increasingly attracting quite a bit of attention from global companies.

Hello India Welcome to Apple India Flagship Stores
The US consumer tech giant makes a big-bang foray into direct retail in India, the world's second-largest smartphone market.

Indians' fascination for Apple has no parallels. A fan waited in queue the whole night to lay her hands on the iconic iPhone when it was launched on August 28, 2008, a full year after making its debut in June 2007 in the United States. As recently as September last year, a man from down south "traveled thousands of miles to Dubai to buy the latest iPhone hours before it went on sale in India". It was also on full display- and expectedly so-as the American consumer tech major opened the doors of the first of its two retail outlets-its first ever flagship stores to open in India where it entered 27 years ago-that has come up in Mumbai's bustling Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) financial, art, and entertainment district.

I have several business degrees, many of which focus on manpower management, a now obsolete specialty that uses analysis to optimize workforce loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity. It became obsolete because the US government determined the practices were discriminatory. They favored well-trained employees at a time when schools favored majority populations over minority populations.

trade like stocks and therefore offer a degree of flexibility unavailable with traditional mutual funds

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), as a mutual fund category, have just turned 30 this year. It was three decades ago, or on January 22, 1993, to be precise, when the world's first ETF-S&P 500 ETF Trust-hit the market in the United States. Its overwhelming success spawned similar products in America and elsewhere. According to Statista, an online platform specializing in market and consumer data, there were 8,754 ETFs globally in 2022, compared to 276 in 2003. Globally, assets under management (AUM) in ETFs, though, are only a fraction of the total financial market. ETFs represent 12.7% of equity assets in the US, 7.8% in Europe, and 4.1% in Asia-Pacific, shows iShares data. In India too, awareness about ETFs is slowly but surely increasing. In an exclusive interview with Amit Singh Sisodiya, Deputy Editor, The Global ANALYST, Sailesh Jain, Fund Manager - Equities, Tata Mutual Fund, talks about the significance of ETFs as a mutual fund category, their key features, the advantages they enjoy over traditional funds, the risks an investment in these funds may entail, and his outlook on the category.

Notwithstanding the current tough phase, the Indian IT industry appears to be well-placed to reap the benefits of the upcoming global IT spending boom, estimated to be worth $4.6 tn, as well as new growth opportunities in areas such as Cyber Security, AI, and the Metaverse.

- By M R Raghu, CFA, FRM, FCMA, CEO - MARMORE MENA Intelligence

Information Technology (IT) stocks have been having bad days in the stock market during the last year. While the overall Nifty 50 index is up 1.3%, the Nifty IT index is down nearly 18% with steep losses noted for its star constituents TCS (-11%), Infosys (-24%), and Tech Mahindra (-21.5%), with few exceptions like Persistent Systems (up 7.2%). This has led to some fundamental questions being asked about the long-term outlook of Indian IT stocks.

Effective leadership-and what makes an effective leader-is variable, and there is "no one-size-fits-all" solution for all situations.

- By Michael Walton, Business Psychologist and Visiting Professor, UK

My supposition is that most, if not all, people rely on a number of implicit working principles, guidelines, ideas, and notions to help them make sense of what goes on around them in the workplace. These could be key learning points from past experiences or perhaps influential ideas and notions retained from their training and workplace experiences. The end result will be an idiosyncratic collection of beliefs that will guide executive action but remain private and personal to each individual. To an observer, an executive's unexpected, counter-intuitive, or perhaps even bizarre behavior could be the result of that particular executive's personal set of working principles being activated.

With cybercrime cases on the rise, more and more companies are making cyber insurance an essential component of their comprehensive risk management strategy.

- By Surbhi Singhal, Senior Research Analyst, Advance ThinkTank, New Delhi

One of the biggest cyber attacks in India was seen in the year 2022, when the country's premier institution, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, or AIIMS as it is popularly known, was hit by a ransomware attack. The AIIMS server went offline for about two weeks before the authorities recovered the data and the systems went online.

Due to its extraordinarily low rates, Japan has been a significant exporter of capital to international markets. However, if domestic yields climb, capital is anticipated to move from the rest of the world to Japan, which will weaken other currencies and strengthen the JPY and in turn, cause foreign debt yields to increase.

- By Shail Apte, Founder & CEO, Airtham, Ahmedabad

Unlike last year, when the yen lost ground to the US dollar (USD) at an unprecedented rate, the Japanese unit has gained ground in 2023. This could have wider ramifications for international markets. Take a look at the data: The Japanese Yen (JPY) strengthened from 150 JPY/USD in October 2022 to 134 JPY/ USD currently (as of April 24, 2023), mostly due to a weaker USD and the widening of the Yield Curve Control (YCC) policy target rate window by the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the country's central bank.

Domestic gas customers are expected to greatly profit from the introduction of the new pricing mechanism as prices are anticipated to drop.

- By Rajat Kapoor,Managing Director, Synergy Consulting, Inc., New Delhi

The gas industry in India has undergone significant growth in recent years, with increasing demand for natural gas across various sectors such as power generation, fertilizers, and city gas distribution. The industry has also played a vital role in reducing India's dependence on imported fossil fuels and diversifying its energy mix. It is estimated that India consumed nearly 64 BCM natural gas in FY 2021-22, of which nearly 45% was met from imported liquified petroleum gas (LNG) thus making it the 4th-largest importer of LNG. Gas usage in the country has been growing exponentially thanks to a huge population, a burgeoning middle class, and rising domestic economic activity.

In this first part of the "Forward Thinkers' Talks Series," conducted by Ivo Pezzuto, Professor of Global Economics and Digital and Sustainable Innovation at ISM Paris/New York and Founder of the Ivo Pezzuto Forward- Thinking Lab, he interviews Maurizio Zordan, Zordan srl sb's CEO, and Woodways' President.

India, along with China, has emerged as the saviour for Russian crude following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions imposed in its wake. In fact, more and more Asian buyers are trying to benefit from the cheaper Russian oil even as European and other Western buyers stay away.