MAKE IN INDIA

Uber brings mobility fintech Moove to India to boost driver ecosystem

New Delhi, July 25 (IANS): Ridehailing major Uber on July 25 announced to bring Moove, its largest vehicle supply partner in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market, to India to help people buy new vehicles using a percentage of their weekly revenue, first in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and become its driver-partners.

Founded in 2020, mobility fintech Moove embeds its alternative credit scoring technology onto ride-hailing platforms and leverages proprietary performance and revenue analytics to underwrite loans to drivers who have previously been excluded from financial services.

Moove aims to launch 5,000 CNG and electric vehicles within the first year and plans to scale to 30,000 over the next five years in India.

“Moove has created an innovative rent to own’’ model that provides a flexible option for drivers who want to get into the business of ride hailing without having to borrow from car owners or take bank loans to finance cars brought from dealerships,” said Abhilekh Kumar, Director, Business Development, Uber India South Asia.

“The addition of new cars will help provide superior customer experience to riders while creating sustainable earning opportunities for drivers on the Uber platform,” Kumar added.

The startup recently raised $105 million to expand across new markets in Asia and Europe.

With over 600,000 drivers on Uber in India, the launch will unlock an opportunity for Moove to provide accessible financing to thousands of drivers.

“We’re excited to be expanding our revenue-based vehicle financing model to enable the sustainable creation of jobs across the country, where there are some of the lowest vehicle ownership rates in the world, in part because of the lack of access to credit,” said Ladi Delano, cofounder and co-CEO at Moove.

Moove aims to be a global leader in the electrification of ridehailing and mobility with a commitment to ensuring that 60 percent of the vehicles it finances globally are hybrid or electric.

Smartphone brand Honor makes claims about ‘maintaining’ business operations in India

New Delhi, July 25 (IANS): As reports surfaced that Shenzhenbased Honor, formerly under Huawei, has pulled out its team from India, the company said on July 25 that the company is 'maintaining business operation' in the country. According to a report in the South China Morning Post, the company's business in India will remain in operation, managed by local partners, but the brand will adopt a "very safe approach."

Honor CEO Zhao Ming told staterun newspaper Securities Times that Honor formed the India team a few years ago but chose to leave for "obvious reasons", the report said. In a statement to IANS, a company spokesperson said it "is maintaining business operations in India and will continue its development". "Honor officially announces its exit from the Indian market" is not correct, the spokesperson added. The development came as Indian authorities like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) have conducted raids and investigations of major Chinese smartphone players like Vivo, OPPO and Xiaomi.

Honor once held a 3 per cent market share in India during its peak in 2018 but fell out after the US put sanctions against Huawei.

Struggling to keep its consumer business afloat in the wake of the US sanctions, Chinese conglomerate Huawei in November sold off its Honor smartphone business assets to China-based Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co Ltd. Honor smartphones were hit by US sanctions that prevent Huawei from doing business with the US companies. Since its creation in 2013, the Honor brand has focused on the youth market by offering phones in the low- to mid-end price range. In the next seven years, Honor developed into a smartphone brand that shipped over 70 million units annually. In India, Honor had entered the laptop market and expanded its wearables portfolio in the country.

Facilitating Ease of Living through digital innovations

The global health pandemic has positioned technological interventions at the core of socio-economic development. As economies recover from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, digital solutions are allowing economic change and putting economies on a path toward green, resilient, and inclusive growth. Such digital innovations and interventions have contributed in driving down costs, producing higher efficiency, enabling smoother service delivery and increasing transparency and accountability in the global market. In addition to this, investment from both the private and governmental sectors in digital solutions is helping the most vulnerable people access essential services, support small and medium-sized businesses, enable trade and services, and increase shock resilience.

In the context of India, the flagship Digital India campaign has gained severe traction under the context. The schemes and efforts under this have catalysed growth, bridged the gap of inaccessibility and maintained socio-economic balance. In the Digital India Week, 2022, held in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted “India is leading the world in the digital revolution as the government’s commitment to the use of digital technology in welfare programmes and services delivery is changing the lives of the people of the country”. This has been evident in how the potential with which the Digital India programme has built in the country in the last eight years has immensely helped the country to combat, cope and initiate recovery from the pandemic.

We were able to run the world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccination and relief programmes owing to these measures. It has been reiterated that the Digital India programme helped CoWin and Aarogya Setu, were two major mobile applications that contributed extensively in channelising the significant vaccine doses. Additionally, such digital interventions facilitated relief provisions to the underserved and volatile sections of the society during the pandemic. Crores of rupees were transferred in the bank accounts of women, farmers, labourers as a form of relief funds and financial assistance under this initiative. Moreover, the ‘one nation one ration card’, free supply of essential goods was distributed to 80 crore people of the country.

The technological boom has also resulted in the massive decline of the digital divide between rural and urban India. The Common Service Centers in the country, especially in the rural and semi-urban parts of the country have been pivotal in bringing e-commerce and government services to the people at the grassroots level, thus bridging the gap between development and amenities in rural and urban India. These have also led to a major contribution in the ease of living in the country. Through Direct Benefit Transfers, or DBT, more than INR 23 lakh crores have been distributed to beneficiaries since 2014. Furthermore, the use of digital platforms has enabled citizens to access public services without visiting government offices or approaching middlemen. For instance, collecting birth certificates, payment of bills, collection of ration, claiming admission, accessing exam results, getting certificates or availing banking facilities have been rendered hassle-free, time saving and seamless.

By Ishita Sirsikar and Srijata Deb, Strategic Investment Research Unit (SIRU)