Can India be an AI winner?
India is hooked on artificial intelligence. The country is the fastest-growing market for ChatGPT. By some estimates it accounts for the largest share of users, or about 14% of the total. Soon, the popular bot may have local competition. On May 23rd Sarvam AI, a Bangalore-based startup, unveiled an 'Indic' large language model (LLM) capable of conversing in Indian languages. Early this month, Bharat Gen, a publicly funded model, made its debut. Both aim to help users engage with AI in the languages they speak, from Hindi to Malayalam.
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Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
Collapsed luxury Glastonbury Festival glamping firm debts revealed
From fresh revelations over Glastonbury glamping firm Yurtel's collapse and EDF's takeover of Pod Point, to Octopus investing in African clean tech, Badenoch's business plea, rising jobseeker numbers, and FuelHub's funding push - here are today's top UK business stories. Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Luxury Glastonbury glamping firm Yurtel racked up over £2 million in customer debts before collapsing in May. A new report shows some festivalgoers paid up to £16,500 for high-end packages. The Wiltshire-based company has told customers to seek refunds through third parties. Liquidators at Begbies Traynor have confirmed £2.2 million in unsecured claims. Luxury Glastonbury glamping firm Yurtel racked up over £2 million in customer debts before collapsing. | Getty Images EDF takes over Pod Point and Kemi Badenoch's rally cry: More Business in Brief EDF is taking full control of EV charging firm Pod Point in a £10.6 million deal. The move comes after weak EV sales and a falling share price left Pod Point struggling. EDF said the takeover was the only way to secure the company's future. Pod Point runs over 250,000 charging points across the UK. Octopus Energy has acquired Sheffield-based MOPO, a clean tech firm working in Sub-Saharan Africa. MOPO rents out solar-charged batteries, offering a greener alternative to petrol generators. The pay-per-use model helps bring affordable power to underserved communities. Octopus says the deal will accelerate access to clean energy across the region. Kemi Badenoch has urged businesses to 'get on the pitch' and oppose harmful policies. Speaking at a business conference, she said the Conservatives are still their best bet. Her comments came as GDP figures showed the economy shrinking more than expected. She also slammed Labour's planned tax rises, including on family farms. The number of people looking for jobs is rising at the fastest rate in over four years. A report from KPMG and REC says redundancies and fewer vacancies are driving the trend. Permanent job placements fell again in May as firms scaled back recruitment. The data comes from a survey of 400 recruitment agencies across the UK.
The National
4 hours ago
- The National
Starmer's approach to global trade is clearly not ‘pragmatic' at all
The UK Government estimates that annual economic output will be a stunning 0.1% higher by 2040 than it would have been without the India trade deal. In contrast, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) noted in Spring 2023 that Brexit's impact in the long run reduces our overall output by around 4% compared with what we would have had we remained in the EU. The amount gained by the 'landmark' India deal is therefore one-fortieth of the amount lost due to Brexit. READ MORE: UK-India post-Brexit free trade deal agreed after years of negotiation Prime Minister Starmer has described the Indian trade deal as a 'pragmatic' approach to global trade. Such an approach would, however, involve the UK Government restoring frictionless trade with the UK's largest trading partner, the European Union. If the UK Government were looking to deliver a 'pragmatic' approach on the economic front, Sir Keir would be looking to get the UK back into the European single market as soon as possible. This would be far more productive than trying to deliver trade deals with far-off countries and deliver immensely higher economic benefits than the paltry 0.1% generated by the India trade deal. Alex Orr Edinburgh THE world must be having laugh at Starmer as they did with Boris Johnson. Starmer considered he had done well to claim first prize with his Trump deal, being the first in the world to do so. Then along came Joseph Stiglitz, an American Nobel-prize-winning economist, on Laura Kuenssberg's Sunday show stating that Trump's method for changing his business bargaining tariffs is to choose the weakest first, then move on to the other countries, which is indeed what he did with the UK. READ MORE: Scottish care sector chief compares Keir Starmer to Enoch Powell in damning comments Stiglitz was a breath of fresh air in his interview, even stating that Scotland did things differently to Westminster especially where student fees are concerned. Starmer behaved like a school boy bringing an apple for his teacher when he presented Trump with an invitation for tea with King Charles. 'What a pushover', Trump must have thought, 'this guy is gonna be no trouble.' And so it was with Starmer claiming a success story with his 10% tariff in exchange for the 1.8% tariff on UK goods to America. Even more than before Brexit when we were part of the EU market. Alan Magnus-Bennett Fife STARMER'S Trump appeasement and grovelling is reaching the point where we're all reaching for the sick bag. Put aside the smarm-fest that was the 'royal' invitation. Put aside the bizarre trade deal, with oligarch-pal and yacht-botherer Peter Mandelson first lapping it up at Trump's left shoulder before looking like a puppet with cut strings when a real reporter (Scottish) pointed out it was all smoke and mirrors. Put aside all the UK's debasement. READ MORE: Police and fire brigade attend fire at Keir Starmer's house I ask again, when is enough going to be enough? Presidential adviser Stephen Miller, creep of creeps, has just announced a possible end to habeas corpus – the foundation stone of the most basic democracies. This follows the deportation of US citizens by ICE and Trump's befuddlement over whether or not he has to 'follow the constitution'. I just wait to see who Westminster will send along to represent Britain (England) at Trump's birthday military parade. Yes – the military parade for the draft dodger who has mocked veterans and banned transgender people from serving in the US military. Might I nominate Tony Blair as the perfect envoy to watch real heroes march by as slimeballs look down from a gold balcony? Amanda Baker Edinburgh I KNOW that modern journalists are generally illiterate about anything to do with religion these days but I would have thought that a journalist for The National would know a little more about the Scottish Catholic Church than shown in your article of May 9 on the election of Pope Leo XIV. The journalist quotes 'international development charity Cafod' about the Pope, obviously oblivious to the fact that this is the aid and development agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Scotland's equivalent, Sciaf (Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) is ignored, as is any source from the Scottish Catholic Church. READ MORE: Richard Murphy: Pope Leo can yield power stronger than political force The Vatican is the only state in the world which recognises Scotland as a separate entity from the rest of the UK. The then Pope Leo XXIII restored the Scottish hierarchy in 1878 and the current Scottish Bishops' Conference was born. The current pontiff has taken the name of Leo because he wants to acknowledge Leo XXIII's first modern Catholic Social Teaching encyclical, Reurum Novarum, which protected the rights of workers at the height of the industrial revolution – a sign that he will follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis. By the way, Sciaf, which transforms the lives of the poor, not making them comfortable in their poverty, is at the top of the recipients of funds for projects from the Scottish Government's overseas development fund (which would be much bigger had we been independent, of course). Please note for the future! Dr Duncan MacLaren KCSG Glasgow Former Director of SCIAF and former Secretary General of the Vatican-based Caritas Internationalis I HAD to laugh about the RBS bank notes article in last Monday's National. For the last two years, the ATM inside the Falkirk branch of the RBS only appears to dispense English bank notes (seven out of seven visits). All part of the anglicisation of Scotland, after the Tories changed the name of the parent company from RBS to the NatWest (National Westminster) Group in 2020? A Wilson Stirlingshire
The Herald Scotland
5 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Politics overshadow pain of cuts at Alexander Dennis
This is all the more so when it comes to manufacturing job losses in Scotland, perhaps because of the extent to which this sector has dwindled over the decades. The news that up to 400 jobs are at risk at Falkirk bus manufacturing firm Alexander Dennis is first and foremost a massive blow to the people directly affected. It means there is a very real prospect of hundreds more people joining the ranks of the unemployed in an area hit hard by the closure of Scotland's only oil refinery at Grangemouth, with the loss of around 400 job losses. It is always disheartening when concerns over widespread job cuts come a distant second in the minds of those seeking to score political points from corporate decisions taken to reduce workforces. Yet, coming so soon after further job cuts were announced by oil and gas giant Harbour Energy in Aberdeen, a move blamed by the company on the UK Government's energy profits levy, the proposed cuts at Alexander Dennis have led to an impression of decline in Scottish industry. Opponents of the Scottish Government have been quick to assert that events at Alexander Dennis are yet more evidence of the administration's flawed strategy and failure to protect industry and jobs. These critics repeatedly point to the delays and cost over-runs in the delivery by the nationalised Ferguson Marine shipyard of two ferries to serve the west coast and the time it has taken to find a buyer for Prestwick Airport, which was taken into state ownership in 2013, in justification of these claims (even though Prestwick is now regularly making profits and beginning to build a lucrative air freight operation). The Scottish Government has also come under for fire failing to deliver the amount of "green" jobs in the transition from oil and gas production to renewable energy that ministers forecast. Read more: But in the matter of Alexander Dennis, which has been part of NFI Group since the North American company acquired the firm for £320 million in 2019, any culpability on the part of the Scottish Government seems hard to discern. Winnipeg-based NFI, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, looks simply to have assessed its costs and concluded that it can save money by consolidating its UK bus body building operations into a single site. Unfortunately for Scotland, the site selected for this work is in Scarborough, not Falkirk. Euan Stainbank, the Scottish Labour MP for Falkirk, said the Scottish Government should have done more to support Alexander Dennis by ordering more buses from domestic manufacturers to serve local networks. He said Greater Manchester had bought more than five times the amount of buses from Alexander Dennis than had been purchased to serve the industry in Scotland. But ultimately in Scotland it is down to private bus companies to decide which manufacturers they wish to buy their vehicles from – not the Scottish Government. Naturally, those fighting to prevent the proposed cuts in Falkirk are urging Scottish ministers to do all they can to stop or limit the amount of redundancies during the consultation period that is now under way. Perhaps there is some financial incentive that can be offered to entice NFI to change its mind, but it is hard to be optimistic. Paul Davies, president and managing director of Alexander Dennis, hinted at the limitations of UK policy when the proposed cuts were announced on Wednesday. 'While stakeholders have been sympathetic of the situation, the stark reality is that current UK policy does not allow for the incentivisation or reward of local content, job retention and creation, nor does it encourage any domestic economic benefit,' he said. 'We have warned of the competitive imbalance for some time and would like to see policy and legislative changes that incentivise the delivery of local benefit where taxpayer money is invested. We strongly believe funding that supports public transport should lead to investment in local jobs, domestic supply chains, technology creation and a recurrent tax base.' There is a certain, painful irony to the situation too. While the Grangemouth refinery was declared by Petroineos to be no longer financially viable in the face of global competition and the drive to net zero, the Alexander Dennis site in Falkirk has been involved in the production of buses powered by electrical batteries and hydrogen, in other words at the cutting edge of modern transport technology. As veteran Scottish politician Kenny MacAskill, leader of the Alba Party, noted, it is 'perverse when Scotland is awash with renewable energy and is the base for the UK's green hydrogen that a company specialising in hydrogen buses is forced to relocate elsewhere'. Sadly, past experience in Scotland suggests that once a company decides to close operations, there is no going back. Petroineos could not be persuaded to change course at Grangemouth, and back in 2009 Diageo proceeded to shut down its Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock despite significant protests at the time. It looks for all the world that the proposed cuts at Alexander Dennis are destined to become another sad chapter in Scottish industrial history, and one that will be especially poignant given the company's proud and long manufacturing legacy.
