Mohandas Pai talks Budget’s hits and misses; Healing newborns using tech

Hello,

Nothing unites like a common enemy.

Since its discovery, asteroid 2024 YR4 has been making headlines for its potential collision with planet Earth on December 22, 2032. Though the probability of a potential impact is just over 2%, some countries are not taking any chances.

China has opened applications to recruit for a ‘planetary defence force.’ It is looking to hire recent graduates with majors in astrophysics, earth and space exploration technology, and aerospace science and technology to conduct ‘research on monitoring and early warning of near-Earth asteroids.’

According to initial estimations, the rock may hit India. Measuring 40-100m wide, the asteroid is described as a city killer and can cause widespread devastation if it falls over a densely populated area.

ISRO is also active when it comes to planetary defence. The national space agency has been tracking a massive asteroid named Apophis, named after the Egyptian God of Chaos, which would pass by Earth at a distance of less than 31,000 km in April 2029, and would be visible to the naked eye.

But humanity is more prepared than you think.

In 2022, as part of NASA’s DART mission, a spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, significantly changing its orbit and no longer making it a threat.

There’s ingenuity in adversity.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• How Budget fared according to Mohandas Pai
• Healing newborns using tech

Here’s your trivia for today: In which country was the Zika virus first identified?

Interview

How Budget fared according to Mohandas Pai

Former Infosys board member and Aarin Capital Co-founder TV Mohandas Pai has stated that while the Budget is excellent for startups, the government’s Rs 10,000-crore allocation for the startup fund is not enough if India wants to become a leading player in artificial intelligence (AI) and GenAI.

“As a nation, we need to have bigger ambition on AI and this can be driven only by startups,” he stated in a conversation with YourStory.

Key takeaways:

• “The Budget was very good for startups. The Rs 10,000 crore fund is a good move, but it should have been Rs 50,000 crore, because the Rs 10,000-crore fund came in 2016, but now the size of the ecosystem is much bigger,” Pai said.
• He advocated for a homegrown foundational AI model along the lines of Aadhar to create a public AI platform so that others could build their revenue model on top of that. He urged to government to partially fund the project.
• “India will have the largest number of people who are trained in use cases of AI and AI implementation in the world. The work is already happening in a big way, and all indications are that India will be the largest,” he asserted.

Startup

Healing newborns using tech

Bengaluru-based Sensivision Health Technologies strives to save the lives of newborns and minimise the risk of brain damage due to birth asphyxia using a therapeutic cooling device—which cools the baby, slows down metabolism, and gives the brain time to heal.

“We bring down the baby's temperature to 33.5 degrees (using REVIVE) and maintain it for three days. After 72 hours, we slowly warm the baby again,” explains Jayadeep Unni, Founder, Sensivision.

Breath of life:

• REVIVE provides whole-body cooling and warming and comes with integrated technology that monitors the baby’s response to the cooling, its cerebral function, and the seizure activity of the brain.
• Sensivision has installed REVIVE in 20 hospitals in India—both government and private institutions—across Tier I, II and III cities, including PGI Chandigarh, Wadia Children’s Hospital and Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai, and Niloufer Hospital in Andhra Pradesh. 
• The startup plans to launch its second product, Illuminatus, within a year. This device monitors the blood oxygen levels in the brain tissue and the brain’s electrical activity in babies.

News & updates

• AI race: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI will release its Grok 3 chatbot on Monday, with the billionaire describing it as the “smartest AI on Earth.” The product will go live with a demonstration at 8 pm Pacific time, Musk said in a post on X.
• AI upgrade: Apple is planning to integrate AI capabilities into the Vision Pro headset. The tech giant also plans to introduce a guest user mode and a spatial content app by April. These enhancements are part of a software upgrade that could be available in beta version for developers as early as this week.
• Rabbit hole: Argentina’s President Javier Milei faced threats of impeachment after he made a post on social media promoting a cryptocurrency that quickly tanked in value. Milei promoted a new cryptocurrency on social media platform X which increased in value to $5 before quickly tanking to below $1.

What you should watch out for

• Pumping cash: The RBI will step up its liquidity infusion and inject over $16 billion this week into the banking system, according to Reuters, as the central bank expects large outflows owing to tax payments. Last week, it bought Rs 40,000 crore worth of government securities via an open market operation auction against the earlier notified amount of Rs 20,000 crore. This was part of measures to inject Rs 1.5 lakh crore into money markets to address the shortfall caused by RBI’s intervention in selling dollars to stabilise the rupee.
• Trade war: On Thursday, US President Donald Trump signed a memo instructing staff to develop custom tariffs for each country, taking into account their existing tariffs, exchange rates, trade balances, and other rules. This week, Trump is expected to announce some of these tariffs as countries scramble to put together reciprocal tariffs. Meanwhile, India slashed duty on bourbon whisky to 50% from 150% after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the US president last week.

In which country was the Zika virus first identified?

Answer: Uganda, in 1947. It was identified in a Rhesus macaque monkey followed by evidence of infection and disease in humans in the 1950s.

We would love to hear from you! To let us know what you liked and disliked about our newsletter, please mail [email protected]. 

If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here. For past editions of the YourStory Buzz, you can check our Daily Capsule page here.