Category: INT. Pulse

Blog Banner

🤖 We use AI – Means we don’t use AI.

December 1, 2023

Dear Colleague, we have officially put our foot in December’s door and we thought it was our fiduciary duty to update each one of our 58,000 readers on how corporate language should be truly deciphered for the rest of the year. Alright then, here are some mission critical phrases we heard in meeting rooms through 2023, followed by what they truly mean: “Let me check with my team” = I forgot “Possibly” = Impossible “On my roadmap” = Won’t happen “This will be done in Q4” = Will try in Q2 next year “Let’s take this offline/circle back” = We’ll never speak of this again “35,000 foot view” = I don’t know what I’m saying “Low hanging fruit” = Easy promotion “Challenging landscape” = We’re going out of business, rapidly “Digital transformation” = We’re going out of business, slowly “All hands on deck” = Can we please try once? and… “We use AI” = We don’t use AI —— 🏆 At IAMAI’s iconic DNB Awards 2023, this monthly email was declared as one of India’s top 3 business newsletters. Experian, Make My Trip, and INT. Pulse were the three finalists and MMT bagged the winning trophy, leaving us in the dust. Are we going to try and become the champion next year? “Possibly” 😅 STATS: 71% Employees Want Appraisals Done By AI Indian managers listen up, please. It seems your credibility – when it comes to employee performance reviews – is at an all-time low. What The Eff? We kid you not. Per this report by the HR experts at Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG), 71% of Indian employees would rather have their performances evaluated by AI than their managers. We reckon this could be due to two reasons: 1️⃣ Rising trust in artificial intelligence (AI), or 2️⃣ Sinking trust in managerial performance evaluations. But irrespective of the reason, the end result is not looking good for Indian managers. What Else Does This Report Reveal? Since you asked: 💡92% of respondents acknowledge the role AI plays in assisting managers in creating employee schedules, while 89% believe AI should help. 💡95% of employees surveyed also feel AI can improve their quality of life, meaning so far, employees have benefitted much more from the usage of AI than the organisations they work for. But since this newsletter is not written by a bot, we beg to differ. 😁 Need HR Analytics help? Reach out to Dipak, our resident AI man. We estimate 92% of our readers should get in touch with Dipak in 3…2…1. Healthcare: AI Doctor In A Shopping Mall Near You Oh boy, imagine this. In a neighbourhood shopping mall, you approach a metallic, square 8×8 foot box and unlock it with your phone. Once inside, you find a chair and a large screen, where a robotic voice guides you through a body scan or a blood pressure reading or a finger prick blood draw — all of which you do on your own to receive a hospital grade diagnosis and a prescription. Is This Checkout Humour? We assure you it ain’t. Because according to Adrian Aoun, who cofounded San Francisco-based health tech startup Forward in 2016 and recently announced a fresh USD100 million in funding, the future of healthcare is an AI-powered mall kiosk he’s dubbed the “CarePod.” Going Forward. . . Forward is working hard to bring 25 of these pods to malls across the US, and the startup compares its healthcare approach to what Elon Musk is building at Tesla. The objective, akin to Musk’s vision of self-driving cars, is to put medicine on autopilot. 🎙️“Slowly but surely we’re just migrating every single thing from doctor and nurse to hardware and software.” “In fact, we don’t even believe a doctor’s office should exist,” the cofounder told Forbes. Doctors reading this be like – 🥱😆 Rising Dough: Indian Tech Startups ‘Do Well’ Every other day, you will see an entrepreneur on LinkedIn – complete with a tagline like, ‘bootstrapped to 100 gazillion’, or ‘solving the world’s greatest pain point through alien technology’ – write a post that starts with ‘the life of an entrepreneur is like selling bad karma at hell’s door’. While that is true in some ways, the highs entrepreneurs experience once in a while makes up for all the pain, we guess. Yeah? Hell, yeah! Per this MoneyControl report, SoftBank Vision Fund’s finance chief just announced that valuations of portfolio companies like Swiggy, FirstCry, and Ola Electric have been marked up in the September quarter. We have been following this space for a bit and clearly, this is a move that could be an early sign of private market prices of tech companies bouncing back after a prolonged slide. Doing Relatively Very Well SoftBank also stressed that 6 companies from its India portfolio — OYO, Swiggy, Ola Electric, OfBusiness, Lenskart, and FirstCry are among the top 15 of its private holdings worldwide. 📌At least 4 of these 6 Indian companies will IPO next year, per the grapevine. More power to entrepreneurs, please. ✊ Stuff We Are Watching 📌Take Off Those Glasses: Point your smartphone through a pair of glasses with a certain power. Then tap the screen until the “AF/AE lock” function appears. Use it to get a focus lock. Now remove the lens and voila! This is how the person who wears those glasses actually sees the world without them. An eye opening tech use case by Sakata Yoshi. 📌India Is A Rising Star: According to Wharton professor’s iconic ‘Best Country in the World’ list, India is inching up slowly, from No. 31 last year to No. 30 this year. Even though it hasn’t cracked the top 10, Prof. Reibstein said he’s keeping an eye on the country. India doesn’t score well on social purpose, but it ranked fifth as a mover. The rankings are here. . . 📌When AI Explains Maby Baking: One tough thing about parenting is explaining to kids how babies are made. It will have the best of us fumble

Read More »
INT. Pulse

 Close shave – Thank your asteroids.

July 27, 2023

Dear Colleague, we woke up today with a bit of a ‘dinosaur feeling’. 🦖 How Come? The Jurassic emotion was a direct result of finding out that a house-sized asteroid is making a very close pass of our planet today.  Fyi, when faced with the wrath of such a rogue rock, the dinosaurs were not so lucky, and that’s evident because these days you are filling up their remains in your car’s fuel tank.  🦖 + ☄️ = ⛽ What’s On The Rocks? As you read this, Asteroid 2018 BG5, a space rock from the Apollo group of near-Earth asteroids, will fly by earth (July 27,2023) at a speed of 30,094 kays an hour, per NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).  The asteroid will come as close as 4.1 million kilometers to us – a distance which may seem large, but it is relatively small in astronomical terms, considering the vastness of space and the size of the asteroid. Should You Withdraw All Your Savings? No. No. NASA’s best have assured that there is no risk of impact with Earth today or in the foreseeable future. ⚠️ However, even a small asteroid can cause significant damage if it enters the Earth’s atmosphere, as shown by the Chelyabinsk meteor event in 2013, when a 59 feet asteroid exploded over Russia, injuring over 1000 people and damaging nearly 8000 buildings. STATS: Sorry, The Doctor Isn’t Available Life sciences leaders, heads up. Are your sales reps getting the cold shoulder/elbow nudge from doctors more often these days? Turns out, they are not trying to hoodwink your system while catching up on Oppenheimer during office hours. Yeah? How Is That? A new CMI Media Group survey of physicians across countries is providing fresh evidence that face to face meetings with doctors is becoming a rare commodity since COVID-19. When asked, 25% of the doctors reported reducing face-to-face interactions. With another 10% of doctors permanently closing their doors for reps, the survey suggests pharmaceutical companies will find it increasingly tough to put their drugs in front of ~35% of physicians via the traditional in-person route. Aha. What Could Work Then? To start, how doctors utilise their time roughly maps onto the value they place on each touchpoint. Print and online journals are on top, with 79% finding them very or extremely useful. Pharma reps on the other hand, are pretty much down on the attention radar. Only 33% doctors find reps very or extremely useful, placing them below resources like medical websites and unbranded disease education from biopharma. Bonus Data Points 🍎 99% doctors engage with print/online journals or medical websites at least once a month. 🍎 75% also engage with search engines and email, online drug references, direct mailers, medical apps, professional online communities, brand emails, medical videos on YouTube, and medical podcasts. The doctors’ world is clearly leaning towards an omnichannel approach. If you need to explore such a strategy, chat up with Anindya, our resident Life Sciences man. Psst, he curates the most amazing conversations over ☕️. Ai & ANALYTICS: The Chatbot Will See You Now Unlike physicians who are reducing their face time with med reps, did you know chatbots have no pressing personal issues (yet) and are doing mankind some sterling service?  I Do  This blurb refers to securing consent from humans for stuff like clinical trials and other life sciences related studies, where, hold our battery pack, chatbots are doing very well.  Seriously? Yo! Results from a study of the use of a chatbot in the consent process show that it encourages inclusivity, and leads to faster completion of the process with high levels of understanding.  On the flip side, the traditional method of securing consent lacks a mechanism to verify understanding objectively, just like all the web forms we give consent to without understanding zilch of the fine print.  Comparatively, the chat-based method can test comprehension, disqualifying users who do not show understanding to give consent; rather, it puts them in touch with a genetic counsellor to figure out why knowledge transmission did not occur.  Pretty dang smart for a piece of software, talking of which, we have a whole bunch of AI-powered chat bots held in a big steel vault behind Dipak’s office desk. Get in touch with him to deploy one for your business.  BFSI: A Single Source of Truth We’ve been swamped with news, stories, videos, and you-name-it, all revolving around artificial intelligence, once prompting OpenAI’s CEO to say, people are ‘begging to be disappointed’ about GPT4, meaning let’s water down the hype, please.  But amid all the speculation and noise, what are the most achievable, real world uses of AI?  The BFSI Space Is A Great Start, We Say The BFSI sector is flourishing with AI tech integrating with many functions, from the digital KYC verification process to evaluating credit scores.  However, to quench the thirst of the customer base accustomed to the convenience of digital tools, the industry needs to deploy more AI tech, the first among them could be;  Customised Experience: Because of the very nature of the trade, BFSI players have always had a finger on consumer pulse. Time to take that to the er, bank. Their spending patterns and investment portfolios can assist BFSI businesses to build relevant, personalised messages, enabling them to better present their products and services across various platforms, improving acquisition and loyalty.  This is where AI and data analytics shine, delivering value by creating a single source of truth from an ocean of data from within and outside the business.  Fraud Detection: While the original BFSI fraud detection model is focused on detecting fraudulent transactions – an area where generative AI has added a powerful weapon to the fraud detection arms depot – a gap remains.  You guessed right, detecting fraudulent human behaviour. Fraud does not happen in vacuum or underwater. People commit fraud.  AI can also be deployed to comb through the field of behavioural indicators. It’s time to task AI with sifting through the subtleties of human communications — written

Read More »
INT. Pulse

INT. PULSE

June 29, 2023

Dear Colleague, these days, if a tech newsletter does not start with the acronyms AI or ML, it can be safely assumed that its writers are probably living under a rock. Thus, to mask our prehistoric addresses from over 40 thousand monthly readers, we are starting June’s Pulse with an AI story, but there’s a twist. Out With It, Please. Okay, so word on the street is, contrary to the doomsayers, AI and ML seem to be creating new jobs for humans, faster than they are killing employment. No Way! Surpriiise. A good 75% of companies think that they will adopt AI in their businesses soon enough; the great challenge now is to get the staff with the necessary expertise to fill these new jobs. Many human resources folk are also suddenly agreeing that the labour market is being shaken by the demand for new workers in AI-related areas. Where Are These New Jobs? Alright, we will start you off with two.  For instance, AI can create personalised medicinal treatments, precision farming and sophisticated industrial methods. These new products and services can lead to new responsibilities in research, development and marketing, along with new skills and experience requirements.   The emergence of AI-powered digital assistants and smart home appliances has opened up new career prospects for hardware engineers, data analysts and software developers, akin to how autonomous vehicle and drones have opened up new career prospects for engineers, technicians and logistics specialists. Always A Catch While more employment is always cool, AI is expected to make some jobs obsolete too, especially in the content generation area.  This means, pretty soon, as generative AI begins to write this newsletter, you may receive INT. Pulse twice a day instead of once a month, and we will have retired to the Himalayas.  Win-Win  STATS: When Every Analytical Tool Failed Sample this.  On 14th June, Sweden reported unexpectedly high inflation for May, causing economists and all their tech tools to wonder: What on earth kept prices that high? (Side Talk: Dealing with an analytical crisis? Solve it over a  with Dipak Singh, our analytics & AI head honcho). And then it dawned upon them like a Manali sunrise: Beyoncé.  The pop superstar put her Renaissance tour on the road in Stockholm last month, pulling 80,000+ fans to the city over two nights.  Danske Bank finally deciphered that for this influx of concertgoers, hotels and restaurants upped their prices to such a degree, it skyrocketed overall inflation.   Your TakeawayThe fact that one person, by the sheer force of her popularity, was responsible for higher inflation in an entire country is…beyond analytics.  Danske’s chief Swedish economist, Michael Grahn, quoted, “It’s quite astonishing for a single event. We haven’t seen this before.” Well, now we have.  GA4: Underreporting Traffic? No Papa Alright peeps, the Universal Analytics (UA) sun is finally setting and come July, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is all we have, making migration to this new platform mandatory. But, but, but… with GA4, you may also be saying hello to underreported website traffic. Before you start comparing it to the train wreck some recent Windows upgrades were, we advise you to read on. What Happened Here? Indian proptech giant, Square Yards, usually gets ~70% of its web traffic from mobile devices and the rest from Desktops/tablets. But on switching to GA4, they found a hot-potato drop in traffic stats. On fishing in deeper waters, the folks at SY found that mobile traffic was under-reported by the GA4 tracker. This could also be-happening/happen to you. GA4, Give Me Everything Please So, there’s this important setting in the GA4 Console that allows Google to collect metadata about granular device details of your site and app visitors, so it can provide you with location and device-based info. This is turned OFF by default for any new property being created in the GA Dashboard. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Fix? 1️⃣ Go to your GA4 property settings 2️⃣ Select Data Collection, and 3️⃣ Enable Granular location and device data collection. Aaaand, you’re done. 📌 We are keeping our crawlers active on GA4 stories for a ‘best hacks and tips blurb’ in our July edition. Btw, if you need help with GA4 migration, or perhaps, take GA4 to its optimum limits to power growth for your business, Sanjeeb and his team are all set to help you out. Reach out to Sanjeeb here. AI/ML: How Nvidia Hit A Jackpot Selling Chips We’ve all heard of cashing in your chips post winning big but selling chips to hit a jackpot? That’s a new one and the trophy goes out to hardware giant, Nvidia. How Come? 1️⃣ For starters, you should know Nvidia (USD960B)* is now worth more than: *as on May 27, 2023. 2️⃣ This is the company that started 30 years ago and was for almost all its life, only a video game chip maker. 3️⃣ You should also know that over three decades, Nvidia was on the verge of bankruptcy 3 times. How On Earth Then……? It turns out Nvidia’s GPUs (originally created to improve gaming graphics) are also well suited for the data processing and model training demands of generative AI. Like this analyst said, “Training AI models demands chips that have large memory…Nvidia is the only company making those chips.” The rest is history (in the making). ­Stuff We Are Watching 📌Instant Productivity Boost: You know what’s hot? Bring your own device (BYOD) programs are, as they can potentially save organisations big money on equipment – and they might increase productivity.. but there are flip sides too. 📌 A Funding Tip That Works: CEOs and CFOs looking for funding? Remember, when framing your competition to investors without having to buy them antacids or anti-stress pills, follow this hierarchy of competition, from most worrisome to least. 📌 Are Cookies Dying? In one word? Yes. In fact, we may have only 50-odd weeks left. That’s the estimate for cookie-pocalypse. Educated guesses we gathered from all over indicate that Google will get rid of 3P cookies in Chrome around

Read More »
INT. Pulse

INT. PULSE

May 26, 2023

Dear Colleague, each month, all of us at INT. Marketing dive into a dizzying research gig to write the best opening section of this newsletter (Fyi, Pulse has 35K+ monthly subscribers now 😎). Here’s this month’s winner – the Forrest Gump of tech, aka, Yahoo! And Why Is That? Sample this – Yahoo had a peak dotcom-days valuation of USD125 billion but ultimately – hold our coffees – was sold to Verison for USD4.8 billion in 2016. Here are five 🤯 Yahoo moments: In 1998 Yahoo refused to buy Google for USD1 million. 4 years later, in 2002, Google said it would sell to Yahoo for USD5 billion (but Yahoo only offered USD3 billion, meaning – no deal, sir.) ⏩ to 2006, Yahoo offered USD1 billion for Facebook but Zuckerberg turned it down. Sources said, if Yahoo had increased their bid to USD1.1 billion, Facebook’s board may have pushed for sale, but Yahoo didn’t budge. Come 2008, Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for USD46 billion, but Yahoo said ‘Noooooo Wayyyyy!’ And finally, in 2013, Yahoo bought Tumblr for USD1.1 billion, writing it down to USD230 million just 3 years later. Psst: Also, instead of Tumblr, it considered buying Netflix for USD4 billion, now worth USD140 billion. STATS: Fastest Finger Hand First In a world where acronyms like DAU and MAU rule the roost, your mother-in-law will tell you that it would be wise to know the number of years it took each of the following to gain 50 million users, per the World of Statistics: Airlines: 68 yearsCars: 62 yearsTelephones: 50 yearsCredit Cards: 28 yearsTV: 22 yearsComputers: 14 yearsThe Internet: 7 yearsPayPal: 5 yearsYouTube: 4 yearsFacebook: 3 yearsTwitter: 2 yearsWeChat: 1 year ChatGPT: A little less than 30 days, and……🏆 PornHub: 19 days AI/ML: How Big Tech Effed Up (Major Time) ­All of us are in the know about tech layoffs, triggered by the arrival of generative AI. However, while dishing out pink slips may have made investors happy, there is another side to the story. Yeah? And What Is That? The AI Trap. Let us explain. As generative AI and coding took off, massive layoffs, led by big tech firms were triggered across the tech world. But, but, but, all these former employees are now going and building serious competition in 1/10th the time it would take biggies to get there. On the other hand, the big guys are perpetually stuck in meeting/webinar hell, arguing over use cases, tech stack, safety, and deployment methods, while solo developers knock the wind out of them, meaning, the long tail of software just grew 100X. Was It Avoidable? Probably not. You see, Covid tailwinds resulted in a huge surplus as people spent more time online and the big boys used that tailwind to hire, expecting never-ending growth. As the Covid winds died down, growth in tech crashed, leaving big tech players bloated, less agile, and ready to walk into the AI trap, with arms wide open. 💡 At INT., we have an agile AI and Advanced Analytics setup that is doing some cool work in the BFSI, Life Sciences and Retail space. Reach out to Dipak Singh to know how you can reduce costs and improve customer acquisition. ☕️ The coffee is on us! BFSI: Fintech Market Correction Is ‘Short Term’ For the last year or so, fintech exuberance has been served a super-strong shot of black coffee, with regulations clamping down hard, valuations dropping by 60% across the sector, and funding drying up by almost 43%, YoY. So, Is Fintech Dying? In one word – NO WAY! Per this BCG-QED report, the fintech growth story is only in its initial stage and is expected to grow to a USD1.5 trillion industry by 2030. Here are some key takeaways from that report. Sit back and get a hold of this. Where Does Fintech Stand Today? Word on the street is that the fintech journey is still at infancy and will continue to disrupt the financial services industry over time. Basis of that belief is; customer experience remains poor and with over 50% of the global population remaining unbanked or underbanked, financial technology (FinTech) is the only means to unlock new use cases, resulting in growth going up by leaps and bounds. Deepak Goyal, MD, BCG, opines that all stakeholders must therefore seize the moment. Regulators need to be proactive and lead from the front. Incumbents should partner with fintechs to accelerate their own digital journeys. APAC To Lead The Fintech Show Asia-Pacific is this big unserviced market, with almost USD4 trillion in financial services revenue pools, and is slated to outpace the US to become the world’s top fintech market by 2030. This growth will be driven primarily by Emerging APAC (e.g. China, India, and Indonesia) at a projected CAGR of 27%. 🔥 What’s Hot & Happening In Fintech? While payments led the last leg, B2B2X and B2b (serving small businesses) will lead the next. B2B2X is made up of B2B2C (enabling other players to better serve consumers), B2B2B (enabling other players to better serve businesses), and financial infrastructure players. The B2B2X market is expected to grow at a 25% CAGR to reach USD440 billion in annual revenues by 2030. 💡 Need to create and implement your B2B2X strategy? Souvik Chaki is your go to person, so feel free. Stuff We Are Watching ­📌 Are Credit Cards Dying? Because from now on, you can get easy credit on UPI as well. Here’s how this disruptive feature can boost the Indian Economy, or turn into a recovery nightmare, depending on who’s reading. 📌 Big Tech Work Cultures: Sample this and guess which company these people hail from – Super thoughtful, similar to Microsoft, platform mindset, but sometimes too slow to act. All Big Tech work cultures, summed up by one observer here… 📌 Why Optimise Code Anymore: Remember the old times when most software installation was done via 1.4 MB floppy disks? With storage space restrictions dead, why should developers optimise code?

Read More »
INT. Pulse

INT Pulse

April 26, 2023

Dear Colleague, there you are at your desk, starting the day with a review of your 80/20 list and suddenly –  upcoming meeting alert – or in other words, the sound of your workday dying.  Fret not, because just like you, your boss hates that sound too.  Nope, we didn’t cook this up ourselves – multiple researches stand by what we’re telling you.   Executives spend an average of 25 hours a week in meetings, yet nearly half of those video calls and project updates could disappear without any negative impact, per a survey of over 10,000 desk workers by Future Forum.   Reluctantly going to noncritical meetings wastes about USD100 million a year at big organisations, according to another survey.  The studies found the top reason why business leaders went to unproductive meetings is that they thought it would be a good use of time, but ultimately wasn’t.  They also attend because they’re afraid to miss something important, and to show their own manager they’re working.   Reminds us of that old saying – ‘this meeting could have been an email’.  Just like the one you are reading now.  AI: Why Google Is Taking It Nice And Easy What You Know The once-a-little-known startup, OpenAI, took on Big G head-on in a fight for the spot as AI’s top dog.  Within just 60 days of its release, ChatGPT amassed 100 million+ users worldwide. Also, since it saw daylight, ChatGPT has passed multiple prestigious graduate-level exams in law and business, even going as far as passing the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE).  On the flip side, Google recently released an ad for Bard (it’s own AI tool) that had incorrect information coming directly from the chatbot, resulting in the loss of over USD100 billion in market value for the tech giant. What You Also Know Even with an unspectacular tech stack, ChatGPT’s decision to offer AI to the masses through the web has revolutionised text generation through automation, having big ramifications on sectors like education, employment, and, particularly relevant to Google, the evolution of online searches.  On the other hand, Google has only allowed some groups to test out Bard before its full public release in the near future.  Plus, Blake Lemoine, an ex Googler, stirred up a storm by publishing a document in which he proposed the possibility of the AI being sentient. (ChatGPT had its share of lobotomy as well, BTW) What You Don’t Know ChatGPT might be winning the AI race for now, but soon Sam Altman will probably have to fly to Washington DC and spend afternoons with an 85-year-old farmer-turned-Senator from Idaho, to explain why his great-granddaughter was suspended from private middle school for using something called “the GPT AI.”  Jokes apart, our resident AI/ML lead, Dipak Singh, is doing some transformational work for enterprises with ChatGPT, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence in general. Reach out to Dipak to explore a solution for your organisation BFSI: Apple Is Ummm, A Bank Now? For all practical considerations, yes.  Let us explain. Sometime back, Apple drove an armoured cash van through the American banking industry.  Yeah?  True. While the average bank is paying less than 0.5% on savings accounts, the USD2.6 trillion tech giant announced it would dish out 4.15% (that’s 10X the national average) annual returns to savers. This, when regional American banks are balking in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank crisis to maintain their deposit bases, and cash-starved fintech startups are gasping for breath.  Is It A Gravity Game Changer? Pretty much. Per Forbes, “as trust in traditional banks falters, the two most iconic names in tech and finance are joining together to create what might become America’s mightiest FinTech.”  Clarification on the other iconic name – since Apple does not have a banking license, it has teamed up with Goldman Sachs Bank, USA.  In pure fintech jargon, Apple is now a neobank like Jupiter and Fi Money – except its ginormous brand strength, with over two billion iPhones globally, is now serving as Goldman’s branch network.  At 4.5%, Where Are The Profits? Apple’s 10X returns savings account is less about profits than it is about bringing more iPhone owners under Apple and Goldman’s financial umbrella.  While two billion people around the world own Apple devices, fewer than 10% are Apple Card users, meaning there is a megatron* market opportunity waiting to be tapped already.  Net earnings from interest margins may not be Goldman’s priority either.   Profits or no profits, the iPhone user is certainly not complaining.  *megatron is a myth, but it sounds so cool, we used it for effect.  Pharma: Unable To Pear The Loss Pharma technology pioneers, here’s a reality check – one that is brought to you, courtesy, insurance companies.  What The Eff? Yes, Pear Therapeutics, creator of 3 FDA-cleared prescription apps to help treat substance use disorder and insomnia, just announced that it is, err, bankrupt, as the tech startup struggled to get insurers to pay for its technology.  Btw, we are talking about America here.  While doctors were willing to prescribe digital therapeutics and patients were willing to use them, “that isn’t enough,” Pear’s CEO Corey McCann wrote in this LinkedIn post.  “Payors have the ability to deny payment for therapies that are clinically necessary, effective, and cost-saving.” What made Pear special? Clinical robustness: Through high quality clinical trials, Pear demonstrated enhanced patient outcomes in substance use disorder and insomnia. Regulatory blessing: One of the earliest to get US-FDA approval, Pear saw 10,000+ prescriptions written for its digital solution. Investor enthusiasm: Pear raised USD300M in equity, USD100M in debt and went public last year with a valuation of USD1B+. Key Takeaway? Per Tushar Sadhu on LinkedIn, “external capital comes with its powers and responsibilities. Unrealistic valuation and pre-mature IPO undid the good work the company had done in product creation.”  Stuff We Are Watching  GoI’s Chatbot Plan: The Government of India is working to create a multilingual ChatGPT-like chatbot helpline that can be used to manage grievances of disgruntled consumers.   USD100,000 Saved by AI: ChatGPT use cases now run into millions, populating every nook and corner of social timelines, but how does

Read More »
INT. Pulse

SNBL

March 22, 2023

As the whole world is going bananas over BNPL (buy now, pay later), Africa has dropped a new fintech model on its shoppers. And it’s something so cool, you’ve never heard of it – SNBL, aka, save now, buy later. While BNPL has skyrocketed worldwide and given us juggernauts like Klarna, this arm of fintech is facing backlash too, with many realising it encourages overspending and can lead to nasty debt traps. The wise are also asking if it’s commercially sustainable, as Klarna saw its valuation cut 85% from USD46B to USD7B. Save now, pay later is like an upfront answer to that. SNBL providers across emerging markets reiterate that the model is better aligned with existing cultural practices and furthers consumers’ long-term financial health. African fintech investors are believing the story wholeheartedly too. Let’s try saying this aloud – ‘Flipkart save now, buy later.’ ✅ Sounds like a million bucks already. AI/ML: When A Monkey Took A Selfie From horses to automobiles, postcards to emails, or even film to digicams, there’s a long history of backlash towards emerging technologies. As exhibited by the image above, when cinema introduced audio, people asked: “But what will happen to the orchestra?” The obvious worry was that the orchestra that played alongside silent films would be out of a job. Though the concern was valid, ultimately, the introduction of sound into movies dramatically expanded the music industry, increasing net employment many times over. Also, jobs like Sound Editor and Sound Mixer emerged out of empty auditorium seats. As generative AI reinvents industries (yes, some jobs will be replaced), it’s worth remembering past reactions to new technologies, and that the pie has often grown larger, albeit in ways we cannot foresee when we are in the moment. 💡 The design world vehemently opposed photoshop when it dropped. Of course photoshop has its downsides, but it also ushered in a new era of visual expression and spawned millions of jobs worldwide. 🙈 Also note that you can’t copyright AI art (you may be infringing when you create AI art though), meaning when a monkey took a selfie, AI art lost the battle before it even started. BFSI: The Safest Bank In The World Before your thoughts start running away to things like ‘mattress’, ‘underground’, or even ‘false ceiling’, please consider this. Many years ago, a startup called Narrow Bank, cooked up a business model of just taking deposits and holding 100% of them in Federal Reserves. The plan was simple. It would basically make Narrow the safest possible bank. But sadly, they were never granted a Fed Account or even access to their electronic payment services. The Narrow Bank even went to court over it and lost. What’s Wrong With Super Safety? 🤔 If one bank is “too safe”, it can suck deposits out of the whole system towards itself, meaning most of the current two-tier banking system wouldn’t make sense, if that full-reserve bank existed. Moral Of The Story: Regulators ironically want banks to be safe, but for none to be too safe. 🔔 If you’re a professional making banking ‘safer’ with technology, Souvik is always around to help you explore and deploy the best-fit tech stack for your BFS system. Reach him here. . . ­Pharma: GPT4 And Drug Discovery Drug discovery is an incredibly complex process. Zeroing in on a target molecule, testing each compound for value and toxicity, and then modifying the molecules appropriately for clinical trials are the general steps involved. As a result, it often takes years to find a viable chemical using this ‘hit to lead’ method. Then There’s GPT4 Toying With It Simply give it a currently available drug and it can: Find compounds with similar properties Modify them to make sure they’re not patented Purchase them from a supplier (includes sending an email automatically with a purchase order). Here’s the complete paper for your perusal. ✋ If you need to know more about how data, analytics, ML and AI can augment your pharma business (we understand there’s much more to it than discovering drugs using AI), get in touch with Dipak, our lead data scientist. Stuff We Are Watching 📌 Overdue Diligence: Please spare a thought for the Saudi National Bank, because just a couple of months back, they invested USD1.5 billion in Credit Suisse to pick up a 10% stake. Today the same stake is valued at ~ 🥜🥜, a total write off in a matter of weeks. 📌 Expensive Errors: Beyond the human cost of healthcare medication errors, the WHO estimates the global cost to be USD42 billion annually. Per this study, 8 out of 10 healthcare tech professionals are willing to increase spends to minimise preventable medical errors. 📌 The Coolest Tech Billionaire: Meet Mark Leonard, the founder and CEO of Constellation Software – a company like none other. Why? Because since its debut at USD70 million at the Toronto Stock Exchange, the company has increased in value by ~ 70,000% 🚀­🙋🏻‍♀️ Before we wrap up the March edition of Pulse, here’s a conversation we overheard on social. Chappie #1 – Instagram is dead. In the next 3 – 5 years, every single image on social media will be generated by AI. And here is the kicker: It will be impossible to tell fake from reality. Chappie #2 – Instagram is the kingdom of fake. Care to elaborate how better fakes represent a danger to the business model? Party Crasher Elon – These days, if it looks shoddy and fake, it’s probably real. 🤷🏻‍♀️ 💡 Simply hit reply to this email and get instantly connected to a team of 850+ experts to start any kind of conversation, or to be featured in this monthly newsletter – read by over 22,000 professionals like yourself. See you in April. Cheers! Team INT.

Read More »
Technophobia

What Is Technophobia and How to Overcome It?

October 14, 2016

If you have ever hesitated to use your child’s smartphone, or wondered how to operate a computer without someone giving you guidance, you may not be alone. A number of people find it difficult to deal with technology and gadgets inspire fear in them. Some people take this fear to an extreme and may be called ‘technophobics’ by psychologists. Technophobia is not an officially recognized mental illness but it is the extreme and irrational fear of technology. Usually, this fear is related to irrational fear of computers, robots, artificial intelligence, weapons and other such things which seem advanced in scientific thought. Many people fear genetically modified organisms too (GMO), though research shows that they are safe to consume. In other words, fear of science and technology is a very real problem in our societies and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that one can find a technophobic around every street corner. Fear or just aversion to technology? Yet, in this article, we are going to discuss technophobia as a general term, not as the extreme avoidance of computers as people understand it. So, for the scope of this article, technophobia is hesitation or aversion towards new technologies, especially cloud technology, mobile applications, the use of Internet and of coding. This is a huge problem today because a number of businesses are still using computers that run on Windows XP, and refuse to bring in any sort of technological advancement to their companies. This has resulted in loss of growth, stagnation of economy and a general sense of lethargy that is simply not required. [php snippet=1] Most of these companies which refuse to adopt new technologies often have CEOs that are resistant to changes, directors who are technophobic in its real term and people who just do not want to see any kind of changes made at all. All these categories of people have hampered the growth of their own companies and of society in general. In this article, let us understand what technophobia is, and how we can overcome it, so that newer technologies can be adopted without fearing them. Of course, this is not going to happen all of a sudden, and will take time, but the effort put in is certainly worth it. Self help Self help does not get the credit it usually deserves. While books like The Secret and others are panned by certain people, there are a lot of self help techniques that can actually work. You will need to find out what is best for you. If you believe your aversion towards technology is irrational and that it must be paid attention to, you have already reached a certain level of insight. This insight can further be developed into making positive changes in life that will help to introduce technology slowly but surely. For example: Sam was fearful of smartphones. He initially purchased a basic cellphone model, and graduated to using a smartphone. He did not give his number to everyone and instead, only allowed his daughter to call him. Slowly, he started to converse with his friends on the phone and in the end, he encouraged himself to check emails, call the customer, etc. Counseling If self help techniques do not help, counseling can be the next step. Counselors do not train mental health issues nor are they trained to do that. They only help you to gain clarity about your situation and advise what could be the best thing to do. Counselors may assess your situation and tell you why you are avoiding technology though it is obviously harming you. They may teach you certain techniques and listen to you patiently when you discuss your fears. Most people may ridicule your technophobia but a counselor will validate your fears and emotions. That alone is enough to help you start making positive changes in your life. For Example: Nicole always avoided her computer and was not able to use Skype to make video calls to her son. She sought the help of a counselor who pointed out that if she avoids her fear, she will never overcome it. Nicole slowly started to make video calls to not only her son, but also to her colleagues. Support groups When just counseling will not help, you may seek the help of support groups. Support groups are great for people who wish to share their stories with others. They can also learn from others how they are dealing with a particular issue. By choosing support groups, one can understand what others are doing to overcome technophobia and imbibe the same techniques back when they are facing issues. Most importantly, support groups help people to realize that they are not alone. The very fact that there are other people who too face technophobia can be an epiphany of sorts. Example: Jason could not bear to set up an ERP at his factory. This caused many lost opportunities and significant losses. At a support group, he met another business owner who told him that he was seeking extra support for an ERP so that he doesn’t have to deal with the software himself. Jason was back in his factory and implemented an ERP. Cognitive behavior therapy When simple counseling or support groups do not have any effect, one may need professional help from a psychologist. Psychologists often use cognitive behavior therapy to change the thought pattern that might be enabling the fear. They also gradually introduce the client to the feared stimulus (in this case, some technology), and help them to reduce anxiety, fear and stress during those situations. For example: Christine disliked using projectors because she felt something would go wrong, though she could not pin point what this eventual disaster would be. Her psychologist slowly helped her to use the projector without feeling anxious or fearful. Christine got better at using projectors and started to make great presentations. Psychodynamic therapy Sometimes, psychologists aim to treat the underlying cause, which usually is a traumatic incident

Read More »

Services

Industries

Company

Resources

Press Kit

MENU
Book a free consultation
CONTACT US

Let’s connect!

    Privacy Policy.

    Book a free consultation
    Almost there!

    Download the report

      Privacy Policy.