Category: Startup

Dutch company launches flying car at Geneva show

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Robert Dingemanse has heard the comparisons many, many times. The Jetsons, Harry Potter, James Bond.

As CEO of a Dutch company developing a flying car, he’s used to curious people whose only frame of reference for his new vehicle comes from cartoons or movies.

But as of this week, Dingemanse’s dream of letting commuters (albeit well-heeled ones) choose whether to drive or fly to work comes a significant step closer. He is unveiling the first production model of the PAL-V Liberty, a three-wheeled, two-seat car and gyroplane rolled into one, at the Geneva motor show.

“Flying cars have been in movies many, many times and they will be available next year,” Dingemanse told The Associated Press at an airport near the southern Dutch city of Breda as he stood next to a sleek, black prototype of the PAL-V Liberty.

The PAL-V Liberty is one of several flying cars in development around the world such as The Transition, a folding wing two-seater being developed by U.S.-based Terrafugia, and an all-electric vertical take-off and landing jet being developed by German startup Lilium.

Carlo van de Weijer, director of Eindhoven’s Technical University’s Smart Mobility program, doesn’t see flying cars as much more than a niche market.

“It’s not really going to be a substantial part of the total mobility industry,” he said. “It’s a nice gadget to combine it with a car so … it might be a successful company in selling quite a few,” he said of the PAL-V.

In the air, the PAL-V is pushed forward by a rear mounted propeller driven by two engines. It is stabilized by a larger roof-mounted rotor that bolsters safety.

“The rotor is not powered,” Dingemanse said, “so it’s actually a parachute which is always available.”

Its makers say the PAL-V will drive at up to 170 kilometers per hour (105 mph), fly up to 180 kmh (110 mph) and can fly about 500 kilometers (310 miles) on a single tank of regular unleaded gas.

Land it and the rotor and propeller fold away, the tail retracts and the PAL-V is ready to drive. Switching from road to aircraft mode takes about 10 minutes including performing the necessary checks, the company says.

With a price tag expected to be around 500,000 euros ($615,000) for the first production run of 90, the flying cars are not for everybody, but Dingemanse said he has plenty of buyers lined up. They will have to become certified gyroplane pilots to take their PAL-V into the sky and the company is offering training courses, too.

Just don’t expect this flying car to lift off vertically if it gets caught in a traffic jam. The PAL-V needs a short runway or grass airstrip to take off and land.

With the first production model of the car now ready, the company can begin the final stages of certification with road and aviation authorities in Europe and elsewhere.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it is constantly working to integrate new technology into its regulations.

“Urban mobility technology is highly promising and we are vigorously working towards the development of policy and regulations to support it,” the FAA said in a written response to questions from AP.

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Phone apps push people to take their pills

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Take two tablets and a selfie? Your doctor’s orders may one day include a smartphone video to make sure you took your medicine.

Smartphone apps that monitor pill-taking are now available, and researchers are testing how well they work when medication matters. Experts praise the efficiency, but some say the technology raises privacy and data security concerns.

Selfie medicine works like this: Open an app on your phone, show your pills, put them in your mouth and swallow. Don’t forget to show your empty mouth to the camera to prove today’s dose is on its way. Then upload the video proof to the clinic.

Fans say the technology addresses a big problem: About half of drugs for chronic conditions aren’t taken as prescribed because of cost, side effects or patient forgetfulness.

With treatment for opioid addiction, a skipped dose can mean a dangerous relapse. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is funding research to tailor a smartphone app for those patients and see if they’ll use it.

“If we can keep patients engaged, we can keep them in treatment longer,” said lead researcher Dr. Judith Tsui of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

The next phase of her research will compare a group of patients who use the monitoring app called emocha (ee-MOH-kuh) with those who don’t to see if there’s a difference.

At one Tennessee treatment center, some patients with opioid addiction are already using the app to upload selfies of their daily dose and answer questions about how they’re doing.

“Every time they sign on, it allows us to capture data. Are they having cravings? Suicidal tendencies?” said Scott Olson, CEO of Dallas-based Pathway Healthcare, which is trying the app at its Jackson, Tennessee, site. “Maybe a phone call from a counselor might make the difference between staying clean and a relapse.”

Olson thinks insurers will pay for the service with more evidence. For monitoring tuberculosis patients, health departments pay roughly $35 to $50 per patient each month for systems that include encrypted data storage. A small health department might pay as little as $500 a month.

The idea of watching someone take their medicine — called directly observed therapy or DOT — has roots in tuberculosis where one person’s forgetfulness can be serious for everyone. If patients don’t take all their antibiotics, their infectious TB germs can get stronger, developing drug resistance and endangering the broader community.

But taking a handful of pills daily for up to a year is difficult, so public health departments traditionally sent workers to people’s homes and workplaces to watch them take their doses. Today, many TB patients prefer remote monitoring. Nurses like it too.

Nurse Peggy Cooley has used Skype for years to chat live with patients taking TB medicine.

“We can accomplish in a two-minute phone call something that might have taken an hour to do and most of that hour was in the car,” said Cooley, who works for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department in Washington state.

The new uploaded selfies don’t need an appointment. They are a daily routine for many tuberculosis patients in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston, where savings on mileage and worker time amounted to $100,000 in a recent year.

In Boston, Albuquerque and five other cities, researchers are studying whether the technology works for hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus that’s surging among a new generation of injection drug users. New drugs for hepatitis C can cure, but they’re expensive — $75,000 for a 12-week course of treatment — so insurers want to make sure patients take them.

“I think it holds a lot of promise,” said researcher Dr. Alain Litwin of University of South Carolina School of Medicine, who’s testing whether patients do better when someone watches them take their pills.

What’s next? An insurer in Maryland plans to use the technology in diabetes and high blood pressure to make sure Medicare and Medicaid patients take their medicine. Startups selling the apps say they could be used by faraway adult children monitoring an elderly parent’s daily pill-taking.

Experts worry about privacy, data security and penalties for poor pill-taking.

“That’s the biggest ick factor,” said Carolyn Neuhaus, a medical ethicist at the Hastings Center in New York. “You can imagine a program where benefits are tied to compliance and the insurer says, ‘We won’t pay for medication anymore unless you’re taking it correctly.'”

Globally, the rapid spread of smartphones creates an opportunity to eradicate TB, say the app developers.

But eliminating TB may take simpler, cheaper technologies that can be scaled for millions of cases, said Dr. Daniel Chin, who leads TB efforts for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The group supports research in China and India on two homegrown technologies. China’s tool, about the size of a child’s shoebox, reminds patients to take their pills and saves data for review. In India, the government favors a blister pill pack printed with phone numbers; a patient punches out a daily pill, then calls the revealed number.

Worldwide, TB kills more than 1.6 million people annually, even though most deaths are preventable with treatment.

“If we are going to eliminate the disease, we need technology,” said Dr. Richard Garfein of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who helped develop one of the smartphone apps, SureAdhere.

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Canadian investor CDPQ invests $20 million in Nandan Nilekani’s Fundamentum

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Canadian institutional investor La Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) has made an initial investment of USD 20 million in the first growth fund of Nandan Nilekani promoted Fundamentum.

The investment in Fundamentum’s first growth fund (Series B) is a new strategic investment for CDPQ, enabling it to diversify its activities in India, a priority market, the company said in a statement.

In addition to the investment in Fundamentum, CDPQ said it will also explore direct investments in Fundamentum’s portfolio companies.

According to CDPQ president and chief executive officer Michael Sabia, India ranks as the world’s third largest technology start-up hub and this new partnership will enable the selected start-ups to scale their businesses.

“We view this as the beginning of a long-term partnership leading to subsequent rounds of investments,” he said.

Fundamentum is a scale-up platform for mid-stage technology companies in India founded by Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal the founder of Daksh and Helion Venture Partners, alongside a network of Indian entrepreneurs and key investors.

With a target size of approximately USD 100 million, Fundamentum Partnership – Fund I is expected to invest an average of up to USD 15 million in select startups.

It will focus on investments in consumer and enterprise technology businesses across retail, logistics, travel and outsourcing.

“We will greatly benefit from CDPQ’s knowledge of global trends and deep investment expertise. Both Fundamentum and CDPQ are bullish about the opportunity to build a host of large and enduring world-class organisations out of India, in the next decade and beyond,” said Nilekani.

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Government seeks Facebook’s clarification on data breach

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Union Government issued a notice to Facebook asking the social media giant to clarify if personal data of Indian users was used to manipulate elections, according to a Business Standard report.

“It is felt that there is a need for further information about the data breach from Facebook. Accordingly, a letter has been issued by the Ministry of Electronics & IT on March 28, 2018, to Facebook seeking their response,” the Government said in a statement.

The government raised questions on whether personal data of Indian users was compromised by any firm including Cambridge Analytica.

As per the report, the Ministry of Electronics and IT said a notice was also sent to Cambridge Analytica to get details about the data breach from Facebook.

Facebook has been directed to respond by 7th April while Cambridge Analytica was asked to respond  by the end of the month.

Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat however said  that  Facebook would  continue to operate as the social media partner of the Election Commission during the upcoming Karnataka elections.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

SoftBank reportedly pushes for Ola-Uber merger

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Japan’s SoftBank has called for a merger between the ride-hailing majors – Ola and Uber, in order to make the consolidated firm the biggest in Asia, the Business Standard reported.

SoftBank, the largest investor in both companies, has been holding talks between the ride-hailing apps for almost a year, sources told the paper.

SoftBank’s push for the merger heated up after Uber announced its exit from Southeast Asia and sold its local unit to Grab, according to the report.  Post the Uber-Grab deal, Uber will take charge of 27.5% stake in the combined entity.

There have been talks between the senior executives of Uber and Ola and a conclusion is expected in a couple of months, sources told the paper. They added that SoftBank is in favour of Ola acquiring the Indian unit of Uber.

Since both the firms are seeking a controlling stake in the merged entity, the talks have not been borne fruit as of yet, the paper said.

If the deal goes through, it will mark the Uber’s fourth large retreat globally.

Read more about the story in Business Standard’s report.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Uber exits SE Asia in new retreat from global markets

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Uber sold its Southeast Asian business to rival Grab today, ending a bruising battle between the ride-hailing behemoths and marking the US firm’s latest retreat from international markets.

Singapore-based Grab is taking over the ride-sharing and food delivery operations of Uber in the region, with the California-based company to receive a 27.5 percent stake in the business in return.

The sale is Uber’s latest withdrawal from a market where it had faced fierce competition, as new chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi seeks to stem huge losses and move past a series of scandals.

After a fierce battle, Uber sold its China operations to rival Didi Chuxing in 2016 in return for a stake, and last year the US firm merged in Russia with the taxi-hailing app of internet giant Yandex.

The deal with Grab is similar to the one struck with Didi, and ends a years-long fight for market share in a region that is home to some 650 million people and an increasingly affluent middle class.”Today’s acquisition marks the beginning of a new era,” said Grab chief executive Anthony Tan. “The combined business is the leader in platform and cost efficiency in the region.”

Khosrowshahi, who is joining Grab’s board as part of the deal, said: “This deal is a testament to Uber’s exceptional growth across Southeast Asia over the last five years. It will help us double down on our plans for growth.”

Grab has long been the dominant force in ride-hailing in Southeast Asia and speculation mounted that a deal with Uber was on the cards after Japanese financial titan Softbank invested huge sums in the US firm.

Softbank is also a major investor in Grab, and is known for pushing for consolidation in the global ride-hailing industry, which has been losing billions of dollars a year due to turf wars.
Grab, launched in 2012, has poured money into expanding its regional fleet and now has more than 2.1 million drivers in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia.

Competition between ride-hailing apps has been heating up in Southeast Asia, with the market forecast to grow more than five times to $13.1 billion by 2025, according to a 2016 report by Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

Uber is the largest firm of its kind with a presence in more than 600 cities, but it has been rocked by scandals and is facing fierce competition from rivals in Asia and Europe. Chief executive Travis Kalanick was ousted in June last year after missteps including allegations of executive misconduct, a toxic workplace atmosphere and potentially unethical competitive practices.

New boss Khosrowshahi has vowed to turn the company around as Uber gears up for 2019 public share offering. But he has a fight on his hands — Uber’s losses in 2017 grew to USD 4.5 billion from the USD 2.8 billion the company lost a year earlier.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Commerce Ministry discusses regulatory issues faced by startups

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The commerce and industry ministry on Friday held consultations with various departments to resolve regulatory issues being faced by startups in the sectors such as e-pharmacy and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Issues like presence of pharmacist at e-pharmacy platforms, stream lining of application process for NBFCs by the Reserve Bank, reforms in current guidelines for UAV sector, “which does not allow for manufacturing of drones, and vehicle specifications for door to door retail delivery of petroleum, were discussed at length,” the ministry said in a statement.

Commerce and Industry and Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu chaired the roundtable meeting here.

Matters related with retail delivery of petroleum from door to door was also deliberated upon in detail.

“Held a roundtable meeting on regulatory issues with startups and representatives of various Ministries. An interactive discussion to understand regulatory issues faced by startups and the way ahead to facilitate.We are committed to foster entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country,” Prabhu said in a tweet.

Officials from different departments including industrial policy and promotion, RBI, SEBI, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Drugs Controller General OF India, Ministry of Finance were present in the meeting, it added.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow