Sapere Aude || The Quizarc Newsletter. Year in review Part-1
First edition of Quizarc's "year in review 2024" newsletter
In this special edition of Sapere Aude, we will be looking into the biggest business news of 2024.
This is Business
📢For India, 2024 was the year of IPOs, cumulatively raising over Rs 1 trillion.
Hyundai Motor’s IPO was the biggest ever in Indian IPO history, surpassing LIC.
Swiggy's co-founders, Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, along with two delivery partners, Jigar Khan and Namrata Vora, rang the ceremonial bell at the National Stock Exchange to mark the company's stock market debut.
Zomato made history by becoming the first Indian startup to be included in the BSE Sensex 30 index, replacing JSW Steel.
🏛️Strong regulatory stance of RBI: The RBI directed Paytm Payments Bank to suspend critical operations, including accepting new deposits.
The RBI issued revised directions for non-banking financial companies' peer-to-peer lending platforms.
😟Bigwigs in trouble: Gautam Adani, in December 2024, was indicted by the US government on charges of bribing officials of the Andhra Pradesh government to get undue favors.
Hindenburg, who had targeted Adani before, decided to shift focus to SEBI chief, Madhabi Puri Buch and claimed that she and her husband have stakes in offshore entities which invest in the Indian stock market.
🚫Strikes around the world: Samsung saw strikes at its South Korea factory as well as Tamil Nadu factories.
Workers at nine Volkswagen factories across Germany brought assembly lines to a halt, protesting pay cuts and proposed factory closures.
SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) initiated a labor strike involving the union’s voice actors and motion capture artists against American video game companies.
More than 33,000 machinists employed by Boeing went on strike from September to November 2024.
✈️More troubles for Boeing: Missing bolts caused a panel to blow out of a Boeing 737 Max in January, forcing the Alaska Airlines flight to complete an emergency landing with a gaping hole in its fuselage.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule malfunctioned in orbit with two astronauts (Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore) aboard, leaving them without a way to return to Earth from the International Space Station until at least March 2025.
🤝Mega Mergers: Air India and Vistara came together to form a single, full-service airline.
In the entertainment world, the partnership between Viacom18 and Disney+ Hotstar created one of the largest content-streaming powerhouses in India.
Adar Poonawalla-led Serene Productions invested Rs 1,000 crore in Karan Johar's Dharma Productions and Dharmatic Entertainment, acquiring 50% of the company.
Fintech company Slice received approval from the National Company Law Tribunal for its merger with North East Small Finance Bank.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquired Juniper Networks for $14 billion to strengthen its position in cloud services and advanced computing.
Omnicom Group, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies has agreed to acquire Interpublic Group which would create the biggest ad agency in the world, with more than 100,000 employees and around $25 billion in annual revenue.
ExxonMobil completed its acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $60 billion.
👎🏻Bankruptcies: Byju's, once India’s leading edtech startup, valued at $22 billion at its peak is currently on the verge of bankruptcy.
Bluelearn, an edtech startup founded in 2021 by BITS Pilani alumni Harish Uthayakumar and Shreyans Sancheti, aimed to empower students from Tier-II and Tier-III colleges in India, also shut down in 2024.
Koo, an Indian microblogging app launched in early 2020 by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, aimed to rival Twitter shut down in 2024.
Spirit Airlines, the largest US budget carrier filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy after facing mounting losses and insurmountable debt in the post-pandemic travel landscape.
The world’s largest seafood chain, Red Lobster, filed for bankruptcy, counting over $1 billion in debt and less than $30 million in cash reserves.
Founded in 1976 by Anita Roddick, the Body Shop winded up its US stores on March 1 and liquidated 33 of 105 stores in Canada along with discontinuing online sales in the country.
Founded in 1946 with Earl Tupper's airtight plastic containers, Tupperware found it difficult to stay relevant and filed for bankruptcy this year.
The Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt lost charge and powered off.
Anglo-American cosmetics and personal care manufacturer Avon headed to bankruptcy owing to a barrage of asbestos related lawsuits.
The American casual dining chain TGI Fridays, known for its “flair” filed for Chapter 11 in after years of dealing with a shrinking footprint and a decline in customers.
🎯Elon Musk at the center of everything: Along with being the world’s richest person—Musk is now a powerful Washington insider. He has been tasked with tightening USA’s spending (along with biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy) through a newly formed body called the Department of Government Efficiency.
SpaceX continued to dominate the space cargo delivery market, winning at least $2.6 billion in new government contracts this year. It also celebrated the first successful test launch of its jumbo rocket, Starship.
Traffic on Starlink’s satellite internet network tripled this year.
Neuralink implanted custom chips into the brains of its first two trial patients.
֎Nothing is quiet on the AI front: OpenAI announced its latest ChatGPT model, GPT 4o with a feature that allowed users to directly converse with the AI model using certain voices. One such voice was called ‘Sky’, which was uncannily similar to Scarlett Johanson’s voice in the sci-fi movie ‘Her’.
Nvidia and SoftBank Corp have unveiled the world’s first AI and 5G-integrated telecom network, 5G AI-RAN, which transforms base stations into AI-powered computing hubs.
Auction house Sotheby’s sold artwork by Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist. The painting, a 2.2-meter portrait of mathematician Alan Turing, sold for $1,084,800.
The completely AI-generated Moroccan influencer Kenza Layli won the first AI beauty pageant.
Google rebranded its rustic Bard AI model into a new identity- Google Gemini. They also came up with the Willow Quantum Computing Chip - a chip so fast that it "performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years - a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe."
SM Entertainment debuted Naevis, a virtual K-Pop idol created with AI.
Mitsubishi’s TOKUI Fast Accurate Synchronized Motion Testing Robot (TOKUFASTbot) took 0.305 seconds to solve a Rubik’s cube, besting human record holder Max Park’s 2023 time of 3.13 seconds.
CUE bot from Toyota set a second Guinness World Record, for the farthest basketball shot by a humanoid robot with a 80-ft shot.
The 2024 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry were awarded to pioneers in the field of artificial intelligence. John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on developing machine learning technology using artificial neural networks.Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, co-founders of the AI firm DeepMind, and Professor David Baker were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on protein folding.
🤖Futuristic Tech innovations: Self driving cars are gaining momentum with Waymo leading the pack in USA. Elon Musk took the wraps off the Cybercab, a fully driverless robotaxi that he predicts will be available by 2027.
Apple AirPods Pro 2 got certification to work as a hearing aid.
Lenacapavir, a groundbreaking HIV-1 capsid inhibitor developed by Gilead Sciences, stands on the brink of revolutionizing HIV prevention.
⚔️Brand-wars:
Indigo vs. Mahindra: Indigo’s parent company, InterGlobe Aviation, has taken Mahindra Electric to court over the use of ‘6E’ label for its new electric vehicle, the BE 6e, set to hit the roads in February 2025.
Lacoste vs. Crocodile International: Lacoste’s battle against Crocodile International for using a deceptively similar crocodile logo concluded with a permanent injunction from the Delhi High Court.
Amul vs Terre Primitive: Amul scored a major victory in a trademark infringement case against Italian company Terre Primitive. who used Amul’s distinctive packaging, script, and design, with a mere ‘eti’ added to the name to create ‘Amuleti’.
Kunal Kamra took on Ola over its longstanding service issues and had a war of words with Ola CEO Bhavish Agarwal.
Revant Himatsingka, popularly known as foodpharmer continued his crusade against brands misrepresenting their products and his campaign resulted in Bournvita and Maggi ketchup cutting down their sugar content.
Ashneer Grover, the co-founder of BharatPe, settled a legal dispute with the company in September 2024.
😞Fails!
WazirX faced a major security breach on July 18, 2024 resulting in significant financial losses of over $200 Million.
On 19 July 2024, American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed a faulty update to its Falcon Sensor security software that caused widespread problems with Microsoft Windows computers running the software.
The company that pioneered direct-to-consumer gene testing, 23andme fell from $6 Billion to nearly $0.
Intel’s reputation for PC desktop chips took a serious hit after admitting that its “Raptor Lake” processors suffered from a voltage bug capable of damaging the silicon.
Microsoft unveiled an AI-powered “Recall” feature for Windows PCs that takes snapshots of your activity so you can easily return to it later. But it prompted concern that Recall could be compromised to expose user data or record passwords and financial data.
Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO was arrested in France for allegedly allowing illegal activities such as drug deals and child exploitation on the platform.
Adidas tried to lace up some nostalgia with the re-release of its SL 72 sneakers, celebrating their debut at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But instead of stepping into a marketing win, the campaign stumbled into controversy when it launched on the anniversary of the Munich massacre—a tragic event where 11 Israeli athletes were killed.
⛔Bans!
Brazil banned X after Elon Musk refused to follow local rules and was accused of spreading election misinformation.
A new law in USA gave TikTok a Jan. 19 deadline to sell to a non-Chinese company or face a nationwide ban, however Donald Trump is trying to pause the law.
Australia passed a law banning children under 16 from using Social media.
📈Stock market stirrers:
Nvdia became the world's most valuable company, surpassing Microsoft and Apple, on June 18, 2024, after its market capitalization exceeded $3.3 trillion.
Berkshire Hathaway became the first non-tech company to cross 1 trillion $ in market capitalization.
Elcid Investments became the most expensive stock in India, surpassing MRF.
Reliance Industries Limited made history as the first Indian company to exceed ₹10 lakh crore in annual revenue.
Resourceful Automobile, a Delhi-based two-wheeler dealership’s Rs 12-crore IPO was been subscribed over 400 times, attracting bids worth Rs 4,800 crore.
💼Changes at the top:
The board of Starbucks removed the CEO Laxman Narasimhan and replaced him with Brian Niccol.
Pat Gelsinger was ousted as CEO of Intel after the company's board was concerned about the slow progress of his turnaround plan, which impacted free cash flow and increased debt.
John Donahoe was ousted as CEO of Nike and replaced by Elliott Hill, who is a Nike veteran.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares abruptly quit as US Jeep, Ram sales faltered.
Mark Schneider stepped down from Nestle after an eight-year tenure.
Blizzard president Mike Ybarra announced his decision to leave Activision Blizzard months after Microsoft confirmed its acquisition of gaming studio.
🤍 In memorium
Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive officer of YouTube from 2014 to 2023 and had rented out her garage as an office to the Google’s founders in 1998.
Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize winning Behavioural psychologist who wrote the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Shashi Ruia, cofounder of the Essar group, who turned a small construction business into an infrastructure conglomerate worth around $14 Billion.
Ratan Tata, who was responsible for transforming a company worth just $4 billion when he took over and was worth $77 billion when he retired from active corporate leadership in 2012.
And that’s a wrap for this special edition of Quizarc’s Sapere Aude newsletter, in which we delved into the top business stories of 2024.
In the next edition we will be covering all the biggest MELA stories.
Also, there is good news for all followers of Quizarc!
We are coming up with a quiz in the new year, with exciting cash prizes.
Register now on Unstop.
Keep following Quizarc on Instagram for your daily dose of quizzing!
Let us know about your opinions about it in the comments or by emailing at query@quizarc.com.
Subscribe to the newsletter and share it with your friends and family!