Sapere Aude || The Quizarc Newsletter. Vol 7
Seventh edition of Quizarc's "week in review" newsletter
This is Business
✈️ Indigo files trademark infringement case against Mahindra over '6E' branding.
Quizarc Insight
While the airline uses '6E' as its call sign, Mahindra Electric Automobile Ltd (MEAL) unveiled two brand new sports utility vehicles, one of which is named BE 6e.
According to a recent AirHelp report, Indigo is the 7th worst airline in a list topped by Brussels Airlines!
🚀 Rocket Lab launched two rockets into orbit within 24 hours from two different hemispheres.
Quizarc Insight
Led by New Zealander Peter Beck, the California-based company was able to outpace legacy aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing through moves like skipping the prototype phase of Neutron’s engine development and buying launch sites on the cheap.
ᯤ Spotify disabled all modded apps to prevent piracy.
Quizarc Insight
Spotify Wrapped originated in 2015 as a year-in-review campaign called "Year in Music" and was given the present avatar by their former intern Jewel Ham.
👵🏻 British phone company O2 introduced AI granny, a AI-powered chatbot built by to fight fraud.
Quizarc Insight
The granny Daisy tricks phone scammers into thinking they’re speaking with a real human, and rambles on to keep fraudsters occupied and away from real people.
🏰 Walt Disney will pay $43.3m to settle a claim that, over eight years, it paid women employees in California $150m less than men in similar roles.
Quizarc Insight
On the other end of the spectrum, "pink tax" is the practice of charging women more for products and services than men for similar or identical items
🚕 Uber launches ‘Uber One’ loyalty subscription service in India.
Quizarc Insight
Uber also started Asia’s first boat taxi service on Kashmir’s Dal Lake.
The name Uber comes from the German word über, which means "over" or "above"; a name chosen by founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, to reflect the company's mission to provide a service that goes beyond traditional taxi rides.
🚖 Over half of Kolkata’s iconic yellow cars to bid farewell soon.
Quizarc Insight
This is due to a 2008 Calcutta High Court ruling that prohibits commercial vehicles over 15 years old from operating on city roads.
⚽︎︎ The English Premier League has finalised a three-year media rights deal with JioStar for the Indian market.
Quizarc Insight
Barclays sponsored the EPL from 2001 to 2016, but currently EPL doesn’t have any official sponsor.
💻 Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stepped down amid turbulent tenure.
Quizarc Insight
Intel was founded by Gordon E. Moore (known for "Moore's law"); Robert Noyce, a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit; and Arthur Rock, an investor and venture capitalist.
🚗 Volkswagen India slapped with $1.4 Billion tax notice citing short-payment of duty on Import of VW, Audi and Skoda Parts.
Quizarc Insight
Meanwhile, Volkswagen workers are stepping up strikes in Germany to fight German plant closures.
👚 Balenciaga has collaborated with Lamborghini for a new fall collection.
Quizarc Insight
Originally a Spanish brand, Balenciaga was founded in 1919 by Cristóbal Balenciaga in San Sebastián.
🛬 The DGCA has issued a notice to Akasa Air for failing to provide corrective training to a pilot involved in a hard landing incident.
Quizarc Insight
The incident involved an Akasa Air flight from Bagdogra to Bengaluru, where the aircraft bounced upon touchdown.
📱 Huawei’s latest device runs on HarmonyOS Next, which was developed in-house and doesn’t rely on Android’s open-source code.
Quizarc Insight
According to the company founder Ren Zhengfei, the name Huawei comes from a slogan he saw on a wall, Zhonghua youwei meaning "China has achievements".
👩🏻🏫 Union Minister for Education, Dharmendra Pradhan, launched The TeacherApp, a digital platform developed by Bharti Airtel Foundation to empower educators.
Quizarc Insight
Sunil Bharti Mittal is the founder of Airtel. His father, Satpal Mittal, gave his sons the middle name Bharti to indicate their Indianness.
⚕️ Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the insurance division of UnitedHealth Group, was shot and killed in a targeted attack in Manhattan.
Quizarc Insight
UnitedHealth Group originated in late 1974, when Minnesota-based Charter Med Incorporated was founded by Richard Taylor Burke.
UnitedHealthcare is the largest private health insurance provider in the US, serving roughly 50 million customers.
🧠 Google's DeepMind unveiled an AI model capable of predicting the weather more accurately than existing forecasting systems.
Quizarc Insight
DeepMind researchers trained their model, GenCast, on data from 1979 to 2018 to predict the weather for 2019.
DeepMind was founded by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman in November 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014.
🍸 Stoli Vodka has filed for bankruptcy in the US.
Quizarc Insight
The company was founded by billionaire Yuri Shefler, who was exiled from Russia in 2000 after opposing President Vladimir Putin. Stoli was sold as Stolichnaya — meaning “capital city” in Russia — in the US until 2022 but changed its name following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
🧋 A Starbucks opened in South Korea, with a view of the Demilitarized Zone separating it from North Korea.
Quizarc Insight
The DMZ is a 160-mile long and 2.5-mile wide strip of land that runs across the Korean Peninsula, roughly following the 38th parallel.
🔆 Walmart buys TV maker Vizio for $2.3B.
Quizarc Insight
Vizio was founded in 2002 as V Inc. by William Wang
💰 BlackRock to buy credit manager HPS Investment Partners for $12B.
Quizarc Insight
BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with over US$11.5 trillion in assets under management.
🔋 Foxconn plans to set up world's 2nd largest battery plant in Tamil Nadu.
Quizarc Insight
The world's largest battery plant is the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada
♪ TikTok parent ByteDance is seeking $1.1m and a public apology from an ex-intern it alleges sabotaged an AI project by changing its code.
Quizarc Insight
ByteDance’s Doubao is China’s most popular chatbot.
🚙 Jaguar reveals its all electric Type 00 model after a contentious rebrand.
Quizarc Insight
Phone maker Nothing changed its tagline to Copy Jaguar after Jaguar’s rebranding slogan Copy Nothing.
🐍 Nothing adds 'Snake' game as home screen widget on its smartphones.
Quizarc Insight
The genre originated in the 1976 competitive arcade video game Blockade from Gremlin Industries.
⛽ Amara Raja Infra has launched India's first green hydrogen fueling station in Leh.
Quizarc Insight
The Amara Raja Group is known for its automotive battery brand Amaron, the second largest selling automotive battery brand in India after Exide Industries.
💊 Drugmaker Eli Lilly reports its weightloss drug Zepbound showed more than 20% reduction in body weight.
Quizarc Insight
Zepbound was found to be roughly 50% more effective than rival Wegovy in randomized control trials.
🧪 Torrent Pharma to acquire 3 anti-diabetes brands from Boehringer Ingelheim.
Quizarc Insight
Torrent Pharmaceuticals was established in 1959 by U. N. Mehta as Trinity Laboratories.
🌌 TakeMe2Space, a Hyderabad-based space tech company, will launch India’s first AI laboratory in space.
Quizarc Insight
Developed with support from IN-SPACe Technical Centre, the initiative will enable real-time in-orbit data processing and reducing data transmission costs
🎓 Allen Institute in talks to acquire Unacademy at $800 million valuation.
Quizarc Insight
Unacademy started off as a YouTube channel created by Gaurav Munjal in 2015.
📦 Amazon and Anthropic have started a project called “Rainier,” which is spread across multiple US locations and connected to act as one gigantic computer.
Quizarc Insight
Anthropic has developed a family of large language models (LLMs) named Claude as a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
🔒 Godrej Enterprises unveils refreshed brand identity.
Quizarc Insight
The refreshed brand identity introduces a purple colour while retaining the cursive logo, reminiscent of the founder Pirojsha Godrej’s signature.
🎨 Pantone's Colour of the Year is Mocha Mousse.
Quizarc Insight
Pantone began in New Jersey in the 1950s as the commercial printing company of brothers Mervin and Jesse Levine.
🪐 Jared Isaacman has been chosen by President-elect Trump to head NASA.
Quizarc Insight
Jared became the first private astronaut to complete a spacewalk earlier this year.
☮ Mercedes gave Pope Francis the first all-electric Popemobile.
Quizarc Insight
Mercedes Benz is acknowledged to have been the most frequent provider of papal vehicles since it provided the Vatican with its first "popemobile" in 1930.
MELA
🌀 Moana is the most-streamed movie of the past five years.
Quizarc Insight
Moana 2 recently broke the record of Frozen 2 for the best opening weekend for a Walt Disney Animation film.
🎤 Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Drake top Billboard's list of the 21st century's greatest pop stars.
Quizarc Insight
Beyoncé is also set to Perform at halftime During NFL Christmas Gameday Live on Netflix.
🎬 The Golden Peacock Award for Best Feature Film at the International Film Festival of India was awarded to the Lithuanian film “Toxic”, directed by Saulė Bliuvaitė.
Quizarc Insight
The Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce.
🍿 Vikrant Massey announced taking a long break from movies.
Quizarc Insight
Massey made his acting debut with the series Dhoom Machaao Dhoom and made his Bollywood debut with the movie Lootera.
🪵 Pushpa 2, starring Allu Arjun, has set records with over Rs 1,100 crore in pre-sales.
Quizarc Insight
It is currently the highest-grossing Indian film on its opening day, grossing ₹270 crore worldwide.
🎧Taylor Swift named Spotify's most-streamed artist worldwide for second straight year; The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Drake, and Billie Eilish round out the top five.
Quizarc Insight
Arijit Singh and Pritam were India's most-streamed artists.
👩🎨 Jasleen Kaur, a Glasgow-born Scottish Sikh artist, has won the prestigious Turner Prize 2024 for her exhibition 'Alter Altar'.
Quizarc Insight
The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist.
It’s in the game!
⚽︎ Real Madrid Congratulate FC Barcelona on 125th Anniversary.
Quizarc Insight
The oldest football club in the world is Sheffield Football Club, which was founded in October 1857
🏏 Joe Root became the highest ever scorer across the fourth innings, surpassing Sachin Tendulkar’s record.
Quizarc Insight
Root crossed Tendulkar’s mark of 1625 runs in the fourth innings. The rest of the top five is filled out by Graeme Smith, tied with Alastair Cook on 1611, and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, at 1580.
🏏 New Zealand and England to compete for Crowe-Thorpe Trophy.
Quizarc Insight
The Crowe-Thorpe trophy is made from bats used by the late Martin Crowe of New Zealand and England’s Graham Thorpe.
🏏 Former Australia batter Joe Burns has been announced as the new T20I captain of Italy.
Quizarc Insight
Burns, who was born in Brisbane, had qualified for Italy through his mother's heritage and made his debut for them in June.
🏸 Anders Antonsen became the first Danish player to win the China Masters men's singles title, defeating Jonatan Christie.
Quizarc Insight
This marked Antonsen’s fourth BWF Tour title of 2024.
🏊🏻♀️ Emma McKeon, Australia's most decorated Olympian, announced her retirement at age 30.
Quizarc Insight
She leaves a remarkable legacy with 14 Olympic medals and her seven-medal performance at Tokyo 2020 remains the most by a female swimmer at a single Games and tied for the most by any female athlete in one Olympics.
♞ Divith Reddy, an eight-year-old from Hyderabad, won the Under-8 World Cadets Chess Championship.
Quizarc Insight
The motto of FIDE is Gens una sumus, Latin for 'We are one Family.
🏎️ Max Verstappen secured his fourth consecutive Drivers’ Championship title despite finishing fifth in the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Quizarc Insight
George Russell of Mercedes emerged victorious, with Lewis Hamilton finishing second.
🥊 Israel Vázquez, three-time boxing world champion, died of cancer at age 46.
Quizarc Insight
Vázquez is best known for his series of four fights against fellow Mexican Rafael Márquez.
🏓 Riteish & Genelia Deshmukh join Sudhir Mehta, Ajeenkya Patil to acquire World Pickleball League’s Pune Team.
Quizarc Insight
Swiggy bought the Mumbai team.
🏑 India beat Pakistan 5-3 to record third consecutive Junior Asia Cup title.
Quizarc Insight
The triumph marked India's fifth title and a third in succession following the victories in 2004, 2008, 2015 and 2023.
🪂 Fortnite’s in-game concert — Remix: The Finale — saw 14m+ concurrent players, making it the game’s biggest event yet.
Quizarc Insight
The event featured music from Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and the late Juice WRLD, whose posthumous track “Empty Out Your Pockets” premiered at the event.
General
📙 Oxford University Press has declared 'brain rot' as the Word of The Year for 2024.
Quizarc Insight
Brainrot refers to any internet content deemed to be of low quality.
The first recorded use of the term traces back to the 1854 book Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
🛣️ Dwarka Expressway in NCR to get barrier-free electronic toll collection system.
Quizarc Insight
The 29-km-long Dwarka Expressway, which connects Delhi’s Dwarka to Gurgaon in Haryana, was inaugurated by PM Modi in March.
💲 As Trump threatens BRICS nations with tariff barrier, RBI Gov Shaktikanta Das says India has no plans for de-dollarisation.
Quizarc Insight
The idea of the BRICS was formulated by Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs, Jim O'Neill, in a 2001 study entitled "Building Better Global Economic BRICs".
🏞️ The area on the banks of Sangam in Prayagraj, where the upcoming Maha Kumbh will be held; has been named Mahakumbhnagar and notified as a new district.
Quizarc Insight
The location at the confluence of Ganges and Yamuna rivers was known in ancient times as Prayāga, which means "place of a sacrifice" in Sanskrit. It is believed that Lord Brahma performed the very first sacrifice in this place.
🧳 Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi was crowned the World's Most Beautiful Airport.
Quizarc Insight
Laid out in an X shape, the terminal has four piers, each themed around one of the city's natural elements – desert, sea, city and oasis.
A scene in the film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was filmed at the terminal before it officially opened.
🛰️ ISRO and ESA launch the Proba-3 solar probe from Sriharikota.
Quizarc Insight
The mission consists of two satellites that will study the sun's corona—the outer layer that can reach temperatures of around 2 million degrees and significantly influences Earth through solar flares and mass ejections.
🫰🏻 South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in the country for the first time since 1979.
Quizarc Insight
Hours after the emergency declaration, the National Assembly voted unanimously to lift the ruling.
🐒 Thailand is sending almost 1,000 highly endangered tortoises and lemurs home to Madagascar in a landmark victory against animal trafficking.
Quizarc Insight
Endangered species, as classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are species which have been categorized as very likely to become extinct in their known native ranges in the near future.
👱🏼♂️ Donald Trump has picked Indian origin lawyer Kash Patel to lead the FBI.
Quizarc Insight
Patel’s parents first moved to Canada in the early 1970s from East Africa, where they were facing ethnic repression.
🫗 FSSAI classifies bottled water as a high-risk product.
Quizarc Insight
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is a statutory body under the administration of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
🧈 World's largest gold deposit discovered in China.
Quizarc Insight
Valued at $83 billion, the deposit could surpass South Africa's South Deep mine, which holds about 900 metric tons, as the world's largest gold reserve.
💊 Wockhardt Ltd has developed Nafithromycin, the first domestically produced antibiotic targeting multi-drug-resistant bacteria.
Quizarc Insight
This antibiotic is aimed at treating community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP) in adults.
💳 The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the Income Tax Department’s PAN 2.0 Project.
Quizarc Insight
With an estimated budget of Rs 1,435 crore; this project aims to upgrade the PAN cards by featuring a QR code.
📖 The Union Cabinet approved the One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme.
Quizarc Insight
The initiative aims to provide seamless access to scholarly articles for 1.8 crore students, faculty, and researchers across 6,300 government-managed institutions.
🏛️ Hemant Soren takes oath as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand.
Quizarc Insight
This follows the victory of the INDIA bloc, comprising Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and CPI (ML), in the recent state elections.
🧶 Gujarat’s ‘Gharchola’ handicraft has been awarded the GI tag, bringing the state's total to 27 GI tags.
Quizarc Insight
Traditionally worn in Hindu and Jain weddings, Gharchola is recognized for its rich cultural significance and vibrant colors.
🧺 Two of London’s oldest markets will close after 850 years.
Quizarc Insight
Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, selling meat and fish respectively, have operated since medieval times.
👨⚖️Yamandu Orsi, a former history teacher and mayor of Canelones, has been elected Uruguay’s president.
Quizarc Insight
Representing the center-left Broad Front coalition, Orsi defeated Alvaro Delgado of the conservative National Party.
♻️The COP29 in Baku ended with a controversial agreement to triple climate finance for developing nations to $300 billion annually by 2035, far short of the $1.3 trillion requested by these nations until 2030.
Quizarc Insight
The deal faced strong opposition, particularly from India, which rejected the proposed goal as “abysmally poor” and criticized the unfair distribution of funds.
🧑🏫Professor Amiya Kumar Bagchi, a distinguished economic historian and macroeconomist, passed away.
Quizarc Insight
Known for his groundbreaking work on India’s colonial economic history, development, and the impact of imperialism, Bagchi's works remain vital to understanding underdevelopment in post-colonial India.
Brand in focus
🍗 KFC
KFC is doing crazy collaborations!
KFC and Build-A-Bear Workshop released a collection of stuffed bear accessories, including a KFC bucket costume, a stuffed chicken leg, and chicken pajamas.
KFC and Burger King collaborated in France to create their new BBF Burger. Promoting their newfound friendship is a playful ad featuring KFC and Burger King employees coming together to sing War's 'Why Can't We Be Friends?'.
Ad in focus
🍫Cadbury 5 Star India’s latest campaign “Make Al Mediocre Again”
5 Star raises an alarm on the ever-increasing speed of AI, which has left people with little time to sit and relax. In the ad, the brand announces setting up “the world’s first server farm” designed to work 24/7—but with a twist: its sole purpose is to make existing AI models less efficient by providing it with gibberish data.
Pop culture recommendation
🏎️Senna
Senna, a miniseries based on the life of Brazilian F1 champion Ayrton Senna follows Senna's life from his early karting days to his death in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. The series is full of emotional and heartbreaking moments and maintains a brisk pace, quite similar to the spirit of F1.
Bonus: Where have you seen this beautiful house? Head over to Quizarc’s Insta page and tell us in the comments!
And that’s a wrap for this edition of Quizarc’s Sapere Aude newsletter. 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!