Swiggy launches new app; Women dealing with cancer
Swiggy has built B2B app Assure for restaurants to source supplies. Women with cancer navigate economic hardships, stigma, and often endure treatment alone.
Hello,
The spending war is heating up among the AI giants.
Chinese technology behemoth Tencent said it would boost capital expenditure in 2025 to strengthen artificial intelligence development and infrastructure, with the company president adding that capital spending would rise to the "low teens" as a percentage of revenue.
This is largely in line with peers like Alibaba and ByteDance, who have also set aside significant sums to go towards capital expenditure focused on AI infrastructure.
On the other side of the globe, US companies are approaching the AI race differently…by teaming up. NVIDIA and Elon Musk's xAI have joined a consortium backed by Microsoft, investment fund MGX and BlackRock to expand AI infrastructure in the US.
In fact, when it comes to AI’s ubiquitousness, a humanoid robot revolution is not too far behind, according to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang–give or take five years.
ICYMI: Check out this newspaper produced entirely with artificial intelligence.
In other news, this week has been a win for space exploration, as NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule after nine long months aboard the International Space Station.
This finally caps the end to what was initially expected to be a week-long mission, fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles with Boeing’s Starliner.
All’s well that ends well!
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Swiggy launches new app
- Women dealing with cancer
Here’s your trivia for today: Which famous science fiction author was born in Petrovichi, Russia?
Quick Commerce
Swiggy launches new app
Quick commerce and food delivery firm Swiggy has built an app for restaurant supplies. Called Assure, the service is likely to put Swiggy in direct competition with rival Zomato's Hyperpure, a B2B restaurant supply chain solution.
Levelling up:
- Assure is a B2B app for restaurants to source supplies. It was launched on Google Play Store on September 17 last year and last updated in December.
- The app is Swiggy's latest addition to a series of app launches, including Snacc, a quick food delivery app; Pyng, a professional services marketplace; and a standalone app for its quick commerce business Instamart.
- Bengaluru-based Swiggy primarily runs its B2B operations through Lynk Logistics, a company it acquired in July 2023.
Funding Alert
Startup: Nourish You
Amount: Rs 16 Cr
Round: Series A
Startup: Hypergro.ai
Amount: Rs 7 Cr
Round: Pre-Series A
Health
Women dealing with cancer
While cancer patients in India face healthcare challenges in terms of limited access to routine checkups and preventive screenings, women have to additionally navigate rigid societal barriers and economic constraints. A lack of cancer awareness and early detection compounds the problem.
Key takeaways:
- A study by the Research Triangle Institute, exploring the stigma around cervical and breast cancer in Karnataka, found that a cancer diagnosis was widely perceived as a death sentence, fostering hopelessness, withdrawal, and a sense of inevitability about disability and mortality.
- Among the factors making women’s cancer journeys painstakingly lonely is also economic vulnerability.
- Thenmozhi Trust, an NGO supporting underprivileged cancer patients in India, runs a ‘mammogram bus’ across Tamil Nadu’s semi-urban and rural areas to conduct free screenings for women. The initiative has reached over 1,000 women, but this is still a modest number.
Women from the Thenmozhi Memorial Trust, Chennai
News & updates
- AI chips: NVIDIA has introduced its latest artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Blackwell Ultra and Vera Rubin, designed to build and run advanced AI models. CEO Jensen Huang announced the new lineup of chips during the company’s annual GTC conference in San Jose, California.
- Lawsuit: Google has agreed to pay $28m to settle a lawsuit that claimed white and Asian employees were given better pay and career opportunities than workers from other ethnic backgrounds, a law firm representing claimants says. The technology giant confirmed it had "reached a resolution" but rejected the allegations made against it.
- Fish of the year: Once dubbed the world's ugliest animal for its soft, lumpy appearance, the blobfish has made a stunning comeback: it was crowned this week as Fish of the Year by a New Zealand environmental group. The annual competition, held by the Mountain to Sea Conservation Trust, aims to raise awareness for New Zealand's freshwater and marine life.
Which famous science fiction author was born in Petrovichi, Russia?
Answer: Isaac Asimov
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