18 TRENDS
FOR 2018
ET Magazine looks
at what will define the New Year in politics, business, sports and technology —
from a fiercer face-off between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi to promoters
losing control of companies, from drones taking over the skies to girls going
for gold in sports. Read on
NaMo vs RaGa: Bigger, Bolder
Battle
The two leaders will face off as
eight states go to polls. It will set the tone and tenor for 2019 general
elections
This winter’s Gujarat elections shook the BJP citadel
that has grown from strength to strength in the state since 1995. Does the
unusually close fight between the Congress and the BJP in the 2017 assembly
elections suggest a shift in or at least a rebalancing of politics in the
country in 2018?
Of the eight states that go to the polls in 2018, the
BJP rules three. Rajasthan, under Vasundhara Raje, has a crushing majority of
163 seats out of 200 in the current assembly. In Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister
Shivraj Singh Chouhan will be seeking a fourth term for the party, as will
Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, the BJP’s longest serving chief minister, in power
since 2003. The other large state going to the polls will be Congress-led Karnataka.
Four states of the Northeast — Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura and Mizoram — will
also have assembly elections between February and December 2018.
In 2019, the year of parliamentary elections, these
eight states will send 99 MPs to the 17th Lok Sabha, incidentally the precise
number of seats the BJP won in the Gujarat assembly polls.
Both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are seeking to
extend the government beyond three terms in office into a fourth one.
Antiincumbency is a formidable factor for the ruling party in both these
states. In Rajasthan, the Congress has won back several local bodies against
the ruling party. In the Northeast, the BJP has worked hard to spread its
footprint in the predominantly tribal belt. In the only big state that belongs
to the Congress, Karnataka is not likely to be easy for either the BJP or the
Congress.
The Congress’s pushback in Gujarat — Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s home from where he was catapulted to the top job — is the first
sign that the BJP’s momentum has been arrested since the Modi wave swept the
party to power with a simple majority in 2014. The state polls in 2018 will
measure the efficacy of the BJP’s post-Gujarat strategy as well as the
longevity of the Congress’s fight across the nation under Rahul Gandhi.
Tough Choices in Governance
Big questions — from kisan to
Pakistan, growth to oil prices — will confront the government
The government is likely to face tough choices in
2018. First, as made clear by Gujarat’s farmers, agriculture will need serious
attention from the BJP-ruled Centre, especially with the party hoping to win
most of the eight states that go to polls in 2018. But should farmers get sops
like loan waivers and very high minimum support prices or will they be happy if
the government’s targeted schemes on supplying cooking gas and electricity work
out? A tough question for the BJP, and February’s budget will give the first
clue on the answer.
Second, the government’s challenge on growth. Private
investment is still sluggish, as is bank lending. How quickly the insolvency
problem works out is the key question here. Equally crucial: what is the
elbowroom on ramping up public capital expenditure? Hard choices have to be
made between fiscal discipline and giving a sarkari push to the economy, on
whether a cut in corporate tax rates is justified as a means to enthuse private
capital. For the RBI, the inflation-versus-growth question will become sharper
as prices stay up, growth remains modest and the government gets increasingly
antsy about the absence of interest rate cuts. Again, the first couple of
months of 2018 will give us a clue.
Third, Pakistan: the eternal dilemma for Indian
governments. Narendra Modi has tried being nice and tried being tough but an
increasingly dysfunctional Pakistan seems impervious to any messaging. As the
general election draws near, the Centre will need to show there is a clear line
on the troublesome neighbour. What that line will be — more cross border
strikes, even bigger military responses, another offer to talk? — will be among
2018’s most fascinating questions.
Fourth, high oil prices. If Donald Trump or some
other equally unpredictable force does something that spooks oil markets and
prices rise steeply next year, a lot of calculations for a major oil importer
like India will need to be revised. Keep an eye on Brent crude prices to get a
sense of how 2018 will shape up.
As we said, 2018 will be the year of tough choices.
Companies Will Change Hands
The reason could be debt or
disinterest. While promoters of indebted firms will be eased out by banks,
scions of some business families may not be interested in taking over
Many companies are battling insolvency proceedings,
and a lot of them will see either promoters giving up or being taken over. In
June 2017, the Reserve Bank of India referred 12 accounts, identified as wilful
defaulters, to the insolvency process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code
(IBC). Later in the year, it identified 28 more accounts as wilful defaulters.
In November, through an ordinance, the Centre tweaked the IBC to debar wilful
defaulters and those with NPA accounts from bidding for their own assets in
auctions to recover defaulted loans. The 180-day limit for resolving cases mean
a lot of resolutions/auctions will happen in 2018. The big names on the list
include Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel, JP Infra and ABG Shipyard. A lot of
excitement is around steel companies as big names like Tata Steel,
ArcelorMittal and Vedanta are likely to put in bids.
There are 4,300 insolvency proceedings at the
National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), under the corporate insolvency resolution
process, filed between May 2016, when the IBC came into force, and November
2017.
Insolvency apart, there is also a growing tendency
among promoter families where the next generation is not ready to take over and
run their parents’ businesses. They would rather go into a growth business that
they can scale up faster. Some may not be interested in business at all. The
only option here is to organise the family investments into a family office and
induct professionals to run the businesses. Either way, watch out for changes.
Stars Will Again Rise in South
There will be more stardust in
southern politics, with Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan and Upendra making their
political aspirations clear
Former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s
death in 2016 threw the state’s political field wide open. Infighting in her
party, the AIADMK, gave hope to its bête noire, the DMK. But with DMK chief M
Karunanidhi no longer active in the party’s affairs owing to old age — he is 93
— new political aspirants are hoping to provide an alternative. In May,
Rajinikanth gave the strongest hints in recent years about finally taking the
plunge. He will make an announcement on New Year’s Eve. Kamal Haasan recently
said that he would launch his own party soon. Tamil Nadu has a long line of
artists taking to politics: while Jayalalithaa and her mentor MG Ramachandran
were actors, and Karunanidhi and his predecessor CN Annadurai were
screenwriters.
The BJP, which is insignificant in Tamil Nadu, has
invited Rajinikanth to join it. The party hoped that a merger of the AIADMK’s
warring factions would yield it political gains, but the AIADMK’s affairs are
still in a mess, with a faction controlled by Jayalalithha’s jailed aide
Sasikala wielding some influence. While Sasikala’s nephew TTV Dhinakaran won
the recent by-election to Jayalalithaa’s constituency in Chennai, the BJP fell
behind even NOTA. The BJP, however, will rely on the five southern states to
deliver more seats in the 2019 general election (the BJP and its allies won
only 38 out of 129 seats in these states in 2014). It is keeping its options
open, maintaining cordial relations with both the AIADMK and the DMK, which is
a Congress ally; Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently met Karunanidhi in
Chennai.
The NDA is betting on increasing its 14.6% vote share
in the 2016 Kerala assembly election, when the state elected its first ever BJP
lawmaker, and converting it into a few seats in 2019 but its ally BDJS, which
pulled in a lot of Ezhava votes, is on a weaker wicket.
The BJP will bargain for more seats in Andhra
Pradesh, where its relationship with its ally, the Telugu Desam Party, has seen
better times. The BJP is playing it safe by not openly criticising TDP’s rival,
the YSRCP. There is also speculation that former chief minister NT Rama Rao’s
grandson, a Telugu film star who shares his name, might venture into politics.
In Telangana, the BJP could break ties with the TDP and fight the 2019 election
alone. (Telangana and Andhra will also have their assembly polls along with the
general election.) How the BJP fares in Karnataka in 2019 will depend on the
assembly election next year, which will be the first for actor and filmmaker
Upendra’s party, Karnataka Prajnavanta Janata Paksha, which he launched in
October 2017.
Fight for Privacy in a Connected
Age
As companies try to map user
behaviour, consumers will push back to protect privacy
Have you travelled to a new city and got a Facebook
prompt asking if you would like to know what your friends did when they visited
the same place? Facebook knows where you are going, who have been there and
what they did. Have you wondered how many ways Facebook is using knowledge
about you and not telling you about it? Recently, Facebook denied one of the
oldest allegations against it — that it listens to user conversations through
the smartphone mic and then uses cues to target ads. It is not just Facebook.
A recent study by Arrka Consulting revealed that more
than 70% of Indian apps do not take adequate permissions for collecting data
from users about their usage behaviour. Also on average, Indian apps ask for
more permissions (3.5 times) than American counterparts. On top of that, there
are concerns around biometric data, including for Aadhaar, and the Supreme
Court will be hearing a batch of petitions on that in the coming year.
Biometric data resides in your phone as well, which unlocks by scanning your
fingerprint or face.
The counter attack for holding on to one’s privacy
has already begun. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation, which will
become law from May 25, can be a benchmark for the rest of the world for
creating legislation in protecting personal data and in how app providers can
use such data. Only last week, Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower holed
up in Russia, released a privacy protection app called Haven: Keep Watch, a
beta version of which is available on Google Play. This app attempts to protect
users from unwelcome intrusions by using the camera, the mic and the
accelerometer. Google is said to be working on an app that alerts you if
someone is peeping at your smartphone over your shoulder. Both these apps use
smartphone sensors like the mic and the camera, making you wonder whether while
it protects, it also creates more usable data.
Motown to Take an EV Turn
The government is pushing to
have only electric vehicles on the roads by 2030 — to counter pollution and
crude oil dependence
The era of the internal combustion engines (ICE) is
coming to an end across the world. India, too, is gearing up for the change
with road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari giving a deadline:
2030. There are two big reasons for this – rising vehicular pollution and
concerns around oil security. Today, 65-70% of the fuel produced by a barrel of
crude oil is used for transportation. The US consumes 19 million barrels of oil
each day; oil provides 92% of the energy that powers its cars, trucks, ships
and aircraft. It is the same for India, the world’s third largest oil importer.
It now imports over 80% of its crude oil needs, up from 37% in 1990. In
2017-18, India’s oil import bill is likely to rise a third to touch $85-90
billion.
Many pull factors are at play, too. There are marked
improvements in EV technology, including battery storage capacity, its cost
economics, charging time and range anxiety. The cost of battery power has
fallen from around $1,000 per kWh in 2010 to around $227 in 2016 and is
expected to drop below $200 per kWh by 2020. By 2030 experts expect EVs to
attain cost parity with ICE.
China will lead the global EV wave — its
manufacturers accounted for 43% of all EVs sold in 2016. In India, too, the
government is making the first move. In Nagpur, the municipal corporation, Ola
and Mahindra & Mahindra are experimenting with an all-EV fleet with
charging infrastructure. Meanwhile, the first tender of 10,000 EVs was won by
Tata Motors. The EV push will have dramatic implications for India’s Motown.
ICE-focused car companies and vendors will have to either reinvent or perish.
On the other hand, a rash of established companies and startups, from M&M
to Ather Energy and Chetan Maini-led Sun Mobility, will find new business
opportunities.
Ascent of Drones
Better technology and lower
costs will see drone use proliferating across businesses, consumers and the
military
Facebook wants to use it to deliver broadband to the
boondocks, Amazon and Alibaba want to extend their ecommerce reach using it,
industrial giants ranging from GE to Shell to Reliance Industries are all
tinkering with it to keep an eye on their vast business complexes. In 2018, the
drone will spread its wings. It will no longer just be a hobbyist’s passion or
a behemoth’s plaything. With its technology evolving and costs falling, it may
be ready to hit the mainstream. Ecommerce companies are expected to step up
their drone use to deliver shipments, while medical charities can collect
reports and deliver medicines quicker.
Much of this has happened because laws have changed.
In 2015, the US Federal Aviation Authority, the aviation regulator, softened
its long-standing antipathy to these devices and allowed their wider use. In
India, too, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation announced draft
regulations on civil use of drones in November 2017, providing a fillip to its
use. Already, companies in oil and gas, logistics, supply chain, automobiles
and several military units have run experiments of various sizes to figure out
their use. With liberalised norms, these efforts are only expected to gather
pace. Instead of a handful of drones whizzing about, experts predict that drone
swarms will take centre stage. Dozens, if not hundreds, of small drones could
buzz around industrial sites checking for leaks and defects, fly over large
farms checking on pests, irrigation and crop production, and even upend
conventional military strategy by taking over battle fields and using superior
technical capabilities to outmanoeuvre human-run weaponry. As drones are being
juiced up with the booster shot of artificial intelligence, allowing them to
learn on the job, they will get smarter with each flight.
AI Will Play a Huge Role in Your
Life
Thanks to artificial
intelligence, businesses and consumers will benefit from reduced costs,
improved efficiency and more choices
If you are a frequent online shopper, chances are you
searched for, say, a belt, and the website suggested you buy something
unrelated, like a coffeemaker. This will become rarer as machine learning, a
subset of artificial intelligence, improves substantially. And with
advancements in technologies for image recognition and search — Google has
launched this feature on its Pixel 2 phones, though it is still in beta —
ecommerce will be more interactive and intuitive. According to a report by
PricewaterhouseCoopers, using different datasets to make predictions, including
shopping recommendations, is the biggest area of focus in AI globally.
Moreover, Amazon, Samsung and Google are training the
voice assistants on their devices to get better at speaking in and
understanding Indian English accents, saving us the effort of repeating our
questions. Given India’s multilingual nature — there are 22 major languages at
last count and tens of other languages and variants — AI will make non-English
speakers’ experience with gadgets less cumbersome. Banks and other financial
services firms are increasingly relying on AI to better serve their customers
and reduce costs. HDFC Bank and State Bank of India are among those which have
launched chatbots to handle customer queries.
Healthcare is another sector that will be transformed
by AI, especially in a vast, underserved country like India – it ranks a lowly
154 out of 195 countries on a healthcare access index. Estimating the incidence
of a disease in a particular population based on extensive data and cheaper
diagnoses are among the upshots of cognitive computing. Many entrepreneurs are
betting on AI-based offerings to lift them out of obscurity; one of them, Bengaluru-based
Halli Labs, was acquired by Google in July, just four months into its founding.
It might be a while before driverless vehicles are
seen on Indian roads, but India is taking to AI at a rapid clip. A recent study
by Capgemini found more than half the Indian companies using AI to have taken
it beyond just pilot projects, a higher proportion than any of the other eight
countries surveyed. The study found AI adoption to be the largest among telecom
and retail companies globally. Most of us will hardly stop to think about it,
but AI will play a much larger role in our lives in 2018 than ever before.
Biometrics Will Be Thumb Rule
Biometrics will come of age with
more smartphones being equipped with fingerprint and iris recognition
Apple has not so much invented technologies as
brought them into the mainstream. Think multitouch user interface and Touch ID,
the latter of which popularised unlocking phones with your finger. Now with the
iPhone X, Apple is using your face as a passcode. While Face ID is not the same
as an iris scanner, which other companies have installed on their devices
before, Apple — and its competitors like Samsung, Google and OnePlus —
could lead the way in changing how people interact
with their phones in the future, particularly in India.
Biometrics involve the use of fingerprint, iris,
voice or facial patterns to identify oneself. It is more secure than a PIN or a
password. A 2017 HSBC survey of over 12,000 persons in 11 countries, including
India, found that nearly half the respondents expect fingerprint recognition to
replace passwords and a quarter of them say iris recognition will be the
alternative. The study also concluded that China and India will be the most
open to new technologies. Nearly a third of the Indians surveyed use
fingerprint scanners, next only to China (40%), and Indians are three times as
likely to have used iris recognition as the average of the 11 countries.
Offices are increasingly using fingerprint and iris
scanners to allow access to their employees and millions are receiving
government subsidies under various schemes through Aadhaar, a biometrics-based
identification initiative. However, concerns over the misuse of the data
collected for Aadhaar remain. Mobile apps are fast replacing passwords with
fingerprint identification. E-payment companies like Paytm and banks use
biometric data to authenticate payments and transfers. Facial or iris
recognition on phones is glitchy and not foolproof – what fingerprint scanning
was three years ago – but it is only a matter of time before it becomes
reliable and available on a wide array of devices. Phones will soon have
fingerprint readers on the screen itself.
TechSci Research pegged the size of the biometrics
market in India in 2016 at around $780 million, which is expected to grow at a
compound annual growth rate of 26% till 2022, making it clear that the adoption
of biometrics is heading only one way.
Startups Bottom Out, Headed Up
As investor interest wanes, only
startups with robust, scalable ideas will get VC backing
According to Venture Intelligence, a tracker of deal
data, 74 venture capital investments, totalling $286 million, were made in
India in the third quarter of 2017, sharply down from 104 investments worth
$437 million in the corresponding period a year ago. The past 12 months have
seen a sharp downturn in investor sentiment, as startups have struggled to
enthuse VCs wary of backing ventures in this difficult business environment.
2017 was the year Snapdeal, once valued at $5 billion, almost collapsed, and a
raft of funded ventures across apparel, food tech and grocery were shuttered.
The new year is likely to see wellheeled companies
such as Flipkart and Ola flex their financial muscle (the latter has already
bought Food Panda India in December), even as Amazon, in many ways a
four-yearold startup in India, uses its war chest to extend its dominance in
the country. The coming 12 months will likely see this trend accelerate as two
or three players take centrestage, as categories such as grocery and fashion
possibly see a further winnowing of companies. Investors are also expected to
further narrow down their choices, and entrepreneurs can expect to take longer
and work harder to close deals.
According to some industry estimates, there are 20 or
more new funds, with over $4 billion in dry powder waiting to back fresh ideas.
While some marquee names such as Accel and Sequoia have raised hundreds of
millions of dollars in funds dedicated to India investments, other global
players have seen top managers leave to start their own units. These investors
will begin to cut deals in a very different market from 2016 and 2017, looking
at prospects in newer segments such as artificial intelligence, internet of
things, big data and blockchain, and away from overexposed segments such as
food tech sides conventional VCs, tech giants — which made its first direct a
concierge service in Bengaluru — ed to step up their dealmaking
Private Labels to Power the Cart
For both retail chains and
ecommerce companies, private labels are crucial to their growth plans
Private Labels are brands owned by a retail store,
hence often described as store brands or in-house brands. Private labels
usually deliver better margins for retailers, making a lucrative case for
investment in them. The phenomenon has not yet become a significant part of any
retailer’s revenue in India — but this could change in a big way in 2018.
Historically, store brands were perceived to stock
cheap, low-quality, generic products and operating in categories that do not
have a high brand recall. However, retailers across big markets in the US, UK
and Europe saw this perception change over the last five years. An economic
downturn gets more consumers into buying products that are reasonably priced
and offer value for money even if it means not having a big brand’s logo
slapped on the package. This has driven retail giants like Walmart, Target,
Costco and Whole Foods to grow their private labels portfolio aggressively.
In August 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods and its
complete range of private labels. Shortly after this news, the Private Label
Manufacturers Association, a nonprofit that represents 70 countries, shared a
report which said that retail majors saw a 4.6% growth in sales of in-house
brands in 2016, while that of established brands went up by just 1.1%.
Indian retailers and ecommerce companies are getting
in on the action, too. By mid-2017, one of Flipkart’s private labels, SmartBuy,
accounted for half the sales of cables and chargers on the platform. Amazon is
making inroads with private labels like AmazonBasics, Solimo, Myx, Symbol and
Echo.
At last count, the company had over 30 in-house
brands in its fold globally. Data and analytics firm OneClickRetail has
said Amazon.com’s privatelabel business may have clocked over
$400 million in sales in 2017. Morgan Stanley expects the figure to top $1
billion by 2019.
BigBasket, an online grocer, expects private labels
to bring in 40% of its revenues in 2017-18. On the brick-andmortar front,
Future Group wants private labels to account for two-thirds of the products
sold in its stores, and Godrej Nature’s Basket aims to increase the
contribution of private labels to its sales from 15% last year to 25% in the
near future.
Aviation Will Fly Even Higher
Backed by a government scheme,
flying is set to become more common
Sometimes, numbers tell a story better than words.
Sample this: domestic air travel demand surged to over 1 crore passengers in
November 2017, a nearly 17% growth over the same period in 2016, according to
the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. In the 11 months of 2017, a record
10.6 crore people flew within the country compared with 9.9 crore during the
whole of 2016. Now this is set to rise higher.
The Narendra Modi government is aggressively pushing
its regional connectivity scheme, UDAN — Ude Desh ki Aam Nagrik (Let the common
man fly) — which makes flying accessible to millions of Indians by encouraging
airlines to fly to under-served airports. Under the initiative, airlines will
have to sell some of their seats (9-40) at no more than ₹2,500 per hour of flying, for
which they will be compensated by the government. Five airlines were allotted
128 routes in the first phase of UDAN in March. The government has also given
the go-ahead for 19 new airports and reviving 50 unserved/under-served airports
and airstrips.
By 2036, India is estimated to have 48 crore flyers,
which will be more than that of Japan (just under 22.5 crore) and Germany (just
over 20 crore) combined. There is another statistic that underscores the Indian
aviation boom: India will overtake the UK to become the third largest air
passenger market by 2025, according to a recent report by the International Air
Transport Association (IATA).
“UDAN scheme seeks to promote regional connectivity
by serving the unserved and under-served airports,” said Vice-President M
Venkaiah Naidu, while inaugurating the 2nd Aero Expo India 2017. Connecting
tier-II cities, pilgrim towns and historic places with the wider air routes is
important for boosting tourism and business travel, Naidu said, adding that
India became the world’s fastest growing domestic travel market for the 22nd
straight month, recording a 26.6% year-on-year growth in January 2017. The
trend of more and more Indians opting for flights over trains and buses will
only play out in a bigger way in the new year.
Year of Tremors and Showers
More earthquakes could occur
globally next year and India needn’t worry about a bad monsoon
Earthquakes are among nature’s worst disasters, and predicting
them accurately is a holy grail of sorts for geophysical science. While
scientists are far from predicting them accurately, if ever, they are beginning
to understand the earthquake mechanisms and hence are able to make
better-informed guesses, according to one of which the world will see more
earthquakes next year. The analysis was published as a paper in the
journal Geophysical Research Letters in August this year.
Periodic slowing and speeding of rotation of the
Earth are common. When the rotation speeds up, the Earth’s equator bulges, and
when it slows down, the equator shrinks. When it contracts, the stress is
shifted towards the poles. When this shift happens, faults, or cracks in the
Earth’s crust, which are already stressed can respond by triggering an
earthquake. The Earth slowed down marginally in 2011. According to the
scientists, it takes about five to six years for it to manifest in earthquakes.
The big earthquake in Mexico in September may have been a warning shot for next
year.
Like earthquake prediction, forecasting a monsoon
accurately well in advance is also extremely valuable but difficult. However,
seasonal monsoon forecasts have been improving but are nowhere near the
required accuracy. There are many factors that influence the monsoon, and one
of the major ones is El Nino, which is a periodic warming of the central and
eastern Pacific Ocean. The higher the degree of warming, the poorer the Indian
monsoon most of the time. The year before last was one of the worst El Ninos in
recent times, and it coincided with one of the worst monsoons in recent times.
As it stands now, temperatures in the Pacific are
below normal and are likely to stay that way through the winter. Meteorologists
who watch Pacific temperatures say that normal conditions are likely to return
to the Pacific by April-May, but an El Nino is nowhere in sight. This directly
does not correlate with a good monsoon, but makes a poor monsoon unlikely.
Secure, Connected Public Spaces
India will see a ramp-up in
Wi-Fi hotspots and deployment of CCTVs
Wi-Fi helps people get online while closed-circuit
televi sions (CCTVs) ensure security Both are basic building blocks of any
smart city. In India, the penetration of both is woefully inadequate, keeping
large parts of the population unconnected and unwatched. India has a mere
31,000 Wi-Fi hotspots compared with 1.3 crore in France and 98 lakh in the
United States, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of In dia. And the
United Kingdom has one CCTV for every 14 people, while India is believed to be
nowhere near, though exact figures are not available. But both Wi-Fi and CCTV
could get a big push in 2018.
For instance, Indian Railways wants to ensure 2018 is
safer for women by installing Wi-Fi routers on trains and in railway sta tions
and CCTVs across all stations. The Central government is giving a major push to
Wi-Fi with plans to deploy 7.5 lakh public internet hotspots by the end of
2018. The Wi-Fi rollout, mainly focussed on provid ing high-speed internet in
semi-urban and rural areas, will be carried out by Reliance Jio, Airtel,
Vodafone, Idea Cellular and state-owned BSNL, apart from internet services
providers (ISPs).
This will help push e-governance and digital
development initia tives, including the government’ Digital India programme. By
2018 Google will complete its deploy ment of Wi-Fi hotspots at 800 rail way
stations; 227 stations are al ready online, with an average of 75 lakh users
accessing the internet via these hotspots.
CCTV will see twin changes in 2018 — more deployments
and switch from analogue to internet protocol-based cameras. The vid eo
surveillance market is expected to more than treble from $700 million in 2017
to $2.5 billion by 2020. Most of the cameras will be installed in public places
and commercial establish ments, with the share of households at just 13%.
In Delhi, the government plans to in stall at least
1.4 lakh CCTVs next year Bosch, Honeywell, Videocon, Pana sonic are among the
companies eyeing the CCTV market. By the end of 2018 India might still fall
short of global aver ages in public internet access and cam eras, but will
definitely be better placed than before.
Destination Canada
More and more Indian students
and professionals are choosing Canada over the US
At a breakfast event at the US Embassy in New Delhi
on November 9, 2016, a senior diplomat from the Canadian High Commission
discreetly fielded questions on whether more Indians would opt for permanent
residence and citizenship in his country, with the new US President Donald Trump
taking a hard line on immigration. Fast forward to the winter of 2017 and that
trend seems to be becoming a reality. Canada is fast emerging as the preferred
destination in North America.
According to the annual Open Doors report on
international education released in November by the Institute of International
Education (IIE), New York, and the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs, the enrolment of new Indian students in US campuses remained almost
flat in 2016-17, just 1.3% higher than the previous year. Over 500 American
colleges and universities reported an average decrease of 7% in the number of
newly enrolled students.
Though the 1,86,267 Indian students enrolled in US
campuses in 2016-17 still outnumber the 1,00,000 studying in Canada, the latter
is showing a significant rise in numbers. In 2016, 52,870 Indian study-permit
holders went to Canada, but in 2017 the figure is already 54,425 (till
October). On the other hand, the number of fresh F1 visas (for those wishing to
study in the US) issued to students in India was 62,537 in 2016-17, a drop of
16.4% over the previous year.
One of the important attractions of Canada for
students is the fact it is 30-40% cheaper than the US, even at top universities
and colleges. Besides, Trump’s stance on immigration and concerns over racist
incidents are taking the shine off US campuses.
Optional practical training (OPT), a programme that
allows Indian students to remain in the US after they finish their education,
is now facing difficulties as the H-1B work visa comes under a cloud. Employers
in Canada, on the other hand, are wooing Indian students studying in Canada
especially those in STEM fields (science, tech, engineering, mathematics).
Canada’s express entry system, in fact, creates a pathway for skilled Indians
to get fast-track permanent r resident status and then citizenship. For Indian
students with degrees from Canadian institutions, the road to PR is even faster
under the Canadian Experience Class.
Girls Will Go for Glory
A standout year awaits sportswomen,
with a little help from the establishment
It was the year the Indian women’s cricket team came
heartbreakingly close to the World Cup, with 180 million people watching. It
was also the year the national women’s hockey team won the Asia Cup after 13
years, thereby ensuring a berth in next year’s World Cup. India’s sportswomen
certainly did the country proud in 2017. In individual events, too, India had
reason to cheer, whether it was PV Sindhu’s silver or Saina Nehwal’s bronze at
the Badminton World Championships in Glasgow or Saikhom Mirabai Chanu ending
India’s two-decade drought with a gold medal at the World Weightlifting
Championships in Anaheim, US.
With these victories and the few medals in Rio in
2016 being courtesy of our sportswomen, 2018 promises to be an even better
year, provided the infamous “system” does not let them down. In team sports,
both cricket and hockey teams are expected to do well. “The team can really
look forward to pushing up their ranking in 2018,” says Viren Rasquinha, former
captain of the men’s hockey team and chief executive of Olympic Gold Quest, a
not-for-profit which supports sportspersons. In cricket, a tri-series against
Australia and England awaits the team early next year. In an acknowledgement of
their talent, the International Cricket Council’s women’s World Cup XI had
three Indians: skipper Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur and Deepti Sharma.
Badminton is the other sport that has been on an
upswing. “Sindhu is obviously someone you will watch out for. But another talent
you cannot ignore is Gayatri Gopichand, P Gopichand’s daughter, though she’s
just 14 now,” says Nandan Kamath, a lawyer and trustee of GoSports Foundation,
which supports 93 athletes. The legendary badminton coach’s daughter won the
Under-19 singles title at the All-India Junior Ranking Badminton Tournament in
2017.
Rasquinha points out that the 10-metre Air Rifle is a
sport that is among the most competitive in the country currently, with a lot
of promising talent. But to help our sportswomen inch closer to the next medal,
the establishment also needs to do a lot more. “Their safety needs to be
guaranteed and there need to be more women on sports governing bodies. At
present, it is more or less men making all the decisions,” says Kamath.
And victories should beget more victories.
“The single biggest change sportswomen like Mary Kom,
Sindhu and Saina have brought about is the self-belief in young girls that
they, too, can win,” says Rasquinha.
Instagrammable Holiday
To post that perfect photo, travellers
will be looking at new holiday destinations and experiences
The conventional idea of a honeymoon is to choose a
destination with a pretty beach or a mountain. But Gauri Jayaram, founder of
Active Holiday Company, recently had a couple asking her to help them book the
Icehotel near the Arctic Circle in Sweden. Another couple contacted boutique
travel firm Byond Travel because they wanted to spend their three-week
honeymoon on a road trip through New Zealand. Thanks to the pressure to post
holiday pictures that will have your social media friends exclaiming, “But
where is this?”, and the increasing influence of travel trends in the West,
more and more Indians are likely to ask for offbeat experiences in the new
year.
“People will be either looking to explore
conventional destinations in a different way or go to unusual places for their
holiday,” says Jayaram. For instance, you might be interested in going to
Austria with your family but rather than doing the usual guided tours, you
could choose to hike 10-12 kilometres a day while your luggage is transported
separately to your hotel. Byond Travel founder Vikram Ahuja expects to see more
clients travelling to South America or the less explored countries in Southeast
Asia like Laos, and Morocco and Zanzibar in Africa. “Europe is now being
considered run-of-themill,” says Ahuja.
Uma Krishnan of Footprint Holidays, a boutique firm
whose clients include Nandan and Rohini Nilekani, feels both Russia and South
Korea will be trending destinations in 2018. “People will go for the churches
and palaces in St Petersburg. Getting caught up in the World Cup fever will be
the icing on the cake,” says Krishnan. With South Korea hosting the winter
Olympics, the country is another attractive destination in 2018.
“People want to experience the flavour and life of
the place they are travelling to. One way to do this is to dine with local
hosts, which is getting more popular,” says Ahuja. Another trend he expects to
pick up is acquiring a new skill on a holiday. Thus, clients have been asking
about learning archery in Bhutan and salsa in Cuba, or in being trained to give
a massage in Bali, rather than getting one. “Today, travellers want to explore
destinations that inspire and interest them,” says Ahuja. Without forgetting their
followers on Instagram and Facebook, of course.
Small is Big in Food
Compact eateries, home cooks and
chef-led niche restaurants will be the flavour of the season
The big restaurant-opening of the new year is at The
Oberoi New Delhi. London-based chef Alfred Prasad will open a modern Indian
diner at the revamped hotel. However, for average Indian diners, it is not big
and expensive restaurants that are likely to define 2018. Instead, the dining
culture is set to change with much-needed freshness by home cooks, niche
restaurants and small entrepreneurs. Home cooking — undiscovered recipes,
regional ingredients and home chef-led concepts — is to get bigger as passion
projects boom despite a tough business climate.
Expect more places like Curry Tales, a 40-seater
devoted to home-style food from the western coast that opened last year in
Mumbai’s Khar locality. The brainchild of Sandeep Sreedharan, who quit his
corporate job to turn chef, it is now getting serious attention in the city,
sans promotion. The Bohri Kitchen, a popular pop-up, may get into the
restaurant space.
Sources say restaurateur Riyaaz Amlani is curating an
interesting concept in central Mumbai with five niche, small restaurants,
including The Bohri Kitchen and Saransh Goila’s Goila Butter Chicken under one
roof. Goila Butter Chicken, meanwhile, is set to take the dish global with a
pop-up in Melbourne at Masterchef Australia judge George
Calombaris’s restaurant, The Press Club.
In Delhi, one of the most exciting new projects is
Jamun, an Indian restaurant by Rakshay Dhariwal of PCO and Ping pedigree, where
recipes have been sourced from a number of home chefs. From Telangana mutton to
Goan rissois, this one has a smattering of dishes you don’t find on regular
menus. Expect artisanal coffee, tea infusions and locally made cheeses to be on
more café menus and retail outlets.
Small entrepreneurs with links to farmers and
sourcing of millets, seasonal veggies and spices will flourish as the race for
exclusively local ingredients heats up, wellknown chefs experiment and more
restaurants like Bengaluru’s recent Go Native devoted to sustainable dining
(all ingredients are sourced from nearby farms) spring up. Non-metros are set
for more gastronomic attention. Goa’s Gunpowder and Bomras, Jaipur’s Tapri
Central and Dragon House, and Savya Rasa in Pune, with dishes from the southern
states by cooks hired from old messes, have attracted national attention.
Expect more quality restaurants in tier-II cities as India’s eating-out culture
expands.
ETM31DEC17
