BACK PAGE, P18 COMPANIES, P4 INTERNATIONAL, P3 T20 WORLD CUP IN JUNE Q4 SHOWS DEMAND REVIVAL MILLIONS OF DOLLARS SINCE 2022 Pandya casts long shadow as skipper defends squad Premium fashion getting back in trend again Huawei is secretly funding research at US universities NEW DELHI, FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2024 FOLLOW US ON TWITTER & FACEBOOK. APP AVAILABLE ON APP STORE & PLAYSTORE WWW.FINANCIALEXPRESS.COM READ TO LEAD VOL. L NO. 53, 34 PAGES, `12.00 (PATNA & RAIPUR `12.00) P U B L I S H E D F R O M : A H M E D A B A D , B E N G A L U R U , C H A N D I G A R H , C H E N N A I , H Y D E R A B A D , K O C H I , K O L K ATA , L U C K N O W, M U M B A I , N E W D E L H I , P U N E SENSEX: 74,611.13 ▲ 128.35 NIFTY: 22,648.20 ▲ 43.35 NIKKEI 225: 38,236.07 ▼ 37.98 HANG SENG: 18,207.13 ▲ 444.10 `/$: 83.47 ▼ 0.03 `/€: 89.35 ▲ 0.15 BRENT: $83.45 ▲ $0.01 GOLD: `70,997 ▼ `532 IN THE NEWS RBI LIFTS BAN ON BAJAJ FIN’S ECOM, INSTA EMI CARD THE RBI HAS allowed Bajaj Finance to resume the sanction and disbursal of new loans under eCOM and online through its ‘Insta EMI Card’, reports Ajay Ramanathan. ■ PAGE 10 BYJU'S LINKS SALES STAFF SALARIES TO WEEKLY REVENUE BYJU’S HAS LINKED salaries of its sales staff to revenues they generate every week, reports Anees Hussain. This comes at a time employees have not got February and March salaries due to lack of funds. ■ PAGE 5 RESERVOIR LEVELS DOWN 19%, DROP FOR 30TH WEEK WATER LEVELS IN the country's 150 major reservoirs fell sharply to 19% below previous year's level on Thursday, reports Sandip Das. This is 30th week in a row the water levels have declined. ■ PAGE 2 EXPLAINER Is wealth redistribution feasible? ■ PAGE 9 TO BUILD AI COMPUTE INFRA Govt to lease data centres to India Inc JATIN GROVER New Delhi, May 2 THE GOVERNMENT IS planning to build a network of data centres under the `10,000-crore AI mission.These data centres will provide high computing facilities, which can be given on lease to industry players to train and develop their models. While the Union Cabinet had approvedtheAImissioninMarch,the rules relating to its implementation will be drawn up after a new government assumes office in June. Officials said that AI data centres will consist of high-performance systems such as graphic processing units (GPUs), storage systems, network infrastructure and other specialised hardware accelerators. Privateplayersaswellasstartupscanuse these data centres to test or run their largelanguagemodels(LLMs)fortheir AIofferings.Academiaandresearchers can also use these facilities.The duration of the lease and charges will be fixed bythe government. The plan isverysimilarto a model in China, where startups are given vouchers at subsidised cost to use state-run compute infrastructure. Initially, the government will source the GPUs from companies like Nvidia, but later the plan is to manu- AI ON THE PRIZE ■ Govt eyes public AI compute infra of 10,000 or more GPUs in PPP mode ■ These GPUs can be used to test/run LLMs for AI offerings ■ US-based Nvidia dominates the GPU market with about 88% market share Kotak’s IT churn: 10 key execs quit in 16 months SACHIN KUMAR Mumbai, May 2 IN THE PAST one-and-a-half years, 10 key officials in Kotak Mahindra Bank’s (KMB) information technology (IT) and digital departments have putin theirpapers. These exits happened at a time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was scrutinising the bank for various lapses in its digital services, including service outages. Last week,KMB was barred from taking onnewcustomersviaitsonlineand mobilebankingchannels,andfrom issuing new credit cards.“For two consecutive years, the bank was EXIT WOUND ■ One of the major problems that the bank faced during the time period was frequent outages ■ These exits happened at a time when the bank was under the RBI lens for various lapses ■ Some officials who quit played a crucial role in building the bank's tech platform assessed to be deficient in its ITrisk and information security governance,” said RBI’s notification. During this crucial period, the key officials who quit included the ■ Exits created a vacuum, impacting the knowledge transfer from old to new hands president and chief digital officer, president-digital IT, CTO-Kotak Cherry,seniorEVPIT,head of RTB. Continued on Page 16 ■ Plan can help AI players reduce computing costs by around 40-50% ■ Currently, an Nvidia GPU costs about $40,000-50,000 a unit ■ Initially, these GPUs will be sourced from companies like Nvidia; to be made locally later facture these in the country with the helpofglobalcompaniesmakingsuch AI chipsets,officials said. Continued on Page 16 New Delhi Hindenburg report Adani got 2 notices from Sebi in Q4 ADANI ENTERPRISES received two show-cause notices from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in the fourth quarter. Notices werepartoftheregulator’sprobeinto a reportbyHindenburg Research. Thetwonoticesallegednon-compliance of provisions of the listing agreement and regulations pertaining to related-party transactions of earlieryears,AELsaid in a regulatory filing.Themanagementbelievesthat “there is no material consequential effect”of these notices to the financialstatementsandnomaterialnoncompliance of applicable laws and regulations,it added. — FE BUREAU