AI to help chartered accountants deliver high quality audits: ICAI prez

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 16, 2023 | Technology

Artificial Intelligence will help chartered accountants deliver high quality audits as well as increase the number of transactions being looked at, ICAI President Aniket Sunil Talati has said and highlighted that efforts are on to provide the best skill sets to its members.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has more than 3.80 lakh members and over 8 lakh students.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are being used in various sectors.

In a recent interaction with PTI, Talati said he sees AI as a big change that is coming into the audit profession.

“If there is a good AI system, then there is so much one can look at in terms of transactions. AI will report back to you in terms of any deviations, red flags… and will play a huge role in assisting chartered accountants to deliver high quality audit.

“We are working with our members to train and upskill them to have the best skill sets to understand AI,” he said.

Over the years, the accounting profession has moved from paper ledgers to calculators to computers.

According to Talati, AI is going to change a lot of aspects and will help chartered accountants look at a wider number of transactions.

“There are pitfalls also and you need to be trained to understand AI. We are also working on technology tools to members to use in audit. Those also will get embedded with AI,” he noted.

Amid instances of concerns over financial and governance issues at some startups, the ICAI President said the institute is trying to have collaborations with startups and asserted that there is a robust regulatory system to deal with abberations.

“We have an ecosystem of more than 90,000 startups… we as a country have developed a very strong ecosystem and a lot of unicorns have come in,” he said.

Set up under an Act of Parliament in 1949, ICAI will be completing 100 years in 2049. It is now collaborating with IIM, Ahmedabad to prepare a vision document.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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India is now the second-biggest mobile phone-making country: Counterpoint

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 16, 2023 | Technology

Led by the Centre’s push, higher internal demand and rising digital literacy, India has become the second-biggest mobile maker in the world, a report by global research firm Counterpoint said on Tuesday.

It added that the mobile phone shipments from India crossed the 2 billion cumulative units mark under the “Make in India” initiative during 2014-2022. It registered an annual growth rate of 23 per cent.

Moreover, according to the data shared, in 2022, more than 98 per cent of shipments in the overall Indian market were made in India. This is very high when compared to just 19 per cent in 2014.

“We have also seen increasing local value addition and supply chain development in the country. Local value addition in India currently stands at an average of more than 15 per cent, compared to the low single digits eight years ago,” said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint.

Counterpoint also said that Phased Manufacturing Program (PMP), Make in India, Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) and Atma-Nirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) programmes have contributed to an increase in local manufacturing and value addition for smartphones.

“Under the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the Centre introduced the Phased Manufacturing Program and increased import duties on completely built units and some key components over the years to push local manufacturing and value addition. Under the Self-Reliant India scheme, the government introduced the PLI scheme for 14 sectors, including mobile phone manufacturing. Due to all this, exports from India have increased,” said Prachir Singh, senior analyst at Counterpoint.

“Many companies are setting up units in the country for manufacturing mobile phones as well as components, leading to growing investments, increasing jobs and overall ecosystem development. The government now intends to capitalize on its various schemes to make India a ‘semiconductor manufacturing and export hub’. Going forward, we may see increasing production, especially for smartphones, as India gears to bridge the urban-rural digital divide and also become a mobile phone exporting powerhouse,” Pathak added.

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Governments abroad call Data Protection Bill a ‘landmark’ regulation

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 16, 2023 | Technology

Countries such as Norway and South Africa have called the passage of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act a “landmark” regulation and said that the legislation offers “invaluable lessons” to the world on how safeguards can be applied to the global South.

Countries such as New Zealand said that they are taking a ‘keen interest’ in the implementation of the Bill and also its approach to privacy regulation, according to a report in The Economic Times (ET).

Some countries, such as Norway, are planning to introduce clauses that could mirror those in the DPDP Bill.

The DPDP Bill has conditions for processing data of children and parental consent is a must for processing data of minors. The Bill states that undertaking tracking and behavioural monitoring of children is prohibited with certain exemptions.

Trine Smedbold, senior legal adviser at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, said, “We are very happy to see that children are protected from tracking, behavioural monitoring, and targeted advertising from companies.”dp

Mukalani Dimba, executive for education and communication at the Information Regulator (South Africa), said that India has inspired the evolution of the right to information globally over the decades.

On August 11, the Bill was granted assent by President Droupadi Murmu.

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From NYT to Threads, Elon Musk’s X throttled access to several websites

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 16, 2023 | Technology

X, formerly known as Twitter, is throttling the traffic to several websites, including the New York Times, Facebook, Instagram, Reuters and Threads, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. The move, according to the report, seems to be aimed at the websites that have been attacked in the past by X’s owner, Elon Musk.

Clicking a link on X to one of the affected websites resulted in a delay of about five seconds before the webpage loaded, the report said, citing tests it conducted.

By late Tuesday afternoon, X appeared to have eliminated the delay. Another report by Reuters said that when contacted for comment, X confirmed the delay was removed but did not elaborate.

However, some websites like The Washington Post, Fox News and YouTube did not face such delays in the redirection.

Musk, who bought Twitter in October, has previously lashed out at news organizations and journalists who have reported critically on his companies, which include Tesla and SpaceX. Twitter has previously prevented users from posting links to competing social media platforms.

A user on Hacker News, a tech forum, posted about the delay earlier on Tuesday and wrote that X began delaying links to The New York Times on August 4. On that day, Musk criticised the publication’s coverage of South Africa and accused it of supporting calls for genocide.

Notably, online companies invest millions of dollars into ensuring their websites open as quickly as possible. Most companies know that even tiny delays can lead their traffic to plunge as users grow impatient with the delay and go elsewhere.

A 2016 study by Google on mobile traffic said that 53 per cent of users abandoned a website if it took longer than three seconds to load. X has also throttled traffic to Bluesky, an X rival that has Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on its board.

A spokesperson for The New York Times told Reuters that it had not received an explanation from X about the link delay.

“While we don’t know the rationale behind the application of this time delay, we would be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organisation for unclear reasons,” the spokesperson said.

Mastodon and Substack were the other websites affected by the delays.

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Apple AirPods to be made in India at Foxconn factory in Hyderabad

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 15, 2023 | Technology

iPhone maker Apple will start manufacturing its wireless ear buds AirPods at Foxconn’s Hyderabad factory, according to sources.

Foxconn has approved an investment of USD 400 million for Hyderabad plant which is expected to begin mass production by December 2024.

“Foxconn Hyderabad factory will make AirPods. The factory is expected to begin mass production by December,” a source told PTI.

The information was confirmed by one more source who is privy to the development.

An email query sent to Apple and Foxconn did not elicit any reply.

AirPods will be the second product category after iPhone that will be made in India.

Apple’s AirPods leads TWS (true wireless stereo) market globally.

It led the global TWS market with about 36 per cent market share in the December 2022 quarter, according to research firm Canalys.

Apple was followed by Samsung with 7.5 per cent market share, Xiaomi 4.4 per cent, Boat 4 per cent and Oppo 3 per cent.

Xiaomi started making its TWS in India this year at Optiemus Electronics plant in Noida.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Aug 15 2023 | 3:55 PM IST

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Australian court fines Dell unit .5 mn for misleading customers

Australian court fines Dell unit $6.5 mn for misleading customers

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 14, 2023 | Technology

Australia’s Federal Court on Monday ordered Dell Technologies Inc’s local unit to pay A$10 million ($6.46 million) in penalties for making misleading representations on its website about discounts for add-on computer monitors.

In a legal action brought by the country’s competition regulator, Dell Australia was found guilty by the Federal Court in June to have misled customers about the prices or discounts on add-on monitors on its website.

“This outcome sends a strong message to businesses that making false representations about prices or inflating discounts is a serious breach of consumer law and will attract substantial penalties,” said Liza Carver, commissioner of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Dell Australia, which sold more than 5,300 add-on monitors with overstated discounts between Aug. 2019 and Dec. 16, 2021, will be working “with impacted customers to provide appropriate refunds plus interest and are taking steps to improve our pricing processes to ensure this sort of error does not happen again”, a spokesperson for Dell Australia said in a statement to Reuters.

($1 = 1.5480 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Navya Mittal in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Subhranshu Sahu)

First Published: Aug 14 2023 | 11:32 PM IST

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