2022 was a tough year for the majority of education technology (EdTech) in India, with the “Tracxn Geo Annual Report: India Tech 2022” reporting a 39 per cent decrease in funding during the January-November period compared to 2021. To overcome this, many businesses, including industry-leading players like BYJU’S, Unacademy and Vedantu, had to resort to job cuts.
On January 19, 2023, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation in a surprise move, citing that she just “no longer had enough in the tank” to carry on. This news followed a slew of gender-related headlines—expectedly. Media houses seemed to enjoy their “I told you so” moment, with the BBC posting an archaic and sexist headline: “Jacinda Ardern resigns: Can women really have it all?”
Business owners often struggle with boosting website traffic, lowering their bounce rate and converting followers into paying customers. However, many are unaware of the great potential offered by YouTube. Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has established itself as a world-renowned platform for modern media. As per Alexa’s global ranking, YouTube is the second most trafficked website in the world.
In 2022, American media personality Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims reached a market capitalization of US$3.2 billion. This massive net worth is a byproduct of a lot of factors, such as Kim’s popularity, the brand’s inclusive size range and adaptability (as we saw during the pandemic) to name a few.
Many people push themselves beyond their limits at work to receive a promotion. Indeed, a promotion comes with numerous benefits, like more opportunities to develop new skills and make key decisions for your company. If you’re more interest-minded, you may desire a promotion because it is typically accompanied by a raise, though 39% of employers commonly offer promotions without salary increases.
Ah, home sweet home! With the Covid-19 pandemic making working from home and hybrid working models the norm, the home has become a place where many of us spend most of our time now. But staying at home has also come with its own set of challenges. While housing costs are rapidly shooting up around the world, home spaces, especially in urban areas, seem to be shrinking.
Almost every one of us has a subscription to a streaming service today. We listen to music on platforms such as Spotify, watch films on Netflix and read books on a Kindle. But the subscription economy goes far beyond these services. Today, you can subscribe to literally anything, such as smoothies, food boxes and even underwear. There are even subscriptions to services that really need to be a one-time purchase, such as headphones and car features.
In November 2022, San Francisco city officials voted for the use of robots in the police force. These robots were meant to help police officers incapacitate violent criminals and were also authorized to use deadly force to stop crime. But just under a month after being approved, the city was forced to take back its decision due to massive public outcry.
As advancement in AI solutions expands and accelerates, AI will be more powerful and inseparable from our daily lives in the future, and that will also happen with the education industry. To provide a personalized learning experience, a combination of EdTech and AI can bring about an adaptive learning platform, which can track a student’s progress, learning patterns, knowledge gaps and so on.
“Moonlighting” is a term you might be hearing more and more these days. It’s a growing trend in the business world that startups, especially tech companies, should know about. But what exactly is moonlighting, and why should you care? Let’s take a closer look.
The state of cryptocurrency this year has been one for the comic books, where the protagonist—in the face of a crisis—says, “But it can’t get any worse than this, right?”, and it does. It just wasn’t crypto’s year. From rising interest rates to mistakes made by cryptocurrencies like Terra Luna and CEOs like Sam Bankman-Fried of the crypto exchange FTX, a host of factors stunted the digital currency’s growth. It also led to investors losing money and becoming skeptical about its future.
Global sporting events have often been the ground for contentious political statements. Given their magnanimity, they provide the ideal platform to spread a message. In 1968, athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists during the national anthem in a black power salute. They aimed to turn the world’s attention to racial inequality and got a lot of mixed reactions at the time for doing so. Another popular footballer who stood against the racial divide was Colin Kaepernick.
The 1997 American film Picture Perfect has given us one of the most memorable phrases about corporate dressing: “In business, we dress for the job we want, not the one we have.” Even those who may not have seen this film must have heard the quote being used, especially when it comes to dressing up for a job interview.
The tech industry is facing a slew of staff cutbacks since the beginning of the year. In November 2022, the internet went into a frenzy at Elon Musk laying off most of Twitter’s employees. A few days later, Meta also announced its own round of layoffs, letting go of about 13% of the workforce. Later, Salesforce also confirmed it had dismissed hundreds of workers to cut expenses.
The recent FTX scandal has all the trappings of a Netflix drama series where the business tycoon—once lauded for his power moves—is brought down by greed, selfishness and the judiciary system (The Wolf of Wall Street, much?). The CEO of crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, has come into the spotlight for bringing about the downfall of FTX and his other company Alameda Research. In November 2022, he filed for bankruptcy for both companies after a devastating collapse in the public eye.
Japan has the most hardworking people in the world. Grinding hard is so deeply ingrained into Japanese culture that 37% of companies in the country make their employees work 45 hours or more in overtime every month. The Japanese workforce hesitates to take time off work, so much so that in 2019 it was made legally mandatory for employees to take five days a year off.