Mumbai, Jan 6 () Subhash Chandra-owned Essel Group's Jalesh Cruises, which sailed its first ship Karnika on April 17 last year, is planning to introduce a second vessel by October 2020 following robust demand for cruise tourism in India.
"We witnessed huge demand since Karnika sailed from Mumbai on April 17, 2019. We are witnessing huge growth in bookings. In this calendar year we expect minimum 35-40 per cent growth in bookings from last year," Jalesh Cruises Strategic Advisor Rajiv Duggal told here on Monday on the sidelines of the launch of world's first 4-day business-to-business jewellery exhibition on board Karnika from January 6.
He said, in order to cater to this growing demand, the company is planning to launch another vessel by October this year.
"Cruise is also a huge employment generating medium and cruise ships are heavy with crew member. Currently, in Karnika we have 900 crew and we will be adding another 900 with the new vessel," he said.
As a long term goal, the company is planning to have 4-5 ships in next 5 years, he added.
The growing segments for cruise tourism in the country are wedding, meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) and young independent travellers, he said.
"Destination weddings are now slowly getting extended to cruise as we are witnessing growing interest in the segment and MICE is also a huge segment for us. Young independent travellers are a huge opportunity for us. We are planning to tap all three segments," he added.
Mumbai Port Trust Chairman Sanjay Bhatia, who was also present on the occasion, said the country is in an exciting phase of the travel and tourism industry and cruise tourism will play a vital role in the sector's rapid growth.
"We are undertaking several steps towards expansion and swift implementation of initiatives that will significantly boost cruise tourism in India. We are proud of setting a benchmark by being the first in the world to have a jewellery exhibition on board the Karnika cruise," he added. SM BAL

Jalesh Cruises to introduce second ship by October 2020

Remember the ransomware WannaCry that hit the globe last month? Well, a new ransomware has yet again hit several countries, locking up computer screens of as many as 20 companies across the world. <keyword id="4701507" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Petwrap">Petwrap</keyword>, dubbed as an advanced version of ransomware <keyword id="3305248" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="petya">Petya</keyword>, has targeted users across India and Europe and shipping, aviation and oil and gas companies have been hit in the UK, Russia, France, Spain and elsewhere. Petwrap is believed to be asking for $300 to free up the locked computer screens. Mondelez, Merck and Maersk were targeted by the ransomware. As per several reports, Indian units of UK and Russia-based oil and gas, energy and aviation companies were also hit. A Mondelez International spokesperson said, "The network is experiencing global IT outage. Our team is working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible." Meanwhile, Neeraj Bansal, deputy chairman of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust said the operations at Gateway Terminals India, operated by Maersk Group-owned APM Terminals at the Mumbai-based port, has been impacted. "They are trying to do what they can manually. They have told us assessing the situation and trying to find a solution as soon as they can," Bansal told ET.

New ransomware, Petwrap, hits India, other countries; Indian shipping hub impacted

<ul><li><keyword id="3873233" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Medlife">Medlife</keyword> is currently witnessing an 8% month-on-month growth and hopes to achieve 100% year-on-year growth over last year.</li><li>It will continue to focus on digital marketing, and come up with hyper-local personalized content to target consumers.</li><li>Medlife is looking at almost doubling its consumer base from last year’s 1.5 million to 2.5 million this year.</li></ul> It’s been about three months since <keyword id="6397414" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ananth-Narayanan">Ananth Narayanan</keyword>, former CEO of Myntra and Jabong came on board as the Co-founder and CEO of Bengaluru-based health-tech company Medlife. Since then, Narayanan has focused on coming up with strategies to scale up the business, always keeping the consumer at the core. Founded in 2014 by Tushar Kumar and Prashant Singh, Medlife, which started out being an online medicine delivery platform has today diversified its offering to <keyword id="164597" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="diagnostics">diagnostics</keyword> and online consultations. The company is currently witnessing an 8% month-on-month growth and hopes to achieve 100% year-on-year growth over last year. It is also looking at expanding its diagnostics presence across 50 cities within the next 24 months. In a recent conversation, Narayanan told us that Medlife’s marketing strategy would revolve around coming up with hyper-local digital content to target different areas in the cities they launch and will back that up with BTL as well as Radio. “However, our aim would be to do a 360 degree surround for our consumers. When they think of healthcare, Medlife should be the first port of call for them,” says Narayanan. Edited excerpts: Q) From growing Myntra in the fashion e-commerce space to now growing Medlife in the online healthcare space, how has the journey been so far? I am a consumer-backed person and look for large markets to play in. Both Myntra and Medlife are a $100 billion market, however in India, access, consumer journey and having standardized processes and procedures to make healthcare simple is a problem. So it felt like a very large problem to solve. Medlife started four years ago and is in the process of solving at least two or three of these problems. I met the founders Tushar and Prashant at that time, and it felt like we're very complementary. While Tushar played more of a strategy role, Prashant and I went on to run the business. It seemed like a good idea to come together and see if we could scale it. My vision for Medlife is to build it into a trusted brand partner and serve all the healthcare needs of the 100 million plus Indians, by keeping technology at the core. Since you joined Medlife, what have your areas of focus been? There have been three to four focus key focus areas for me. The first is to improve consumer experience. We’ve launched a new react native app and have reduced the lead time for delivery. We're scaling Express which is our two-hour delivery service in eight cities. So consumers have been a big focus. Secondly, we need to make the business sustainable. In the next six to eight months, we want to reach unit economics breakeven, which means at the unit level, we don't lose money anymore. Once we achieve that, we can scale as much or as little as we want. Thirdly, there’s a continued focus on ramping up the team. We already have a terrific team of 400 people but are working on strengthening it further. We want to strengthen the tech, product and the operation side of the team. Also, we're a very small part of a very large business and our aim is to sustain a healthy growth. What kind of growth has Medlife been witnessing? Today, the online penetration of health is less than 2%. We want to grow 8% month-on-month. By the end of this year, we'll have a 100% year-on-year growth over last year. It looks like we will be ahead of our original plan for the year. Have you set a target for yourself, in terms of Medlife’s growth? In the next five years, I want to be 10X of what I am today. And if we continue to see 100% growth year-on-year, we will easily reach there. Also, I want to be able to serve multi-million customers. By when do you expect Medlife to become a profit-making entity? The key milestone is unit economics. Hopefully, as I said, six to eight months from now, we'll get there. And after that, it's really a matter of choice as to when you want to become profitable. How big is your consumer base right now and what kind of growth are you seeing in that regard? Last year, we served 1.5 million customers, and we continue to grow. This year, we will serve 2.5 million customers. Since you have diversified to diagnostics and consultation, which segments are performing the best for you? We started out being a medicine delivery platform and that's still 85-87% of the business and still growing rapidly. But that gives us a large customer base to do diagnostics with. Diagnostic is a newer business which we started about a year ago and is growing very fast for us, the unit economics are already profitable. On the <keyword id="387573" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="online-consultation">online consultation</keyword> front, we have about 1,500 doctors on board and again, that number is growing rapidly too. In terms of growth, medicine delivery is growing at 6-7% and the other two are growing in double digits month-on-month. How have you built the consumer’s trust on your platform? In the businesses we operate in, the way to build trust is by sticking to your promise. We measure a lot on NPS and consumer experience. We work hard to ensure that we deliver whatever we commit to the customer. We are also very careful about quality, whether it's our medicines, diagnostic test results or the consultations. We do a lot of checks, tech-driven and otherwise, that allow us to make sure that the quality of our offering is great. Your vision is to turn Medlife into an e-health provider. Can you expand on that? Our aim is to own the consumer journey and provide them with everything they need. Today, we may be into medicine delivery, diagnostics and consultation but there are many other things that the customer actually wants. They want home healthcare, primary and secondary care and health insurance. We don't intend to do all of this but we’re trying to partner with the ecosystem to provide customers all of these offerings. What are your strategies to grow your market share and expand reach? Like I said, the current penetration is 2% and we have 10x growth ahead of us. We’ve built a good supply chain network. We have over 40 fulfillment centers all over. Extending the supply chain is one way of penetrating the market. The second is continuing to reach people through digital marketing. And the third is by starting to expose them to the multiple services that we actually offer. There are roughly 62 million online transacting customers in India today and we only serve 2 million, so there’s a huge opportunity. Are your consumers primarily from the metro cities? The age range of our customers is between 26 and 86, so it's a much broader range than e-commerce. Secondly, about 60% of our consumers are from the top 30 cities and 40% come from beyond. Medlife has made some strategic acquisitions with <keyword id="8296503" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="medlabz">MedLabz</keyword> and <keyword id="304370" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Myra">Myra</keyword>. Are more acquisitions on the cards? We will continue to do strategic acquisitions. We acquired MedLabz when we realized diagnostic is important for us. Express delivery was an important capability. The market today has chronic needs and acute needs. Acute needs account for roughly half the market, but you need to be able to supply within one to two hours. That's why we acquired Myra. So we will keep looking for capabilities to buy. How will be your broad marketing strategy going ahead? The healthcare space works micro-market by micro-market. So we look at 10 parts of Mumbai as 10 different markets. We think of personalizing the digital marketing in each of these areas very differently. We will also do Radio and BTL to get to our consumers. But the key is to start doing a 360 degree marketing around the customer so that Medlife becomes a part of their lives. Medlife needs to be the first port of call for them, whenever they think of health needs and that’s what we're trying to establish. Our brand proposition is, ‘Health comes home’. Where do you want to see Medlife in the next few years? There's still a lot of scale left to be had in the medicine delivery side of business. We want to expand our Express rapidly. We are offering diagnostics in 20 cities currently, we'd love to be in 40-50 cities. So we'll scale it up in the next 24 months. Thirdly, we will also work on creating personal online consultation into a paid consultation service, not just a complimentary one. Where do you anticipate the next phase of growth for Medlife will come from? We will grow with deeper penetration in the current cities that we’re in. I believe that in all the big cities that we're in for pharma, labs will start to become big. Medicine delivery will expand beyond the top 30 cities and we're starting to think about supply chain infrastructure beyond the top 30 cities.

Medlife hopes to achieve 100% growth by the end of this financial year, will take its diagnostics offering to 50 cities within the next 24 months

<ul><li>New income tax slabs: 10% tax on income between ₹7.5 lakh without exemption compared to 20% right now.</li><li>15% tax on income between ₹7.5 lakh and ₹10 lakh without exemption compared to 20% right now.</li><li>20% tax on income between ₹10 lakh and ₹12.5 lakh without exemption compared to 30% right now.</li><li>25% tax on income between ₹12.5 lakh and ₹15 lakh without exemption compared to 30% right now.</li><li>Cost to the exchequer ₹40,000 crore; Removed 70 tax exemptions and deductions. These new rates are available to those who forego exemptions, deductions, and rebates.</li><li>Dividend distribution tax will be abolished, it will be taxable in the hands of the recipient. Cost to exchequer: ₹25,000 crore</li><li>SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/news/union-budget-2020-live-updates-news-and-highlights/liveblog/73824572.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">Business Insider India live blog</a> on Budget 2020.</li></ul>Finance Nirmala Sitharaman presented her second annual budget speech. The top highlights from the budget 2020 proposals include the government's plan to sell stake in state-iowned insurance giant Life Insurance Corporation of India, sweeping changes in the income tax slabs, as well as the abolition of the dividend distribution tax at the end of the corporates. Aside from theses, startups with revenue up to ₹25 crore can avail 100% tax deduction in any three years over a period of 7 years, according to the latest Finance Bill presented by Sitharaman. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 <div type="image" title="Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman" msid="73828645" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;quot;As per tradition, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman calls on President Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan before presenting the Union Budget,&amp;quot; the official handle of the President&amp;#39;s office tweeted today.&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>


































 Following are the key highlights of the budget speech: <ol><li>Only through higher growth, we can have our youth gainfully and meaningfully employed.</li><li>Fundamentals of the economy are strong, inflation has been contained, banks have been cleaning up the accumulated loans of the past decade. </li><li>An average household now saves about 4% of its monthly spends due to lower incidence of tax under the GST regime.</li><li>Welfare schemes with direct benefit transfer embedded in them, preventive healthcare via programmes like sanitation, healthcare via central schemes, housing scheme via Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY) etc changed the established order of a few individuals cornering most of the benefits. </li><li>During 2014-19, Indian economy grew at an average of 7.4% with low inflation. India's foreign direct investment was $284 billion between 2014 an 2019 compared to $190 billion in the preceding five-year period.</li><li>India's government debt fell to 48.7% of GDP as of March 2019 compared to 52.3% as of March 2014.</li><li>Three themes of Budget 2020: 'Aspiring India', 'economic development', and 'to build a caring society'. </li><li>We shall aim for seamless delivery of services by leveraging technology. </li><li>6.11 crore farmers insured under Prime Minister Fasal Bima Yojana - a centrally-sponsored insurance scheme. Farm markets need to be liberalised.</li><li>16 action points: 1: Encourage state governments that will implement the following model laws that have already enacted by the centre. 2: Propose comprehensive measures for 100 water-stressed districts. 3: Expand outlay for solar pumps to 20 lakh farmers, another 15 lakh farmers to pumpsets to solar grid. Farmers if they have barren lands, they can set up solar power plants and sell it to the grid. 4: Balanced use of orgnaic and inorganic fertilisers. 5: Provide viability gap funding for setting up warehouses. Food Corporation of India can set up warehousing on their land too. 6: Push to reduce storage costs for farmers. 7: Promotion of women self-help groups. 8: To launch refrigerated trains to transport food items from the farm to other parts of the country. 9: Horticulture exceeds the production of foodgrains. 'One product for one district' to promote focussed development of horticulture. 10: Integrated farming system in rain-fed areas. Multiple crops, bee-keeping solar pumps in rain deficient area. 11: Financing on negotiable warehousing receipts will be linked to e-NAM. 12: The NABARD refinance scheme will expanded. The agriculture credit target for FY21 will be expanded to ₹15 lakh crore from ₹12 lakh crore. 13. To eliminate foot and mouth disease by 2025. To double milk production to 108 million metric tonnes by 2025. 14. Blue economy - development management of marine resources. Target ₹1 lakh crore in fish exports by 2025. 15. By FY23, propose raising fish production to 200 lakh tonnes, will also promote algae, seaweed.</li><li>16. Under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana, self help groups will be expanded beyond the current 58 lakh.</li><li>Allocation for agriculture: ₹2.83 lakh crore, this includes ₹</li><li>Mission Indradhanush has been expanded to include 12 new diseases and 5 new vaccines. A very focussed water and sanitation programme to reduce the burden of diseases on the poor. There are 20,000 hospitals empanelled under the PMJAY, this has to rise. Propose to set up hospitals under the private-public partnership, the 112 districts identified as 'aspirational' will get priority in the setting up of new hospitals. </li><li>Proceeds from taxes on medical devices will be used to support the programme to build the infrastructure.</li><li>Reiterate India's commitment to eradicate tuberculosis by 2025. </li><li>Allocation for health: ₹69,000 crore including ₹6,400 crore for PMJAY.</li><li>By 2030, India is set to have the world's largest working-age population. They need education, skills, and employment opportunities. Our education system needs more money to attract better teachers and to set up better labs. Open the education sector to external commercial borrowing. </li><li>In order to provide quality education to the under privileged, a full-fledged online courses will be launched from the top 100 institutions in India.</li><li>Under 'Study In India' programme, a new INSAT exam to be launched for foreign students to enroll into Indian universities. </li><li>Every medical college will be linked to a nearby hospitals under the public-private partnership mode.</li><li>Total outlay for education sector: ₹99,300 crore and another ₹3,000 crore for skill development.</li><li>150 top education institutes to start offering apprenticeship programmes.</li><li>Propose to set up an investment clearance cell for end-to-end services including information on land bank and facilitating the approval process etc. </li><li>It is proposed to develop 5 new smart cities in collaboration with state governments in PPP mode. </li><li>Electronics manufacturing industry is cost competitive and India has shown its potential. To attract large investments in electronic manufacturing -- including electronic equipment, smartphones -- a new policy will be announced soon.</li><li>A National Textile Mission to work for next four fiscal years with an estimated outlay of ₹1,480 crore.</li><li>A new scheme Nirvik, for higher insurance cover, reduction in premium for small exporters, and simplified claim process, including digital refund process to help exporters.</li><li>Every district must become a hub for exports.</li><li>Unified procurement scheme: Propose ₹27,300 crore for development of industry and commerce in FY21.</li><li>National Infrastructure Pipeline will bring in generic and sectoral reforms in construction and maintenance of the infrastructure. Propose a project preparation facility that will employ economist, management graduates to execute projects.</li><li>A National Logistics Policy will soon be released to clarify the roles of Central government, state governments, and the regulators.</li><li>The Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and two other projects will be completed by FY23. The Chennai-Bengaluru expressway project will also started by then.</li><li>Government will monetise 12 NHAI highway projects.</li><li>Setting up a large solar power capacity alongside the rail tracks on the land owned by the railways, is a proposal under consideration.</li><li>150 trains under the PPP mode. More Tejas type trains will connect iconic tourist destinations. </li><li>Central government will give 20% of the funds needed for a suburaban rail transport system in Bengaluru.</li><li>100 more airports will be set up in the next five years.</li><li>₹1.7 lakh crore allocated for transport infrastructure.</li><li>Propose to replace traditional meters with digital meters in the next three years. This will allow consumers to port out of a service provider (selling power) just like they port out of mobile service provider.</li><li>Fibre to home connections through Bharat Net will connect 1 lakh villages this year itself. Propose to provide ₹6,000 crore for Bharat Net programme.</li><li>Quantum technology: An outlay of ₹8,000 crore over the next five years.</li><li>₹22,000 crore allocated for the power sector including renewble energy sector.</li><li>No manual cleaning of sewers will be allowed, new technology will be roped. Centre in conversation with civic bodies.</li><li>Provision of ₹85,000 crore for scheduled castes and other backward classes.</li><li>Provision of ₹53,700 crore for scheduled tribes in the country.</li><li>5 archaeological sites would be developed as iconic sites with on-site museum -- Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Hastinapur (UP), Dholavera (Gujarat), Shivsagar (Assam), and Aditya Nallur (Tamil Nadu).</li><li>Propose ₹35,500 crore for nutrition-related schemes.</li><li>Allocation for Ministry of Culture: ₹3,500 crore. </li><li>Propose ₹2,500 crore to promote tourism.</li><li>Propose ₹9,500 crore for senior citizens and specially abled.</li><li>Proposed total allocation for women-centric programmes ₹28,600 crore.</li><li>Propose ₹4,400 crore allocation for clean air. </li><li>Companies Act will be amended to abolish 'criminal liability' for 'civil offences'.</li><li>A National Recruitment Agency will be set up. It will conduct a common entrance test for non-gazetted positions in the government and public-sector enterprises. </li><li>Propose a new national policy on national statistics will push for use of AI to collect data real time.</li><li>India will host G20 Presidency in 2022; the government proposes to allocate ₹100 crore to start the preparations.</li><li>Governance reforms proposed for PSU banks: Robust mechanism is in place to monitor the health of all banks and the money of depositors are safe. Insurance of bank deposits raised to ₹5 lakh from ₹eposit insurance and credit guarantee scheme.</li><li>Government will sell its remaining stake in IDBI Bank to private investors. Stock jumps over 13%</li><li>MSME entrepreneurs can avail 'subordinate debt' from banks and the loan will be fully guaranteed by a Trust. This will be treated as quasi-equity stake.</li><li>Government has asked RBI to extend deadline for MSME debt restructuring by one more year. </li><li>FY20 fiscal deficit seen at 3.8% of GDP and at 3.5% in FY21.</li><li>Non-resident Indians will be allowed to invest in certain categories of government bonds.</li><li>Currently, foreign portfolio investors are allowed to buy a maximum of 9% of the outstanding corporate bonds. Finance Minister proposes to increase the threshold significantly to 15%.</li><li>An international bullion exchange will be set up in GIFT City in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.</li><li>Government to sell stake in LIC. </li><li>Receipts for FY21 estimated at ₹22.46 lakh crore, estimate expenditure: ₹</li><li>Borrowing plan for FY21: ₹5.36 lakh crore, capital expenditure will rise over 22%.</li><li>Dividend distribution tax will be abolished, it will be taxable in the hands of the recipient. Cost to exchequer: ₹25,000 crore</li><li>Dividend and capital gains made by foreign funds on investment in infrastructure space will tax free.</li><li>Startups with revenue up to ₹25 crore can avail 100% tax deduction in any three years over a period of 7 years.</li><li>Small retailers with revenue up to ₹5 crore need not get their books audited by accountants.</li><li>New scheme to end tax disputes: If someone agrees to pay the disputed tax amount by March 2020, there will be no interest and penalty. There are 4,83,000 tax disputes pending at various forums.</li><li>FY21 disinvestment target ₹2.1 lakh crore, doubled from the ₹1.05 lakh crore target in FY20.</li><li>Propose a cash incentive for customers demanding invoice, to boost compliance with GST</li><li>Imported footwear, furniture, and medical equipments will get more expensive as customs duty will be increased.</li></ol> SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/personal-finance/news/new-income-tax-slab-tax-savings-for-salaried-people/articleshow/73835816.cms">You'll save ₹78,000 more under new income tax slabs if you earn less than ₹15 lakh</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/news/indian-government-infuses-22000-crore-in-power-and-renewable-proposes-freedom-to-choose-supplier/articleshow/73835587.cms">Indian government infuses ₹22000 crore in power and renewable, proposes freedom to choose supplier</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/income-tax/news/check-out-new-income-tax-slab-of-2021/articleshow/73830824.cms">New income tax slabs 2020</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/news/there-will-be-no-manual-cleaning-of-sewers-anymore-announces-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/73835265.cms">“There will be no manual cleaning of sewers anymore,” announces Nirmala Sitharaman</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/news/union-budget-2020-live-updates-news-and-highlights/liveblog/73824572.cms">Union Budget 2020 Live Updates</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/news/indian-taxpayers-expectation-from-the-budget-2020/articleshow/73804969.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/news/indias-budget-allocation-for-defence-has-remained-fairly-static-for-the-past-five-years/articleshow/73153930.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank"></a>

Income tax cuts, stake sale in LIC and other highlights from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/48775086.cms" /> <keyword id="45224" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mahindra">Mahindra</keyword>, the country's largest <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=SUV+maker">SUV maker</a>, is ready to make an entry on US roads through two wheelers. It will soon launch Vespa-like electric scooter called the <keyword id="2361033" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Genze">GenZe</keyword> in the US. 
 
The company hopes to win over campus dwellers with a $2,999, electric scooters called GenZe, which goes on sale this fall in California, Oregon and Michigan. Sales might expand to other states and Europe, depending on its outcome. 
 
The further course of action depends on this current launch. If buyers like it, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Mahindra+">Mahindra</a> could use the GenZe as a springboard into the car market, just as <keyword id="20630" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Honda">Honda</keyword> made the leap from motorcycles to cars in 1970s. 
 
But this strategy has some risks. Firstly, scooters are not as popular in the US as elsewhere in the world, for example, people in China buy as many <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=electric+scooters+">electric scooters</a> in a day as Americans do in a full year. 
 
Secondly, consumers might not trust Mumbai-based Mahindra, which scrapped an attempt to sell vehicles here five years ago because it couldn't meet US safety standards. 
 
“The pressure has really been on to make sure that we get this right,” says Terence Duncan, the head of customer engagement for the GenZe and one of its chief designers. “What we're doing, really, is introducing the brand to American customers.” 
 Mahindra designed the GenZe in <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword> with features favored by tech-savvy Millennials, like a secure laptop charging port under the seat. It opened its four stores in <keyword id="12161" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="San-Francisco">San Francisco</keyword> and <keyword id="92788" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Portland">Portland</keyword> because buyers there are more accepting of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=two-wheeled+transportation">two-wheeled transportation</a>. In Michigan, buyers can get a GenZe at the Ann Arbor factory where it's made. 
 
The GenZe only goes up to 30 miles per hour, so riders won't need a license. Its most innovative feature is a 28-pound removable battery, which riders can unhook and carry inside to charge. The battery takes 3.5 hours to fully charge, and the scooter goes for 30 miles on a charge. A 7-inch touchscreen display tells drivers their speed and range. 
 Only about 5,000 electric scooters will be sold in the US this year, according to Ryan Citron, who analyzes the market for the consulting company Navigant Research. Among them: the ZEV 2700 and the <keyword id="286421" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bravo">Bravo</keyword> EVT-168, which cost about the same as the GenZe. By comparison, 30,000 will be sold in Europe and 3.9 million in China, where electric scooters cost less than half the price of a GenZe because they use a cheaper type of battery. 
 
Citron says about 46,000 gas-powered scooters will be sold in the US this year. Any scooter has a tough time selling when gas prices are relatively low, he says. 
 Citron believes the electric scooter market will grow to around 20,000 annual sales by 2024 as companies like Mahindra and Oregon's <keyword id="3032764" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Boxx-Corp-">Boxx Corp.</keyword> enter the market. Another one to watch is Gogoro, a Taiwan-based scooter maker that wants to develop stations where riders can swap out batteries. 
 
Mahindra is targeting college campuses and also plans to supply scooter-sharing programs like Scoot. So far, it has around 300 GenZe orders from people who paid a $100 deposit. The company expects to make around 3,000 scooters in the first year, Duncan says. 
 
This isn't Mahindra's first attempt to crack the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=electric+scooters+">US car market</a>. The $16.9 billion conglomerate, which controls about 40% of the SUV market in India, began courting US dealers about a decade ago with the promise of delivering vehicles by 2009. But Mahindra had trouble meeting US vehicle regulations and canceled its plans in 2010. 
 Mahindra does sell tractors in the US, but wants to build its name in urban areas, says GenZe CEO Vish Palekar. So in 2012, it set up a small group in <keyword id="116260" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Palo-Alto">Palo Alto</keyword> and told them to come up with a vehicle that would get people around cities more easily. 
 
(Image: Indiatimes)

Mahindra is debuting in the US market with this product. No, it’s not its iconic SUVs!

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54971d46ecad04023207b23f-1200-924/narendra-modi-29.jpg" border="0" alt="Narendra Modi">Hindustan Times/Getty ImagesPrime Minister Narendra Modi pays tributes to freedom fighter Veer Savarkar on 131st birth anniversary at Parliament House on May 28, 2014 in New Delhi, India. </img>In 1906, in a lodging house for Indian students in Highgate, a pleasant area of north London, a young lawyer called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi dropped in on a law student called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who happened to be frying prawns at the time. Savarkar offered Gandhi some of his meal; Gandhi, a vegetarian, refused. Savarkar allegedly retorted that only a fool would attempt to resist the British without being fortified by animal protein.
The meeting is said to have begun hostilities between the two young Indian nationalists; whether or not the story is apocryphal, there were real reasons for antipathy.
The two men had very different approaches to the struggle against Britain. Gandhi, who became leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), was a pacifist with an inclusive attitude towards Muslims and Christians. Savarkar, who would lead the Hindu Mahasabha, was a right-wing majoritarian who spawned the idea of hindutva, or Hindu-ness--the belief that the Hindu identity is inseparable from the Indian identity. Congress eclipsed the Mahasabha and, since history belongs to the victors, the story of India's independence movement became one of non-violence. But the strand of thought that Savarkar represented was more important than is generally recognised, and is enjoying a revival.
A member of the Mahasabha broke away to form the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or national volunteer organisation, in 1925, modelled, some say, on the British army. A social rather than explicitly political organisation, it presented itself as the world's largest non-governmental group, in which like-minded, khaki-uniformed men could gather for dawn calisthenics. It recruited boys at an impressionable age, as the Jesuits did, the better to inculcate them with discipline and with passion for the cause. One such was the eight-year-old Narendra Modi. The future prime minister attended training sessions with the RSS, was subsequently inducted as a cadet, and in 1985 was assigned by the RSS to its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he rose to lead.
Mr Modi is India's strongest leader since Indira Gandhi, and its most controversial. The source of controversy is his failure in 2002, when chief minister of Gujarat, to avert a massacre of Muslims, which opponents attribute to a hostility to Muslims born of the ideology that Savarkar spawned. Mr Modi has never apologised for the massacre, though he said last year that he felt regret over them, as he would at seeing a puppy run over in the street. Nor has he made any attempt to distance himself from the RSS.
The RSS, meanwhile, is becoming more overtly political. Mohan Bhagwat, its current leader, is somewhat in the mould of Savarkar, paraphrasing his beliefs and promoting Hindutva. In August this year Mr Bhagwat directly echoed Savarkar by saying all who live in "Hindustan" are in fact Hindus, whatever Muslims, Christians or secular Hindus might say. More striking, the RSS leader has switched the organisation's methods. Now, far from eschewing party politics, the group has become an enthusiastic and effective actor within it. The RSS's millions of members and volunteers (no one knows just how many active ones there really are) played a big role in electing the BJP by a landslide in 2014. At least 19 ministers in government, including Mr Modi, have a background in the RSS. Its leaders are seconded to senior posts in the party too. So the ideas of the man who inspired the RSS matter more than ever before.
<h3>The naked jumper</h3>
The lawyer described by a British official in 1906 as "a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner" does not sound like the muscular hero that Indian nationalists crave, but Savarkar clearly had a certain dash. In 1910, while he was in London, he was charged with conspiring to wage war against the king and with providing weapons used to assassinate a Briton in the Indian civil service, sentenced to two life terms--50 years--in jail and sent back to India. While the steamship "Morea" was berthed in Marseille harbour, he slipped away from his guards, leapt, almost naked, into the sea and swam ashore. Unfortunately for the eulogists, he was promptly caught by French police and bundled back to the ship.
His daring did, however, win him fame, and also created legal history. France's government, annoyed that Britain had overseen an arrest on its territory, wanted Savarkar returned. Britain refused so the matter went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It ruled his arrest was indeed "irregular", but decided Savarkar might as well stay in India. The case was one of the earliest heard by the tribunal.
Savarkar's next stop was the Andaman Islands--a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. This palm-fringed tropical paradise served as a penal colony for the British. Cellular Jail in the capital, Port Blair, is now a memorial for freedom campaigners. In a park opposite stands a row of statues of independence heroes. One is of a slender man with a pinched face behind round spectacles. A pen protrudes from his jacket pocket, one hand rests on a part-furled umbrella and the other wags a finger at the sky. You might mistake him for a prissy bank manager, but a plaque identifies him as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The park is named after him.
Ranjit Savarkar, his great-nephew, who runs the Savarkar trust, says that he showed great fortitude in jail. A trained yogi, he overcame thoughts of suicide. Other inmates nicknamed him "Barrister Babu", for his London legal training. Already a published historian and poet, he used Cellular Jail to work on his writing--literally: he wrote on its walls. He spent a decade there before being moved to the mainland in 1921. He was subsequently freed, after pledging to keep out of politics--a promise which the ideology he was developing in jail suggests he did not intend to keep.
A fierce nationalist, he adored Guiseppe Mazzini, who fought for the unification of Italy, writing about him in the hope of inspiring resistance to the British in India. Savarkar believed that India is really composed of, and must only be run by, Hindus. In his 1924 book, "Hindutva", he drew on cultural, philosophical and religious practices of ancient Hinduism, a rich faith that allows immense variety in how it is followed. But he also distinguished the ideology of hindutva--an attempt to unite disparate Hindus in a political project--from the religion. He himself was an atheist, and disapproved of aspects of traditional Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as superstitious--a stance that would upset many today. He was an early outspoken opponent of caste discrimination. In the 1920s and 1930s others among the emerging Indian political elite opposed "untouchability", the rejection as sub-human of those considered "below caste". But Savarkar went further, saying modern India should drop altogether the idea of dividing people by caste.
His attitude towards Muslims, who made up a quarter of the population before partition, and other non-Hindus was less liberal. He regarded them as alien and separate, in effect not as real Indians. He was fiercely opposed to the formation of Pakistan and what his great-nephew calls the "appeasement" of Muslims. He believed that they, along with the Europeans, had crushed Hindus for a millennium--a sentiment echoed by Mr Modi in an address to parliament after his election this year, when he spoke of ending "1,200 years of slave mentality" in India.
Aside from his view of Muslims, the big difference between Savarkar and the nationalists in the INC lay in their contrasting attitudes to violence. He also wrote one of the first Indian accounts of the uprising in 1857, centred in Delhi. Known as the "Mutiny" to the British, it is referred to by many Indians as the "first war of independence"--echoing the title of Savarkar's book, "The Indian War of Independence". It was a gruesome episode, in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but Savarkar was untroubled by the violence, and seemed to justify the murders of British women and children. His works are steeped in a desire for revenge against those who have humiliated Hindus, and his frustration with the passivity of his co-religionists: "I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race." In his early years, he circulated manuals on bomb making. He approved of--and probably assisted in--the assassination of colonial administrators. He was suspected, for example, of encouraging a student radical who shot dead Sir Curzon Wyllie, a government official, one summer night on a Kensington street in 1909.
<h3>Rewriting history</h3>
<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54971c4e69bedd2367d1449f-1200-924/gandhi-4.jpg" border="0" alt="gandhi" width="800">AP/James A. Mills</img>
Today, some Indians adulate him. On the day your correspondent called in at Cellular Jail, a party of jovial men in their 80s and 90s, an official "Eminent Committee of Freedom Fighters", was also visiting. Among the last surviving veterans who battled the British in the Quit India movement in the 1940s, they raised gnarled fists to chant "Jai Hind", posed for pictures and praised Savarkar as strong. The local MP called veer (brave) Savarkar a "ferocious, dangerous man who frightened off the British". Rashida Iqbal, the jail's curator, assessed him as "one of the most important freedom fighters". Port Blair's airport, like the park, bears his name. Some 2,000km away, in his native Maharashtra, a street and a park in Mumbai also each carry his name. (In London a blue plaque identifies his former home in Highgate.)
Savarkar's enthusiasm for violence sits uncomfortably with conventional ideas of how India got its independence. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and then the Congress party (successor to the INC) promoted a pacifist narrative of history, the idea that Gandhi and the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, a social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement, triumphed through non-violent resistance. That meant downplaying the bloodshed of 1857, in which atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, and also the roles of Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Bose, the Bengali leader of an Indian National Army against the British in the second world war and an ally of Hitler and imperial Japan, led some 40,000 soldiers against the British. (He didn't get far, though the Japanese briefly handed him control of the Andamans.) Patel, the "Iron Man of India", had the Bismarckian task of uniting the country. He oversaw the integration of 562 princely states into India, threatening and using military force. Operation Polo in 1948, a five-day conquest of Hyderabad, a wealthy and Muslim-run state in the south, was bloody indeed. Official estimates, only made public in 2013, suggest the fighting and subsequent Hindu-Muslim clashes there killed between 27,000 and 40,000 people. Some historians claim the real toll might have been five times higher.
The way the story of Indian independence is told is beginning to change. Mr Modi and the BJP are keen to celebrate muscular, nationalist figures. Patel is likely to have a much higher profile in future: in the national budget, in July 2014, the government set aside $32m to erect a statue of him in Gujarat, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, by 2018. And while Mr Modi frequently invokes Gandhi's name and beliefs, he refers almost as often to Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century nationalist who revived Hinduism and promoted it abroad. Mr Modi is said to be named after him (the swami was originally called Narendra Nath Datta) and frequently poses before his photograph. Vivekananda's ideas on invigorating Hinduism foreshadowed Savarkar's hindutva project.
Savarkar's profile is lower, but is also rising. Educational comics, hagiographies and patriotic films retell parts of his life story. In 2008 Mr Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, inaugurated a website (savarkar.org) that promotes a man "largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades", and in 2012 he launched a Gujarati-language biopic. A previous BJP-led government put Savarkar's portrait in parliament. On his birthday this year, May 28th, the prime minister paid homage to him there. Mr Modi tweeted about Savarkar's "tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland". Ranjit Savarkar's group plans various events to mark the 50th anniversary of Savarkar's death in 1966. (Aged 83, he submitted to what he called atmaarpan--refusing food, water or medicine in order to die. It took 20 days.)
Yet Savarkar remains immensely divisive. He was a fiercely outspoken critic of Gandhi, still India's top national hero: he called Gandhi weak, a "sissy" and far too willing to collaborate with Britain. Gandhian talk of man's common humanity he regarded as utopian to the point of naivety. In articles from the 1920s to the 1940s Savarkar lambasted Gandhi as a "crazy lunatic" who "happens to babble...[about] compassion, forgiveness", yet "notwithstanding his sublime and broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head." Gandhi promoted ahimsa, a Buddhist rejection of violence which Savarkar called "mealy-mouthed". He said Gandhi was a hypocrite for supporting violence by the British against Germany in the first world war. Nor did he cheer Gandhi's prominent backing for the Ottoman Caliphate Movement, designed to win Indian Muslims to oppose British colonial rule.
Over the years, Savarkar was eclipsed by his rival. During the 1920s and 1930s, the INC benefited from its ability to claim plausibly that it spoke for Muslims as well as Hindus, which made it a more credible interlocutor with the colonial authorities. Perhaps more important, it had an impressive organisation and, in Gandhi and later in Nehru, accomplished political leaders.
By the mid 1940s Savarkar and his supporters in the Mahasabha (which he led until his death) had a new gripe against Gandhi. They were enraged at the prospect of Pakistan seceding from India. Gandhi, in their eyes, did nothing to stop that "vivisection". Worse, he seemed to favour Pakistan when it sent forces to violently seize Kashmir, evidence to Savarkar that warlike Muslims were again crushing passive Hindus. When Nehru applied economic sanctions on Pakistan (refusing to pass on its share of central-bank funds from before independence), Gandhi launched a fast in protest and forced him to back down. To Savarkar's followers in the Mahasabha, that constituted national betrayal.
On January 30th 1948 Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi. The killer, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Mahasabha, edited its newspaper and was an associate of Savarkar's. Godse's explanation of his actions echoed Savarkar: he said he murdered Gandhi for his "false notions of Hindu-Muslim unity" and in fury over the secession of Pakistan. Savarkar was arrested and tried as a plotter in the murder. He denied all and was acquitted. That did not convince everybody. As the leader of the Mahasabha, who had praised the efficacy of violence and railed against Muslims, it was reasonable to suspect he had at least inspired Gandhi's killer. A.G. Noorani, author of a book on Savarkar and Godse, goes further. He draws a parallel to the Kensington murder of Wylie in 1909, saying the elder man had twice pressed others to pull the trigger. "I would definitely call him complicit in the assassination of Gandhi," he concludes. He points, too, to an official commission of inquiry into Gandhi's death, in the late 1960s, which drew on testimony unavailable at the original trial. It found the evidence was "destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group". Following Gandhi's murder the RSS was also banned, for a year. Yet the final reason why Savarkar should remain unacceptable in modern India goes beyond suspicion over Gandhi's murder. It lies in his attitude to his fellow, non-Hindu, Indians. In his own writing he relates joyfully how as a 12-year-old boy he led a gang of schoolmates to stone his village mosque and smash its windows and tiles, in the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots. Relating how "we vandalised the mosque to our heart's content", he adds that when confronted by Muslim boys, he and his pals wielded knives and sticks and chased them away.
Throughout his writing he sets out Muslims as savage, immoral, sensual and eager to destroy the Hindu way of life. In 1937 he wrote of there being "two antagonistic nations living side by side in India", an idea that relies on using religion as the defining characteristic of any Indian, one utterly against the secular constitution of India. And while he occasionally wrote admiringly of the political and religious fervour of Islam, or rather of Muslim political leaders, he did so to encourage his fellow Hindus to match or exceed it.
In India today the fear of communal clashes--between Hindus and Muslims--should not be overblown. But it is never far away. Especially before elections, parties exploit religious tensions. Those who promote hindutva and echo Savarkar whip up stories of "love jihad", alleging that Muslim men convert large numbers of Hindu women by seducing them. Earlier this month a BJP parliamentarian praised Godse as a "patriot" equal to Gandhi. Members of the increasingly influential RSS feel emboldened. Such majoritarian politics, when a larger religious group sets out to absorb or flatten a minority, is utterly destructive. One need only look at the failure of Pakistan as a reminder of that. Sarvarkar could be a brilliant, eloquent and progressive leader. He could also be extremist, violent and divisive. If his influence grows, India's tolerance and moderation will be at risk.
"Notwithstanding his...broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head," wrote Savarkar
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Savarkar (back row, second left) was arrested and tried as a plotter in Gandhi's murder. He was acquitted
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