Battery maker VFlowTech raises nearly $21 million to ride India's clean energy aim
VFlowTech said on Wednesday it also plans to use the funds to hire more people in engineering, research and operations, to build local supply chain efficiencies and boost recycling of vanadium, a mineral utilized for making vanadium redox flow batteries used for large-scale energy storage applications.
India aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070 as it targets greater adoption of cleaner fuel sources. New Delhi aims to reach at least 500 gigawatts of clean energy by 2030 against 172 GW currently.
The funding round was led by Granite Asia and had Antares Ventures, Pappas Capital and others among investors, the company said.
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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Spud-tacular: How India became a french fry superpower
French fries turned around the fortunes of Jitesh comes from a family of farmers in Gujarat in the northwest of India. Traditionally they grew cotton, but the returns were poor. Droughts in 2001 and 2002 made the situation worse and the Patels knew things had to change. "We realised that we had to start growing something that does not require lot of water," Mr Patel they experimented with potatoes. Initially they tried table potatoes; the kind available in local markets and cooked at home, but the returns weren't much better than by the arrival of french fry makers in their state, in 2007 they started growing the varieties of potato used by the food industry. It turned out to be a winning strategy."Since then, no looking back," says Mr Patel. Mr Patel is part of India's rise to potato superpower status. It is already the world's second biggest spud it's the export market, particularly of french fries, that's really flying. Gujarat has become India's capital of french fry production, home to huge factories churning out chips, including facilities belonging to Canadian giant McCain Foods and India's biggest maker of French Fries, HyFun Gujarat fries are sent all over over the world. But the most important markets at the moment are in Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, according to Devendra K, who has been studying the potato market for many years. In February of this year, monthly exports of Indian frozen fries broke the 20,000 tonnes barrier for the first time. In the year to February, India's fry exports totalled 181,773 tonnes, a 45% increase compared with the previous success is partly down to price."Indian frozen fries are noted for being competitively priced in the international market," says Devendra. He says that in 2024, the average price of Indian fries was even cheaper than those from China. For the french fry makers, it's boom time."India has emerged as a significant player and exporter due to its abundant agricultural produce, cost-effective manufacturing, and growing focus on quality standards," says Haresh Karamchandani, CEO of HyFun has seven plants processing potatoes in Gujarat with another two coming online by 2026."Urbanisation, increasing disposable incomes and changing lifestyles have promoted the consumption of frozen foods, not only in the household but also in food service establishments," says Mr Karamchandani. Meeting that demand has required decades of innovation from Patel studied agriculture at university and has been applying science to farming ever since. Along with friends and family they are continuously trying to improve their potato yield."We are a well educated bunch of farmers, so we keep trying new methods," he of their first innovations, back in 2003, was to switch to a drip system of irrigation, rather than flooding fields with keep the soil productive the fields are rested over the summer, and fertilised with cow focus now is finding the perfect potato plant."We are in the process of experimenting with seeds and soon we will have a new variety," he says. Jain Irrigation Systems is a large agricultural technology company. As well as selling irrigation equipment, it has teams of technicians developing seeds for agriculture, including potato use a set of techniques known as tissue culture. It's a way of cloning plants, with desirable traits and eliminating disease. It involves growing small pieces of plant tissue in a controlled laboratory environment to create virus-free plantlets. These plantlets can then be used to produce more seed potatoes through methods like taking cuttings."Potato seeds destined for future seed production undergo meticulous breeding practices under the supervision of breeders," says Vijay Singh, vice president of marketing at the issue they are tackling at the moment concerns a variety of potatoes used to make chips. Farmers found that by November the potato crop starts to go brown because of its sugar content. "Companies like us who are into tissue culture are trying to come up with a new variety to overcome the challenges that the industry is facing," says Mr Singh. While Indian farmers are working on improving their yields, investment is needed elsewhere in the frozen food particular, firms need to be able to store and transport goods at sub-zero cold storage facilities have been built, but more are needed."Only about 10–15% of India's cold storage facilities are suitable for storing frozen foods," says Vijay Kumar Nayak, co-founder of Indo Agri Foods, an exporter of Indian food. "These facilities are unevenly distributed, heavily concentrated in a few states, leaving rural and remote regions severely is a problem as well. "There is a notable shortage of specialised refrigerated trucks and containers, making temperature-controlled transportation extremely difficult and increasing the risk of spoilage," he says. A reliable electricity supply is also essential."Frequent power outages in many parts of the country increase the chances of spoilage and make running a reliable frozen food supply chain a daunting task," says Mr Nayak."Indian companies face intense competition in export markets from countries like China, Thailand and Brazil. These nations benefit from more advanced logistics, infrastructure, and production systems," he points out. Back at his Gujarat farm Mr Patel is happy that the chip makers moved in. "Gujarat has become a food processing hub. Most of the farmers, including me, have become contract farmers which gives us security and good money for our yield," he says.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Japan's minority government faces election snub as economic storm brews
TOKYO, July 18 (Reuters) - Japan's shaky minority government is poised for another setback in an upper house vote on Sunday, an outcome that could jolt investor confidence in the world's fourth largest economy and complicate tariff talks with the United States. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for most of the post-war period, and its partner Komeito, are forecast to lose their majority in a repeat of last year's election for the more-powerful lower house. The ruling coalition needs to win 50 seats of the 125 up for grabs in order to retain its majority. While the vote will not directly determine whether Ishiba's government falls, investors are nervous it will leave him beholden to opposition parties advocating fiscal largesse that could exacerbate mass selling of Japan's government bonds. In a worst case scenario, some analysts say Ishiba may have to resign, unleashing political drama as Tokyo heads for an August 1 deadline to win reprieve from punishing import levies set by its largest trading partner, the United States. "If he had an overwhelming loss, I think he would have to resign," said David Boling, director for Japan and Asian Trade at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. "That then creates a lot of questions about who replaces him and what impact that has on the US-Japan trade negotiations." Other financial and political analysts, such as Joseph Kraft of Rorschach Advisory in Tokyo, say the LDP is unlikely to opt for a leadership change at a pivotal moment in talks on tariffs hammering key industries such as automakers. In a sign of that urgency, Ishiba will take a break from campaigning on Friday to hold talks with Washington's chief tariff negotiator and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is visiting Japan for the World Expo in Osaka. More likely is that Ishiba will seek to either broaden his coalition or strike informal deals with opposition parties to keep his government functioning after the election, Kraft said. That prospect has made investors nervous. Inflation has been a killer issue for Ishiba, as it recently has been for incumbents elsewhere. The price of rice, which has doubled since last year, has become a lightning rod for voter discontent. In response, opposition parties have promised tax cuts and welfare spending to soften the blow, while the LDP, with one eye on a very jittery government bond market, has been calling for fiscal restraint. Any opposition deals to weaken that restraint will only heighten investor nervousness about Japan's ability to refinance the world's largest debt pile and hamper the Bank of Japan's long-held goal of normalising monetary policy. But not only parties advocating for more spending have chipped away at LDP support. The far-right Sanseito, espousing anti-foreigner rhetoric once confined to the political fringe, has been the surprise performer of the campaign. Birthed on YouTube spreading anti-vax conspiracy theories five years ago, the party may win 10 to 15 seats, polls show. That would herald the arrival of a new force of populist politics that has yet to take root in Japan as it has in the United States and Europe. One reason the LDP has stayed so long in power, analysts say, is because it has served as a "broad church" for political views. But bringing into the fold the likes of Sanseito may trigger a deeper crisis of faith. "If the party (LDP) goes too far right, it loses the centrists," said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation think tank in Tokyo. "But without the right wing, it has other problems. It's a balancing act and a tough one."
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Is Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust worth buying?
T he emerging markets category is one of those asset buckets beloved of fund managers but it doesn't always make huge sense to end-investors looking for a convincing theme. Not much connects India with Chile, say, or the United Arab Emirates with Taiwan. The very fact that the investment world categorises wildly diverse developing nations in this way gives it a kind of logic, however. Flows matter. If big institutions allocate more to the emerging markets bucket, everything in the bucket benefits. And if the recent rebalancing of portfolios away from the super-dominant US carries on, every other market can expect a bit of a boost, including emerging markets. A wider rethink about the asset class has been a long time coming. From about 2010 until very recently emerging markets had seriously unperformed, and the bull and bear cycles can last a long time. Emerging markets boomed in the 1980s, lagged in the 1990s and boomed again in the 2000s.
