Tech5: Hyundai's first non-Korean CEO, Lenovo's expansion outside China, Infosys Prize and more

Hyundai names José Muñoz president and CEO, first non-Korean at helm

Hyundai Motor Company has named José Muñoz as its new president and CEO, making him the first non-Korean to take the top job at the South Korean auto giant, which recently listed in Mumbai as well.

Munoz will succeed Jaehoon Chang, who is being promoted to vice chairman of the auto group, Hyundai said in a press release earlier today. The appointments will take effect on January 1.

Muñoz is tasked with extending Hyundai’s leadership in areas including electrification, diversified powertrain offerings and hydrogen technology, and raising the Korean company’s profile as a global brand, according to the release.

Muñoz, 59, who’s previously worked at Nissan and Toyota, joined Hyundai in 2019. A native of Spain and a US citizen, he has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Polytechnic University of Madrid and an Executive MBA from IE Business School in Madrid. He has also completed executive management programs from Cranfield School of Management in the UK and INSEAD Business School in France.

Yotta acquires cloud platform provider IndiQus adding capabilities

Yotta Data Services, which has shot into prominence in India for acquiring thousands of Nvidia GPUs for its data centre, has acquired IndiQus Technologies, a cloud platform provider. This expands Yotta’s cloud and AI infrastructure capabilities, the Mumbai company said in a press release on November 14. No details were provided on the terms of the deal.

IndiQus was founded in Delhi by Sunando Bhattacharya and K B Shiv Kumar in 2013. The bootstrapped company offers a software product called Apiculus, which enables cloud service providers, data centers and managed service providers to set up and manage their cloud business, according to IndiQus’s description of it on G2, a popular site for businesses to discover, compare and find reviews of software products.

Telecoms service providers are the company’s biggest customers. Providers in 17 countries in Asia, Middle East and Africa use Apiculus to build sovereign cloud operations. Customers include Bharti Airtel’s Nxtra, NTT and Tata Communications. IndiQus’s co-founders will take on the roles of chief revenue officer and chief innovation officer, respectively, at Yotta.

EVTOL startup ePlane Company raises $14 million in fresh funding

The ePlane Company, which is developing a vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) air taxi, has raised $14 million in fresh funding, co-led by Speciale Invest and Antares Ventures, the Chennai startup said in a press release on November 14.

Existing investors Micelio Mobility, Naval Ravikant, Java Capital, Samarthya Investment Advisors, Redstart (from Naukri), and Anicut also participated. The money will help ePlane to obtain global regulatory certifications and step up efforts to commercialise its manned aircraft, with flight testing planned for mid-2025.

Founder and CEO Satya Chakravarthy, a professor at IIT Madras, founded ePlane in 2019 with Pranjal Mehta, who later left the company. ePlane’s first passenger plane is envisioned as a two-seater aircraft that can ferry people typically intra-city and land in spaces as small as the parking area needed for a large SUV.

There is global interest in India’s potential as an air taxi market. In November 2023, InterGlobe Enterprises, the company that operates Indigo airlines, signed an MoU with Archer Aviation, a Silicon Valley-based maker of eVTOL aircraft to bring an air taxi service to India. That partnership is planning to use larger aircraft that can seat more passengers and make longer trips.

Infosys Prize winners named for 2024 in six categories

Winners of the Infosys Prize for the year 2024 were announced on November 14 in six categories covering STEM and humanities. The prize was instituted by the Infosys Science Foundation in 2009 and previous winners have gone on to achieve greater heights, including winning the Nobel Prize.

This year’s winners are Arun Chandrasekhar, Professor, Department of Economics, Stanford University, in the Economics category; Shyam Gollakota, Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington in Engineering and Computer Science; Mahmood Kooria, Lecturer, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, in Humanities and Social Sciences; Siddhesh Kamat, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune in Life Sciences; Neena Gupta, Professor in the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, in Mathematical Sciences; and Vedika Khemani, Associate Professor in the Physics Department at Stanford University, in Physical Sciences.

The Infosys Prize has grown in stature as an award in India that acknowledges excellence in science and research by those under 40. Each prize consists of a gold medal, a citation and a purse of USD 100,000. Previous winners have gone on to win international awards including the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, the Dan David Prize, the MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and the Marconi Prize.