P V Sindhu falters at semifinals again at All England championships
Birmingham, Mar 20: An erratic P V Sindhu suffered yet another semifinal defeat at the prestigious All England Championships as she went down tamely in straight games to sixth seed Pornpawee Chochuwong of Thailand in the women's singles here on Saturday.
Sindhu, the reigning world champion, couldn't match the pace, power and precision of her younger world number 11 rival Chochuwong and lost 17-21 9-21 in a match that lasted 43 minutes.
"I think it was her day, everything she was hitting was on the line, I just couldn't do anything about it. Overall, I should've controlled my unforced errors, maybe things could've been different," Sindhu said.
"I knew it was going to be a good match, she's not an easy player. Her strokes are really good and she's going to be a really good player."
The world no. 7 Indian had also lost at the semifinal at the 2018 edition of the tournament.
"Everybody aims to be in the final, it's over for now so I have to learn from my mistakes and take the positives. I don't have a tournament for another month so I have time to prepare and come back stronger," Sindhu, the Olympic silver medallist, said.
Sindhu, seeded fifth, came into the semifinal contest with a 4-1 head-to-head lead over the 23-year-old Chochuwong, whom she had beaten at the World Tour Finals in January.
But all that statistics didn't matter as Chochuwong showed immaculate defence and agility to outclass the Indian.
In scenes similar to her Swiss Open final loss to Olympic champion Carolina Marin, Sindhu once again looked subdued against an opponent, who played at a searing pace.
Perhaps the 76-minute quarterfinal battle against Japan's Akane Yamaguchi took a toll on Sindhu as Chochuwong completely dominated the proceedings, leaving the Indian to do the catch up act.
Sindhu opened up a 3-1 lead early on but she made a few judgement errors and Chochuwong also played a few good shots to take a 8-5 lead.
The young Thai used her cross-court returns to good affect, leading 11-6 at the break. Chochuwong stepped up the pace and tried to run Sindhu to the corners to lead 14-7.
Sindhu reeled off four straight points next before a wide return made it 11-15. The Indian narrowed it down to 13-15 after the Thai missed the line. Two attacking returns and it was 17-13 for Chochuwong but Sindhu kept snapping at her heels, making it 16-17 with a cross-court smash.
But Chochuwong again moved to 19-16 with Sindhu going wide. A terrific net return gave the Thai four game points. She sent one to the net before Sindhu hit long to hand over the opening game to her rival.
In the second game, Chochuwong took a 4-1 lead and though she committed few unforced errors, she managed to lead 4-3.
The young Thai surged ahead, reeling off six points on the trot to make it 10-3. She held a massive seven-point cushion at the break.
It was mostly a one way traffic after that as Sindhu looked resigned to her fate. Chochuwong quickly took a 18-9 lead. Another winner and it was 11 match points for Chochuwong and she sealed it comfortably.
On Friday, Sindhu had defeated Yamaguchi 16-21 21-16 21-19 in an intriguing quarterfinal match to make it to the last eight.
"I am playing against her after quite a long time. I'm sure she would have trained very hard. The match was a good, tough long match," she had said.
Sindhu had played an aggressive game but unforced errors allowed the Japanese to jump to a 11-6 lead, a deficit she couldn't erase as Yamaguchi pocketed the first game.
In the second game, Sindhu moved to 6-2 with some superb shots. She then led 8-4 with the Japanese missing the lines twice. Sindhu got five game points and won the game easily.
In the decider, both were level at 15-15 but Sindhu made it 19-18 and then grabbed the match points with Yamaguchi going wide. The Japanese then hit the net as Sindhu won the match.
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Amazon to make mega-investment of USD 35 billion in India by 2030 across its business
New Delhi (PTI): E-commerce giant Amazon plans to make a mega-investment of USD 35 billion, over Rs 3.14 lakh crore, in India by 2030 across its businesses with a focus on AI-driven digitization, export growth and job creation, a senior company official said on Wednesday.
Making the announcement during the Amazon Smbhav Summit, Senior VP Emerging Markets, Amit Agarwal, said the company has set a target to quadruple exports from India to USD 80 billion from about USD 20 billion it has facilitated as of now and create an additional one million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs by 2030.
"Amazon to date has invested USD 40 billion in India since 2010. Now we will invest another USD 35 billion by 2030 across all our businesses in India," Agarwal said.
Amazon's investment plan is 2 times of Microsoft's investment plan of USD 17.5 billion and close to 2.3 times that of Google's USD 15 billion investment plan by 2030.
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Agarwal said the company has invested USD 40 billion in India to date and is the largest foreign investor in India, according to a Keystone report compiled from publicly available data.
In May 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest USD 12.7 billion in India by 2030 into its local cloud and AI infrastructure across Telangana and Maharashtra. The company has already invested USD 3.7 billion in India between 2016 and 2022.
Agarwal said that the company has invested at scale towards building physical and digital infrastructure, including fulfilment centres, transportation networks, data centres, digital payments infrastructure and technology development.
According to the Keystone report, Amazon has digitized over 12 million small businesses and enabled USD 20 billion in cumulative ecommerce exports, while supporting approximately 2.8 million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs across industries in India in 2024.
To push export growth from India, Amazon launched a manufacturing-focused initiative, "Accelerate Exports", designed to connect digital entrepreneurs with trusted manufacturers while enabling manufacturers to become successful global sellers.
As part of the program, Amazon will host on-ground onboarding drives in over 10 manufacturing clusters across India, including Tirupur, Kanpur, and Surat.
At the Smbhav summit, Amazon announced a key partnership with the Apparel Export Promotion Council of India to expand and scale the program nationwide.
