- Arvind's Newsletter
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- Arvind's Newsletter
1.Amazon to introduce 15-minute deliveries in Bengaluru this month
Amazon is taking the fight to India’s quick commerce startups. Starting this December, the e-commerce giant will roll out 15-minute delivery as a pilot in Bengaluru, targeting top-selling items like groceries and daily essentials.
The move marks Amazon’s response to growing competition from ultra-fast delivery players, a segment reshaping consumer expectations in India.
“Prime Members can enjoy 4 million products the next day; 1 million products, same day, several hundred thousand in a few hours. Starting this December we will take the top-selling products and make them available in 15 minutes.”
2.Google's 2024 search trends: IPL to K-dramas, AQI near me, what Indians searched most
It’s that time of the year, when everyone wants to look back. Google, the search giant has come up with its list of topics that were most searched by Indian internet users in 2024.
Google says that globally, there are billions of searches a day on its platform -- and 15 per cent of them were new.
This year, searches spanned a fascinating spectrum -- a vibrant mix of sports fervour (IPL to Olympics) and entertainment love across boundaries (Stree 2 to K-dramas), to also exploring indie music hits (Nadaaniyan), 'demure and mindful' (and hilarious!) memes, and quirky (or Pookie!) lingo.
3.Salary, wage expenses growing faster than revenues for India Inc
Expenses on salaries and wages by firms in India have grown faster than net sales (gross interest income in the case of lenders) in nine of the last 15 years.
This has led to a steady rise in the share of net sales that companies spend as employee expenses. The ratio of expenses on salaries and wages expenses to net sales improved (which means it declined numerically) during the post-pandemic boom in demand growth in FY22 and FY23, but employee expenses are again growing faster than revenues, eating into companies’ margins and profits.
4.From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician: How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself
Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has dropped that nom de guerre associated with his jihadist past, and been using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in official communiques issued since Thursday, ahead of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.
This move is part of Jolani's effort to bolster his legitimacy in a new context, as his Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), leading other rebel factions, announces the capture of the Syrian capital, Damascus, solidifying its control over much of the country.
Jolani's transformation is not recent, but has been carefully cultivated over the years, evident not only in his public statements and interviews with international outlets but also in his evolving appearance.
5.Google has built a powerful new quantum computing chip But it doesn’t have any real-world applications—yet.
Researchers at Google reached a major milestone in the race to build practical quantum computers, revealing a device with an error rate that gets lower as the number of qubits increases. The company says the breakthrough could allow it to build a commercially viable quantum computer by the end of the decade.
Quantum computers rely on individual qubits, which harness the power of quantum mechanics but are highly susceptible to things like temperature fluctuations, potentially introducing errors. Google's Willow chip effectively spreads the quantum information across more than 100 qubits—making one, single "logical" qubit.
To demonstrate, researchers performed a benchmark calculation using Willow in about five minutes. In contrast, a supercomputer would take 714 trillion times longer than the age of the universe, which is about 14 billion years old, to perform the same computation. Researchers will now work to scale up multiple logical qubits connected together.
6.Merger shakes up advertising industry
Omnicom Group is acquiring Interpublic Group in a roughly $13B deal that would create the world's largest advertising agency valued at more than $30B. The companies are behind iconic marketing campaigns like “Got Milk” for the California Milk Processor Board, “Because I’m Worth It” for L’Oreal, and “Think Different” for Apple.
Under the terms of the stock-for-stock transaction, Omnicom shareholders will own 60.6% of the combined company, while Interpublic shareholders will own 39.4%. The combined entity will operate under the Omnicom name and trade under the OMC ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange. The deal is expected to have an annual cost savings of $750M and is set to close in the second half of 2025.
Omnicom is the third-largest advertising holding company globally by revenue, generating roughly $15B in 2023, while Interpublic follows with roughly $11B. Combined, the two agencies will surpass current industry leaders: UK-based WPP, which reported approximately $18B in revenue in 2023, and Paris-based Publicis Groupe, which reported nearly $16B in revenue.
7.How WhatsApp ate the world
WhatsApp is the world’s most widely used messaging app; the company says it has 2 billion daily users. These users send more than 100 billion messages every day in 60 languages across 180 countries. Some 400 million of those users are in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market, followed by another 120 million in Brazil.
WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of “everything app.”
8.Emilia Pérez” leads all films with 10 nominations for the 2025 Golden Globe Awards; "The Bear" tops on the TV side with five nods
“Emilia Pérez” has a lot more to sing and dance about, raking in 10 nominations at Monday’s 2025 Golden Globe Awards nominations.
Jacques Audiard’s charming drug cartel musical, acquired by Netflix out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, scored the most nods out of any feature film contender. It’s up for best motion picture – musical or comedy, director for Audiard, supporting actress for Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez, actress for Karla Sofia Gascón, screenplay, original score and more.
Here is full list of all Golden Globe nominations by category
9.Parmy Olson wins FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year for Supremacy
Supremacy, Parmy Olson’s timely and in-depth exploration of the rivalry between the founders of artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Google DeepMind, has won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.
The book is the fourth winner in the past five years of the prize to focus on technology and the business, economic, social and geopolitical implications of the sector’s rapid expansion.
In Supremacy, Bloomberg columnist Olson focuses on the competition between Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, and Sam Altman, his counterpart at OpenAI. Khalaf, who chaired the judging panel, said Olson “brilliantly frames the development of artificial intelligence as a thrilling race to master the technology, build a business, and dominate the technological future”.
The book also explores the tension between the entrepreneurs’ initial lofty ambitions to ensure AI serves the world, and the commercial pressures exerted by their deep-pocketed backers, Google and Microsoft.
