Arvind's Newsletter

1. Anil D Ambani: Is he back?: Economic Times

Armed with defence and solar portfolios, Reliance Infra and Reliance Power are once again making waves bagging big deals and striking significant partnership.

After the IPO of Reliance Power, ADAG group had market capitalisation a whopping Rs 4 lakh crores for businesses that ranged from telecom to mutual funds. But a lot of water has flown since then.

Cut to today.

Many of the Reliance ADAG (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group) companies such as Reliance Communications, Reliance Capital and the media businesses are buried under the debris of debt. Reliance Power (R Power) and its parent Reliance Infrastructure (R-Infra) are the only entities that are keeping the group going. With a combined market capitalisation of around INR33,000 crore, even these are pale shadow of the past.

Yet, Anil Ambani, the founder and chairman of Reliance Group, the title he uses these days instead of ADAG during the glory days, has been back in action in the last few months.

Clean energy and defence are emerging as the two growth areas Ambani seems to have picked to bring back the lost mojo into the group. Several tenders have been won and partnerships inked in these areas by the group entities recently.

Last week, Ambani announced a strategic partnership with German ammunition maker Rheinmetall AG to supply propellants and explosives. R-Infra’s arm Reliance Defence will build a new factory in the 1000-acre Dhirubhai Ambani Defence City (DADC) the company is building in Ratnagiri’s Watad Industrial Area in Maharashtra. This is the third major alliance of the group after similar tie-ups with Dassault Aviation and Thales of France.

Can this help regain investor trust? 

2.BP’s Castrol Unit Draws Interest From Aramco, Reliance, Apollo and Lone Star: Bloomberg

BP's Castrol lubricant business is attracting interest from energy companies and buyout firms, with a potential sale value of $8-10 billion. The companies that have shown initial interest includes Reliance Industries Ltd. and buyout firms such as Apollo Global Management Inc. and Lone Star Funds, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The suitors would join the world’s biggest energy company, Saudi Aramco, in considering bids for all or part of the business. The process is still in the early stages, with initial bids expected in several weeks, so price and outcome remain open, the people said. Some suitors could team up as well.

The sale is part of BP's corporate revamp and would help the company's deleveraging target, but may also remove a resilient component of its earnings in a weakening oil market.

It will be interesting to see if Reliance bid for the whole or only the India business of Castrol. The latter seems more likely.

3.Governments globally are growing increasingly alarmed over China’s apparent hacking capabilities.

The Czech government blamed a cyberattack against its foreign ministry on a Chinese state sponsored group; the European Union and NATO both condemned “malicious” Chinese cyber-espionage.

And India’s government recently imposed new rules requiring manufacturers of CCTV cameras — including Chinese, Korean, and American companies — to submit their equipment, software, and source code for testing. The policy was largely driven by hacking fears linked to Beijing, Reuters reported: Chinese firms make up some 30% of the Indian surveillance camera market, and “there’s always an espionage risk,” a former government cybersecurity official said. But makers of surveillance gear have pushed back, warning the rules are onerous and could impact supply.

4.Airbus-Tata Chopper Unit Lands in Karnataka: Economic Times

Airbus, the European aerospace major, and Tata Advanced Systems (TASL), the aerospace arm of the nearly $400-billion Tata Group, have decided to set up the final assembly line (FAL) for the H125 helicopters at Kolar in Karnataka, people aware of the developments told ET.

The facility will be India’s first privately led helicopter assembly line, boosting the Make-in-India programme that also seeks self-reliance in aerospace manufacturing as a key objective of the dedicated scheme, experts said.

The factory will produce Airbus’ best-selling H125 helicopter from its civil range for India and the neighbouring countries, said the people cited above.

It will be the fourth such facility in the world — after France, the US and Brazil.

5.US trade court says Donald Trump’s global tariffs are illegal: Financial Times

“A US court has ruled that Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff scheme is illegal, in a blow to the White House that could throw the president’s global trade policy into disarray.

The US Court of International Trade found on Wednesday that Trump did not have the authority to use the emergency economic powers legislation that he cited when he imposed sweeping global tariffs last month.

The ruling by the panel of judges is a dramatic twist in the trade wars that Trump has launched since returning to the presidency, and comes as his administration is racing to cut trade deals after suspending the imposition of most of its higher tariffs.

While the Trump administration said it would launch an appeal, the ruling will embolden opponents of the tariffs in corporate America, foreign capitals and the US Congress. The judgment affects levies announced on April 2, including a baseline 10 per cent tariff and higher so-called reciprocal duties on many countries, but not sectoral tariffs that he has also imposed on steel and car imports.”

Here is the NYT coverage: “It was not clear precisely when and how the tariff collections would grind to a halt. The decision gave the executive branch up to 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process of halting them. Shortly after the ruling, the Justice Department told the court that it planned to file an appeal.”

Trump has plenty of other ways in which he can impose duties, experts noted. “This ruling represents a setback,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote, “but might not change the final outcome for most major US trading partners.”

6.US targets Chinese students: Politico

The U.S. will “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday in an escalation of the Trump administration’s conflicts with China and academia.

Rubio’s announcement did not specify how many students would lose their ability to study in the U.S., but suggested the effort would focus on people with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or those studying sensitive subjects.

He said the US would also revise criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong.

For nearly a decade, the FBI and other security officials have raised increasing concerns about the potential for Chinese students — particularly those in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields — to help Chinese intelligence services conduct espionage in the US.

7.Toyota mounts software challenge to Tesla and Chinese rivals: Financial Times

Toyota will deliver a homegrown operating system with one of its best-selling vehicles by next March, in a bid by the world’s largest carmaker to catch up with Tesla and Chinese rivals’ software lead.

The in-house system, known as Arene, will provide over-the-air updates to help drivers with manoeuvres such as lane keeping and parking, as well as multimedia and entertainment features. It will debut in the next-generation RAV4 sport utility vehicle.

The software platform is central to Toyota’s efforts to lay the groundwork for autonomous driving, accumulate driving data and catch up with competitors that have banked on the provision of digital services — paid and unpaid — to add value to cars.

It is the first fruit of seven years of labour by the entity that became Woven by Toyota, a subsidiary established by the automaker to boost software development competitiveness and break from its slower-moving car manufacturing culture.

While Japanese automakers excel at manufacturing robust cars, they have fallen behind on software. Toyota was ranked third-bottom last year on Gartner’s digital automaker index, which tracks the potential for groups to monetise their software services. Electric-vehicle makers such as Tesla and China’s Nio and Xpeng are far ahead.

8.Elite American universities are adapting their financial playbooks to deal with the Trump administration’s escalating threats against higher education: Bloomberg

Schools including Harvard University and MIT have taken on more than $4 billion in additional debt since March to protect their finances amid the government’s proposed funding cuts — a “recession-style” strategy, Bloomberg reported.

And to blunt the impact of Trump’s budget package that would raise taxes on university endowments, colleges are rethinking their investment plans: They are considering pursuing fewer short-term gains, and instead shifting money toward investments like private equity, which take longer to realise gains, The Wall Street Journal reported.

9.Only 6 Percent of Gen Z Workers Want to Be the Boss: Harper’s Bazaar

Is Gen Z dealing with an ambition crisis?

According to Deloitte’s 2025 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey, only 6 percent of Gen Z and millennial workers say their primary career goal is to reach a senior leadership position. On the surface, this may sound like a lack of drive—but it’s not. Instead, it signals a generational shift away from traditional career aspirations toward something more sustainable, balanced, and personally fulfilling.

Career coach Kori Burkholder, who has spent nearly a decade helping early- to mid-career professionals, says she sees the same trend with her clients. “Nobody that I’ve ever worked with is lazy,” she notes. “They’re all ambitious. They all want to work and succeed. It’s just a different kind of success [they’re after] now.”

10.YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It’s Coming for the Sitcom: Bloomberg

For two decades, YouTube has tried to convince advertisers that it’s the future of entertainment. The pitch has always been simple enough: “Young people don’t watch cable; they watch YouTube.” It doesn’t exactly require a PowerPoint presentation.

But YouTube has had problems making its case. The first is that the vast majority of videos on the site aren’t filmed to Scorsese-like standards. “The biggest knock against creator content is that it’s low quality, s---, crap, slop, garbage,” Doug Shapiro, a former executive at Time Warner, wrote in December. That’s sort of inconsequential, he argued, since most people aren’t watching random YouTube slop—they’re watching the most popular slop. Which leads to YouTube’s second issue: The most watched channels haven’t always been hospitable to advertisers.

YouTube has spent the past few years trying to make itself the centerpiece of the living room. The company teamed up with TV manufacturers so watching YouTube on a TV became as easy as watching it on your phone or laptop. People can now leave comments and subscribe to YouTube channels on a TV, and creators can arrange videos as though they’re episodes of a show. YouTube will remind viewers where they left off with a program and feed them the next episode—rather than have the algorithm offer a similar video, often from another creator. YouTube also tailored its advertising for TV viewing, creating more space between ad breaks. The company introduced pause ads, which show commercials when a viewer stops a video, and it introduced a live-TV service, YouTube TV, that includes the channels in a cable bundle—crucially, the ones that show the NFL—as well as a storefront that offers paid streaming services such as Max and Paramount+.

YouTube is now the TV service of choice for viewers of all ages. People in the US spend more time watching YouTube on a TV than on a phone or computer, according to the company. Not including YouTube TV, the service accounted for over 12% of TV viewing in April, more than all of Walt Disney Co.’s TV networks and streaming services combined, according to Nielsen. About 40% of viewers are age 18 to 49, the demographic most appealing to advertisers, Nielsen reported. “When people turn on the TV, they turn on YouTube,” says YouTube Chief Executive Officer Neal Mohan. While linear TV ad sales have flatlined, YouTube has more than doubled its ad sales over the last five years, from $15 billion in 2019 to $36 billion in 2024, according to earnings reports. YouTube now generates more sales from advertising than all four broadcast networks combined.

Hollywood executives still try to portray YouTube as a slopfest. In a recent public appearance, Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos said YouTube is a place people kill time, whereas his service is a place where people spend time. But these comments now reek more of fear than confidence. As much as Hollywood has worried about labor strife, artificial intelligence and the demise of moviegoing, the rise of YouTube is a much more immediate and real threat.

Read on (Gift article)