Arvind's Newsletter

1.India will become the entertainment hub of the world: Mukesh Ambani

“The day is not far when India will become the entertainment hub of the world,” Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, said in his keynote address at the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES).

He added: “We are living in an era of global media renaissance when two tectonic shifts have changed the landscape of the creative industry globally.” The first is geo-economic, and the other is technological.

Ambani said that India’s media and entertainment industry stands at $28 billion and can easily reach $100 billion in the next decade, which will give birth to huge opportunities in employment and entrepreneurship in diverse fields.

And,YouTube paid ₹21,000 crore to Indian creators over the last three years

YouTube’s chief executive officer, Neal Mohan, called India a powerhouse in entertainment, as the company announced an investment of ₹850 crore in the next two years to accelerate the growth of India’s creator economy.

The company has paid ₹21,000 crore to Indian creators, artists, and media companies over the last three years.

He called India's emergence as a "Creator Nation", with over 100 million channels in India uploading content in the past year, and more than 15,000 of these surpassing one million subscribers. “Today, India isn't just a world leader for film and music — it's rapidly becoming what I'm excited to call a 'Creator Nation',” he added. 

Indian content is also finding a growing audience overseas. According to the company, videos produced in India generated 45 billion hours of watch time from viewers outside the country in the past year. 

2.Dixon, Inventec form joint venture to manufacture PCs and servers in India

Electronics manufacturing services company Dixon Technologies has entered into a joint venture agreement with Taiwanese IT hardware giant Inventec Corporation for manufacturing personal computers, components and servers in India.

The joint venture, Dixon IT Devices Private Limited, will focus on manufacturing notebook PC products, desktop PC products, including components, and servers within India, according to a regulatory filing.

Under the terms of the agreement, Dixon Technologies will hold a 60 per cent stake in the joint venture, while Inventec Corporation will own the remaining 40 per cent.

Inventec, established in 1975 and recognised as one of the world's top five PC original design manufacturers (ODMs), manufactures notebooks, desktops, all-in-one PCs, servers, and handheld devices.

3.Air India sees Pakistan airspace ban costing it $600 mn over 12 months, seeks aid

Air India expects to face around $600 million in additional costs if a ban from Pakistan's airspace lasts for a year, and has asked the central government to compensate it for the hit, a company letter seen by Reuters shows.

Air India on April 27 asked the Indian government for a "subsidy model" proportionate to the economic hit, estimating a loss of more than 50 billion Indian rupees ($591 million) for each year the ban lasts, according to a letter sent by the airline to the Civil Aviation Ministry seen by Reuters.

4.The US and Ukraine signed a long-anticipated minerals agreement.

Two months after their infamous White House fight, the US and Ukraine announced on Wednesday that they had finally struck a long-awaited minerals deal.

What’s in this deal? It creates a joint US-Ukraine investment fund to invest in the development of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals – which are used in electric vehicle batteries and other consumer and military technology – as well as oil and gas. Future US military support for Ukraine will be counted as part of Washington’s investment in the fund. Revenue from the extraction of natural resources will be split 50/50 between the two countries. The proceeds of the fund will not be used to reimburse the US for the roughly $120 billion in aid it has sent so far.

Will the deal help end the war? Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has argued the deal would give Washington a stake in Ukraine’s peaceful future, making it less likely that Trump would halt all US support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian invaders. Trump prides himself on his ability to cut big deals and will protect an agreement once signed. The president noted during a press event at the White House yesterday that the US presence in Ukraine “will keep a lot of bad actors out of the country.” That’s clearly what Kyiv is hoping for. The text of the deal recognises a “free, sovereign, and secure Ukraine."

But this deal, however lucrative for the US and useful for a Ukraine that is desperate to keep Trump onside, doesn’t change the reality that Kyiv and Moscow’s visions for Ukraine’s future are fundamentally incompatible. That said, anything that keeps Washington invested in Ukraine’s defense will be greeted as good news in Kyiv.

One last step. Ukraine’s parliament must still ratify the framework for the deal before it becomes law.

5.Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning project Worldcoin makes US debut

Sam Altman’s digital ID project World has launched in the US, making its controversial iris-scanning technology and cryptocurrency token available in the country as Donald Trump’s administration embraces the digital asset sector.

The group aims to make the US its core market after initially rolling out the product outside the country in 2023, partly because of the Joe Biden administration’s more hostile attitude to crypto. Altman, who is also chief executive of $300bn artificial intelligence company OpenAI, lamented at the time that his venture, recently rebranded from Worldcoin, would be “World minus the US coin”.

Trump has since pledged to make America the “crypto capital of the planet”.

Announcing the US rollout at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, Altman said: “I’m a very proud American, I think America should lead innovation, not fight it off.”

6.Google’s Gemini AI could soon be built into iPhones, says CEO Sundar Pichai

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai has voiced confidence that Gemini, the company’s flagship artificial intelligence platform, could soon be offered as a built-in option on Apple’s iPhones. Speaking on Wednesday during his testimony in the US government’s antitrust trial against Google, Pichai said he was hopeful an agreement with Apple could be reached by the middle of the year.

7.Tesla Chair denies report on plans to look for new CEO

Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm on Thursday denied a Wall Street Journal report that said the electric car maker’s board of directors contacted executive search firms to look for a replacement for Elon Musk as the company’s CEO.

In a post on Tesla’s X account, Denholm called the Journal’s report “absolutely false” and said the board is “highly confident” in Musk’s ability as CEO.

The Journal earlier reported that Tesla’s board reached out to several executive search firms about a month ago. Around the time that the conversations with those firms began, board members told Musk—who was working on the Trump administration’s government efficiency initiatives—that he needed to spend more time at Tesla, according to the Journal.

8.A Global Flourishing Study Finds That Young Adults, Well, Aren’t

New data collected from more than 200,000 people across the world shows that young people aren’t as happy as they used to be.

The happiness curve is collapsing.

For decades, research showed that the way people experienced happiness across their lifetimes looked like a U-shaped curve. Happiness tended to be high when they were young, then dipped in midlife, only to rise again as they grew old.

But recent surveys suggest that young adults aren’t as happy as they used to be, and that U-shaped curve is starting to flatten.

This pattern has shown up yet again in a new study, one of a collection of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Mental Health. They are the first publications based on the inaugural wave of data from the Global Flourishing Study, a collaboration between researchers at Harvard and Baylor University.

9.The BBC deepfaked Agatha Christie to teach a writing course

BBC Studios is using AI to recreate the voice and likeness of late detective story author Agatha Christie for the purpose of featuring it in digital classes that teaches prospective writers “how to craft the perfect crime novel.” A real life actor, Vivien Keene, is standing in for Christie, with her appearance augmented by AI to resemble the author.

The new class, called Agatha Christie Writing, is available today on BBC Maestro, the company’s $10-per-month online course service that usually gives you access to content from living professionals teaching things like graphic design, bread making, time management, and more.

Deepfaked Agatha Christie’s teachings are “in Agatha’s very own words,” her great-grandson James Prichard said in a press release. It uses insights from the real Christie and is scripted by academics — so the actual content appears to be human-made and not generated from a model that’s been fed all of her work. BBC collaborated with Agatha Christie Estate and used restored audio recordings, licensed images, interviews, and her own writings to make this all happen.

10.How India and Pakistan’s Military, Nuclear Arsenals Stack Up: Bloomberg

 Tensions rising between India and Pakistan over the deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir, with India's government under pressure to retaliate and limited conflict remaining a possibility.

India has a larger military and spends more on its military than Pakistan, but Kashmir's rugged geography limits military options for both sides, and India also has to defend its border with China.

The stakes are high due to the countries' nuclear arsenals, with both sides working to refine delivery systems for warheads and India maintaining a "no first use" policy, while Pakistan reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first.