Arvind's Newsletter

1.Inside Capgemini’s $3 billion deal for WNS: All you need to know: Economic Times and others

Global IT services company Capgemini is shelling out $3.3 billion to acquire WNS, a business process management services firm. Both the companies have a large employee base in India and consider local IT services vendors as their competition.

The acquisition marks an important milestone for Capgemini, WNS but also the IT services industry in general. The deal can trigger consolidation in the industry, write Debangana Ghosh and Reshab Shaw of Moneycontrol. Legacy IT services can look to gain AI capabilities and deepen their domain expertise through acquisitions.

Capgemini is acquiring WNS to accelerate its agentic AI-powered services offerings. WNS has developed a set of sector specific AI-led solutions and has earlier this year acquired Kipi.ai to strengthen analytics and AI capabilities.

Indian IT services have been talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and are investing and training their employees on it. But none have acquired a company of WNS's size to scale up their offerings in new technologies as yet.

2.Smart devices to be next bastion for UPI with IoT-ready payment system: Business Standard

India’s real-time payments system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), is getting a smart upgrade. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is developing an Internet of Things (IoT)-ready version of UPI that will allow automated payments through smart appliances, wearables, connected vehicles, and more, according to two sources in the know.

With this upgrade, smart devices — like refrigerators, washing machines, connected cars, and even smartwatches — could initiate UPI payments on their own. Think of parking fees paid directly from your car, metro tickets via a wearable, or a subscription renewed automatically through your smart TV — all without opening a banking or third-party UPI app.

What sets the new system apart is its ability to transact across gadgets. Currently, all UPI transactions must be executed through a mobile phone. The upcoming feature will allow devices to process payments using a separate virtual payment address tied to the user’s primary UPI ID. This opens the door for embedded transactions on smart devices, powered by delegated payments via UPI Circle.

3.India’s drone industry grows rapidly but faces critical rare-earth magnet dependency: Mint

India’s drone ecosystem is ramping up local manufacturing amid rising defence demand and policy push, and a swelling base of domestic startups. While there’s growing domestic capability in airframes, batteries, and software, critical components such as flight controllers, sensors, and motors continue to be largely import-dependent.

A key vulnerability lies in the reliance on rare earth magnets—essential for high-performance drone motors, which India currently lacks the capacity to produce at scale, industry executives said. With China tightening export controls on these magnets, especially for defence applications, industry executives warn this could become a bottleneck in India’s goal of building a fully self-reliant drone manufacturing ecosystem.

Currently, India is home to 515 drone-related companies, with 263 focused specifically on component manufacturing. In terms of funding, drone startups secured $108 million in 2024 and have already raised $39 million in 2025, according to Tracxn data. India is also set to roll out a $234 million incentive scheme aimed at boosting domestic production of drones for both civil and defence use, according to a Reuters report.

4.Will Trade War Make South India the Next Manufacturing Hub? Bloomberg

Delta Electronics paid 650 million rupees for the naming rights to the Delta Electronics Bommasandra station in Bengaluru, as part of its five-year drive to establish a manufacturing hub in southern India.

According to Benjamin Lin, president of Delta's operations in India, the company chose to locate its newest factory in Tamil Nadu after the state offered incentives, including a 10-year income tax exemption, and because of its robust infrastructure.

Besides the spanking-new research-and-development center where Lin and about 400 other Taiwanese and Indian engineers work, the company operates a 125-acre manufacturing facility in Krishnagiri, in the adjacent state of Tamil Nadu. That site churns out electric vehicle chargers as well as equipment that will be used to make iPhones by contract manufacturers for Apple Inc., which has announced plans to source most of its US-destined smartphones from India.

Delta operates a total of 19 factories across Asia—mainly in Taiwan, with two in China and three in Thailand. Yet more and more, customers are asking the Taiwanese company to source products from its plants in India, Lin says.

Lin says that customers are asking Delta to source products from its plants in India due to growing demand for more diverse, less China-dependent supply chains, and that the company is following the customer, saying "we follow the customer, and if the customer asks to move out of China, we move out of China."

So far, much of the new investment is flowing into the country’s more prosperous, more industrialized southern states. Local officials are doing everything within their power to welcome the new arrivals, including fast-tracking infrastructure projects and providing tax incentives, which may help India shake off its reputation as a difficult place to do business. “

5.Women's enrolment rises sharply at IIMs as B-schools push for diversity: Business Standard

India’s top business schools are ramping up female enrolment in their flagship programmes — a move experts believe will help produce a new generation of high-calibre women leaders, as industries across sectors push for greater diversity at all levels.

The six older IIMs have collectively enrolled 9 per cent more women in the incoming Class of 2027 compared to the previous cohort, according to a recent Economic Times report.

This shift is being praised by industry experts as a step forward for inclusive leadership development, aligning with corporate India’s push to diversify boardrooms and senior management positions.

At IIM-Indore, women now make up 53.79 per cent of the incoming class — the highest female representation in the institute’s 29-year history. Similarly, IIM-Kozhikode has reported that women constitute close to 55 per cent of its 489-member new cohort. IIM-Ahmedabad, too, has seen a spike, with 30.84 per cent female representation — its highest in the past four years.

6.Trump’s Tariff Goalposts Moved from July 9 to August 1: Financial Times

The US is set to impose a 25% blanket tariff on all imports from Japan and South Korea, effective Aug. 1, according to an announcement yesterday from President Donald Trump. He also disclosed new rates for 12 other countries, including Malaysia (25%), Kazakhstan (25%), South Africa (30%), Bangladesh (35%), Laos (40%), and Myanmar (40%). The upcoming measures were communicated through formal letters to the countries' leaders, which Trump shared on social media.  Trumps claimed that “trade deal with India is close”.

Trump yesterday also signed an executive order delaying so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries from tomorrow to Aug. 1. The tariffs had initially been postponed from April to July to give countries more time to negotiate agreements; the US has so far reached deals with the UK and Vietnam, as well as a preliminary framework with China.  

The latest trade updates from the White House reflect the administration's broader strategy of pressuring trading partners into new bilateral deals and reducing the US trade deficit.

7.Poland's border checks: Beginning of the end of Schengen? DW

When Poland introduced border checks with Germany and Lithuania this week, it wasn't the first time that a Schengen country took such a step. These measures are typically justified as necessary to curb irregular migration, combat human smuggling, or address national security concerns. But for many analysts, it may be one of the clearest signs yet that the European Union's borderless travel area, seen as a symbol of integration and common identity, is under increasing strain.

8.How Trump is using the 'Madman Theory' to try to change the world (and it's working): BBC

Asked last month whether he was planning to join Israel in attacking Iran, US President Donald Trump said "I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I'm going to do".

He let the world believe he had agreed a two-week pause to allow Iran to resume negotiations. And then he bombed anyway.

A pattern is emerging: The most predictable thing about Trump is his unpredictability. He changes his mind. He contradicts himself. He is inconsistent.

"[Trump] has put together a highly centralised policy-making operation, arguably the most centralised, at least in the area of foreign policy, since Richard Nixon," says Peter Trubowitz, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

"And that makes policy decisions more dependent on Trump's character, his preferences, his temperament."

Trump has put this to political use; he has made his own unpredictability a key strategic and political asset. He has elevated unpredictability to the status of a doctrine. And now the personality trait he brought to the White House is driving foreign and security policy.

It is changing the shape of the world.

Political scientists call this the Madman Theory, in which a world leader seeks to persuade his adversary that he is temperamentally capable of anything, to extract concessions. Used successfully it can be a form of coercion and Trump believes it is paying dividends, getting the US's allies where he wants them.

But is it an approach that can work against enemies? And could its flaw be that rather than being a sleight of hand designed to fool adversaries, it is in fact based on well established and clearly documented character traits, with the effect that his behaviour becomes easier to predict?

9.China’s weaponisation of rare earths is a new kind of trade war; Chris Miller in Financial Times

Shortly after Beijing announced new restrictions on exporting rare earth minerals and the specialised magnets they make, the world’s auto industry warned of shortages that could force factory closures.

China’s skilful deployment of rare earth sanctions this spring was probably the key factor in forcing Washington to reverse its tariff rises on the country. They represent a new era of Chinese economic statecraft — evidence of a sanctions policy capable of pressuring not only small neighbours but also the world’s largest economy.

China has been a prolific user of economic sanctions in recent years, but many of its efforts have been blunt and only partially effective. Punitive measures have often been hidden and even officially denied. Chinese tour groups lost interest in visiting the Philippines, we were told; while Taiwanese pineapples couldn’t meet health standards and Chinese consumers simply didn’t want to buy Korean products.

Government-backed boycotts have imposed economic costs on China’s trade partners, but their record at achieving political goals has been mixed. They seem to have prevented some countries from hosting the Dalai Lama or challenging Beijing’s nine-dash line in the South China Sea. Yet they have proved less impactful when core national interests are at stake.

Australia didn’t cave when China cut wine purchases over foreign policy disputes, for example. Nor did South Korea remove a missile defence system it installed in 2016, despite China imposing sanctions and demanding its withdrawal. And China’s earlier sanctions against the US — including blacklisting defence companies and imposing licensing regimes on certain mineral exports — have been more political signal than economic substance.

The new controls on exporting rare earth materials and magnets are different. In just a handful of weeks they threatened to shutter key factories across the auto industry — the largest manufacturing sector in most advanced economies. They also brought the US president to heel on his signature initiative: the trade war.

Why did these sanctions prove so much more effective than prior efforts? Partly because Beijing has been improving its toolkit, building a legal regime to cut strategic exports and improve knowledge of trade partners’ pain points. China has even made this extraterritorial, demanding that companies in other countries not use Chinese minerals to make products for the US defence industry. Beijing bet that other major trading partners would not blame it for the rare earth restrictions but instead push Washington to roll back tariffs. Read on (Gift Article)

10.Google’s AI-created drugs are almost ready for human trials: Fortune

Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs is preparing to launch human trials of AI-designed drugs, its president, Colin Murdoch, told Fortune. Born from DeepMind’s AlphaFold breakthrough, the company is pairing cutting-edge AI with pharma veterans to design medicines faster, cheaper, and more accurately.