Arvind's Newsletter

1.India Inc's Q4FY25 earnings beat Street estimates, but growth slows: Business Standard

Corporate earnings for the January-March 2025 quarter (Q4FY25) surpassed Street expectations, led by Bharti Airtel, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), and base metal producers Hindalco and Vedanta, as well as leading private-sector lender ICICI Bank.

The combined net profit (adjusted for exceptional gains and losses) of 1,555 companies (excluding their listed subsidiaries) grew 6.6 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in Q4FY25, well above most brokerage estimates. In their earnings previews, various brokerages had projected Y-o-Y growth of -5 per cent to 1 per cent for companies in their coverage universe.

However, despite exceeding expectations, the pace of earnings growth remained similar to the previous quarter (Q3FY25) and marked a slowdown from the double-digit rise in Q4. For comparison, the sample’s combined net profit grew 10.8 per cent Y-o-Y in Q4FY24 and by 6.5 per cent Y-o-Y in Q3FY25. In absolute terms, the combined adjusted net profit grew to a new high of ₹3.6 trillion in Q4, up from ₹3.39 trillion a year ago and ₹3.23 trillion in Q3FY25.

2.Freakish rains disrupts Mumbai: Economic Times

Heavy rains hit India's financial capital Mumbai on Monday as the annual monsoon rains arrived some two weeks earlier than usual, according to weather forecasters. Mumbai has broken its 107-year-record of receiving highest rains in the month of May. As per IMD data, the weather agency's Colaba observatory recorded 135.4 mm of rainfall in the 24 hours ending 8:30 am Monday, categorised as "very heavy rain" (115.6 mm–204.4 mm). In contrast, the Santacruz observatory in the suburbs recorded 33.5 mm.

"The Southwest Monsoon has advanced to Mumbai today, May, 26 2025, against the normal date of advancement, June 11," IMD said in a statement. "Thus, the monsoon has arrived in Mumbai 16 days earlier than usual. This marks the earliest monsoon advancement over Mumbai during the period 2001–2025."

Several regions across India, including Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and parts of Madhya Pradesh, have experienced unseasonal heavy rains and storms, leading to significant disruptions and damages. These events are indicative of shifting weather patterns.

3.RBI Dividend Windfall Boosts Fiscal Room And Supports Capex Momentum, Say Analysts: NDTV PROFIT

The Reserve Bank of India has announced a record dividend of Rs 2.69 lakh crore for the central government for financial year 2025, marking a significant 27.4% increase over last year’s payout of Rs 2.1 lakh crore. At 0.75% of GDP, the dividend surpasses both the government’s budget estimate of Rs 2.25 lakh crore and most market expectations.

Brokerages welcomed the announcement, noting its implications for fiscal consolidation and capital expenditure. Morgan Stanley remarked that the higher-than-expected transfer aligns with the government’s fiscal consolidation target—pegged at 4.4% of GDP for fiscal 2026, down from a revised 4.8% in financial year 2025—and supports continued capex momentum.

Nomura also revised its fiscal deficit forecast downward by 0.1 percentage points to 4.4% of GDP, citing the dividend windfall. The payout provides the government with greater flexibility, reducing near-term fiscal slippage risks. BofA echoed this sentiment, noting that the dividend will help cushion ambitious revenue assumptions in the fiscal 2026 budget, especially in light of recent income tax.

4.Nestle SA picks up minority stake in Indian pet food company Drools: Mint

Swiss food giant Nestle SA, the parent company of Nestle India, has made a minority investment in the Indian pet food company Drools Pet Food Private Limited. The financial details of this investment, Nestle SA's first in India, were not disclosed. Nestle SA owns popular brands such as Kit Kat and Milo.

The investment follows a $60-million fundraise by the company in 2023 from LVMH-backed private-equity firm L Catterton. The firm's investment in Drools amounted to 10% of the company’s valuation at the time, making it one of the largest investments in the Indian pet care industry.

The deal values Drools at over $1 billion, the company claimed in a statement, making it India’s third unicorn of 2025. The company said it will continue to operate independently.

Nestlé has a strong global presence in the pet food industry, with its Purina PetCare division being a major player. They operate pet food factories in 19 countries and have headquarters in North America, Europe, and Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Purina PetCare's sales reached US$21.47 billion in 2023, accounting for 20.3% of Nestlé's overall sales. 

5.University of Liverpool to open Bengaluru campus, start by August 2026: Business Standard

The University of Liverpool is set to open a campus in Bengaluru by the summer of 2026, after receiving a formal letter of intent (LoI) from the University Grants Commission (UGC) on Monday to establish a foreign campus in India.

This makes it the second university from the United Kingdom (UK) to set up a campus in India, Vice-Chancellor Tim Jones told Business Standard in a telephonic interaction.

Currently, the University of Southampton has a campus in Gurugram, where classes are expected to begin in August this year.

Scheduled to welcome its inaugural batch of undergraduate and postgraduate students in August 2026, the University of Liverpool’s Bengaluru campus will initially offer programmes in business management, accounting and finance, computer science and biomedical sciences.

6.Cricket gives Disney-Ambani unit in India almost as many users as Netflix globally: Financial Times

India’s largest streaming platform JioHotstar has amassed more than 280mn subscribers in recent months driven by the popularity of the world’s richest cricket league, according to the company, almost as many as the world’s largest streamer Netflix has globally.

JioStar, the six-month-old product of a merger of a unit from Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance media empire with Disney in India that is also backed by James Murdoch, now owns the digital and television rights for the tournament, previously split between the two rivals.

Fans used to be able to watch matches on Reliance’s Jio for free, but since the merger, cricket fans have had to subscribe to JioStar’s service. Subscriptions to JioHotstar — the streaming platform — have jumped from 50mn in March to 280mn this month, just shy of the 300mn claimed by Netflix globally.

“It has been the biggest season of IPL till now. Both in terms of viewership as well as monetisation,” Sanjog Gupta, JioStar’s chief executive for sports, told the Financial Times. Since the tournament began on March 22, some 450mn people have watched cricket on TV and the same number again on digital platforms, Gupta said, although there has been some overlap.

The network hopes that these viewers will stick around after the cricket ends on June 3, and watch Hollywood movies and shows from Paramount, Disney to Pixar and HBO, to which it has exclusive rights.

The surge in subscriptions, with monthly packages starting as low as $0.60, caps a difficult period for broadcasters, which have struggled to profit from a cricket league that has been hugely profitable for the Indian cricket board and the individual teams but not for the media companies that paid for the rights. Read on (Gift article)

7.India’s WFA opportunity: Founding Fuel Publishing

While some major employers like JPMorgan and Amazon are mandating return-to-office policies—often driven by legacy mindsets and control biases rather than productivity concerns—successful global companies like Atlassian and Spotify have embraced WFA (Work From Anywhere) with positive results. 

In his essay, 8 It enables individuals to live closer to family and creates opportunities for women. It also helps organisations through lower attrition, higher productivity, and cost savings. There are challenges like employee isolation, but they can be addressed through best practices, he writes.

Choudhury argues that WFA could be particularly transformative for India. It could potentially reverse the brain drain from small towns to metros and create development opportunities. He gives the example of Tulsa, Oklahoma's successful remote worker attraction program.

He writes, “The city offered incentives to attract remote workers. The result? A revitalised downtown, more tax dollars, greater civic engagement, and a startup boom. Over 50 cities in the US now compete to attract remote workers. Globally, more than 50 countries—from Portugal to the Philippines—have launched digital nomad visas to draw in knowledge workers.

Can India seize this moment? Will our policymakers design a digital nomad visa to attract global innovators and academics? Will local leaders in Durgapur, Sikkim, or Kozhikode create the conditions to retain and draw WFA talent?

8.Harvard Derangement Syndrome: Dr. Stephen Pinker in New York Times

Stephen Pinkar is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of well known author of several books including the Blank Slate (one of my favourites), Better Angels of our Nature and Enlightenment Now.

“In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay “The Trouble With Harvard” called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current “eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism” which “conceals unknown mischief.” My 2023 “five-point plan to save Harvard from itself” urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained “how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,” calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes.

So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged. According to its critics, Harvard is a “national disgrace,” a “woke madrasa,” a “Maoist indoctrination camp,” a “ship of fools,” a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” a “cesspool of extremist riots” and an “Islamist outpost” in which the “dominant view on campus” is “destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization.”

And that’s before we get to President Trump’s opinion that Harvard is “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”

This is not just trash talk. On top of its savage slashing of research funding across the board, the Trump administration has singled out Harvard to receive no federal grants at all. Not satisfied with these punishments, the administration just moved to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students and has threatened to multiply the tax on its endowment as much as fifteenfold, as well as to remove its tax-free nonprofit status.”

Read on (Gift article).

9.Chinese electric vehicle stocks plummeted after BYD, the world’s biggest EV maker, announced that it would slash prices by up to 34% amid a global price war reported Financial Times

EV sales have recently reached an all-time high, but growth is slowing. A backlash against Tesla over CEO Elon Musk’s controversial role in the White House, the scrapping of government incentives globally, and rising tariffs on Chinese-made EVs have further kneecapped demand.

Last week, producers in Brazil — one of the world’s biggest car manufacturing countries — called for sanctions on BYD in response to the company’s dominance, Nikkei Asia reported. BYD accounted for 70% of EVs sold in Brazil in the first quarter.

10.Texas is on the verge of becoming the second US state after Florida to ban social media for minors. 

A proposed bill would require all social media platforms to verify users’ age.

Florida has prohibited social media for under-14s, and several other states are pursuing similar moves, as are countries outside the US.

Brussels wants a European Union-wide “age of digital adulthood,” according to Politico. Social media’s impact on mental health is debated, but young people seem to want to reduce their use.

Several polls find young people wish social media didn’t exist and support “digital curfews” limiting their access.

“Offline clubs,” in which youths meet in spaces where smartphones and laptops are banned, are growing across Europe, DW reported.

Australia has already introduced legislation that restricts social media access for individuals under 16. This law mandates that certain social media platforms take "reasonable steps" to prevent users under the age of 16 from having accounts.