Arvind's Newsletter

1.India’s industrial production rebounds in March but falls short of expectations

India’s industrial activity continued its recovery momentum with the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) growing 3 per cent year-on-year in March 2025, according to data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. This marked a recovery from the six-month low of 2.9 per cent recorded in February. However, growth remained below the 5.5 per cent expansion reported during the same month last year.

2.Reliance in Race to Get Haier’s Indian operations

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) has emerged as a key contender for a significant stake in the Indian operations of China’s Haier, said people in the know. Haier is seeking to localise its consumer electronics and appliance manufacture business by roping in a homegrown strategic partner.

The move pits Reliance Industries against a consortium that includes Sunil Mittal of the Bharti Group, among others, mirroring their competition in the telecommunications sector.

Haier Appliances India, ranked third after LG and Samsung, had been considering a plan to dilute 25-51% equity, including an MG Motors-style structure, in which an Indian entity becomes the single largest shareholder.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) also plans to invest Rs 75,000 crore ($9 billion) each into its new energy business and petrochemical expansion, according to a company presentation. In its FY25 result statement, Ambani said the company has laid a strong foundation for its projects in renewable energy and battery operations.

“In the coming quarters, we will see the transition of this business from incubation to operationalisation. I firmly believe that the new energy growth engine will create significant value for Reliance, for India and for the world,” Ambani said.

The conglomerate has commissioned a 1-gigawatt heterojunction (HJT) solar module manufacturing facility and aims to scale it to a fully integrated 10-gigawatt capacity by 2026. This expansion is expected to add Rs 6,000 crore to Reliance’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and Amortisation (Ebitda), the company said.

3.Sarvam AI To Develop India's First GenAI Platform; CEO Says Will Be Ready In 6 Months

The Indian government announced the selection of Sarvam AI to build the country’s first homegrown AI foundational model.

While releasing the guidelines for the ECMS scheme, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw disclosed that out of the 67 proposals received, Sarvam AI is the first startup shortlisted to develop India’s first indigenous foundational model.

He shared that in the due course, 2-3 more startups will join the programme.

4.Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train to launch by 2028.

“By 2028, we will be able to travel on the bullet train,” Devendra Fadnavis, CM of Maharashtra said, conceding that the neighbouring state Gujarat is ahead of Maharashtra in the project development.

Last week, the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) said approximately 75 per cent of the excavation work for the $15 billion Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train station at Bandra Kurla Complex in the metropolis has been completed.

The 508-kilometre corridor will have 12 stations. While the one in Mumbai is underground, those at Thane, Virar, Boisar, Vapi, Bilimora, Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand, Ahmedabad, and Sabarmati are elevated.

5.Musk’s XAI Holding in talks to raise $20 bn

Elon Musk’s XAI Holdings, formed from merging his xAI startup with social media company X, is in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported. The new investment could value the combined company at $120 billion, the report said.

The giant round could be used to pay down some of the debt that X, then called Twitter, took on when Musk took it private in a leveraged buyout three years ago. XAI, the maker of chatbot Grok, has previously raised about $13 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, BlackRock  and sovereign wealth funds MGX and Qatar Investment Authority.

6.Waymo might be willing to sell you a self-driving car, says Sundar Pichai

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that he could foresee people owning cars with Waymo’s self-driving car systems. There’s “future optionality around personal ownership” of Waymo’s technology, Pichai said in a call to discuss the company’s first quarter results.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, doesn’t sell its robotaxis to the public, which are estimated to cost over a quarter of a million dollars, according to autonomous vehicle experts. It’s not clear if the company would sell the vehicles or just the self-driving systems to operate another car marker’s vehicles. A spokesperson for Waymo declined to elaborate.

Putting Waymos in the hands of individual owners or businesses could increase the pressure on Tesla. The electric vehicle maker has said that Tesla owners would be able to make money off their cars that operate as robotaxis. Tesla said earlier this week that the Austin launch will consist of 10 to 20 cars.

Pichai said Waymo also now completes 250,000 paid trips weekly, five times more than it did last year. Waymo operates robotaxis in San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles, and has an expansion into Atlanta planned for this summer and Washington next year.

And Google claims it is the only company that can offer the level of features and functionality that its popular Chrome web browser has today, given its “interdependencies” on other parts of the Alphabet Inc. unit, the head of Chrome testified.

“Chrome today represents 17 years of collaboration between the Chrome people” and the rest of Google, Parisa Tabriz, the browser’s general manager, said Friday as part of the Justice Department’s antitrust case in Washington federal court. “Trying to disentangle that is unprecedented.”

Some of the product’s features, such as its safe browsing mode or a system that notifies users if their password has been compromised, rely on shared Google infrastructure not solely within Chrome’s purview, she said.

“I don’t think it could be recreated,” she added.

7.The record-breaking tunnel being built from Denmark to Germany

A record-breaking tunnel is being built under the Baltic Sea between Denmark and Germany, which will slash travel times and improve Scandinavia's links with the rest of Europe.

Running for 18km (11 miles), the Fehmarnbelt will be the world's longest pre-fabricated road and rail tunnel.

It's also a remarkable feat of engineering, that will see segments of the tunnel placed on top of the seafloor, and then joined together.

8.In Uncertain Times, Get Curious

When we feel uncertain or anxious about something, our curiosity can go into hiding. And that’s “just when we need it most,” writes Elizabeth Weingarten.

“It’s easy to get curious about queries separate from ourselves (‘Why do only some leaves turn colours in the fall?’) or even about exciting unknowns in our lives (‘What’s the surprise my family is planning for my birthday?’),” she writes. “It’s harder to access a sense of curiosity about the parts of our lives that are scary or painful . . . Our fears and anxieties take the wheel, driving us to places we’d rather not be.”

Elizabeth explains how getting curious through asking questions can help mitigate the anxiety that comes with uncertainty. “Asking questions . . . is not just about wanting to find the answer—it is also about our need to connect, with ourselves, with others, with the world,” she writes. 

9.How to have friends past age 30

Economist Noah Smith, provides a quick and easy guide in this blog post.

10.Four Leadership Loads That Keep Getting Heavier; MIT Sloan Review

No one ever said leadership was easy. But in recent years, as with so many jobs, being a leader has, in fact, become harder. Leaders rush from meeting to meeting feeling like lunchroom attendants for an unruly junior high. With exponentially escalating business complexity, diminished civility, and intrusive, pervasive technological interruptions, you may feel like it’s barely possible to keep order, let alone lead employees on an inspiring journey.