Arvind's Newsletter

1.India eyes tariff cut on $23 bn of US imports, to shield $66 bn in exports: Business Standard

New Delhi fears the tariffs could hit 87% of its $66 billion exports to the US.

India may lower or scrap duties on some US goods but insists on relief in return. Sensitive sectors like meat and dairy are off-limits, though almonds and quinoa may see cuts. However, broader tariff reforms remain uncertain, with Modi balancing political and economic stakes.

2.Canada and India Look to Reset Ties in Counter to Trump’s Duties: Bloomberg

Canada and India are working to cool diplomatic tensions as both sides look to strengthen trade ties to counter US tariff threats. The two countries are considering returning envoys after tit-for-tat expulsions last year, according to people familiar with the matter. Canada’s intelligence chief also participated in a meeting hosted by India’s national security adviser last week in New Delhi. A meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, at the Group of Seven summit in Alberta in June cannot be ruled out, the people said.

3.One In Five Ultra-Rich Indians Plan To Migrate Abroad, Says Kotak Private

One in five ultra-high-networth individuals (UHNIs) surveyed by Kotak Private Banking, a division of Kotak Mahindra Bank, are looking to migrate out of India to enhance their standard of living, healthcare solutions, education, or lifestyles.

These individuals aim to reside in their chosen host country permanently while retaining their Indian citizenship, the report said.

The survey, conducted in the first two quarters of FY25, included 150 UHNIs.

Professionals showed a greater inclination to migrate compared to entrepreneurs or inheritors. Age-wise, those aged 36–40 and over 61 expressed the strongest interest. Preferred destinations include the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with its Golden Visa scheme being particularly attractive.

4.Indian Stock Rebound Gathers Steam as Nifty Erases Loss for 2025:Bloomberg

India’s stocks have erased this year’s losses on signs of a pickup in government spending. The central bank’s liquidity infusion and interest-rate cut in its last meeting have also driven optimism. Set for a six-day winning streak, the benchmark NSE Nifty 50 Index climbed as much as 1.3% on Monday, up about 7% from its lows in the first week of March, after declining as much as 16% from its September high. However, the stocks dropped some of these gains over next 2 days. An economic downturn and persistent foreign selling led the downturn.

5.India's tech sector sees more women, yet leadership gaps persist: Team Lease Digital

India’s tech contractual workforce has witnessed a notable improvement over the past four years, with female participation rising from 9.51 per cent in 2020 to 27.98 per cent in 2024, according to a report by TeamLease Digital.

The report, titled 'Gender Parity - Shaping Workforce Equity,' is based on a quantitative analysis of a proprietary dataset comprising 13,000 associates from TeamLease Digital’s tech contractual workforce between 2020 and 2024.

Among various sectors, global capability centres (GCCs) have made the most strides in improving gender diversity. Female representation in GCCs rose from 31.4 per cent in 2020 to 38.3 per cent in 2024, driven by structured DEI policies and global workforce strategies.

Despite these improvements, women’s representation in senior leadership remains low, increasing only marginally from 11.43 per cent in 2020 to 13.60 per cent in 2024.  

6.BYD’s EV dominance

BYD is the carmaker on everyone’s lips at the moment and the chatter may be about to get even louder. China’s best-selling automaker is due to report its full-year earnings on Monday and revenue could top $100 billion — a first for BYD that would also put it ahead of Tesla, whose 2024 sales were $97.7 billion.

BYD has had an amazing run. Since it stopped selling internal-combustion-engine cars in March 2022 — making it the first major automaker in the world to fully transition away from gasoline-powered vehicles — sales have registered hockey-stick growth. That’s thanks in large part to BYD’s lineup of attractive models across the price spectrum.

The battery company turned carmaker already sells about the same number of EVs as Tesla — 1.76 million in 2024 versus Tesla’s 1.79 million — but is much larger when all of its other passenger hybrid car sales are included. BYD’s total car deliveries last year climbed to 4.25 million, almost as many as Ford. For 2025, BYD thinks it will ship as many as 6 million vehicles.

The hot streak hasn’t stopped BYD from continuing to make advances in technology. Its shares surged to a fresh record last week — they’re up almost 60% this year alone in Hong Kong — after it unveiled a new ecosystem that allows some of its electric vehicles to get 400 kilometers (250 miles) of driving range from just 5 minutes of charging. 

7.Atlantic magazine releases more details of Trump officials’ Signal chat: Financial Times

The Atlantic magazine has published more excerpts of the Trump administration’s group chat on Signal that detail timings of military strikes in Yemen, a day after senior officials claimed the exchanges contained no classified information.

The messages will heap more pressure on the administration over what is being described as one of the most spectacular security breaches in the upper echelons of power in Washington in recent years.

Donald Trump has dismissed the scandal as a “glitch” and stood by Mike Waltz, his national security adviser, who set up the group chat on the Signal messaging app and inadvertently invited Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to take part.

In its latest publication, The Atlantic cites one text timed at 11.44 on Saturday, March 15 from defence secretary Pete Hegseth that reads: “Just CONFIRMED w/ CENTCOM [Central Command, the military’s combatant command for the Middle East] we are a GO for mission launch.”

“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”, the text continues.

Critics say it is virtually unprecedented for senior officials to discuss such highly sensitive information touching on vital US national security interests on an unofficial, commercially available messaging platform.

8.Apple is experimenting with adding cameras and some AI features to the Apple Watch,  signal the company is accelerating its efforts to stay competitive in the shift toward artificial intelligence.

The cameras would allow the watch to see the world around it and deliver information about the surroundings to its owner. The company hopes to do something similar with its AirPods, part of a broader roll out of what Apple calls Visual Intelligence—a melding of cameras and AI into hardware like the AirPods and Apple Watches.

While AI has proliferated across software and applications, companies have struggled to develop popular AI-focused hardware, and a month ago, Humane, the once-buzzy startup behind such a device, said it was selling itself to HP for $116 million, a fraction of the valuation it had previously fetched.

9.Open AI considers price cut for Chat GPT in India: The Information

OpenAI has told some employees the company may cut the price of ChatGPT’s premium subscription in India to as low as several dollars a month, 75% to 85% less than the $20 per month it charges customers in the rest of the world. This price is high relative to the country’s median monthly salary.

OpenAI plans to reach 1 billion daily active users by the end of this year, and growth in India is important to reaching that goal, according to a person who saw the plans.

The company is in talks with India’s Reliance Industries, led by Mukesh Ambani, about a potential partnership to distribute or sell its artificial intelligence products, according to two people who spoke to executives at both companies. The partnership could involve Reliance using its wireless carrier, Jio, to distribute ChatGPT or selling OpenAI’s models to its enterprise customers through an application programming interface.

10.The biggest companies in the United States are on a hiring spree in India: New York Times.

They are building hundreds of overseas office parks. These aren’t call centers — they’re offices for Indian professionals employed by global companies to perform advanced tasks that, not long ago, Americans would have carried out. There are already 1,800 of these centers, and the rate of growth is doubling. They will soon employ two million Indians.

President Trump wants to restore American manufacturing. He is preparing to impose tariffs on India, a move that he says will bring jobs back and close a $46 billion trade deficit.

But tariffs reduce trade by making goods more expensive; they don’t affect services or offshoring, the practice of hiring workers overseas. Visa restrictions are equally irrelevant. The roles at these new centers are not for immigrants. They’re for people who want to stay in India and work for American companies.

In the 1990s, banks and big tech companies realized they could send jobs to India, where wages are just a fraction of those paid in the United States. Many of these were positions Americans didn’t want to fill. Sweaty youngsters piled into rooms in the middle of the night to help American customers rebook their flights or learn whether warranties had expired.

Now the roles are more advanced, and the people holding them often have graduate degrees. Workers are analyzing medical scans, writing marketing pitches, balancing budgets and designing state-of-the-art microchips — the kind of work that used to put Americans in the top tax brackets.

It’s not just happening here. Japanese and British firms have set up offices in places like Mexico and Poland. But most of the multinationals are American, and most of these new centers are in India.

America is reducing immigration, and its working-age population is shrinking. It’s harder than ever for companies to hire skilled workers. But the talent pool is nearly bottomless in India, which churns out roughly 10 times as many engineering degrees as the United States every year.

America is reducing immigration, and its working-age population is shrinking. It’s harder than ever for companies to hire skilled workers. But the talent pool is nearly bottomless in India, which churns out roughly 10 times as many engineering degrees as the United States every year.

So all kinds of companies are converging on six English-speaking cities in India. They include huge firms like Cisco and Target, which has a Bengaluru campus roughly the size of its Minneapolis headquarters. Bank of America is in Chennai. Hundreds of smaller companies have rushed in elsewhere, too. A third of the companies in the Fortune 500 have centers like these across the country, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in India.

Trump may one day retaliate against American companies hiring service workers abroad. Some firms won’t brag about it for fear of inviting a backlash. But it’s unclear what could disrupt them: All of Trump’s levies so far focus on imports and don’t touch this part of the economy.

Maybe Trump won’t notice. These high-wage, education-intensive positions aren’t the manufacturing jobs he promised to bring back.